Martin Edwards: All the Lonely People

Harry remained motionless, staring through the picture window into the darkness outside. Despite the heat of the room, a chill of fear had suddenly touched him for when he had looked down at her slender wrist, he had seen the angry red stitch marks which criss-crossed it — marks that he recognised as the stigmata of a failed suicide.

Sleep eluded him for hours. The sofa was too narrow to allow him the insomniac’s self-indulgence of tossing and turning as he raked over the conversation with Liz. His mind was a junkyard of discarded emotions and he could not be sure if he was glad or angry that she had returned to him, merely to say goodbye. As consciousness drifted away, he had a fuzzy recollection of a question he had forgotten to ask.

When he awoke, the wall clock reminded him that he hadn’t retrieved his alarm from his bedroom. Eight o’clock already and he was supposed to be back at the Bridewell by half-past to complete his stint of twenty-four hours as the city’s Duty Solicitor, as confidant of the thieves and muggers, drunks and vandals who were picked up by the police and had no one else to turn to. Cursing, Harry struggled to his feet. He yearned to stay and talk to Liz; even if she was no longer his, he could think of no one with whom he would rather be. For a moment he contemplated phoning in to say he was sick and unable to come in today. But the work instinct won and he shambled to the bathroom instead.

After a hasty wash and shave he looked in on Liz. So many times, waking first, he had watched her exactly like this. With the duvet tucked beneath her chin, her face seemed as peaceful as a child’s, and as innocent. No make up, no worry lines, no hint of any suffering. Why should she want to cut her own wrist?

Shaking her, he said, “I must go. There’s food and drink in the kitchen for breakfast. Okay?”

In a slow ceremonial way, like a monarch bestowing attention on a humble subject, she opened her eyes. It took a second for them to focus on him and then she smiled. “Thanks for looking after me.”

Harry wasn’t sure if she was teasing him. “You might call me,” he said, trying to be off-hand about it. “We could have lunch.”

“I’d love to be your honoured guest. No, seriously.”

He could feel himself tense as her fingers touched his hand.

“You all right, Liz?”

“Fine.” The green eyes widened. “I feel safe here.” Her arms dangled negligently by the side of the bed and once more he saw the damaged wrist.

Flinching, he turned to go. “See you later.”

Outside, rain smacked the pavements with sadistic fury. For once it was worth taking his car the short distance into the city centre. He drove an M.G. convertible, twenty years old and still lively beneath a rusting exterior. The only car he had ever owned; he was comfortable with it and didn’t believe in change for the sake of it. Glancing every so often at his watch, he weaved through sodden one-way streets, squeezing past roadworks and imperilling pedestrians who took a chance.

The riddle of why Liz might want to kill herself continued to nag at him. Might he have been mistaken in interpreting the marks on her wrist as the legacy of a failed suicide bid? He didn’t think so. In the past he had seen similar scars disfiguring his clients. One had been the victim of a messy divorce, another a kleptomaniac with a heroin habit: both had tried to kill themselves. Could Coghlan’s vicious streak have caused Liz comparable despair? Anything was possible — and yet the Liz he knew loved life, would never bring it to an end a moment too soon.

He arrived with less than a minute to spare. The Magistrate’s Court was not yet open but he turned into Cheapside and banged on the heavy black door round the corner. A taciturn constable let him in, jangling keys in his pocket as if to taunt any sharp-eared ruffians incarcerated in the holding cell with the sound of freedom. He unlocked the iron gate leading to the cell and motioned Harry through.

The Bridewell sergeant was perched on his high chair like a pre-war schoolmaster, while a pack of his subordinates lolled on a bench opposite the holding cell, engrossed in the racing pages of the Sun and Mirror. On an oblong of white card suspended by string from a hook in the wall, someone had written: please do not ask for bail, as a REFUSAL MIGHT OFFEND.

“All right, mate?” enquired the sergeant. He peered at Harry’s shiny-elbowed suit and scuffed Hush Puppies. “You really must give me the name of your tailor some time.”

“Piss off, Bert,” he said without malice.

No matter how many times he came here, it always took him a moment to adjust to the Bridewell’s purgatorial atmosphere. He blinked in an effort to adjust to the harshness of the artificial light before striding over to the other side of the room, where Ronald Sou was waiting for him.

“How are you, Mr. Devlin?”

Harry said he was fine. Almost every day he tried to persuade his clerk to call him by his first name. But Ronald Sou, the son of a Chinese seaman who had married a girl from Toxteth, remained inscrutable as if, like his forefathers, he had been born in Canton rather than Liverpool Eight, and when speaking to his employer he always maintained the respectful distance appropriate to a bygone age.

“An interesting night?” enquired Ronald politely.

Harry pursed his lips. “You could say that.” After a moment he added, “One call out, nothing more.”

One of the constables coughed and said, “Been busy since you left, Harry. Must be a score of customers for you inside.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the holding cell and said, “Junkies, an arsonist, two blokes we picked up in Sefton Park wearing skirts and suspender belts. You name it, all human life is there.”

Harry went to the cell door and peered through the spy-hole at the bleary faces of the captive men. Most were slumped on the bench that ran around the walls. Several wore suspects’ space suits, the off-white, thin as paper, all-in-one garments which the police supplied to those whose clothing was taken away for forensic tests. The interior of the cell was dimly lit, its gloom matching its occupants. Harry settled himself in the first interview alcove while Ronald Sou went into an identical cubicle next door.

The job took an hour and a quarter. As each detainee’s surname was called out in alphabetical order by one of the constables, the individual concerned shuffled over so that Harry could log the details of the offence and the name of the miscreant’s lawyer in the ruled lines of the large red diary that was the Liverpool Duty Solicitor’s book.

Every now and then the atmosphere of grudging resignation was poisoned by incoherent screams of rage from within the holding cell — drug addicts growing restless as they came to end of their latest fix. Occasionally someone would beat a tattoo on the metal door that set them apart from the outside world, prompting the youngest policeman on the bench to wander over and mutter a few warning words beneath his breath. His colleagues had seen it all before and continued to read undisturbed.

When the last detainee returned to captivity Ronald was still ringing round the city’s criminal advocates to inform then of their clients’ latest misdemeanours. Harry yawned and went back upstairs.

The room set aside for the Duty Solicitor was off the main hall of the court building. There would be another ten minutes or so to wait until the first of the morning’s clients arrived. Idly, he leafed through the newspaper. Trouble everywhere, of course. Renewed fighting in Beirut. The I.R.A. expressing its regret to the family of a child killed in Belfast when a bomb had gone off an hour early by mistake. A Cabinet minister denying a homosexual affair with his constituency agent. A big bullion raid in Leytonstone and three people dead after a gas explosion in Leeds. Harry kept turning the pages.