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121 pages

English

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Harry Devlin is in trouble. The wife of his best client, Jack Stirrup, has vanished and the police suspect foul play. Stirrup claims she's still alive, but Harry wonders if he has something to hide. When Stirrup's daughter and her boyfriend go missing, Harry finds himself hunting a brutal murderer...This special eBook edition contains a range of extras, including:- An Introduction by Val McDermid- The Making of Suspicious Minds- Meet Martin Edwards- Martin Edwards: An Appreciation- Preview Chapter of 'I Remember You'

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Political

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Thriller

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	13 septembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781781662779
Langue	English

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Extrait

Suspicious Minds
Book two of the Harry Devlin series
Martin Edwards

First published in 1992
This revised edition published in 2021 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 1992, 2021 Martin Edwards
Introduction Copyright © 2021 Val McDermid
The right of Martin Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Introduction
Twenty years ago, the British crime novel fell into two main categories – the police procedural and the village mystery. With a few notable exceptions such as Reginald Hill’s Mid Yorkshire-set Dalziel and Pascoe series, they were set in London and the Home Counties. Murder and mystery had a largely cosy, conservative and comfortable constituency.
But at the start of the 90s, something changed. It wasn’t conscious, it wasn’t deliberate, it wasn’t preconceived. But around the same time, several writers – myself included -- decided to write about the world as we knew it. To create crime fiction that painted a portrait of Britain’s other cities, a portrait that wasn’t about cops who wrote poetry and listened to Wagner. We’d read what Raymond Chandler said about Dashiell Hammett and we wanted to embody it: he ‘gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.’
At a time when Britain had been convulsed by the social revolution of Thatcherism, when our common values were twisting and rearranging themselves, when the crime novel seemed uniquely placed to cast a light on the society around us, a cohort of new writers began to revolutionise the world of British crime fiction.
And so John Harvey’s Charlie Resnick policed the surprisingly mean streets of Nottingham; Ian Rankin’s John Rebus became the maverick cop who haunted Edinburgh; my own Kate Brannigan became a guide to life behind the masks of Madchester, Gunchester and Gaychester; and Martin Edwards gave us Harry Devlin, a Liverpool criminal lawyer with an uncomfortable taste for justice.
That passion for justice had been tempered with weariness over the years. Weariness but not cynicism. Unlike most of the American heroes of legal thrillers, Harry was not a brilliant high-flyer brought low by circumstances; the practice where he was a partner was undistinguished and resolutely middle of the road. There was nothing glamorous about Harry or about the Liverpool of Martin Edwards’ imagination. But what he lacked in glamour, Harry made up for in tenacity and intelligence.
Edwards’ debut, All the Lonely People, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger for the best first novel of the year. Harry Devlin’s second outing, Suspicious Minds, thrusts him into a complex stew of missing persons and serial rape that pushes his professional and personal lives into sharp conflict. The answers are almost as uncomfortable as the questions.
It’s been almost twenty years since Suspicious Minds was first published. Forensic science has made astonishing leaps forward; communications technology means it’s almost impossible to be out of reach of human contact for long; information technology means we can access all sorts of background data that was out of reach to all but a few back then.
But that doesn’t matter. Like those other ground-breaking ‘provincial’ crime novels, Suspicious Minds doesn’t feel at all dated. That’s because at the heart of this book are two timeless elements – a well-drawn character, and a living breathing city. Harry Devlin and his Liverpool feel as authentic today as they did when they first broke on the scene.
Val McDermid

Suspicious Minds

Chapter One
“Do you think I murdered Alison?” asked Stirrup.
Harry Devlin shaded his eyes against the glare of the midday sun. They had stepped out of the police station into a wall of heat and he needed a moment to catch his breath. As well as to judge how to answer a question better left unasked.
“What if I say yes?”
Stirrup stopped in his tracks.
“Remember, it’s easier to get rid of a solicitor than a wife.”
Tiredness had rubbed the varnish off Stirrup’s good humour, leaving his Brummie accent ugly and bare. Small wonder: the interrogation had stretched through four long hours into a test of patience and nerve.
Stirrup had phoned at seven that morning with the news that the police had called at his home again; they wanted to re-interview him about his wife’s disappearance.
“Said I was willing as long as you could make it too. All right?”
“I’ll meet you there. And remember, you haven’t been arrested. You’re not forced to say any more. They’ll try to get under your skin, that’s what they’re paid for. So keep your temper under control.”
“No problem. They’ve nothing against me, Harry boy. Nothing at all.”
DI Bolus evidently thought otherwise. Fresh-faced and bespectacled, he resembled an inquisitive schoolboy more closely than Tomas de Torquemada. Yet his ingenuous manner camouflaged the persistence of a Toxteth kerb-crawler.
“People like your wife simply don’t vanish into thin air,” he kept saying. Lines of puzzlement creased his brow. “There must be an explanation. Don’t you agree?”
Harry watched his client straining to keep himself under control. To his relief, Stirrup stuck to the straight denial they had agreed on when first it became clear the police suspected that Alison was dead.
“I’ve no idea where she is.”
“Do you care?” Bolus sounded genuine in his anxiety to be reassured.
“I want her home again. And the sooner you get off my back and find her, the better.”
And so it continued, with Bolus determined not to let go without a struggle and Stirrup intent on giving nothing away. Eventually the time came for Harry to stand and say that his client, a free and respectable man with a business to run, had helped enough with inquiries for one day and that now they would be going. The moment of decision. And Bolus had dismissed them with a courteous nod of thanks. Stirrup wasn’t to be charged today.
***
“Want a lift?” asked Harry as they reached his rust-scarred M.G.
Puffing and grunting, Stirrup squeezed into the passenger seat.
“What do you say, then, Harry boy? Do I look to you like a wife killer?”
Sweat shone on Stirrup’s bald head and well-fed jowls. Harry wondered if it was a clue to fear lurking beneath the customary bravado. But the sun was harsh and they had spent half a day in a tiny airless room which had it been a cell would probably have been in breach of some convention on human rights.
Harry slung his jacket and tie in the back of the car. Inside, the shabby upholstery burned his palm. The steering wheel felt too hot to hold.
“Jack, take my advice. Guilt and innocence are for a jury to decide.”
“Are you saying it’ll come to that?”
“Look, if Bolus had enough to pin something on you, you’d be changing your suit for something made of paper by now. So relax. Or worry about something constructive, like staff pilfering or last month’s sales figures.”
Stirrup gripped Harry’s shoulder. “Listen, you know me well enough. I didn’t kill her, all right? She’s as alive as you or me, take my word for it.”
“Unless I learn something to make me do otherwise, my job is exactly that. To take your word for it.”
Stirrup fell silent as the car moved off. Out of the corner of his eye Harry glanced at his client. On that bulky frame the Armani suit had no more elegance than a vacuum cleaner bag.
You know me well enough. Was that true? Harry had once been let into the secret that his client’s full name was John Aloysius Kendrick Stirrup, but more meaningful confidences had been few and far between. His firm had handled Stirrup Wines’ legal work for three or four years, buying sites for off-licences throughout Liverpool and here on the Wirral peninsula, appearing regularly in the magistrates’ court to secure the right for each branch to sell alcohol to the public. So many of Crusoe and Devlin’s other clients were rogues or traders (or both) in a small way of business. Representing a boom company was a lawyer’s dream. Harry had wined and dined Stirrup, had in turn accepted the man’s hospitality; it was as close as he ever came to attempting to market his practice. Yet they did not have enough in common to call themselves friends and for all their frequent contact Harry realised that he could not say he knew Jack Stirrup well.
“Straight on.”
“The sea front?”
“Why not, Harry boy?” Joviality again. “Terrific day. Where better to spend it than at the seaside? The weather forecasters reckon it might touch ninety today.”
“If you’d told me earlier, I’d have brought my raincoat.”
Stirrup laughed. “Know your trouble? You’re a sceptic, Harry. You ought to have more faith.”
“For that, I’d need a change of job.”
“Not a bad idea. Earning a living out of legal loopholes is enough to turn any bugger sour. But save me from Strange-ways first, all right?”
Soon they were driving along Mockbeggar Drive, lookin