Martin Edwards: All the Lonely People

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?”