All the Lonely People (16 page)

Chapter Twenty

He slept badly, the battered arm and rib-cage protesting each time he tried to turn over in his bed. Liz's face kept appearing in his ruptured dreams. Not smiling, for once, but downcast with reproach.

It was a relief when early morning sun began to lighten the room through a chink in the curtains. His body was stiff and getting up was a slow and painful business, made no easier by the sense of guilt which hung around his neck like a weight.

He hated feeling that she was on his conscience. That if he had done more, she would not have died. And that he'd betrayed her by wanting to respond to the touch of Brenda's lips. How bloody typical of Liz, he thought, at least she's consistent. Unreasonable in death just as in life.

Stepping under the shower, he turned his thoughts to the woman from next door. What if he had asked her to stay? He didn't doubt that she would have said yes. He didn't love her, she could hardly love him, but did that matter? The jet of hot water stung him, but not as much as his anger with himself. Why shouldn't he want a woman again?

Since Liz had left him, he had usually slept alone. His occasional affairs had offered no fulfilment. There had been a sociology student, doing a stint as a barmaid at the Dock Brief, who said she was in search of experience. A copper-haired solicitor called Sinead whom he had met at a seminar about developments in divorce law. A couple of drunken one-night stands with girls whose names he couldn't even remember, picked up at parties thrown by people he hardly knew. None of them compared with Liz, none held for him more than a fleeting appeal.

Brenda Rixton was fifteen years older than any of them. A week ago the thought of her as a lover would never have crossed his mind. Yet Angie the singer, at much the same age, exuded sexuality. If he could fancy her, why not his neighbour? Brenda wasn't a bad-looking woman.

As he dressed he gave his reflection in the mirror a grin. Perhaps that birthday last Wednesday had marked a change in his taste. He was getting on. Jim would say he was starting to grow up.

The doorbell summoned him. Brenda. He said hello, feeling faintly ridiculous. Minutes earlier he'd contemplated making love to this respectable lady. Now, seeing her neat, trim and middle-aged in her business suit, he was ready to let the fantasy fade.

“I thought I'd just see how you are before going in to work.”

“That's kind of you, but I'm okay, thanks. A bit stiff, but nothing to make a fuss about. Er - won't you come in for a moment?”

She stepped into the room. Was it his imagination, or did her hips swing more jauntily than he'd noticed in the past?

“At least it's a fine start today. Though the forecast is bad.” She perched on the sofa's arm, seemed to have difficulty in choosing her words. “Look, about last night, I hope you didn't think . . .”

“Brenda, don't worry. I was glad to see you. You've been very good to me. I'm an ungrateful-seeming sod, but I do appreciate it. Really.”

She smiled and shook her head. “No, you're a kind man, though you try to pretend otherwise. I'm sorry about your wife. It takes time to get over something like that. But, remember, you can't mourn forever. Eventually you need to make a fresh start.”

“Easier said than done.”

She stood up. “I won't try to argue. Besides, I wouldn't win. Look after yourself, though. Please.”

“I will,” he said. “Depend upon it.”

At the door she turned. “Harry, I
am
depending on it.” After her footsteps had died away down the corridor outside, he washed and dressed. Between mouthfuls of coffee, he dialled the Ensenada, his favourite restaurant in the city. Taking Brenda out for a meal tonight was the least he could do. Just a meal, though. Nothing else.

At such an early hour, he got straight through to Pino. The Ensenada's proprietor was a voluble extrovert, one of the biggest gossips in town. As a source of hot news, he rivalled the
Echo
and he often said he loved good conversation (by which he meant talking to an appreciative audience) as much as
haute cuisine.
His florid condolences and exclamations about Liz's death lasted for several minutes without a pause.

“And to think,” he announced in melodramatic style as Harry tried to speak, “that I was talking to her less than two - yes! - hours before the tragedy occurred.”

In the theatrical pause that followed, Harry demanded in a voice suddenly hoarse, “What do you mean?”

“Ah, you did not know?” Pino could scarcely conceal his pleasure at breaking an exclusive to the victim's husband. “But she was dining with Mr. Edge. Your brother-in-law, is that not correct?”

Derek, of all people? Trying to conceal his amazement, Harry said, “When was this?”

Shorn of frills and flourishes, the answer was that Liz and Derek had been among Pino's first customers on Thursday evening, arriving at half-six and leaving just before eight.

“And within hours - no, minutes even! - this terrible thing . . .” Pino's shock-horror vocabulary temporarily failed him.

“Do the police know about this?”

It had somehow come to their attention, Pino admitted. Despite the fact that he had scarcely mentioned the matter, they had deemed it worthy of enquiry. But there was so little to tell. He had exchanged a few pleasantries with Mrs. Devlin. As always, she was in high spirits. Mr. Edge was perhaps a little more subdued, but then who would not be content to sit and listen to such a charming and delightful woman? It was an infamy, this crime, an outrage.

Harry eventually brought him down to earth and pressed for more information. But Pino had little more to tell. Amidst further expressions of sympathy, Harry booked a table for two for eight o'clock. Eventually, he managed to ring off and after a moment's thought called the local office of Krikken and Company, the firm in which Derek was a partner.

“Mr. Edge is in a meeting, I'm afraid.” The switchboard operator chanted the phrase in ritual fashion. Harry recognised office code for “Piss off unless it's an emergency” and persisted, hinting that a mega-buck deal hung on his being able to consult with Derek immediately. Money talked and after a flurry of resistance, he was put through to a secretary and finally the voice of the man himself came on to the line.

“Harry.” Derek Edge communicated in the two syllables a blend of obligatory sympathy for the recently bereaved and the tetchiness of an important professional man disturbed in the midst of complicated work.

“I need to see you straight away, Derek. It's about Liz.”

His brother-in-law responded with a lot of dignified nonsense about having to consult his diary. Harry interrupted.

“I won't waste your time, I promise. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

He rang off without waiting for a reply. He had always wanted to bully Derek, as a semi-civilised alternative to throttling the smugness out of him. But now he had to put aside petty dislikes and concentrate on learning why Maggie had never told him about her husband's dinner with Liz.

He walked over to Krikken's. The exercise might help ease the stiffness in his body that was a constant reminder of the brief ferocity of Monday night's attack. The accountants occupied a building at the corner of Drury Lane which looked like an upturned egg box. In an entrance lobby big enough to hold a circus, a stainless steel plaque recorded that Krikken House was the registered office for a hundred or more companies. Most of the names included-words like “Investment”, “Offshore” and “Holdings”.

A uniformed commissionaire gave him a security pass flatteringly labelled authorised visitor and directed him tot he seventh floor. The lift whirred upwards without asound and when the doors opened, he was greeted by a sleek secretary whose startling resemblance to Kim Basinger would have guaranteed her a job even had she been unable to type her own name. She ushered him into Derek's presence and then withdrew.

Immaculate in a dark grey three-piece, his brother-in-law came from behind his desk, right hand outstretched.

“My dear fellow. Take a seat.”

Harry sat. The chair was low and squelchy. Like all the furniture in the room it was black: some designer's concept of chic, heedless of comfort. A picture window behind the desk commanded a view of the Liver Building and the Mersey. Harry saw the Seacombe ferry was chugging towards the Pier Head.

He brought the conversational preliminaries to an end. “I gather you dined with Liz on the night that she was murdered?”

Derek's pallid face invariably yielded as many clues as a sheet of blank paper. Coolly, he said, “It's rapidly becoming common knowledge.”

“I've talked to Maggie more than once. She's never mentioned this to me. Haven't you told her?”

“Yes, I have. There was no particular concealment on my part. The police came to see me, as a matter of fact. I made a statement. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do any more than sketch in Liz's movements during a part of the day in question.”

Harry stared at him curiously. “And why exactly were you out on the town with my wife? I hadn't realised you were such bosom buddies.”

Derek Edge shrugged. “Frankly, it was a spur of the moment thing. Liz was my sister-in-law, after all. I offered her a meal for old time's sake.”

In common with most of the affluent people whom Harry knew, his brother-in-law was not noted for generosity. He said, “Was she more to you that just a sister-in-law, Derek? Did you fancy her?”

“For heaven's sake!”

“Or ever sleep with her?”

That evoked a facial reaction. Derek pressed his thin lips so closely together that they almost vanished from sight. Harshly, he said, “I realise you're upset, and I'm making allowances, but if you're going to be gratuitously offensive, I shall have to ask you to leave.”

Harry banged his fist on the desk, scattering the assortment of pens and paper clips that lay beside Derek's leather-trimmed blotter. “I want the truth, Derek. Don't forget, I'm a lawyer. I'm familiar with prevarication. More so even than an accountant discussing a client's tax return. The glib stuff won't work with me.”

Edge toyed with his wedding ring. “Liz was right about you,” he said. “She said you'd never be more than a poor man's brief. Too many “B” movies in youth, she suspected. They made you irredeemably second-rate.”

It was a rabbit's punch: Liz had teased Harry to his face, saying much the same. Calmly, he said, “She was right about many things, Derek. Including her estimate of you. I'll spare you the details. Let's just say I'm not convinced by this beloved sister-in-law crap, whether the police fell for it or not.”

The accountant hesitated. He was still playing with the wedding band; it was as near to a neurotic gesture as Harry had ever seen in him. “This doesn't go beyond these four walls?”

“No promises, Derek, but you know I'm not a blabbermouth. You should concede that, however second-rate I am.”

Edge twisted in his chair. “I didn't mean to - well . . .” He essayed a flickering smile. “I suppose all our nerves must be a little taut in the circumstances.”

“Go on.”

Taking in a gulp of air, Edge said, “If you must know the gory details, then you could say that I was besotted with Liz. Like a schoolboy, though you may find it hard to credit.”

Harry studied his brother-in-law. Derek gave the impression of having been born middle-aged. He still wasn't forty, but with that neatly parted, thinning brown hair, uninflected voice, and fondness for bridge and the
Financial Times,
it was a feat of imagination to believe he had ever been young.

Harry would have though him no more susceptible to Liz'swiles than an inanimate piece of computer hardware.

“Maggie guessed, of course. My wife's no fool. She kept Liz well away from me until we'd tied the knot. I gather she'd lost a string of boyfriends to her sister over the years and she wasn't inclined to take any more chances. But Liz had a way of looking at you so that, whatever she said, however trivial or joking, you felt that she was longing to be alone with you.”

Harry knew what the man meant. His mind switched back to courtship days; he saw them like sepia stills from an old silent movie, with Liz as the heroine; himself as the Chaplinesque simpleton who had fallen for her.

The story dribbled out. Derek had resisted temptation for a time before succumbing. There had followed a game of cat and mouse: when he expressed an interest in Liz, however obliquely, she backed away. When he pretended indifference, she would take advantage of any moments alone together to flirt with him before reverting to more orthodox teasing as soon as anyone else entered the room. This had been the way of it before, during and even after her years with Harry. After she had started living with Coghlan, Derek had seen much less of her. But six months ago he had bumped into her in the Cavern Walks and she had responded eagerly to his invitation for a drink. He sensed her discontent with her new life and, hoping to play upon it, arranged to take her out from time to time. Again her interest had faded, but by now Derek was caught like a mouse in a trap.

“I would ring her up,” he said, “but always there was some excuse why she wasn't able to see me. I couldn't understand it. Coghlan would never change his ways, I told her so a thousand times. She'd never be happy with him.”

“By then she'd found herself another playmate.”

Edge stood up and looked at the view through the window. The ferry was now out of sight. When at last he spoke again, his tone was heavy with despair. “Who could read her mind? Not me. But on Thursday I was just stepping out of India Buildings when I spotted her on the other side of the street. I was on my way to lunch with a client. She waved and seemed glad to talk. She told me she'd walked out on Coghlan and was staying with you. Not that you were getting back together, she said you had more sense, but you'd offered her a roof over her head while she sorted one or two things out. I was excited, I thought I had a chance. So I asked her out to dinner that night and she said yes.”