Waterloo Sunset: A Lake District Mystery #4 (Lake District Mysteries) Page 13

  ‘Why should it?’

  She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Let’s not go there, Harry.’

  Shit. Was there anyone in the city who didn’t know he’d carried on with Juliet? Whatever happened to personal privacy?

  ‘I’d better take a look at our lease.’

  Her eyebrows arched. Of course, he should have studied it before signing. But he trusted Jim. Would trust him with his life.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about. The deal’s a good one. We have a break clause after five years.’

  ‘But?’ He’d known her long enough to realise there must be a ‘but’.

  ‘No such thing as a free lunch, Harry. I warned him about Casper May. It’s not a good idea to get in hock to a man like that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘A few days ago, they had a row.’

  ‘I never heard about it.’

  ‘It was our second day here. You were in court with that footballer from St. Helens.’

  Another matrimonial client with violent propensities. He’d married a precocious sixteen-year-old in a shotgun wedding and when he’d come home unexpectedly eighteen months later to find his wife in bed with his team’s goalkeeper, he’d initiated an airgun divorce, peppering the couple’s naked backsides with a dozen pellets each.

  ‘So what did Jim and Casper quarrel about?’

  ‘The client wanted to pay cash for a nursing home. Jim was worried that Casper was using the deal to launder dirty money. He didn’t want to touch the deal, but Casper reckoned he was owed a favour.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Jim refused. Of course. Nobody is straighter.’

  ‘How did Casper take that?’ He remembered Casper’s bleak manner when they met at the Stapledon.

  ‘He didn’t make a song and dance about it. Simply said he never forgot anyone who let him down.’

  ‘Jim never mentioned it to me.’

  ‘He didn’t want to worry you. And…’

  ‘What?’

  She bowed her head. ‘I encouraged him not to bother you with it.’

  He stared at her until the explanation stole into his mind. ‘Because of Juliet?’

  ‘I thought your life was complicated enough without having to worry about Casper May all over again.’

  He stifled a groan. ‘I suppose I should say thanks.’

  She shrugged. ‘There are plenty of lawyers out there who are happy to turn a blind eye when rich crooks want to be looked after. The only surprise is that it took so long for him to try it on with Jim.’

  ‘Yeah, he must have known how hard it would be to persuade Jim to break the rules.’

  ‘I thought he would take no for an answer. My mistake. And now…’—all of a sudden, Syliva’s mask collapsed—‘…and now that bastard has taken his revenge.’

  ***

  ‘Green and Pleasant Plant Care,’ a posh woman trilled, ‘how may I help you?’

  Harry introduced himself and said, ‘I’d like to speak to Ka-Yu Cheung. Can you tell me where to find her this morning?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t, Mr. Devlin. She didn’t come into work today.’

  ‘Is she off sick?’ His hopes lifted. Perhaps some bug had prevented her from keeping the appointment at West Bank.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’ Posh, but also pissed off. ‘She didn’t have the courtesy to let us know. Although company rules do require…’

  ‘That’s not like Kay.’

  ‘No.’ A sigh. ‘But these young women…’

  ‘Do you know how I can get in touch with her?’

  ‘I’m afraid that I can’t disclose employee details to clients, Mr. Devlin, no matter how valued.’ How afraid could one woman be? Harry wondered. ‘It would be a breach of the Data Protection Act. As a solicitor, you will understand.’

  Harry understood that the Data Protection Act had become a convenient excuse for keeping people in the dark. He told a few fibs and within five minutes had prised out both Kay’s mobile number and the address of the flat she shared with Tom Gunter at Liverpool Marina.

  The mobile went straight to voicemail and the familiar soft voice said: ‘Hi, this is Kay. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.’

  He muttered into the phone: ‘This is Harry. Please ring me as soon as you can. Just to confirm you’re all right.’

  But, like the posh woman at Green and Pleasant Plant Care, he was afraid—afraid that Kay would not return his call.

  ***

  He needed to get out of the city for half an hour. Clear the fog in his head. He hurried over to Empire Dock and jumped into his car. He drove on auto-pilot, trying to squeeze out of his brain the memory of Tom Gunter in St. Nicholas Gardens, caressing his knife. After twenty minutes, he reached Waterloo and turned off the main road, parking as close as he could to the beach. From here it was only five minutes’ walk to the Alhambra, but he hadn’t come to watch a film.

  A stiff breeze slapped his cheeks as he followed the path skirting the lake. Clouds had gathered and he felt drizzle on his skin. A man in a black wetsuit clinging to a gaudy sail drifted across the water. Gulls squealed overhead, as if in derision. Soon Harry reached a board warning THIS BEACH IS HAZARDOUS and beyond it the vast expanse of yellow sand.

  Hazardous for Lee Welch, that was for sure. She had died here, though he didn’t know the precise scene of crime. You couldn’t chalk the outline of a corpse on the beach.

  The Seaforth radar terminal loomed to his left, beyond it the rattle and boom of the container port. Wind turbines twirled on land and sea. Crosby beach wasn’t a conventional beauty spot. Harry had read some snooty Southern journalist describe it as a long channel of estuarial sludge. An old lady tapping a stick on the asphalt made her way towards him, an obese dachshund grunting at her feet.

  Harry walked on to the beach, shoes squelching in the damp sand. The old lady halted, intrigued by the sight of someone in an office suit wandering out to sea. Perhaps she imagined him stripping off by the water’s edge and then moving forward until he was submerged by the waves. Even the dachshund was sufficiently intrigued to hold its tongue.

  A tall naked man, feet buried in the sand, had his broad back to the land. Harry stopped beside him. The man took no notice. A weathered penis dangled between his legs, blind eyes stared out towards where sea and sky merged into a slate-grey horizon.

  He must have witnessed Lee’s murder, he knew the truth of her fate. But he’d never tell.

  He was made of cast iron.

  Chapter Eleven

  This was Another Place.

  Another Place, where one hundred iron men stared out at sand, sea and sky.

  A sculptor named Gormley had created the pensive figures, moulded from his own frame, and arranged them along the beach, stretching for a kilometre towards the sea. You could have been forgiven for thinking the Iron Men were emissaries from a distant planet, taking part in some eerie ritual in a bleak and futuristic setting. At high tides, water submerged the Iron Men, but nothing fazed them, nothing shook their sombre calm. A notice said they were merely a particular body. No hero, no ideal, merely the representation of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe.

  Another Place obsessed Harry. He often slipped up here to stroll among the rusting statues, asking himself if they saw what he saw, if they dreamed what he dreamed. He might not know much about art, but he did know that the Iron Men meant something to him, perhaps something different to whatever they meant to anyone else. Too many people hated the disruption to their environment: coastguards, conservationists, fishermen, hobby-sailors, they all wanted rid of the Iron Men. But Harry rejoiced that they had been allowed to linger here, gazing out towards—God knows, America? Striving to make sense of a mysterious world.

  Like him.

  Questions tumbled down the helter-skelter of his brain. Who had beaten Jim, what had happened to Kay, how could he fathom the significance of Midsummer’s Eve? Leaning against the cold har
dness of the sculpture, he murmured, ‘What do you think?’

  No answer.

  The old lady with the fat little dog watched his lips move, then bent down and instructed her companion to get a move on. No doubt she thought Harry was a madman, possibly a fugitive from Ashworth Hospital. The drizzle eased, but once she hobbled out of sight, he was the only living being on the beach.

  He pictured Jim lying on his bed in intensive care. Eyes shut, tubes poking out of him. Frozen on the ledge between life and death.

  Until now, shock had numbed Harry. But as he acclimatised to the horror, he was beginning to feel something else. Hot and smothering rage.

  He clenched his fist. Time to fight back.

  ***

  The sun peeked from behind the clouds as he reached Liverpool Marina and the paintwork of the boats sparkled in its rays. Outside the bar and restaurant, the car park was crammed with BMWs and Volvos. Portly men in smart sailing gear, accompanied by stick-thin second wives thronged the pathways. Tall blocks of houses and flats spilled along the riverside. Harry checked out the house numbers on Ballance Boulevard and made his way to the address the posh woman had given for Kay.

  All very different from the mean streets of Halewood. Tom Gunter and his girlfriend had come a long way up in the world. Harry wondered what Tom was up to these days. There was money to be made in IT, but even so. Besides, he couldn’t be working full-time, otherwise what was he doing in St. Nick’s Gardens?

  Harry pressed the entry buzzer. No reply. He dialled Kay again on his mobile. Voicemail once more. This time he didn’t bother to leave a message.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  He turned to face a woman wearing too much lipstick, her arm entwined with that of a bearded bloke in a peaked cap. A skeptical gleam lit their eyes. Harry’s suit was shinier than his shoes, even though he’d scraped off most of the sand, and his tie had seen better days. Not a Liverpool Marina person, really.

  ‘Do you know when Tom and Kay are likely to be back?’

  The woman frowned. ‘The new people in Number Seven? We don’t really know them.’

  ‘We hear them more than see them,’ Captain Pugwash snorted. ‘Playing their music all hours of the day and night. This rap stuff. Bloody rubbish, if you ask me.’

  ‘You haven’t come across Kay in the last twenty four hours, then?’

  ‘I had to knock on their door last night,’ the man said, ignoring the question. ‘Asked him to turn down the racket. Bloody rude, he was.’

  ‘And Kay?’

  ‘Didn’t see her.’

  ‘Was she in the flat at the time, do you know?’

  The woman jabbed him in the stomach with a bejewelled forefinger. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Might as well tell the truth. ‘Kay is a friend of mine.’

  ‘And is this chap of hers a friend of yours?’

  ‘No.’

  She turned to Captain Pugwash with a smirk of triumph. ‘Told you so!’

  ‘What?’ Harry demanded as the man belched in disapproval.

  ‘He’s a bad lot,’ she said. ‘I know the type. Years ago…well, never mind. Let’s just say that the moment I clapped eyes on him, I knew he was a brute. All this music, I don’t think he plays it for entertainment.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘If you ask me, he hurts her. And he turns up the music loud enough to drown out her crying.’

  ***

  Lou was behind the desk on the ground floor of John Newton House, gossiping with the crony who resembled W.H. Auden. From the way they fell silent as Harry approached, it was clear that the attack on Jim had replaced soccer as the topic of conversation. A Stepford Architect on the plasma screen waxed lyrical about vibrant sustainability and key deliverables, but Lou silenced her with the flick of a switch.

  ‘This is a bad business, Harry.’ he muttered. ‘Any news from the hospital?’

  ‘He’s still on the danger list.’

  ‘If you ask me, we should bring back capital punishment,’ the crony said.

  Harry resisted the urge to snap that he hadn’t asked him. ‘Where’s Victor?’

  ‘In his flat.’

  ‘I’ll have a word.’

  Lou lifted the phone as Harry moved towards an inconspicuous door at right angles to the waterfall. ‘I’ll let him know you’re on your way.’

  Now why would that be necessary? Had Victor told Lou to let him know whenever anyone wanted to call on him? Perhaps it was reasonable if he wanted to sleep during the day. Even so.

  Through the door was a small windowless landing. Even in the middle of the day the light was on, illuminating a flight of steep steps down to the basement. Facing the steps was another door marked BUILDING MANAGER. Harry pressed the buzzer, heard it squeal. His skin prickled; he was sure someone was peering at him through the spyhole. Ten seconds passed. A key screeched in the lock and at last the door swung open.

  Victor wore a navy blue vest and denim jeans that had seen better days. His eyes were bleary and he smelled of stale sweat. Harry had never seen his skinny arms before. Each bore a tattoo of a bad-tempered griffin.

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Victor.’

  The building manager took a breath. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Harry. I mean, like, fucking hell.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Victor folded the bare arms. No sign that he was about to invite his visitor in.

  ‘A bad do.’

  ‘Are the police finished in the basement?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’d like to take a look round.’

  ‘What’s the idea?’

  ‘I want to see where Jim was attacked.’

  Victor frowned. ‘Doing your amateur detective stuff, eh?’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  A moment’s hesitation. ‘No…of course not. I’ll come down with you.’

  ‘No need. You should catch up on your sleep.’

  ‘After what happened last night, I haven’t been able to do more than doze for half an hour at a time.’

  ‘Seriously, I don’t mean to mess up your resting time. If you let me have the key…’

  ‘It’s not a problem. Won’t be a moment.’

  Victor turned on his heel and disappeared into the room where soft music played. Harry thought he heard muffled voices, but if Victor had company, he wasn’t about to make introductions. Within a minute he was back, a fat bundle of keys bulging in his fist.

  ‘Follow me.’

  He locked the flat behind him, as if to emphasise that nobody remained inside. Protesting too much. Harry wondered why.

  ‘Can’t be too careful after last night.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  Victor’s chin jutted forward. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I’ve felt better.’

  A heavy sigh. ‘It was grim, Harry. I’m glad you weren’t here to see him in such a shocking state. It’d have broken your bloody heart.’

  Harry followed him downstairs. The steps were ancient and worn and Harry picked his way with care. It would be so easy to lose your footing and pitch headfirst down to the basement and break your neck. No wonder Victor kept the light on. The walls were whitewashed and fringed with spiders’ webs. The interior designers who had transformed John Newton House hadn’t made it below ground level. No thick floor coverings deadened the echoing footfalls. There was no climate control. The temperature in the stairwell was a couple of degrees lower than in the entrance lobby.

  ‘You know the basement was part of the original building on this site? Dates back three hundred years. Mind, that’s nothing compared to Tower Building next door. The first Tower was built in the twelfth century. It was a prison. So was this place, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Victor arrived at the bottom of the stairs. He pressed a switch and smiled, his gold tooth gleaming in the fluorescent glow as he unlocked yet another door that le
d to the car park.

  ‘The slave traders kept their goods here until the ships were ready to sail to Jamaica or wherever. Look closely at the walls and you’ll see the fastenings for the chains.’

  ‘The property agents never mentioned this.’

  ‘Part of our history, mate. Why should we be made to feel ashamed of it? These days people say we should apologise for what happened generations ago. Fucking barmy.’ Victor waved at a series of indentations in the brick wall. ‘See those marks? Makes you think, eh?’

  They stepped through a tall arch, one of a dozen spanning the basement and a movement-activated sensor flooded the car park with light. To their right was a floor-to-ceiling metal roller shutter, ahead of them two rows of marked bays for cars. On the left stood three large blue waste bins on wheels; beyond them a passageway led to a row of large, hollowed-out spaces. Harry glanced into the first alcove. Dusty metal shelving ran the length of its back wall.

  Victor nodded. ‘Over there was the old telephone exchange. Not used since the sixties. You can still see some of the bits and pieces. There’s an electricity substation at the back.’

  Harry pointed to the roller shutter. ‘And behind there?’

  ‘Part of the floor inside is missing. The health and safety people ordered us to shut it off. I asked the landlords if I could get a quote to have it fixed, but they want to flog a few more flats before they shell out any more money on the building. At least on the parts that the tenants don’t see.’

  ‘Any chance that whoever hit Jim could have hidden in there?’

  ‘None. The police asked the same question, but there’s only one key and I keep it with me.’ He jangled the keys in his hand. ‘You can’t be too careful these days. The insurers wouldn’t pay up if anyone had an accident.’

  Ahead were the vast double doors of the car lift and beyond them the passenger lift shaft. Only one of the three carriages came down to this level. Apart from the stone staircase, the remaining entrance to the basement was the door which gave on to the outside path. High on the walls hung two CCTV cameras, sited to command a view of the entrances and exits. When they worked.