I Remember You

Chapter Two

Two hours later Harry was standing on the doorstep of a club listed in the phone book as the Dangerous Liaison, but known to everyone in Liverpool as the Danger. Finbar had persuaded him to come here against his better judgement. Sometimes he felt as if he spent his entire life going against his better judgement.

‘It’s on your way home,’ Finbar had insisted while hailing a taxi.

‘Not unless the cabbie’s got less sense of direction than a roulette ball.’

‘C’mon! I owe you a drink from earlier this evening.’

‘Forget it.’ Knowing it was a mistake to ask, but unable to resist, Harry added, ‘Anyway, why do you want to call at a dive like the Danger?’

‘Listen, it’s just on the off-chance. I happened to mention to the girl I saw this morning that I’d be at the Danger tonight. It’s the first place that sprang to mind. She’s hooked herself up with another feller now, so ten to one she won’t be able to make it anyway. But let’s give it a try, eh?’

Harry had known Finbar for only a few months, but he’d soon learned that his client never took ‘no’ for an answer. After five years of separation from his wife and persistent demands for a divorce, Finbar was at last about to get his own way. Sinead Rogan, a strong Catholic, had withheld her consent for as long as the law allowed. Now she had no choice, she had evidently resolved to take him for every penny he had. Harry could understand her bitterness. For Finbar, adultery was a hobby — a habit, almost — rather than a vice or guilty secret. He had no more conscience than a one-armed bandit. Yet Harry could not help liking the man. He was a good companion; more than an acquaintance, if not quite a firm friend.

‘Have you no shame?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.

Finbar chuckled. Earlier, he’d admitted to Gilfillan that his studio was handsomely insured, almost daring the policeman to make of that what he would. He had more reason to celebrate, it seemed, than to mourn.

Harry climbed with resignation into the back seat of the cab. ‘And what about Melissa? You’ve only been going out with her a matter of weeks.’

‘What the eyes don’t see.’

Finbar leaned forward to tell the driver his destination, then glanced back over his shoulder and gave a devilish wink. Harry found it easy at that moment to imagine his client with cloven hooves and forked tail.

‘Tell you something, Harry — I could murder a pint.’

‘One of these days you’ll end up murdered yourself.’

‘If so, I wouldn’t back your mate Gilfillan to track the culprit down. Jases, I feel like I’ve been through the third degree. And I’m the blessed victim!’

The police questioning had continued long after the fire was finally doused. Harry could read Gilfillan’s mind. Finbar had probably tattooed half the inmates in Walton Jail in his time; it did not take too much prejudice to guess that a man who decorated villains’ flesh might have made ugly enemies over the years. Yet Finbar had been adamant; no one had threatened him or sworn revenge. He couldn’t think who might have wanted to burn down his studio. The fire, he maintained, must have been started by youngsters careless of the identity of the people whose property they sought to destroy.

Harry could see Gilfillan didn’t believe what he was being told. But Finbar’s complex love life had no doubt schooled him in the art of telling careful lies. If he had guessed who was responsible for the arson, he was keeping it to himself and no amount of nagging would make him say more than he wished. Harry wondered if a drop more alcohol might loosen his client’s tongue. In any case, he always found Finbar’s company exhilarating. With him around, there was always the chance that something extraordinary would happen; perhaps that was the secret of his charm. So when the taxi arrived at the Danger, Harry found himself clambering out as well.

The club occupied the cellar of a redundant mariners’ hostel on the waterfront. The place looked as though it had been punished by the Luftwaffe in the Blitz and not repaired since. On the door was a giant whom Finbar introduced as Mad Max and whose handshake almost fractured Harry’s arm.

‘Had a lady asking after me tonight?’

‘No lady would ever ask after you, Finbar,’ grunted the giant.

‘Max’s brother owns this dive,’ Finbar said, waving Harry down a narrow wooden staircase. ‘They have to use him as a bouncer because he wouldn’t fit anywhere inside.’

Harry could believe it. The Danger earned its name, if only because it transgressed every health and safety rule in the statute book. At the bottom of the stairs he and his client plunged into a mass of bodies wedged together between wooden uprights which propped up the low ceiling with an unnerving lack of conviction. Shadowy outlines of damp marks could be seen through the distemper someone had splashed haphazardly on the walls. There seemed to be more smoke than in Williamson Lane at the height of the blaze and the tuneless thud that was supposedly music made Harry’s ears feel as though they were about to burst.

Whilst Finbar disappeared in search of drinks, Harry fought through the crush. A jostling girl spilt vodka and lime over his arm and legs and swore with a fluency that would have made a docker gape. In the disco, teenagers in tawdry clothes writhed as if afflicted by disease, their lips moving to form the words of meaningless lyrics, their bleary eyes staring unfocused. In one corner, a leather-clad lad had his hand up the skirt of a high-heeled brunette with a schoolgirl’s figure and a harridan’s smile. In another, a fat boy was being sick on matting strewn over the concrete floor.

Finbar returned and thrust a pint pot into his hand. Harry downed the beer in record time and gestured towards the exit. He had to shout to make himself heard.

‘Did you find her?’

Finbar shook his head. ‘Not my lucky night!’ he bellowed in reply. He finished his drink and followed Harry back up the stairs. At the top, Mad Max was cuddling a coquettish blonde; Harry doubted whether her rib-cage would survive the experience.

Outside again, he gulped in a lungful of air. For all that it was tainted by factory dust and car exhaust fumes, in comparison to the atmosphere in the Danger it had the tang of a Highland breeze.

‘Thank God for that! At last I’ve realised I’m past it.’

Finbar laughed. ‘It’s all in the mind. And compared to one or two places I know in Dublin, the Danger is as sober as a confessional.’

‘You’re welcome to them. Why did I let that taxi go?’

‘You’re not so far from home. Since I’ve been stood up, let’s stroll by the riverside and I’ll pick up a cab when you say goodbye at Empire Dock.’

For a while neither of them spoke as they followed the roadside path parallel to the Mersey. The temperature had dropped to freezing point, but at least the cold sharpened Harry’s thoughts. He decided to seek again the answer to the question that bothered him.

‘Are you sure you have no idea who may have started the fire?’

‘Didn’t I tell your policeman friend exactly that?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Don’t say you’re pointing the finger too! When I told him about the insurance, I could see him sizing up my wrists for handcuffs.’

‘He was only doing his job.’

‘Face it,’ said Finbar with sorrowful good humour, ‘so far as Gilfillan is concerned, I’m uniquely qualified for a life of crime. I’m not only an Irishman, but a tattooist as well. With the busies, old prejudices die hard. They don’t understand the body is a canvas and…’

‘And you’re a picture of innocence. Okay, okay, spare me the propaganda.’

‘All right, mate, don’t get the needle!’

Harry grinned. In full flow, Finbar was a formidable advocate of the tattooist’s art; the Bar’s loss was the saloon bar’s gain. Harry had heard not once but a dozen times that illustrated skin is like a personal diary, as fitting for a businessman as for a fairground freak.

Three huge buildings loomed ahead of them: the Liver, the Cunard and the Port of Liverpool — monuments to the city’s maritime traditions and its glorious past. The sight of the Pierhead, whether by day or night, always stirred Harry. For all its faults, he loved his home town. There was too much squalor for it to be a comfortable place, yet he relished the architectural reminders of the time when this had been the Empire’s second city. For him, Liverpool and its people remained intensely and defiantly alive.

Finbar paused and sighed as he pointed at the floodlit Liver Building.

‘See? When I first arrived here on the ferry as a kid, my ma lifted me up to look at the lights. My first sight of England. I’ve never forgotten it.’

A faraway expression misted his eyes. He gestured back in the direction from which they had come, towards Princes Dock. ‘We used to land over there. The boats were packed with the Irish, sailing here for a weekend or a lifetime.’

As Harry’s forebears had done, a hundred and fifty years ago, in the wake of the potato famine. He was the last of the line, knowing nothing of his ancestors, not sharing their faith, which the Devlin family like so many others had lost through the passage of time. Yet still he felt an affinity with those Irish people who had crossed the sea in search of a new start. Perhaps it helped to account for his liking of Finbar.

But Finbar was quick to destroy the romantic impression he had conjured up. ‘I can see them now. Fellers lying on the floor in the toilet, still trying to sing along with the ceilidh music playing everywhere. Sad-faced women, travelling so they could have an abortion — I remember watching them throw up over the side of the boat.’

He stopped and stared out into the night. ‘And to think that Eileen might still be alive…’

‘Eileen?’

‘A sweet girl I used to know. Ah, Harry, if only we could unmake the past!’

Both men became quiet, lost in their own visions of what might have been. Eventually Finbar said, ‘We don’t stop dreaming, you know, us Irish. When I made the trip for the last time, I still had the notion that one day I might return to Dublin.’

‘And will you?’

‘Are you serious? The ferry doesn’t even sail from Liverpool any more!’

A lone black cab came into view and Harry flagged it down, but shook his head when Finbar suggested he jump in for the short journey to his flat in Empire Dock.

‘Thanks, but I’ve walked this far, I may as well keep on. Clear my head. Tell Melissa I may see her at Radio Liverpool tomorrow. And — watch yourself.’

‘Stop fretting. A gang of kids torched the place, depend upon it. It was nothing personal.’

All the way home, Harry juggled the possibilities. Finbar’s wry admission to the police about the number of his enemies had probably not been much exaggerated. He was a man who might easily drive others to fury — but arson? Perhaps Finbar was right after all.

He was glad to reach the sanctuary of his flat. The Empire Dock building was a waterfront warehouse, part of a complex transformed in recent years from dereliction into housing and leisure facilities. His neighbour was a nocturnal saxophonist, but the old walls were so thick that Harry never heard a note. Passing the jazz player’s front door, he remembered the previous occupant, a lonely woman with whom he had shared a brief relationship in the aftermath of his wife’s death. Shaking his head, he hurried on.

Alone in his flat, he lay on the bed fully clothed, too exhausted to undress. Yet now he had the chance to rest, sleep stubbornly refused to come. He could still see the fire’s flames and smell the suffocating smoke and the cacophony from the Danger continued to pound in his ears.

At last darkness gave way to misty morning. Yawning, he set off for the magistrates’ court and his daily struggle to portray wrong as right — or at least as not deserving of a custodial sentence. Five guilty pleas and a minor crimewave of offences taken into consideration made him wish that his clients displayed as much ingenuity in escaping the clutches of the law as they expected him to show in finding plausible mitigating circumstances. He returned to his firm’s office in a semi-daze, his mind a blank, his imagination sucked dry.

Arriving at Fenwick Court, he had a vague impression that something was missing. Picking a path through the rubble left by a gang of navvies who were renovating the block on the opposite side of the courtyard, he tried to fathom what it was. The moment he pushed open the door which led into reception at New Commodities House, an electric drill started to scream and he remembered. Sometimes he suspected they waited for his return before resuming work.

The throbbing in his head began again. It was as bad as being back in the Danger.

‘Shit!’

He hadn’t meant to speak out loud. In so doing he startled a young woman, whom he had not at first noticed, sitting in the corner reading a tattered copy of Exchange Contracts. She glanced up at him in bewilderment.

In the shabby waiting room, with its threadbare carpet and faded posters extolling the virtues of legal aid, she seemed as out of place as an orchid in a nettle patch. The subtle perfume; the Enny handbag; the sheepskin jacket; all hinted at an affluence rare among his firm’s clientele. Her heart-shaped face was framed by shoulder-length dark hair and she had painted her fingernails the colour of blood.

Harry gasped, feeling a sense of shock verging on disbelief. It was not due simply to the woman’s glamorous looks, but because for an instant he thought he was seeing a ghost.