Martin Edwards: All the Lonely People

“Whose idea was it to murder Froggy Evison?”

She bowed her head. “Rourke’s, of course. I was getting desperate. I’d heard you talking to Froggy. I told Joe, and he wanted to put you out of the way for good. I said no, I wouldn’t have that. No more killing. He was just to warn you off. Rough you up a little if necessary.”

Harry ran a hand over his injured ribs. “Yes, he did that.”

“What can I say? It’s too late for regrets. Everything was getting out of control. Froggy had already told Joe that he’d seen him kill that — I mean, your wife. We didn’t believe it, Froggy wasn’t the sort to hang around if danger was in the air. But obviously he’d seen something, put two and two together. He wanted money. I was willing to pay, but Rourke said we couldn’t take a chance. Once you give in to blackmail, he said, you never stop. And the morning after you spoke to Froggy here, he got in touch with Joe and said that he’d decided to double his price. He reckoned you’d be willing to cross his palm with silver, even if we weren’t. That settled it, as far as Rourke was concerned.”

She looked up at him, hopelessly.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it? A middle-aged woman in a suburban living room, talking about a contract killing. It isn’t what I meant to happen. It’s not what I meant at all.”

“As you said, it’s too late for regrets.”

“I should have realised shooting Froggy wasn’t going to bring it to an end. It’s become a waking nightmare.

Things went from bad to worse between Tony and me. I must have been hell to live with. This morning he said maybe we should live apart for a little while. A trial separation, he called it. I begged him to give me another chance — I know I haven’t been myself lately. I pleaded. I almost told him what I’d already done to try to keep him. But it was no good. For Christ’s sake, he looked as though he was afraid of me. And then it dawned on me: murdering your wife hadn’t altered a thing, he was still determined to go.”

“And Rourke?”

“He spent his money soon enough. He’s one of those men who could lose a million inside a month. Frittering it on women, booze and drugs. He rang today, said he wanted another five thousand for Froggy. I said no, I’d paid what we agreed. Then the threats began. I put the phone down on him. He was vicious, I never deceived myself about that. But he didn’t realise you can’t frighten someone with nothing left to live for.”

They looked into each other’s eyes. For a moment, Harry was aware of a bond with her, as though her destructive invasion of his life had brought them together, sufferers in the common cause of misplaced love. It was like the sense of closeness to her which he had briefly experienced that Thursday night as she sang in the Ferry, that night when, unknown to him, she had arranged for Liz to die.

She nodded, as if reading his thoughts. “We’ve both fed off fantasies for too long, haven’t we? Well, you have all your answers now. But there is one thing more. The phone is in the kitchen. Call the police. Let them take charge of this whole bloody mess.”

“And you?”

“I’m dirty. All over. That’s what murder does to you, Harry. I can still call you Harry, can’t I? It seems as if we’ve known each other much longer than this little while. Well, Harry, I need to get clean. Though there are some things you can never scrub away.”

She stood up and walked to the door, bare feet moving silently over the thick pile of carpet.

“Wait,” he said, “one more question.” He stopped for a moment, almost ashamed of this last, helpless naivete. Yet he had to ask. “You’re — you’re not an animal. Not like Rourke. Why did you have to kill to get your way?”

“I thought you understood, Harry. It’s sharing this feeling that draws us together a little, isn’t it? I’ve been alone before, I know what it’s like, just as you do. I didn’t want to be alone again. I was willing to do anything in my power to avoid it. That’s all.”

She turned and went out into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. Harry remained in his chair. Memories drifted through his mind like flotsam on the Mersey. Liz had scarred so many lives: those of Maggie and Derek, of Matt Barley and Angie O’Hare. But then he thought of her commanding Dame’s fierce loyalty, and of his own better times with her when it seemed their lives stretched endlessly ahead and that every promise was sure to be fulfilled. He remembered a November night of fireworks and his first sight of a woman with a laughing face. Yes, it was true, he understood the impulse that had corrupted Angie O’Hare.

A cry from upstairs roused him. He heard something crash, then silence.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

He leapt to his feet and took the stairs three at a time, desperate to save her, to salvage something from disaster. Gasping, he kicked open the bathroom door.

Angie O’Hare lay naked at the bottom of the bath, auburn hair trailing in the water. Harry gazed at her white breasts, the triangle of reddish fuzz between her legs. Her mouth was wide open and the lovely blue eyes were empty of everything. A hair dryer was beside her, its long flex snaking out of the steamy room to a three-pin plug pushed into a socket on the landing. The crimson robe had been folded and put on the towel rail in a last act of futile tidiness.

Harry stared at the body. Impossible to look away. Death after death after death after death — how could he have guessed it would end like this?

He should be exulting. But now he’d lost his taste for blood.

A sentence from Liz on that last Wednesday night floated unbidden into his mind: I ought to feel sorry for her. And as he stood there, he became overwhelmed by pity for the woman who had paid for his wife to be killed.

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed,” said the priest, “is death.” A young man, bespectacled and earnest, he gazed upwards as if in search of divine approval. His Welsh lilt made the old words seem freshly minted and right. Yet in the front row of the congregation, Harry heard without listening, unable to absorb the sense of the text being preached.

In his new dark suit he was stiff and uncomfortable. Every limb of his body seemed to be hurting, as though for the past fortnight he had been numbed by an anaesthetic whose effect was now starting to fade, leaving him exposed to recurrent waves of physical pain.

Brick-built and drab, the crematorium had hard seats and no heating. A miserable place in which to say goodbye to Liz. But cremation had been her choice; she always hated the thought of burial. “Imagine,” she once murmured as they walked past a graveyard, “the worms eating the bodies in their tombs underground.” Rolling her eyes in comic disgust she’d said, “I’d rather be burnt.” Then she had laughed at the absurdity of the idea of death.

Harry felt a tingling beneath his eyelids as he glanced around at the people gathered to remember his wife. Maggie was sitting on the same row, an arm’s length away. Her black jacket, skirt and coat contrasted with the pallor of her skin, and the rings under her eyes testified to sleepless nights and despair of her crumbling marriage. Harry had last talked to her when discussing the plans for this funeral service and had found her glum and preoccupied. “If it wasn’t for the children…” she had begun at one point, but without completing the sentence. Next to her now, Derek was watching the white-robed priest with stony-faced concentration. He might have been attending a seminar about capital gains tax or the annual general meeting of a public coftipany.

Across the aisle, Dame dabbed at her cheeks with a handkerchief, drying one of the few unselfish tears that had been shed for Liz. On the telephone the other day she had told Harry about her latest beau, a Ferrari-driving whizz-kid from the world of advertising. There was a chance that he might get her a part in a TV commercial, she said. Beside her sat Matt Barley, his face smudged with misery, his stubby fingers fidgeting with the printed card which set out the order of service. He hadn’t spoken to Harry since confessing his brief affair with Liz. On his way in here, he had nodded grimly and hurried by.