Blue Is the Night (17 page)

On the weekend of 20th October autumn lows crossed the Atlantic, serried ranks of storms. In the harbour mouth sandbars shifted westward and tidal surges grounded ships in the channel mud. Trees were blown down in the city and shops closed early on Saturday as slates and other debris were dislodged from rooftops. By six in the evening the streets were deserted, that season’s havocs unleashed.

Harry Ferguson left Leopold Street RUC barracks at nine o’clock. Rain beat against the windscreen and blown leaves whirled in the night wind, crossed in the headlight beam and were torn away into the darkness.

Ferguson met Lunn in the foyer of the Reform Club. Lunn was wearing evening dress. There was a poppy on his lapel.

‘Bar Association dinner tonight,’ Lunn said.

‘I wasn’t invited.’

‘I hope your news is better than mine. Andrews is going to preside over the retrial.’

‘The Lord Chief Justice himself. Taylor should be flattered.’

‘Andrews doesn’t like me and he doesn’t like the way this case has dragged on. He wants it put to bed and Taylor in a hole in the ground. He doesn’t see the consequences for everything we’ve built in this city if Taylor hangs.’

‘It’s no odds anyway. I spoke to my men tonight.’

‘Glenravel Street barracks?’

‘No. Don’t forget they’ve spent time with Taylor. They’d be as happy to get him a date with Harry Allen as I would. I went to Leopold Street. They’ll do what they’re bid and keep their mouths shut.’

‘I have to tell Taylor.’

‘I don’t want you to.’

‘I have to. He’s ready to fold. Maybe even confess. He saw that black cap sitting on the judge’s bench. He isn’t fit to face another session in the box with Curran the way things stand.’

‘He’ll start acting smart. He could bring the whole thing down around all our heads.’

‘He won’t, as long as your men do what they’re told.’

‘They will, but I don’t want them put in the box. I can’t answer for them there.’

‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘If Taylor knows he’ll tell it all round the Crumlin Road.’

‘He’s smarter than that.’

‘Could you hide it, Lunn? If you were on trial for your life and a way out appeared?’

‘I take your point.’

Cars were arriving at the front of the Reform Club. The Bar Association dinner was being held at the Culloden Hotel and the cars were to take the diners there. Ferguson stood back in the entrance to the porter’s lodge as the judges and barristers came down the steps in procession, sequenced according to rank. Ferguson saw Curran walking alone.

‘Mrs Curran isn’t with him. She must be took bad with the nerves again,’ Lunn said. ‘If I was married to a man like him I’d be bad with the nerves as well, not to mention the daughter if half the things I hear are true.’

‘For a man thought of as hunger’s mother in this town, you’ve plenty to say about other people’s families.’

‘You’d be better keeping a civil tongue in your head, Ferguson.’

‘I have to work with you but I don’t have to like you, Lunn.’

Lunn smiled. He joined the ranks of men who waited in order of seniority. Judges appellate and magistrate, Queen’s Counsel and ordinary and the subordinate. Men of laws in procession. Ferguson watched them silently as they departed into the night.

Taylor had to sit through more hours of coaching with Hanna. He would slip into his cell unannounced, he told Lily. You’d be lying on your bed daydreaming and look up to see Hanna standing there, the screw closing the door behind him. It scared him. Hanna didn’t look like the jovial man about town that everyone talked about. One night Taylor woke up to see Hanna standing over him.

‘It’s late, Mr Hanna,’ Taylor said. Hanna put his hands on the bed and leant over Taylor. Taylor could feel spittle in his face when Hanna spoke. ‘Get up and put on your clothes, son. If it was up to me I’d let you swing and good riddance, but I’ve pinned my colours to your sick little mast and you’ll be ready for Curran when you step into that courtroom.’

‘I told Hanna I didn’t need no going through the story. You know the way I am.’

Lily did know the way he was. He was quick-witted and fast with his tongue. He could say something hurtful and be halfway down the street before what he had said sank in. Sometimes when she said something wrong he would pinch her in passing so quick that no one else saw it, but it left a bruise that took weeks to fade.

‘What do we do, Mr Hanna?’

‘There’s two main things Curran will be going after again. One’s the blood on your clothes. The second is the identification evidence. You’ll have to deal with the blood. I’ll take care of the identification.’

‘It looks bad, Mr Hanna. We can’t say blood isn’t blood and we can’t prove the woman didn’t see me.’

‘We don’t have to prove or disprove anything. We just have to make it look as if we did.’

‘What do you mean, Mr Hanna?’

‘I’ve never met you, son, and after this I’ll never see you again, but I know you better than you know yourself. I know what happened the night you impregnated Lily Jones. You took a gamble that she wouldn’t get pregnant but she did. You took a gamble with Mary McGowan and you lost. So what do you do when you lose? Deal the cards again. That’s your life, son. You lose, you go on to the next bet. Can’t understand the hue and cry. But this time I’m handing you the cards and I’m playing them. Now. Why was there blood on your clothes when you returned to the house?’

‘It wasn’t blood. It was paint from work.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that. The police analysed the stains.’

‘Nosebleeds. I get these nosebleeds. All the time.’

‘That’s better. That’s the kind of thing I want to hear. Blood on the clothing. Nosebleeds set off by paint fumes?’

‘That’s it, Mr Hanna.’

The retrial of Robert Taylor for the murder of Mary McGowan opened at Crumlin Road courthouse on 24th October. Lord Chief Justice Andrews presided. Lancelot Curran prosecuted. Robert Hanna QC represented the defence. The storms had not abated. The courthouse yards were littered with storm debris. Seabirds driven inland wheeled in the air above the city. The Lancia was buffeted by the wind as Ferguson drove Curran along the Crumlin Road. As he turned into the courthouse Ferguson saw Lily standing at the top of the steps with Lunn and Hanna to either side of her. Her baby must be due soon. The child’s father on trial for his life. The crowd drew back from her, black-clad, charged with sombre force.

When he saw Taylor in the box Ferguson knew that Lunn had told him. Taylor chatted to the warder who brought him in. He waved to members of his family. When the jury were being sworn in he adopted a benign expression. He smiled in an understanding way. He was there to ease them through things. The days ahead would be difficult for all of them but he would stand by them, the twelve members of the jury looking awkward in their best suits and workaday expressions. Lunn wouldn’t meet Ferguson’s eyes.

Ferguson had seen Patricia once since she went back to school, walking past the university alone, books in her arms, her eyes downcast, looking hunched and scholarly. She had not seen him drive past. He had left a space for her beside him in the public gallery but she did not come.

Lunn did not dispute the evidence of Thornton and the other constables. He wanted to show that he was on their side. That the defence respected the law. When Kathleen McGowan went into the box Curran once more did not spare her. He made her identify the implements of death, the photographs of her mother’s injuries, the dress that she had worn in its rich brocade of blood. The witness hesitated at points, averted her gaze from Taylor in the dock and the baleful presence of Lily in the public gallery. It was late afternoon before she had finished, the light falling in wintry tones.

Taylor was to go into the box on the morning of the 24th. The Newsletter said that he ‘presented a confident demeanour’. Ferguson thought he looked like some archetype from an old tale. A character you would follow to the edge of the forest, a cheery figure beckoning from under the trees, inviting you to follow him, to go deeper.

Curran settled his papers on the bench and stood without speaking, gathering the attention of the court to him. An usher opened the courtroom door to admit a clerk. A draught blew dead leaves from the foyer into the courtroom and the dead leaves gathered at the base of the the judge’s podium.

Curran cross-examined two defence witnesses before Taylor went into the box, prison attendant Robert McAuley and Girvan the prison doctor. They told of two episodes in prison when blood had been found on Taylor’s pillow. Taylor had claimed they were nosebleeds caused by the smell of fresh tar from the prison corridors. The doctor said that he found no trace of bleeding from Taylor’s ears, nose or throat.

Curran made the two witnesses repeat their testimony. Taylor’s attempt to create a history of nose-bleeding caused by exposure to paint and other substances sounded more transparent on the second telling. Taylor’s ‘confident demeanour’ did not change but his eyes followed Curran everywhere and Ferguson thought he saw something else there, a watcher in the shadows.
Babyface killer.

Taylor followed McAuley and Girvan into the box. As the two witnesses left the courtroom the draught from the opened door stirred the dead leaves at the foot of the dais and some of the public gallery leaned forward to look, as though they thought some light-footed thing sported on the courtroom parquet.

‘Mr Taylor. How long did it take you in your profession as a painter to discover that gloss paint caused your nose to bleed?’

‘About two months.’

‘Your nose might bleed two or three times a week because of the smell of gloss paint?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Did it occur to you that this was not a suitable occupation?’

‘No.’

Curran inexorable. None of the rest of Taylor’s story held up. Blood was all he had.

‘Did you ever suggest to anyone before that it was the smell of gloss paint that caused your nose to bleed?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Did you ever suggest it in court?’

‘I suggest it today.’

‘But until today did you ever suggest it?’

‘No.’

‘Why did you not think of that before?’

‘I wasn’t asked.’

‘I see.’

‘When your attention was drawn to the bloodstains on your coat and the police asked you to account for them you said it was paint?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you tell a lie?’

‘I never thought of my nose bleeding.’

‘Why didn’t you tell them about your nose?’

‘I was thinking more of getting out of the barracks.’

‘Were you afraid that if you admitted it was blood it would be evidence against you?’

‘But I thought it wasn’t blood.’

‘Wasn’t the statement about it being paint a deliberate lie?’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew it was not paint?’

‘Well, it was a brownish colour.’

‘Were you asked by the police how the paint got on your foot?’

‘Yes, but I never answered them.’

‘Why?’

‘I was fed up that night.’

‘You didn’t suggest that the blood came from your nose?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I told you. I was fed up that night.’ A snarl. Taylor looking as if he wanted to reach out for someone, to get hold of a fleshy part and twist. Ferguson seeing him for what he was. The courtroom seeing him for what he was. The strangler. The pincher and the groper. The keeper of the box of tricks. Curran looked at the judge and raised his eyebrows slightly. Ferguson knew what he was doing. Asking the judge for a recess. You go out on the scene you want your audience to remember. Let it hang in the air. Let it sink in. Judge Andrews considered Taylor. Andrews wanted the conviction. Taylor looked back at him. Placid now.

‘Please continue, Mr Curran.’

‘The button man.’ Patricia slid into the seat beside Ferguson. ‘Button eyes and button nose. He’s the button man. What did I miss?’

‘Your father winning his case.’

‘How’d he do that?’

‘He took Taylor to the edge of the cliff, then let him throw himself over.’

‘Clever Daddy.’

‘Very clever.’

‘You don’t look pleased.’

‘There’s nothing to be pleased about in this whole thing, Patricia.’

Curran asked the court usher to produce Taylor’s overcoat and to show it to the jury. It was the coat Taylor had worn on the morning Mrs McGowan had been killed, when a figure wearing a ‘blue coat and yellow shoes’ had been seen on Ponsonby Avenue.

‘You said the blood got on the coat because you were sleeping in the kitchen with the coat over you.’

‘I’d been working at home. I painted two rooms, then I lay down because I was tired.’

‘Was the fire lit in the kitchen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it cosy?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you were cosy as you say you were, what was the necessity to have your overcoat over you?’

‘To keep out the draught.’

‘Was there a smell of paint in the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where was it coming from?’

‘From the front room.’

‘You didn’t think of closing the kitchen door, although there was a draught?’

‘I was just lying down. I wasn’t worrying about my nose.’

‘Did you not think your nose would bleed?’

‘No.’

‘Although there was a smell of paint?’

Taylor did not answer. He could not remember what side he had lain on so that the blood got on his overcoat.

‘The reason for your difficulty in giving details of this incident is that it never happened at all.’

Taylor was questioned about his claim to have visited the Daisy newsagent at the time of the murder. As with his evidence with regard to painting the house and his nosebleeds in prison, he added detail to his previous testimony, creating new pitfalls for himself. He said he had a conversation with Clarke the newsagent, despite Clarke’s denial and Hanna’s suggestion that Clarke had left his counter to go to the bathroom. He maintained that he had arranged with Clarke to see him later but then said that he had arranged to meet Billie Booth in the Deer’s Head at the same time.