All the Lonely People

Chapter Five

The insistent wail of the doorbell woke him. Harry opened his eyes a little. Everything was dark. The throbbing inside his head seemed always to have been there, though he tried to tell himself it was only an early morning hangover. Ignore the racket, he told himself. Wait for it to go away.

Again the bell rang, for a full minute without a break. Impossible to sleep through that. Swearing, he peered at the luminous digits of the radio alarm. Five-fifty. There must be some mistake. But after a brief pause came another ear-piercing summons to the door.

“All right.” He admitted defeat with a dehydrated croak. Climbing out of bed wasn’t as easy as usual; his legs might have been those of a rheumaticky pensioner. Struggling into a dressing gown, he padded into the hall. The noise ceased as he put a filmy eye to the spyhole. A man’s face, bleak as a mountain range, filled his line of vision.

In a hoarse whisper, Harry said, “You realise what time it is? What’s this all about?”

“Mr. Devlin.” A statement of fact, rather than a question, uttered with glum authority.

“Correct. And who are you?”

“Police. Will you let us in, please?”

Harry unlatched the door, but didn’t release the chain. Outside stood two men in suits. The man who had spoken was heavily built and aged about forty. He had sandy hair, thinning on top and going grey. The corners of his mouth turned down to give him a lugubrious look. Harry recognised his accent as West Yorkshire. His companion was a generation younger, lean, lithe and wary as a soldier scanning a street in the Bogside. But what struck Harry most was the colour of his skin. In Liverpool, a black cop with a sergeant’s stripes was still unexpected, like a mermaid rising from the murky depths of the Mersey.

“Detective Chief Inspector Skinner,” said the first man. His melancholic tone matched his appearance. He indicated his colleague. “This is D.S. Macbeth.”

“I don’t care if he’s Banquo’s bloody ghost. What’s the big idea?”

Skinner ignored the question. “You’d like to see our I.D., I imagine.”

He flipped open a card and his colleague did likewise. Harry tried to focus on the documents.

“Okay. So why… ”

“May we talk inside, please, sir?”

Skinner’s manner precluded contradiction and Harry was unable to think of a reason for not doing as the policeman asked. He couldn’t think of much at all. Leading the intruders into the lounge, he motioned them towards armchairs, more than glad to sit down himself. He saw their quick professional glances around the room, taking in the mess of books and papers, the crumpled jacket draped over the arm of a chair and the leaves of the unwatered cheese plant just beginning to yellow.

“I gather that you’re a local solicitor,” said Skinner. He spoke as if diagnosing an illness.

Harry nodded. He wasn’t acquainted with either of this pair; nothing odd about that in a large city, but why the black sergeant was glowering at him with scarcely concealed hostility was impossible to understand. Crusoe and Devlin didn’t have a bad name down at the Bridewell; they weren’t thought of as bent. Nevertheless, it wasn’t customary for the local force to pop into the homes of defence lawyers in the early hours to chat about their current caseload.

Skinner leaned forward. “I believe you are married to a Mrs. Elizabeth Devlin?”

Harry scarcely recognised the name. It must have been years since he last heard it. Anyway, it didn’t fit Liz. She had always been her own woman, never a possessed spouse. But he grunted assent.

“I am afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Devlin.”

Harry sensed that he was expected to respond, but the ache in his head blotted out rational thought. He glanced at Macbeth, but the dark face was now stripped of expression. Both men were studying him intently. After a short pause, Skinner coughed and spoke again.

“Mr. Devlin, I have to tell you that your wife died last night.”

Harry stared, first at one man, then at the other. Their features betrayed nothing. They were two detectives, watching him watching them. And waiting. Time passed. Seconds, minutes, hours? Harry neither knew nor cared. The silence made his head hurt more and his stomach began to churn.

Skinner cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry.”

Harry’s shoulders twitched. “But isn’t… I mean…” He couldn’t frame what he wanted to say. He had no idea what he wanted to say.

Softly and with no emphasis, the chief inspector said, “Your wife’s body was found last night. We are treating it as a suspicious death, Mr. Devlin.”

Harry was conscious of the detectives’ unwavering gaze. Vaguely aware that there were questions which he should be asking — though if Liz was dead, how could any answers matter? — he clutched like a shipwreck victim at the first which entered his head.

“How did she die?”

Skinner said in the same flat tone, “She was stabbed, Mr. Devlin.”

Stabbed. The word twisted in Harry’s guts like the blade of a knife. He shut his eyes. A hundred memories surged into his mind, like unwelcome intruders breaking down the door.

Liz on the night of their first meeting, at a fireworks display within a stone’s throw of here at the Albert Dock. She’d told him then how much she loved to see the river lit up by the exploding showers of colour, had laughed and introduced herself: Liz Wieczarek. He couldn’t pronounce her Polish surname and she had teased him about his ineptitude.

Their wedding day when she’d promised to honour and obey, while a trace of humour had sparkled in her eyes and he’d tried not to grin at the provocative touch of her fingernails running along the back of his hand while the vicar droned on about the nature of their sacrament.

The evening when his cross-examination skills had drawn out the admission that she was sleeping with Michael Coghlan. When Harry asked if she loved the man, she had spread her arms and simply said, “I think so. But even if I don’t, I do know that I want him.”

Eventually he again became aware of the unblinking scrutiny of the policemen. Their watchfulness as they assessed his reaction to their news made him think of physicists noting the outcome of a laboratory experiment.

“I realise that this must come as a shock to you,” said Skinner. He coughed once more. “Even so, I wonder if you could help us by answering a few questions.”

Harry felt as if every muscle in his body had melted. This is the same room, he told himself, in which you talked to her thirty hours ago. That’s where she sat. Through the door is the bed in which she slept. Yesterday morning she was alive and said thank you, for making her feel safe.

“Perhaps I could start, sir, by asking when you last saw your wife.”

Harry’s lips were dry. “Yesterday. Yesterday morning.”

The policemen exchanged glances. They had not expected that reply. Macbeth seemed to be breathing harder, although he continued to hold his tongue. His superior kept the next question casual.

“At what time?”

“Shortly after eight in the morning.”

“And where was that?”

“Here, in this flat.”

Skinner scratched his nose, perhaps to conceal his surprise. “She visited you here?”

“Yes. She stayed the night.”

The chief inspector frowned. Sitting opposite, his sergeant’s eyes began to gleam with that brooding hostility which Harry could identify, but not comprehend.

“Am I right in believing,” said Skinner, “that you were separated from your wife, but not divorced?”

Harry nodded.

“An amicable arrangement?” asked the policeman softly.

There was something here which Harry didn’t understand. A secret from which he was excluded. He fumbled for a cigarette and found an old pack of Player’s in his dressing gown pocket. His hands trembled as he lit up. Instinct urged him to choose his words with care. Cautiously, he said, “Is any separation amicable?”

“That’s a lawyer’s reply, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.” Skinner was curt. “Now — were you still on friendly terms or not?”

“I hadn’t seen her for two years. We weren’t on any terms at all.”

“Yet she called on you,” said Skinner, “and spent a whole night with you.”

“Not with me.”

Skinner’s eyebrows curved like question marks.

“I mean, we didn’t sleep together. She took the bedroom, there’s only one, you can see how tiny this place is. I had the sofa.”

“I see.”

“I doubt it,” said Harry. Anger began to surge inside him, providing an anaesthetic against pain and giving him strength to confront the puzzle. What in God’s name had happened? And what were they withholding from him?

“Tell me, then.”

Harry exhaled and with a jerky movement stubbed out the half-finished cigarette. “Liz was waiting for me the night before last. I arrived back at midnight. She’d talked the porter into letting her in.”

“Why had she come?”

“She’d started an affair with a married man. Unfortunately her other boyfriend found out. That frightened her.”

“Why?”

“The boyfriend is Mick Coghlan. Runs the gym in Brunner Street.” He moistened his lips. “Your people must have a cabinet full of files on him.”

Skinner inclined his head.

He already knows about Coghlan, thought Harry. Christ, what’s going on?

“You’re sure — I mean, you are definite that Liz is dead?” Harry looked quickly from one man to the other. “There hasn’t been — some sort of a mistake?”

He knew the answer before it came. For the first time the sickening realisation hit him that he had been here before. Eighteen years ago, when staying at a friend’s house, the adults had taken him to one side and told him his parents would not be coming home again. Harry had not believed it then, and it had taken weeks — no, months, surely? — for the truth finally to sink in. Trouble was, he had always had a secret faith that a mistake had been made, some bizarre error of identification. Forcing himself to admit that there had been no such mistake had been the hardest lesson of his life. Since then he had blotted out the memory of the breaking of the news. Until now.

His parents had died through the randomness of fate, hit when crossing the road by a fire engine which had burst through red traffic lights. The driver hadn’t been to blame, they had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And afterwards, he had felt lost, for there had been no scapegoat for him to hate, except for the never-to-be-identified hoaxer whose false alarm had sent the engine thundering to disaster that foggy November night, now so long ago.

Skinner’s voice jerked him back to the present. “I’m afraid there’s been no mistake, though I am going to have to ask you to provide formal identification of the body shortly.” Skinner fished inside his jacket and offered him another cigarette. Harry took it with an unsteady hand. “I am sure this must be difficult for you, sir, but would you be good enough to tell me what happened, from when Mrs. Devlin came to see you onwards?”

In a daze, Harry described his discovery of Liz in the flat on Wednesday night. He gave a fragmented account of their conversation and of how he had missed her on the phone during the following day and responded to her written summons by making his fruitless visit to the Ferry Club. He spoke dully; his mind was elsewhere as he tried in vain to reconcile himself to the fact of her death. When he mentioned her fear of Coghlan, he noticed the chief inspector exchange a glance with his sergeant, but the combined effect of hangover and shock made him uncaring about anything other than his loss of Liz. After he had finished talking, he bowed his head, as if to say: What does any of it matter now?

But Skinner wanted more. “This note that she left for you. May I see it?”

Harry tried to recall what he had done with it. “That’s… yes, I remember now. I burnt it. In a temper, I admit.”

“Why do that? It seems an extreme reaction.”

“I was angry, that’s all. She was taking it for granted that I would chase after her.”

“Yet that is precisely what you did,” pointed out Skinner. “Very well. Did you go to the Ferry Club right away?”

“Not immediately. I made myself something to eat first, read a little, then went out. I must have left here about twenty to eleven.”

“And did you bump into your wife on the way?”

“Of course not.”

“Talk to anyone whilst you were out?”

Harry hesitated, then told the detective about his conversation with Trisha. Skinner nodded, Macbeth made a note. Yet neither of them seemed interested.

“And you say you left at about twelve?”

“Give or take ten minutes. I can’t be precise. Look, do you mind-”

“You came straight home, you said. Anyone see you arrive back? Or depart?”

“Not as far as I can recall. The porter may have been on his rounds.”

Skinner appeared to reflect on Harry’s answers for a moment or two before saying, “What were your feelings towards your wife, Mr. Devlin?”

Harry scoured his mind for a suitable reply. But how could he give a sensible response to someone who had never met the woman? What were his feelings for Liz: love, hate, devotion, fury? All in equal measure at every hour of the day? He stretched out his arms helplessly.

“You’re speaking in the past tense,” he said at last, “I don’t think I can cope with that at the moment. Any minute now Liz will walk through the door and tell me this is all some gigantic joke. An out-of-season April fool.”

Skinner’s pale pink tongue appeared between narrow lips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Devlin, but I have to ask you this — did you kill your wife?”

Harry lit another cigarette. Although he avoided the detectives’ eyes, the prickling of his skin told him that they were weighing him up like ratcatchers examining their prey.

“Liz tempted me to murder from the hour when I met her, Chief Inspector. She was impatient and impulsive and infuriating. I never came across a woman who could goad me with such ease. I won’t pretend she didn’t sometimes drive me crazy with rage. But I’d sooner lose an arm than cause her a moment’s misery. If you’re scratching round for a culprit, count me out.”

Macbeth said, “Mind if I look round?” After his superior’s low-key questioning, the sound of the black detective’s voice came as a shock. The accent was deepest Kirby, the tone unambiguously insolent. Even before Harry could reply, the young policeman was on his feet, prowling about the room, his whole body taut with expectation. Harry noticed that he touched nothing.

“What were you wearing last night?” As an afterthought, Macbeth tossed in a “sir” that added to the insult.

Trying to steady his voice, Harry described his clothes and, turning to Skinner, asked, “Where was she found?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

Unsubtle, thought Harry. “No, Chief Inspector.”

“One of our patrolmen discovered the body on his rounds. In Leeming Street, at the bottom of an alleyway running down by the tyre centre, Albiston’s.”

A mean place for anyone to die. A liver-rotted wino would be ashamed to finish up there. For an instant Harry thought he was going to vomit. Only with a heart-straining effort of will was he able to conquer the feeling of nausea.

“When was she killed?” he asked.

Skinner shook his head. “Too soon for us to say, sir.”

And even if you could, you’d keep that card up your sleeve, thought Harry. He noticed Macbeth push open the bedroom door and step inside, but made no objection. Instead, he pressed for more information and the chief inspector painted in a few background details.

There was, said Skinner sombrely, no indication of a sexual motive for the attack, although pending the post mortem it was too early to draw a firm conclusion. The murder weapon had been a Stanley knife, of the kind sold in hardware shops on every street corner. So far it had not been found. Liz’s handbag had been stolen, but picked up two streets away. No money or credit cards — just the empty wallet — but the driving licence had identified her. Ironic, as she never cared to drive; being chauffeured was much more in her line.

Slowly, Harry said, “Presumably it was some kind of street crime? A mugging gone wrong.”

“We can’t rule out any possibility at this stage.” Skinner’s melancholic face offered no hint as to whether he considered it likely or not. Yet Harry’s years in the law had taught him anything could happen in this city. A kid desperate for money to feed his taste for heroin perhaps, setting on a woman alone, messing up a bag snatch, then grabbing for his knife in a spasm of panic.

“As I mentioned, sir,” continued Skinner, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to accompany my sergeant to the mortuary.”

Before Harry could speak, Macbeth strode out of the bedroom, barely able to contain a savage smirk of triumph. To his superior he said, “A couple of suitcases in there, sir. Also a shopping bag full of women’s things. The luggage is marked with Mrs. Devlin’s name.”

“You failed to tell me about that, Mr. Devlin.”

Harry shrugged. “I forgot, that’s all.”

“Really, sir?” The corners of Skinner’s mouth seemed to turn even further down than before.

It took Harry’s last reserves of self-discipline for him to respond evenly. “Liz dumped them there yesterday when I was out. I think I told you, my neighbour exchanged a word with her in the early evening.”

“If you don’t object, sir, we’ll have to carry out a search of your flat. A routine precaution, I’m sure a man with your background will understand.”

Harry nodded, as for the first time this morning his mind began to work. From the moment they’d learned Liz had spent Wednesday night here, he’d been in the frame. Skinner’s attitude made it clear that his time at the Ferry, his speaking to Trisha, gave him no alibi. Liz must have been killed earlier in the evening. If it was much later, the police wouldn’t have arrived so quickly. And if he objected to their making a full search, a warrant would materialise like an ace from a conjuror’s palm.

“Go ahead, Chief Inspector.” He hoped he sounded more relaxed than he felt.

Skinner nodded and Macbeth walked over to the door. As he got up to leave, Harry had to choke a bitter laugh in his throat as a thought sprang into his mind. Never mind about a mugging — hadn’t Liz in this very room, not forty-eight hours earlier, expressed her dread of meeting her death at Mick Coghlan’s hands? And he had dismissed it as an absurd flight of fancy. Perhaps to be suspected of murder was the start of his punishment for having disbelieved her.