Part One

Chapter 1

A solitary candle lit the darkness, allowing Harry Devlin to see the man in crimson robes. The sickly smell of incense hung in the air. The high priest was standing in front of the altar, his arm raised. As the flame flickered, Harry caught sight of a gleaming blade.

‘Blood is the sacred life-force in both man and beast,’ a disembodied voice intoned. ‘The rite of sacrifice enables gods to live and thus man and nature may survive.’

A small bundle lay trussed up on the altar. The whimper of a child cut through the silence. Harry’s stomach lurched and instinctively he took a pace forward. Suddenly he remembered where he was. He halted, feeling foolish. Why did his imagination always run away with him? He was a grown man, a solicitor of the Supreme Court, supposed to be dispassionate and the master of his emotions. Yet he could not help shivering when he felt a touch upon his spine.

‘Frightening, isn’t it?’

He spun round. A woman was studying him intently, as if he were a specimen in a glass case. His cheeks felt hot and he said awkwardly, ‘For a moment, I almost believed…’

‘That’s what we like to hear, Harry.’ She bent her head towards his and added in a whisper, ‘You know, the sign outside does make it clear that the exhibition isn’t suitable for small children. Parents never cease to amaze me.’

A harassed teenage girl hurried past them, dragging a pushchair. Its occupant’s whimper had matured into a wail. Harry always admired the fortitude of those who had children, but he kept quiet, guessing that Frances Silverwood would regard his reaction as another example of the inability of his head to rule his heart.

‘Very lifelike,’ he said. ‘I know a judge who might be the twin of your high priest. Come to think of it, I’m not sure which one is the dummy.’

‘Sorry to keep you waiting after I begged you to come over here,’ she said, raising her voice to compete with the loudspeaker commentary. ‘I had to take a call from my opposite number at the Smithsonian.’

‘When they told me you were engaged I thought I’d take a look,’ Harry said. He gestured to the sign by the entrance: Understanding the Supernatural. ‘I wondered if it might give me a clue to the workings of the British legal system.’

‘Bad day in court?’ she asked over her shoulder as she led him through a door marked Museum Staff Only. He followed her down a long corridor so still that the slap of her flat-heeled shoes against the floor tiles sounded unnaturally loud.

He gave a rueful grin. ‘The woman I was acting for was found guilty of not being a witch.’

She paused in mid-stride. ‘You’re teasing me.’

‘Lawyer’s honour. When witchcraft ceased to be a hanging offence, Parliament made it a crime to pretend to use sorcery. So being a genuine witch became a defence to the charge. My client was accused of casting a spell on her best friend’s unfaithful husband, to make him love her again.’

‘Good God. What happened?’

‘The magic didn’t work. To make matters worst, the friend found my client in bed with her man. There was a fight, the police were called and a prosecutor with time on his hands decided to test out the law on fraudulent mediums.’

‘Only in Liverpool.’

Frances laughed, a rich deep sound. On a bad day, Harry thought, she might be mistaken for a witch herself. She was striking rather than beautiful in appearance, with a high forehead and sharp chin. As he had got to know her, he had begun to realise that her abrupt manner was a mask for shyness. He’d grown to like her and to believe it would do her good to laugh a little more often.

They arrived at a door whose sign bore her name and title: Keeper of Ethnographical Artefacts. She waved him inside and as he took a seat on a hard plastic chair, his eye caught a ghastly face staring at him from a display cabinet on the wall. It was a shrunken brown head with flowing black locks and its ravaged features had formed into the expression of a soul in torment. Harry’s flesh prickled. With an effort he tore his eyes away and focused his gaze on the Native American portrait calendar on the wall behind Frances’s desk.

‘Sorry to startle you,’ she said briskly. ‘I should have given you advance warning. I’m very fond of Uncle Joe, but I tend to take him for granted nowadays.’

Trying to make light of it, he said, ‘I ought to expect something out of the ordinary in a place like this. But why isn’t he out on display?’

‘Preservation is a problem with human remains,’ she said crisply. ‘Many of them were brought over from the colonies in the nineteenth century. We had to inter a number of Uncle Joe’s colleagues in the local cemetery when the smell became too much to bear.’

Harry shuddered and glanced again at the shrunken head. Once it had belonged to a human being who lived and breathed. He felt his gorge rising.

Frances said, ‘You don’t approve?’

‘Perhaps I’m too squeamish.’

‘He keeps me company,’ she said with a shrug.

Forcing a smile, he said, ‘He looks even sterner than Luke Dessaur when a trustee turns up late for a meeting.’

To his surprise, she flushed. ‘Strange you should say that. Luke is the reason why I asked you to come over here at such short notice.’

‘I assumed that it was in connection with the meeting tonight.’

‘It is. You see, Luke’s told me that he’s unable to come. The first time he’s ever missed since he became chairman. I’m worried about him, Harry.’

He stared. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I think - he’s afraid of something.’

‘Afraid?’

Harry did not try to hide his incredulity. Could she be joking? Her earnest face gave no hint of it: no smile, no twinkle in the deep-set eyes. She was leaning forward, chin cradled in her hands, elbows touching her overflowing in-tray. Her whole body was rigid and he could sense the tension in her shoulder blades, almost taste the dryness of her lips.

Yet the thought of the chairman of the Kavanaugh Trust experiencing fear was comic in its absurdity. In Luke’s presence, Harry always found himself fretting about the shine on his shoes or the length of his hair. Luke was the sort who had a fetish about punctuality and never took the minutes of the last trustees’ meeting as read. He was capable of great personal kindness, but Harry had never heard him split an infinitive and suspected that he would rather face torture than surrender the crease in his trousers. What could perturb such a man - other than, perhaps, the prospect of having to act on Harry’s advice?

‘What exactly is the problem?’

Harry noticed a tear in the corner of Frances’s eye. Hot with embarrassment, he studied his palms whilst she dabbed at her face with a tissue.

‘I wish I knew. Last week he and I went to a rehearsal of a musical the Trust is subsidising. He seemed preoccupied, but then, he’s hardly an extrovert. After a quick drink, I left him in the bar having a chat with the producer. I had to be up early for a train trip to London the next morning. When I arrived back, I gave him a ring at home. He was out, so I left a message on his answering machine. He didn’t call back the next day, which puzzled me. It was so unlike him.’

Harry nodded. Luke always returned calls and responded to letters without delay. Something of a paragon. And as a client, therefore, something of a pain as well. Most of the people Harry acted for were consistent only in their incompetence. The previous day he’d been called out to advise a burglar arrested after being spotted by a woman whose house he had robbed the night before. She had recognised him because he was wearing her husband’s clothes.

‘I called again. Same thing. This time he did ring back. He sounded agitated and I asked if he was all right, but he assured me everything was fine. I thought he might be ill and not looking after himself properly. That night I dialled his home at around ten thirty, but again I could only get the answering machine. The day after, I bumped into him in the street as I was coming back from a meeting at the Albert Dock.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘His face was like chalk and he’d been gnawing at his fingernails. He looked as though he hadn’t slept a wink since I’d last seen him. His hands kept trembling and his manner was twitchy. Suddenly I realised that he wasn’t ill. He was worried sick.’ She let out a breath. ‘I said as much and he bit my head off. Told me not to interfere in his private business, said he could look after himself perfectly well. He’d never felt better. I was dumbstruck.’

‘I bet.’ Harry began to realise why Frances was concerned. Luke being rude? The Archbishop of Canterbury was more likely to let rip with a string of obscenities.

‘After a couple of minutes, he calmed down and apologised. He did admit he had things on his mind, but said I shouldn’t trouble myself about them. He would be fine. And that was that. There was nothing more I could do. Luke’s lived alone ever since Gwendoline died. And he’s proud, too. He wouldn’t seek help even if he really needed it.’

‘He’s no fool.’

‘But people don’t always behave rationally, do they?’ Frances said.

Don’t I know it? thought Harry. Yet Luke Dessaur was one person who had always struck him as supremely rational. He had been personnel director for an arts and heritage charity before taking early retirement at fifty, weary of the endless round of redundancies and budget cuts, and devoting himself to the Kavanaugh Trust. ‘So what did you do?’

‘I called round at his house this lunch-time. I rang his bell and rapped on the door until my knuckles were sore, but there was no answer. Then a woman passed by. His next-door neighbour. She said that if I was hoping to find Luke, I was out of luck. She’d seen him driving off a few minutes earlier. He’d put an overnight case into his car.’

‘Observant lady.’

‘She’s an old gossip with too much time on her hands,’ Frances said. ‘Though who am I to talk? I suppose you think I’m overreacting.’

‘Not at all.’

What he really thought was that Frances’s dismay revealed how sweet she was on Luke. He’d suspected it for a while. Looking round her office, he saw no evidence of a private life. No photographs, nothing unconnected with her work, although he knew that in her spare time she was a keen singer. He had heard her once at a private party, singing about the loss of love and loneliness. For his part, Luke had been a widower for years. Maybe she thought it time they both had a change of status.

‘When I arrived back from Luke’s house, there was a message from him on my voicemail. He asked me to present his apologies to the meeting tonight. He spoke in a jerky way, as if his nerves were in pieces. I called his mobile this time and managed to catch him. Though I guessed that he regretted answering as soon as he heard it was me on the line. It was as if he’d been hoping to hear from someone else.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said he needn’t try to bluff me. I knew him too well not to realise he was sick with worry. I asked him to talk to me, to trust me with the problem, whatever it was. He didn’t bother to deny the truth of what I was saying, but he said there was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do. He was desperate to get off the line. Finally he said a quick goodbye and put down the phone before I could utter another word.’ She groaned, put her head in her hands. ‘This must all sound ridiculous to you. Am I being silly?’

‘You’re bound to be anxious. And confused.’ Harry paused. He thought about telling her of his own last conversation with Luke Dessaur, but something held him back. ‘What’s the explanation for the overnight case? Is there anyone he might be visiting? What about his godson?’

‘You know Ashley Whitaker?’

‘Yes, I often buy books from him. I first met Luke through Ashley, as it happens - years before Crusoe and Devlin started to act for the Kavanaugh Trust.’

‘Luke can’t be staying with him. Ashley and his wife are attending a book fair in Canada. I remember Luke mentioning it that night at the theatre.’

‘Any other lines of inquiry?’

‘You sound like a policeman,’ she said. ‘I know you have been involved in a number of - unusual cases, but I would hate to think…’

Harry loosened his tie. The room was warmed by twin radiators and poorly ventilated. Perhaps that, and the watchful presence of Uncle Joe, explained why he felt so uncomfortable. ‘Luke’s behaviour is a mystery.’

‘Yes, but it’s not…’

Again, she allowed her voice to trail away. Harry could guess the reason. She had meant to say: it’s not a murder mystery. He said gently, ‘Anyone else who might be worth contacting?’

She pushed a hand through her thick black hair. ‘He’s a good man, as you well know, but I wouldn’t say that he has many friends. He and Gwendoline lived for each other. Since she died, I think he has led a solitary life. But I would have expected him to let me know if anything was amiss.’

Harry caught the eye of the shrunken head and quickly glanced away again. How could Frances concentrate on her work with that face staring down at her? ‘Has he seemed out of sorts before?’

‘As you might expect, this business with Vera Blackhurst has appalled him. He is very suspicious of her. He’s even said that the Trust’s survival might depend on the outcome of her claim. The Trust means a great deal to him - and we are desperate for money. But I can’t believe there is any reason for him simply to… well, to act as though he is personally under threat.’

‘Have you discussed this with the other trustees?’

‘Only with Matthew Cullinan and even with him I was rather circumspect. He oozed charm as usual, but he obviously thought I was making a mountain out of a molehill. Perhaps I am. Even so, I wanted to have a word with you before tonight’s meeting. I was sure that you would listen to me patiently. As you have. Sorry to come crying on your shoulder.’

She smiled ruefully and Harry found himself having to fight the urge to give her hand a comforting squeeze.

She wasn’t his type, but he had a lot of time for Frances Silverwood.

‘I’m sure Luke will be fine,’ he said. But he wasn’t sure that he really believed it.

She stood up. ‘Thank you for hearing me out, Harry. I expect this will probably all blow over and I’ll have made a complete fool of myself in Matthew Cullinan’s eyes. Worrying over nothing.’

Harry stood up and took a last glance at the shrunken head. It stared back, as if to say: You know it’s right to fear the worst.

Chapter 2

A gale was blowing the litter down Dale Street as Harry headed back towards his office. Empty burger cartons, chip papers and hot-dog wrappers were strewn along the pavement. He’d read that nutritionists believed there was a link between junk food and delinquency. If they were right, Liverpool was in for a crime wave.

He turned up his coat collar. Whoever said that April is the cruellest month had never spent January in Merseyside. It was one of the harshest winters he could remember and the forecasters promised worse to come. As his partner Jim Crusoe pointed out, it was perfect weather for probate lawyers. A cold snap that carried off a few elderly clients was always good for a solicitor’s cashflow. Harry’s sympathy was with the old people. After the warmth of the museum, the bitterness of the wind was hard to bear.

Yet the chill in his bones owed less to the weather than to his recollection of his last meeting with Luke Dessaur and the conversation which he had decided against mentioning to Frances Silverwood. A week earlier, Luke had called at Crusoe and Devlin’s office in Fenwick Court. He had brought a letter from Geoffrey Willatt, the lawyer acting for Vera Blackhurst. Harry had been surprised to see him; the letter could have been sent by post or fax and a busy man would usually prefer a quick word over the telephone.

Luke was worried, that was obvious. In his early fifties, he was still a handsome man, tall and erect in his three-

piece pinstripe with exquisitely coiffured grey hair. He

had, Harry always thought, the confidence and charm of a leading counsel as well as the same small vanities: the fob-watch, the gleaming gold crowns, the natural assumption that every considered view he expressed was right. Frances was not, Harry felt sure, the only woman Luke left weak at the knees. Yet for once he looked his age. His brow was furrowed and he kept breaking off his sentences to rub tired eyes.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you are absolutely sure…’

‘Don’t worry,’ Harry said, not for the first time. ‘Vera Blackhurst can’t take the money and run. Even though she’s flourishing a will made in her favour and appointing her as executor of Charles Kavanaugh’s estate, remember we’ve lodged a caveat with the court. So she isn’t allowed to obtain probate and make off with all his money until the dispute has been resolved.’

Luke sighed. ‘In that case, I suppose we can do nothing more until the trustees meet.’

‘Right. Everything’s under control.’

It was a bold claim for any lawyer, let alone Harry, to make but it prompted Luke to nod his thanks before climbing to his feet and picking up his coat. At the door he paused.

‘There is one other thing that I suppose I ought to mention.’

Harry had years of experience in dealing with people who had difficulty in coming to the point, but he would never have expected Luke to be one of them. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s rather embarrassing. You see, I’m concerned by the behaviour of one of the trustees. It seems to me that the person in question may - may have been deceiving me.’

‘Can you tell me more?’

‘I’d rather not at this stage, if you don’t mind. I need to think things through, perhaps speak to the individual concerned before I take matters any further. But to be frank, I’ve been having a few sleepless nights. And - I’m not making excuses - I may have been slightly indiscreet.’

‘I doubt it,’ Harry said. It wasn’t flattery. He knew few people less likely to talk out of turn than Luke.

‘Kind of you to say so, but I did mention that I was concerned about the Trust to - to someone the other day. Of course, I didn’t mention any names and he said at once that I ought to seek legal advice.’

Harry thought for a moment. ‘Was it Ashley Whitaker, by any chance?’

A rare smile flitted across Luke Dessaur’s face. ‘It’s true what people say, Harry. You have missed your vocation as a detective. How did you guess?’

‘The explanation’s always a let-down,’ Harry said. ‘It’s simply that I know you would only discuss something like this with someone you could trust.’

‘You’re right, as it happens. I value his judgment - and of course he was right. So I may need to consult you soon, for advice on the removal of one of the trustees.’

‘Ah.’

‘It is a very delicate matter.’ Luke hunched his shoulders. ‘Most distressing. Perhaps either you or your partner would care to refresh your minds about the precise terms of the trust deed. Unless I am very much mistaken, we will have to speak about this again.’

‘Call me any time.’

But Luke had not been in touch again after that strange, unsatisfactory conversation - and now, if Frances was to be believed, his concern had turned into fear.

As soon as he was back in his own room, Harry hunted around for the lever arch files which contained the bulk of the Kavanaugh Trust papers. One came to light under his desk; another was propping up the unsteady table on which stood his new (or more precisely, reconditioned) computer. The revolution in information technology had touched even Crusoe and Devlin, but where Harry was concerned, there would always be scope for the lowest of low tech. The screen was blank: he reminded himself to switch the machine on before Jim Crusoe looked round the door and upbraided him for Luddism.

He opened the current file and a couple of dozen sheets spilled through his hands and on to the floor. As he scrambled around picking them up, he reflected that for all the computer salesman’s honeyed words, the paperless office was as much a pipe-dream as the paperless toilet. When the documentation was back in its proper order, he began to sift through it in preparation for the evening. At least if the chairman did not turn up, the other trustees were less likely to put penetrating questions or to realise that he was practically innumerate. He gazed at the mass of dividend payment request forms and wondered why charity had to go hand in hand with bureaucracy. Surely that was not what Gervase Kavanaugh had intended?

A large figure loomed in the doorway. Jim Crusoe lifted his thick eyebrows in mock astonishment. ‘Harry Devlin studying a file? What next?’

‘The Kavanaugh Trust papers. I thought I’d better brush up for this evening. Why did I let you talk me into becoming involved?’

‘We agreed, remember?’ Jim eased himself down in the client’s chair and Harry fancied that he heard it creak under the strain. His partner had put on weight recently: the result of too much home cooking as he tried to make up to his wife for a relationship with another woman of which Heather Crusoe was so far unaware. ‘I would handle the money side. You’d deal with the litigation.’

It was true. When Crusoe and Devlin had acquired the business of Tweats and Company, they had taken over the files of a handful of estimable clients, including the Kavanaugh Trust. A surprising number of otherwise sensible people had never rumbled the fact that Cyril Tweats, for all that he modelled his bedside manner on Dr Finlay, knew rather less about the law than the average reader of John Grisham. Harry had been content to let Jim handle the work and his partner’s offer had seemed like a good deal at the time. When did a local charity ever become embroiled in courtroom battles?

Certainly, there was no reason to expect the Trust to engage in disputes. It had been founded by an elderly composer whose music had enjoyed a brief vogue in the thirties. Shortly before his death, Gervase Kavanaugh had set up a charitable trust with a view to distributing largesse to worthy causes in the arts in Liverpool. His son Charles, a lifelong bachelor, had regarded himself as a discerning connoisseur of art, although in truth he had as much aesthetic sensibility as a bullfrog (a creature to which he had borne a disconcerting physical resemblance). He had made a will years back leaving his estate to the Trust. A fortnight ago he had died in a nursing home following a short illness. After expressing their sorrow and paying tribute to his support, the trustees had turned their minds to the pleasant dilemma of how to spend all the money. The injection of new funds would be welcome since little was left of the original endowment. Charles’s demise could not have been more timely. And then they had learned he had left his fortune to his housekeeper-companion, Vera Blackhurst.

‘We can’t fight her claim all the way to court. Our case isn’t strong enough and the trustees can’t afford the risk. Though I think we ought to check Vera out.’

Jim’s eyes narrowed. ‘Listen, I don’t want you doing your Sexton Blake bit on behalf of the Trust. They aren’t the kind of clients to mess around with. If there’s any inquiry work to be done, we play it by the book, okay? Get them to instruct Jonah Deegan.’

‘All right, all right. But there’s something else you should know.’

He reported his conversation with Frances Silverwood and Jim shook his head. ‘Luke afraid? I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘He came to see me the other day. I was waiting for him to come back to me before I mentioned it to you. He reckoned one of the trustees was deceiving him.’

‘Good God. Who was he pointing the finger at?’

‘He wouldn’t say. But he was obviously troubled. Talked about losing sleep. He’d even mentioned it to Ashley Whitaker, who quite rightly told him to have a word with us.’

‘But why should he be afraid? It’s not like Luke to go over the top.’

‘It’s not like Frances to exaggerate, either,’ Harry said grimly. ‘Maybe I’ll learn more at tonight’s meeting. Matthew Cullinan’s hired a room at the Piquet Club.’

‘My God, you are moving in exalted circles. Don’t they say that’s the oldest gentlemen’s club in England?’

‘From what I’ve heard, that’s because it caters for the oldest gentlemen. Matthew’s probably the youngest member they’ve ever had. He’s just been elected, apparently.’

Jim whistled. ‘So soon? I heard there was a five-year waiting list.’

‘Not if you’re an offspring of Lord Gralam. He’s even arranged for an outside caterer to come in to make sure that we are fed and watered.’

‘All the trustees’ meetings I’ve attended,’ Jim grumbled, ‘I’ve never done better than soup and sandwiches.’

Harry patted his partner on the shoulder. ‘Sorry, mate. I’ve learned this much from rubbing shoulders with the nobility. It’s not what you do that matters. It’s who you know.’

The streets had been dark for a couple of hours by the time Harry found himself outside the entrance to the Piquet Club. A uniformed commissionaire who bore a marked resemblance to Sir John Gielgud opened the door eighteen inches and examined Harry’s Marks and Spencer suit and Hush Puppies with disdain.

‘May I help you?’ The plummy tones made Sir John sound like a bingo caller.

Harry conquered the temptation to tug a forelock and said tentatively, ‘Kavanaugh Trust?’

‘Ah yes’ - the commissionaire paused - ‘sir. Take the stairs and it’s on your left on the second landing.’

As he climbed the wide curving staircase, Harry studied the sepia-tinted pictures of eminent past members. Bewhiskered men with stern faces, proud Liverpudlians who had lived in an age when the city was great. The club was legendary for its wealth, derived from endowments established by merchants who had taken time off from slave trading to play cards with each other. He paused on the first landing, opposite a door marked Strictly Private and guarded by a security camera and alarm. Presumably that was where they kept their etchings: the Piquet Club’s other claim to fame was that it boasted one of the finest collections of erotica in private hands. The stuff was supposed to make the Kama Sutra look as racy as Teach Yourself Origami.

On the second landing, he glanced through an open door to his right. A couple of white-haired men with hearing aids were playing piquet at a small table. The room had a domed ceiling which emphasised the atmosphere of religious solemnity. It was hard to imagine that they were in the heart of the city of football and pop music, of stand-up comics and stevedores.

Harry was seized by the sudden urge to shout, ‘All right, lads! Let’s have a look at the filthy pictures, shall we?’ But he thought better of it. Even if the old fellers could be persuaded to unveil their stock of superannuated porn, their hearts would probably split under the strain once they took a look at it.

Suddenly he heard a woman’s giggle from behind the opposite door. It was a sound as unlikely as rap music in

a monastery. From the doorknob hung a placard saying: Kavanaugh Trust - Private Meeting. Harry knocked and, without waiting for a reply, pushed open the door and walked inside.

Matthew Cullinan was facing him. He had his arms round the waist of a woman in a gingham overall and he was squeezing her ample buttocks.

Harry groaned inwardly. Why did he always rush in where others feared to tread? If only he had stayed outside and waited for a summons he might have been spared the spectacle of a scion of the aristocracy sexually harassing a serving wench. And wasn’t Matthew reputed to be something of a shrinking violet, anxious to avoid any hint of publicity or breath of scandal? Perhaps he thought that goosing a caterer didn’t count, that waving his cheque book around gave him some from of droit de seigneur.

Matthew winked at Harry and whispered in the woman’s ear, ‘We have company, darling.’

She looked over her shoulder and blushed. Plump, with a plain but pleasant face, she reminded Harry of a farmer’s wife. He estimated that she was in her mid-thirties, rather older than Matthew. ‘I did warn you that we shouldn’t mix business with pleasure.’

To his surprise, she spoke with a slight German accent. Well, a Bavarian farmer’s wife, then. Harry was flummoxed: he would have guessed that Matthew’s taste was for leggy Sloane Rangers. Matthew disentangled himself from her and strode forward to offer Harry his hand. A half-forgotten phrase sprang to Harry’s mind: the tranquil consciousness of effortless superiority. This fellow made the average cucumber look hot and bothered.

‘Sorry to barge in on you.’

‘No harm done. Inge is quite right. I should have allowed her to carry on sorting out the eats. May I introduce the two of you, by the way? Darling, this is the Trust’s solicitor, Harry Devlin. Harry, meet my girlfriend, Inge Frontzeck.’

‘Oh.’ Okay, so he’d misjudged the scene. But why did her surname sound familiar?

The woman smiled. ‘Hello. I do hope you weren’t offended a moment ago.’

‘No, no. Really. Not at all.’

Matthew grinned. With his floppy fair hair and amiable manner, it was easy to picture him in a straw boater and striped blazer, punting a girl in a summer frock down the Isis. He was an investment consultant and, having met him at some cocktail party for the great and the good, Luke had persuaded him to become a trustee. He was the younger son of Lord Gralam, but although the family home was in Surrey, he had moved up North the previous summer. Luke had assured Harry that Matthew was anxious to shun the limelight, to the point of being almost a recluse. But just at the moment there were no signs that he was easily embarrassed in the presence of others.

‘We’re the ones who should apologise. You must have thought we were enacting a scene taken from the club’s private collection. I have been a bit naughty, I suppose. I told Luke that I felt it would be a good idea for us to bring caterers in since the club’s facilities are, frankly, rather limited. Inge is in the business and I asked her if she wouldn’t mind helping us out. A bit incestuous, perhaps, but it wasn’t exactly a big enough contract to be put out to tender.’

‘I quite understand,’ Harry said hastily. ‘Very good idea. Excellent.’

Inge beamed. ‘I suppose I’d better leave you two to it, then.’ She wagged a finger at Matthew. ‘And no more distractions!’

She disappeared through a door into an anteroom and Matthew motioned Harry into a deep leather armchair. ‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in the service or the food, Harry. Of course, this is only a sideline. Inge doesn’t need to work. But it keeps her out of mischief. Or at least it does if I’m not around.’

‘Frances has spoken to you about Luke, I gather,’ Harry said.

‘Ye-es,’ Matthew drawled. ‘I must admit, I wasn’t quite sure why she was getting so steamed up.’ He yawned and started to take papers out of a leather briefcase which bore his initials in gold. ‘Oh well, what have we got on the agenda tonight? The usual begging letters from gay and lesbian watercolourists, another approach from that docker who re-wrote Hamlet in Scouse dialect?’

‘Vera Blackhurst is the main item on the agenda.’

Matthew’s face darkened but before he could speak, the door was flung open and a breezy voice said, ‘Evening, folks.’

Roy Milburn’s dark hair was tousled and his tie askew. His cheeks were flushed and, as usual, he was accompanied by a whiff of alcohol. He walked with a noticeable limp, the legacy of a recent crash when he’d driven his old banger into a lamp-post after a night on the ale. Although he was only in his early thirties, the broken blood vessels on his nose and the dark rings under his eyes made him look ten years older. Yet despite that and his developing paunch, he always reminded Harry of an impish schoolboy.

Roy looked around the room. ‘Nice place, even if it is a bit spooky. I’m sure I saw two corpses playing whist downstairs. Any chance of a squint at the dirty books after we’ve finished? After all, we’re famous for being dedicated to the cause of the arts in Merseyside.’

Matthew’s eyes gleamed. ‘The collection is reserved for the eyes of members and bona fide students only, I’m afraid.’

‘Very unfair, when you remember we’re all donating our valuable time out of the goodness of our hearts. There’s no bloody money in it for us, so surely there ought to be some perks.’ He turned to Harry and grinned. ‘And how’s my favourite legal eagle? Did I ever tell you why they bury lawyers under twenty feet of dirt?’

‘Go on,’ Harry said gloomily. Roy had an inexhaustible supply of lawyer jokes.

‘Because deep down, they’re really good people.’

Matthew raised his eyebrows as Roy belly-laughed at his own wit but merely said, ‘Do I hear footsteps on the floor? Yes, here are Frances and Tim.’

A large heavily built man in an ill-fitting tweed jacket and shapeless trousers held the door open, ushering Frances through before him. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ Tim Aldred said as he shambled towards a vacant chair. His tone was defensive, as though he had an excuse ready to deflect any criticism of his tardiness. ‘Where’s the chairman?’

‘A very good question,’ Frances said grimly.

‘He’s otherwise engaged,’ Matthew said. ‘No matter. The catering is all laid on.’

Harry was tempted to say that if he hadn’t butted in, the caterer might have been laid, but he thought better of it.

‘Well, that’s the important thing,’ Roy said. ‘Let’s not worry about the Dinosaur, eh?’

‘But where is he?’ Tim asked. ‘I’ve never known him miss a meeting before.’

Matthew gave a dismissive wave. ‘Just one of those things. Now, if you don’t mind, I might as well ask Inge to serve as we talk. Agreed, everyone? Splendid. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.’

Chapter 3

As the clock in the corner struck eight, Matthew Cullinan leaned back in his chair and said, ‘If you want my opinion, she is a greedy, mischievous, dishonest, scheming bitch.’

For a few moments, there was a hush. Harry thought that he could hear a faint snoring from the card players downstairs. Then Roy sniggered and said, ‘You really must stop beating about the bush, Matthew. Come right out with it. Why don’t you speak your mind?’

Tim Aldred cleared his throat. As usual, his demeanour was so hesitant that Harry found it hard to believe that his role on the board was to represent the performing arts. The average church mouse was a foul-mouthed dissident by comparison. ‘But can we be absolutely sure you are right, Matthew? I only met Vera Blackhurst once, but she struck me as genuinely fond of Charles.’

Matthew expelled a sigh worthy of a long-suffering schoolmaster confronted by the irrational stubbornness of the classroom dunce. ‘Oh really, Tim.’

Tim went pink but said doggedly, ‘I realise this is inconvenient for us, but perhaps Vera swept Charles off his feet.’

‘But what did she see in him?’ Roy asked.

‘Money,’ Frances said drily.

Roy feigned amazement. ‘You’re suggesting it wasn’t a love-match?’

‘Surely her motives don’t matter,’ Tim said. ‘If he left the money to her, then there is very little that we can or should do about it.’

‘I think you are missing the point,’ Matthew said. ‘It is not just a question of money. With all due respect, Tim, a matter of principle is involved here.’

Tim bowed his head, his resistance crushed. Frances contented herself with studying the papers in front of her. Roy Milburn glanced in Harry’s direction and winked.

‘Careful, Matthew. This must be music to Harry’s ears. When clients start talking about the importance of principles, I guess Crusoe and Devlin’s bank manager starts to sleep a little more easily.’

Frances said, ‘Well, Harry, how do you see things?’

He wiped his brow with his palm. The room was as stuffy as Frances’s office but that wasn’t the reason he was sweating. It was one thing to advise a recidivist in a remand centre; offering words of wisdom to trustees in a tight corner was more of a challenge. He remembered, too, that Luke believed that one of the people round the table was deceiving him. But who - and why?

‘First,’ he began carefully, ‘we need to remember the kind of man Charles Kavanaugh was.’

Matthew grunted and Roy chortled. ‘Exactly,’ Harry said in his briskest tone. ‘No-one could deny that Charles was an eccentric. And I suspect that none of us shared his taste in objets d’art…’

‘You can say that again,’ Roy broke in. ‘Forget about never speaking ill of the dead. Now we aren’t beholden to him, let’s call a spade a spade. He knew less about art than this chair I’m sitting on. And as for his so-called treasures - let’s face it, they are utter crap.’

There was a short embarrassed silence. Harry reflected that Roy had done nothing more than voice the opinion shared privately by all the trustees. Charles Kavanaugh had fancied himself as something of a connoisseur of the arts; he described the substantial Victorian villa in which he lived as his studio and had not only collected pictures and antiques, but also tried his own hand at sketching and painting. Everyone who had ever seen his collection dismissed it as worthless stuff which would give bric-à-brac a bad name. His own pictures were especially deplorable: splodgy landscapes and misshapen nudes composed with a lack of skill that was truly breathtaking. Yet there had always been a tacit understanding that to ridicule them was unthinkable. But now Charles was dead and he had gifted his fortune to a blowsy gold-digger whilst the trustees were left with a house full of junk.

‘You wouldn’t be saying that if Luke was here,’ Tim said reproachfully. ‘He’s always a stickler for the proprieties. And Charles is barely cold in his grave. I rather think the chairman would want us to show our respect.’

Roy said, ‘But the Dinosaur isn’t here, so we can all have our say. And frankly, the one thing that has always baffled me is this. How did Charles manage to accumulate so much stuff without even stumbling on anything of the remotest merit?’ He laughed. ‘I mean, whatever happened to the law of averages?’

Frances gave him a fierce look and said, ‘Harry, you were interrupted.’

Roy gave an elaborate sigh and picked up his pencil again. He always doodled his way through trustees’ meetings, covertly sketching caricatures of his fellow board members. Luke had once caught sight of Roy’s portrayal of him as an immaculately groomed Tyrannosaurus Rex and had not been amused. These days he eked out a precarious living as a cartoonist for one of the local free sheets, although he’d trained as an accountant after university before spectacularly failing his exams. On that slender basis, he’d been asked to act as honorary treasurer to the Trust. After glancing at the last balance sheet, Jim had said it was like appointing a train robber as Lord Chief Justice.

Harry said, ‘We’ve always known that Charles intended to donate his collection of artistic ephemera…’

‘Crap,’ Roy murmured, directing a provocative wink at Tim.

‘…or whatever you may like to call it, to the Trust, in the fond belief that the sale proceeds would generate substantial funds. Obviously a fantasy. But he always led everyone to believe that was merely the icing on the cake. He never married, there were no children, nothing but the Trust to carry on the Kavanaugh name. There was every reason for him to leave his estate to the Trust to make sure that it was able to keep up its good work. Until he met Vera Blackhurst.’

‘I still say she’s on the make,’ Matthew burst in. He thrust out his lower lip, as if daring anyone to disagree. ‘She was a housekeeper, nothing more, the latest in a long line.’

‘A housekeeper with peroxide hair and tits that Juno would die for,’ Roy said. ‘Don’t underestimate her. She’s as tough as a Birkenhead barmaid. Let’s face it, she had to be. Living with Charles for forty-eight hours would be enough to send most people off their head.’

‘He wasn’t so bad,’ Tim said defensively. ‘Granted, he had his funny little ways, but most of us do.’

Roy gave him a withering look but Harry said quickly, ‘Miss Blackhurst’s story is absolutely clear. I’ve discussed the position at length with her solicitor. She’s instructed my old boss, Geoffrey Willatt, of Maher and Malcolm.’

‘A very prestigious firm,’ Frances said grudgingly.

Harry nodded. Like Jim Crusoe, he’d been recruited by Maher and Malcolm at a time when the demand for trainee solicitors had far exceeded the supply. It had been rather like a couple of kids from Toxteth being offered a scholarship to Eton. ‘And correspondingly pricey. She means business, all right. Geoffrey tells me he’s convinced she would make a first class witness, should it ever come to that. Besides, the will is crystal clear.’

‘She made sure of that,’ Matthew muttered.

‘Are you suggesting she forged it?’ Frances asked.

‘Why not? Charles was a sick man. He’d scarcely had a chance to get to know this Blackhurst woman before he fell ill. Soon he was in a nursing home and never left it again. What had she ever done for him? Yet we’re supposed to accept that two days before he died he wrote out a will in her favour in his own fair hand.’

‘It was properly witnessed,’ Harry said. ‘There is no question of its being a forgery.’

‘And who were the supposed witnesses? Two part-time care workers who didn’t have a clue what they were signing. How can we be sure it was the so-called will that they put their names to? It could have been any scrap of paper.’

Harry shook his head. ‘Sorry, Matthew. Charles told them it was his last will and testament. He even mentioned that he meant to be generous to Vera - because she had been very good to him’.

Roy paused in his doodling to roar with merriment.

‘Hey - you don’t think they were lovers, do you? The mind boggles. Perhaps they did it with paper bags over their

heads.’

Harry saw Tim Aldred turn crimson again and glanced over Roy’s shoulder to see the latest work-in-progress. It was a lewd sketch of a bullfrog mounting a busty blonde. The assurance he had given to Luke that everything was under control looked increasingly like wishful thinking.

He said hastily, ‘As some of you probably know, Charles’s original will was drawn up years ago by a lawyer named Cyril Tweats, who also acted for the Trust. My firm took over his practice and we have the will in safe keeping. Apart from a few minor bequests, Charles gave everything to the Trust. So far, so good. The snag is this: the act of making a new will destroys the old one.’

‘In other words,’ Frances said, ‘unless we can discredit the new will, the Trust will get nothing.’

‘Appalling,’ Matthew said. ‘And wholly unacceptable. Look at how much we’ve been spending, especially in view of the blank cheque that the chairman gave to the Waterfront Players when they wanted to put on Promises, Promises. I did warn him against it. Musicals always cost the earth.’

‘It was a reasonable decision at the time,’ Frances said. ‘Luke was confident he could persuade Charles to give

the Trust a loan to alleviate any short-term financial problems.’

‘To think,’ Roy murmured, ‘that we spent so many years toadying to Charles - and it may all have been in vain. I never thought he had any sense of irony. Maybe I was wrong.’

A gloomy silence settled upon the gathering. ‘I do wish Luke were here,’ Frances said.

Harry said, ‘The real question is whether there are any grounds for contesting Vera’s claim.’

‘What was Charles’s mental state towards the end?’ Matthew asked. ‘Everyone realised that he had been doolally for years. Including, I’m sure, the Blackhurst woman. She was obviously prepared to take advantage of a mentally infirm man. I simply can’t believe that the law will allow her to get away with it.’

Harry had practised his most impassive expression before coming out here. Just as well: it was having to work overtime. ‘There’s no evidence that Charles was certifiable. But that isn’t the end of the matter. I have told Geoffrey Willatt the trustees may contest the will.’

‘Good for you!’ Matthew said. ‘Hit ’em hard. That’s what my father always says to the family lawyers whenever we have a spot of legal trouble.’ During their brief acquaintance, Harry had heard Matthew make passing reference more than once to Lord Gralam’s solicitors; it seemed that they were Mayfair-based rottweilers who made even Maher and Malcolm’s fees seem like an unmissable bargain.

‘What exactly can we hit them with?’ Tim asked.

Harry shrugged. ‘For starters, we might say that she exercised undue influence over her employer when he was seriously ill. She was in the same room when Charles and the witnesses signed it.’

‘Is that legal?’

‘Sure. You can have the Household Cavalry present at the same time as you execute your will as long as you adhere to the proper formalities. But it’s unsatisfactory, all the same. My guess is that she was determined to make sure that there was no hitch. She didn’t trust Charles to get it right.’

‘Who can blame her?’ Roy said.

‘Let’s be realistic,’ Harry said. ‘Suppose we are right and Vera Blackhurst was a woman on the make. She didn’t invest too much time in cuddling up to Charles. I guess she will want to sort this out sooner rather than later. Her solicitor said she sympathised with the Trust’s predicament.’

Matthew grunted. ‘As I said, she’s a lying bitch.’

‘Was any offer made?’ Tim asked.

‘Oh no,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t wish to raise your hopes. Geoffrey Willatt did say that at least the Trust would benefit from Charles’s collection of treasures.’

‘I hope his tongue was firmly in his cheek,’ Roy said.

‘Geoffrey has no sense of humour whatsoever. It’s part of the person specification for partners in Maher and Malcolm. All I can say is that there is a small chink of light. We must make something of it. So I have a proposal.’

‘Take out a contract on Vera Blackhurst?’ Roy suggested. He stretched his arms and emitted a comfortable belch. Harry reflected that it was just as well that Luke, that model of decorum, was not present.

‘A bit late for that. No, we need a few bargaining chips. It would help to have a little background about Vera. Anything that we might use to strike a deal that leaves the Trust with a share - however modest - of the Kavanaugh estate.’

The trustees digested this in silence for a few moments. Harry watched them closely. Matthew’s face was dark with anger. Tim and Frances looked tired and miserable. Even Roy had lapsed into silence. Finally Frances spoke.

‘Didn’t Ambrose Bierce say a litigant is someone who gives up his flesh in the hope of saving his bones? I take it you don’t believe we should see her in court?’

Harry shook his head. ‘Too risky. Too time-consuming. And above all, too expensive. Jim and I recommend the Trust to hire a private investigator to check her out. I can instruct a reliable local man if you wish.’

Matthew frowned and opened his mouth again but Frances intervened before he could speak. ‘That seems like sound advice to me. I’m sure that Luke would be in favour. Are we all agreed? Very well, Harry, you have your go-ahead. Now, any other business? No? Excellent. I propose then that we all adjourn to the pub.’

As the others drifted towards the door, Harry joined Roy Milburn, who was putting the finishing touches to his latest sketch on the back of the minutes of the last meeting. He looked up and grinned. ‘Well, well. Who would have thought it, the Kavanaugh Trust hiring a gumshoe?’

Harry looked over his shoulder and studied the cartoon of a Humphrey Bogart look-alike in trilby and mackintosh. He pictured Jonah Deegan in his mind and shook his head. ‘Sorry, but you’re way off the mark. A flat cap and a duffel coat is more our man’s style.’

‘Must you shatter my illusions?’ Roy put his pencil back in his pocket. ‘By the way, what you said about the lawyers’ fees reminded me of something. Know why the Law Society prevents solicitors from having sex with their clients?’

‘I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’

Roy chortled. ‘Because it stops them charging twice for essentially the same service.’

***

‘It’s been a long evening.’

Tim Aldred leaned back on the bar stool and gave an elaborate yawn. Harry had a curious sensation that Tim was waiting for him to react to something. He glanced at his wrist to check the time, then gasped.

His watch had disappeared.

Panic gripped him. He looked around frantically, uttering a silent prayer that he would find the watch. It was Swiss, a good make, but what mattered was that it had been a present to him from his wife Liz, in the days before their marriage had gone wrong, long before she had finished up on a mortuary slab, victim of a callous murderer. It kept good time, but even if one day it stopped for ever he would never give up wearing it. It was part of his life, a reminder of lost innocence as well as one of the few tangible things he had to remember her by.

‘What’s wrong?’ Tim asked.

Harry sucked air into his cheeks. Was it possible that for the very first time since Liz’s death he had forgotten to put the watch on? Or had he drunk more than he’d realised and taken it off in an absent-minded moment?

Tim grinned, showing large uneven teeth. ‘Is this what you are looking for?

Casually, he stretched an arm around Frances Silverwood, who was sitting between them, and fished the watch out of her jacket pocket, handing it to Harry with a little bow.

‘So I can answer my own question. It’s ten o’clock.’

‘Tim!’ Frances cried. ‘That’s amazing!’

Fastening the watch back on to his wrist, Harry said ruefully, ‘Talk about the quickness of the hand deceiving the eye. I never even realised it was missing. How on earth did you manage that?’

Tim opened his hands in an easy-when-you-know-how gesture. ‘Magic.’

‘Pity you never took up the law. I have plenty of clients who could do with a conjuror rather than a solicitor. I long ago ran out of rabbits to pull out of my hat.’

‘You’re extraordinarily clever, Tim,’ Frances said with an encouraging smile. ‘I’ve said it before. You’re too good an act to spend all your time performing at parties for children or old age pensioners.’

Tim coloured. ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ His moment on centre stage having passed, he again became the awkward introvert familiar to Harry from the trustees’ meetings. He finished his pint of beer and mumbled, ‘Well, I suppose I really must be going.’

‘Thanks for the drink,’ Harry said. ‘As soon as there is any news from Jonah Deegan, I’ll let you know.’ Tim responded with a non-committal grunt and Frances gave him a penetrating look. ‘Look here. Am I right in thinking that you’re not entirely happy with the tactics we agreed tonight? Keep it between the three of us if you like.’

Matthew Cullinan had declined to join them here, since he had to take his girlfriend home. Roy had consumed a swift pint at Harry’s expense and then disappeared before there was any danger that he might have to put his own hand in his pocket.

‘It’s just that I’m not sure I like the idea of disputing the will. No offence, Harry, but a charity like the Trust should be concentrating on its clients, not on legal argument. For God’s sake, tonight we spent five minutes discussing applications for funding and the rest of the time the possibility of going to law. We had no right to expect anything from Charles Kavanaugh. If he chose to leave his money elsewhere, that’s his prerogative. We should respect it.’

‘The Trust needs the money,’ Frances said quietly. ‘That’s Luke’s view, he told me so the last time we spoke. And you know he would never be a party to anything underhand. We should follow Harry’s advice.’

Tim sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right. I suppose I’ve always had an old-fashioned outlook.’

‘I’d call it honourable,’ Frances said. ‘And I’ll go further. If I really believed that Charles had made a rational decision to disinherit the Trust and give everything to his lady friend, I’d defend to the death his right to do so. But I can’t accept her story at face value. It stinks, frankly, and we owe it to the Trust to test it out. If it survives close scrutiny, I’m inclined to say good luck to her. We might solicit a donation, but that’s all. Because what you say is right. And it does you credit.’

‘Thanks.’ He was mumbling again, plainly embarrassed. ‘I’ll be off then.’

‘Good night,’ Harry said. He watched the man go, bumbling through the crowded room in the vague direction of the exit and speculated whether, just as Frances was evidently attracted to Luke, so Tim might carry a torch for Frances.

Harry’s route back to his flat took him through the city centre. As he walked, he wondered again about Frances’s claim that Luke was afraid. The Blackhurst problem alone could not, surely, account for it. Perhaps it was something to do with the supposed deception by one of the other trustees. Frances, Matthew, Tim or Roy? The meeting had offered no clues. He resolved to give Luke a ring the next morning, to see if he had returned home.

Fifty yards ahead, he caught sight of a woman emerging from the Ensenada, a restaurant famed equally for cuisine and cost. As he watched, she stepped under a streetlamp and flagged down a taxi. He had only met her once before, but he would have recognised that shocking blonde hair anywhere. Talk of the devil. Vera Blackhurst was living it up already.

He ducked into a doorway as a tall grey-haired man in an overcoat followed her out of the restaurant. His coat collar was turned up and, although his build and walk seemed familiar, it was impossible to identify him. As Harry peered through the darkness, the man held the cab door open for Vera and was rewarded for his courtesy by a peck on the cheek. He put his hand on her arm and it seemed to Harry that it lingered there before they said their goodbyes and the man waved her off.

What was going on?

The man strode across the road and disappeared down an alleyway on the other side. Harry hesitated, then remembered how his hackles had risen when Jim had scoffed at his habit of poking his nose into other people’s business. He took a deep breath, then hurried off in pursuit of Vera’s companion. The alley led to Lord Street but when he arrived there, his quarry had disappeared.

‘Shit!’ he exclaimed.

A drunk who was leaning against a litter bin said, ‘You never spoke a truer word pal,’ and promptly threw up over the pavement.

Harry groaned. Perhaps Jim was right after all. The man had probably parked in one of the multi-storeys - but which? He opted for the NCP in Paradise Street and raced to the main exit.

After five minutes he realised he had chosen wrongly. None of the cars which emerged contained anyone who remotely resembled Vera Blackhurst’s companion. He sighed and told himself that probably it didn’t matter. It was a free country. She couldn’t be expected to mourn her late employer for ever. Let’s face it, there was no harm in going out for dinner with someone.

And her companion couldn’t possibly have been Luke Dessaur - could it?

Chapter 4

Jonah Deegan had acquired an answering machine. It was akin to an Ancient Briton investing in a microwave oven. As Harry listened to the taped message the morning after the trustees’ meeting, he found it difficult to suppress a burst of laughter. At last he had come across someone less at ease with technological advance than himself.

‘There… uh, there’s no-one here at present. I mean to say, there won’t be at the time you hear this recording. I know it’s a real pain when you hear one of these things, anyhow, don’t hang up without letting me know who’s called. Start talking after you’ve heard the whatsit - yes, I know, the tone. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible. All being well.’

Jonah’s parents had named him wisely. In the unlikely event that he had ever had a shred of optimism in his make-up, a career in the CID followed by long years operating on his own account had served to rob him of it. What puzzled Harry was Jonah’s use of the royal we. The old man was usually as careful in his choice of phrase as a Chancery lawyer and since leaving the force he had operated as a one-man band. Surely at his time of life he was not about to turn over a new leaf?

‘This is Harry Devlin. I have new instructions for you. Can we meet at one o’clock for a bite of lunch on board the Queer Fish?’

He felt pleased at having couched his request in terms that Jonah would find difficult to resist. Provided he picked up the message during the morning, the prospect of a paying job coupled with a free lunch and a trip to his beloved waterfront should ensure the old man’s presence at the appointed time.

He still couldn’t make up his mind whether the man with Vera had been Luke Dessaur. He rang Luke’s home number but there was no reply. A metallic voice on Luke’s mobile number told him that the phone was switched off and please to try later. He put the receiver down and told himself that he’d run out of excuses to delay sifting through his correspondence. He was wondering why, whenever he received a particularly stupid letter from another solicitor, it came on letterhead festooned with quality assurance logos when his receptionist rang.

‘Kim Lawrence for you.’ Suzanne had an extraordinary gift for uttering the four words with the aural equivalent of a knowing wink and a nudge in the ribs. Harry’s involvement with the solicitor from Mersey Chambers was now widely known, although he still found difficulty himself in defining their relationship. He felt himself blushing even as he asked for her to be put through.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ Kim began before pausing. He was struck by her tentative tone. Outside the office she could be a mass of contradictions and uncertainties, but during working hours she adopted the persona of the cool, decisive lawyer with such skill that very few realised that it was no more than a disguise.

‘Glad you rang. I was wondering if you would be interested in seeing Vertigo again? It’s on at the Philharmonic Picture Palace.’

‘Thanks - but is there any chance I can see you before then? Tonight, for instance?’

‘Sure.’ He was surprised by the urgency of her tone, but gratified by it. ‘What would you like to do?’

‘Tonight is the annual general meeting of the Liverpool Legal Group. I haven’t been for years, I thought I might show my face this time. Shall I perhaps see you there?’

Harry knitted his brow. From anyone else, the suggestion would have been a patent leg-pull. He loathed the politics of their profession. For him, attending a lawyers’ talking shop held as much appeal as undergoing a colonic irrigation. Yet her question was not satiric, but rather anxious - almost pleading. Quite out of character. He would need to feel his way through this conversation. ‘I hadn’t planned…’ he began.

‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I should have realised. Silly idea. Forget it.’

‘No, no. Jim reckons I ought to take an interest in the future of the profession. I say the Legal Group has no more influence over it than a bunch of fortune tellers. But if you’re going, perhaps I should break the habit of a lifetime.’

‘Fine,’ she breathed. ‘And thanks.’

‘No problem. I can moan about diminishing profits with the best of them. And it’ll be good to see you again.’

‘You too,’ she said quietly.

Suzanne rang to say that Jonah had called back to confirm their lunch meeting. Things were beginning to move. On his way out to court, he looked round Jim’s door. His partner looked up from the glossy brochure he was studying and said, ‘We need to sharpen up our corporate image.’

Harry groaned. This was old ground. ‘Don’t tell me. Another public relations consultancy has got its claws into you. Remember the salesman who wanted us to sponsor a Formula One racing car? With our luck, it would have crashed at the first bend and incinerated the driver.’

‘You’re prejudiced. Old-fashioned. We need to move with the times, keep up with the competition. The woman who phoned me is full of ideas. We could hold a season of seminars for regular clients, mailshot them with news of changes in the law.’

‘Wonderful. Do you think the governor of Walton Jail might let us circulate our clients with details of how to lodge an appeal against conviction?’

Jim scowled. ‘Your idea of practice development is buying a round for the villains who hang out at the Dock Brief.’

‘Don’t knock it. It works. And I’m quite willing to raise my blood-alcohol level in the line of duty.’

‘We need to be proactive.’ A thought evidently struck Jim and he tossed the brochure across the desk. ‘I’ve talked to her on the phone and she’s offered to come in for an hour to talk things through. Are you interested?’

Harry glanced at the photograph on the front cover. ‘Juliet May Communications? And this is Juliet May, I presume?’

‘Uh-huh.’

She was a striking redhead with large brown eyes. Harry gazed at the picture for a few seconds and said, ‘Obviously, it would be wrong for me to pre-judge matters. I suppose in fairness I ought to give her a hearing.’

Jim grinned. ‘I thought that on reflection you’d be willing to reconsider. Leave it with me, I’ll fix something up. I warned her you’d be a challenge - to say the least - but she was quite relaxed about that, said a one-to-one session with you would suit her fine.’

‘She obviously has good taste.’

‘She’ll learn. So how was your meeting at the Piquet Club?’

‘I didn’t get to look at the naughty books. Must be slipping. The trustees spent most of their time bitching about Blackhurst. And guess what? She was out on the town herself last night.’

He described his sighting of her outside the Ensenada. ‘I even wondered if the man with her was Luke. But quite apart from the fact he can’t stand the sight of her, he’s not as solidly built as the chap I saw. All the same, I’ll mention it to Jonah. The trustees were happy to instruct him and I’m seeing him for lunch. If anyone can dig the dirt on Vera, he can.’

‘You think there is dirt to be dug?’

‘Why not? How many people do you know without a skeleton in their cupboard?’

Only as he left the office did Harry reflect on his partner’s pained expression and wonder if his careless final remark had been misinterpreted. Jim was an uxorious man, married with two children, but last year he had wandered from the straight and narrow with an attractive girl, a woman police officer much younger than his wife. Harry was the only other person who knew about the relationship: he’d once barged in on them at the most delicate moment imaginable. So far as he knew, Jim had now stopped seeing the other woman. He certainly hoped so; he cared for the Crusoes and did not want to see any of them hurt. But he sensed that even if Jim managed never to be found out, his conscience would continue to trouble him.

He headed through the city streets under a sky that threatened rain. Charles Kavanaugh had been buried on just such a day. Harry had been required to represent the firm at the funeral because Jim was involved in a heavy property deal; it had given him the opportunity to meet Vera Blackhurst for the one and only time. She had been dressed from head to toe in black and kept wiping away tears from her heavily made-up cheeks. Harry had taken an instant dislike to her. Perhaps it was unfair, perhaps she had worshipped the ground that the dead man had walked on. But somehow he could not believe it. When he had muttered a few words of condolence to her at the graveside, she had burst into uncontrollable weeping. Grief took different people in different ways, but when she put her handkerchief away, he noticed that her small dark eyes were as hard and unemotional as pieces of coal.

Outside the magistrates’ court, the wild-eyed vagrant the local lawyers called Davey Damnation was in full cry. He was a cadaverous figure who had been hanging around the city for months and his knowledge of the Book of Revelation surpassed even Harry’s familiarity with The Big Sleep.

‘And the city had no need of the sun!’

‘Thought you were a prophet of doom, not a weather forecaster,’ Harry murmured. But out of a strange mixture of habit and superstition, he tossed a few coins into the battered hat which Davey kept at his feet. The response was less than euphoric.

‘He that is unjust, let him be unjust still!’

Harry grinned. ‘That’s no way to talk about the chairman of the bench.’

Davey glared. If he had ever possessed a sense of humour, it must have been worn away by years of living rough. His age was unguessable: perhaps early forties, but he had the weathered flesh of a man twenty years older. He drew in his breath, but before he could launch into another diatribe, Harry hurried into the building. When he emerged a couple of hours later, he had secured an acquittal for one client and a paltry fine with time to pay for another. The clouds had rolled away, too. Perhaps it was going to be his day.

Davey thought otherwise. He jabbed his forefinger at Harry as if pointing out a bag thief on an identity parade.

‘And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night.’

The prophet’s understanding of the difficulties faced by the local legal profession was remarkably acute, Harry decided. He strolled down Dale Street in the direction of the waterfront. The river was quiet, as usual these days. More freight was put through the Port of Liverpool now than at any time in its history, but the supertankers lacked the romance of the old days, when the world’s ships had sailed here. He sighed and turned into the Albert Dock complex. The Queer Fish was a small restaurant boat moored outside Gladstone Pavilion that offered snacks and meals to tourists and a wealth of gossip to locals. As Harry stepped on board, the proprietor hailed him like a returning prodigal.

‘If it isn’t Harry Devlin! How super to see you again. Where have you been hiding yourself?’

What would be an effusive greeting from anyone else was par for the course with the rubicund matelot standing by the kitchen door. Harry knew that the warmth of his welcome was genuine. Dusty Rhodes loved people and good food in equal measure. He had once been a cook in the Royal Navy, but nowadays running the Queer Fish was as close as he came to a life on the ocean waves. His affectionate nature had led to an incident resulting in his dishonourable discharge, but in the safer waters of the Albert Dock he was able to indulge his passions to his heart’s content.

‘Yeah, long time no see. I’ve invited Jonah Deegan along.’ Dusty knew the detective, who was always happy to have lunch here if a client could be found to foot the bill. ‘Any chance of a quiet table for two?’

‘Your wish is my command. Follow me.’ Dusty looked back over his shoulder. ‘Old Jonah, eh? So is the game afoot, as Sherlock would say?’

Harry took a seat. ‘Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’

Dusty pouted. ‘Spoilsport. Ah, here’s the man himself.’

Harry glanced towards the door. Jonah Deegan was hobbling towards him. The old man suffered badly from arthritis and was in the queue for a hip replacement. But Jonah on one leg was still more effective than most inquiry agents on two: he had the priceless gift of being able to accept nothing at face value. In response to Dusty’s cheery greeting, he simply scowled. Old habits died hard and Jonah had never had any time for shirtlifters. But Dusty was a detective’s dream, a mine of information about goings-on in the city who simply loved to be quarried. With Jonah, the job mattered more than anything and he just about managed to keep his prejudices in check. Harry suspected that the old fellow might even entertain a sneaking regard for Dusty, but knew he would sooner die than admit to it.

‘Glad you got my message. Pull up a chair and after we’ve had a bite I’ll explain what I’m looking for.’

‘I’ve got company,’ the old man said with his habitual truculence.

Harry had noticed a bespectacled young woman in dungarees threading her way through the tables behind Jonah, but he had not imagined they were together. She stepped forward and offered her hand. ‘Stephanie Hall. Pleased to meet you, Mr Devlin. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

As they shook hands, Harry tried to weigh her up. She had a fresh face, a mop of unruly fair hair and a grip that would not have shamed a prison warder. There was something about her cast of features that reminded Harry of someone, but he could not place it. He was too busy wondering why Jonah had brought her along.

‘I never realised I was famous.’

‘Your detective exploits, of course. Jonah here has told me all about the cases you’ve been involved with. He doesn’t have much time for amateurs but I bet that, if pushed, he might make an exception for you.’

Harry was bemused by the fond, almost proprietorial way in which she referred to the old man, who was shifting uncomfortably in his chair. ‘You work together?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Partners,’ Stephanie beamed.

He gaped at her. Female private eyes were nothing new, but Jonah teaming up with a girl less than half his age? It was less likely than a joint venture between the Law Society and a troupe of morris dancers. ‘Oh. Right. And since when…?’

‘Well, I’m jumping the gun slightly. Officially the partnership commencement date is the first of next month. But I’m on board now and we’ve made a few small changes already.’

‘Ah. The answering machine?’

‘For example. Though I’m having some trouble persuading Jonah to switch it on. But as I’ve said to him, we have to move with the times. Clients’ expectations have changed since he first hung up his nameplate. We have to offer a quality service. Customer care. Value for money.’

To judge by the crimsoning of his leathery cheeks, Jonah had experienced increasing difficulty in keeping quiet throughout these exchanges. Finally the old curmudgeon could bear it no more.

‘Stephanie’s my sister’s daughter, you see.’ Harry had never heard him sound so defensive. ‘She’s always been keen on the idea of coming into the business.’

‘And you’ve said no for the past two years, haven’t you?’ she said with an amused glint in her eye. ‘But in the end you saw it made sense.’

‘We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?’ he said grumpily.

Stephanie winked at Harry. ‘He’s expecting me to fall flat on my face. But the fact is, Mr Devlin, he isn’t getting any younger. He has all the experience and contacts, but he needs another pair of hands. I may not be an ex-copper, but I’m brimming with enthusiasm and I’m full of ideas.’

Harry organised the food and as they ate he learned a little more about the odd couple’s plans. Stephanie was a geography graduate, but since her teens she had always had a yearning to follow in her uncle’s footsteps. It offered, she said, a perfect opportunity to satisfy her natural curiosity about people and to be paid for the privilege.

By the time he was pouring out the tea, Harry decided that he liked Stephanie very much. She had the same square jaw as her uncle and he guessed that she would be as resolute in the pursuit of an inquiry, although she might not take such pains to make her clients aware that she was doing them a favour by taking on their case.

As he told the story of Vera Blackhurst, Stephanie asked frequent questions. ‘What do we know about her?’

‘Very little. Until Charles’s death, I was scarcely aware of her existence. I met her once, at the funeral. She was about as inconspicuous as Sharon Stone in widow’s weeds. And her hat was the ugliest I’ve ever seen. Like a rejected exhibit from the Tate.’

Stephanie grinned. ‘Can’t say anything about that. The Deegans are hardly famed for their sartorial elegance. Tell me - was there anything suspicious about his death?’

Jonah had become a little restive and now he could contain himself no longer. ‘Stephanie has this idea that she’d like to help solve a murder mystery.’

‘It’s a weakness we have in common,’ Harry said.

‘One of the reasons I asked her along,’ Jonah said gloomily. ‘I thought you two would get on like a house on fire.’

‘Unfortunately, the answer to her question is no. Charles never enjoyed good health. Miriam, his mother, pampered him from infancy. He was always overweight and he suffered from diabetes as well as a variety of other ailments. During the last few years, he ate to excess and it put a heavy strain on his constitution. He had a heart attack a little while ago. But in the end the diabetes did for him. He had a couple of toes amputated, but it was too late to prevent gangrene setting in. Even if he hadn’t suffered a second and fatal coronary, he wasn’t likely to have survived. No possibility of foul play.’

Stephanie rubbed her chin. ‘And the will was found amongst Charles’s effects at the nursing home after his death?’

‘Correct. Vera was present when he died. Holding his hand, by all accounts. Of course, his death was not unexpected. There is no doubt that it was a case of natural causes.’ Harry’s eyes narrowed. ‘Apparently the body had no sooner been wheeled away than Vera was asking the matron to look through Charles’s effects to make sure that his important papers were looked after. By which she meant, of course, the will. He’d kept it in his bedside cabinet during the last forty-eight hours of his life. Vera said that Charles would have wanted the trustees to be informed of his passing. Luke Dessaur had called in to see him several times and I gather that most, if not all, of the trustees had visited to pay their respects.’

Jonah grunted. ‘Hypocrites.’

‘Vera said she was too upset to ring round herself, but she asked the matron to let Luke have the news. And it was the matron who told him about the new will. She said she’d caught sight of its contents. By accident, of course. She hadn’t meant to pry.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Jonah said. ‘I expect she was hoping for a mention.’

‘If so, she was disappointed. She told Luke that Charles had left the Trust his treasures - I suppose she assumed they were valuable - and that the rest was going to Vera. You can imagine Luke’s reaction. He was appalled and consulted Jim Crusoe right away. Jim advised the trustees to lodge a caveat. Which was duly done.’

‘And what’s the effect of that?’

‘I won’t bore you with all the legal technicalities,’ Harry said. In truth, he was far from sure that he could remember them. ‘But it prevents Vera from sealing a grant of probate for up to six months. So she can’t pay herself a large slice of Charles’s fortune and then skedaddle. Even if she wants to. It slows everything down.’

‘Sounds like every other legal process I ever heard of,’ Jonah grumbled.

‘Useful for the trustees, though. Charles was a wealthy man with a wide variety of assets. Stocks and shares, property and so on. Sorting out a complex estate always takes time. Even so, we won’t be able to hold off Geoffrey Willatt for ever.’

‘Fascinating,’ Stephanie breathed. ‘Vera sounds like a mystery woman.’

‘Something else happened last night.’ He described seeing her leave the restaurant and his fruitless chase after her companion. ‘I did wonder if the man with her was the chairman of the Kavanaugh trustees. It seems unlikely, even though there was a resemblance. But it prompted me to looking through the file again and I’ve started wondering about the language used in the will. Geoffrey Willatt has given me a copy. It’s written out in shaky longhand but it’s simple and legally sound. In other words, very suspicious.’

‘Why?’

Harry grinned. ‘Any lawyer will tell you, do-it-yourself wills are almost always badly drafted.’

Jonah coughed. ‘You just want to drum up more business.’

Stephanie shushed him. ‘Are you saying Charles was too stupid to draft a will properly?’

‘Not exactly. What I am saying is that I wouldn’t have expected him to use the briefest valid attestation clause. That is, the bit before the signatures. He used the phrase: signed by the testator in our presence and by us in his. Very neat. But it’s not a form of words that would spring naturally to the mind of a dying man.’

She opened her eyes very wide. ‘Could he have copied it from his old will?’

‘No. His lawyer, Cyril Tweats, had many qualities, but brevity was never one of them. He always used a more verbose formula. It was part of his style. My guess is that Vera checked out the wording in a book and dictated the terms of the will to Charles.’

‘I agree,’ Stephanie said eagerly. ‘I’m sure you’re on to something.’

Harry chuckled. Jonah was quite right: Stephanie was a woman after his own heart. ‘So it’s over to you two. If you can give the trustees any information which will help them to drive a suitable bargain with Vera, they will be delighted.’

‘We’ll do our best,’ she said, reaching for her bag. ‘Thanks for the instructions. We’ll report back as soon as possible. Just one more thing I ought to mention.’

‘Yes?’

‘We’ve had to increase our fees. Forced on us by the level of overheads. I’ve often told Jonah, he’s been selling himself short for years. Don’t think of it as a price rise so much as a long-overdue correction. See you.’

Jonah winked at Harry, who mouthed at him, ‘Bloody answering machine.’ Whatever her qualities as an investigator, it looked as though Stephanie was intent on becoming the acceptable face of her uncle’s brand of capitalism.

Ten minutes later he was walking back into Fenwick Court. As he stepped into reception Suzanne hailed him. The pleasurable alarm on her face filled him with foreboding: she loved nothing better than to be the breaker of bad news.

‘Mr Crusoe wanted to see you. Urgently.’

‘Any idea what it’s about?’

She shook her blonde locks. ‘All he said was that he wanted me to make sure you got the message. At once. He doesn’t trust you to check your e-mail.’

Harry made straight for his partner’s room. ‘A problem? Or is Suzanne simply enlivening her afternoon by turning on her best shock-horror manner?’

Jim looked up from the pile of title deeds in front of him. ‘I think you would call it a problem. Luke Dessaur has been found dead.’

Chapter 5

He called Frances Silverwood right away. It was evident from her muffled tone that she was choking back tears as she gave him the brief details of which she was aware.

‘Luke had booked into the Hawthorne Hotel down on the Strand. God knows why. He had a single room on the third floor and he fell from the window about half past midnight. As far as I can gather, it’s not clear whether it was an accident - or suicide.’

‘Suicide?’ Harry’s head was spinning. ‘Surely that’s not possible?’

‘That - that’s what I would have said. But apparently it is a strong possibility.’

‘Why? Did he leave a note?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s just unbelievable, Harry.’ He heard her taking a deep breath at the other end of the line. ‘Sorry. I’ll pull myself together soon, but this has come - as rather a shock, to say the least.’

‘If there’s anything I can do.’

‘I - I don’t like to ask this,’ she said.

‘Go ahead.’

‘I realise you’re a busy man. I trespassed on your time yesterday and I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself. But I wonder - could we have a word about this, once I’ve had a chance to collect my thoughts? I’d like to talk to someone. If that doesn’t sound foolish in a grown woman.’

‘Of course it doesn’t. Are you free later this afternoon? I have a meeting at Empire Dock after work.’

‘I could be at your office for five thirty, is that all right?’

After ringing off, he felt a twinge of conscience, aware that his motives were not purely altruistic. The news of Luke Dessaur’s death was not merely startling. It saddened him. They had never been close, but he had always respected the older man. The waste of a good human life always made him feel dismay. Yet he had the honesty to admit to himself that he was also intrigued. It was impossible to understand what had happened to Luke, to think of a reason why he should have left home for a hotel and then finished up dead. But he needed to make sense of the mystery. It was a feeling with which he was familiar, one that perhaps he should resist - but could not. Even if he did not give in straight away, it would continue to tease him like a seductive woman, nibbling away at him until he had no choice but to surrender to his instincts.

When Frances arrived, Harry was shocked by the change in her. Her shoulders were hunched and her voice croaky. He’d never seen her eyes so red and she kept blowing her nose. Although she gave the excuse that she was going down with a cold, he did not believe her. Luke’s death had left her desolate.

Darkness had fallen and it was cold outside, but she suggested that they walk for a little while along the waterfront. Harry was quick to say yes. He loved the river and in times of trouble often sought to calm himself by watching the waves as they lapped against the shore. They paused in their stroll near the ferry terminal and stood by the rail, looking out towards the straggling lights of the Wirral peninsula. For a while neither of them spoke.

‘Thank you for sparing me your time,’ she said at last.

‘It’s the least I could do.’ After a pause he said gently, ‘Would you like to take me through what happened, as far as you know?’

‘Yes, I must have sounded pretty incoherent when we talked earlier. Sorry. There isn’t actually a great deal to tell. I tried ringing Luke’s home number one more time today and a policewoman answered. She was tight-lipped at first. Needless to say, I was bewildered. But I was able to put a few pieces together partly through talking to her and partly through having a word with Don Ragovoy, the manager at the Hawthorne Hotel. He’s been involved with the Museum as a sponsor and I know him slightly. I called there before coming round to your office.’

‘And?’

‘Don said there was no record that Luke had ever stayed there before and he had no idea why he should suddenly have decided to do so yesterday.’ She frowned. ‘It makes no sense. Why should he pay good money for a room in a hotel when he lives only a few miles away?’

‘Had he been drinking?’

‘So Don says. After picking up his suitcase, he seems to have driven into the city and left his Rover in the hotel’s underground car park. If he was planning to meet someone in town and have a few drinks, why not simply take a taxi? He had an evening meal alone in the restaurant.’

‘Ah.’ So one mystery was solved. Luke had not been Vera’s dinner companion at the Ensenada.

‘Apparently the waitress who served him said he seemed tense and preoccupied. In his room they found an opened whisky bottle and an empty tumbler.’ She swallowed. ‘Nobody saw him fall. His room overlooked an inner courtyard, according to Don Ragovoy. A night porter whose cubby-hole is on the ground floor heard a thud outside and went to investigate. He found Luke’s body stretched across the gravel.’

Harry flinched. More than once in his life he had seen the body of someone dead before their time. One corpse had belonged to his wife. The memory of his last sight of her always swamped him with nausea.

‘An accident, perhaps?’

‘Don Ragovoy claims it couldn’t have been. Although Luke’s room had a window opening out on to a tiny balcony, it would be very difficult for someone simply to slip to their death. The balcony isn’t for everyday use, it’s a design feature. Don showed me the corresponding room on the floor below. To get out, one would have to open the window to its fullest extent and then haul oneself over the railing. Not as difficult as Don made out, but far from easy.’

‘You have to take what he says with a pinch of salt. He has the reputation of his hotel to protect and his own job to think about. If it turned out that the place he is running is a deathtrap, he would be finished.’

‘Even so, he has a point. Why would Luke want to scramble out of his bedroom window in the early hours - unless he wanted to end it all?’

‘Strange that he left no message.’

She sighed. ‘I agree. He is - sorry, was - so precise, so well organised. And so considerate. That’s why I refuse to believe that he can have meant to commit suicide. Mind you, he was only an occasional drinker. If he’d drunk more whisky than was good for him, perhaps he became confused. And there are other possibilities. I’ve even wondered if it was some form of - oh, I don’t know - some form of a cry for help.’

‘But think of the method he chose,’ Harry said. ‘Not an overdose. Not something where there was a chance someone might haul him back from the brink. You say his room was on the third floor. You don’t get a second chance if you fall from that height.’

She gulped. ‘I suppose you’re right. It just seems so extraordinary. I can’t understand why he would want to do such a thing.’

‘One thing I’ve learned,’ he said, ‘is this. No matter how well you think you may know another person, you can never know everything about them. You can live with someone for years and yet they may have secrets you never begin to expect.’

She inclined her head and said softly, ‘You know about sudden death, don’t you? Your wife was murdered.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There was once a time when I reckoned I knew Liz inside out. Of course, I was deceiving myself. At least as badly as she deceived me.’

Still facing out across the river, she said, ‘I cared for him, you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I’d known him slightly for years. He’d always been closely involved with the arts in Merseyside and at one time he was a non-executive director of the Museum. He knew about my singing and invited me on to the Trust board after he was appointed chairman. I don’t pretend he was always an easy colleague. He had such integrity. Most people were in awe of him. But he didn’t court popularity. Or ever compromise on his principles.’

A silence followed and Harry remembered his last conversation with Luke Dessaur. Luke had believed that one of his fellow trustees was deceiving him, perhaps even committing a crime. Surely such knowledge would not cause him to take his own life?

‘The last time I saw him…’ he began.

She turned towards him. ‘Yes?’

‘He did seem… to have something on his mind.’ Even as he uttered the words, he realised how lame they sounded. He had been about to confide in her, but under her penetrating gaze he’d found himself faltering. It was inconceivable that Frances was the person Luke thought had been deceiving him - wasn’t it? - but just as it had during their meeting at the Museum, something made him hold his tongue. Perhaps it was nothing more than a lawyer’s inbred caution.

‘I told you yesterday, he’s seemed afraid recently. But - why?’ There was a note of urgency in her voice, as if she sensed that he knew more than he was yet willing to reveal. He cursed himself for raising the subject on impulse.

Having abandoned candour, he had no choice but to obfuscate. At least legal training came in handy sometimes. ‘I suppose none of us can tell what would drive a man to the depths of despair.’

Yet the thought slid into his mind that perhaps it was not a question of despair at all. A man of integrity would make enemies - it was inevitable. And a man unwilling to compromise on personal standards might be a danger not only to himself, but also to others.

***

After saying goodbye to Frances, he headed along the waterfront towards Empire Dock. The Liverpool Legal Group often hired a room there for its meetings. Harry lived in the same complex, in one of the apartments that had been carved out of the old warehouse. He sometimes had to take care not to be spotted by professional colleagues when he was on his way home; he had no intention of spending his evening talking with other solicitors and barristers about their tribulations as well as their trials.

Thinking about Kim Lawrence distracted him from speculating about the death of Luke Dessaur. Why had she invited him to the Legal Group AGM, of all things? Kim was a sole practitioner, a lawyer with crusading zeal who specialised in family and criminal law. In Liverpool, there was no shortage of work in either discipline. She had little time for the establishment, which made her attendance at Empire Dock tonight all the more curious. He sighed. Compared to Kim, his wife Liz had been an open book. He knew he must be patient, but sometimes he despaired of ever being able to understand the way Kim thought, let alone to try to read her mind.

As he walked along the riverside pathway, he became aware of an emptiness in his stomach. Surely he was not nervous? It made no sense: he had nothing to fear from the hacks of the Legal Group. And he should be looking forward to the chance to see Kim. The wind whipped against his cheeks as he mulled it over. There had been something strange in the way she had spoken on the telephone. Was it possible that she had met someone else?

He was the last to arrive. Unpunctuality was one of his vices. It derived, he supposed, from a pathological fear of boredom, of arriving too early and having nothing to do. It seemed better to turn up just in time, but in practice he always left things to the last minute and found himself panicking about whether he would ever make his appointment. He always regretted it and kept vowing to mend his ways: one more resolution he never kept.

The penalty on this occasion was that he had lost his chance to sit next to Kim. She was always prompt and he noticed her blonde head at the front, facing the raised dais on which the Group’s officers were arrayed. If she had tried to keep a seat free for him, there was no sign of it. He found a place in the back row, treading on a few toes and causing a bit of tutting as he did so. Geoffrey Willatt, sitting on the dais, caught his eye and frowned. Harry winked at him in the hope of provoking a scowl. The tease worked, as it always did. Then, as he craned his neck to see over the balding heads in front of him, he saw Kim deep in conversation with Quentin Pike, a partner in a firm called Windaybanks.

Odd, but comforting. As the proceedings began, he reflected that at least there was no chance of Quentin becoming a rival for her affections. Quentin’s chubby exterior concealed - as callow police officers often discovered to their cost - an incisive defence lawyer’s mind as well as a sly wit. But he was a devout Catholic with a charming wife and an ever-increasing number of children. Harry could not imagine him embarking on an affair with a professional rival noted for her earnestness and campaigning zeal.

Come to think of it, many people would have regarded Harry as an equally improbable partner for Kim. Although they shared an unswerving loyalty to the underdog as well as a passion for justice that even bitter experience of the real legal world could not dim, the ways in which they expressed their beliefs could scarcely have been more different. Kim favoured lobbying Parliament and candle-lit vigils. Harry preferred to search on his own for the truth in cases which fired his imagination. In contrast to her fierce sense of purpose, he had only a dogged unwillingness to leave any conundrum unresolved.

He was, despite himself, impressed that the meeting was so well attended. The economic climate was troubling and lawyers were feeling the pinch. The Group was trying to retrieve lost ground. They knew they could never expect public sympathy. They lived in an age when Roy Milburn’s lawyer jokes always raised a laugh, a world in which audiences guffawed at the scene in Jurassic Park where a dinosaur eats a lawyer as he sits on the toilet. So to make up, they comforted each other. Litigators expressed dismay about the slump in income from conveyancing work. Property lawyers condemned the latest cuts in legal aid. Everyone united against those soulless accountants who were snatching so much of the work that should properly be handled by solicitors and barristers in private practice.

‘All we ask,’ one speaker insisted, ‘is to be paid properly for what we do.’

This eminently reasonable sentiment received loud applause, but Harry kept his hands upon his knees. The man who was complaining possessed a Jaguar, a house on the Wirral and a mistress with a taste for designer clothes. Harry did not doubt that the fellow was strapped for cash, but reckoned that neither the Lord Chancellor nor the clients were likely to shed any tears for him.

The plastic chair was hard, the discussion short of intentional humour and Harry was relieved when Geoffrey Willatt concluded the formalities. As people began to rise and move in the direction of the bar, Kim turned and looked over her shoulder. Harry caught her eye and she waved. Yet she then turned back to talk to Quentin Pike. What were they debating - surely not the scope for charging more for a house sale and purchase?

Only one way to find out. He ambled over and perched on a chair in the row immediately behind them. Quentin was in the middle of a sentence when he glanced round and saw they had company. The words died on his lips and he gave Harry a nod of welcome whilst scanning his face, as if trying to discover something.

‘Evening, Quentin. Kim. So what’s your verdict - is there a future for the high street solicitor?’

Quentin beamed, as he often did in court when trying to glide over a serious flaw in his case. ‘It’s very worrying. For once I agree with dear old Geoffrey. We shall all have to tighten our belts.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’ Harry couldn’t resist glancing at the other man’s ample girth. Quentin’s bathroom scales probably screamed for mercy every morning. ‘But I expect we’ll survive. I must admit I find the scare stories rather wearing, though I noticed you two found plenty to discuss.’

Kim’s pale cheeks coloured. Quentin patted her on the shoulder. ‘As you well know, Ms Lawrence is always worth listening to. And now, I’m afraid, I must leave you both.’

‘Stay and have a drink.’ Harry would normally have felt that two was company, three a crowd. But something was up and he could not be sure that Kim would confide in him. Maybe after a couple of rounds Quentin might be ready to talk.

‘Sorry. I was on duty last night and it takes its toll.’ He paused and added, ‘Besides, I’m sure the two of you have enough to chat about together.’

Harry noticed Kim blush again and as Quentin made his way towards the exit, he asked, ‘What was all that about?’

‘Any chance of that drink?’

‘My God, is it as bad as that?’

She gave him a thin smile. ‘Not really.’

A couple of minutes later they had found the quietest corner of the room and Harry was savouring a pint of best. In the background, he could hear people grumbling about court delays and the cost of professional indemnity insurance. He said, ‘This is the last place I expected you to suggest for an evening out.’

‘I needed to talk to Quentin. And besides, there’s something I want you to know.’

She put her glass down on a small table and fiddled with the copper bracelet on her wrist. Her eyes had the downward cast of a bringer of bad news.

It doesn’t matter, Harry told himself. How could she hurt him? As a boy he’d had to listen to the news that his parents were dead. Years later, two policemen had called at his flat early one morning to tell him that his wife had been murdered in a dismal back street. Not too long ago he had discovered that someone he liked was a killer. He had risked his life then and Kim had saved him. She owed him nothing. Besides, anticipation was always worse than the event. Whatever she had to say, it was better to get it over and done with.

He touched her slender arm. ‘Go on.’

She swallowed. Her hands were trembling slightly. It occurred to him that she had been dreading this moment, that she had rehearsed a little speech but now the right words were evading her.

‘You know how much my work with MOJO means to me.’

Puzzled, he nodded. She was regional chair of the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation and she admitted herself that she devoted more time to it than was healthy for her own legal practice.

‘Ever since I was a law student,’ she continued hesitantly, ‘it’s seemed important to me to do everything possible to help people betrayed by the legal system.’

‘God knows,’ he said, ‘there are plenty of them.’

She managed a faint smile. ‘You understand, Harry. It’s one of the things I’ve always liked about you.’

That sounded disturbingly like an epitaph. He ground his teeth, said nothing.

‘So I’m hoping you’ll also understand what I’m about to say. You see, I’ve been offered a job.’

He stared at her. ‘But you have your own firm.’

‘Yes.’ She waved a hand dismissively in the direction of their colleagues, chattering over canapés. ‘But I’ve never felt as though I truly belong to the profession. Filling in forms, charging by the hour. The more I think about it, the less it seems to have to do with justice.’

He grunted. ‘I know what you mean.’

‘And I’ve come to realise that my work for MOJO gives me much more satisfaction than anything else. We can make a difference, Harry. And if we can help to put right even a few of the travesties that the law inflicts, then I can’t think of a more worthwhile way of spending my time.’

‘So MOJO have offered to take you on the staff?’ A wave of relief swept over him. What was all the fuss about? ‘Wonderful news. Congratulations.’

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she said. ‘As you know, the organisation runs on a shoestring. There’s no way that the North West branch could afford to take someone on to the payroll. The money simply isn’t there.’

‘What, then?’

‘The national headquarters is in London. The present chief executive has had a coronary and been offered ill-health retirement. They’ve asked me if I’d like to take the position in his place.’

He caught his breath, trying to take it in. ‘So do you have to relocate?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve discussed it with the Board. I wanted to know if it was possible for me to keep a base in Liverpool. The answer was no. Whether we like it or not, London is the centre of influence. The chief executive has to be there full-time. And it’s not just a Monday to Friday job. If I want it, I have to move.’

‘And - you do want the job?’

‘Very much.’ She paused. ‘I’ve wrestled with it night and day ever since they put the offer to me. But if I don’t seize the chance now, I’d always regret it. Even so, it’s a frightening prospect, making a fresh start in a strange city at the other end of the country. I’m settled here. Perhaps even in a rut. But I’m not like you, I’m not a native Scouser. All the same - it would be a wrench to leave Merseyside. And you.’

She stroked his hand. Her fingers were cool. He was absurdly conscious of the sweatiness of his own palms and coughed to hide his dismay.

‘Thanks. But - what about your business?’

‘As you saw, I’ve been talking to Quentin. The reason is that, coincidentally, Windaybanks approached me a couple of months back. They wanted to know if I’d like to join forces with them. I said no and didn’t give it a second thought. I’ve no interest in being part of a big partnership. But when the MOJO job came up, I gave Quentin a ring, asked if he’d be interested in taking over my caseload without taking over me. They came straight back and made me an offer. He’s just been answering a few of the questions I asked. And he’s being very reasonable, he’s not insisting on an immediate response. One thing’s for sure. They are offering me the chance to walk away with cash in my pocket.’

‘And will you take it?’

‘I don’t know, Harry. That’s the truth. I simply don’t know.’ She paused. ‘What do you think I should do?’

In another part of the room, someone guffawed. The mood of the legal luminaries had lightened. After a few gin and tonics, things never seemed so bad.

He made up his mind. ‘You should have another drink, that’s what you should do.’ And draining his glass, he wandered over to the bar.

‘Let me get those,’ Geoffrey Willatt said as the barman rang up the price on the till. Harry turned and gaped at his old principal. It was rather as if Bumble had offered an extra helping of gruel to Oliver Twist.

‘Thanks.’

‘My pleasure. Glad you could spare the time to join us. We must all stick together, Harry.’ Geoffrey absent-mindedly adjusted his old school tie. ‘There are simply far too many people coming into the profession. We need to restrict the numbers. I like the idea of making would-be solicitors undertake a personality test to see if they are suited to the work.’

‘Just as well that idea wasn’t around in my day,’ Harry said. ‘They would never have allowed me to qualify.’

If Geoffrey Willatt privately agreed with him, he was too discreet to reveal it. He lifted his glass. ‘Cheers. Oh - and by the way.’

‘Yes?’ Of course, there must be an ulterior motive for this unwonted generosity.

‘This Kavanaugh business. The caveat the trustees have lodged. They surely aren’t going to contest the will, are they? There are no grounds.’

So that was it. Harry pursed his lips and thought about having to fill in his income tax return. It was his foolproof method when he wanted to assume a sombre expression. ‘They’re not happy, Geoffrey. Not happy at all. There is a good deal of money at stake. Charles Kavanaugh had promised it all to them, then your client turns up and five minutes later she’s copped for the lot.’

‘I’m sure she would be happy to reach an accommodation with them,’ Geoffrey said, smoothing down an errant strand of grey hair. ‘I can assure you, she is a very reasonable person. Very reasonable indeed.’

‘Well, I’ll put it to my clients, but I can’t make any promises. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

‘Of course. I must let you get back to Ms Lawrence.’ Geoffrey coughed. ‘Perhaps I may expect to hear from you in early course?’

‘Perhaps,’ Harry said with a sweet smile and returned to Kim’s side.

‘What are you looking so cheerful about all of a sudden?’ she asked.

‘Oh, just solved a little puzzle, that’s all.’

It was true. He did not yet know why Vera was so keen to do a deal when all the cards seemed to be stacked in her favour. But he had at least worked out the identity of the companion whom he had half-recognised following her out of the Ensenada. Of course, it hadn’t been Luke Dessaur, but another distinguished member of the Liverpool establishment, the famously respectable Geoffrey Willatt. And to add to his amusement, he’d also remembered Roy Milburn’s joke about lawyers who went around screwing their clients.

Chapter 6

The death of Luke Dessaur was a nine day wonder. For a while people in Harry’s circle talked of little else and although he now had other things on his mind he noticed how quickly shock gave way to speculation. Some argued that Luke had simply been the luckless victim of a tragic accident. He’d had too much to drink and not realised the risk he was taking when he opened his bedroom window and leaned right out to get a breath of air. Others reckoned it must have been suicide. Why else would he have booked into the Hawthorne Hotel? Presumably he could not face ending it all in the house he had once shared with his late wife. On a cold winter’s night, there would have been little reason for him to open the window, let alone lean out so far that he lost balance and fell to his death.

Yet why should a pillar of the community have killed himself? As Jim Crusoe said, the explanation must lie in Luke’s own personality.

‘He often seemed remote, but that may date back to the time when he lost his wife.’

‘She died of leukaemia, didn’t she?’ Harry asked.

‘That’s right. It was years ago, but everyone agrees he was devoted to her. Nursed her all the way through a long final illness. After that, he threw himself into his work.’

‘You think he never stopped grieving?’

‘Sometimes it’s impossible to forget.’ Jim spoke in an uncharacteristically gentle tone and Harry realised that his partner was thinking of the scars left by Liz’s death.

‘If it was suicide, then he must have had a breakdown. Why else would he behave so oddly in the days leading up

to his death and finally leave home and check into the Hawthorne?’

‘His mind must have been in turmoil.’ Jim’s face clouded. ‘Frances said he’d seemed afraid. We know why now, don’t we? He was summoning up the courage to kill himself.’

‘Doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘Still looking for mysteries?’ Jim considered him. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, any reason why it shouldn’t be?’

A deliberately casual shrug of the big shoulders. ‘It’s just that for the past couple of days you haven’t seemed yourself.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Jim said mildly, ‘but you’ve been arriving early and leaving very late and not sparing anyone much more than a hello and a goodbye. Your secretary told me this morning she’d never known you be so up-to-date with your paperwork. There’s even a filthy rumour that behind closed doors you’re practising on the computer. Any minute now and you’ll be surfing on the Internet.’

Despite himself, Harry smiled. ‘So - there must be a problem? I can’t win.’

‘Dead right.’

It was difficult to keep a secret from a partner. Jim had found that out for himself the hard way. Why pretend? Harry sighed and explained that Kim might be about to leave Liverpool.

Jim grunted. ‘Sorry to hear that. But you say she’s still in two minds?’

‘The job was made for her. She’d be crazy to turn it down.’

‘You could be long-distance lovers.’

Jim’s easy assumption that the affair had been consummated deepened Harry’s melancholy. He could not bring himself to tell his partner why he and Kim had never slept together. The last time she had made love to a man, he had died in the act. She was still fighting to rid herself of the sense of guilt that she felt because of the death of someone who had been married to another woman.

Jim took a deep breath. ‘You’re not going to thank me for this.’

‘Words of wisdom coming up,’ Harry said gloomily. ‘Go on.’

‘If she did go - it could be for the best in the long run.’

‘Thanks,’ Harry said in his curtest tone. ‘But right now, that feels unlikely.’

Jim was trying to choose his words with care, to make a point without causing pain. The effect was clumsy: he was like a bear trying to hold an eggshell in its paw. ‘I mean, it has always seemed to me that the two of you are so - different.’

‘That’s why I like her,’ Harry said. ‘Because she is different.’

Jonah turned up later that day to report progress on the Vera Blackhurst inquiry. He was wearing a thick scarf and walking even more stiffly than usual. The thought passed through Harry’s mind that the old man was himself a candidate for being carried off by the bad weather. And a hundred to one he hadn’t made a will.

‘She’s a lady with a past, that’s for sure,’ Jonah wheezed. ‘Only trouble is, it doesn’t look as though it’s the same past she told Charlie Kavanaugh about when she applied for the job with him.’

‘I wonder if she’s told Geoffrey Willatt that?’

Jonah shook his head. ‘I’d have thought he’d have had more sense than to get involved with the likes of her.’

‘Perhaps it’s not so surprising. His wife left him eighteen months back. She ran off with a partner in Boycott Duff. I suppose that if Vera has turned on the charm…’

‘There’s no fool like an old fool,’ Jonah said. ‘Any road, I’ve had a scout round the house, rooted through a few of the old feller’s things.’

Jonah was perhaps ten years older than both Geoffrey Willatt and the late Charles Kavanaugh, but Harry let it pass. ‘How did you manage that?’

Jonah winked and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You ought to know better than that, lad. Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies. Let’s just say that I did a bit of sniffing around.’

‘Isn’t Vera still living there?’

‘Yeah, queening it for the time being. She’s a lady who likes the sound of her own voice, from what the neighbours tell me. It’s a posh area, the people there don’t have much time for servants with ideas above their station. Which is how they see Lady Muck. Apparently, she’s all set to take a long holiday abroad, calls it a pick-me-up. She’s bragged about going on a cruise, maybe round the world. Reckons it’s the only way to travel. Claims that she’s travelled on the QEII, flown in Concorde. I’m told she cracks on she’s some sort of distressed gentlewoman. You know, someone of good birth who fell on hard times and was forced to start working for a living. But one thing’s for sure. She didn’t work for the people she claimed to have done when she replied to old Charlie’s advertisement.’

‘You followed up her references?’

‘It’s more than Charlie ever did, stupid old bugger. They’re phoney, of course. The names and addresses she gave simply don’t exist.’ Jonah began to cough and his eyes started watering. Presently he recovered his composure sufficiently to be able to say, ‘Old age, Harry. That’s my problem. It’s a bastard. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.’

Harry forbore to suggest that the cigarettes Jonah had spent a lifetime smoking might have had something to do with it. He’d given up smoking himself the day after Liz’s death: he’d felt driven by an obscure urge to escape from the past. Now he regarded the weed with the smug disapproval of a late convert to healthy - or, at least, less unhealthy - living.

‘Can I get you a drink? Coffee, tea?’

Jonah’s gnarled hand waved in contemptuous dismissal. ‘I’ll have a pint of best later on and that’ll see me right. Any road, back to Blackhurst. The next thing is to find out what she’s really been up to all these years. Bear in mind, it may take some time. There isn’t much for me to go on yet.’

Harry nodded. ‘With Charles dead, I can’t believe we could get enough evidence to make a criminal charge stick, even if she obtained the job by deception. She could come up with half a dozen stories to explain the references away. The CPS would never prosecute.’

A ferocious snort conveyed Jonah’s opinion of the Crown Prosecution Service. ‘CPS? Couldn’t Prosecute Satan, more like. In my day, the police decided for themselves whether or not a charge could be made to stick. They weren’t forced to leave it up to a bunch of pen-pushers who wouldn’t recognise a criminal if he wore a mask and carried a swag-bag. I used to go by my nose. It never let me down.’

Jonah’s nose, large and bulbous, was no thing of beauty, but it had served the old man well. Harry said, ‘I’ll get back to the trustees, warn them it may be a while before you turn up anything more.’

‘They have other things to worry about anyway, don’t they? I gather they’ve lost their chief. Sounds like a rum business.’

‘Too right. There are plenty of questions to be answered. Maybe the inquest will cast some light.’

The old man grunted. ‘If you believe that’s what inquests are for,’ he said, ‘you’ll believe anything.’

Jonah’s scepticism, borne of long years of compulsory kow-towing to coroners, proved all too justified. Harry decided to attend the inquest, telling himself that it was a mark of respect for Luke, but knowing in his heart that it was no more than a manifestation of his insatiable curiosity. His hopes were quickly dashed. As soon as he learned the identity of the coroner seised of the death, he realised that there was no chance of enlightenment.

Seymour Cunis was a decent fellow who hated more than anything else the thought of hurting anyone’s feelings. What would be a strength in most people - and was, Harry had to admit, a rare quality in a litigation lawyer - was a fatal flaw when it came to discharging the duty of his historic office. Seymour was addicted to holding public appointments. In addition to being a deputy coroner, he was vice-president

of the Liverpool Legal Group and an active member of innumerable committees devoted - at least according to their constitutions - to good works. Since even Seymour had never discovered how to expand the number of hours in a day beyond twenty-four, he found it necessary to spend as little time on each task as possible. His enthusiasm for prioritisation (a word he’d picked up at a seminar and subsequently used to justify his own brand of instant justice) coupled with his unwillingness to cause distress made the outcome of the proceedings a foregone conclusion.

‘Open verdict,’ Harry forecast in a whisper to Ashley Whitaker, who was sitting beside him at the back of the court.

Luke Dessaur’s godson blinked, as he often did. He was an amiable fellow, but he always gave Harry the impression of living in a world of his own. Events in the here-and-now always seemed to catch him by surprise. ‘Really? I expected an adjournment.’

‘Forget it. Seymour won’t want to record a verdict of suicide if there’s even a smidgeon of doubt about Luke’s intentions. He hates to upset relatives of the bereaved. Even though Luke had no family, he’ll regard you as the next best thing. If it had been left to Seymour, he would have ruled that Roger Ackroyd was the victim of an unfortunate accident.’

Ashley said sharply, ‘But what about searching out the truth?’

‘Don’t hold your breath for that. Seymour’s a lawyer. He knows the truth comes out in court much less often than most people would like to believe. He won’t want to prolong the agony.’

Ashley knitted his brow, as if trying to come to a difficult decision. He was an old friend of Roy Milburn’s, but the two men could hardly have been more different. Ashley was always reluctant to give offence. If at times he seemed to be a dreamer, he could afford to be. He was married to a wealthy woman and their affluence had enabled him to turn his hobby into his work. He ran a second-hand mystery bookshop and enjoyed the rare good fortune of never needing to worry about the bottom line.

‘I see. In that case, there is very little I can do today.’

‘What did you want to do?’

Ashley seemed about to say something, before changing his mind. ‘Never mind. It will keep.’

Seymour Cunis ran true to form. He let everyone have a say, but made sure that as soon as they said it, the case moved on. No-one ever had a chance for second thoughts in his court. And besides, the evidence was wholly inconclusive. Seymour called Don Ragovoy, the manager of the Hawthorne Hotel, an American whose statement was as bland as a can of diet cola. The police and medical evidence was equally low-key. Yes, Luke had been drinking on that last night. No, he hadn’t been paralytic. Clearly, his judgment could not have been at its sharpest. There was nothing to suggest any breakdown in safety procedures. The police did not consider that further investigations were likely to be fruitful. The hotel was not at fault; Luke had just been unlucky.

Ashley was asked whether Luke had ever shown any inclination to end his own life. He denied it with unaccustomed vigour and Seymour clicked his tongue in genuine sympathy. Although there was no suicide note, the records revealed that, just before midnight UK time, Luke had telephoned the hotel in Toronto where Ashley and his wife were staying. The Whitakers had been out and Luke had simply left a message that he had rung. He’d said a return call was not necessary.

‘According to the note the switchboard girl gave me, he simply said, “It doesn’t matter”,’ Ashley said bitterly. ‘I took that at face value and thought no more about it until I heard the news from home the next day. Fortunately, we had a flight booked for that very evening, but of course, we would have come straight back anyway - even though there was nothing we could do.’

‘You mustn’t reproach yourself,’ Seymour said. It was a phrase he often uttered and, although Harry found his approach frustrating, there was no doubt that he uttered it with the best of intentions.

Seymour grasped the chance to sum up as soon as he could. ‘It is all quite tragic. The late Mr Dessaur was a man of considerable distinction. There are, it is true, a number of circumstances in this case that are difficult to understand. But that is by no means unusual. The conclusion I am forced to reach is perhaps unsatisfactory. But I must not shirk it simply for that reason. I find myself constrained to record an open verdict.’

‘Seymour’s verdict was like his surname,’ Harry said wryly that afternoon. ‘Neither one thing nor the other.’

Jim grinned. ‘Ah well. Not every mystery has a solution. Though I think I can guess why you’re wearing your smartest suit today. And is that tie made of real silk?’

‘It was a Christmas present,’ Harry said defensively. ‘I simply never got round to unwrapping it until now.’

‘You’re turning into a bit of a Beau Brummel. I never thought I’d see the day.’ The phone buzzed. ‘Yes, Suzanne? Fine, I’ll tell Harry she’s arrived.’

He turned to Harry and winked. ‘She’s all yours.’

Within a couple of minutes of the start of their meeting, Harry had decided that even the photograph in the brochure had not done Juliet May justice. He put her age somewhere in the late thirties and she had laughter lines around the eyes and the corners of her mouth, but that simply added to her appeal. Her perfume was discreet and, he guessed, very expensive. She was dressed simply in jacket, blouse and skirt but years of marriage to a woman who believed money was made to be spent had taught him a little about the cost of haute couture. He guessed that Juliet May spent as much in a week on clothes as Liz might have managed in a year. She didn’t bother with jewellery except for a gold band on the third finger of her left hand. Mr May, he reflected, was a lucky fellow.

Suddenly he became aware that she had asked him a question. ‘Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.’

She smiled. ‘I hope I’m not boring you.’

‘Oh no. Certainly not.’

‘But I had the impression your mind was wandering.’ Her tone was playful. No question: she was teasing him. ‘I simply asked who you regarded as your key target clients.’

Harry pondered. ‘Adulterous burglars who get injured at work, I suppose. Provided they qualify for legal aid.’

She laughed. ‘At least you’re honest.’

‘I realise it’s a disadvantage when it comes to marketing legal services. Or anything else, come to that.’

She pretended to wince. ‘Your partner did warn me that you wouldn’t be easily convinced of the benefits of engaging a consultant. So I didn’t come here expecting an easy ride. But don’t you think it’s worth making more of an effort to sell your problem-solving skills?’

‘Problem solving? I have enough trouble with the quick crossword in the morning paper.’

‘That’s not what I hear. You have quite a reputation for searching out the truth.’

‘Believe me, most of my clients would regard that as a supreme disadvantage in any solicitor.’

‘You don’t do yourself justice,’ she urged.

He gave her a sad smile. ‘One thing I’ve learned in the law is this. Justice isn’t as easily come by as most of us would like to believe.’

‘You’ve unravelled one or two mysteries,’ she persisted. ‘And when it comes to achieving justice, I know that you’ve put right at least one notable miscarriage. The Edwin Smith case - the so-called Sefton Park Strangling.’

He was genuinely startled. ‘How do you know about that? I once promised someone - closely involved - that I wouldn’t spread the truth around, go shouting my mouth off from the rooftops.’

‘I do my homework, Harry. I always advise my clients to research their potential targets and I practise what I preach. But what you say is right. You never seem to court publicity. Perhaps you ought to try it for a change.’

‘I didn’t get involved with the Sefton Park murder in order to get my name in the paper,’ he said sharply.

‘I appreciate that. And of course your attitude does you credit, I’m not seeking to persuade you otherwise. I’m simply saying that you obviously have skills that are marketable, perhaps in very different circumstances.’

He grunted. ‘Cases like that don’t crop up every day. Most of the people I act for are as guilty as Crippen.’

‘Who says Crippen was guilty?’ she asked, her eyes shining. ‘My theory is that he was innocent. Where was the proof that the bones they found in Hilldrop Crescent were his wife’s? She could have zipped off to America with a lover. The pathologist made too many assumptions, he was desperate to make a name for himself. If Crippen hadn’t fled with Ethel Le Neve, the police might never have made the charge stick.’

He gaped at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a true crime buff?’

‘All mysteries fascinate me,’ she said simply. ‘In real life or in fiction. When I asked around about Crusoe and Devlin, I was intrigued by what I heard. It seems you’re a man after my own heart. So when your partner offered me the chance of this meeting with you, I jumped at it.’

‘I suppose I should be flattered.’

She smiled at him. ‘I suppose you should.’

After she had departed, Jim wandered into his room and said, ‘Well?’

‘She was quite plausible,’ Harry said carefully.

‘She was in here for an hour and a half, for God’s sake.’ Jim grinned. ‘I was beginning to wonder what the two of you were getting up to in here with the door closed. Just as well you were talking business. You do realise who she’s married to, don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Casper May.’

Shit, Harry said to himself. And then - How could she? He’d had a narrow escape. For a few minutes he’d toyed

with the idea of inviting Juliet out for a drink one evening.

He wasn’t being disloyal to Kim; he had no intention of propositioning a married woman. He would simply have liked to spend more time with someone he found appealing. Just as well he had resisted temptation. If Casper May got the wrong idea about you, you were dead meat.

Chapter 7

Harry hated funerals. He would never forget the first that he had attended, after the death of his parents whilst he was in his early teens. It had been a typical Liverpool day, cloudy and with spits of rain, the kind of day he had seen a thousand times before and even more often since. And yet it had been a day when a sick and empty feeling in his guts told him that life had changed for ever. Until then, like any boy, he’d believed that bad things happened to other people. Suddenly he knew better and nothing would be the same again.

Yet now he was attending his second funeral inside a month. Harry sat at the back of the church, sharing a pew with a couple of Americans, the manager of the Hawthorne and a tall young man who was evidently a colleague. He had attended the service for Charles Kavanaugh out of a sense of duty; this time, he was driven by a nagging sense of unfinished business. He needed to understand what had happened to Luke. That mattered to him: he’d lost his mother, father and wife for no good reason. He had to keep believing that life was not always so cruel, or so meaningless.

But the service offered little reassurance. There were no clues, no credible explanations. Much was said, by the vicar, by Frances Silverwood and by Ashley Whitaker about Luke’s good works and his sense of duty to others. The hymns were sensitively chosen. For all that, the one word in everyone’s mind was never spoken. Why?

He reflected that one of the terrible things about suicide was that it imbued everyone who had known the deceased with a desolate sense of failure. It was a feeling that was unavoidable, yet infinitely depressing: we knew each other, we were friends, yet that wasn’t enough to make him want to keep living.

When the service was over, he joined Matthew Cullinan, Roy Milburn and Tim Aldred outside. The grey of the sky matched the trustees’ mood; even Roy was subdued and from his grimace Harry guessed that his damaged leg must be hurting. They were waiting to say a few words of comfort to Frances when she emerged from the church and filling their time with the inevitable topic of conversation.

‘Of course it’s a tragic loss,’ Matthew was saying. He was wearing a three-piece suit and had his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘I have to say that, with hindsight, one or two things do become clear.’

‘What do you mean?’ Tim asked.

‘Well, he was a born worrier. The way he used to fuss over the vetting of grant applications. Attention to detail is all very well, but it can get out of hand.’

Roy stretched his arms and Harry noticed a gold watch glinting from his wrist. ‘Let’s face it. The Dinosaur was always a bit of an old woman.’

Tim said angrily, ‘You’d never have dared say that whilst he was alive.’

‘I freely admit it. He liked to have his own way. He always had to be right. But I suppose even he had his Achilles’ heel, or we wouldn’t be here today.’

‘So you believe he killed himself?’ Harry asked.

‘Don’t you? The idea of an accident is just too far-fetched.’

‘I agree,’ Matthew said. ‘The coroner wanted to spare people’s feelings, that’s all very commendable. But between ourselves, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Luke did away with himself.’

‘I couldn’t take it in when I first heard,’ Tim said. ‘Luke, of all people. He’s the last person I would have expected to…’

‘I’ve heard that said a good many times today,’ a new voice said. It belonged to Ashley Whitaker. He was accompanied by his wife, a pale blonde with downcast eyes.

‘I heard that Luke tried to telephone you on - the last night,’ Tim said after condolences had been expressed.

Ashley blinked at the pebbles on the path, still glistening after overnight rain. ‘Yes. I keep wondering what he wanted to say.’

Frances Silverwood joined them as he spoke. Under her overcoat, her shoulders were stooped and Harry sensed she had been struggling to hold back tears.

‘I hope you’re not torturing yourself, Ashley,’ she said quietly. ‘It must be tempting to take some of the responsibility on yourself, to imagine that if only you’d taken the call, things might have been different.’

‘You’ve read his mind,’ Melissa Whitaker murmured. A slender woman with high cheekbones, she had the sort of blue eyes that people wrote poems about. Harry knew that Ashley idolised her and he could understand why. Yet she was so quiet that it was surprisingly easy to overlook her. If Harry hadn’t been watching her closely, he wouldn’t have noticed her give her husband’s hand a comforting squeeze as she spoke.

‘It’s human nature,’ Frances said. ‘You were always close to him, Ashley. It’s significant that after he dialled your number and couldn’t get through, he didn’t try to call any of the rest of us.’ She paused and Harry guessed that in her mind she was adding the words: not even me. ‘But I’m sure there was nothing you could have done.’

‘I’ve already told him that,’ Melissa said. ‘But he’s been brooding ever since we heard the news.’

‘Don’t,’ Frances said to him. ‘God knows, if there is any blame, we should all take a share of it. Luke knew a great many people, but he was a lonely man. He never got over Gwendoline’s death. I have this feeling that his death was a long time coming. He’ll have thought it through in his rational way. My guess is that he was calling you simply to say goodbye.’

Ashley grunted and Harry said, ‘In that case, surely it’s odd that he didn’t write to Ashley. Or anyone else, come to that.’

‘Plenty of suicides don’t leave a note,’ Tim said.

‘Are you an expert on the subject?’ Roy asked.

The question seemed to shock Tim. He coloured and mumbled something unintelligible. There was a short uncomfortable silence. Harry found himself shivering and was not sure that the biting wind was entirely to blame. Finally Frances said, ‘Have we heard any more from Vera’s solicitors?’

‘Not yet. I haven’t yet revealed what we know about her false references. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for further revelations from our private investigator.’

‘Let me know when there’s news,’ Frances said briskly. ‘And now, everyone, if you’ll excuse me, I must be going. It’s been quite a draining day.’

As Matthew followed her down the path towards the lych gate, Ashley sighed and said, ‘Good to see you again, Harry. I’m only sorry about the circumstances. As a matter of fact, I wondered if it would be possible for us to have a quiet word later? Do you have anything on this evening?’

‘Nothing special.’ Kim was duty solicitor tonight. He had seen her only briefly at court since the Legal Group’s AGM. Anything was better than a television dinner and an evening alone spent watching unfunny sitcoms.

‘Let me run Melissa home, then I’ll come back to the shop. I’ve bought some new stock you might be interested in looking at.’

After the Whitakers had said their goodbyes and headed off towards the car park, Roy Milburn stared after them and said out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Gorgeous, isn’t she?’

‘You fancy Melissa?’ Harry asked.

‘Why so surprised? She’s rich and she looks as good as when I first knew her. Only trouble is, she’s always been as neurotic as hell.’

‘I’ve never noticed.’

‘Look at her fingernails some time. She wears false ones because she chews them down to the quick. Believe me, she’s a nervy one. Not someone to mess around with.’

Harry did not regard bitten fingernails as evidence of an unstable personality, but he let it pass. ‘You’ve known her a long time, then?’

‘We were all students together. Her daddy owned Grayson’s Brewery. The ideal father-in-law, wouldn’t you say? Ashley was the lucky one she fell for. He had this little-boy-lost manner that came over a treat.’

Tim had been shifting impatiently from foot to foot and Roy’s mocking tone seemed to provoke him into saying abruptly, ‘By the way, Roy, when does your case come up?’

Roy’s smile faded. ‘Next week, isn’t that right, Harry?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Roy had been charged with drink-driving after the crash in which he’d been injured and had asked Crusoe and Devlin to take the case. At a cut price, he’d added, given the business they had from the Kavanaugh Trust.

‘Will you lose your licence?’ The note of schadenfreude in Tim’s voice was unmistakable.

Recovering his usual cockiness, Roy put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and said, ‘Far from it. With Loophole Devlin on my side, I’m expecting a public apology and handsome compensation.’

‘In that case,’ Harry said, ‘you need a magician rather than a solicitor. Have you thought about engaging Tim’s services? He’s the expert at pulling rabbits out of hats.’

Roy laughed. ‘So how’s it going, Tim? Still entertaining Merseyside’s infants and geriatrics?’

‘It’s all work,’ Tim said. ‘And I need the money. Though I do have something different on next week. I’ve been hired by Jericho Lane Labour Club to perform at a fund-raising event for charity. Come along if you like, you two. And bring a friend.’

Roy chuckled so derisively that Tim reddened with anger.

‘I’d love to come,’ Harry said hastily. ‘Though I’ll be amazed if you’re able to teach Liverpool politicians any new tricks.’

‘Politicians? They’re almost as bad as lawyers.’ Roy paused. ‘Which reminds me. Why don’t lawyers go to the beach?’

Harry’s heart began to sink. ‘Break it to me gently.’

‘Because cats keep trying to bury them.’

And Roy shattered the quiet of the graveyard with a belly laugh.

***

As he drove back to the city centre, Harry reflected that until now he had not appreciated how adroitly Luke had maintained peace within the Kavanaugh Trust. He had done it partly through force of character, partly through refined chairmanship skills. Every meeting had been meticulously prepared, with little scope for deviating from the agenda. In any group of people, there was potential for acrimony; the more so, perhaps, with those who might fancy that they had an artistic temperament. But in the past Harry had witnessed little backbiting; with Luke gone, people were daring to antagonise each other.

The prospect of a visit to the Speckled Band Bookshop cheered him up. He spent more time and money there than he should have done. It was a pastime rather than a business; Ashley was as happy to spend half an hour chatting with a fellow devotee about the novels of Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers as he was to sell any of his stock.

The shop was a stone’s throw from the Bluecoat Centre. It occupied an old building that might have been elegant in Britain’s imperial heyday but now bore the stains of centuries of unclean air. Harry glanced upwards as he approached and saw a trio of sooty gargoyles glaring down from the rooftop, as if they held him personally responsible for failing to sandblast them back to their original state. The sign on the door said Closed, but when Harry knocked, Ashley answered and let him in.

Ashley could have afforded the swishest interior design that money could buy, but Harry was glad he had resisted temptation. The Speckled Band was a dusty, rambling cavern with floor-to-ceiling shelves and creaking wooden floorboards, a world away from the sterile High Street chain stores that only stocked bestsellers, and all the better for that. Towards the back of the ground floor, an open log fire crackled. Never mind what the safety people might say, who knew what treasures might be found lurking in a place like this?

‘Take a look in the boxes on the floor,’ Ashley said, indicating a couple of huge cardboard containers. ‘Stuff we brought back from Toronto. I’ve not marked prices, but if you see anything you fancy, just let me know. I’ll make us a coffee in the meantime.’

The smell of old books was everywhere and Harry knew few sweeter perfumes. He dived into the boxes and spent a few happy minutes flicking through battered rarities. Murder stories where bodies were found in hermetically sealed chambers surrounded by snow that bore not a single footmark; crimes investigated by a blind detective with a super-sensitive auditory nerve; and one little gem he remembered borrowing from the library as a boy in which, it was true, the butler really did it.

When his host returned with two chipped mugs, he pointed to a small pile of books he had put to one side. ‘Tell me how much I owe you.’

Ashley waved him into a shabby captain’s chair by the side of the desk at the back of the ground floor. ‘Don’t worry. They lack their dustwrappers and the Philip Macdonald is no more than a reading copy.’

‘Reading is what interests me. I’ve never understood why, in your trade, “reading copy” is practically a term of abuse. And as for the idea of putting all one’s books in plastic jackets and never daring to open them…’

‘You’re like me,’ Ashley said. ‘A hoarder rather than a collector.’

‘The one thing that worries me is that I’m running out of space in the flat. I may have to move before the floor gives way under the weight.’

Ashley took a sip of his drink. He’d changed out of his suit into more familiar garb, an old jacket with patches on the elbows and a pair of corduroy trousers. With his prematurely thinning hair and vague manner, he reminded Harry of an Oxford don. Or at least of what he imagined an Oxford don would be like if he ever met one.

‘You’re the same as me in another way, I think. When you come across a puzzle, whether it’s in a book or in everyday life, you want to solve it.’

‘Everyone tells me it’s a character defect.’

Ashley chewed at his lower lip. ‘It’s the reason I asked you round this evening.’

‘I thought you simply wanted to sell me a few books.’

‘They were an excuse.’

‘What’s on your mind?’

Ashley leaned forward in his chair. ‘It’s about Luke. I was very fond of him, you know. I’ve known him all my life. He was an old friend of my mother. We’ve always been close.’

‘I’m sure you miss him badly,’ Harry said. He wondered what was coming.

‘Although he lived a public life, he was a very private man. Difficult to get to know. Although I say it myself, since poor Gwendoline died, no-one knew him better than I did.’

Harry nodded. ‘His death must have come as a terrible blow.’

‘Yes, it did. It hasn’t been easy to think coherently about it. But I’ve tried to understand how he might have arrived at a decision to kill himself.’ Ashley swallowed. ‘And I’ve come to a conclusion.’

‘Which is?’

‘It’s impossible.’ Ashley pointed at the locked room mystery at the top of Harry’s pile. ‘Not in the physical sense. I’m not talking about John Dickson Carr stuff. But psychologically. It’s all wrong, Harry. Luke would never have done it.’

Harry coughed. ‘I do realise it’s difficult to come to terms with. When someone does something so - so shocking and out of character.’

‘You think I’m rationalising my distress? Well, maybe. That’s Melissa’s view. But I wanted to speak to you because I felt you might listen with an open mind.’

‘To what?’

Ashley blinked and said deliberately, ‘To my theory that Luke was murdered.’