All the Lonely People (26 page)

“As you said, it's too late for regrets.”

“I should have realised shooting Froggy wasn't going to bring it to an end. It's become a waking nightmare.

Things went from bad to worse between Tony and me. I must have been hell to live with. This morning he said maybe we should live apart for a little while. A trial separation, he called it. I begged him to give me another chance - I know I haven't been myself lately. I pleaded. I almost told him what I'd already done to try to keep him. But it was no good. For Christ's sake, he looked as though he was afraid of me. And then it dawned on me: murdering your wife hadn't altered a thing, he was still determined to go.”

“And Rourke?”

“He spent his money soon enough. He's one of those men who could lose a million inside a month. Frittering it on women, booze and drugs. He rang today, said he wanted another five thousand for Froggy. I said no, I'd paid what we agreed. Then the threats began. I put the phone down on him. He was vicious, I never deceived myself about that. But he didn't realise you can't frighten someone with nothing left to live for.”

They looked into each other's eyes. For a moment, Harry was aware of a bond with her, as though her destructive invasion of his life had brought them together, sufferers in the common cause of misplaced love. It was like the sense of closeness to her which he had briefly experienced that Thursday night as she sang in the Ferry, that night when, unknown to him, she had arranged for Liz to die.

She nodded, as if reading his thoughts. “We've both fed off fantasies for too long, haven't we? Well, you have all your answers now. But there is one thing more. The phone is in the kitchen. Call the police. Let them take charge of this whole bloody mess.”

“And you?”

“I'm dirty. All over. That's what murder does to you, Harry. I can still call you Harry, can't I? It seems as if we've known each other much longer than this little while. Well, Harry, I need to get clean. Though there are some things you can never scrub away.”

She stood up and walked to the door, bare feet moving silently over the thick pile of carpet.

“Wait,” he said, “one more question.” He stopped for a moment, almost ashamed of this last, helpless naivete. Yet he had to ask. “You're - you're not an animal. Not like Rourke. Why did you have to kill to get your way?”

“I thought you understood, Harry. It's sharing this feeling that draws us together a little, isn't it? I've been alone before, I know what it's like, just as you do. I didn't want to be alone again. I was willing to do anything in my power to avoid it. That's all.”

She turned and went out into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. Harry remained in his chair. Memories drifted through his mind like flotsam on the Mersey. Liz had scarred so many lives: those of Maggie and Derek, of Matt Barley and Angie O'Hare. But then he thought of her commanding Dame's fierce loyalty, and of his own better times with her when it seemed their lives stretched endlessly ahead and that every promise was sure to be fulfilled. He remembered a November night of fireworks and his first sight of a woman with a laughing face. Yes, it was true, he understood the impulse that had corrupted Angie O'Hare.

A cry from upstairs roused him. He heard something crash, then silence.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

He leapt to his feet and took the stairs three at a time, desperate to save her, to salvage something from disaster. Gasping, he kicked open the bathroom door.

Angie O'Hare lay naked at the bottom of the bath, auburn hair trailing in the water. Harry gazed at her white breasts, the triangle of reddish fuzz between her legs. Her mouth was wide open and the lovely blue eyes were empty of everything. A hair dryer was beside her, its long flex snaking out of the steamy room to a three-pin plug pushed into a socket on the landing. The crimson robe had been folded and put on the towel rail in a last act of futile tidiness.

Harry stared at the body. Impossible to look away. Death after death after death after death - how could he have guessed it would end like this?

He should be exulting. But now he'd lost his taste for blood.

A sentence from Liz on that last Wednesday night floated unbidden into his mind: I ought to feel sorry for her. And as he stood there, he became overwhelmed by pity for the woman who had paid for his wife to be killed.

Chapter Thirty

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed,” said the priest, “is death.” A young man, bespectacled and earnest, he gazed upwards as if in search of divine approval. His Welsh lilt made the old words seem freshly minted and right. Yet in the front row of the congregation, Harry heard without listening, unable to absorb the sense of the text being preached.

In his new dark suit he was stiff and uncomfortable. Every limb of his body seemed to be hurting, as though for the past fortnight he had been numbed by an anaesthetic whose effect was now starting to fade, leaving him exposed to recurrent waves of physical pain.

Brick-built and drab, the crematorium had hard seats and no heating. A miserable place in which to say goodbye to Liz. But cremation had been her choice; she always hated the thought of burial. “Imagine,” she once murmured as they walked past a graveyard, “the worms eating the bodies in their tombs underground.” Rolling her eyes in comic disgust she'd said, “I'd rather be burnt.” Then she had laughed at the absurdity of the idea of death.

Harry felt a tingling beneath his eyelids as he glanced around at the people gathered to remember his wife. Maggie was sitting on the same row, an arm's length away. Her black jacket, skirt and coat contrasted with the pallor of her skin, and the rings under her eyes testified to sleepless nights and despair of her crumbling marriage. Harry had last talked to her when discussing the plans for this funeral service and had found her glum and preoccupied. “If it wasn't for the children . . .” she had begun at one point, but without completing the sentence. Next to her now, Derek was watching the white-robed priest with stony-faced concentration. He might have been attending a seminar about capital gains tax or the annual general meeting of a public coftipany.

Across the aisle, Dame dabbed at her cheeks with a handkerchief, drying one of the few unselfish tears that had been shed for Liz. On the telephone the other day she had told Harry about her latest beau, a Ferrari-driving whizz-kid from the world of advertising. There was a chance that he might get her a part in a TV commercial, she said. Beside her sat Matt Barley, his face smudged with misery, his stubby fingers fidgeting with the printed card which set out the order of service. He hadn't spoken to Harry since confessing his brief affair with Liz. On his way in here, he had nodded grimly and hurried by.

A faint movement by the priest attracted Harry's attention. Slowly, the coffin began to slide out of sight. Within an instant, it seemed to Harry, the deep blue curtains had been pulled together and the box was gone forever. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he realised the service was over and that people were beginning to shuffle about, waiting for him to move. He got up from the seat and stumbled towards the exit. From behind, he felt the pressure of an arm supporting him.

Jim Crusoe's voice whispered “in his ear. “It's done.”

Gently, his partner propelled him out into the cold morning air where the priest was waiting. Harry mumbled a few words of thanks in mechanical response to the young Welshman's attempt to offer consolation. He scarcely noticed the pile of wreaths and the tied-on cards which bore messages of sympathy and were flapping in the breeze.

A short distance away stood Skinner, head bowed in contemplation. For the police, the official file had closed following the death of Rourke. Enough evidence had been obtained to tie him to both murders: the knife, the shotgun, a couple of witness sightings of him at Pasture Moss at around the time when Froggy Evison was killed. The tabloid press had talked about the suspected murderer who had died in a freak car crash, but there had been plenty of good stories around lately - riots in a Scottish prison, the resignation of a Cabinet minister - and already the deaths of Liz and Evison were yesterday's news.

The papers didn't have an inkling about Angie O'Hare's involvement and neither Harry nor Skinner planned to enlighten them. As far as the outside world was concerned, it was a simple case of a forgotten star of days gone by finding herself unable to cope with life amongst the second-rate. The local rags had called it a tragedy; in the nationals, it scarcely rated a mention. The inquest was unlikely to disclose too many secrets and the verdict was sure to be suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed.

When he had listened to Harry's story, had it typed up for the record and signed, Skinner had said, “A bitter thing, is jealousy.” It was the first spoken indication that he accepted Angie had hired Rourke to do her dirty work, though later a check on her bank account revealed that she had withdrawn five thousand pounds shortly before the stabbing of Liz. Harry had looked at him and said, “Not so much jealousy, Chief Inspector, as the fear of being on her own again.”

He took a few paces down the shingle path which led from the building. Feeble rays of sunlight were beginning to filter through the greyness overhead. In a narrow bed under the shelter of the roadside wall, the year's first greenery had started to emerge: snowdrop and crocus leaves, tokens of the coming spring.

He raised his eyes. The early morning mist had cleared and he could look down from the slopes of the crematorium grounds and see the Liverpool skyline in the distance: the contrasting forms of the two cathedrals, the muscular bulk of the buildings on the waterfront. Beyond, the charcoal ribbon of the Mersey flowed towards the Irish Sea. Pasture Moss, though nearer at hand, was masked from view by rows of redbrick terraced houses. According to a bulletin on the local radio the previous day, the waste heap was to be levelled soon and the land grassed over and reclaimed for recreation. There was talk in the papers of a resurgence in local industry and pride. Whether it was a rebirth or just a period of remission interrupting the decline of a dying city, Harry didn't know. He doubted if anyone did.

Brenda Rixton had caught up with him. She had been sitting quietly at the back throughout the service. Now she extended a hand and they shook formally, like strangers acknowledging mutual respect. Their eyes met for a moment and then they walked towards the crematorium gates, together and yet still alone.

Excerpt from
I Remember You

Chapter One

Flames licked at the building, greedy as the tongues of teenage lovers. They curled out from the windows above the shopfront and up to the gutters, fierce in their hunger, intent on conquest.

The smell of burning filled Harry Devlin's sinuses. Smoke stung his eyes and the back of his throat.

‘Don't even think of going in there.'

‘For the love of Jases,' said Finbar Rogan. ‘What d'you think I have for brains? I'd not try to force my way inside if the missus herself was trapped the other side of that door.' He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Come to think of it, if she was - I'd be chucking in a match or two myself.'

A thunderous splintering of glass made them duck in a reflex of self-defence. Straightening up, Harry saw the first-floor panes disintegrate. He shielded his face as a thousand shards showered the paving all around.

Finbar cried out in pain and stumbled to the ground. Seeing blood trickle from a cut on the Irishman's cheek, Harry didn't hesitate. In a matter of seconds, he dragged Finbar back towards the shelter of a doorway on the other side of the street. There they leaned against each other for support, fighting for breath as the fumes leaked into their lungs.

The narrowness of Williamson Lane intensified the heat and Harry felt the skin of his face tingle. Finbar groaned and wiped the blood away with his sleeve.

‘Thanks for that, mate,' he gasped. ‘So now we know what we're in for when we go to Hell.'

‘Speak for yourself.'

‘Listen, you're a solicitor. Even I have a better chance of Heaven.'

Harry couldn't help grinning at his client. Even as his business blazed on this cold October night, Finbar showed no sign of fear or despair. He would always scoff at any unkindness of the Fates.

‘Are you all right?'

‘I'll live to claim the insurance, don't you fret.'

Never before had Harry witnessed at such close quarters the raging passion of a fire out of control. A dozen viewings of Mrs Danvers perishing in the ruins of Hitchcock's Manderley had not prepared him for this; nor could he have imagined that the city centre could be so claustrophobic. He had a dizzy sense of everything closing in on him.

Disaster had begun to seduce late night Liverpool's passers-by, excited by the sound and fury. ‘Better than Blackpool bloody illuminations!' someone bellowed from the safety of the adjoining square.

The wail of a siren pierced the hubbub, growing louder as each second passed. Harry could hear the fire engines' roar and saw people pressing back into the shadows, making way as first one, then another of the vehicles rounded the corner and pulled up with a shriek twenty yards away.

‘The cavalry,' said Finbar.

Suddenly the place was teeming with firefighters. In their yellow headgear and drip pants, navy blue tunics with silvery reflective stripes and rubber boots with steel toe-caps, they might have been storm-troopers from a distant planet. They moved to a pre-ordained routine, running the hose along the ground, connecting it to a hydrant, waving the crowd back, roping off the end of the street. Harry and Finbar were the only spectators within fifty feet of the fire. A man whose white helmet marked his seniority hurried towards them.

‘Anyone left inside?' His urgent tone held no hint of panic.

‘No one,' Finbar called back. ‘Though I might have been in there doing my books if this feller hadn't been due to buy the next round.'

The officer spoke into a walkie-talkie, ordering help from an appliance with a turntable ladder, keeping watch all the time on the spread of the fire.

‘You own the shop which sells leathers? Or the travel agents next door?'

‘No, I'm up above.'

The words on the blackened signboard at first-floor level were hard to decipher. The officer peered at them. ‘Tattooist's studio, is that? You're the feller I heard on Radio Liverpool this morning?'

‘The one and only. Liverpool's Leonardo da Vinci.' With boozy bravado, Finbar shrugged off his jacket and ripped open his shirt. On his chest was an extravagant, multicoloured image of a naked woman astride a horse. Her modesty was not quite saved by long dark tresses, and she seemed unaware of the exophthalmic scrutiny of a caricatured Peeping Tom.

‘I'll gladly autograph you as a souvenir,' he offered. ‘And if you can salvage the electric needles I keep up there, I'll turn you into the Illustrated Man free of charge.'

The officer tipped his helmet back, a now-I've-seen-everything expression spreading across his face.

‘Thanks very much, but I'm pretty as a picture as it is.'

In the distance, a second siren howled its warning.

‘Here come the police,' said Harry. Ruefully, he asked himself why, earlier that evening, he hadn't refused Finbar's invitation for a quick one. He knew the folly of becoming too closely involved with his clients and their misfortunes, yet it was a mistake he could never help making. If only he'd been taught at college the knack of remaining aloof, of concentrating on rules in books, instead of becoming fascinated by the people who broke them...

‘Anything combustible in there?' demanded the fire officer.

Finbar bowed his head, momentarily abashed. ‘I had paint and thinners on the landing. Been planning to decorate. Early resolution for next New Year.' He gazed up at the flame-lit heavens. ‘Sod's law, eh? I should have left the dirt to hold the place together.'

‘What about the ceiling tiles?'

‘Polystyrene.'

‘Perfect. A fire trap, waiting for a spark. All right - wait here out of harm's way while I take a gander.'

As the officer rejoined his men, a police car appeared, its lights flashing. One of its occupants raced towards the blaze, the other strode towards Harry and Finbar, waving his arms like a farmer directing sheep.

‘Move, will you? Don't - hey, for Chrissake, it's Harry Devlin! What are you doing here, pal? I thought you chased ambulances, not fire engines.'

Harry nodded a greeting. He knew Roy Gilfillan of old.

‘Where there's a disaster, there's sure to be a solicitor. Finbar's a client. We were having a pint in the Dock Brief, putting the world to rights, when some bloke burst in and said a building in Williamson Lane had gone up in flames. We dashed over and it turns out to be - '

Another siren interrupted him and he swung round to watch the arrival of the turntable while Roy Gilfillan marched over to his colleague, who was conferring with the fire officer outside the entrance to Finbar's studio. Harry noticed the Irishman's eyes slide away from the fire to a couple of girls in the crowd behind them, blondes
en route
for a nightclub who had paused to goggle at the inferno. Finbar winked at them and was rewarded by smirks of encouragement. Even at a time like this he was incorrigible.

‘Do you need to call Melissa?' asked Harry, hoping to lead Finbar away from temptation. ‘Tell her what's happened?'

‘No problem. She's not neurotic, not like Sinead, doesn't make a fuss when I tell her to expect me when she sees me. I'm not a train, I don't run to timetables.'

‘Neither does InterCity, but at least it stays on the rails most of the time.'

Finbar chuckled. ‘Truth to tell, I've a lot on my plate already, so far as the fair sex are concerned - even leaving Sinead and her bloody alimony demands aside. I bumped into a girl I used to know only this morning. A lovely lady. I reckon I might be able to persuade her to rekindle the flame - 'scuse the phrase, in present circumstances. And then there's Melissa ... Jases!'

Across the street, the door which led to the tattoo parlour finally disintegrated in an explosion worthy of an Exocet. Awestruck, Harry and Finbar gazed at the wreckage. Above them, men in breathing masks were directing water jets from the top of the ladder down on to the blaze, while at ground level two more firefighters armed with axes moved towards the entrance. Safe behind the cordon, winos cheered as if on the terraces at Anfield. Oblivious to his audience, the fire chief pointed towards the building. The policemen stared obediently at something, then Gilfillan gestured for Harry and Finbar to approach. The two of them edged closer.

‘What's up?' asked Finbar. ‘Any closer and I'll get scorch marks on Lady Godiva.'

‘Smell that!' shouted Gilfillan, pointing towards the doorway.

No mistaking the stink of petrol from close range. Harry exchanged a look with the policeman.

‘And see the inside of the passageway?'

The fumes made their eyes water, but squinting through the hole Harry saw charred walls immediately beyond the space where the door had been.

Finbar pushed a hand through his unruly dark hair. He was a stocky man, barely as tall as Harry but broader in the shoulder and a few years older; yet his wonderment was that of a wide-eyed schoolboy.

‘Are you telling me this wasn't an accident?'

The policeman shrugged. ‘The seat of fire seems to have been the other side of your front door - the burning is worse there than further up the stairs. Add that to the smell and there's only one diagnosis.'

‘Arson?' asked Harry. For all the heat, he felt a sudden chill.

‘Suspected malicious ignition,' Gilfillan's colleague corrected him primly, before turning to Finbar. ‘Is there anyone who might have a grudge against you?'

Finbar looked nonplussed. After a pause for thought, he allowed a guilty grin to lift the corners of his mouth. It was a moment of self-knowledge.

‘Only everyone I've ever met.'