On the right-hand side of the passage were two double glass-paned doors, in front of which he paused. Above them in faded paintwork he could barely distinguish the legend PIERHEAD BALLROOM. Through the dusty panes he could make out the dim shapes of chairs, desks and cupboards heaped on top of each other as if in anticipation of Bonfire Night. Not since Hitler marched into Poland and changed the world forever had the smart couples of Liverpudlian society taken the floor in there.
The open space in which he stood had once been the lobby. A fenced-off shaft occupying the far side now lacked the lift that had whisked people up to street level. During the war, the cavernous ballroom had become an air-raid shelter. It had survived the might of the Luftwaffe, but peacetime austerity had seen it utilised for storage and the main entrance hall above the ground had been demolished to make room for a car park.
Next to the shaft, a complex mass of sewage pipes climbed one wall, in macabre parody of wisteria festooning a country cottage. Walking on, he heard the echoing of his footsteps. Even in the middle of the day this was a place which belonged, he felt, to lost souls. He could almost believe he heard from behind the double doors the faint strains of a band playing Jerome Kern numbers and the delicate tread of ghostly figures in evening dress, dancing cheek to cheek.
Suddenly, a saxophone began to play, a frantic sound. Harry froze, thinking for an instant that his fantasy had been realized and the old sybarites had returned to haunt him. He did not dare to breathe.
Then he recognised the mangled tune. ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ had been written long after the Pierhead Ballroom closed to customers. And a professional musician would never have played so many false notes. He laughed and told himself not to be ridiculous. Passing through another doorway, he entered a long and wide corridor with white-washed walls disfigured by huge moist patches. Every few yards small metal trays had been placed on the ground. They contained poison, he knew. The intention was to kill the rats for whom this place was a natural home. Necessary, he supposed. Yet he always had a sense of nausea whenever he saw the trays.
The saxophone sounded louder here. Harry paused outside a door on his left, listened for a while, then threw it open. A slender fresh-faced young man wearing shirt, tie and pinstriped trousers was kneeling on a wooden crate and leaning backwards as he blew. His cheeks were puffed out like tennis balls.
Harry put his hands on his hips and grinned. ‘I know the devil has all the best tunes, but I didn’t expect to hear them subjected to torture in the Land of the Dead.’
The saxophone gave a maddened squeal as the lad lost his balance and toppled to the floor. He scrambled to his feet, flushing with embarrassment.
‘Sorry. I’m Adrian, I’m articled with Kim Lawrence. Her firm rents storage room here. What did you say about — about the Land of the Dead?’
‘It’s the name I give to this place. Where all the solicitors’ files are laid to rest. With all their secrets, all their memories. I’m Harry Devlin, by the way. Crusoe and Devlin, a two-man band from Fenwick Court.’
They shook hands and he added, ‘We keep our old papers here as well. Don’t tell Jock what I call his second home. He’d be mortally wounded — the cellar archives are his pride and joy.’
Adrian gave an eager nod. ‘He was happy for me to play here before work starts at nine and during my lunch break, said I wouldn’t be disturbing anybody. He’s a really good bloke. He told me he’s always loved music himself.’
‘Wouldn’t “Subterranean Homesick Blues” be more appropriate?’
‘Jock prefers ballads. He says nothing beats a decent melody.’
Harry resisted the temptation to make the obvious joke and said goodbye. As he moved away, Adrian started to do his worst with ‘The Long and Winding Road’.
Further down the passageway a heavy door was set into the wall. Next to it were two rows of numbered buttons. Harry entered a four-digit security code and pushed the door open.
Facing him was a large desk, on which stood a visual display unit and keyboard. Sitting behind them was a bald, neatly bearded man with half-moon spectacles perched on the end of his nose. The archivist who dwelt in the Land of the Dead, known to all who came here simply as Jock, was studying columns of figures with the avidity of a cricket buff devouring the first-class averages in Wisden.
‘Morning, Harry,’ he said in a Glaswegian accent which many years in Liverpool had done little to soften. ‘What brings you here so soon after opening time?’
‘Not the pleasure of listening to young Adrian down the corridor, that’s for sure.’
‘Ah, he’s only a wee lad, Harry. Needs somewhere to practise. I thought, he’s a decent kid, what’s the harm? You don’t object?’
‘’Course not. You’re doing a public service, Jock, keeping him out of sight and underground. I never knew till now a saxophone was an instrument of cruelty. John Coltrane must be turning in his grave.’
‘To say nothing of John Lennon. Ah well, we all had to start somewhere. Were you looking for anything special, or just having a mooch?’
‘No offence, but I’d rather mooch around Smithdown Cemetery. As a matter of fact, I’m looking for an old file.’
‘You could have phoned,’ Jock pointed out. ‘Or sent someone over. I reckon I can lay my hand on most things inside five minutes if I’m given the correct index number.’ He gestured to the flickering screen in front of him. ‘The system enables me to…’
‘This isn’t an ordinary dead file request,’ said Harry, speaking quickly. The Scot was an amiable fellow, but once embarked on an exposition of the technical wonders at his command, he was not easily hushed.
‘Something out of the ordinary? Grand, gives a little spice to the day,’ said Jock, rubbing his hands. Not even the dank atmosphere of the Land of the Dead could quench his boyish enthusiasm.
‘It’s an old matter from the days of Tweats and Company.’
‘Ah.’ Jock tutted, cheerfully disapproving. ‘You may be asking for something there, Harry. No method, that was the trouble with the Tweats archive. No method whatsoever.’
‘I appreciate your problems. Knowing Cyril, I expect half the wills he drew finished up as sandwich wrappings. So I thought I’d best come down here myself and give you a hand.’
‘Fine.’ Jock pressed a couple of keys and brought up a new menu on his screen. ‘So tell me the name we’re looking for.’
‘Would you believe Smith?’
‘Like to set a challenge, don’t you? Any more clues, or have you got all day?’
Harry leaned over his shoulder. ‘The client’s first name was Edwin. It was a criminal case.’
‘Criminal, eh?’ said Jock abstractedly as he watched the cursor scurry down the screen. ‘What sort of thing?’
‘Murder.’
‘Really?’ He turned to face Harry, not attempting to disguise his interest. ‘You mean — this Edwin Smith killed somebody?’
‘He was certainly convicted on that basis,’ Harry said. ‘Whether the verdict was fair may be a different story.’
What did he do?’
‘Killed a young girl in Sefton Park, supposedly. Strangled her.’
‘Good grief — oh, bugger it! I’ve wiped the screen clear in all the excitement.’
Jock was agog. Murder did this to people, Harry had discovered. It was the ultimate taboo: nothing could touch it for thrills.
‘The file would finally have gone to storage in the mid to late sixties.’
Jock fiddled with his computer. ‘Bear with me.’
Storing Crusoe and Devlin’s records here had been Jim’s idea. Until six months ago the firm’s dead files had been kept beneath the office in the basement of New Commodities House. Harry had preferred it that way; if he needed to refer to old papers, he liked to think they were close at hand. As time passed, however, the sea of unstored documents had threatened to drown them and Jim had pointed out that, so disorganised were their records, there was barely a hope of tracing an individual file in any event. The imminent acquisition of Cyril Tweats’ practice had forced them into a move to the Pierhead cellars, which boasted up-to-the-minute facilities: an easily accessed database, a full-time archive clerk with computer skills and security sufficient to satisfy the most pessimistic insurer.
But the publicity leaflets said nothing, Harry reflected, about there being enough warfarin here to wipe out every single member of the Liverpool legal profession. He leaned over Jock’s shoulder. ‘How are we doing?’
The clerk watched the list of names as it sped up the screen. ‘Edwin Smith, you say? I think we’re in business.’ He noted the reference on the pad and said, ‘If you’re in a hurry to be off, I can send it over.’
‘No problem, I’ll take it myself. I may have to do a lot of waiting around the court today. The file will give me something to scan.’
‘Follow me, then.’
They walked down an aisle lined by built-in cupboards. Jock led the way, a short, slightly built man whose working clothes were sweatshirt and jeans. The two-bar radiator by the side of the desk seldom burned and Harry marvelled that his guide had never succumbed to pneumonia. He was aware of his own gooseflesh as they turned into a large cellar containing rows of shelving which reached from floor to ceiling. Each of the shelves sagged under the weight of fat packets bearing numerical codes.
‘If only they could talk, eh, Harry? Plenty of stories there. Shattered reputations, unsuccessful scams. Broken marriages, disputed wills.’
Shaking his head in wonder, Jock marched into a second large room. Long metal racks were piled high with books and buff folders and there was a collection of the bizarre oddments accumulated over the years by a dozen firms of solicitors. Rusty filing cabinets leaned like Pisa’s tower under the weight of big black deed boxes bearing such inscriptions as BRIGHTWELL DECEASED and ESTATE OF THE LATE COLONEL TOLMIE. Cardboard crates were scattered over the floor, making the men’s progress an obstacle race. Harry peered inside one of them and caught a glimpse of the detritus of Liverpool’s glory days: old mariners’ charts and pictures of ships in frames with cracked and dirty glass. Another held a trophy case entombing a morose stuffed trout: an unwanted legacy, perhaps. There were chairs with missing legs, a settee with its springs sticking out and even a lumpy mattress in a bilious floral design.
Jock pointed towards the mattress. ‘I’ve heard it said that during the Blitz the senior partner of Maher and Malcolm entertained the wives of wealthy clients in his private office on that.’
‘I’d feel more comfortable on the floor outside, taking my chance with the rodent population.’
As they came to the back of the cellar, Jock indicated a crater in the distempered wall, with exposed sandstone visible inside the cavity. ‘If a rat dug that out, I wouldn’t fancy bumping into the bugger.’
‘If you’d met some of my clients, you’d take it in your stride. So, where do you keep Cyril’s stuff? I realise he bequeathed a load of garbage, but we must be under the Mersey by now.’
‘Not far off. I reckon that when we get a thirty-foot tide, I can hear the water washing up not a stone’s throw away. As for the material from Tweats and Company, I’m still logging it on the system. It’d be easier to catalogue Dale Street litter.’
‘You have my sympathy. Total quality management meant less to Cyril than Sanskrit.’
‘Hey! I think we’ve struck gold!’
Jock bent down to a shelf just above the floor and picked out three files of papers held together by a rubber band. He flourished his find in front of Harry’s nose.
‘“SMITH, EDWIN, MURDER.” All right?’
‘Jock, you’re a genius. Thanks.’
‘So what is all this about?’ asked the little man as they picked their way back through the detritus. ‘A murder case thirty years ago — where do you come in?’
‘I don’t know yet that I do come in. But I’ve been asked to look into the old papers, see what I make of them.’
Jock raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ve heard you have a name as a part-time private detective. Tramping the mean streets of Merseyside.’
‘So someone’s told you I’m a nosey sod? Well, I don’t suppose I’ll be sueing for slander. I can’t deny I have an inquisitive streak. And yesterday I met a man who thinks there may have been a miscarriage of justice in the case of Edwin Smith.’
‘Get away.’ Jock flourished a dog-eared Ross Macdonald paperback which he had pulled from the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Fact is, I like a good murder mystery myself. You’ll have to let me know what you discover. Who knows? I might get a chance to play Watson to your Holmes.’
‘Don’t hold your breath. The man I spoke to may be way off beam.’
‘But if he isn’t?’
‘Let’s see what yesterday’s papers tell me. Whether Smith was guilty as charged or just unlucky in his choice of defence lawyer.’
Puzzled, Jock stroked his jaw. ‘But Cyril Tweats was a good brief, by all accounts. He may not have known about keeping proper records, but he was a champion of the ordinary man, not any kind of fool.’
Harry gave a sceptical grunt and nodded back towards the endless shelves of old documents.
‘You know what they say — doctors bury their mistakes and architects build them. Solicitors simply file them.’