All the Lonely People (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Hurrying round the corner into Fenwick Court, Harry collided with a woman walking in the opposite direction. He was about to mutter an apology when he recognised her.

“Brenda!” A thought hit him. “Oh, shit! We were going to have lunch together.”

She brushed some hair out of her eyes. Her face was puffy with frustration and disappointment. She looked her age.

“A couple of hours ago, yes. Never mind. Your secretary was very kind. Stuck up for you and even offered to share her sandwiches. I waited till it was time for tea!”

“Christ, what can I say? I'm sorry. Look, don't leave right now. Come back to the office for a minute.”

“I've got a job to do, remember? And I'm very late. It may not seem important to you, but I've already had to ring my friend and ask her to cover up for me.”

“Brenda, please, I've said I'm sorry. Listen, I've been all over the city today. I think I've got a lead on the murders.”

She sighed. “Yes, that's what matters most to you, isn't it? Finding the man who stabbed your wife. Despite the way she treated you - flaunting her infidelities. Perhaps that's what we have in common, Harry. We're both gluttons for punishment.”

He swallowed hard. She was preaching at him, as Angie O'Hare had done. And, as before, his flesh prickled as he realised he couldn't deny the truth in the sermon. The Liz he'd loved had treated him like dirt.

Brenda was still talking, as much to herself as to him. “I suppose the world's full of those who take and those who give. You're unusual; mainly it's women who do the giving. And for what? Just a name. I'm still a Rixton, although he dumped me so long ago. I never went back to my maiden name, yet why should women always be called after their husbands, anyway? It seems so bloody unfair.”

She was on the brink of tears. He put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it away.

“I'll leave you to it,” she said. “I hope you find what you're looking for.”

“Brenda, I'll see you tonight,” he began to say, but she had gone.

He swore under his breath. This morning she'd not been looking for commitments. Hours later he was already in the wrong. All the same, he hated the thought of letting Brenda down. Whether it was Liz's fault or his didn't matter. He'd vowed to find her killer and he couldn't give up now. It was no longer a question of simple vengeance. He hungered for the truth, had to discover it, whatever the cost. Until he did, he'd never be able to get on with the rest of his life.

Back in the office, Lucy greeted him. “Your - er, neighbour just left. She seemed upset.”

“I bumped into her on my way here.”

“Oh dear. Recriminations? I did my best for you, told her that if you'd been called away, it must be urgent, said you always put your clients first.”

He couldn't help grinning. “The perfect secretary. You lie so convincingly, there must be a future for you in the legal profession.”

At the reception desk Suzanne was talking to Jim Crusoe. His partner swivelled at the sound of voices and assumed an expression of mock amazement. “Mr. Devlin, I presume? Word in the city is that you've been helping the police with their enquiries.”

“The report of my arrest has been exaggerated,” said Harry.

Jim walked down the corridor with him to his office. Sitting down on the edge of the desk, the big man asked, “What news?”

Harry took a deep breath. “Coghlan's been charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to steal four millions' worth of bullion. There's been another killing - a man who knew something about Liz's death has been found shot to death on the rubbish heap at Pasture Moss. Turns out neither my brother-in-law nor one of my old friends was as impervious to my wife's charms as you, and shortly before she was killed she was being followed around Liverpool by a two-bit hoodlum who may have been an ex-boyfriend bent on revenge. Oh, and I spent last night at Canning Place trying to convince the scuffers I'm not a double murderer. Other than that - nothing much to report.”

Jim's craggy face puckered with bewilderment. “Are you having me on?”

“Would I?” Harry leafed through the telephone pad tear-offs tucked underneath the desk calendar. Nothing that Lucy couldn't cope with. “I want to check a file, it'll only take a moment. Then I'll be off again.”

Jim contrived a wry smile and hoisted himself down off the desk. At the door he said, “Don't rely on me for bail, that's all.”

“Trust me, I know what I'm doing.”

“Famous last words.” With a shake of the head, Jim wandered off to his room.

Delving into the top drawer of his second filing cabinet, Harry located a buff folder marked TRISHA SLEIGHTHOLME-SOLICITING CHARGE and rifled through the sheaf of papers secured by a green treasury tag. The first page of his handwritten notes confirmed that Trisha wasn't on the phone, but gave the address of the Toxteth flat in which Peanuts Benjamin had set her up to ply her trade. He jotted it down on a scrap of paper which he thrust into his inside pocket. Having a contact amongst the street girls might help him to find Marilyn and thus, he hoped, Rourke more quickly. Today's calendar motto, he noticed, was:
It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen.

After a quick parting word with Lucy, he picked up the M.G. and set off up Duke Street. The February night was falling now and the sodium lights cast their eerie glow on the darkening city streets. Graffiti on the walls of a disused bacon factory angrily proclaimed that the I.R.A. would win. He passed the austere bulk of the Anglican Cathedral, not two hundred yards away from the gym which Coghlan was never going to see again. Turning on to Upper Parliament Street, he slowed down, starting to squint into doorways, searching in vain for a prostitute who bore a resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. At the traffic lights opposite the mosque, a police Escort pulled alongside him; Harry sensed its occupants giving him the once-over. He accelerated away. The idea of having to explain a kerb-crawling charge to Skinner and Macbeth did not appeal. At the next lights he turned into Grove Street and managed to shake off the police car. Another left brought him into Falkner Square, notorious as the favourite outdoor haunt of the city's prostitutes. No one was in sight, there were just a couple of black cabs cruising hopefully. Perhaps it was too early yet.

A minute later he was in Castlereagh Avenue, one of half a dozen broad, lamp-lined streets in the vicinity built in the days when Toxteth was where Liverpool's prosperous merchants lived in splendour. He pulled up outside the tall terraced building numbered thirteen and said a silent prayer that the M.G. would still be there when he returned. Stone steps led up to a front door which stood ajar. There were half a dozen doorbells but only two had accompanying name cards. Harry checked the piece of paper in his pocket. Flat F, that was it.

Keeping his fingers crossed that he wasn't interrupting Trisha in the middle of a professional engagement, he pushed the door open and climbed the flight of stairs that led from the scruffy hallway. On the first landing were Flats C and D. He climbed again and found himself outside a door marked F. Sellotaped to it was a card marked TRISHA and decorated by little heart shapes in mauve felt tip letters.

His loud knock brought an immediate response. Trisha's voice, challenging yet with an undertow of anxiety. “Who is it?” The question of a woman who is not certain that her next customer will not be the last. A rapist, perhaps, a psychopath, a murderer . . .

“Harry Devlin.”

After a moment's scrutiny via the spyhole, she admitted him. Crossing the threshold, he absorbed at a glance the rush matting in lieu of carpet, the cracked mirror hanging from the old-fashioned picture rail, the dripping
I Love Ibiza
tee shirt draped across the clothes maiden in the hall. Curry smells wafted in from the adjacent kitchenette.

“You had me flummoxed there. It's a bit soon for punters. Besides, only me regulars call at the house first, and then they're likely to give me a ring first.” Her eyebrows lifted a fraction as a thought occurred to her. “Changed your mind?”

“I'm here to beg a favour.”

Mischievously, she breathed, “Nothing - out of the ordinary?”

“Behave, Trisha. All I need is your help.”

“Last solicitor who asked me for that, I charged him double.”

Harry refused to be diverted. “I'm looking for a girl known as Marilyn. She works round here. I'd like to find her fast.”

“Is she another of your clients?” A faint grin. “Or the other way around? Don't make me jealous.”

Patiently, he said, “I simply want to talk to her.”

“You wouldn't be wanting to cause bother for her? The law's the law. You're either inside it or not. You're in. Marilyn and me, we're out.”

“This is personal.” He leaned back against the wall, arms folded. “You'll have read about my wife in the papers, yes?”

“More than that, Harry. The busies came round to check your alibi. Remember us meeting in the Ferry last Thursday? They wanted to know all about it.”

Harry had forgotten telling the police about his casual meeting with Trisha, had overlooked the diligence with which they checked and counter-checked.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to . . .”

She waved away his apology. “No problem. I wasn't entertaining when they arrived. What's this all about, anyway?”

“It's possible that Marilyn knows someone who knows something about who killed Liz.”

Trisha scanned his face for a moment, then said, “Wait here. I'll get my coat.”

She darted into the living room and re-emerged a minute later wearing a knee-length fake fur coat. “A present from Peanuts,” she said with a trace of pride. “He's not as bad as people make out.”

Her legs were bare and she was still wearing her fluffy indoor slippers. He gestured towards them. “Don't you want to put some shoes on?”

“We're not going far.”

She led him back down the stairs and into the street. The sharpness of the evening breeze made him wince, but Trisha didn't seem to care. She traced a path through the streets. A couple of cars passed, moving slowly. The drivers peered furtively at Harry and his companion before continuing on their way. At the bottom of Falkner Square, Trisha halted at the pavement's edge. Up ahead a taxi had pulled up alongside a telephone kiosk. A thin figure in a leather jacket and mini skirt skipped out from behind the red box and spoke to a man on the passenger side of the cab. Then she opened the rear door and clambered in.

“That's not her,” said Trisha authoritatively as the taxi sped off in the direction of Myrtle Street. “Young Carla, she's only fourteen. Wrong, innit?”

Harry waved towards the Square. “This is Marilyn's patch?”

“If she's working tonight, she won't be more than a hundred yards from here. Goes round in ever decreasing circles, she does. Course, you've got to keep on the move, otherwise it's an easy lock-up for some lousy scuffer with nothing better to do.”

Harry said nothing. He had spotted a woman moving out from the shadows on the other side of the road at the sound of another approaching vehicle. As a scrap metal truck lumbered by, she retreated again into the blackness, but for a moment a nearby street lamp had shed its cone of light upon a thatch of blonde hair. The woman was vaguely familiar. He realised that he had seen her for a brief moment in the Ferry. Of course, it struck him now. He had actually seen her interrupting a man - Rourke? - who was talking to Evison.

He tensed with excitement. At last it was all beginning to come together. He had been right to link Liz's vague report of the man with the battered face who, she had claimed, had been following her, with the ex-boyfriend whom Jane Brogan had attacked in the Nye. Shirelle had confirmed that. And now he knew there was a connection with Froggy. But there was still much that Harry did not understand.

“Seen her?” asked Trisha.

“I think so.”

“Leave the talking to me. She can be a rough cow. Moody, too. But she's all right, Marilyn, just had a hard time, see?”

In little, mincing steps Trisha went on ahead of him. Harry held back. The familiar knot of tension was grinding away in his stomach again. Instinctively, he sensed that he was on the verge of a breakthrough, that the truth about the deaths of Liz, her child and Froggy Evison was about to come within arm's reach.

The two women came into view. Trisha had her hand on the arm of the blonde, as if to prevent her making a bolt for it. Marilyn was well nick-named. At first glance on a February night her hair and curving figure might remind anyone of the screen goddess. The illusion didn't last long, even in semi-darkness. Her eyes lacked sparkle and the red mouth was stretched in an ungenerous line.

Trisha took charge. “Marilyn, this is a mate of mine. Harry Devlin.”

“Yeah?” There was no sign in the dull eyes that she was acquainted with his name.

“He just wants a word with you, that's all.”

Suspiciously, the woman said, “I'm working, Trish, can't you see?”

“This won't take a minute. And he'll make it worth your while.”

“Yeah?”

“That's right,” he assured her. “I'll pay you for your time. Easy money, better than working.”

“You want to talk here? It's freezing, I have to keep moving to keep warm, never mind the bleeding busies.”

“Use my place if you like,” offered Trisha.

“Thanks,” said Harry. “All right with you, Marilyn?”

“Suppose so.”

The three of them started back towards Castlereagh Avenue. Out of Marilyn's range of vision, Trisha looked meaningfully at Harry and mouthed the words: “Smack head.” Harry nodded. He acted for enough drug addicts to be able to recognise the signs of their weakness. Heroin was cheap these days and freely available. His thoughts turned back to Rourke. Two women more different from Liz than Jane and this Marilyn would be hard to imagine. Perhaps the man had eclectic tastes. Or was there another explanation for his interest in Harry's wife?