Martin Edwards: All the Lonely People

Harry slipped in through an unmarked door at the rear. Turning sharply at the end of a corridor, he cannoned into Jim Crusoe and staggered backwards. It felt like walking into the side of the Liver Building and the collision took Harry’s breath away.

“Not so fast,” said the big man. With his mane of brown hair, shaggy brown beard and lumbering gait, he resembled a huge grizzly bear. Stretching out a great paw, he tapped Harry in the ribs, an amiable gesture which elicited only a gasp.

“You could carry a week’s shopping in those bags under your eyes, old son. Been burning the candle at both ends?” The craggy features split in a grin. “That rapacious neighbour of yours broken down your resistance at last? Careful now, you’re not as young as you were.”

“You’ll never guess,” said Harry quietly. “Liz came round last night.”

Jim Crusoe’s brow darkened. Harry was aware that his partner had always had a blind spot about Liz, had never seemed at ease in her company or susceptible to her charm. Jim was a conveyancer by profession. He bought and sold properties, drafted wills and handled probates: steady work, well-suited to a man for whom reliability was as instinctive as breathing. The black-and-white certainties of a bundle of title deeds appealed to him; he distrusted litigation as a game of chance. With erratic, unpredictable Liz, he had as much in common as the Rock of Gibraltar with a rolling stone.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Harry said. “It’s only a flying visit. She’s leaving Coghlan for some other fool.”

But the easy jocularity had been wiped from Jim’s features, as though by a damp cloth. “Watch your step, Harry. The woman’s nothing but trouble.”

“No sweat. She’ll be off in a day or two.”

Jim shrugged and set off towards the reception area. “The sooner the better, if you ask me,” he said over his shoulder.

I didn’t, Harry was tempted to retort. But the big man always spoke his mind and there was no point in arguing for the sake of it. Their partnership too was a marriage of sorts. They had worked together for the past eight years, having met as solicitors on the staff of Maher and Malcolm, a large practice which acted for Liverpool’s upper crust. Over a pint one evening they had talked themselves out of their comfortable rut into becoming masters of their own destiny, no longer wage slaves hired to pile up profits for senior partners who spent half their time yachting or out on the golf course. The following day they had written their resignations and the firm of Crusoe and Devlin had kept its bank manager nervous ever since. In that time, both of them had learned the need for give and take.

Harry wandered over to his room, a claustrophobic box which might have been purpose-designed to deter clients from overstaying their welcome. From the walls, paint peeled almost before his very eyes, although the worst blemishes were hidden by a cartoon of a solicitor milking the cow of litigation and framed certificates which helped him to remember that he was a respectable professional man. Bulging buff files were strewn across his desk and cabinets, on the carpet and the window sills. He tore yesterday’s date from the calendar that had been a building society’s routine Christmas gift. Each day’s sheet bore an unctuous motto; he crumpled up The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring and threw it into the wastepaper bin. Today’s offering was The mystery of women is largely the product of men’s imagination. Shaking his head, he picked up the telephone.

“So you’re back,” snapped the switchboard girl. “Just as well, there’s a client waiting.” Her attitude had been foul since Monday, when he had interrupted her in the midst of a lengthy call to a boyfriend she had met in Marbella last summer. When Harry asked if there were any messages for him, she rattled through half a dozen before adding, “And a woman called.”

“Yes?”

“She wouldn’t give her name. Said she was your lodger and she was sorry she’d missed you. She didn’t think she’d be able to make lunch with you since she was just going out.” Harry could sense the girl curling her lip; her tone was that of one who suspects sexual impropriety and considers it the sole prerogative of those as young as herself.

So the message he had sent via Ronald would not have got through to Liz. He tried to bite back his disappointment. “That would have been my wife,” he said, more briskly than usual. “If she calls again, Suzanne, put her straight through.”

With an effort, Harry pushed Liz away from the centre of his thoughts and leaned back in his seat, trying to compose his face into the unshockable expression with which he aimed to greet his clients’ tales of bad luck, infidelity and crime. Giving advice was easy, not like believing all that he was told.

One gross indecency and a case of car theft later he made his way to reception, where a young couple were arguing about the new house Jim was buying for them. Swings and roundabouts, Harry reflected: we may lose the property deal and get the divorce. He tapped the window which separated the switchboard girl from the clientele. Suzanne was immersed in a Mills and Boon about an amorous sheikh. With a reluctant pout, she slid aside the glass partition.

“Any more calls for me?”

She leafed through a wad of pink telephone notes. “The Magistrates’ Court — please call before noon. Your accountant’s chasing after your tax return. A new gross indecency, Lucy’s booked him in for three o’clock.” Smirking, she added, “Nothing from your lodger.”

“Just my wife’s idea of a joke,” he said, feeling defensive and resenting it. Suzanne sniffed and returned to fictional romance.

From his own room, he dialled the flat number. No reply. After waiting three full minutes he banged the receiver down on its cradle. Perhaps she had gone to Coghlan’s house to pick up her things and would ring back shortly. The frustration of having missed speaking to her gnawed at him like an ulcer. Ploughing through the files, with their commonplace tales of greed and confusion, seemed as tedious as reading out-of-date tide tables. He lit cigarette after cigarette, only to find that smoking did not have its usual calming effect, and he kept stubbing the ends into his ashtray before he had finished. Now and then the phone would trill; each time he snatched at it only to be connected to clients fretting about their alimony or industrial injury claims. He uttered the necessary words of reassurance and ended the conversations as soon as he could.

Had Coghlan returned home earlier than expected? A worrying thought. Harry had never met the man who had destroyed his marriage, but knew a good deal about him. Mick Coghlan’s name cropped up as often in gossip down at the Bridewell as it did in the columns of the city’s Press. He ran a gym on the edge of Chinatown and liked to portray himself as a pillar of the community, forever raising money for charity, a local scally made good. Liz had talked of his generosity when she had broken the news to Harry that she was moving out. But whispers in the city had long had Coghlan down as the most ruthless scion of an old Liverpool family of villains, a man suckled on crime. People said his money had come from a series of armed post office raids in the mid eighties but his C.V. included nothing more damning than a couple of minor convictions for wounding. From time to time, a client or policeman would mention Coghlan in conversation, unaware of the quickening interest with which Harry listened. A hard man, they would say, and ruthless. Harry found himself shivering. If Coghlan came back to find Liz packing her bags, might he go berserk? Perhaps that wild story about his wanting her dead was no exaggeration.