“My mistake.”
But as Harry went down the stairs he knew he had not misunderstood. Yesterday, when turning down his offer of a visit to the Everyman, Valerie had said she’d been landed with a new brief for a case today. She’d even thrown in a moan about Quentin Pike’s lack of consideration; she would have to sacrifice her evening to mug up all the facts. He felt sickened by the silly little lie. Sicker still that he could guess the reason for it.
Chapter Four
Driving through the boulevards of West Kirby on the way to Jack Stirrup’s home, Harry wondered if Valerie was at that very moment with Julian Hamer. See you later. Hamer’s casual farewell to her must have been literally meant. Since Liz’s death, Harry had lived without jealousy and it was a shock to recognise envy nibbling like a rat at his guts.
Maybe he was doing Valerie an injustice. Starting out on her career, she was bound to be busy some nights. And if she were seeing Hamer, what of it? As professional colleagues they might have a dozen good reasons to socialise from time to time. But that argument held no more water than a recidivist’s alibi.
Harry bit his lip. No point in agonizing — life was too short. Better by far to do something positive to occupy his mind. Such as puzzling over Alison Stirrup’s disappearance.
Stirrup lived in affluent Caldy, at the end of a lane which petered out into an unmade track leading to the crest of a sandstone hill overlooking the Dee. Harry approached the house by way of a drive which wound through beech and lime trees, finally revealing after the last bend a large redbrick building with a much-gabled roof and a mass of small, irregularly-placed mullioned windows. Prospect House dated back to the eighteenth century and according to Jim Crusoe, who had handled the conveyancing, so did the plumbing. Outside the front door, a tarpaulined builder’s lorry and a skip full of rubble signified that the repair programme still had a long way to go.
As Harry locked his car Stirrup appeared at the front door, two glasses of beer in his hands. His short-sleeved designer leisure shirt did not flatter his paunch.
“Glad you could make it. Here, quench your thirst. Care for a quick trip round the estate?”
He led Harry along a path of crazy paving which rambled around the side of the house. The overgrown gardens extended for acre after acre. Rhododendron bushes loomed on either side, blocking out the low evening sun. Brambles poked at the two men with tendrils like the fingers of menacing strangers. They walked past an empty greenhouse with cracked and cobwebbed panes and a tumbledown stable block. Even the estate agents’ particulars had described the place as a challenge.
Harry guessed that the most diplomatic course was to admire the view. Doing so was no hardship: a heat haze shimmered over the river, making the grey-green Welsh hills beyond seem remote and mysterious. Stirrup enthused about the sunsets in this part of the world, then apologised for the state of the grounds.
“Can’t find a gardener, believe it or not. You’d think people would be glad of a job. Anyway, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Thought I’d concentrate on the house first. Christ, I knew it was a big job when I started, but if I’d realised…”
He launched into a jeremiad about the tribulations of modernising an old property. The expense, the defects not revealed even by an expensive survey, the delays, the inadequacies of tradesmen. Harry speculated that Alison might simply have grown tired of the inconvenience of living in an approximation to a builder’s yard.
When they went inside, the progress made became apparent. The entrance hall boasted polished walnut wainscoting, a low ceiling with exposed beams and half-timbering in the old Cheshire style. All it lacked was a life-size portrait of the lord of the manor.
“Woodworm treatment alone cost me a bloody fortune,” grumbled Stirrup, although there was a note of pride in his voice.
Harry was making all the right noises when a door banged and a girl appeared. She glanced theatrically at her watch.
“You’d better be sitting down in the next two minutes.”
“Hello, Claire,” said Harry. “Sorry we’re late, your dad’s been showing me round outside.”
Stirrup’s daughter was the child of his first marriage. Her mother had died in a car crash when the girl was still at infants’ school. Her figure had filled out since Harry had last seen her. A tight jersey and narrow-waisted jeans did nothing to disguise curves which, for a fifteen-year-old, were generous. A year or two ago she had been a quiet daddy’s girl, a flat-chested, androgynous kid with the abstracted appearance of someone who has spent too long listening to a personal stereo. Round-framed spectacles had been abandoned in favour of contact lenses and she had grown her black hair to shoulder length. Her nose was too big, and her jaw too long, for her to claim prettiness, but she was now unmistakably a young woman. She even had the sulky look which in Harry’s teenage memories was inseparably associated with girls who had just become aware of their power to appeal to men.
“You remember Mr. Devlin?” asked Stirrup, all paternal good humour.
“Yeah.” She turned her back on them. “I’m putting the stuff out on the table this minute, okay?”
Stirrup winked at Harry, who had never fathomed why so many parents regard their offsprings’ rudeness as a source of amusement. They went into the dining room, a large oak-panelled place. The round table was set for two.
“Claire ate earlier on,” explained Stirrup. “Busy young lady, you know, she wanted the rest of the evening to herself.”
As the girl served them with melon, Harry recalled that her father had told him that she had her heart set on a career in catering. He asked if that was still the case and she nodded curtly before withdrawing, leaving Harry to reflect that he found it no easier to converse with fifteen-year-old girls than he had done when he was the same age.
Over the meal — beef cooked in wine, simple but excellent — Stirrup talked about his company, interrupting himself only to shove forkfuls of food into his mouth. Loudly he bemoaned the iniquities of the tax system, the greed of customers and the unreliability of suppliers. And above all, the difficulty of finding competent staff.
“What’s the latest on Trevor?” asked Harry, pouring the last of the wine.
“Morgan? Christ knows. No one’s asked me for a reference. Last time I asked around, he was drinking more than ever. The man’s a fool to himself.”
Harry put the wine bottle down guiltily. “Pity,” he said. “You and he were close at one time.”
“Close?” Stirrup leaned over the table and snapped his fingers. “We were like that, Trevor Morgan and me, ever since the days when I had one off-licence and a scratty little wine bar in Wrexham called The Stirrup Cup. Claire was just a toddler then, it was in the days when Margaret was still alive. He and I have been together ever since. If he could have kept his hands off the female staff, he’d be with me now. But he went too far.”
“How did Cathy take his sacking?”
“No idea. Never seen her from that day to this. Tell you the truth, I could never stick the woman. Hard-nosed bitch. She gave Trev a hard time, no wonder he played away from home. Ali got on with her all right, reckoned she was cultured. But once I’d given Cathy’s old man the push, that was the end of it. The girls could scarcely keep on socialising.”
Claire came in, bearing mints and cups of coffee. Harry congratulated her on the meal and received a shrug in response. Stirrup said genially, “She still fancies going to catering college. Sometimes I worry I’ve bred a female Bryan Grealish, God help us. I keep telling her to go to university, take a degree in law. Make yourself a fortune like that feller Devlin, I keep on saying.”
As he bellowed with laughter, his daughter looked briefly at the heavens and went out again.