She banged her glass down on the bar and concentrated her attention on him. In a fierce voice she said, ‘Listen, I arrived at the house at half two. Looking forward to afternoon tea in the lap of luxury, bloody young idiot that I was. The earliest Edwin could have strangled the girl was a quarter past six.’ She drained her glass, as if in need of strength. ‘Yet the Echo said Carole Jeffries was murdered sometime between four o’clock and five at the latest. I couldn’t make sense of it, so I rang the reporter, telling him some cock-and-bull story. But he was definite: there was no mistake. They could fix the time because Carole only left her parents’ house at four and by five a courting couple had started canoodling on a bench only yards away from the bushes where her body was found. As the man said to me, the pair of them may have been engrossed with each other, but no murderer in his right mind was going to take the risk of dragging a corpse right under their noses whilst they were snogging.’
‘Did you discuss this with anyone?’
‘Who? Edwin had confessed, hadn’t he? If he’d wanted to take the blame, who was I to stand in his way? Besides, he was beyond my help by then. It wasn’t as though he was about to be hung — or even spend the rest of his days inside.’
‘And what about his mother? She had to live with the belief that her son was a murderer.’
‘I was seventeen,’ said Renata helplessly. ‘I’d never met her and besides, I didn’t want to be any more involved with the police than I had to. While I was down in London, you see, I’d picked up a conviction. Soliciting. So much for the bloody glamour and the bright lights.’ She finished the rest of her drink. ‘Any chance of another?’
When it came, she tossed it all down in two or three gulps. ‘Look, when I saw Miller’s advert, I knew I had to give him a call. I’ve been married twice and had more men that you’ve had hot dinners, but until last week I’d kept my secret in silence. It’s been preying on my mind for so long. When I spoke to Miller, it was like a dam bursting.’ She shook her head. ‘All this time, I’ve been wanting someone to realise that, for all his faults, that pathetic little creep Edwin never murdered anybody in his life.’
And as Harry watched, she cradled her head in her hands and, oblivious of the barmaid’s baffled stare, began to weep for the young man she had walked out on thirty years before.
Chapter Sixteen
Next morning Harry was back in the bargain basement of the legal system, down at the magistrates’ court appearing on behalf of a couple of careless drivers and a positively negligent car thief who had managed to leave a letter to him from the social security office tucked under the dashboard. When the last case had been heard, he paused on his way out to look at the news-
stand adjacent to the courtroom entrance. The face of Jeannie Walter beamed out at him from under a banner headline saying JUSTICE IS DONE — BUT WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG?
Edwin Smith and his mother might ask much the same question, he reflected. In the small hours, he had finally poured a sobbing Renata into the taxi he’d called to take her back home. By then she had become maudlin and was blaming herself for Edwin’s suicide. ‘If only I’d stayed with him,’ she kept saying, ‘he would still be alive today.’
‘You can’t rewrite the past,’ he’d told her, although he had himself often wanted to do exactly that.
At least, he thought, in death both Edwin Smith and Ernest Miller had been vindicated. Edwin was no killer and the strange old man’s hunch about the case had been proved right. Harry could imagine Miller, following his retirement, recalling what his wife had once told him about Edwin’s short-lived attempt to withdraw his confession; perhaps she’d had more sense than Cyril Tweats and had realised that it rang true. But only once one understood how Edwin knew what Carole had been wearing did it become clear that the corroborative evidence so crucial to the assumption of his guilt really had no substance at all. When, following the humiliation with Renata, he had confessed to the crime, he must have guessed at the ligature used by the real killer, knowing already that Carole had been strangled and was wearing a scarf when she took her last stroll through the park. Harry thought the conversation with Carole was too vivid to have been a total fabrication. He guessed Edwin had tried to chat her up on a previous occasion and received the crushing rebuff he had described to the police. As for Miller, what had he learned from Ray Brill about the case — and who had called at the scruffy house in Everton on the evening of the fatal asthma attack?
‘Wondering how many copies to buy of Jeannie Walter’s exclusive interview?’ asked Kim Lawrence in his ear.
He turned to face her. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother.’
‘Why not? You’re bound to be mentioned.’
‘I don’t think my ego would stand the strain. Besides, I’ve already come to earth with a bump after yesterday’s excitements. Petty crime, fines and probation. No travesties of justice this time. How about you?’
‘A shoplifting single mother. She turned up with a bruise under her eye — her boyfriend’s been beating her black and blue.’ Kim sighed. ‘Any news about your Sefton Park case?’
‘Only that Edwin Smith could not have strangled Carole Jeffries.’
He was rewarded by the widening of her eyes. ‘Tell me more.’
As he did so, he found himself aware of how much he had begun to enjoy her company. She had a reputation in the city as an abrasive litigator famously quick to interrupt her opponents, but he was realising for the first time that she could also listen and he could not deny that he felt flattered by her interest in the case that so absorbed him. He could sense her mind working, testing Renata’s story for flaws and contradictions, worrying away at possibilities for lethal cross-examination.
When he had finished, she opted for direct attack. ‘And what makes you believe that after thirty years of silence this superannuated belly dancer is telling the truth at last? Maybe she’s just spinning you a yarn for the sake of a little notoriety.’
‘If you’d seen her dancing, you’d realise she’s no need to tell tall stories to do that. But leaving that aside, I did believe her. Although she did nothing to save Edwin while he was alive, she didn’t have any inkling that he needed to be saved. She had problems enough of her own to contend with at the time, but I’m sure the whole business has nagged at her ever since. That’s why she was willing to spill the beans when she read Ernest Miller’s advertisement.’
She gave a satisfied nod. ‘Okay, I’ll buy that. So — what next? Presumably it’s time for you to speak to the people closest to Carole. But do you think they will co-operate?’
‘Have you ever met a Liverpudlian who was unwilling to talk? Anyway, I’ve made a start. I called Shirley Titchard first thing and she agreed to see me this afternoon. But before that, I want to see if someone can give me an objective picture of them. So right now I’m going to call on the man who headed the murder enquiry.’
‘And I thought your conscience would make you head back to your desk as soon as court was over.’
They exchanged grins, two advocates who regarded desks as designed for conveyancers and corporate lawyers. ‘It can do without me for a while. Let’s face it, I might still have been sitting behind Patrick Vaulkhard, watching him kebab the police authority’s witnesses.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ she said after a slight pause, ‘there is a meeting of MOJO tomorrow evening in one of the conference rooms at Empire Hall. Our speaker has cancelled at the last minute, so I’ve asked Patrick if he would be willing to talk about the Waltergate case. I wondered if you’d like to join us. That is, if you don’t have anything else planned.’
He looked at her and said, ‘No, I don’t have anything else planned. I’d be delighted to come.’ An idea occurred to him. ‘And will your president, Sir Clive, be there?’
She smiled. ‘I thought you might ask that and the answer is yes. But I hope you won’t look on the evening solely as an opportunity to pump him for more information about the Sefton Park Strangling.’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I won’t.’
Half an hour later, a pleasant middle-aged woman at the reception desk in Jasmine House nodded when Harry said he wanted to see Vincent Deysbrook.
‘That’s lovely. Vincent will be glad to see you. He doesn’t have too many visitors. His son lives in Norfolk and
