All the Lonely People (8 page)

“His name?”

“She never told me. We only spoke about him once and that conversation didn't last long. I couldn't hide what I thought about it.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of months ago, possibly longer.”

He was surprised. “Surely you've seen her since then?”

“No. Not even at Christmas.” She bowed her head. “The fact is, Liz and I have drifted miles apart since the two of you split up. I told her she was a fool and she didn't care for that, reckoned I was jealous. The sun shone out of Mick Coghlan then. She worked him out eventually. Too late, as usual.”

“Did he beat her?”

“She wouldn't have admitted it to me if he had. And, as I say, we saw less of each other. Of course, she used to mock Derek, as you know. After she left you, there was no reason for me to put up with that. We only met Mick Coghlan once and that was plenty for both Derek and me.”

Harry found that easy to understand. Strait-laced Derek Edge's only acquaintance with crime would be on the fringe of his clients' insider trading and elaborate tax dodges. For him to small-talk with Mick Coghlan would be like an archbishop's wife asking a call girl round for tea.

“So Liz and I just met for a cuppa once in a while. Our lives ran on different tracks. I didn't see any future in her being some kind of gangster's moll and I dare say my prattling on about the kids bored her to tears.” Her face creased in recollection of lost opportunities. “And now there won't be another chance to put things right between us.”

Harry waved to a waiter for coffee. “Did she seem frightened when you saw her last?”

Far from it. She kept saying how hard it was to be separated from the man you loved. I gave her a piece of my mind, told her this time she'd better make sure it was for keeps. Naturally, she made a few snide remarks about Derek. Poor man, he can't help being an accountant.”

The coffee arrived. As they sipped from delicate china cups, Harry studied his sister-in-law. He had always been fond of Maggie. No fads or fantasies for her. Liz had poked fun at the Edges' well-dusted home and their immaculate square of garden. Boring, boring, boring. But although Maggie could never equal Liz for looks or style, she had the gift of knowing her limitations. She had worked out exactly what she wanted from life and seemed to have acquired it. And yet - there was an indefinable difference in her from the Maggie that he remembered. A streak of ruthlessness, perhaps? Or possibly he'd expected her to seem a little more devastated by Liz's death. But he reminded himself that he was trying not to let shock and despair take over. Maybe Maggie was simply doing the same.

They talked for a few more minutes, going back over their shared past. The Guy Fawkes party on the anniversary of his first meeting with Liz when the bonfire had been too wet to light. A cousin's wedding when Liz had drunk too much and proposed to the bridegroom. The stripping-nun kissagram she had ordered for Derek's thirtieth birthday celebrations in the discreet restaurant where he used to dine his clients.

After he had signed a chit in lieu of a bill - the Traders' was not the sort of sordid place where members' money changed hands in the sight of guests - Maggie said, “Why did you ask if she was frightened?”

He gave her a brief resume of Liz's late night visit to his flat. When he had finished, there was a long pause before Maggie took a deep breath and said, “You don't think - there's anything suspicious about her death?”

Harry winced and she said quickly, “Sorry, that was stupid of me. But I meant, do you believe it was any more than a street attack that went horribly wrong?”

“It's possible. The police are being cagey but they certainly haven't handled it as though they're satisfied with the simple explanation.”

Shaking her head, Maggie said, “You can't think that Mick . . .”

“I don't know what to think. But there's a great deal I want to find out.”

She placed her small, white hand on his. The fingers were cool, the pressure firmer then when they had greeted each other. “Keep out of it, Harry. This is a dreadful day, but for all her faults, I won't accept that anyone would wish to do Liz harm. It's sure to have been an ordinary street crime. If killing a person can ever be ordinary. And if it wasn't . . . ”

“Yes?”

“Then you shouldn't meddle.” She closed her eyes for a moment. When she spoke again there was a harsh urgency in her tone. “Let the police sort it out. That's their job. Don't get involved.”

He might have said: You don't understand, I was her husband, I am already involved. But instead he remained quiet, wondering why Maggie, too, now appeared to be frightened.

Chapter Eight

Instead of returning to the office, Harry wandered about the city for an hour, struggling against the dull ache in his head and the weakness of his limbs in a vain effort to marshall his thoughts. He yearned to act, to take some positive step towards achieving vengeance for Liz's death. It wasn't enough to wait for the police investigation to take its course. Yet his sluggish brain refused to tell him what to do.

His shoes slid on pavements greasy after another fall of rain and when he looked around he saw Liverpool with a stranger's eyes. Streets littered with discarded till receipts, rotten apple cores and polystyrene hamburger cartons. Illicit dealers flogging dustbin bags and cheap brooches from upturned crates. Teenage kids with green hair loafing at corners and men in leather jackets trying to sell socialist propaganda. Today everyone had a face as grey as the sky. Vandals had ripped up a row of saplings planted under the shadow of St. George's Hall and sprayed shop walls with slogans about football, sex and anarchy. Normally he took the shoddiness of it all for granted, but this afternoon the sight of the place hurt him as much as would a scar across the face of a friend.

Harry quickened his pace as he approached each newspaper stand; the early evening editions were already on sale. Hoarse relish filled the vendors' voices as they shouted their reminders that Liz was dead.

“Murder of City Girl!”

Harry flinched the first time he heard the cry, but soon it was commonplace, as much a part of the background as the smell of onions from the hot dog sellers' carts and the intermittent screeching of the buses' brakes.

“Murder of City Girl! Murder of City Girl!”

People were buying the papers; he could see one or two of them devouring Ken Cafferty's prose. Liz had always wanted to be the centre of attention and in death her wish had come true. He remembered her once quoting Andy Warhol's dictum that everyone should be famous for fifteen minutes and wondering aloud when her moment would come. Real life was never good enough for her; television and movies, the admen's images of a better life just over the rainbow, had seen to that. She would have revelled in her name being on everyone's lips. He could picture her grinning and with a careless toss of the black hair, saving only half in jest, “Maybe this makes it all worthwhile.”

In the end he bought a copy himself and took it back to the office. Slumped in his chair, he could scarcely believe that he was reading about his wife. The newspaper told him nothing he didn't already know. The photo of Liz must have been taken years ago; probably some journalist had prised it out of Maggie. Liz had been looking straight at the camera, wearing the practised smile she had learned in her abbreviated modelling career. On the facing page was a smaller, smudged file photo of himself. It dated back to a much-publicised case when he had defended an enterprising Evertonian who earned a crust impersonating people summoned for jury service, but reluctant to perform their civic duty. Harry gazed at the rag for a minute or so, then threw it into the wastepaper bin.

Sighing, he contemplated the beer belly that bulged unmistakably beneath his shirt. A few years ago he had run in the Liverpool Marathon with the minimum of training; these days he used the lift in the Empire Dock rather than climbing the stairs. Cigarettes and booze were partly to blame, but so was the sense of futility that had dogged him since the marriage breakdown.

Thinking about keep-fit reminded him of gym-owning Michael Coghlan. There was no escaping the man; he muscled into any memory of Liz. Realistically, was it conceivable that Coghlan murdered her? The fingernails of Harry's right hand dug into his left palm as he was seized by the impulse to find Coghlan and beat the truth out of him.

Of course, the logical thing was to go home and wait for the police to act, but he no longer cared about the logical thing. On the calendar, today's saw was
There are situations in life when it is wisdom not to be too wise.
For once the message rang true. He pushed the remaining files to one side, said goodbye to Lucy and left.

Brunner Street was five minutes distant by car. He parked across the road from a Chinese moneylender's and walked down to the old brush factory that had been converted into Coghlan's Fitness Centre. A gaudy yellow signboard nailed across the building's soot-blackened exterior promised high quality facilities and a family atmosphere. Harry walked in past a ground-floor display of jogging gear and sweatshirts and a gum-chewing assistant who was chatting up some girl on the telephone. The place was quiet. Too far from the city centre to appeal to health-conscious businessmen who fancied a lunch hour work-out, thought Harry, and too close to Toxteth to make an up-market image credible. He went through a door marked members only. It led to a flight of steep stairs which he took two at a time out of some vague gesture of solidarity with the keep-fit clan, but by the time he reached the top he was puffing for breath.

Upstairs a red-haired woman sat at a small table reading the fashion page of a glossy magazine. She wore a tight tee shirt emblazoned with the legend:
My boss is a comedian - the wages he pays are a joke,
and an expression as bored as the voice in which she asked for his membership card.

“I'm looking for Mick Coghlan.”

His eyes roamed around the gym. No evidence here of the family appeal of Coghlan's, just a handful of squashy-nosed men in singlets and boxer shorts working out on the punch bags and dumb-bells or pressing their hairy, hard-muscled bodies up and down with practised ease on the green mats that covered half the pine block floor. Grunts and curses punctuated the sweaty silence. On the far side of the room, a burly and balding man in a faded tracksuit stood, arms folded, watching the activity. A navy blue towel was slung over his shoulder. He caught sight of Harry and stared at him in a menacing, sleepy-eyed way, as if he fancied himself a Liverpudlian Robert Mitchum.

The woman said, “Mr. Coghlan isn't here.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you want him, anyway?”

“I need to talk to him urgently.”

“Arthur.” She called to the burly man, who strode towards them.

“What's the problem, Paula?”

“This feller wants to see Mick. Reckons it's urgent.”

Arthur scowled at Harry. It was like sustaining the visual equivalent of grievous bodily harm.

“So who are you?”

“My name's Devlin. Harry Devlin.”

The man looked puzzled for a moment, as if the name rang some far-off bell, then his brow cleared and he picked up a copy of the evening paper from the table, turning to the story about Liz's murder.

“Harry Devlin, eh? Well, pal, Mr. Coghlan isn't here and I don't think he'd want to talk to you if he was.”

“Is he back at the house?”

“You deaf or summat? I said, he wouldn't want to see you. Now scram before my patience breaks.”

Harry began, “Whatever you say, I'll be sure to . . .” But he got no further because the man laid a couple of shovel-like hands on his shoulders, spun him around and frog-marched him towards the door.

“Arthur,” said the red-head in a warning tone.

“No problem,” came the reply. “Simply seeing Mr. Devlin out.” He released his grip and bent down to hiss in Harry's ear. “My manners aren't always so good. Now fuck off and don't come back.” One push sent Harry tumbling down the first few steps and had him clawing at the rail to regain his balance.

Downstairs the youth was still busy on the phone. Harry left Coghlan's Fitness Centre without regret but with no sense that it had been a wasted visit, either. He had the illusion of having done something positive and he'd seldom experienced that kind of feeling recently. The next move was to find out whether Coghlan had yet arrived home.

Liz had phoned him a couple of times after going to live with Coghlan, asking him to send on a few of the things she had left behind on the day she moved. Harry remembered that her new address had been in Woolton; he stopped off at a post office on the way to check the details in the phone book. It was five o'clock and darkness had fallen. He drove throughout the waste land of the inner city towards the more affluent suburbs, trying to work out what he would say if Coghlan was there. In truth, he had no real idea of how he would handle things but that, perversely, was part of the challenge.

Coghlan's place was a modern detached in spacious grounds, worthy of a successful executive or a villain too smart for the police to catch. More than likely there was a swimming pool at the rear. That alone would have been enough to captivate Liz - she loved the water and used to say that as a kid she'd had a recurrent dream of being a mermaid. Harry pulled up outside, walked to the door and pressed the bell.

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.