The Devil in Disguise by Martin Edwards

you know about that? I once promised someone - closely involved - that I wouldn’t spread the truth around, go shouting my mouth off from the rooftops.’
    â€˜I do my homework, Harry. I always advise my clients to research their potential targets and I practise what I preach. But what you say is right. You never seem to court publicity. Perhaps you ought to try it for a change.’
    â€˜I didn’t get involved with the Sefton Park murder in order to get my name in the paper,’ he said sharply.
    â€˜I appreciate that. And of course your attitude does you credit, I’m not seeking to persuade you otherwise. I’m simply saying that you obviously have skills that are marketable, perhaps in very different circumstances.’
    He grunted. ‘Cases like that don’t crop up every day. Most of the people I act for are as guilty as Crippen.’
    â€˜Who says Crippen was guilty?’ she asked, her eyes shining. ‘My theory is that he was innocent. Where was the proof that the bones they found in Hilldrop Crescent were his wife’s? She could have zipped off to America with a lover. The pathologist made too many assumptions, he was desperate to make a name for himself. If Crippen hadn’t fled with Ethel Le Neve, the police might never have made the charge stick.’
    He gaped at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a true crime buff?’
    â€˜All mysteries fascinate me,’ she said simply. ‘In real life or in fiction. When I asked around about Crusoe and Devlin, I was intrigued by what I heard. It seems you’re a man after my own heart. So when your partner offered me the chance of this meeting with you, I jumped at it.’
    â€˜I suppose I should be flattered.’
    She smiled at him. ‘I suppose you should.’
    After she had departed, Jim wandered into his room and said, ‘Well?’
    â€˜She was quite plausible,’ Harry said carefully.
    â€˜She was in here for an hour and a half, for God’s sake.’ Jim grinned. ‘I was beginning to wonder what the two of you were getting up to in here with the door closed. Just as well you were talking business. You do realise who she’s married to, don’t you?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Casper May.’
    Shit , Harry said to himself. And then - How could she? He’d had a narrow escape. For a few minutes he’d toyed
    with the idea of inviting Juliet out for a drink one evening.
    He wasn’t being disloyal to Kim; he had no intention of propositioning a married woman. He would simply have liked to spend more time with someone he found appealing. Just as well he had resisted temptation. If Casper May got the wrong idea about you, you were dead meat.
    Chapter 7
    Harry hated funerals. He would never forget the first that he had attended, after the death of his parents whilst he was in his early teens. It had been a typical Liverpool day, cloudy and with spits of rain, the kind of day he had seen a thousand times before and even more often since. And yet it had been a day when a sick and empty feeling in his guts told him that life had changed for ever. Until then, like any boy, he’d believed that bad things happened to other people. Suddenly he knew better and nothing would be the same again.
    Yet now he was attending his second funeral inside a month. Harry sat at the back of the church, sharing a pew with a couple of Americans, the manager of the Hawthorne and a tall young man who was evidently a colleague. He had attended the service for Charles Kavanaugh out of a sense of duty; this time, he was driven by a nagging sense of unfinished business. He needed to understand what had happened to Luke. That mattered to him: he’d lost his mother, father and wife for no good reason. He had to keep believing that life was not always so cruel, or so meaningless.
    But the service offered little reassurance. There were no clues, no credible explanations. Much was said,