As the door closed behind his secretary, Harry recalled Kay murmuring to the potted palms as she fed and watered them. She was a gentle woman, content with the simple things. He couldn’t believe she’d been happy to work as an escort, for all the ostensible respectability of Cultural Companions. Had her revulsion at a client’s demands led to her death?
He called Sylvia in and asked what she knew about Kay. Needless to say, she’d learnt far more than Harry ever had.
‘Her sister is a photographer. She’s ten years older, and quite successful, I think. They fell out because she didn’t approve of Tom Gunter.’
‘A woman of sound judgment, then.’
‘Absolutely. Though it was such a pity. The two of them were never close. When the parents died, the sister was reluctant to take responsibility for Kay. Kay went her own way, but when she became involved with Tom, the sister was furious. After that, they hardly ever spoke to each other.’
‘So it’s not likely the sister can cast any light on Kay’s death?’
Sylvia frowned. ‘Shouldn’t you leave all this to the police?’
‘You know me.’
‘Too well.’
‘I’m curious, that’s all.’
‘Curiosity will kill you one day, Harry. After what happened to Jim…’
‘This is nothing to do with what happened to Jim.’
The moment he said it, he wondered if it was true. But it must be, surely?
‘All right.’ She shook her head, resigned to the inevitable. ‘The sister is called Rosamund Chow. She changed her name when she began to make her way in photography. If you want to talk to her, she may be up at St James’s Gardens.’
Harry was startled. ‘By the Cathedral?’
‘Yes, I read in the Daily Post that she’s exhibiting her photographs there.’ Sylvia shivered. ‘I didn’t much like the sound of the show. She calls it Aspects of Death.’
‘Where better to display photographs about death than in an old cemetery?’ Rosamund Chow asked.
Good question and Harry didn’t have an answer. They were standing under a large gazebo of green canvas in St James’s Gardens, sheltering from the drizzle. The awesome bulk of the Anglican Cathedral loomed up in front of them, but Harry had eyes only for the pictures on display.
The photographs were black and white. He found the spare images unsettling. Faces twisted with grief, men and women dressed in black gathered around an open tomb, a body on a mortuary table, covered in a shroud.
Rosamund Chow waved him to sit down on a plastic chair next to a table covered in leaflets about her work. She was a short, dumpy woman who kept her hair in a tight bun and wore a plain white blouse and grey skirt. Her manner was brisk and business-like and everything she said suggested an uncompromising intelligence. Harry detected no trace of Kay’s habitual anxiety to please, but the shower had deterred visitors to the exhibition, and once he’d explained that he was the friend Kay had arranged to meet on the day she died, she was willing to talk. She’d already told him that she was married to an accountant and lived in leafy, upmarket Woolton. Harry had met her husband at the professional networking events that Jim insisted he attend. He was an affable fellow, and Harry suspected that Rosamund wore the trousers. Hard to imagine that she and Kay ever had much in common beyond a blood-tie.
‘It is one of the differences between the Chinese mind-set and the Anglo-Saxon,’ she said. ‘There is not such a taboo about death. We think about it a lot. Perhaps…perhaps it will make it easier for me to come to terms with this ghastly thing. Though right at this moment, I cannot be sure.’
‘Did you see much of Kay?’
‘We last met twelve months ago. I bumped into her in the city centre. She was going to an office to see to their plants, and I was off to see my husband for a bite of lunch at the Athenaeum. We talked for a few minutes, but I’m afraid it was all very superficial. Kay knew that I disliked Tom Gunter. He could twist her around his little finger, but with me she could be stubborn. No way did she want me to have the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so”. Neither of us mentioned his name, but he was there in spirit, standing right between us.’
‘What did you know about their relationship?’
‘Let me speak candidly, Mr Devlin. Never mind de mortuis. Kay was a sweet, innocent girl, but she wasn’t strong and at times, I’m afraid, she didn’t behave in a particularly intelligent way. She chose her men badly, and although I only ever met Gunter the once, that was enough. Paul and I never wanted to have anything to do with him again. He was obviously unreliable and had a hair-trigger temper. I have little doubt that he beat Kay if she displeased him. But she didn’t have the backbone to walk out. Does that sound harsh? To say that she was perversely loyal might be kinder. Even when he was charged with murder, she stood by her man. You were his solicitor, you say, you must be aware that she actually believed he was a victim of mistaken identity.’
‘The case against him fell apart. Once he’d sacked me, that is.’
Rosamund Chow snorted. ‘Legal jiggery-pokery, I expect you were too honest to indulge in it. Of course, from Kay’s perspective, her loyalty was vindicated. How ridiculous is human nature. Poor Kay had an endless capacity to deceive herself.’
Rain smacked against the gazebo’s canvas roof and Harry turned his collar up against the gathering wind. The gardens occupied a scooped-out site, once a quarry and later a burial ground, and they formed a cool, quiet and mysterious oasis close to the heart of the city. Close to the gazebo, the cylindrical Huskisson Memorial honoured the man killed by Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’. Behind was Liverpool’s very own spa, a spring of water said to be drinkable, though Harry had never chanced it. Above were sloping ramps, down which hearses once travelled to deliver the dead to their final resting place. Catacombs were cut into the sandstone cliff, old tombstones lined the pathways. Reminders of mortality were everywhere. Including the occasional needle discarded by the junkies and prostitutes who sometimes crept in here at night.
‘You never spoke to her after that meeting?’
‘I did not say that, Mr Devlin.’ Her tone was precise, verging on pernickety. Harry suspected that having Rosamund as an elder sister might be a challenge for anyone. ‘We didn’t keep in close touch, but Paul and I are Christians and our faith has become the cornerstone of our lives. We are born again, you might say. I came to realise that I let Kay down. I was older and wiser and I should have kept her safe from men like Gunter. I failed her.’
‘I feel the same,’ he blurted out. ‘That message she left for me…’
‘You must not reproach yourself. You were a friend, but I was her flesh and blood. For years, I was preoccupied with carving out my own path. I adopted a new professional name, met Paul and married him. There wasn’t any room in my life for a younger sister.’
‘Did you contact her?’
‘Belatedly, yes. I rang her up ten days ago and tried to explain that I wanted to make amends for my past mistakes. She told me she and Gunter had moved into a flat at the Marina. It was a step up for them, but she seemed unhappy. I wondered where the money was coming from. Nowhere good, I suppose. I suggested we meet for a coffee, but she put me off.’
‘And that was the last time you heard from her?’
‘No, Mr Devlin. She left a message on my voicemail on the morning she was murdered. I told the police about it, of course.’
‘What did she say?’
A flicker of pain creased Rosamund Chow’s stern face, and Harry’s heart went out to her.
‘She asked me to call her. Her last words were: you were right. About Tom Gunter, I presume.’
‘Did you ring back?’
‘No, I was too busy with the exhibition. I thought it would keep. Besides, I wanted to savour what she had said. I’m afraid it is one of my sins, Mr Devlin. I very much enjoy being proved right. But of course, in the long run this has not made me feel happy at all.’
She sniffed hard, although Harry saw no sign of tears. He looked away while she blew her nose, at a photograph of two old Indian men, contemplating the blackened remains of a funeral pyre.
‘I must pray for the Lord’s forgiveness,’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘While I absorbed myself in death, I neglected life.’
‘If there’s a serial killer at work,’ Harry said as he sipped a half of Cain’s, ‘you can bet that he has a history. These people don’t spring out of nowhere, fully formed as sadistic murderers. There’s a build-up. Clues in their past. Previous crimes, they…’
‘All right, all right.’ Carmel raised her hands in mock-surrender. ‘You’re starting to sound like Maeve Hopes. When you get a bee in your bonnet, there’s no stopping you. Jim used to say the same. “If only Harry worked as hard as he”…’
Her voice faltered as she realised she’d used the past tense. ‘I mean, he’ll say it again the minute I tell him the latest.’
‘Yes, he will,’ Harry said quietly.
For a minute or so, neither of them spoke. They were in the saloon bar of the Burning Deck, across the road from the General. It was a cramped little pub which did a roaring trade thanks to the families of patients who felt in need of something stronger than tea, coffee or squash in the hospital cafeteria. The place owed its name to an almost forgotten daughter of Liverpool, Felicia Hemans. She’d been a chum of Wordsworth and at one time her verse earned her a reputation second only to Byron’s. But her fame hadn’t lasted. These days her poetry was remembered by a single phrase from ‘Casabianca’: The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled.
Some days, Harry could imagine exactly how that boy must have felt.
‘Kay was different from Denise and Lee. Too gentle and quiet for anyone to describe her as bubbly and fun-loving. Even if Denise and Lee were killed by a client who lost it, Kay wouldn’t arrange to meet a client at the same time as she was supposed to be seeing me.’
Carmel tasted her white wine and pulled a face. ‘Yuck. Too sweet. Like Kay Cheung, eh? She doesn’t fit the typical profile of an escort. Cultural Companions say she’d only been out with a couple of men. The team is checking up on them, of course.’
‘I wonder if she was killed for some other reason than the first two victims.’
‘But the MO is identical. That’s the complication.’
‘What have you found out about Borth?’
‘Not much. I need to tread with care. The SIO won’t take kindly to an in-house lawyer poking her nose in. There’s a strict line between legal and operational, you know that.’
‘You’ll wrap him around your little finger.’
‘As of now, this is the highest profile investigation in the north of England. We’re under pressure. The media are screaming that Denise’s murder wasn’t taken seriously because she was an escort.’
‘Isn’t it true?’
‘Not true and not fair. There simply wasn’t enough evidence for the team to get their teeth into. Everyone is focused on achieving a result. The people at the top won’t want to be distracted.’
‘If you don’t ask, you don’t find out.’
Carmel pushed her glass to one side. ‘OK, OK, anything to get you off my case.’
‘Thanks.’ A thought struck him. ‘What about the forensics? Were all the women strangled in exactly the same way?’
‘Manually, yes. There were fingernail marks on the throat of Denise Onuoha, but they haven’t been matched to a suspect. Lee Welch’s neck was bruised, but there wasn’t much forensic evidence. Same with Kay Cheung. But he may have made a mistake in his latest choice of crime scene. Forensic clues don’t last long on a beach, but grassy areas are different. Footwear impressions were found close to Kay’s body that look interesting.’
Harry finished his drink. ‘Sibierski insisted on checking my shoe size.’
‘He’s just pulling your plonker, Harry. These prints came from size 11 trainers.’
‘My feet are size 9.’
‘Phew, got away with it, eh? If we can find a match to these impressions, we’re in business.’
Harry breathed in. Not so long ago, his lungs would have choked up in a place like this, but the smoking ban had cleansed the atmosphere. Now there was only the smell of stale beer to clog up your nasal passages.
‘How did the murderer cut out the women’s tongues?’
‘With no great expertise.’ She made a face. ‘Messy. Horrible, actually. He used a common type of Swiss army knife. We haven’t found the weapon, or weapons. Maybe he used the self-same knife each time, maybe not. There are thousands of those knives out there.’
‘Yeah, I saw one recently,’ Harry said. ‘Tom Gunter threatened me with it.’
‘You took a risk, confronting him,’ Carmel said once he’d told her the story.
‘It wasn’t as if we were strangers. I once acted for him, don’t forget.’
‘All the more reason to watch your step.’
‘Thanks for your confidence in my client management skills.’
‘Fools rush in, and all that.’ She coloured. ‘Sorry, that sounds cruel. Listen, Harry. I know you mean well.’
‘That sounds worse.’
‘It’s just that…with Jim in such a state, I need you to look after yourself.’
‘We can’t wrap ourselves up in cotton wool. Jim wasn’t poking his nose into anybody else’s business, was he?’
‘But…’
‘No buts,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘I must get along. Things to do.’
‘There’s no stopping you, is there?’ she said in weary resignation.
He touched her warm hand. ‘After what happened to Jim and Kay? Nothing at all.’
His next destination was Pretty Street, in Waterloo. Aled Borth’s cottage propped up the end of an ancient terraced row in a featureless one-way thoroughfare five minutes from the waterfront. The street name was presumably the brainchild of Victorian city fathers with a keen sense of humour, but Aled’s neighbours had done their best to live up to it. Their small front gardens were neat confections of coloured pebbles and shrubs hardy enough to withstand the icy blast from the waterfront. In contrast, Aled’s patch of ground resembled a ‘before’ shot in a garden makeover programme. It was covered with old, broken concrete; nettles, bindweed and couch grass had colonised the cracks. Harry made his way from the broken wooden gate to Aled’s front door. The curtains upstairs and down were drawn.
There was no bell, only a rusting iron knocker. Harry smacked the door with it half a dozen times, but no reply. He couldn’t hear a sound from inside. Not a curtain twitched. If Borth was hiding in there, he was keeping very still.
A stout woman in her seventies emerged from the house next door, wheeling a tartan shopping trolley. She stared at Harry as if he was an extra-terrestrial with more than his fair share of tentacles.
‘You’re not looking for Mr Borth, are you?’
‘He doesn’t seem to be at home.’
The woman gave a loud sniff. ‘Heaven only knows what that one gets up to. Coming and going at all hours of the day and night, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I never knew decent folk keep such peculiar hours, that’s for sure. Come to that, I’ve lived next door to him for more years than I care to remember, but I’ve never known him have a caller.’
She paused for a moment, as if to ratchet up her disapproval. ‘I mean to say, not a male caller.’
Harry hazarded a jocular grin. ‘A bit of a ladies’ man, is he?’
This time her sniff sounded more like a bomb blast. ‘I wouldn’t call them ladies.’
Harry tried to look shocked, but he felt a surge of excitement. If Borth had a habit of paying for female company, over time his demands might have become increasingly exotic. He might have wanted to take what wasn’t for sale. Even in the sober environment of the coroner’s court, he’d not been able to control his temper. Alone with an unwilling or scornful escort girl, the impulse to indulge his fantasies by force might have become too strong to resist.
The woman glared at Harry’s grey pinstripe. After crawling round Juliet May’s balcony, he’d dropped off his court suit at the cleaners. This one was Asda rather than Armani, but at least it was a suit and that alone created grounds for suspicion in Pretty Street.
‘You’re not a debt collector, by any chance? I mean, he’s forever complaining that he’s short of money and he still owes me for a pint of milk from a month ago.’
‘No, I’m his solicitor.’ It was more or less true, though Harry could not conceive that Borth would ever consult him again.
‘His solicitor?’ The way the woman scowled, Harry might have confessed to being a paedophile. ‘No wonder he’s on his uppers if he’s had to pay legal fees. My son Brian has just been involved in a court case. Lawyers? Money-grabbing blood-suckers, that’s what he calls them.’
Harry tried to compose his features into an expression neither vampiric nor avaricious. ‘Any idea where Aled Borth might be?’
‘At that blinking picture-house, like as not. He spends half his life there. I don’t see the point, myself. Why go to the cinema when you can watch television in the comfort of your own front room?’
In the June daylight, the turrets and the towers of the Alhambra seemed even more at odds with their surroundings than on a cold winter’s night. Two men chatted in a foreign language as they unloaded boxes from a white van outside the kebab house, while a gang of truanting kids kicked a football at a goal chalked on a brick wall. Harry strolled up the steps to the cinema entrance. The main door was closed, but when he pushed, it yielded to his touch.
Every other time he’d stood in the foyer, fellow movie-goers had milled around the kiosk and box office, and the air was thick with the aroma of popcorn and fruit gums. Now the Alhambra’s interior was graveyard-quiet, with chandeliers unlit and the windows shuttered. Everything was dark, from the densely patterned carpet to the oak panelling on the walls. His skin felt clammy and uncomfortable, and his shoulders stiffened with tension.
The silence was shattered as a venerable organ roared into life. In the auditorium, someone was playing the Alhambra’s lovingly restored Mighty Wurlitzer. Harry recognised the frenzied rhythms of The Phantom of the Opera.
It had to be Aled Borth.
Harry took a pace forward, then paused. He was about to confront the man on his home ground, with nobody to call on for help. What if Aled were a serial killer? But the organist didn’t frighten him. Ka-Yu Cheung was dead and her murderer must be found and that was all he cared about. When he strode past the kiosk and kicked open the door to the auditorium, the music shuddered to a halt.
The lights were up in the movie theatre. Stretched between two Doric columns, an amber curtain concealed the vast screen. There wasn’t a soul in the fifteen hundred red plush tip-up seats of the stalls and circle. Crouched like a crab over the keys of the Mighty Wurlitzer was Aled Borth.
‘Hello, Aled.’
An unforgiving glare illuminated Aled’s bald patch. He was wearing tweed trousers with threadbare knees and dirty carpet slippers. As Harry walked up to him, the whiff of old beer was as strong as in the saloon of the Burning Deck. When Aled turned, the goldfish eyes behind the spectacles were dull with drink.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’d like to ask you one or two questions.’
‘Nothing to say.’
‘You knew Lee Welch.’
‘Lee Welch?’
Aled’s voice trembled with fear. The feeble attempt to feign ignorance would not convince a child.
‘The girl who was murdered. Whose body was found on the beach, a stone’s throw from here.’
‘Oh, yes. I read about it.’
‘And you recognised her name, didn’t you?’
‘So what?’
‘You knew her.’
‘I knew her mother.’
‘Her mother?’
‘Yeah, she worked in the Co-op with my mum, donkey’s years ago.’
It was like that heart-sinking moment when a witness you’re cross-examining comes up with an answer that takes your breath away. Yet Aled hadn’t hesitated; he gave no sign of making up something that sounded plausible. And hadn’t Gina spoken of Lee’s mother having a job in a shop?
‘You met her again recently, didn’t you? In very different circumstances.’
Aled looked away. ‘I…dunno what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you do. She was an escort girl and you hired her. Want to tell me the full story?’
‘You must be bloody joking.’
‘Or would you rather explain to the police instead?’
‘Who do you think you are? You’re my fucking solicitor!’
‘That’s history,’ Harry said softly. ‘What matters is that I knew the latest girl to die. Her name was Ka-Yu Cheung and she never had the joy in life she deserved. Whoever killed her took away any chance she might find something better.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you making some kind of threat?’ Aled struggled to his feet, his demeanour a pastiche of injured dignity. ‘You’re right, I ought to call the police!’
‘Chances are you’ll speak to them any time now.’
Aled jabbed a forefinger hard into Harry’s midriff. He scarcely felt it – at last, an upside to putting on a few pounds.
‘Why are you persecuting me?’
‘You were a client of Lee Welch’s. Easy to prove, these agencies keep records, they like to show that they operate above board. Anything the girls agree with the clients is nothing to do with them, blah, blah.’
‘I told you, she grew up here. Her mother…’
‘Did she tease you, was that why you lost it?’
‘No!’ Aled’s breath was coming in short gasps. ‘I would never hurt her. She’s the sort who made enemies. It could have been…’
‘Enemies? She’d been down in London, she hadn’t had much time to make enemies back here.’
‘Not true. She was sly and greedy, and…’
‘You really didn’t like her, did you?’
‘Listen, all I did was pay for her time. Where’s the harm? I just like to talk to the girls, that’s all. Lee was happy the last time I saw her. She told me she was going to be rich.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘There was something she’d overheard at work. She did a bit of cleaning and she knew something that someone wanted to keep dark. Lee said they would pay good money to keep her mouth shut.’
‘You’re making it up. You haven’t had a proper relationship for God knows how long, so you make do with prostitutes. But what…’
Aled lunged at him, fists swinging. He caught Harry a glancing blow on the temple and within a moment, both of them were on the floor, grappling with more stubbornness than science. What Aled lacked in strength, he made up for in bloody-minded rage. He hauled himself up and started stabbing at Harry’s eyes with short, grubby fingers. Harry struggled to push the man’s hand away from his face, not meaning to inflict pain, just to avoid it. He didn’t want to hurt Aled, whatever he might have done to Kay and the others. He loathed violence, his passionate hatred of it had brought him here, to this renovated picture palace and a bizarre wrestling match.
Suddenly he heard the clatter of a big man’s footsteps, and then Sid Rankin’s voice, hoarse with astonishment.
‘My God, now I’ve seen everything. A cinema organist trying to poke a solicitor’s eyes out!’
Aled moaned, and rolled off Harry’s stomach. When Harry shifted position, his ribs hurt. In the melee, he’d bitten his own tongue. It seemed to take an age before he could stand upright. Aled was huddled up a couple of feet away, his back wedged against the Mighty Wurlitzer. His spectacles lay on the floor, the glass crushed beyond repair. Tears trickled down his cheeks, moistening the thread veins.
‘All I did was talk to the girls,’ he muttered.
Harry gulped in air. Aled was a dirty old man in more ways than one. He’d admitted to hiring escorts, but it was a long way short of proof that he was a murderer.
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘Because it’s true. A…a cultural companion, that’s what I wanted. Someone I could pay to be my friend for an hour or two.’
Sid looked as dazed as if he was the one who’d come off worst in a bare-knuckle fight. Harry would have laughed if his ribs could take the strain.
‘Come on, you two. What’s going on? I mean, am I dreaming this?’
Harry wiped dusty hands on his trousers. At this rate, he’d need to take out a second mortgage to afford his dry cleaning bill.
‘It’s not what you think,’ he said.
‘Harry,’ Sid said, ‘you really don’t want to know what I think.’
‘Another fine mess you got yourself into,’ Carmel said.
They were together again at the General, in reception at A&E. Harry’s ribs kept aching and he’d decided to have them checked out. The nurse gave him a once-over and announced that although she couldn’t find anything worse than a bit of bruising, he ought to have a precautionary X-ray, just in case.
‘It wasn’t in vain,’ Harry insisted. ‘Aled Borth admitted he knew Lee Welch.’
‘Takes us no further forward.’
‘Did you find out any more?’
Carmel nodded. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
‘I reckon I’m due some good news.’
‘All right, you were spot on. Aled Borth has a history. Six months ago he was cautioned for kerb-crawling in Toxteth.’
‘It’s a progression.’ Harry dug his nails into his palm. ‘He picked girls up on the streets until police surveillance made it uncomfortable. After that, he turned to hiring girls from escort agencies.’
Carmel sighed. ‘Ready for the bad news?’
‘Break it to me gently.’
‘Ever since Denise Onuoha was murdered, the team has been checking up on past offenders with a history of association with prostitutes. Painstaking work. They have traced the movements of hundreds of men. Including Aled Borth.’
‘That’s not bad news.’
‘Depends on your point of view. When Denise was killed, Aled was playing his organ. No rude jokes, please. There was a soirée at the Alhambra and he performed selections from the days of silent movies. He couldn’t have made it across the river until long after midnight, by which time Denise was probably dead.’
‘It’s not a watertight alibi. What about the night Kay died?’
‘Aled arrived at the cinema at six-fifteen, for a screening at seven. No way could he have killed her at Widnes and hot-footed it back to Waterloo in time. You’ll never guess what film was showing.’
‘Break it to me gently.’
‘The Trouble with Harry,’ Carmel chortled. ‘They ought to remake it as a documentary.’
‘So did he have an alibi for Lee Welch’s murder?’
‘Not as far as we know. But if the crimes form a series, he must be in the clear. Are you suggesting Aled was able to ascertain the murderer’s MO and copy it in killing Lee? How could he do that?’
His last sight of Aled Borth stayed in his mind. Squeezed into a foetal ball against the cinema organ, Aled had sobbed himself into incoherence. Suppose he was telling the truth, and the reason he tried to wheedle his way into the pagan circle, and then hired escort girls when that didn’t work out, was that he craved female company, any female company, once his mother left for the Indian Summer Care Home, to spend her twilight days in a booze-soaked reverie?
‘Are you OK?’ Carmel asked.
‘Sore ribs, that’s all.’ The pangs of conscience hurt more. He didn’t like Aled, but he wished he hadn’t made a sad life even harder to bear. ‘Surely the murders must all have been committed by the same person?’
‘That’s the assumption the SIO has made. But…’
‘Forget Aled. What if someone else knew the killer’s signature?’
‘You read my mind, Harry darling.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Which in itself I find rather perturbing.’
‘A copycat with access to the inquiry might have killed Lee,’ he said, chasing after the train of thought, ‘or Kay. Or even both of them.’
‘That assumes confidential information leaked from the inquiry team.’
‘Par for the course.’
‘Cynic. The SIO made every effort to contain the key facts on a need-to-know basis.’
He shrugged. ‘But you knew. And I knew.’
‘Don’t rub it in. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth.’
‘I’m glad you trusted me. But not everyone who needed to know will have been discreet.’
The nurse appeared. ‘Ready, Mr Devlin?’
A thought grabbed him and he said to Carmel, ‘I’m not talking about the investigating officers. Even in a highly sensitive murder case, there are people on the fringes who find out important stuff. Such as the fact that the victims’ tongues were cut out.’
The nurse opened her eyes very wide. ‘I’m sorry?’
Neither of them paid her any attention. ‘Who do you have in mind?’ Carmel asked.
‘The pathologist. The paramedics who moved the body. Staff from the undertakers.’ He paused. ‘A mobile embalmer, for instance.’
Carmel told him she’d never heard of Barney Eagleson, but she agreed it was worth asking a few questions; even if he wasn’t the killer, if he’d been indiscreet, more people might know about the MO than the police believed. The X-ray revealed that Harry’s ribs were not broken, and within half an hour he was in his car, crawling back to the waterfront. Traffic inched through endless roadworks, past huge and colourful billboards bragging about the millions spent on what the authorities, with a stab at irony, had dubbed the City Centre Movement Strategy. He shut out the grumbling engines and impatient horns by turning up the volume for an old favourite track. Dionne Warwick’s definitive ‘Walk on By’. The chorus might have been the city engineer’s advice to frustrated motorists.
When at last he reached John Newton House, Lou was engaged in his usual colloquy at the welcome desk with WH Auden. Harry gathered that they were unhappy with the recent performances of the England football team, and had much smarter ideas about players, formation and tactics than the wildly overpaid team coach.
‘Is Victor around?’
Lou shook his head. ‘Gone out on the piss with his mate.’
‘Barney Eagleson?’
‘The bloke who looks like he’s got TB, that’s right.’
‘Any idea where they are?’
‘Sorry, mate.’
‘Or when Victor might be back?’
‘As long as he’s back to relieve me at six, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’
The entrance doors swung open and Wayne Saxelby strolled in. ‘Harry, just the man!’
Harry’s heart sank. ‘Hi, Wayne.’
‘Were your ears burning? I’ve been in touch with the Chief Executive of LIC.’
‘LIC?’
‘Liverpool Innovators’ Centre. They make grants available for local businesses at the cutting edge.’
‘I’m not sure we qualify.’
‘Use your imagination! I pitched this idea of the firm developing an interactive web presence. You can combine a blog with online client satisfaction surveys and a chat room for members of your personal network.’
‘I’d worry too much about what they might chat about. As for client satisfaction…’
‘Look forward, not back! I’ll include detailed proposals and costings in my report. It should be with you on Monday.’ Wayne beamed. ‘See, I’m assuming you make it past Midsummer’s Eve.’
‘I appreciate your confidence. Anyway, I’d better be getting back.’
‘Sure, don’t let me stop you.’ Wayne lowered his voice and cast a glance towards the desk, but chewing gum and football talk occupied Lou’s full attention. ‘By the way, I had a thought. Your message about Midsummer’s Eve. Might it have been sent by Casper May?’
‘Why would he bother? We’ve only been tenants for a fortnight. It’s too early for us to fall behind with the rent.’
The lift doors opened and Wayne waved Harry in. As they moved from the ground floor, he tapped the side of his nose. His know-all expression made Harry want to kick him. Not for the first time, he forced himself to remember that he was in the man’s debt.
‘Suppose Casper got wind of the fact that you and his ex-wife are more than just good friends?’
‘I told you…’
‘Harry, we’re both men of the world. All I’d suggest is this. Might be an idea to give the lady a wide berth for a while. Know what I mean?’
The lift doors opened at the fifth floor and Harry escaped without another word. But as he exchanged a few words with Suzanne, his mind raced. That photograph in Juliet’s penthouse, of the couple walking up to the door of the Adelphi. The woman had reminded him of someone and he’d remembered who it was.
The moment he was back in his room, he did an internet search against the name of Denise Onuoha. Sure enough, he came up with the news stories about her murder. And the old picture of the victim as a schoolgirl. He closed his eyes. Yes, he was sure of it now. The woman in the photograph was Denise. Her hair was different and her outfit glamorous, but the similarities were unmistakable. Juliet kept a photograph of a woman who had been strangled.
Had Ceri conducted the inquest on Denise, was that a link? The inquest would have been adjourned pending further inquires, but a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown was inevitable, unless and until the culprit was found.
The door to his office opened and Grace looked in and asked if he would like a cup of tea. He nodded, but didn’t speak. His head was too cluttered. One damn thing after another.
As his thoughts roamed, he opened his inbox and scrolled through his emails. The name of one sender stood out.
Ka-Yu Cheung.
His heart almost stopped.
Hardly daring to touch his mouse, he scanned the words on the screen.
Harry, you will only receive this email if I’m in trouble. Tom showed me how to delay sending a message, and how to recall one that has already been sent.
I hate to say it, but Tom is sick of me. Whatever I do to please him, it’s never enough.
I’m scared. I overheard him talking on the phone when he didn’t realise I’d just got back home from work. What he said was terrifying. He’s done something bad, that’s how he found the rent for our new apartment. This time he is in too deep to get away with it.
Now he has guessed that I know too much. The way he looks at me frightens me to death. I’m pretty sure he’s bugged our phone. He has the skills. So he knows I want to talk to you.
He has a knife, and he’s ready to use it.
If someone doesn’t stop him, he’ll kill someone else.