She bowed her head. ‘Strange. I felt strange, that’s the honest answer. Yes, I was shocked, of course, but I couldn’t help feeling other things.’
He waited, willing to take his time while she dug deep into her memory and tried to recapture her inner thoughts of thirty years before. Finally she lifted her chin and looked him in the eye.
‘It sounds terrible to say, but it was the most exciting time I’d ever had. I became the centre of attention. I made out that I was heartbroken and everyone offered comfort and support.’ She paused and added, ‘The truth is, I felt she’d got her just deserts. She’d always lived dangerously and now Ray Brill had lost forever the girl he left me for.’
Harry said nothing and after another momentary pause she bit her lip and told him, ‘I’ve never said that before to another living soul, but it’s true. She fascinated me when she was alive and after all this time she still fascinates me. She hurt me badly, but I’ve never been able to get her out of my mind. So what do you make of my true confession, Mr Harry Devlin? I suppose you think I was depraved to feel that revenge was sweet when my friend had been so brutally strangled?’
‘I don’t think you’d be human if you’d experienced nothing but grief.’
She grunted and gave him a hard glance. ‘You talk as if you know about these things.’
‘My own wife was killed,’ he heard himself saying. ‘She’d left me two years earlier but I still loved her, I mourn her to this day. All the same, I can’t pretend I’ve forgotten the way she behaved.’
With a nod of understanding, she said quietly, ‘I suppose I’d kept telling myself that it wouldn’t last, the relationship Carole had with Ray.’
‘Did you think Carole would finish with him?’
‘Maybe I did.’ Her dark eyes glinted. ‘After all, she was seeing another man, you know.’
Startled, he said, ‘No, I didn’t have any idea of that.’
‘Oh, it had been going on for a while. Though she kept very quiet about him — like I said before, she was secretive. I had the impression he was an older man. Married, I assumed, though she never said as much.’
‘Could you guess who it was?’
‘Ah, she was too cagey to give the game away, although she liked hinting that she’d been taught as much as she’d ever need to know by this other fellow.’
‘Could it have been Benny?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You said he liked girls as well as boys — and he was fond of Carole.’
She spread her arms. ‘If it was him, they both deserve Oscars for their acting day after day in the shop.’
‘Any other candidates?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘What about Clive Doxey?’
‘Sir Clive? What about him?’
‘He was a friend of Guy Jeffries, handsome and sophisticated. Any young girl might have found him attractive. And he was an up-and-coming man with a reputation to protect.’
‘God alone knows. In those days, I wasn’t much interested in politics or writers. Can’t say I’ve changed even now. Guy Jeffries I liked. He thought the sun shone out of Carole’s arse and he was always giving her treats. Mrs Jeffries didn’t approve at all, but she didn’t get much chance to lay down the law. But although I can remember meeting Doxey once at the Jeffries’ house, he never meant much to me. I could see he was smooth and successful, but he was over thirty. To me, he might as well have been eligible for a bus pass. I only had eyes for younger men. Like Ray.’
‘Do you ever see Ray Brill these days?’
‘God, no. The last time we spoke was a mumbled hello at Carole’s funeral. After that, the Brill Brothers started finding it harder to make the charts. Ian gave up pop music and Ray was never much use on his own. He’d lost his way and I can’t say I shed any tears for him.’
‘What about Benny? Do your paths ever cross?’
‘Now and then. I worked for him for another couple of years after Carole died, but then I got married and found a job that paid better in an advertising agency. That was where I met Bob, years later. He was a bookie in a small way of business then, but by the time he died he had this whole chain of shops and was worth the thick end of two million.’ She gave him a grim smile. ‘So maybe it all turned out for the best as far as I was concerned.’
‘Though not for Carole.’
‘No, not for Carole.’ She looked at the linoleum floor for a few seconds, then said, ‘Well, Mr Devlin, I think you’ve had more than the half hour I promised, though I can’t believe what I’ve said has been of any use.’
‘Don’t you believe it. I’m grateful for your time.’
She led him back into the public area. A punter was complaining to one of the girls at the counter that he hadn’t yet been paid out on the last race.
‘Wait a moment, will yer?’ the girl asked. ‘The horse is still sweating! Besides, they haven’t completed the weigh-in yet.’
Shirley Titchard turned to Harry and said, ‘No patience, you see. Just like Carole. She wanted to have everything and to have it right away. Whoever she hurt in the process.’ She folded her brawny arms again and gave him a direct look. ‘And look what it got her — her own tombstone before she was seventeen.’
Conscience prompted him to call in at the office to see if there were any messages before his next trip. At the door of New Commodities House he bumped into Jock from the Land of the Dead. The archivist had a batch of old files under his arm and gave him an eager welcome.
‘Harry! Just the man! Kim Lawrence has been telling me that now it’s absolutely certain that Edwin Smith wasn’t the Sefton Park Strangler. I wondered if you had any more ideas about how to discover who really killed the girl.’
‘One or two, but nothing definite yet. I’m still asking myself whether the burglary here had anything to do with the case. The alarm system is sophisticated, as you well know. It certainly cost us enough. I can’t fathom why anyone would go to the lengths of disabling it and rifling through my room but then take nothing.’
‘Perhaps he or they were disturbed.’
‘Who by? No, I can’t help believing the burglar was after the old Tweats file, mistakenly thinking it contained incriminating evidence. I hope no-one’s disturbed you down in the Land of the Dead?’
Jock put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No need to worry. It’s as safe as Fort Knox.’
‘Even so, I still reckon Miller told Ray Brill that I’d found the file.’
‘You don’t believe Ray was the burglar?’
‘I don’t know what to believe. The likeliest explanation to me still seems to be that Ray knows much more about the death of his girlfriend than anyone realised at the time. Besides, I’ve now learned that he might have had a motive for killing her.’
Jock’s eyebrows rose. ‘Such as?’
‘According to her friend Shirley, Carole had become involved with another man. She’d given Ray the old heave-ho.’
‘I dunno. What about Ray’s alibi? Surely the police must have checked it out at the time.’
‘So they claim. Come inside and I’ll fill you in on the latest.’ He led the little Scot to his room and, pushing a sheaf of telephone messages off his chair, recounted what he had learned. Jock listened carefully and, when Harry had finished, plucked at his beard for a few moments before speaking.
‘Suppose it was the other way round?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Suppose instead of Ray killing Carole because of jealousy, the new boyfriend murdered her because she’d become too possessive. Doesn’t that solve the problem with the alibi?’
‘You’re thinking of Benny Frederick?’
Jock shook his head decisively. ‘I can’t imagine he would have fallen for her. Surely Clive Doxey is a better bet? He was an up-and-coming lawyer and politico. Carole was a child — and the child of a close friend, to make matters worse.’
Harry thought about it. ‘No-one knows what was said between them when he called round at the house that day,’ he said slowly. ‘They might have arranged an assignation in the park.’
‘Exactly! And then they might have had an argument. God knows what she might have threatened to tell Guy.
