blinking as his mind whirled, trying to come to terms with the shock of discovery.
Harry looked again at the photograph on the album sleeve. Ray Brill stood with arms folded: he was acting mean and moody and not a flicker of emotion compromised his dark features. Ian Brill, born McCalliog, stood by his side, wearing a shy and boyish smile. In those days he had been as slim as a girl and his hair had been thick and wavy; his smooth chin might never once have seen a razor. But there was no mistaking him, all the same. The brown eyes had not changed and his two front teeth still overlapped.
‘A long time ago,’ said Jock when at last he found his voice. ‘And yet I remember it as if it were yesterday.’
Harry tossed the record to one side. ‘You’re not the first person to find we can’t escape our past.’
Jock cast a wry glance at the Ross Macdonald paperback next to his desk. ‘I should have learned that from reading Lew Archer novels. Tell you one thing. I’d sooner be the detective than the detected. So how much have you worked out, how much have you guessed?’
‘Enough to be sure, if not quite enough to satisfy my own inquisitive streak. Whether it will suffice for the police is a different matter. It’s for them to dot every ‘i’ and to cross each ‘t’. I doubt if you’ve managed to kill three people without yielding a single clue.’
‘Two,’ said Jock quickly. ‘There were only two murders. Miller died by accident. A lucky chance, as I thought at the time.’
Harry shook his head. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me so many lies.’
‘What do you expect? I’ve always been a survivor. Confession is for the weak.’
‘And the innocent?’ demanded Harry, bitterness rising for a moment to the surface. ‘People like Edwin Smith?’
Jock shrugged. His confidence seemed to be returning and he ventured a small smile. ‘Pity he didn’t cough to the murder of Warren Hull whilst he was at it. But you didn’t answer me. What put you on the track?’
‘Ray Brill made enemies easily, but in all his fifty years no-one had hated him enough to kill him. So I asked myself why he had been murdered now. I’d solved the Sefton Park case — ’
‘What?’ Jock was genuinely amazed.
‘Oh yes,’ said Harry. Despite his tension, he was unable to resist the temptation of a devastating throwaway line. ‘Carole’s own father strangled her. It’s a long story. Another time, perhaps.’
‘I doubt if there’ll be another time for you and me,’ said Jock.
‘You may be right. Anyway, I’d learned that Guy Jeffries did murder his own daughter and he was in his grave, safe from retribution in this world at least. The way I saw it, if Ray hadn’t murdered Carole, and had no cause to shield anyone else, there must be another reason for his death. Similarly, the motive for that mysterious visit to Miller on the day he died could not be connected with the Sefton Park case. Yet Miller did seem to have stumbled on some sort of secret. I remembered how he seemed almost to have lost interest in the identity of Carole’s killer when I met him in the park — which was immediately after he had talked to Ray Brill. I wondered what Ray might have told him.’
‘But Ray didn’t say anything to you about Warren Hull.’
‘No, because you had already warned him to keep his mouth shut. I knew a little about Hull’s death, though, and although everyone had written it off as a gay killing of no account which would never be solved, when I asked myself why someone might murder for the sake of self-preservation, it occurred to me that Hull’s death might hold the key. Miller had an obsession with perfect crimes. If Ray had spilled a few beans about Hull’s death, he might have found that more interesting even than his investigation into the Sefton Park case.’
Jock indicated the record sleeve. ‘When did you identify me as Ian?’
‘Within the past hour. I’d come round to the view that Ray knew who had killed Hull and had kept quiet for purposes of his own. Suppose the culprit was still around, who might it be? I was still groping in the dark until I saw the record sleeve. When I realised who you were…’
‘The pieces of the puzzle all fell into place?’ asked Jock with a wry grin.
Harry forced a smile. On the way over here, he had been dreading the prospect of a confrontation with a man he had liked, had been far from clear in his own mind what he hoped to achieve. At last he was beginning to relax a little. He wanted Jock to fill in the gaps of the story and thought he could persuade him to do so. ‘I don’t believe Ross Macdonald would ever have sunk so far as to use that hackneyed phrase, but you have the right idea.’
‘I told myself not to underestimate you, though — don’t take this the wrong way — it’s easily done.’
‘Once it dawned on me how careful you had been not to tell me you were Ian Brill, I found it hard to believe there wasn’t a guilty explanation. Most former stars I’ve ever met still hanker after the limelight and I couldn’t quite imagine you as a kind of subterranean Greta Garbo. Even assuming you genuinely wanted to forget about your days as a pop star, why not say something when we talked about the Brill Brothers?’
‘I toyed with the idea, but the last thing I wanted was for you to get too close to the truth.’
‘Which is why you took pains to keep tabs on my own nosing around.’
‘My interest wasn’t entirely spurious,’ said Jock. ‘I did find the Jeffries case intriguing. I agree with Miller: people who get away with murder have a special fascination.’
‘I guessed that when I told you I was going to see Ray, you tipped him off. Presumably you’d been in contact recently, as a result of Miller’s investigations.’
‘You’re right, though the night I murdered him was the first time we’d met face to face in over twenty years.’
‘Quite a way to renew an acquaintance. Anyway, Ray said something to me that seemed to clinch your involvement. I’d introduced myself simply as a solicitor called Devlin. I don’t flatter myself that I’m a household name in Southport. Frankly, I’m scarcely a household name in my own flat.’
‘You do yourself an injustice. I’ve heard other solicitors talk about you even down here, you have a reputation for never letting go. You intrigue me, though. What clue did Ray give?’
‘At one point, he called me Mister Harry Devlin. The significance of it didn’t strike me at once, but later on I asked myself: how did he know I was called Harry? Miller might have mentioned me to him, but you were a likelier candidate. I told you the previous day that I would be driving up to Southport to see Ray. The odds were that you had tipped him off. No wonder he didn’t seem too surprised to see me.’
‘Simple as that, eh? And I thought I’d been so careful.’
‘I decided to call on Ray to ask him how he knew my name, but of course, you beat me to it.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘Let’s talk about that in a little while. First, I’d like to satisfy my own curiosity. Obviously, there’s a good deal I don’t know.’
‘And you seem to be short of evidence, as well,’ said Jock, stroking his beard.
‘You know as well as I do that when the police take a close look at everything that has taken place, it’s a pound to a penny that they’ll be able to tie you in with Ray’s murder. I see it as a panic measure, am I right?’
‘I had no alternative. He’d kept his mouth shut about Warren for thirty years, but I couldn’t trust him any longer. He was down on his luck, he knew I had a few pennies put by. He saw me as his pension. I couldn’t have that, Harry, I’m sure you understand.’
‘How did he know you had killed Hull?’
‘I admitted it, of course.’ Jock shook his head. ‘I was only a boy, remember. A frightened wee boy.’
‘What happened?’
‘Warren fancied us, of course. He had a reputation for sleeping with his acts, though I didn’t know that when he signed us up. In the early days, he had his eyes on Ray, and Ray was crafty enough to hold him off whilst encouraging him to think that his defence might one day slip. To keep him interested in us, that’s all. No-one was straighter than Ray, in the sexual sense at least.’
‘But in the end Warren turned his attention to you?’
‘When we started to hit the big time — or the biggest time we ever hit, at any rate — Ray could afford to be brave and to tell Warren where to get off. The man was no fool, he knew he couldn’t risk exposure. So he started to spend more time with me.’
‘And you were glad of his attention?’
Jock gave him a sharp glance. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘I’ve never thought about it coherently until now, but I suppose I’ve sensed subconsciously that you may be gay. You’re not married, are you?’
