Harry groaned. ‘From the gleam in your eye, you’ve already spent the fees.’
‘I wasn’t thinking only of the money. But of course, we ought to invest sensibly. New technology, that’s what we need. A bar-code system for recording the time we spend, visual display units for every typist, an upgraded accounts package. There’s a new debt-collection program on the market which…’
‘Christ, the office will look like the Starship Enterprise by the time you’ve finished with it. Didn’t we leave Maher and Malcolm to escape the tyranny of computers? Talk about looking over your shoulder. That place made Big Brother look like someone who was happy to keep himself to himself. I don’t want Crusoe and Devlin to turn into a law factory.’
Jim’s brow darkened. ‘Look, old son. The law’s no place for Luddites. We’re in business, remember? We need to compete, to provide a decent service.’
‘I haven’t heard Kevin or Jeannie Walters complaining.’
‘You’ve done a superb job, I’m the first to say so. But we must move with the times. We can’t keep living in the Dark Ages.’
Harry shrugged and ambled back to his room. He knew his partner’s arguments were unanswerable and that in time he would have to surrender. His reluctance to agree to change was not born of stubborn stupidity, but rather of an unwillingness to acknowledge that he was first and foremost a businessman, that simply seeing justice done would never in itself pay the mortgage. He resented, not his partner, but the failure of the world to match his more romantic notions of what was right and what was wrong.
A heap of messages awaited him, but the excitement in court had quenched any thirst he might have had for desk work. What he wanted was to take a look at the file he had retrieved from the Land of the Dead. He slipped off a couple of clips that held the old bundle of documents together and the papers spilled on to his desk. Statements of witnesses, correspondence, typed notes of evidence from the committal proceedings, instructions to counsel tied up with pink string, together with a couple of handwritten sheets in a young person’s unformed hand.
He looked at those last two pages. They comprised a record of the trial at the old Liverpool Assizes. Cyril Tweats’ clerk had faithfully taken down every word uttered when Edwin Smith was tried for the murder of Carole Jeffries. Yet not much had needed to be said, in view of Edwin’s guilty plea.
Once more Harry asked himself the question that had been nagging away at the back of his mind ever since Miller had first accosted him. Why was the man so sure Edwin Smith was innocent?
He turned to the correspondence. Cyril had written the usual letters to his client and to the police. A reference in one letter made Harry pause for thought. He turned to the separate set of notes on the meetings between Cyril Tweats and Edwin Smith. Soon he found what he was looking for.
One day in April, not long after his arrest, Edwin had asked to see his solicitor. When the two men were alone together, Edwin had insisted that he had not killed Carole Jeffries. His confession to the crime had been false.
Harry caught his breath as he read the neatly typed notes. At last — an indication that Miller might be on the right track and that Carole could have been murdered by someone else. Yet Edwin had not denied the crime in court. Following his change of heart, what had gone wrong?
The answer was: Cyril Tweats. He had simply not believed Edwin’s retraction. It was clear from the papers that he felt sure that his client had simply panicked at the thought of what lay ahead. Stronger men than Edwin Smith had been terrified by the prospect of the rope. So Cyril had laid down a challenge to the young man: how do you explain your knowledge of facts of which only the murderer could be aware? No answer had been forthcoming. Harry could imagine the young man trembling as his solicitor pointed out that a not guilty plea in a case such as this would mean that he must give evidence on his own behalf and face up to rigorous interrogation from a prosecuting counsel who held all the cards.
Edwin’s nerve soon broke; within twenty-four hours he withdrew his claim to innocence. By changing his tune again, he kept things simple for everyone: his defence team, the police, the courts and himself. He said he was willing to stand by his confession after all, plead guilty and allow the law to take its course.
Harry wondered if that was the moment when, overcome by the relentless inevitability of the legal process, Edwin Smith had decided that he could bear it no more and that, one day when the opportunity presented itself, he would put an end to his torment by taking his own life.
Chapter Seven
Harry licked his forefinger and turned back through the file to find the copy of the statement in which Edwin Smith had confessed to murder. How plausible was the young man’s claim to have strangled the girl? In this bundle of papers, surely, must lie the answer.
He read slowly and, to his surprise, with a sinking heart. For the terms of the statement were unequivocal and he realised he had from the outset been hoping that Miller’s instincts were sound and that the Sefton Park case was a mystery unsolved.
Edwin explained how he knew Carole Jeffries as a neighbour. He had always regarded her as pretty but unattainable. She had given barely a sign that she was aware of his existence, but he sensed she knew of his two criminal convictions: one for exposing himself to a woman walking her dog in Otterspool and another for the theft of knickers from a nearby washing line. He guessed that, if she ever thought of him at all it was with disgust and he did not blame her for such a reaction: sometimes he disgusted himself.
On the last afternoon of Carole’s life he had been on his way home when he saw her a few yards ahead of him and on the other side of the road, walking along the path which skirted the boundary of Sefton Park. She seemed to be wandering aimlessly and when he caught sight of her face as she passed beneath a street lamp, he saw that her expression was miserable, which made him sad, since he thought a girl who had everything ought surely to be happy all the time.
Something prompted him to change course and follow her into the park. Perhaps he would be able to cheer her up and thereby earn her favour. He described her as wearing a brown sheepskin jacket and green silk scarf, as well as black leather boots. After a couple of hundred yards or so he caught up with her and tried to strike up a conversation.
‘Bitter weather, isn’t it?’
Carole took no notice.
‘You look a bit fed up,’ he ventured.
She continued walking.
‘My mum says, a trouble shared is a trouble halved.’
She didn’t falter in her stride as she said, ‘Why don’t you just piss off?’
He kept pace with her in silence for another couple of minutes. It was a grim winter’s evening, cold and dark enough to have deterred even the most resolute of dog walkers, and the park was deserted. Their path took them by the side of the lake for a while before branching off through a dip in the landscape bordered on either side by large spiky shrubs.
Edwin decided to dare everything. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this. But the truth is, I really fancy you.’
At last he’d got through to her. She halted and faced him. ‘You fancy me? So what am I supposed to do? Grovel with gratitude at the admiration of a subnormal little pervert like you? You’re pathetic, Smithy. Now fuck off and go and play with yourself like you usually do in that garden shed of yours and leave me alone.’
The harsh response would always stay in his memory, word for word. Yet according to Edwin, it was the contemptuous sneer on her pretty face that made him snap. He wanted her and he had the chance to do something about it. Without another word, he seized hold of her and dragged her into the bushes. She struggled and screamed as he tried to undo her jacket. He was not a strong young man and, once she had recovered from the initial shock, she fought back fiercely enough to make him fear she was about to break free. He had no weapon to frighten her. All he could see ahead was misery and humiliation. He felt he must do something to avoid that. Anything.
So he pulled the silk scarf tight around her neck. She kicked out wildly, but he did not let go. As he increased the pressure on her throat, gradually her resistance weakened. Within moments — or so it seemed to him — she
