Skinner returned to his side. “Nearly ready, sir.”
“Found anything of interest?”
When the chief inspector failed to reply, Harry pressed him about the murder. Skinner let a few more droplets of information trickle out. There had been, he said, half a dozen separate wounds in the body. Harry felt his gorge rise in his throat as he tried to visualise what had happened in that darkened alley, but he kept his voice calm as he asked if that meant that the murderer was certainly a man. Impossible to be definite yet, said Skinner, but undoubtedly someone possessing very considerable physical strength. How much had the Press been told? A statement had already been made, the detective told him, but it would be sensible to prepare for their questioning.
“I can handle them,” said Harry, as much to himself as to Skinner. He clenched his fist, as if glad of an outlet for his anger at having lost Liz. “No way am I having a bunch of journalists camping on my doorstep day and night, trying to grab a story.” He glanced at the clock. “I must ring the office, let them know why I haven’t arrived.”
He got through to Jim Crusoe at the first attempt and in two or three clipped sentences explained that Liz was dead. At the other end of the line, his partner’s shock was almost tangible.
“It’s - my God, I heard on Radio City that a woman’s body had been found, but I never . . . ” Jim’s voice trailed off into nothingness.
“Tell Lucy I’ll be in later.”
After a pause, Jim said in amazement, “You’re not coming in to work?”
“What else should I do? The police are all but through with me. I just have to talk to Maggie about all the arrangements, but the inquest’s bound to be adjourned. There’s nothing else for me to do but sit and mope. The way I feel at present, I’ll be better off in the office than sitting here with my head in my hands.”
“Look, I - I want you to know . . . Christ, this is terrible.”
Harry could picture his partner going back over the past and all his gibes about Liz, her greed and unfaithfulness. Too late now to apologise, he thought savagely, but all he said was a brusque “See you later” before ringing off.
Skinner was back. “I think we can leave you in peace for the time being, sir.”
Harry gazed at the room. It still bore the indelible marks of unwanted intrusion.
“Where do you go from here?”
“We have plenty of inquiries to make in a case like this, sir.”
“Your sergeant told me Coghlan’s still out of town.” He hesitated for a moment, then added impulsively, “Make sure the bastard doesn’t slip through your fingers. I don’t want him to get away with this.”
“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions if I were you, sir. As a solicitor, you don’t want to find yourself on the receiving end of a libel writ.”
“For saying that he killed her? That’s slander, not libel, Chief Inspector, and anyway there’s a defence of truth.”
“I’m keeping an open mind, Mr. Devlin, and I’d advise you to do the same. You’ll be available if I need to speak to you again, sir?”
“I’m not thinking of doing a moonlight, if that’s what you have in mind. But I’ve told you everything I know and that isn’t much. Liz and I had become strangers. So until you have some news for me, you don’t need to call round again. Having half the police force here all morning is bad for business when my job is to keep clients out of trouble. The neighbours must have had their eyes out on stalks since your lads turned up with their fancy cameras and their two-way radios.”
Getting that off his chest made him feel a little better. Concentrate on the trivia, he told himself, like what the woman next door might think and how to cram a day’s work into four or five hours. Bury your darker imaginings, that’s the way to stay sane when the world seems full of madness.
The detective scratched his chin and said, “I can’t guarantee that I won’t have to trouble you once more, sir, as the inquiry develops. We have to do our job, you understand.”
Surely they couldn’t now regard him as suspect? They had turned the flat upside down and found nothing; Harry was certain of that, for there was nothing to find. Even so, Skinner’s attitude bothered him as the invaders finally left, abandoning him to the flat’s solitude.
He slumped on the sofa whilst the events of this dreadful morning swirled around in his head, defying his attempts to impose the discipline of rational thought. Eventually he made himself a black coffee. Too bitter. Pushing the cup to one side, he forced himself up and into the stinging chill of the outside world.
Liz is dead. Repeating the words over and over would not, he knew, explain anything, but perhaps doing so would help his protesting brain to assimilate the truth.
Liz was dead. That lovely selfish woman whom he had adored. No more would she tease or taunt. The great green eyes wouldn’t captivate again. That disconsolate pout when she failed to win her way belonged to history. Liz was dead and his hopes of a reconciliation had died with her. For at last he was beginning to acknowledge the truth: he had spent the past two years as a sleepwalker, dreaming that one day she would return to share with him the silly moments that had made existence seem worthwhile. And there had been many such moments. Making love beneath their own Christmas tree, the December after they were married, her slender body basking in the soft glow from the fairy lights. The Rhine cruise of their honeymoon, their hands clasped as they sailed around the Lorelei. Skiing in Austria and her radiance as she exclaimed for all the world to hear, “I feel so free!”
Liz was dead. And a primitive rage started to burn within him. Someone in this city owned the hands that had crushed out so much life. Perhaps a mugger or a maniac, but possibly the man of whom she had expressed so much fear: Mick Coghlan. Might her murder so soon after she had begged for shelter from her lover’s wrath be nothing more than a macabre coincidence? Harry’s mind rebelled against the idea. It was not simply that he didn’t believe in such quirks of fate, but more that nailing Coghlan with the guilt had about it a rightness and classical inevitability. That the man who had wrecked his marriage should be responsible too for the final act of brutal destruction seemed as logical to Harry as his own rapidly rising hunger for revenge.
The wind from the Mersey chewed at the bare flesh of his face. The riverside walkway was deserted save for a couple of elderly dog-walkers kitted out in anoraks and fur-lined boots who glanced at him nervously before scurrying on. The noiseless moving of his lips might have disturbed them, or it may have been his wild appearance. Lacking a jersey or coat to guard against the bitter cold, with his patched jeans and thin shirt he must have looked like a ravaged scarecrow, but he didn’t care.
Harry kicked a pebble over the side and heard it splash into the waves that slapped against the breakwater. They used to call this the Cast-Iron Shore, where granite warehouses towered above iron quays and the world traded through the port of Liverpool. Jesse Hartley, the no-nonsense architect who had built the Albert and Empire Docks, was said to have had a contempt for beauty, but the austere grandeur of his monuments remained now that the buildings had out-lived their original usefulness to become traps for tourists and the leisure cult. Times had changed. Gone were the days when the Mersey was crowded with big square riggers arriving on every tide, bringing cargoes of cotton from the New World. The only vessels to be seen this morning were the two river ferries, chugging back and forth from the Pierhead to the landing stages at Seacombe and Woodchurch.
After passing the Tate Gallery, he stopped as he always did at the sight of the Liverpool waterfront, with the Cunard, Dock Company and Liver Buildings towering above the stick men and women who strolled around. Why, he wondered, did he love Liverpool when behind the Victorian splendour of the Pierhead there was so much about the place to hate - the dirt and the poverty and the crime? It occured to him that, as with his ceaseless yearning for Liz, his affection for his birthplace remained strong enough to survive the worst: it could not simply fade away. The city and the woman, they would al
ways be part of him.
In the pocket of his jeans he had thrust, out of habit, a box of matches and a handful of cigarettes. He was about to light up when, for no reason that he could understand, he changed his mind. All at once, he wanted never to smoke again. A ridiculous time for such a decision. But it was a small token of the need he had to commit himself to one objective in life, at least, that might be attainable. He hurled the matches and fags in a single movement out into the river. They bobbled on the surface for a second or two, then disappeared from view. A woman passing by tutted in disgust at this latest pollution of the Mersey.
Increasing his pace, he walked towards Water Street. As he passed the equestrian statue of Edward VII, a pigeon, Scouse-irreverent, defecated on the monarch’s head. Harry grinned for a moment, but then his jaw set again and he made a silent vow. Of course it would be harder than denying himself a smoke. But Liz had trusted him to keep her safe and he had failed her. Now he would not rest, could not rest, until he had found her murderer.
Chapter Seven
“I can forgive a man anything,” said Ken Cafferty, waving a chunky hand magnanimously, “provided he has a sense of humour. But Ned Skinner, now - typical bloody Yorkshireman! Miserable as a Monday morning in Middles-borough.”
He lifted a chipped mug to his lips, oblivious to the ring it had left on the surface of Harry’s office desk, and beamed with pleasure at his own phrase-making. Then he sucked in his cheeks and added, “But he gets results. By God, Harry, he gets results.”
Ten minutes earlier Cafferty had put his notebook away and they had started speaking off the record. Chief crime reporter on one of the city’s local rags, with Harry he had a you-scratch-my-back relationship of the kind that went back years and suited them both. Like most journalists and lawyers, they remained wary of each other, conscious of the conflict between the public’s right to know and the client’s craving for confidentiality. Yet within the constraints of their irreconcilable objectives, Harry was willing to feed Cafferty with as much information about a case as common sense permitted and trusted the man not to print more than was needed to make a story that didn’t sink like a stone.
This time Harry was cashing in a few old favours. He wanted the minimum hassle from the Press and as much inside information as Cafferty could provide. The reporter was willing to oblige; after probing for half an hour, he seemed satisfied that he wasn’t interviewing a credible murder suspect. Positive leads, though were in short supply and he’d been able to tell Harry no more than Skinner had already divulged. The Coghlan angle, as Cafferty persisted in calling it, held his interest, but as Harry had kept quiet about Liz’s fear for her life - he knew better than to show all his cards at the outset, even when seeking help - there wasn’t much meat on the bones of an exclusive yet.
“It comes down to this . . .” said Cafferty, furrowing his brow. Harry knew the cherubic face and cheerfully mundane small talk masked a shrewd intelligence. “. . . was your wife simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or did she know her killer?” He paused, as if hoping to provoke a response, but when none was forthcoming, said, “Did Skinner drop any hints to you about the way he sees things? Without prejudice, as you legal bods would say?”
“Not a thing,” said Harry slowly. “I can’t make out what the man is thinking.”
“Sniffing round for a motive, isn’t he? What can it be if not sex or money? There are no stray lunatics out on the loose to take all the blame. At least, no more than usual. By keeping you guessing, he’s taking no risks. After all, you wouldn’t be the first lawyer in the past few years to have flipped and turned to murder. And remember, my friend, most killings are domestics. That can’t surprise you, you handle divorce work.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Harry stood up. “Thanks for coming in, anyway.” He tried to make it sound like a dismissal. Cafferty had not responded to an invitation to chat; he had simply been hanging round outside New Commodities House waiting for the chance to catch Harry for a one-to-one talk about Liz’s death. But he took the hint and got to his feet.
Offering his hand, Cafferty said, “Appreciate your time. “Specially on a day like this. It’s rough for you, it won’t have sunk in properly yet. Doesn’t matter how long the two of you have been split up, she was still your wife.” For an instant his face clouded. “Believe me, marriages have deeper roots than people realise. Jenny, my first, she buggered off fifteen years ago with some snotty-nosed kid on an assignment from the Mirror and I dream about her to this very day.”
Harry showed him out and agreed to call if there was any further news. Suzanne on the switchboard, shiny-eyed at being involved - if only at one remove - in a case of violent crime, attracted his attention. “Message for you, Mr. Devlin.” She had abandoned her surliness, no doubt as a mark of respect for the bereaved. “Your sister-in-law, Mrs. Edge.”
“Ring back. I’ll take it in my room.”
The phone was trilling as he walked through the door. He hadn’t spoken to Maggie for eighteen months, since they’d bumped into one another in the Playhouse bar during the interval of a Willy Russell play, but it might have been yesterday as she came on to the line. Her voice was as warm as ever, although it faltered a little as she commiserated with him. For a short while they exchanged words inadequate to express their shared sense of shock, before Harry said, “I must see you soon, there are things we ought to discuss.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. When would suit you?”
“I was hoping, right away. Can you manage that?”
“Where, Harry?”
“You know the Traders’ Club in Old Hall Street? We have a firm’s membership there. At least we’ll be able to talk without being disturbed. Meet me there in forty minutes and I’ll sign you in for lunch.”
Someone rapped at the door as he put the receiver down. Jim came in and sat on the edge of the desk. His rugged features were darkened by dismay.
“Nothing I say will be right,” he began, his manner diffident for once. “But I am sorry. I understand what she meant to you.”
“Thanks.”
“Have the police said anything much about what happened? Do they have any ideas?”
“They spent most of the morning turning my flat upside down because Liz stayed overnight with me. They give the impression I’m suspect number one.”
“Only routine. You know that better than me.”
“I suppose so. As to the rest, it’s early days yet. At least they don’t think it was intended as a rape. A mugging, maybe, but it’s far from clear. I have my own views on the subject, for what they’re worth.”
“Which are?”
Harry told him about Liz’s fear of Coghlan. Each time he recalled their conversation, Liz’s anxiety seemed no more justified than before. But for the fact that now she was dead. The bitterness of self-reproach darkened his voice as he said, “I was so sure she was fantasising. But now I look back, I realise that she was telling the truth about the way she felt. And I didn’t lift a finger to help! Christ, I was married to her. I should have been able to tell the difference between her ideas of fact and fiction.”
“I doubt it,” said Jim. “Liz didn’t know the difference herself.”
Harry felt stung. “Easy for you to say that.”
“True, though.”
“Coghlan’s a vicious bastard. If she walked out on him . . .”
“He’s a robber and a thug, by all accounts. Not necessarily a murderer.”
“Not until now.”
His partner jabbed his midriff with a gentle punch. “Look, old son, I know you hate Coghlan. Don’t blame you for that, you have good reason. But don’t let hatred get a hold of you. It’s a cancer, it’ll do you harm. And don’t start convincing yourself that anything you could have done might have saved Liz’s life. Odds are, she was just unlucky. This is a dangerous city, the same could happen to anyone. Sickening, I know, but you mustn’t let yourself become smothered by what might have been.”
/> Examining the worn areas of the office carpet, Harry said quietly, “Of course, you’re right.”
“Yes.” Jim climbed to his feet. “You ready for a late spot of something to eat?”
“I’m meeting Maggie at the Traders’. There are things we have to talk about.”
Jim nodded. “Understood. When’s the funeral?”
“Not for a while, I gather. Skinner will want the inquest over first.”
On his way out, Jim stopped at the door. “Look, anything I can do . . .”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Why don’t you come over, spend the night at our place? Longer if you like. Heather would be glad if you did; in fact, she’ll give me hell if you don’t. Help the boys with their homework - they reckon the two of us are as thick as planks.”
Harry shook his head. “I appreciate it, really do. But at present I think I’d feel better on my own, making an effort to sort some sense out of this mess.”
“Up to you, old son. The offer remains open. Anytime you’d like to take advantage, shout.”
Left alone, Harry shuffled rapidly through the papers on his desk. Jim and Lucy had already organised his work so that Ronald Sou and the articled clerk, Sylvia, were handling the more urgent matters. A couple of court cases had been briefed out for barristers to deal with and there wasn’t any pressing reason for him to come back to the office in the afternoon. Except that he wanted to. The run-of-the-mill workload at least offered the reassurance of familiar territory: arguments between neighbours and shoplifting from department stores, far removed from the finality of death in a bleak back alley.
The Traders’ Club was five minutes’ walk away, tucked in the shadow of the huge ochre-faced insurance building that Scousers called the Sand Castle. As he reached Old Hall Street, he caught sight of his sister-in-law, standing by the steps that led up to the double oak doors. Her slim figure was wrapped in a huge white fur coat, her elfin features scarcely visible beneath an engulfing scarf of hand-painted silk. She moved forward and clasped him to her in a gesture that was as sudden as it was welcome. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek and for the first time since Skinner and Macbeth had rung at his front door he was able to lose himself in the hug, clinging to her, reluctant to let go.
All the Lonely People Page 6