Martin Edwards - All the Lonely People

When he invited her in, she seemed for once to be tongue-tied, almost embarrassed, “I came to ask — how you were coping,” she said, after a couple of false, stammering starts.

He shrugged and said, “All right, I suppose, in the circumstances.”

“I wondered…” she began “… I mean, you must be feeling pretty low. Yet at a time like this, you really need to keep your strength up. So I thought you might like to share lunch next door.”

“I couldn’t possibly put you to all that trouble,” he said hastily. “Besides, I’m going out for a long walk. Clear my head.”

“No trouble,” she said quickly. “If you’re busy — perhaps dinner tonight?”

He was about to refuse again, but something in her expression made him have second thoughts. It was a look of yearning for company that he felt he could not ignore. So he simply said, “That’s very kind of you. What sort of time?”

“Shall we say seven?” She beamed. “Good. I’ll see you then.”

After she had left, Harry threw on a coat and scarf and went out to the waterfront. Walking along the path towards Otterspool, he mulled over the endless questions surrounding Liz’s death. Where was Coghlan and was he the father of the child that the murderer had also killed? Was there something odd about the attitude of people like Matt and even the policeman Macbeth, let alone Maggie and Jim? Or was he being misled by his own over-stretched imagination?

At least he ought to be capable of sorting out what had been going on in Liz’s life during the past two years. Learning of the loss of her unborn child had, if that were possible, strengthened his resolve to discover the man who had committed the crime. A night’s sleep had at least helped to bring matters into perspective. He still wanted to strike out, to take revenge. But more than that: making an effort to contribute towards the killer’s detection would help exorcise the guilt he felt for having ignored Liz’s fear of Michael Coghlan.

On the way back home, he passed families enjoying a Saturday afternoon stroll, kids gambolling around their parents’ feet. Might Liz and he have ended up like that, if he had handled things differently? No, he couldn’t deceive himself. Their relationship had been a helter-skelter ride, not a journey on a long-distance train.

In the entrance hall of the Empire Dock, a rosy-cheeked figure in a raincoat which had seen better days was chatting up the porter. With a journalist’s sixth sense, Ken Cafferty swung round, his face aglow with anticipation.

“The very man!” ’

With a casual wave to the porter, Cafferty walked across the foyer. “I have a tit-bit which may interest you. The police have found Mick Coghlan. He’s down south, apparently, being questioned at length. They haven’t charged him yet, but they haven’t let him go, either. Interesting, yes?”

An overwhelming sense of relief swept over Harry. “How did you find that out?”

Cafferty tapped the side of his nose. “A good newspaperman never reveals his sources.”

But it did not require Sherlockian powers of deduction to work out that Ken must have called in here on the off-chance, on his way from the police H.Q. at Canning Place across the road. Harry dodged a dozen questions and ignored a hint that an offer of coffee would be welcome. Glad as he was that Coghlan had been located, he knew days might pass now before a confession was dragged out of the man or before Skinner and his cohorts decided they had enough evidence to make the charge stick. If, he meditated with a defence lawyer’s instinctive search for the loophole, any link between Coghlan and the crime had the strength to survive critical scrutiny. Ten to one there was an alibi in the background; that would explain Coghlan’s sudden departure down south. And an alibi from a crooked crony might not be easy to break.

Escaping eventually to his flat, Harry switched on the box and yet again watched the video of Don’t Look Now. Roeg’s lush portayal of Venice retained its power to hypnotise and the moment when the psychopathic dwarf strikes that final, fatal blow had lost none of its horror. As the credits rolled, he thought of Matt Barley, the only person of restricted growth — Harry understood that that was the phrase to use these days — he knew. The little man was devoted to Liz. He’d lived next door to the Wieczarek family years ago; the same age as Maggie, he had more than reciprocated the girls’ affection for him. Harry had always enjoyed Mart’s sometimes savage humour and his refusal to allow the mere lack of size to interfere with a Scouser’s birthright of making a dodgy living, selling joke masks to kids and sex aids to middle-aged men.

He showered and changed and rang the bell next door. Brenda ushered him in, saying twice how glad she was that he had come. Her hair was pinned back elegantly and, for all his ignorance about women’s clothes, he guessed that the low-cut taffeta dress had come from the place in her wardrobe reserved for special occasion wear. Her flat was identical to his in design, but she had transformed the small box with subtle wall-lighting and so much greenery that a visitor almost needed a machete to cut a way through the hall. Her living-room walls were hung with oriental tapestries and a couple of icons of the kind advertised in charity gift catalogues.

They ate by candlelight. Brenda produced a bottle of Portuguese wine to complement a boeuf bourgignon which bore no resemblance to the packet version, stuffed with monosodium glutamate, hydrolysed protein and artificial colouring, which Harry often slung in the oven for half an hour and ate without noticing. During the meal, she chatted about her job as a sales negotiator for a firm of estate agents, spicing anecdotes about unscrupulous sellers and pernickety buyers with a touch of satire that he had not previously suspected in her. When the plates had been cleared, they settled down in opposite armchairs.

“I feel better for that,” he said.

“I’m glad,” she said. “If you don’t mind my saying so, for the last day or two you’ve looked like a man going through a living hell.”

He didn’t reply. The wine had relaxed him, but he wasn’t yet ready to chat about Liz’s death to inquisitive strangers.

“The police came to see me, enquiring about your wife. They seemed interested in your movements on Thursday night. I explained that I’d seen your wife and yourself at different stages of the evening. They wanted exact times so I did my best to be accurate.”

She studied him carefully, as though trying to gauge his reaction.

“Routine, Brenda,” he said firmly, “I don’t think I’m a serious suspect.”

“Oh good Lord, naturally! I mean, I hope you don’t think I was suggesting you were.” She tried to cover her confusion by changing the subject. “I read the reports in the local rag. You’ve had a hard time over the years, from what I can read between the lines. They described your wife as fun-loving, I saw. I imagine,” she swallowed hard but continued, “imagine that means she must have led you quite a dance.”

“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.”