All the Lonely People

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.

Maggie took his hand in hers and stepped back. “It’s been a long time.”

“Too long.” He returned the pressure of her hand. “You’re more attractive then ever.” It wasn’t an appropriate comment to make on this occasion, but he meant it and had never quite mastered the lawyer’s knack of not saying what came immediately into his head. Maggie had never matched Liz for glamour, nor had she attempted to, but her small, up-turned face had a natural charm that the dismay in her grey eyes could not diminish.

“Shall we go inside?”

The Traders’ might be only three-quarters of a mile distant from the Ferry Club, but it was a world apart. A uniformed porter whose name was Alfred and who had been there for upwards of twenty years, saluted and held a door open for them. He greeted Harry by name, as if his last visit had been the previous day rather than in the height of the summer. To walk through the hallway was to step back in time. Heavy, gilt-framed portraits of past presidents of the club lined the walls; stern, long-dead shipping magnates and cotton dealers, many of them, men who had prospered during Liverpool’s years of greatness. Extravagant crystal chandeliers hung above their heads and in an alcove a cabinet displayed ivory ware and exotic sailing ships in bottles, trophies of a bygone age. Harry signed his sister-in-law into the visitors’ book and they allowed a uniformed porter to take their coats.

“The Trafalgar Room, sir?” It was the politest reminder that the presence of ladies was not tolerated in the members’ private dining room.

“Please.” Harry allowed the man to shepherd them into the guest lounge. More oak panelling, more maritime artefacts, few people and none of them other than members of staff awake.

Harry whispered to his sister-in-law, “Do you know, even the cockroaches in the kitchen have to wear a jacket and tie?”

A trace of a smile eased the strain on Maggie’s face as they helped themselves from the salad bar. For a couple of minutes they picked at their food in silence before she put down her knife and fork and said in a voice that quavered slightly, “They asked me to identify the body. I had only been back in the house a few minutes when you called.”

Harry glanced at her sharply. “Me too.”

“God, why put both of us through it? Surely one identification is enough?”

Harry didn’t answer directly, but the explanation was obvious. Skinner was covering his back. It wouldn’t do to have to call for identification evidence at a murder trial from the man accused of the crime. He shivered. Merely for the thought to have crossed the policeman’s mind was disturbing.

“What did they tell you?”

“Not much.” She gave him a brief account of her visit from the police. No new facts, but they had questioned her closely about the men in Liz’s life. Coghlan. Harry. And the latest lover.

“Who is he, Maggie?”

Spreading out her arms, she said, “I honestly have no idea.”

“She must have told you something about him.”

“Less than you might imagine. Don’t forget, we’d gone our separate ways.”

True enough. Maggie had followed an orthodox path. Secretarial college as a prelude to five years working for a firm of accountants. Marriage to the boss six months before he became a partner and could point to his name on the notepaper. Two kids and a plush detached house overlooking the sea. An upwardly mobile existence with money no object. It lacked the glamour for which Liz yearned, but he found himself wondering whether all her scathing comments about Derek Edge and her sister’s dinner party lifestyle might in truth have been a cover for the envy that she felt.

“Didn’t she confide in you at all?”

Maggie shook her head. “Not where men were concerned. She was a tease, Harry, you know that better than anyone. She loved to hint and tantalise. Even as a kid sister, she always made a parade of keeping secrets. Anything to be a touch out of the ordinary or to convey an aura of mystery. She would have you believing her latest feller was a member of the aristocracy, but he’d always turn out to be an office boy with the gift of the gab.” She laid down her knife and fork. “Poor Liz. She thought she knew everything there was to know about men, when all the time she didn’t have a clue. You were the only worthwhile one of the lot. She had the sense to catch you and then she threw it away. Crazy.”

“So what did she say about her latest conquest?”

“He was rich and handsome, but of course. Then, so were you at one time of day — you might not have been aware. The money that you were going to make out of the law game… there was no end to it. You should have been Lord Chief Justice by now. Anyway, I asked if he was married and she said yes. She anticipated my disapproval. I think she liked to try to provoke me.”

“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.