Menu in hand, Harry was wavering between kibeh and tabouleh — and telling himself that it was a long time since that lavish lunch at the Ensenada — when a tinkle of finger cymbals told him that the dancer was approaching. He turned to look at her again. At close quarters he suspected she was closer to fifty than to forty. Her make-up could not quite disguise the laughter lines around her mouth and eyes; her stomach was flabby, her buttocks huge. Each wiggle was determined rather than sinuous and her vast breasts seemed in imminent danger of escaping their skimpy moorings.
A brisk swivel brought her body within touching distance. Her perfume was a heavy musk; it even blotted out the smell of the cigars. She smiled at him, putting her tongue between her lips and bent down so as to give him a better view.
‘Mr Devlin?’ she asked in tones more redolent of Anfield than of the mysterious east. ‘Pleased to meet you. My name’s Renata Grierson.’
Chapter Fifteen
The voice was unmistakeable: the wobbling breasts right under his nose belonged to Edwin Smith’s one-time girlfriend. He was conscious that all eyes in the restaurant were upon him. Leaning back in his chair, he returned her smile.
‘Thanks for letting me see you, Mrs Grierson.’
A pair of nipple tassels rotated mesmerically. ‘Renata, please. I’m not one for formal introductions.’
‘I’ve guessed as much.’
The lines on her face hardened. ‘So you’re poking around in a case best left dead and buried?’
‘Like Edwin? I’d like to know the truth about the murder of Carole Jeffries. I think he may have suffered an injustice.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Though at one time I reckoned he deserved what he got.’
‘When can we talk?’
‘The waiters are lovely lads, but speed of service isn’t their strong point. By the time you’ve had your meal, I’ll be through.’
She smiled again before tilting her body away from him and started to glide to the next alcove. As he watched her go, Harry reflected that, had things worked out differently, Edwin Smith might now be a henpecked fifty-year-old married to a belly dancer instead of pushing up daisies in a prisoner’s grave. Some people might not be sure which was worse.
At the end of the evening, Renata timed her return to perfection. While he stood at the till signing the credit card slip, she appeared beside him. Gone were the anklets and the finger cymbals. Even her perfume seemed less oppressive. In her tartan jacket and black leggings she looked like any other middle-aged woman who likes to dress young.
‘Thanks for being willing to talk,’ he said as he followed her down the stairs.
‘That’s all right. I’ve kept quiet long enough.’
‘But you contacted Ernest Miller.’
Her tone became grim. ‘I didn’t much like the sound of him on the phone. He had a slimy voice. But I found myself starting to answer his questions. He said he had this idea Edwin was innocent. His late wife had worked for Edwin’s brief and she’d told him that Edwin withdrew his confession before the trial — but the solicitor didn’t believe him and bloody Edwin didn’t have the bottle to slug it out in a courtroom.’
‘So you said he was right, but didn’t explain why?’
‘I wanted to do it face to face. You see, Mr Devlin, the whole thing’s been bothering me since 1964. I’d like to get it off my chest.’ She forced a smile. ‘Anyway, where are you taking me?’
He spread his arms. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Don’t tempt me, young man. How about a drink in the Demi-Monde? Don’t worry, I won’t show you up. Now I’ve changed out of my dancing clothes, anyone would think I was respectable.’
A couple of minutes later they were sitting at the nightclub’s bar and Harry had learned that Renata’s tipple was a daiquiri and coke.
‘Thanks, love. I need this. All that shimmying is thirsty work.’
He had to raise his voice to be heard above the thudding nineties musak. ‘How long have you been doing it?’
She moved a little closer to him. ‘On and off, for ten years. I love Egyptian dancing, it’s perfect for me. For one thing, it’s a positive advantage to have a big bum. Besides, it takes me out of myself. And at my age, how else could I get a whiff of the steamy passions of the caliph’s harem?’ She gave him a direct look and, even in the darkness of the disco, he felt himself blushing. ‘Now, love. I’ve no-one to go home to at the moment. My feller drives an HGV and he’s down south tonight, so my time’s my own. So what can I tell you about that poor sod Edwin?’
‘How did you get to know him?’
‘On a bus ride into the city centre. He started chatting me up. I was between boyfriends, so even though he was nothing to look at, I didn’t give him the cold shoulder. Besides, it was obvious his family had a penny or two. he might have been a wimp, but his old feller had been a successful businessman and they had a posh house opposite Sefton Park to prove it.’
‘So the two of you got together?’
She gave him a crooked smile. ‘Oh, I played hard to get for a while. At least a week, as I recall. At first, he wouldn’t introduce me to his mum. I gather she was a bit of a dragon, but all the same, I took it as a bad sign. Then one day he invited me round to the house. I was desperate to have a look at the place, so I could see if the Smiths were as well off as I guessed.’
‘You were interested in a long-term relationship, even though he was a wimp?’
‘Oh, I don’t pretend it was a burning passion. I’m no angel, Mr Devlin, never have been. In 1964 I was a one-woman permissive society. School did nothing for me — the teachers said I was bright enough, they just couldn’t control me. At the time I met Edwin I had a job in a tongue factory. I can remember the stench of the mess sloshing around on the works floor to this very day. I wanted to escape. If that meant getting hooked up with a creep like Edwin, I was game.’
‘And so you went home with him?’
He could feel her warm breath on his cheek, see every line that time had dug around her made-up eyes. ‘Maybe I was more innocent than I thought. I actually believed he was going to introduce me to his mum that afternoon. He pretended to be surprised when she wasn’t there and it wasn’t long before we finished up in his bedroom.’ She paused. ‘I’ll never forget it. The date was the twenty-ninth of February 1964. Leap Year Day, but no way was I going to propose to him. Not after that fiasco.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Edwin admitted his mum was visiting someone in Yorkshire and wouldn’t be back till the following day. He’d planned it to perfection so the two of us could have a wild time in bed without any fear of being disturbed. There was only one slight problem.’
‘Which was?’
She wriggled a little on her bar stool. ‘He couldn’t make love to me, could he? His thing was as soft as a piece of plasticine. No matter what I did, it made no difference. I tried kindness and kinkiness, but none of it was any good. He admitted he’d never had a girl before. Not properly.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘After a while he climbed off the bed. He was in tears. I remember that he parted the curtains and looked out. That was what suited him in life — looking, not doing.’
Harry sensed she was about to tell him something important. ‘And do you know what he saw?’
‘I got up and joined him.’ Renata’s voice was abstracted and he could tell she was reliving that Leap Year Day. ‘He was watching a young girl walking into the Park through the gates opposite his bedroom window.’
He guessed what was coming next. The explanation to the conundrum that had been troubling him. ‘A blonde girl, wearing a brown sheepskin jacket, black boots and a green scarf?’
‘Got it in one. Carole Jeffries. At that time, I’d never heard the name, of course. Edwin told me she was a neighbour. I asked if he fancied her and he admitted he did, but said she had no time for him. I pulled him back on the bed, spread my legs wide and told him to make believe that I was her.’ She shook her head. ‘God, the things I’ve done for men in my time. But it was no good. His imagination — or something — simply wasn’t up to it.’