“Talk to anyone whilst you were out?”
Harry hesitated, then told the detective about his conversation with Trisha. Skinner nodded, Macbeth made a note. Yet neither of them seemed interested.
“And you say you left at about twelve?”
“Give or take ten minutes. I can’t be precise. Look, do you mind-”
“You came straight home, you said. Anyone see you arrive back? Or depart?”
“Not as far as I can recall. The porter may have been on his rounds.”
Skinner appeared to reflect on Harry’s answers for a moment or two before saying, “What were your feelings towards your wife, Mr. Devlin?”
Harry scoured his mind for a suitable reply. But how could he give a sensible response to someone who had never met the woman? What were his feelings for Liz: love, hate, devotion, fury? All in equal measure at every hour of the day? He stretched out his arms helplessly.
“You’re speaking in the past tense,” he said at last, “I don’t think I can cope with that at the moment. Any minute now Liz will walk through the door and tell me this is all some gigantic joke. An out-of-season April fool.”
Skinner’s pale pink tongue appeared between narrow lips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Devlin, but I have to ask you this — did you kill your wife?”
Harry lit another cigarette. Although he avoided the detectives’ eyes, the prickling of his skin told him that they were weighing him up like ratcatchers examining their prey.
“Liz tempted me to murder from the hour when I met her, Chief Inspector. She was impatient and impulsive and infuriating. I never came across a woman who could goad me with such ease. I won’t pretend she didn’t sometimes drive me crazy with rage. But I’d sooner lose an arm than cause her a moment’s misery. If you’re scratching round for a culprit, count me out.”
Macbeth said, “Mind if I look round?” After his superior’s low-key questioning, the sound of the black detective’s voice came as a shock. The accent was deepest Kirby, the tone unambiguously insolent. Even before Harry could reply, the young policeman was on his feet, prowling about the room, his whole body taut with expectation. Harry noticed that he touched nothing.
“What were you wearing last night?” As an afterthought, Macbeth tossed in a “sir” that added to the insult.
Trying to steady his voice, Harry described his clothes and, turning to Skinner, asked, “Where was she found?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Unsubtle, thought Harry. “No, Chief Inspector.”
“One of our patrolmen discovered the body on his rounds. In Leeming Street, at the bottom of an alleyway running down by the tyre centre, Albiston’s.”
A mean place for anyone to die. A liver-rotted wino would be ashamed to finish up there. For an instant Harry thought he was going to vomit. Only with a heart-straining effort of will was he able to conquer the feeling of nausea.
“When was she killed?” he asked.
Skinner shook his head. “Too soon for us to say, sir.”
And even if you could, you’d keep that card up your sleeve, thought Harry. He noticed Macbeth push open the bedroom door and step inside, but made no objection. Instead, he pressed for more information and the chief inspector painted in a few background details.
There was, said Skinner sombrely, no indication of a sexual motive for the attack, although pending the post mortem it was too early to draw a firm conclusion. The murder weapon had been a Stanley knife, of the kind sold in hardware shops on every street corner. So far it had not been found. Liz’s handbag had been stolen, but picked up two streets away. No money or credit cards — just the empty wallet — but the driving licence had identified her. Ironic, as she never cared to drive; being chauffeured was much more in her line.
Slowly, Harry said, “Presumably it was some kind of street crime? A mugging gone wrong.”
“We can’t rule out any possibility at this stage.” Skinner’s melancholic face offered no hint as to whether he considered it likely or not. Yet Harry’s years in the law had taught him anything could happen in this city. A kid desperate for money to feed his taste for heroin perhaps, setting on a woman alone, messing up a bag snatch, then grabbing for his knife in a spasm of panic.
“As I mentioned, sir,” continued Skinner, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to accompany my sergeant to the mortuary.”
Before Harry could speak, Macbeth strode out of the bedroom, barely able to contain a savage smirk of triumph. To his superior he said, “A couple of suitcases in there, sir. Also a shopping bag full of women’s things. The luggage is marked with Mrs. Devlin’s name.”
“You failed to tell me about that, Mr. Devlin.”
Harry shrugged. “I forgot, that’s all.”
“Really, sir?” The corners of Skinner’s mouth seemed to turn even further down than before.
It took Harry’s last reserves of self-discipline for him to respond evenly. “Liz dumped them there yesterday when I was out. I think I told you, my neighbour exchanged a word with her in the early evening.”
“If you don’t object, sir, we’ll have to carry out a search of your flat. A routine precaution, I’m sure a man with your background will understand.”
Harry nodded, as for the first time this morning his mind began to work. From the moment they’d learned Liz had spent Wednesday night here, he’d been in the frame. Skinner’s attitude made it clear that his time at the Ferry, his speaking to Trisha, gave him no alibi. Liz must have been killed earlier in the evening. If it was much later, the police wouldn’t have arrived so quickly. And if he objected to their making a full search, a warrant would materialise like an ace from a conjuror’s palm.
“Go ahead, Chief Inspector.” He hoped he sounded more relaxed than he felt.
Skinner nodded and Macbeth walked over to the door. As he got up to leave, Harry had to choke a bitter laugh in his throat as a thought sprang into his mind. Never mind about a mugging — hadn’t Liz in this very room, not forty-eight hours earlier, expressed her dread of meeting her death at Mick Coghlan’s hands? And he had dismissed it as an absurd flight of fancy. Perhaps to be suspected of murder was the start of his punishment for having disbelieved her.
Chapter Six
“Yes, that’s my wife.”
The sweet, sickly stench of the mortuary was everywhere. Instinctively, Harry knew that he would never escape it. No matter if it faded from his nostrils or was cleaned from his clothes. At any moment in the years to come, he would recall this grey morning and again be haunted by the odour of the place of death.
He stood with D.S. Macbeth as the attendant, a silent white-coated man, pulled the sheet up to cover Liz’s face. Seeing her again in this tiled, windowless room seemed unreal. Yet there was no denying that the cold corpse was hers; the last self-deluding prayer, that the police had blundered over identification, had gone unanswered. The dark hair curled as crisply as ever over closed eyes and for all their bluish tinge, the lips had a twist of self- satisfaction. As if to say, “I told you so.” The mortician’s skill almost fooled Harry; it looked as though she were only sleeping. But a second glance at the pale waxy cheeks that he had so often kissed made him realise the spirit had gone. All that was left of Liz on earth was an empty, lifeless shell.
He felt dazed. For a second he thought his legs were going to buckle beneath him, but he summoned up the last of his strength and managed to straighten up. He dare not let himself sink into a quicksand of despair. He must reach for solid ground, try to make sense of the cruel absurdity of what had happened to his wife.
The attendant wheeled her away on a squeaking trolley. Harry did not watch her go. Instead he demanded, “Have you interviewed Coghlan yet?”
His expression unreadable, Macbeth said, “I understand he’s out of town.”
“Liz was terrified of him,” said Harry. He could not help brooding about Wednesday night. “I should have
