All the Lonely People (10 page)

“You could say that.”

She looked straight at him. “I understand how it feels, Harry. You see, my own husband . . .”

The story spilled out with no encouragement from him. Nothing out of the ordinary. She had been married for fifteen years to a Lothario who flitted from job to job and business to business. Finally, he had set up a driving school and inside six months he'd sped off with one of his pupils. Brenda said that until then she had always regarded divorced women as failures; possibly that was right and she had failed with Les.

“One in three,” interrupted Harry. He'd finished the bottle whilst she had been talking. “A third of all marriages end up in the divorce court. Not counting all those where the couple soldier on against their better judgment, because of the kids or habit or both. You can't apportion blame.”

“I'd be glad to think so. Sometimes late at night, though, when I sit here listening to the radio or squinting at the television, I can convince myself I'm the only woman in the world who's on her own.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. Harry thought: Perhaps fear of loneliness is even worse than the thing itself. This woman's attractive enough, she could find someone if she put her mind to it.

Brenda stood up and yawned. “Forgive me. I'm tired and yet I suffer from sleepless nights. Doesn't add up, does it?”

He rose too. “Terrific meal, Brenda. Very kind. Suppose I ought to be making tracks now.”

She moved towards him. Her perfume was just perceptible, a discreet fragrance, different from the exotic muck which Liz used to daub on herself. “Stay longer if you can. Don't feel you have to go on my account.” She smiled, showing even white teeth. “It's good to have someone to talk to. Although I'm afraid I've done all of the talking.”

“I've enjoyed it as well.” He could feel her warm breath on his cheek. Stepping back,
he said, “I must go. Thanks again.”

At the door, she said, “Thank you for coming. We must do this more often. Cooking for two is much more fun than for one.” She closed her eyes and inclined her face in his direction. But he didn't want to kiss her; it would have seemed a betrayal, although of whom or of what he wasn't sure.

“Goodnight,” he said softly.

As he locked his front door and settled down inside, he thought about the mixed emotions on her face as she had turned away and for a moment he experienced an unexpected pang of regret that he had rejected her invitation to stay.

Chapter Eleven

Next morning he rang police headquarters and asked to be put through to Skinner, meeting the switchboard girl's prevarication with the persistence born of years in the legal profession. After a full five minutes' delay, the Chief Inspector came on to the line. He sounded full of cold.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Devlin?”

“Found Coghlan yet?” Better not let him know that Ken Cafferty had already broken the news.

“Mr. Coghlan is in London at present. He is assisting our colleagues in the Met, yes.” Skinner sneezed. “Meanwhile, our enquiries are continuing.”

“When are you going to charge him?”

With an obvious effort at patience, Skinner said, “As you are well aware, Mr. Devlin, there's a limit to what I can . . .”

“Christ, Chief Inspector, the man killed my wife! I want to know.”

Skinner said bleakly, “I've warned you before about these wild allegations, Mr. Devlin. You're under stress, I appreciate that, but you know better than most about being innocent until proved guilty. People in your line of business make a few bob out of that old principle, don't they? Well, for your information, we have no specific reason to believe that Mr. Coghlan was concerned in your wife's death and it is highly likely he will be returning home in the course of the next few hours. A free man.”

“But . . .”

“And that, I'm afraid, is all that I can say at this juncture. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a great deal of work to do. Rest assured, I shall contact you when I have something to say.”

Skinner rang off, leaving Harry sick with dismay. What story had Coghlan been weaving? Why hadn't he been brought back to the local force for interrogation? By now, the questions that had arisen in respect of Liz's murder should have been finding answers. Instead, they were multiplying. A thought sprang into his mind: in a case such as this, could there be any justification for taking the law into one's own hands, if the system proved powerless to ensnare the man concerned? Harry had seen too many culprits go free - had participated sometimes in ensuring that they went free - to have too much faith that Coghlan would eventually be brought to book. Uneasily, he forced himself to think of other things.

He spent a tedious hour trying to restore order to his flat. Pulling an old tie into the back of a drawer, he chanced upon the album in which he and Liz had kept their wedding photographs. Souvenirs to look back on in years to come, they had agreed at the time. But there hadn't been many years to come and Liz had not claimed the pictures when she had left to start another life. He flipped through the book and its collection of memories. At the altar, signing the register, in the doorway of the church With Jim, his best man, with Maggie and Derek and Matt too. That reminded him. Checking his watch, he found that it was time to go. He shoved the wedding album back in the drawer. Sometime he must have a clear-out. But not today.

Outside, the red bricks of the reclaimed dock warehouses basked in the brightness of a February sun. The city streets were quiet as he walked briskly to the Freak Shop, casting his mind back to his first encounter with the little man, a month or so before that wedding day. Mischievous Liz hadn't revealed in advance that Matt was a dwarf, having taken care merely to describe him as a long-time friend of the family. Characteristically, she had relished Harry's attempt to conceal his bewilderment when introductions were made. Matt Barley was perfectly proportioned, but only forty-five inches tall. He had a mop of fair hair and a vice-like handshake. There was no need to indulge in excessive tact about his height; Matt joked about it often - so often that Harry came to realise that for Matt, humour was a shield, used to help him compete on equal terms with a world of tall people.

Yet Matt had no need to feel inadequate. He had a sharp brain and a flair for making a fool out of anyone crass enough to equate a lack of size with a lack of nous. From his father, an equally diminutive sales manager in the motor trade, he had inherited an entrepreneurial zest that had enabled him to start a market stall flogging Beatles memorabilia of doubtful provenance before setting up the Freak Shop. There was more than a trace of self-mockery in the name he gave to the shop which he had transformed into a cross between a fancy dress hire business and a pornographer's discount store. Liz had enjoyed working there. It suited her unshockable style.

The shop was protected by steel shutters and conspicuous burglar alarms. Harry rang the bell and heard bolts being slammed back before Matt's head appeared round door.

“Come in.”

The silent, unlit shop seemed as eerie as a waxworks in a Hammer horror movie. To one side was a counter covered with tricks, toys and masks which caricatured people in the public eye, along the other ran a rail from which were suspended clowns' suits, Elizabethan dress and a score more examples of the costumier's art. Matt led the way past a sign which said private - NO RIFF-RAFF, through a bamboo curtain and into a sparsely furnished back room. On a table in the corner was a tattered paperback of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
together with an opened bottle of Lambrusco and a paper cup. In one corner was a battered old Rock-Ola jukebox that Matt had been tinkering with for as long as Harry could remember. The walls were adorned with a dozen posters showing Matt's hero, John Lennon, at different stages of his career from the Cavern Club days to the self-indulgence of the seventies.

Mall swept a pile of Swedish magazines off a rattan chair and waved Harry into it.

“Tea, coffee? Beer, wine? Tequila, Bloody Mary? Cannabis, cocaine?”

Harry grinned. “Coffee's fine.”

As Matt bustled, they talked of days gone by. Friday night at the Dock Brief or the Drum, Saturday afternoons spent watching soccer at Anfield or Goodison, whilst Liz went round to see Maggie or Dame. When the coffee was made, Matt perched on another chair opposite Harry. His face was suddenly screwed up with pain.

“This can't be happening, you know, Harry. I can almost believe she's here with us in this room, checking her make-up in the mirror and complaining about our grubbier customers.” He switched to the past tense. “She had a genius for making me laugh, squeezing me out of a bad mood. Like I told you when we met in the pub the other week she turned up out of the blue just before Christmas. I was glad to take her back. You know how it hurt me when she took that job with Yes.”

Harry remembered. During their marriage, she'd met at a party the director of a fashion concept retailer and he'd offered her the chance to run a store in the Cavern Walks. She'd packed that in at the time she met Coghlan; he was apparently the sort of man who felt his masculinity threatened if the woman in his life had a full-time job.

“She was beginning to find the life of luxury a bore?”

“Suppose so. Liz never talked much about the creep she was living with and I seldom asked. I gathered that he didn't care for her coming back here, but she'd made up her mind and once that happened she was an irresistible force. Even where Mick Coghlan was concerned.”

“Any idea why she didn't simply walk out?”

Matt gave him a pitying look. “You think I didn't suggest it? There was a day when she came in with a mark over her right eye. He'd hit her, I knew, although she denied it. But she simply said she'd make any move in her own good time and I knew her better than to act like a nanny.”

Harry said tightly, “So the bastard did beat her?”

“Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting Liz was lilywhite. Matter of fact, she said she'd thrown a lamp at the guy and cut him across the face. A stormy relationship, you might say.”

Harry bit his lip. Never once had he laid a finger on Liz during their marriage, yet come to think of it, she had once taunted him with that, while hurling pots and pans around in the kitchen after a row over something of no importance. “You never lose your temper!” she had shouted, “That's no way to behave, bottling things up. You ought to let yourself go once in a while. Like other men. Like me.”

Matt said, “Not as if she had no one to turn to. There was Dame. Maggie, possibly, though the two of them had drifted apart. Or even me.” He bowed his head. “I offered to let her stay at my place, anytime she needed to escape. But she never took me up.”

Harry wondered why she had not gone to Matt, rather than himself, on Wednesday night. He said, “She was involved with someone new.”

The little man compressed his lips. “I tumbled to that. There were signs. She'd spend half the day having muttered conversations on the telephone, pop out for a few minutes and be gone for an hour. Her mind wasn't on the shop this time around, I soon found that out. Anyway, she told me a week ago that she was packing the job in. The last few days, she didn't even come in to work. I didn't make a fuss. She was too busy with her Prince Charming, I suppose.”

“Who was he, Matt?”

“She didn't say. And I didn't ask. Like I said before, it was all a case of in her own good time. I was willing to lend an ear if she wanted to talk, but there was no point in trying to discuss anything before she was ready. She wouldn't take any notice of me.”

“Did she strike you as frightened?”

Matt considered. “On edge, yes. Jumpy, at times. But frightened - I dunno. I suppose the truth I don't want to face is that I was no longer close enough to her to tell.”

“Yet she came back to work here, that signifies something.”

“Does it?” His tone became unexpectedly sombre. “Dunno. It was almost as if - she had some ulterior motive. The job seemed like a means to an end as far as Liz was concerned.”

Harry said suddenly, “Did you know she was pregnant?”

The question seemed to catch Matt off balance. He paled and said hastily, “Yes, yes, the police told me. First I heard of it.”

“So you don't know who the father was?”

Frowning, Matt replied, “No, of course not, how could I?”

“What else did the police have to say?”

Slowly, the little man said, “When I heard that she was dead, I thought it must be a sex crime. They happen every day - though never, you expect, to someone you know. Yet the police seemed too keen to dig up the details of her life, as if they imagined there might be some clue to the thing buried in her past. Not as though she was simply another crime statistic. They wanted the dope on you, for instance.”

Harry felt his cheeks burning. “Yes?”

“And Coghlan, too, of course. How did she feel towards the two of you? Did any friends call on her here? Did she have any enemies?” For an instant, the old humorous twist turned up the corners of his mouth. “I wasn't much help, I'm afraid, but I did make it clear that you at least were kind to animals and good with small children. Poor but honest, at any rate in comparison to every other lawyer I've ever met.” He paused. “They asked who was to blame for your breaking up.”

“And?”

“Drop the worried look, I said she was an idiot. When they suggested you might have harboured a grudge, I said no. I'm sure you must have kept hoping she'd come back to you once she'd flushed Coghlan out of her system.” He lowered his voice. “Believe it or not, I envied you. Despite the way she messed you around, at least you had the memories. There was a time when she cared for you.”

“You too, Matt.”

To his surprise, the little man responded furiously. “Are you kidding? I was a convenience to Liz, nothing more. Christ, I'm only a midget. Someone to pat on the head from time to time, that's all.”

For a minute, Harry was silent. Matt had been a volatile character for as long as he had known him, but this fierceness was unexpected. A nervous reaction to the death of a friend whom he had known for most of his life, or did it signify something more? In the end Harry collected the coffee jug and poured them both a second cup. After taking a sip of the muddy brown liquid, he said, “I think Liz was murdered by Mick Coghlan.”

“What makes you say that?”

Harry explained about Liz's nocturnal visit and the fear that she had described. The anger rose within him as he recounted his conversation with Skinner a couple of hours earlier. “I swear to you, Matt, the man who killed her isn't going to get away with it.”

Matt stared at him. “What can you do?”

“Leave that to me. At present, I'm trying to put the piece together. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you and Dame.”

“That reminds me.” Matt brightened a little. “A mutual friend called in yesterday, after we spoke. A girl who knew Dame from her time at the Playhouse. Lovely brunette, she wanted a Whore of Babylon's outfit for this party up at the University. Anyway, she told me that Dame's currently starring in the lunchtime show at Franco's in Rumford Place. If you move yourself, you might catch her now.”

“What sort of show?”

“That I leave to your fertile imagination. But you know Dame.”

“On a Sunday?”

“So she said.”

Harry shook his head. “What's the world coming to?”

The two of them walked towards the front door, exchanging commonplace conversation before Harry said, “You know, I came round here on Thursday, when I was trying to make contact with Liz. The place was shut up in the afternoon. It's not an early closing day for you, is it?”

The little man seemed discomfited. “No, not Thursday. I was out.” He looked at the ground and said again, “Just out.”