Martin Edwards - All the Lonely People

Harry’s last visit here pre-dated his marriage. He let Dame guide him, showing off her knowledge and occasionally revealing a love for a particular painting that had a passion as real as the eroticism of the show at Franco’s had been fake. As he listened to her expound upon the merits of Augustus John, he reflected that, like Liz, Dame had never lost her capacity to surprise.

They stopped in front of And When Did You Last See Your Father? Harry stared at the little boy and said to Dame, “Corny, I know, but after undergoing a grilling from the police on Friday and yesterday, I realise how the kid must have felt.”

“They gave you a tough time?”

“Only doing their job. Have they seen you yet?”

She shook her head. “I’m not easily tracked down.”

“Had you seen much of Liz lately?”

“We met now and then, not as often as I’d have liked. Different from the old days, eh?”

“How was she?”

A wan smile. “Always the same. Something good, someone good, was invariably around the corner. Like me, except I don’t really believe all the rubbish I talk.”

Harry pressed her for details. Dame didn’t try to disguise the depth of Liz’s infatuation with Coghlan; but eventually it had become clear even to her that the man would never change his ways. “Women are strange. You must have noticed, love. Men tread on us, drain us of every last penny and ounce of self-respect and still we beg for more. No sooner did Liz suss Mick out than she was spending nights on the town, hunting for someone new. That’s how she got involved with this other guy.”

“Did she talk much about him?”

“Hints and innuendoes mostly. You know how Liz liked to weave a web of mystery around her life. Being special, that’s what appealed to her. Reality was second best. So I wasn’t surprised when she told me he was rich and handsome and blessed with a neurotic bitch of a wife who didn’t understand him. Tony, his name was. For all I know, he was a fat forty year old called Percival who was on the dole with half a dozen kids but could shoot a smooth line of chat.”

“She was pregnant, Dame.”

Her face suddenly grim, she nodded. “She told me about ten days ago, the last time I saw her alive. Thrilled to bits, she was, and so was I for her. Careless to get lumbered, but it may have been deliberate. I wouldn’t be surprised. Help her bloke make up his mind to ditch the old lady… it’s the oldest trick in the book.”

“Coghlan wasn’t the father?”

“Liz said not. I got the feeling that he had his hands full with other women and that was beginning to suit her fine. No, the new boyfriend was the culprit, or so she led me to believe. But you know what Liz was like. A lovely lady, but she couldn’t always tell the difference between her dreams and real life.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” said Harry wryly.

“Don’t you speak ill of her,” she said fiercely. “Liz had her faults, we all knew that, but she was still my best friend. We had so many laughs together over the years. Even when she poked fun at someone, like that stuffy brother-in-law of hers, she never meant to be cruel. And she never once let me down.”

“Think yourself lucky.” Harry spoke lightly enough, but Dame still turned on him, flushed and angry.

“It’s the truth.” She lowered her voice, spoke with urgency. “Look, I’ve never told anyone this before. When I was fourteen, I was careless too. Understand? Things were difficult at home. My boyfriend was a soldier, I never saw him again. I had to have an abortion. Liz covered for me with my mum and dad, no one even guessed what had happened. And more than that — she never told anyone else. Not even you, am I right?”

Harry nodded, abashed.

“She kept my secret when it mattered,” said Dame softly. I’ll never forget that. Never.”

They were in the Impressionists Room now. Harry halted in front of a painting of two men, bending over a woman’s prostrate body. A sordid killing in a back street. The Murder by Paul Cezanne. The darkness of the artist’s vision mesmerised him and he did not move until Dame led him gently by the hand towards the sweep of stairs.

“Tea,” she said firmly.

When they were installed at a table, he rested his elbows on the formica and asked bluntly, “Did Liz tell you why she slit her wrists?”

Dame spilled some of her tea into the saucer. “What do you mean?”

Harry explained. There was no doubting the genuineness of her shocked reaction and he placed his hand over hers by way of comfort. “If she was so glad to be having the baby, I can only assume that she cut herself in a moment of desperation when she thought Coghlan wanted her dead. Or maybe this happened a while ago. I simply don’t know. And yet…”

“And yet that doesn’t sound like Liz? I agree, but how else can you account for it?”

He shook his head. “I dunno. All I’m sure about is that she was telling the truth when she confided her fears in me and that I should have listened.”

“You shouldn’t reproach yourself.”

“Don’t you start,” he said bitterly. “You above anyone else know what Liz meant to me. And you can’t imagine that I’ll let it rest there. No, Coghlan was responsible, must have been, there’s no other candidate. I owe it to her to make sure he doesn’t get away with murdering her.”

Dame leaned across the table. “Listen, speaking as one obstinate bugger who loved Liz to another, I wish you well. But don’t forget, this isn’t one of your courtroom games where you give the other guy hell then go off to the bar together afterwards, the best of friends. The only law Mick recognises belongs to the jungle. Watch out for man-traps.”

“I’ll take care.”

“Good.” Her strong fingers laced around his. “So how are you spending the rest of this cold Sunday? Out on the warpath or has the lunchtime entertainment sapped you so much that you need to recoup your strength?”

He pushed his cup to one side and said with a glimmer of a smile, “Late afternoon on a February Sunday in Liverpool? Not much more I can do till tomorrow morning, so I’m at a loose end. How about you?”

Dame laughed, a raucous sound coarsened by years of coping with crumpled dreams. “I’m all dressed up, with nowhere to go. This outfit cost the thick end of three hundred quid and that was in the January sales. But when I go back home tonight there’ll just be one ring working on the gas hob, one bar of the electric fire glowing. I rent a flat in Aigburth the size of a broom cupboard. I’m not exactly desperate to rush back. Why don’t we have dinner together? I won’t insult you by offering to pay. How about it?”

“Dame, that’s an offer no man could refuse.”

She laughed so loudly that an old lady at the adjoining table turned round and stared. “Oh, Harry, if only that were true. If only that were true.”

“My name is Fingall,” said Harry into the handset of his office telephone. “Reuben Fingall.”

The words rolled off his tongue as smoothly as if spoken by Ruby himself. The accuracy of the impersonation, the unexpectedly precise capture of that characteristic note of smugness, gave Harry a small surge of pleasure. In his schooldays he had amused himself and others with his amateur mimicry. Harold Wilson and Tony Hancock had been favourite targets, but he hadn’t been sure that he had retained the knack sufficiently to deceive Paula from the gym at the other end of the line.

“I’m afraid Mick isn’t expected in today, Mr. Fingall,” she said in a cloying tone evidently reserved for her employer’s close friends and professional advisers.

Harry already knew that from Ken Cafferty. This morning Ken had told him that Coghlan had been released by the Metropolitan Police uncharged and was supposed to have returned to Liverpool, although he could be found neither at the Woolton house nor at the gym. Meanwhile, Fingall was in the Crown Court attending on another case and remaining unusually tight-lipped about the whole affair, having declined to reveal his client’s whereabouts. Skinner was saying nothing either and Ken had given up the hunt, having decided to wait for his quarry to emerge in the fullness of time. Harry wasn’t so patient.