“I haven’t any more money. Your girl took an age to put me through.”
“Give me a number where I can phone you back. Come on, Peter, there isn’t much time.”
“No. I must think it over. I see that now. You’re Stirrup’s lawyer after all, you’re in his pocket.”
The line died before Harry could utter another word. He slammed the receiver down and let out a loud groan of despair. Francesca, passing by, poked her head round the door.
“You all right? I’ve got some Alka-Seltzer if that’s any use.”
“No, thanks. Honestly.”
“Suit yourself.” She assumed a martyred expression and disappeared in the direction of the loo, banging the door behind her with the finality of one who has mistyped her last letter of the day.
When she was out of earshot Harry swore quietly, aware that he was no wiser than before Kuiper’s call. He stared disconsolately at the pile of unfinished paperwork languishing in front of him. The heat had drained him of energy and the evening ahead promised nothing.
Valerie was out of town on a trial and when Harry phoned Balliol Chambers, David Base said he thought the case would run on until tomorrow afternoon.
“Can I take a message?”
Unreasonably, Harry found the clerk’s willingness to please grating and he had snapped, “No message,” before banging the phone down.
His small office felt like the inside of an oven, yet if he opened the window traffic noise and roadworks made coherent thought impossible. Time for a positive decision. He would abandon the job for the rest of the day and go and get drunk instead.
On his way to The Dock Brief, he picked up an evening paper. BEAST LINK IN SCHOOLGIRL MURDER? demanded a headline. He leaned against a makeshift timber wall surrounding a redevelopment site and scanned the story.
From the front page a photograph of Claire looked out at him. A head and shoulders portrait of her in a school uniform. Her expression matched the Mona Lisa’s for complacency. As if she were pandering to an adult’s whim in having her picture taken. She’d been at least as arrogant as her boyfriend, Harry reflected. He wasn’t sentimental about speaking ill of the dead. Yet nothing she might have done justified the squeezing away of her life, the consigning of her body to that dark, dismal cavern-tomb.
The journalist, Ken Cafferty, had improved bare facts with a skilful blend of innuendo and speculation. The old identikit picture of The Beast appeared next to the story. A nondescript face, stripped of all individuality. What had Bernard Gladwin said? Might be you. Might even be me. The picture had been composed, Harry suspected, ninety percent from guesswork and ten percent from the fleeting impression of a victim who might have felt she had some sense of the features beneath the animal mask.
Only on a close, lawyer’s re-reading of the story could Harry tell that the police were not officially connecting Claire’s death with the earlier attacks of The Beast. They were simply declining to rule The Beast out as a possible culprit. Cafferty made no mention of The Beast’s supposed predilection for blondes: it didn’t fit with the story. Nor did the red roses, of which he must be unaware. Bolus had made it clear to both Harry and Stirrup that no one else should be told about the strange garland which the killer had left on the girl’s corpse.
What did the roses signify? Nothing Harry knew about Claire suggested that anyone had a rational motive for murdering her. No grudge against her father, however bitterly held, could explain the savagery of her death. If Kuiper was innocent of the crime, as Harry still believed, the only credible alternative theory was that she had fallen prey to a maniac.
But there remained the question of the library books. Why had she lied about them?
He tucked the paper under his arm and strode to The Dock Brief. The pub was crowded but the hum of conversation disturbed him less than the knowledge that he was impotent to make good Jack Stirrup’s loss. Midway through his fourth pint, his reasoning was fuzzier than before and his dismay at Claire’s death had still not been submerged by the booze. As he gazed into the cloudy depths of the drink, he felt a hand grasp his arm.
“We meet again.”
Trevor Morgan. Glancing over his shoulder, Harry found Morgan’s second-hand grin and unfocussed eyes as depressing as the beer fumes which enveloped him like poison gas.
“Pull up a stool.” At least Trevor was probably too far gone to spot the lack of enthusiasm in his words. “How are you doing?”
“Never better, Harry. Never better. A pint glass in my hand and no one to hassle me. What more could any man ask me, tell me that?”
“Sorry to hear about Catherine.”
In his present state, Morgan was unlikely to recall that their last meeting he had pretended his wife was still living with him. Having a word now might minimise future embarrassment if they met again. Nothing unusual in a spouse’s desertion these days. But the one left behind still often felt a sense of shame and of failure as well as the pain of isolation. Harry knew that from personal experience.
“What? Ah!” Morgan’s free hand made a lavish easy-come, easy-go gesture. “Women. You’re better off without them. Don’t you think so, boy?”
Harry thought about Liz, about Brenda, about Valerie.
“Maybe.”
“No maybes about it.” Morgan poked Harry in the ribs with his forefinger. “They’re bad news. Only good for one thing, if you ask me, and most of ‘em aren’t so bloody keen on that. A feller can only put up with so much. Some things he shouldn’t have to take.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Morgan’s voice was beginning to rise and Harry wanted to pacify him, not debate the numberless shortcomings of the other sex.
“Anyway, let’s not talk about the bitches. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“‘Nother pint? I owe you one after you sent me to that feller Fowler. Good man, that. Good man.”
The prospect of a night-long drinking session with Trevor Morgan was sobering Harry fast. He checked his watch, then pushed his glass to one side.
“No more, thanks. I’ll have to be on my way now. But let me buy you one before I go.”
Morgan’s face darkened. Mention of Fowler had led his rambling thoughts down a new track. “No way. You’d be paying with that bastard Stirrup’s money. I know you’re in hock to him up to your eyeballs.”
“He’s only a client, Trevor.”
“Only a bastard.” Morgan stared moodily at his glass. “Ought to be taught a lesson.”
There was no arguing with him. Harry prepared to mutter an apology and make his getaway.
“A lesson,” repeated Morgan stubbornly. “Bloody murderer. I say, bloody murderer.”
His voice was rising again. Harry saw that, even in The Dock Brief’s early evening hubbub, one or two people were turning round. Not in a spirit of censure. The regulars enjoyed watching a good fight every now and then.
“Cut it out, Trevor.”
He laid a restraining hand on Morgan’s upper arm. With a bellow of rage the Welshman threw it off.
“Let go of me! You’re no better than he is. The bloody murderer!”
“Take it easy. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Oh, don’t I? And who do you think you are to tell me that, Mister Smart-Arse Solicitor? Who do you think you are? Sucking up to that bloody murderer. All right. This is what I think of you!”
Harry saw the swing of the arm holding the empty glass at the last possible moment. He ducked instinctively and the wild flailing movement swept over the top of his head. Someone screamed as the glass caught a man passing by on the side of the head. The man staggered and yelled at the same time. Harry lost his balance and felt, rather than saw, an answering blow shave his chin as one of the victim’s friends aimed wildly at Trevor.
Within seconds the place was in pandemonium. Women were screeching, men were shouting, glass was breaking. Harry rolled over and saw Trevor hit the ground with a skull-cracking thud. His assailant, a young man in a leather jacket, was on him at once, firing indiscriminate punches to head and chest before a shirt-sleeved barman managed to pull him off. The man whom Trevor had hit was sitting in a pool of beer and debris, rubbing his temple and blinking back tears of pain. Trevor lay still. He certainly wasn’t dead, but it would be a while before he rhapsodised again on the joys of single life. Blood oozed from a diagonal cut on the side of his forehead.