‘Whatever I find out can’t help Smith. I’m not here to defend him, simply to learn a little more about the case.’
‘A do-gooder, eh?’ Deysbrook made a derisive noise. ‘The world’s full of them. People who like to say that black is white. Even if a bent brief can’t help a criminal to walk out of court with a smirk on his face, you always find some social worker or probation officer willing to blame society for his rapes and muggings.’
‘I’m no bleeding heart, Mr Deysbrook, and I’m not here to throw mud at the police investigation or at you personally. My only interest is to find out what really happened, not to make a fast buck.’
‘I thought you said you were a lawyer?’
Harry grinned. ‘Ouch. I’d like to explain how I come to be involved.’
‘You’d better,’ said Deysbrook without a smile.
The story did not take long to tell. Deysbrook listened carefully. In coming here, Harry had expected hostility. The retired detective was a sick man and no-one welcomes the news that they have been badly mistaken in a matter of life and death. Yet he sensed that Deysbrook’s instinct was to give him a fair hearing.
‘And what makes you think the woman isn’t telling a pack of lies?’
‘Did you never rely on your own nose for the truth?’
Deysbrook grunted. ‘Often enough. But all the lawyers I ever knew liked hard evidence. Something they could see in black and white.’
‘Everything Renata told me fitted the facts. She explained how Edwin could have had the knowledge that incriminated him, about the clothes Carole wore on the day she died. And she gave me a clearer idea of the sort of man he was, a passive inadequate humiliated by his own impotence. I can believe that he would have confessed to the murder to make himself important. When he got in too deep, he tried to save himself, but it was too late. His lawyers hardly listened; they were going through the motions. For Edwin Smith to be guilty was convenient for everyone. Including the real murderer.’
‘And who might that have been?’
‘Interesting to speculate, isn’t it?’ Harry felt he had hooked his man at last. One thing his job had taught him was how to persuade reluctant people to open up. ‘I wanted to ask you about the police view. Was anyone other than Smith a suspect?’
Deysbrook rubbed his jaw as he cast his mind back. While he waited, Harry glanced through a glass panel in the door and saw a nurse walk past, her arm around the shoulder of a weeping woman who he supposed must be a patient’s relative. ‘The boyfriend, of course,’ the old man said at last. ‘With every murder, I always looked first at the nearest and dearest. Young Carole was going out with a pop singer, can’t recall his name. Flash character, thought he was God’s gift to the girls. I didn’t take to him.’
Harry could imagine. ‘Could he have killed her?’
A shake of the head. ‘No way. He had an alibi.’
‘Alibis can be organised. You know that as well as I do.’
‘Bet you won’t admit that in court, though, Mr Devlin, will you? You’d soon have no clients left.’
‘Look, I’ve been wondering — he was a member of a duo, they were called the Brill Brothers. Is there any chance that his partner might have covered for him?’
Deysbrook made a scornful noise through his teeth. ‘No-one could have broken his alibi. Not even he could have corrupted five hundred people. That evening the whatsit Brothers appeared in a concert at a big club in London. As far as I can remember, they’d arrived by mid-afternoon.’
Harry felt a tremor of disappointment. ‘So you are absolutely sure that it was physically impossible for him to have been in Sefton Park when Carole took her last stroll?’
‘Absolutely bloody positive.’ Deysbrook burst into a fit of coughing and Harry waited until the old man had composed himself.
‘Carole worked for a well-known photographer by the name of Benny Frederick. Was he in the clear?’
Deysbrook scratched his head. Harry could guess at the effort the man was making to step back thirty years, to a time when he was fit and strong and had a murder on his hands that he was desperate to solve. Finally, he said, ‘Yes, we did speak to him. I soon guessed he was a queer, though he would never have admitted it. In those days, it was a crime. People like that were ashamed of themselves — and afraid. Now they expect a bloody medal and a government grant.’
‘Any reason to think he might have had a grudge against Carole?’
Deysbrook shrugged. From the way he flinched it seemed that even this simple gesture caused him pain. ‘He reckoned to be cut up about the girl’s death, but who knows?’
‘Any alibi?’
‘Can’t recall. It was a long time ago, Mr Devlin.’
‘What about Clive Doxey — Sir Clive, as he now is?’
‘Oh yeah, I remember him all right. Pal of the girl’s father and a right pain in the arse. Important chap, even then, a bigwig and he made sure you knew it. I liked him even less than the other feller — and I could never stand queers.’
‘You questioned him about his movements?’
‘He wasn’t at all co-operative. As far as he was concerned, we were wasting valuable time questioning him which we could have spent finding the killer.’
‘I take it he had the opportunity to have committed the murder?’
‘Maybe, though again I can’t remember after all this time. To us, he was just another do-gooder — always making a fuss about police brutality, yet he was the first to complain when we didn’t make an arrest within half an hour.’
‘But now? Are you prepared to accept that Carole might have been killed by someone other than Edwin Smith?’
‘I’d need to speak to this Renata woman of yours before I said yea or nay to that.’ He sighed and added grudgingly, ‘But supposing she’s told you the truth — well, maybe we did make a mistake.’
Harry was unable to resist saying, ‘Good job the death penalty’s been abolished, eh?’
Vincent Deysbrook started to cough again, a hoarse retching sound, and Harry realised with a stab of dismay how sick the old detective was and how much it had cost him to talk for so long, let alone have the guts to admit the possibility that his own prejudices might have sent an innocent man to the gallows.
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Mr Devlin,’ he said when he was able to speak again. His tone was subdued, as if he knew that before long his own fight would reach its end, and Harry sensed that in his mind’s eye he was seeing again the dark shadow of the X-ray of his lung. ‘The death penalty hasn’t been abolished, I can vouch for that. I only wish it had.’
Chapter Seventeen
Shirley Titchard had agreed to meet him in one of the shops she owned. After he had explained his interest in the Sefton Park case, her manner on the telephone had been crisp and businesslike.
‘I can’t imagine why you think I can tell you anything, but I don’t mind giving you half an hour. I suppose it will make a change from keeping an eye on the girls. The manageress at Caesar Street is on holiday for the week, so I’m having to run the branch myself, but you can have half an hour, all right?’
The shop was tucked between a tobacconist’s and a derelict snooker hall; the street was a dead end and noisy ten-year-olds were playing soccer alongside the burnt-out wreck of a stolen car. Jasmine House was no more than five miles away, but it might have been in a different country. Harry pushed open the door and stepped inside. At once the hubbub of voices died down and he was conscious of the scrutiny of a dozen scowling faces. The light was dim and the extractor fan did not seem to work: the smoke made his eyes smart and he couldn’t help thinking to himself that a few of Shirley Titchard’s customers would one day end their lives in the same despair as Vincent Deysbrook.
His only acquaintance with horse racing was through the novels of Dick Francis and they had not prepared him for the scruffy reality of this place. The walls were covered with cuttings from the sporting press and the racing pages of the national newspapers. Opposite the entrance, a washable white board was covered with offers of odds scrawled in every colour imaginable. In the middle of the room, a television stood on a pillar: a man in the kind of trilby Harry had never seen worn except in old movies was talking rapidly about runners and riders. Through thick mesh grilles he could glimpse two women cashiers, their attention caught by a loudspeaker voice announcing that a horse had withdrawn from the three o’clock at Sandown and that the latest prices would be coming through shortly. The punters were perched on stools or sitting round small tables. Most had cans of beer in their hands, but they had paused in their drinking and study of the form to examine Harry, but even as he looked around and absorbed the scene, one by one they turned back to the papers or the TV. Some started to scribble out bets on slips of paper. Gambling was a serious business and not even the sight of a stranger in a suit could distract them for long.