Yesterday's Papers

nd how did she take to him?’

‘Oh, she played up to him. She loved being in that shop, having the chance to meet the local celebrities.’

‘Was that how she met Ray Brill?’

Her face darkened. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was. But what you won’t know is that I met him first. I’d already come across Ian, the quiet one, he was an old pal of Benny’s and often called at the shop. A nice enough lad, but not really my type. The minute I saw Ray, I fell for him. I thought he made James Dean seem like the boy next door. He was good-looking, successful, and he seemed to fancy me.’

As Harry tried to regroup his thoughts, a ragged cheer came up from the shop. ‘The favourite’s won,’ she said with a grim smile.

Street, once the site of the old Victorian fruit warehouse which later became a club known as the Cavern. The Brill Brothers would certainly have played there. He was too young to remember what it had been like in Liverpool during the sixties, but people still talked about those golden days when the Beatles were on three times a week and a hat-check girl could change her name from Priscilla White to Cilla Black and suddenly find herself at number one in the charts. It had been a time of endless possibilities, when the world watched what went on in a dirty old port and when everyone believed that fame and fortune were waiting around the next corner.

The Cavern had been bulldozed when Harry was still a boy, but he had heard enough about it for images of the place to be etched in his mind. The stink of oranges and cabbage in the street outside, the sweaty atmosphere within as a crush of kids clutching precious membership cards swayed to the rhythms of the Mersey Sound. Now those of Merseybeat’s pioneers who were left mostly propped up city centre bars, reminiscing about what might have been. John Lennon would never have dreamed he had so many bosom buddies or recognised the tat flogged as Beatles memorabilia by sixties survivors with an eye for a fast buck and a gullible punter.

Pausing beneath the wall sculpture which celebrated the Four Lads Who Shook The World, Harry wondered what Ray Brill was doing these days. Had he, like Guy Jeffries, had his life ruined by his girlfriend’s savage murder? Was it somehow to blame for his own descent into obscurity? After Carole’s death the Brill Brothers had split up and Ray’s subsequent attempt at a solo career had failed to set the Mersey on fire. Harry could recall seeing his name halfway down the bill of a social club concert two or three years ago. A miserable comedown for a man who had once scaled the charts with a steeplejack’s aplomb.

A tune came into his head and he started humming, trying to remember the words.