Martin Edwards: All the Lonely People

Job details. Liz had left school at sixteen, hoping to make it as a model, but her looks weren’t fashionable that year. After a few photo sessions with sweet talkers who may not have had film in their cameras, she’d hauled herself off the slippery slope and settled for shop work and finding a man. She’d graduated from one-night-stands with fumbling teenagers and married men whose wives didn’t understand them to an on-off affair with a boutique owner who made her his assistant manageress. But after a couple of years of dithering, he’d decided he preferred the company of his own sex. Yet Liz hadn’t let the experience sour her. She’d taken a job with Matt Barley, and when Harry met her as fireworks lit the sky at Albert Dock, had betrayed no hint of past disappointments, confident as ever that good times were around the corner.

Marriage details. At first, life together had been full of promise. Liz had always wanted to squeeze the maximum pleasure from life, and for a time he could deny her nothing. Not swish clothes, not holidays in the sun, not all night parties, not clubbing it till the early hours. But the time came when a summons to the Bridewell interrupted a romantic dinner that she had slaved over for hours, and when the free flow of money had to slow down. Slowly, slowly, the cracks began to show. He was content simply to be with her, but she had grown frustrated, impatient for something more than he could give. Harry realised she could never change, and for all the rows that had torn them apart, secretly he had never wanted her to.

“Finished in the bedroom, sir.” A uniformed flunkey attracted Skinner’s attention. They conversed in low voices over by the entrance hall, whilst behind them a walkie-talkie crackled.

Harry absorbed the scene. The unhurried comings and goings were grimly compelling to watch as the team of men approached the end of their task. The frustration he had felt when seeing them pore over his clothes and furniture was submerged by curiosity as they made vague efforts to restore a semblance of order in their wake, stuffing books back onto shelves and righting the wretched cheese plant at last. Only doing their job, he told himself, it’s a necessary evil. And yet he already understood that this place — no, more than that, his whole life — would never be the same again.

Skinner returned to his side. “Nearly ready, sir.”

“Found anything of interest?”

When the chief inspector failed to reply, Harry pressed him about the murder. Skinner let a few more droplets of information trickle out. There had been, he said, half a dozen separate wounds in the body. Harry felt his gorge rise in his throat as he tried to visualise what had happened in that darkened alley, but he kept his voice calm as he asked if that meant that the murderer was certainly a man. Impossible to be definite yet, said Skinner, but undoubtedly someone possessing very considerable physical strength. How much had the Press been told? A statement had already been made, the detective told him, but it would be sensible to prepare for their questioning.

“I can handle them,” said Harry, as much to himself as to Skinner. He clenched his fist, as if glad of an outlet for his anger at having lost Liz. “No way am I having a bunch of journalists camping on my doorstep day and night, trying to grab a story.” He glanced at the clock. “I must ring the office, let them know why I haven’t arrived.”

He got through to Jim Crusoe at the first attempt and in two or three clipped sentences explained that Liz was dead. At the other end of the line, his partner’s shock was almost tangible.

“It’s — my God, I heard on Radio City that a woman’s body had been found, but I never… ” Jim’s voice trailed off into nothingness.

“Tell Lucy I’ll be in later.”

After a pause, Jim said in amazement, “You’re not coming in to work?”

“What else should I do? The police are all but through with me. I just have to talk to Maggie about all the arrangements, but the inquest’s bound to be adjourned. There’s nothing else for me to do but sit and mope. The way I feel at present, I’ll be better off in the office than sitting here with my head in my hands.”

“Look, I–I want you to know… Christ, this is terrible.”

Harry could picture his partner going back over the past and all his gibes about Liz, her greed and unfaithfulness. Too late now to apologise, he thought savagely, but all he said was a brusque “See you later” before ringing off.

Skinner was back. “I think we can leave you in peace for the time being, sir.”

Harry gazed at the room. It still bore the indelible marks of unwanted intrusion.

“Where do you go from here?”

“We have plenty of inquiries to make in a case like this, sir.”

“Your sergeant told me Coghlan’s still out of town.” He hesitated for a moment, then added impulsively, “Make sure the bastard doesn’t slip through your fingers. I don’t want him to get away with this.”

“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions if I were you, sir. As a solicitor, you don’t want to find yourself on the receiving end of a libel writ.”

“For saying that he killed her? That’s slander, not libel, Chief Inspector, and anyway there’s a defence of truth.”

“I’m keeping an open mind, Mr. Devlin, and I’d advise you to do the same. You’ll be available if I need to speak to you again, sir?”

“I’m not thinking of doing a moonlight, if that’s what you have in mind. But I’ve told you everything I know and that isn’t much. Liz and I had become strangers. So until you have some news for me, you don’t need to call round again. Having half the police force here all morning is bad for business when my job is to keep clients out of trouble. The neighbours must have had their eyes out on stalks since your lads turned up with their fancy cameras and their two-way radios.”

Getting that off his chest made him feel a little better. Concentrate on the trivia, he told himself, like what the woman next door might think and how to cram a day’s work into four or five hours. Bury your darker imaginings, that’s the way to stay sane when the world seems full of madness.

The detective scratched his chin and said, “I can’t guarantee that I won’t have to trouble you once more, sir, as the inquiry develops. We have to do our job, you understand.”

Surely they couldn’t now regard him as suspect? They had turned the flat upside down and found nothing; Harry was certain of that, for there was nothing to find. Even so, Skinner’s attitude bothered him as the invaders finally left, abandoning him to the flat’s solitude.

He slumped on the sofa whilst the events of this dreadful morning swirled around in his head, defying his attempts to impose the discipline of rational thought. Eventually he made himself a black coffee. Too bitter. Pushing the cup to one side, he forced himself up and into the stinging chill of the outside world.

Liz is dead. Repeating the words over and over would not, he knew, explain anything, but perhaps doing so would help his protesting brain to assimilate the truth.

Liz was dead. That lovely selfish woman whom he had adored. No more would she tease or taunt. The great green eyes wouldn’t captivate again. That disconsolate pout when she failed to win her way belonged to history. Liz was dead and his hopes of a reconciliation had died with her. For at last he was beginning to acknowledge the truth: he had spent the past two years as a sleepwalker, dreaming that one day she would return to share with him the silly moments that had made existence seem worthwhile. And there had been many such moments. Making love beneath their own Christmas tree, the December after they were married, her slender body basking in the soft glow from the fairy lights. The Rhine cruise of their honeymoon, their hands clasped as they sailed around the Lorelei. Skiing in Austria and her radiance as she exclaimed for all the world to hear, “I feel so free!”