Martin Edwards: All the Lonely People

“What happened after that?”

“I had to go to Birmingham. We were negotiating a fresh loan from the brewery, re-financing this place. I had a couple of long meetings. All Wednesday and most of Thursday I was hammering out the deal. I promised Elizabeth that when I got back, I would sort everything out. We’d soon be together. She was panicking, Coghlan was down in London, also on some kind of business, but she didn’t dare go back to their house. She was convinced he was going to harm her. God forgive me, I thought she was being childish.”

“When were you due back in Liverpool?”

“She said she’d meet me at Lime Street. If the train was on time, we would have an hour or so together before I had to be back here. I’d booked a room for us at a place up in Mount Pleasant.”

“Train?” asked Harry. “Why not drive? It isn’t far.”

“I’m banned from driving,” said Gallimore. “One of the penalties of being in this trade, I suppose. They picked me up on the M62 last Easter, I was twice over the limit, got a twelve months’ ban. My lawyer’s Pike, you must know him, he said I got off lightly.”

“So did you meet her at the station?”

“Of course not. The train was on time for once, but she wasn’t there. I waited for twenty minutes until it was obvious that she wasn’t going to show. I couldn’t understand it. I called the hotel, but they hadn’t seen her or taken a message. So I came back here.”

Harry recalled the man’s abstracted manner on the night of Liz’s murder. His story explained that, but it was still worth digging deeper.

“Carry on.”

Still looking at the gun, Gallimore said, “There’s nothing much more I can add. Until I read the papers the following day, I had no idea about what had happened. I couldn’t believe it. She was so alive, so…”

“You weren’t sufficiently shocked to volunteer a statement to the police,” interrupted Harry. “Why not?”

“What could I say? I was in a difficult position, I…”

The self-justifications went on for over a minute. Harry barely listened. Beneath the glossy looks and fluent line in chat was jelly. But might Gallimore yet prove to be a murderer? Now was the moment to find out.

Without warning, Harry raised the pistol and pointed it at Gallimore’s forehead.

“Are you quite sure you don’t know Joe Rourke, Tony? Wasn’t he the man you hired to kill my wife? Didn’t the pressure get too much for you?” He watched the dark eyes glaze over as Gallimore stared in mixed horror and fascination at the Mauser. “Liz pestered you, didn’t she? You had a nice set-up, it suited you to have a mistress, but you weren’t so keen on a change of wife and all that maintenance pay. Liz had threatened to kill herself, now she was expecting a kid. Where would it end? You had the idea of getting rid of her. What better idea than to pay a yobbo you’d met in the Ferry to do the necessary while you were nicely alibied, tucking into a sandwich on British Rail? I’m sure the train times will stand up, the story tripped so easily off your tongue. You’ve obviously been practising just in case the police got a whiff of your identity. But I’m not fooled, Tony.”

Gallimore’s hands shook as if he had Parkinson’s disease. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped below zero as Harry slowly rolled out the final question.

“How much did you pay Rourke?”

It was a credible theory, soundly reasoned. Harry had been building up towards it for several days now. So many of the pieces fitted if Joe Rourke was a hired killer, Tony Gallimore his paymaster. The motive was there, so too plenty of circumstantial evidence. Rourke’s sudden access to liquid cash, the photograph to help him identify the victim, the clumsy attempts to keep Liz under surveillance whilst waiting for the right moment to strike. And afterwards, Rourke’s conversation in the club with Froggy, who must have stumbled onto the truth on the very night of the murder, a conversation which Marilyn had interrupted in front of Harry’s own eyes.

But even as he watched the man his wife had loved squirm at the sight of the gun poised to blow his good looks away for ever, Harry became conscious of an agonising wrench inside his stomach, more acute than ever before. At once he realised that it was a physical sign of how wrong he had been.

Fragments of conversation came back to mind. Put together, they pointed away from Gallimore’s guilt and towards a different culprit. Liz herself had told him all he should have needed to understand; on the night he had found her in his flat in the Empire Dock. And this very day a chance remark from Brenda Rixton should have helped him to work out what had really happened.

With infinite care, as Gallimore watched in bafflement and held his breath, Harry laid the Mauser down upon the desk. Now, at last, he knew the truth.

At the other end of a crackling telephone line, Quentin Pike was saying, “You realise I shouldn’t be telling you this?”

“Sure,” said Harry. His thoughts were racing and the offhand way in which he spoke failed to convey his gratitude to the man who had helped to fill in most of the gaps in his knowledge. With little more than a mild grumble, Pike had answered questions which Harry had not dared to put to Tony Gallimore.

Time was short, Harry was certain of that. The murder of Froggy Evison had been a panic move. Before long, the police would be on the trail. Yet Harry still had the desperate urge to be there before them. He didn’t know why confronting the murderer was so important to him. Did the primitive thirst for vengeance still rule him or was there buried within his heart and mind some subtler need, the nature of which he could not understand?

“Where is this place, Quentin?”

“Woolton. It’s called Paradise Found, would you believe?” Pike clucked his tongue in deprecation of the nouveau riche and their lack of taste, then explained how to get there.

It was eight o’clock. Miracle of miracles, Harry had found a public phone box in working order in the city centre within five minutes of leaving Gallimore at the Ferry. The club manager — he was not after all, Pike confirmed, legally its owner — had appeared bemused by Harry’s sudden change of manner and mood. Without waiting for a reply to his accusation of murder, Harry had asked another question to which Gallimore said at once: “Yes, of course, didn’t you know? But what has that got to do with — what you were talking about?” Harry hadn’t trusted himself to answer; instead he stuffed the Mauser into its protective chamois and cursed his own stupidity.

“I don’t suppose,” said Quentin Pike sadly, “that you are going to tell me what this is all about? But answer this — am I going to lose a client?”

“Don’t worry,” said Harry soberly, “clearing this mess up will probably keep you in business till retirement. Thanks anyway.”

He hung up and strode to the M.G. Despite the purpose-fulness with which he moved, he had no clear idea of what he should or would do. All he knew was that there was no possibility this time that he might be mistaken. He understood why Liz had had to die. Strangely, he had felt a sudden spurt of pity on realising what had happened, but he had striven to banish any emotion which might cause him to waver at this late hour. One day, perhaps, he would feel differently, but tonight was not the time to sympathise with murder.

As he drove, an unbidden image of Liz leapt to the forefront of his mind. He remembered her in the flat at Empire Dock, saying: “I won’t give you any hassle. I’ll be out of your hair soon, I promise.” Harry pressed down on the accelerator. Would he ever be free of her, ever be able to start again? Or would she continue to haunt him — would he be unable to recall the provocative twist of her lips as she smiled without this wrenching, futile sense of having abandoned her to death?