a firm of accountants. Marriage to the boss six months before he became a partner and could point to his name on the notepaper. Two kids and a plush detached house overlooking the sea. An upwardly mobile existence with money no object. It lacked the glamour for which Liz yearned, but he found himself wondering whether all her scathing comments about Derek Edge and her sister’s dinner party lifestyle might in truth have been a cover for the envy that she felt.
“Didn’t she confide in you at all?”
Maggie shook her head. “Not where men were concerned. She was a tease, Harry, you know that better than anyone. She loved to hint and tantalise. Even as a kid sister, she always made a parade of keeping secrets. Anything to be a touch out of the ordinary or to convey an aura of mystery. She would have you believing her latest feller was a member of the aristocracy, but he’d always turn out to be an office boy with the gift of the gab.” She laid down her knife and fork. “Poor Liz. She thought she knew everything there was to know about men, when all the time she didn’t have a clue. You were the only worthwhile one of the lot. She had the sense to catch you and then she threw it away. Crazy.”
“So what did she say about her latest conquest?”
“He was rich and handsome, but of course. Then, so were you at one time of day — you might not have been aware. The money that you were going to make out of the law game… there was no end to it. You should have been Lord Chief Justice by now. Anyway, I asked if he was married and she said yes. She anticipated my disapproval. I think she liked to try to provoke me.”
“His name?”
“She never told me. We only spoke about him once and that conversation didn’t last long. I couldn’t hide what I thought about it.”
“When was this?”
“A couple of months ago, possibly longer.”
He was surprised. “Surely you’ve seen her since then?”
“No. Not even at Christmas.” She bowed her head. “The fact is, Liz and I have drifted miles apart since the two of you split up. I told her she was a fool and she didn’t care for that, reckoned I was jealous. The sun shone out of Mick Coghlan then. She worked him out eventually. Too late, as usual.”
“Did he beat her?”
“She wouldn’t have admitted it to me if he had. And, as I say, we saw less of each other. Of course, she used to mock Derek, as you know. After she left you, there was no reason for me to put up with that. We only met Mick Coghlan once and that was plenty for both Derek and me.”
Harry found that easy to understand. Strait-laced Derek Edge’s only acquaintance with crime would be on the fringe of his clients’ insider trading and elaborate tax dodges. For him to small-talk with Mick Coghlan would be like an archbishop’s wife asking a call girl round for tea.
“So Liz and I just met for a cuppa once in a while. Our lives ran on different tracks. I didn’t see any future in her being some kind of gangster’s moll and I dare say my prattling on about the kids bored her to tears.” Her face creased in recollection of lost opportunities. “And now there won’t be another chance to put things right between us.”
Harry waved to a waiter for coffee. “Did she seem frightened when you saw her last?”
Far from it. She kept saying how hard it was to be separated from the man you loved. I gave her a piece of my mind, told her this time she’d better make sure it was for keeps. Naturally, she made a few snide remarks about Derek. Poor man, he can’t help being an accountant.”
The coffee arrived. As they sipped from delicate china cups, Harry studied his sister-in-law. He had always been fond of Maggie. No fads or fantasies for her. Liz had poked fun at the Edges’ well-dusted home and their immaculate square of garden. Boring, boring, boring. But although Maggie could never equal Liz for looks or style, she had the gift of knowing her limitations. She had worked out exactly what she wanted from life and seemed to have acquired it. And yet — there was an indefinable difference in her from the Maggie that he remembered. A streak of ruthlessness, perhaps? Or possibly he’d expected her to seem a little more devastated by Liz’s death. But he reminded himself that he was trying not to let shock and despair take over. Maybe Maggie was simply doing the same.
They talked for a few more minutes, going back over their shared past. The Guy Fawkes party on the anniversary of his first meeting with Liz when the bonfire had been too wet to light. A cousin’s wedding when Liz had drunk too much and proposed to the bridegroom. The stripping-nun kissagram she had ordered for Derek’s thirtieth birthday celebrations in the discreet restaurant where he used to dine his clients.
After he had signed a chit in lieu of a bill — the Traders’ was not the sort of sordid place where members’ money changed hands in the sight of guests — Maggie said, “Why did you ask if she was frightened?”
He gave her a brief resume of Liz’s late night visit to his flat. When he had finished, there was a long pause before Maggie took a deep breath and said, “You don’t think — there’s anything suspicious about her death?”
Harry winced and she said quickly, “Sorry, that was stupid of me. But I meant, do you believe it was any more than a street attack that went horribly wrong?”
“It’s possible. The police are being cagey but they certainly haven’t handled it as though they’re satisfied with the simple explanation.”
Shaking her head, Maggie said, “You can’t think that Mick…”
“I don’t know what to think. But there’s a great deal I want to find out.”
She placed her small, white hand on his. The fingers were cool, the pressure firmer then when they had greeted each other. “Keep out of it, Harry. This is a dreadful day, but for all her faults, I won’t accept that anyone would wish to do Liz harm. It’s sure to have been an ordinary street crime. If killing a person can ever be ordinary. And if it wasn’t… ”
“Yes?”
“Then you shouldn’t meddle.” She closed her eyes for a moment. When she spoke again there was a harsh urgency in her tone. “Let the police sort it out. That’s their job. Don’t get involved.”
He might have said: You don’t understand, I was her husband, I am already involved. But instead he remained quiet, wondering why Maggie, too, now appeared to be frightened.
Chapter Eight
Instead of returning to the office, Harry wandered about the city for an hour, struggling against the dull ache in his head and the weakness of his limbs in a vain effort to marshall his thoughts. He yearned to act, to take some positive step towards achieving vengeance for Liz’s death. It wasn’t enough to wait for the police investigation to take its course. Yet his sluggish brain refused to tell him what to do.
His shoes slid on pavements greasy after another fall of rain and when he looked around he saw Liverpool with a stranger’s eyes. Streets littered with discarded till receipts, rotten apple cores and polystyrene hamburger cartons. Illicit dealers flogging dustbin bags and cheap brooches from upturned crates. Teenage kids with green hair loafing at corners and men in leather jackets trying to sell socialist propaganda. Today everyone had a face as grey as the sky. Vandals had ripped up a row of saplings planted under the shadow of St. George’s Hall and sprayed shop walls with slogans about football, sex and anarchy. Normally he took the shoddiness of it all for granted, but this afternoon the sight of the place hurt him as much as would a scar across the face of a friend.
Harry quickened his pace as he approached each newspaper stand; the early evening editions were already on sale. Hoarse relish filled the vendors’ voices as they shouted their reminders that Liz was dead.
“Murder of City Girl!”
Harry flinched the first time he heard the cry, but soon it was commonplace, as much a part of the background as the smell of onions from the hot dog sellers’ carts and the intermittent screeching of the buses’ brakes.
“Murder of City Girl! Murder of City Girl!”
People were buying the papers; he could see one or two of them devouring Ken Cafferty’s prose. Liz had always wanted to be the centre of attention and in death her wish had come true. He remembered her once quoting Andy Warhol’s dictum that everyone should be famous for fifteen minutes and wondering aloud when her moment
