Behind him, someone boomed, “Harry Devlin - what the hell are you doing?”
The unexpected familiarity of the voice was bewildering. Harry whirled round and snapped, “Who’s there?”
“You shouldn’t be here, you daft sod.” A man with a chest as broad as a coal barge emerged from the gloom. The gravel rasped beneath his feet; there was nothing subtle about his heavy tread. For all his anonymous plain clothes, the man would never be mistaken for anything but a policeman.
“Dave.”
Detective Constable David Moulden nodded. “Long time no see.”
“Why are you . . . ?”
“I asked first. This is the last place I thought I’d run into you, Harry.”
“Last place I would have intended to come if . . .”
With a gentleness surprising in a big clumsy man, Moulden interrupted again to say, “Sorry about your missus, Harry.”
Harry looked at the detective. They hadn’t met since one night the previous summer when a client of Harry’s had taken it into his head to crash a stolen taxi cab into a police car. “Am I right in assuming Coghlan hasn’t turned up yet?”
“Correct.”
“Significant, don’t you think?”
“You know me, Harry, I’m not paid to think.” The good-humoured expression was as effective a mask as any.
“Any idea where the man is?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that we’d like to talk with him when he does show up. Result is, two of us have been sent to keep an eye on this place. My mate’s in the car down the road. But you’ve no business here, you’re well aware of that.”
Harry said grimly, “I’d dearly love to speak to Coghlan myself.”
“Forget it. This is a murder inquiry, Harry, not some piddling burglary. You’re personally involved. Do yourself a favour and keep out of it.”
Harry fished for more information, but landed nothing. Moulden might not have been told much about the case by his superior officers and in any event was too good a policeman to let anything slip.
On his way back to the city centre, Harry asked himself what the journey had achieved. Coghlan’s continuing absence was hard to understand. Had he done a flit? The first signs were that Skinner was right in implying that Liz’s death had not been a straightforward case of a mugging or rape that had gone murderously wrong. More than ever, Harry wanted to find out for himself exactly what had happened to her. But how could he do that?
Tonight of all nights he couldn’t go to the Dock Brief. Too many people who knew him frequented the place and he wasn’t in the mood for repeated condolences. Instead he chose the Lear, a free house in Lime Street which took its name not from the Shakespearean king but from the Victorian rhymester who under Lord Derby’s patronage had written many of his poems over at Knowsley Hall. Pictures of luminous-nosed Dongs and toeless Pobbles decorated the walls, strange companions for the seamen and tarts who packed the bar.
Harry sat at a table by himself for hours, drinking slowly and turning the day’s dreadful news over and over in his mind. Quite apart from the traumatic news of Liz’s death itself, the way in which Jim, and especially Maggie, had reacted to the crime was somehow unsettling. And where was Coghlan? Was the nagging thought that the man might have murdered Liz prompted by logic, loathing or merely his own reluctance to accept that she might have met her end at the hands of a teenager doped out of his senses by smack?
In the corner of the snug, a couple of prostitutes were conducting a drunken dispute about a customer beneath a framed print which depicted the Owl and the Pussycat in their beautiful pea-green boat. And as the evening wore on and alcohol, fatigue and consciousness of what he had lost fuzzed his mind, the murder of Liz began to seem more ludicrous by far than a simple piece of nonsense verse.
Chapter Nine
At eight the next morning, the alarm’s buzz woke him. The coldness of the day made him shiver; his restlessness during the night had thrown the duvet onto the floor. Already the memory of staggering home from the Lear was as hazy as a scene observed through a smeared windowpane. He had an idea that he’d taken the phone off the hook and ignored a tapping at the door accompanied by a voice that sounded like Brenda Rixton’s asking if he was all right.
Nothing could be seen when he pulled the bedroom curtains apart. Fog had rolled over the Mersey, covering the water with its grey quilt. No hint of human life anywhere outside; he might have been marooned on an urban island.
He was drinking black coffee when the doorbell rang. Brenda again? No: when he put his eye to the spyhole, the sad face of Chief Inspector Skinner gazed back at him. It was a gut-wrenching repeat of the start to the previous day and for a moment he thought that he must still be dreaming. When he opened the door, he saw Macbeth was there as well.
“Sorry to disturb you again, Mr. Devlin,” said Skinner. There was a faint snuffle in his voice, as if he had picked up a February cold. “We have a number of additional questions for you, I’m afraid.”
Harry stood aside and they walked into the lounge. His grudging offer of coffee was accepted and as he poured two more cups from the jug, he sensed they were appraising his words and movements, on the look-out for evasions and inconsistencies that might suggest he intended to tell them less than he knew. Macbeth didn’t take a seat. Sleek and immaculate in a leather jacket and slacks, he prowled the room like a panther about to pounce.
Skinner said, “We’d appreciate it if you could take us through your movements again on the day that your wife was killed.”
Harry repeated his account of the events of Thursday. Already it seemed a lifetime away. Neither policeman took notes. Skinner listened intently; his sergeant radiated cynicism.
“Is there anything you would wish to add to your statement?” asked the Chief Inspector. “Or change?”
Harry shook his head. “Why should I?”
Macbeth spoke at last. “Why did you call at Coghlan’s house yesterday?” He glared at Harry, daring him to deny the visit.
“I wanted to talk to the man. Simple as that.”
“Why?”
How to reply when there was no safe, sensible answer? “Liz left me to live with him. I’ve never met Mick Coghlan, but he’s still one of the most important people in my life. When she was dead, I thought I should at least speak to him.”
“Mourning together?” The sergeant shovelled on the sarcasm.
When Harry said nothing, Skinner asked, “How did you react when your marriage broke up?”
“I celebrated with champagne, what do you imagine?” Even as he spoke, Harry regretted being provoked into a bitter, childish response. No good would come of it. He had counselled clients a thousand times about keeping cool under interrogation or in the witness box. Easier said than done.
“You must have felt wild.”
Why deny it? “Of course, but at least I had enough nous to realise there was no way I could change her mind for her. If she ever wished to come back, it had to be her decision, taken in her own time. She-”
“Yes?”
“She was a strong-willed woman, Chief Inspector. Threats or pleading, neither would have achieved anything. They would only have made her more determined.”
“Presumably you never lost hope that one day she’d tire of Coghlan and want to give the marriage another try?”
Harry grimaced. “In the back of my mind, yes, I suppose you’re right. Liz and I shared some good moments. But she used to complain I spent too much time working for too little reward. She wanted something more from life.”
“All the same, you never divorced. Exactly why not?”
“I had no urge to and Liz never asked for it. Neither of us bothered with the recriminations that make lawyers rich.” He pondered for a moment and then said, “Some lawyers, at any rate. I put her in touch with a solicitor from Maher and Malcolm and we sorted things out as painlessly as possible. The money side was simple. We sold the house and split the lot down the middle. She
wasn’t greedy. She was confident Coghlan could keep her in the style to which she wanted to grow accustomed.”
Macbeth snapped, “And what about Wednesday night?”
“What about it?” Despite himself, Harry could feel the sergeant’s hostility beginning to get under his skin.
Stolidly, Skinner said, “You must have been aggrieved when your wife turned up, as you say, out of the blue. Let’s face it, she was treating this place as a hotel, somewhere she could rest her head between lovers, isn’t that so?” When Harry failed to answer, he continued, “Frankly, Mr. Devlin, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d been furious with her. Only natural in the circumstances.”
“Believe it or not, I was glad to see her again.”
Macbeth moved forward, his lean body tense. “Did you sleep with her on Wednesday night?”
“I told you. She slept in the bedroom, I had the couch.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that, sir?” Skinner conveyed disbelief without sacrificing a scrap of politeness.
“I’m hardly likely to have forgotten.”
“You see,” Skinner persisted. “Mrs. Devlin was obviously an attractive woman. Charming, vivacious. Everyone we’ve spoken to has agreed about that. And she was your wife, sir, come home after two years with another man.”
“We didn’t sleep together, Chief Inspector. I wish we had.”
“You told us last time,” said Macbeth, “that you hadn’t seen her throughout that two-year period. Do you wish to change that statement?”
“No.”
“Then it isn’t true that you’d been meeting your wife regularly for some time?”
“Totally untrue.” Harry was startled. The trend of the interview was puzzling him and he looked from one detective to another in search of a clue to their line of reasoning. Their faces were trained to yield no secrets, but he was conscious of frustration not far below their surface assurance. They were uncertain of their ground, he could tell. Important pieces were missing from the picture that they were trying to build and so they were pursuing a speculative enquiry in the hope of stumbling across a fresh signpost to the truth. He was well acquainted with how they must feel after years of cross-examining resilient witnesses - themselves policemen, more often than not - who refused to break down but whom he suspected of holding the key that he sought. The tricks of their trade closely resembled his own: the haphazard questioning, the dodgem swerves from blandness to provocation.
Might as well steal the initiative. “So what progress have you made with the investigation, Chief Inspector? Any prospect of an arrest in the near future?”
“Not imminently, I’m afraid, sir. As you can gather, our enquiries are continuing. We have received some valuable information, it’s fair to say.”
“Such as?”
“Well, sir, you’ll appreciate that we have to limit what we disclose at this stage, even to the husband of the deceased.”
The deceased. The words struck him like a slap on the cheek, a reminder of the fact of Liz’s death. He said, “Have you traced her lover yet?”
Macbeth snorted. Skinner said calmly, “I’m sorry to say that my sergeant isn’t finding it easy to come to terms with the existence of your wife’s new lover.”
No need to feign bewilderment at that. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll spell it out for you, sir. We’ve interviewed a large number of people who were on good terms with your wife, including several of the friends and relations you told us about. So far, none of them can come up with a name for this new man in your wife’s life.”
“Nothing odd about that, it’s typical Liz.” How to explain her to men whom she had never met? “She would like to dramatise the situation, make a mystery where none existed.” A thought occurred to him. “And she certainly told her sister a little about the man.”
“Together with one or two others, that’s perfectly true. But it is a mite surprising that she played her cards so close to her chest, wouldn’t you agree? I gather that she was a lady who liked to - if I may say so - talk about herself.”
“The man’s married. She didn’t want his wife to find out.”
“Could be, sir.” Skinner’s eyelids drooped. “Then again, there seems to have been a widely held opinion that one day the two of you would get back together again. Mrs. Edge thought that, for instance.”
“As I said, it was my hope too. Forlorn, as it proved.”
“Yes, Mr. Devlin. All the same, I can believe she was unhappy with Michael Coghlan - she’d made a bad move there. I can accept that she was having an affair. Yet there’s no hard evidence of any other relationship. Obviously, you will say that she covered her tracks, but at present the man most people think she really cared for was you.”
“I wish they’d been right.” Harry felt the urge well up inside him to find a cigarette, have a smoke to ease the tension. But he suddenly realised that it was important for him to resist temptation. “I’ve already made it clear to you that I’d have been glad to have her back. She could have left Coghlan any hour of the day or night as far as I was concerned.”
“Yet, sir, is that correct? The man’s known for being violent. Would she have had the nerve to kick him into touch?”
Harry said, “Liz didn’t lack guts.”
Macbeth intervened. “What about her attempt at suicide?”
“What are you . . . ?” Too late Harry realised that he didn’t know how to reply. In his confusion he allowed the sentence to trail away. The detectives were watching him closely. Taking a deep breath, he said, “She never discussed it with me.”
“Yet you were aware of it?” This was Skinner.
“Yes - that is, I saw her left wrist on Wednesday night. I didn’t mention it then. I imagined - in her own good time . . .”
“The wounds were only superficial, I’m told. But they appear to have been inflicted recently. Could you explain why you failed to mention the matter in your statement?”
Helplessly, Harry shook his head. “No reason. It didn’t cross my mind. Or seem important. Obviously I only gave you the gist of what happened the other night. Not a verbatim report.”
Macbeth said, “So you say that your wife arrived unexpectedly on Wednesday night after two years of playing away from home. You noticed that she had tried to kill herself but didn’t utter a word. And the next day she was murdered. Is that what you’re asking us to accept?”
“I’m not asking you to accept anything,” said Harry. To his dismay, he found that he was almost shouting. “I’ve simply explained what happened.”
Skinner said, “But are you telling us everything you know?”
“As far as I can recall. You must remember, this isn’t an ordinary experience.” Feeling the need for a prop, for something to do with his hands, he again felt that pressing desire for the comfort of a cigarette. It occurred to him then that Liz would have been amused by the thought that she had, indirectly, caused him to practise such self-denial when all her attempts to persuade him to give up during her lifetime had failed. He relaxed, but only for a moment.
Skinner finally lobbed his grenade.
“So it would come as a complete surprise, would it, for you to learn that your wife was pregnant?”
Harry stared at the detective, unable to utter a word.
“Yes, Mr. Devlin, about eight weeks gone.”
Hoarsely, Harry said, “I know nothing about that. Nothing at all.”
Skinner’s gloomy face wrinkled with disbelief as he said, “Can we take it, then, that you deny being the father?”
Chapter Ten
The moment the detectives had gone, Harry telephoned his sister-in-law. Maggie’s voice was anxious. Gone was her customary assurance, the quiet pleasure at having planned life as a series of attainable targets - marriage, children, money - that had irritated Liz and, perhaps, made her jealous.
Cutting short the conversational preliminaries, he said, “The police have been round again. They tell me Liz was pre
gnant.”
“What?”
He repeated himself. From Maggie’s faltering response, he had little doubt that the news stunned her just as much as it had him.
“She didn’t tell you, then?”
“No, no. I - can’t believe it.”
“Hard to imagine, I agree, Liz as a mother. It hasn’t sunk in with me either, yet.” Nor had it. Their own talks about having children seemed to belong to a long ago era when being young meant that there was plenty of time, no need to rush. Liz had said, “Let’s live a little, first.” Unless she had grown careless, her outlook must have changed. The reminder of how far he and his wife had grown apart in the two years of their separation was like a punch to the solar plexus.
Maggie asked, “Do they know who the father is?”
“Apparently not. They were enquiring whether I was responsible.”
“But that’s ridiculous!”
“So I told them. Whether they believed me or not is another matter.”
“Could it . . . could it be Mick Coghlan?” Strangely, it seemed to Harry as though she were hoping that he would say yes.
“Maybe. I gather that he’s still missing. The man will have a lot of explaining to do if he shows himself.”
“You still think he killed her, don’t you?” Her question was curious, tinged with uncertainty, but still less sceptical in tone than she had been the previous day. Again, it almost seemed as if she were willing herself to believe in Coghlan’s guilt.
“Who else would want to do her harm?” he asked. When she did not reply, he continued, “Take it from me, Liz was genuinely afraid the other night. I should have realised.”
“Stop blaming yourself, Harry. You couldn’t have guessed it would end up like this.” She said, with nervousness that he found difficult to fathom, “What about her new boyfriend?”
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