All the Lonely People (13 page)

The food store served the city's business community, but Fortnum and Mason's it wasn't. Busy during the lunch hour, it was quiet at other times and now deserted save for a couple of assistants in drab brown overalls. They were languidly shifting tins from one shelf to another. He walked up to them and touched the shorter girl on the arm. She spun round, her squirrel-features wrinkled in enquiry.

“Gillian?”

Evidently recognising him, she flushed. He was an occasional customer here and the printing of his photograph in Friday's paper would have put his identity beyond doubt. Apprehensively, she said, “Yeah?”

Harry beckoned and, unwillingly, she approached. When he was satisfied that the other assistant was out of earshot, he said quietly, “Lucy told me you know a man who used to be involved with my wife.”

“Women's gossip,” she said. “That's all. She shouldn't have said nothing.”

“Who is he, this Rourke?”

Lowering her voice to a whisper, she nevertheless managed to pack violence into her reply, “He's a shit, that's what he is.”

“Tell me more.”

“He was shacked up with our Jane for the best part of eighteen months. They had a kid, poor little mite, he treated it rotten.”

He stepped over an abandoned wire basket to get closer to her. “Where does your step-sister live?”

Vigorously, the girl shook her head. “I don't want her messed about. She's had a lousy time, she's on her own now after that bugger left her. I shouldn't have said anything to your secretary, should've kept me gob shut.”

Harry gripped her by the wrist. “Gillian, the man who stabbed my wife is still on the loose. I want to find him. Rourke's a new name to me. I'm not saying he was involved, but he may be able to help, point me in the right direction.”

“You'll be lucky,” she said, trying to wriggle free. “Anyway, Christ knows where he is.”

“Then it's Jane I'll have to see. Tell me where.”

“Let go,” she hissed, “you're hurting.”

He glanced across to where the other assistant was sweeping the floor aimlessly, displaying no interest in either the job or her colleague's conversation. Then he realised that the girl was tuned into a personal stereo; her eyes had a faraway look and her lips moved noiselessly to the words of some pop song. Suddenly releasing Gillian, he said, “Please, where do I go?”

The squirrel-faced woman sighed and came to a decision. On a discarded sell-by sticker she wrote in an unformed hand an address in South Liverpool. Harry knew the place as a notorious example of urban blight; these days architects held conferences to discuss how to avoid repeating the design mistakes which had created ghettoes like the Keir Hardie Estate. When he thanked her, Gillian said, “Jane has no idea where he's slunk off to. Good riddance, I say. But don't give her any hassle - okay? She's suffered enough already.”

Harry promised. There was no more to be gleaned here and he returned to the office. Halting by the door of the glassed-in cubby-hole where Lucy did her typing, he said he expected to be out for the rest of the afternoon.

She followed him to his room, ostensibly to finish the day's filing, but closed the door immediately behind her. “Discover anything?” she asked in a conspiratorial undertone.

“The more I learn, the less I know.”

“You're like a child picking at a sore tooth, Harry. But I hope you find what you're looking for.”

He pointed to today's calendar adage:
Persistence is the mother of miracles.
“If only I believed it,” he said.

Chapter Fifteen

Aneurin Bevan Heights - the Nye, locals called it - was a thirteen-storey carbuncle in concrete. Had it housed prisoners, they would have mutinied long ago. Harry walked towards it from the main road. After leaving Beardshall's, he had gone home to change into jeans, an old zip-front jacket and dirty plimsolls before jumping on to a bus at the Pierhead. It wouldn't be wise to turn up in this part of inner city Liverpool dressed in a pinstripe suit, however shiny at the elbows, and driving an unstolen car on which he wasn't anxious to have to claim the insurance.

The block of flats loomed above a landscape of despair. Shops that, though open for trade, had their windows boarded or barred. The busiest were the second-hand stores with their black and white signboards proclaiming free social security estimates given. Unlettable maisonettes straggled along the side of streets that lacked pavements. Bent Lowry-women, bare-legged despite the cold, gathered in small nattering groups. You would only come here for a compelling reason, or if you had nowhere else to go. Harry took a short cut through a patch of waste ground, glancing over his shoulder when shouts of glee attracted his attention. A gang of boys was throwing pebbles at the bus as it started up again. Harry's feet squelched through tufts of muddy grass, treading from time to time on rusted cans and empty packets of condoms. He passed a Ford Cortina, wrecked and burnt out, probably by kids too young to be prosecuted even if they were caught.

He reached the quadrangle of dusty asphalt which passed for a communal garden at the foot of the Heights. Looking up, the building appeared to reach to the heavens, but when he walked through the double doors with their cracked panes, he realised that he was stepping into an earthly hell. Someone had run riot with an aerosol paint spray, extolling in fuzzy blue the virtues of Everton Football Club. Both lifts were out of order. Climbing the stairs quickly, he tried to ignore the stench of urine that hung in the air. On every landing windows were broken, with unswept fragments of glass still scattered on threadbare carpet tiles. Once or twice he saw discarded scraps of silver paper and polythene bags, the tell-tale spoor of heroin addicts and glue sniffers. His breath was coming in jerky gasps by the time that he reached the ninth floor. As he walked down the corridor in search of Jane Brogan's flat, an old woman in pink cardigan and hairnet emerged from a doorway and accosted him.

“You the man from the Corpie?”

“No, love. Sorry.”

Her wrinkled face corrugated in a frown and she leaned confidentially towards him. “They send people to spy on us, you know.”

“Not me, I promise you. Can you tell me where number nine-one-three is?”

She drew the cardigan more tightly around her thin frame, as if her virtue had been impugned. “That scrubber?” A thought occurred to her and her watery blue eyes shone with interest. “You checking up on her, then? Fiddling her Social, like all the rest of them here. The way she's been throwing her money around, like Lady Muck, about time you lot cottoned on.”

When he located flat 913, his rap on the door provoked an outburst of juvenile wailing from inside. Muffled scolding noises were followed by the sound of footsteps.

“Who is it?” The woman's voice was wary, as if she believed that no news was good news.

“You don't know me, Jane. My name's Harry Devlin, I'd like to come in for five minutes. I need to speak to you about my wife.”

Keeping the chain on, the woman opened the door an inch. His first impression was of lank fair hair and a face drained of hope. With a shake of the head, she said, “I don't know no Mrs. Devlin.” But Harry caught a note of apprehension in her reply.

“Maybe not, but your ex-boyfriend did - Rourke.”

She studied him with a mixture of caution and curiosity before saying in a grudging tone, “You mean that woman what got murdered?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know nothing about her.”

“Please let me in, Jane.”

Thrusting out her lower lip, she said, “Piss off and leave me in peace.”

“Listen, Jane, I met your step-sister Gillian. She told me about Joe Rourke. I want to get the story first hand, simply so I can believe it. And I won't go away till you let me in. No matter how long it takes. Come on now, let me in.”

She glared at him, but started to fiddle with the chain and security lock. Finally the door was pulled back to reveal a tall girl whose carelessly buttoned blouse displayed ample portions of white breasts. On a good day, Harry thought, she might be attractive, but this was far from being a good day. Her hair needed a wash and her eyes and cheeks were dull enough to suggest that she had packed a lifetime's misery into her - what? - perhaps twenty years. The resignation implicit in the way she said “Come inside” made it plain that she didn't expect his visit to herald a change for the better.

The flat was a mess of cigarette ash and baby's things. Weeks must have passed since it had last seen a vacuum cleaner. The damp stain which spread across one wall of the room into which she steered him was enough to rob anybody of the incentive to tidy up, though the place was at least equipped with telly, video and stereo system. A smart sheepskin coat, incongrous as the Koh-i-Noor in a cabbage patch, had been thrown over the arm of a chair. A single bar of an electric fire glowed dimly, failing to give off any warmth. He perched on the edge of the two-seater settee and looked at the stain, trying to conceive what it would be like to live here day after day, month after month, year after year, with no prospect of parole. Anyone could go stir-crazy in the Nye.

She stood opposite him with folded arms, still weighing him up. “Smoke?”

“I'm trying to give them up,” he said.

“Life's too short for that,” she said, fishing a cheap cigarette from a pack lying on top of one of the hi-fi speakers. “Reckoned you was from the Social. They hound you these days, the minute you get a quid or two.” Lighting up, she added, “Word's got round, Joe isn't here any more. Kids broke in at the week-end. They used to keep their distance when he was around. No one would've dared to do this place over while he was living in it. I'd only gone downstairs to empty the rubbish. I'd left it over a week, thinking the Corporation would fix the lift. I heard Wayne screaming and ran back in, but they'd already scarpered, hadn't they? Didn't get away with much, just a handful of me records. Little bastards.”

When Harry muttered sympathetically, her response was a casual toss of the matted hair. “Happens every day, dunnit? It's this dump, the kids know there's nothing down for them. You could die in this hole and no one would know the difference. I should've listened to me dad.”

“Yes?” Get her talking, thought Harry, take it slowly. Let her feel relaxed.

“He hates me, does me dad.” The girl's face suddenly burst into life, blazing with pent-up fury, as if she were challenging Harry to contradict her. “He'd never let me back in the house. His wife, me step-mum, keeps it spick and span. They both think I'm a slut - maybe they're right. They were about Joe.”

“They didn't care for Joe?”

She snorted. “Wouldn't have him in the house! They told me he was no good, they soon found out he'd been inside, I was never much of one for keeping things secret. Me dad said he'd chuck me out if I didn't drop Joe. Worst threat he could've made, wasn't it? By then I was expecting Wayne. I told the old sod where to go. Typical me, pig-headed. I never listen until it's too late.”

“When did you find out that Joe was seeing my wife?”

She considered. “Fortnight ago, three weeks maybe.” With a harsh laugh she said, “Caught him good and proper, didn't I?”

“How?”

“Found her photograph in the pocket of his jeans. I was only after a few bob to pay of the ‘leccy bill before they cut us off. I knew he was flush, he'd just brought that coat and the stereo. Fell off the back of a lorry, I suppose. Anyhow, I found three hundred in fifties and this woman's picture tucked away. A real looker. The bastard! I thought.”

“What did you do, Jane?”

“Took the money, didn't I, what else?” A smile flashed for a moment, lighting up her face. “And then I screamed at him, asked who the bloody hell she was. He flew into a rage, cuffed me good and proper.” She brushed the fair hair off the side of her face. “You can't see the bruises now, they've faded, but there's the mark where his knuckle cut me, it's not healed up yet.” A red groove ran down from the base of her left ear.

Harry felt sick in his stomach. Another violent thug with a criminal record . . . had Liz been out of her mind? He said grimly, “Rourke admitted he was seeing her?”

The girl snorted. “He'd had flings before. I can put two and two together.”

Harry looked around again at the room. It was as cold and dismal as a crypt. Why would Liz have got herself hooked up with Joe Rourke, who lived in a slum like this, when she already had Tony, that elusive paragon with money, looks and style? As he asked himself the question, an idea began to form in his mind. Was Tony a myth? Might Rourke have been the father of her unborn child?

“So what happened?”

“After he hit me, he told me to shut up, it was none of my business. I raved at him. Then all the noise woke up Wayne and he started shrieking too. All three of us was going at it hammer and tongs. When Wayne wouldn't quieten down, Joe's temper really blew. He cracked Wayne, hit him across the face to make him calm down. Poor little mite, it only made him scream worse.” She paused, scowling at the memory. “That finished me, I can tell you. I scratched Joe across the cheek - you can see the bloodstain on the cushion there where he wiped himself. I made a real mess of his face, really tore into it. I was glad. He was a vain bastard, it served him right. I thought for a minute he was going to kill me, but then he backed off. Decided I wasn't worth it, I suppose. I told him to get out and he said he'd been meaning to anyway. He'd get himself a real woman, not a boring cow with a whining kid.”

As if in shared recollection of that quarrel, the child next door began to cry. The girl swore. “You'll have to go,” she said. “Me hands are full here.”

“All right,” he said. “But tell me this - where does Rourke work?”

“You kidding? Joe's never had a job.”

“So where did he get his cash?”

She looked at him as if he wanted to know if babies were made in heaven. “Never asked, did I? You don't ask too many questions if you want to sleep at nights, do you?”

“Listen, did Joe know a man by the name of Mick Coghlan?”

The wailing of her son increased in intensity. “Okay!” she yelled. “I'm coming!” Turning her attention back to Harry, she said, “No idea. He didn't tell me what he used to get up to. All the same, Joe was real bad news but I did care for him. Still do, in a funny sort of way. I know he was a shit, but it wasn't always like that.” She grinned artfully. “Even this last time, he let me keep the money.”

“Did he tell you anything about my wife?”

Jane shrugged. The baby was still howling, distracting her all the while. Harry hoped it was well wrapped up. She said, “He wouldn't admit to nothing. Typical man.”

“How can you be sure the photo was of my wife? Did you hang onto it?”

“No, the bastard kept it, didn't he? Snatched it back off me. Fond of his fancy piece, y'see. But it was her, all right. Gill came over on Friday, she brought the paper with her. That's where I read about your wife being murdered and that. I told Gill. I said, “She got what was coming, the . . . ” The sentence trailed off as she saw a spasm of pain convulse Harry's face. “Sorry,” she said brusquely, “I know you was married to her.”

When he didn't say anything, she asked, “Have they got the bloke what did it?”

“Not yet.”

“Some nutcase, that's what it'll be.”

“Perhaps. All the same, I'd like to have a word with Rourke. Where can I find him?”

“Forget it. You don't know the sort of man he is. He's an animal, sometimes. I could handle him, just about.” She surveyed Harry sceptically. “He'd eat you alive.”

Her unseen child began to cough. She edged towards the door and he noticed that her shoulders were prematurely sloped, as if two heavy hands were pressing down on her.

“Jane, my wife was murdered. Stabbed to death. There's a lot that I don't understand about the way she lived after she and I split up. And I need to understand it. Joe Rourke can fill in some of the gaps, I'm sure of it. I have to see him. Do you have an address?”

She shook her head. “He could be anywhere.”

“Where should I start looking? What about his family, his friends?”

“His parents are dead. Joe didn't have many mates, with his temper. Them he had are mostly in the nick.”

“There must
be some address you can give me, a place where I can go and look.”

Next door the baby was spluttering. “I've got to go,” she said, but something in Harry's face made her pause. “You could try the place we used to go every Friday and Saturday. Before Wayne came along, that is. Joe always liked it. Yeah, try the Ferry Club.”