How much did Rosemary know? The idea she might be ignorant of her husband’s duplicity appealed to Harry. But he recalled her air of excitement at their first meeting in New Commodities House and how nervous she had been earlier at her home. With hindsight, her behaviour seemed far from innocent. And it was not as if Graham-Brown was intending to skip to Spain with his secretary, instead of his wife. Why should he, when Rosemary put the average bimbo to shame? She might have reservations about him and his choice of their daughter’s name, but she was a woman who luxuriated in the leisured life that money could bring. Harry had little doubt they were in it together.
‘You look as though someone’s let you down,’ said an ironic female voice. ‘What’s up? Has Rogan done a runner without paying your bill?’
Kim Lawrence had arrived to take her turn on duty. Harry thought it unlikely that the posters she was carrying about the need to fight to safeguard legal aid would tempt many middle-aged captains of industry away from the leopardskin lady.
‘It’s all yours,’ he said. ‘And as for Finbar, he’s around here somewhere if you’re in the mood for a little Irish levity.’
She winced. ‘With any luck, I’ll avoid him. I simply don’t believe that man is as naive as he makes out. I’ve met his kind before: totally self-centred. All hail-fellow-well-met until you cross them. Then, when you do, God help you.’
Harry guessed that Finbar would meet his match in Kim Lawrence. For the first time it occurred to him that his client did not attract such a wide range of women as he had always enviously supposed. To fall for the blarney, they had to be vulnerable — as Harry sensed Melissa to be — or simply keen on sex, like Sophie.
‘You’ll be telling me next that what happened in chambers the other day was a miscarriage of justice to rival the Guildford Four.’
‘A travesty,’ said Kim Lawrence, although the sardonic glint in her eyes robbed her words of priggishness. Her face darkened. ‘And though I’ll live to fight another day, my client was deeply distressed.’
‘You win some, you lose some.’
‘I don’t think Sinead Rogan is so philosophical. I’ve never seen anyone as furious as she was after Cody’s ruling.’
Harry was about to ask Kim if Sinead had said anything to her about Eileen McCray when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Harry! It’s a small world.’
Baz Gilbert and Penny Newland, hand in hand, had come up behind him. The disc jockey gestured at the crowd surrounding the timeshare stand and gave a crooked smile. ‘Legal business doesn’t seem so brisk. Competition too hot?’
‘There wasn’t much hope for us once Ms Lawrence here banned us from touting for new clients under the slogan “Drop Your Old Briefs”.’ He dodged out of reach of feminist retribution and asked, ‘And you two? Has Nick Folley insisted that you go on parade?’
‘With such a small staff, everyone has to do their share,’ said Penny. ‘Even Sophie’s graced us with her presence. Perhaps she hasn’t found anyone to share a hotel room with this evening.’
Her bitchiness came as a surprise to Harry. He sensed she took personal offence at her colleague’s philandering. Obviously news of Sophie’s misadventures at the Blue Moon had not taken long to reach the Radio Liverpool grapevine.
‘Thanks again for inviting me on to Pop In,’ he said, hastily changing the subject. ‘Until yesterday morning, all I knew about local radio was what I’d gleaned from Play Misty For Me.’
‘I’m no Clint Eastwood,’ said Baz.
‘You’re not so bad,’ his girlfriend said, squeezing his arm as the three of them walked down the aisle.
‘At least I don’t have as much trouble as Clint did, fending off the psychopaths.’
‘I don’t know, you’ve had your share of nutcases to contend with. Especially on the phone-ins.’
‘A hazard of the job?’ asked Harry.
‘Too right,’ said Penny. Her expression was troubled. ‘There are some very unhappy people out there. And some very disturbed ones.’
‘Someone’s got to support Tranmere Rovers,’ said Baz.
‘That reminds me! What about the man who would only make love wearing Liverpool football kit?’
‘He once scored at Anfield,’ said Baz drily.
‘But he’s had some sad cases, Harry. In the end, it began to get to him, that’s why he asked Nick to let him move to the morning show. He takes his work so seriously, always gives it one hundred per cent. But it’s no fun at two a.m., trying to talk sense to someone at the end of their tether.’
Harry was struck again by Penny’s fierce devotion to her lover. He wondered whether the disc jockey found it hard living on a pedestal.
‘No wonder they talk about the desperate hours,’ said Baz. ‘The straw that broke my back was a couple of months or so ago. A young girl called, threatening to commit suicide. I tried to persuade her things weren’t so bad, but it was like soft-soaping a speak-your-weight machine. She just kept repeating her life was in ruins, she was no good, she’d let her family down.’
‘What was the problem?’
‘The usual. A young Catholic girl who got pregnant. She wanted an abortion, but felt she could never live with herself afterwards. I’m not one for religion, never have been, and I kept arguing with her, off the air and on. A bundle of cliches, but true all the same. She was only a kid, she had everything good ahead of her, why ruin her life for one silly mistake?’
‘So what happened?’
Baz’s face was ashen as he cast his mind back; Penny had her head bowed. ‘She took my advice, but there was a problem with the anaesthetic. She had a bad reaction to it — a chance in ten thousand. She died without regaining consciousness. I threw up when I heard the news. Couldn’t help reproaching myself.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Penny urgently. ‘You’d done everything in your power to help young Eileen. She simply couldn’t — ’
‘Eileen?’ interrupted Harry. In the overheated room he felt suddenly cold. ‘What was her second name?’
Baz and Penny exchanged puzzled glances.
‘McCray,’ said the disc jockey. ‘She was called Eileen McCray. Why do you ask?’
Chapter Thirteen
‘Life’s riddled with uncertainties, sir!’
A fresh faced youth in a blue polyester blazer called to Harry from an insurance company’s stand.
‘You take chances every single day! But don’t despair! Help is at hand.’ The salesman spoke with the evangelistic fervour of an aspiring Billy Graham. Having captured his prospect’s attention, he allowed his mouth to relax into a smile as broad as the get-out clauses in the small print of the policies he sold.
‘We offer our clients real peace of mind — about their lives, their property, their possessions…’
‘Sorry,’ said Harry, brushing away the proffered literature. ‘Never mind hang-gliding and unsafe sex. If you knew the people I mix with, you’d declare me uninsurable.’
He’d said goodbye to Baz and Penny at the Radio Liverpool stand. Finbar wasn’t there and neither was Melissa. The engineer from Pop In said the Irishman had gone to the bar whilst his girlfriend went to the loo. That suited Harry, who wanted the chance of a private word with his client. He was after confirmation that Finbar was the father of the unborn child Eileen McCray had decided to abort.
As for insurance, Finbar had to be the ultimate bad risk, with two attempts on his life in swift succession. Would McCray — assuming he was the culprit — try again, or would the police investigation scare him off? Harry doubted whether the builder frightened easily. Finbar’s best hope of saving his skin was to put aside his guilt about Eileen McCray’s death and tell Sladdin about it. But if he did not, what could be done to help him?
Two people. Rosemary and Finbar. Both fools to themselves, yet both clients for whom Harry couldn’t help caring. He felt an unwanted sense of responsibility for their fates, as if they were silly kids blind to the danger of what they were doing and therefore unable to protect themselves.