Blue Is the Night Read Online Free PDF

son.’
       
    Ferguson had served as a legal officer for the occupying powers after the war, conducting interrogations at Nuremberg prison. A place of dark pine trees and snow-filled approaches. He had been present at the interrogation of Rudolf Hess and other high-ranking officers. Blond, insolent. He had taken depositions which were later presented at the Nuremberg tribunals. At night he read transcripts of atrocity. He felt himself alone with the almanacs of the damned. He entered the prison at night and left it before dawn. Although there was the appearance of law he well knew what process was set in train here and to what end it led.
       
    ‘You’re a sly dog, Harry.’ Taylor got up and walked up to Ferguson. He took his lapel between his finger and thumb and rubbed it gently. ‘You think I done her for the money? Not true. No way José. I was getting fifteen pound last night as a loan from a friend. That was to pay for the nuptials.’
    Ferguson took a step back. Away from the freckles. The earnest man-boy eyes. Fixed in the forty-watt low-fidelity light of gaolhouse candour. Ferguson knew the sergeant in charge was watching them through the peephole. If wrong had a human form.
    ‘Nice piece of herringbone,’ Taylor said, ‘nice piece of cloth in the jacket.’ Ferguson took his hand away and knocked on the door. The duty sergeant opened it.
    ‘Mr Lunn’s in station reception,’ he said. Ferguson nodded. Lunn would want to be Taylor’s solicitor. He followed the sergeant, the man’s hobnail boots loud on the parquetry. Lunn stood in the middle of the floor. He was a tall florid man with small eyes, a backstreet opportunist, rabble-rouser and slum leaseholder.
    ‘Harry,’ Lunn said, his eyes narrowing, ‘I didn’t think I’d find you here.’
    Ferguson nodded to him and sat down on a wooden bench that stood along the wall.
    ‘Lunn.’
    ‘Curran’s going to prosecute Mr Taylor.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘He’ll go in with kid gloves.’
    ‘Curran will do what he wants to do.’
    ‘He’s an ambitious man, Harry. He’ll put up a bit of a show and then throw in the towel.’
    ‘That sounds a bit like an instruction to me.’
    ‘Take it any way you like, Harry. The truth of the matter is that the mob will decide what happens. They always do.’
    ‘What about the judge and jury?’
    ‘You’re a comedian, Ferguson. I didn’t know that about you. Your sense of humour escaped my notice so far. Why do you think there’s men standing here with guns? You think it’s because the mob will try to punish Taylor? They’d carry him out of here shoulder high if they were let. You know it and Curran knows it and if he goes for a guilty verdict he might as well pack his bags.’
    ‘I’m not here to tell Mr Curran what to do.’
    ‘No you’re not. That’s for sure and certain. You’re Curran’s dog is what you are. When he says tail you start wagging. When he says bite somebody in this town gets bit.’
    Lunn pushed past the sergeant in charge and descended towards the cells.
    ‘He’ll meet his match with that boy’, the sergeant said. ‘The harm of the world is in him.’
       
    On the 14th of July 1949 twenty-seven-year-old Robert Taylor was charged with the murder of forty-nine-year-old Mary McGowan. It was alleged that Taylor had entered Mrs McGowan’s house at 18 Ponsonby Avenue, on the pretence of using the telephone. He had previously been part of a Barretts of Sunnyside Street crew painting the house, so Mrs McGowan wasn’t suspicious when he came to the door. The prosecution stated that Taylor had choked Mrs McGowan with a cord, beaten and stabbed her, then poured hot soup over her.
    Despite her injuries, Mrs McGowan had retained consciousness for two days. On six separate occasions she identified ‘Robert the Painter’ as the man who had attacked her.
    It was alleged that Taylor was looking for money. He was due to be married to his pregnant girlfriend three days after the