Yesterday's Papers by Martin Edwards

Warren Hull’s death was very different. He was battered to death in his own bedroom. The police found his naked body there. Presumably he said the wrong thing at the wrong moment and his rough trade turned violent.’
    â€˜Who killed him?’
    â€˜God knows, some back-street rent boy, I suppose. As far as I’m aware, no-one was ever charged.’ Leo grimaced. ‘Let’s face it, we’re talking about the dark ages, long before the age of equal opportunities. Gay love was illegal and the police weren’t going to bust a gut to avenge someone they’d have been happy to give a good kicking themselves.’
    â€˜This was when?’
    â€˜The Christmas of ’63.’
    â€˜Did you know Ray Brill’s girlfriend was strangled a couple of months later?’
    â€˜Murder’s more your province than mine, Harry.’ Leo gave him a searching glance. ‘Am I right in guessing that’s why you’ve taken a sudden interest in a couple of guys who were hardly in the class of the Everlys or the Righteous Brothers?’
    â€˜Turning detective yourself? Yes, you’re spot on. I wonder - do you happen to know what Ray Brill is up to now?’
    â€˜He stayed in the business, of course, after the two of them split and Ian found himself a proper job as a number-cruncher for some shipping line. He formed a foursome which he called the Brilliants, but it didn’t last long. Once the Beatles moved on and Merseybeat’s golden age began to look a little tarnished, he found it as hard as everyone else. Nobody is forgotten as fast as yesterday’s teen idols.’
    â€˜I’m almost glad I never was one.’
    â€˜Personally, I could have coped with the adulation. Anyway, Ray kept recording solo for as long as he could find people willing to invest in pressing his vinyl, but none of his songs meant a light after he went on his own. Now, can I take some money off you for that Dionne album?’
    Harry followed Leo downstairs into the Aladdin’s cave that was Devaney Records, but his mind was no longer on the record he had spent twelve months hunting for. What fascinated him at the moment was the Sefton Park case and the mixed fortunes of the people linked to it.
    Two people close to Ray Brill, his manager and his sweetheart, had been brutally slain. One of the crimes had never been solved; the other had seemed at the time to be an open and shut case. It had all happened within the space of a couple of months. A fatal coincidence - and Harry wondered how much it had scarred Brill.
    â€˜Any idea where I could find Ray?’
    â€˜You’re not just after his autograph, are you?’
    â€˜No, I’m interested in the girlfriend who was killed - but that makes me interested in Ray as well. Didn’t he have a reputation as a ladies’ man?’
    Leo winked. ‘It takes all sorts.’
    â€˜I suppose he married eventually, did he?’
    â€˜Three times, at the last count. Ray was alway unlucky in love, you might say. The first was an air hostess - she soon blew off with a pilot. Then came a barmaid and after that a black girl who was on the game. None of them stayed with him for long, but it was his own fault. He liked them young and willing and he liked plenty of them. And he was a betting man as well. Not just an odd flutter on the gee-gees, but anything at all. When I saw him doing a gig in one of Southport’s seedier clubs a year ago, he had a couple of teenagers making eyes at him and he was giving odds as to which of them he’d manage to lay first. He was incorrigible. I think he was living up there at the time, though whether he’s still in the neighbourhood, I haven’t a clue.’
    â€˜You’re sure he is still alive?’
    Leo grinned. ‘Certain of it. The price of his merchandise would have shot up if he’d gone to the Cavern in the sky. Have you ever wondered why so many pop stars die young?