Looking up, the building appeared to reach to the heavens, but when he walked through the double doors with their cracked panes, he realised that he was stepping into an earthly hell. Someone had run riot with an aerosol paint spray, extolling in fuzzy blue the virtues of Everton Football Club. Both lifts were out of order. Climbing the stairs quickly, he tried to ignore the stench of urine that hung in the air. On every landing windows were broken, with unswept fragments of glass still scattered on threadbare carpet tiles. Once or twice he saw discarded scraps of silver paper and polythene bags, the tell-tale spoor of heroin addicts and glue sniffers. His breath was coming in jerky gasps by the time that he reached the ninth floor. As he walked down the corridor in search of Jane Brogan’s flat, an old woman in pink cardigan and hairnet emerged from a doorway and accosted him.
“You the man from the Corpie?”
“No, love. Sorry.”
Her wrinkled face corrugated in a frown and she leaned confidentially towards him. “They send people to spy on us, you know.”
“Not me, I promise you. Can you tell me where number nine-one-three is?”
She drew the cardigan more tightly around her thin frame, as if her virtue had been impugned. “That scrubber?” A thought occurred to her and her watery blue eyes shone with interest. “You checking up on her, then? Fiddling her Social, like all the rest of them here. The way she’s been throwing her money around, like Lady Muck, about time you lot cottoned on.”
When he located flat 913, his rap on the door provoked an outburst of juvenile wailing from inside. Muffled scolding noises were followed by the sound of footsteps.
“Who is it?” The woman’s voice was wary, as if she believed that no news was good news.
“You don’t know me, Jane. My name’s Harry Devlin, I’d like to come in for five minutes. I need to speak to you about my wife.”
Keeping the chain on, the woman opened the door an inch. His first impression was of lank fair hair and a face drained of hope. With a shake of the head, she said, “I don’t know no Mrs. Devlin.” But Harry caught a note of apprehension in her reply.
“Maybe not, but your ex-boyfriend did — Rourke.”
She studied him with a mixture of caution and curiosity before saying in a grudging tone, “You mean that woman what got murdered?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know nothing about her.”
“Please let me in, Jane.”
Thrusting out her lower lip, she said, “Piss off and leave me in peace.”
“Listen, Jane, I met your step-sister Gillian. She told me about Joe Rourke. I want to get the story first hand, simply so I can believe it. And I won’t go away till you let me in. No matter how long it takes. Come on now, let me in.”
She glared at him, but started to fiddle with the chain and security lock. Finally the door was pulled back to reveal a tall girl whose carelessly buttoned blouse displayed ample portions of white breasts. On a good day, Harry thought, she might be attractive, but this was far from being a good day. Her hair needed a wash and her eyes and cheeks were dull enough to suggest that she had packed a lifetime’s misery into her — what? — perhaps twenty years. The resignation implicit in the way she said “Come inside” made it plain that she didn’t expect his visit to herald a change for the better.
The flat was a mess of cigarette ash and baby’s things. Weeks must have passed since it had last seen a vacuum cleaner. The damp stain which spread across one wall of the room into which she steered him was enough to rob anybody of the incentive to tidy up, though the place was at least equipped with telly, video and stereo system. A smart sheepskin coat, incongrous as the Koh-i-Noor in a cabbage patch, had been thrown over the arm of a chair. A single bar of an electric fire glowed dimly, failing to give off any warmth. He perched on the edge of the two-seater settee and looked at the stain, trying to conceive what it would be like to live here day after day, month after month, year after year, with no prospect of parole. Anyone could go stir-crazy in the Nye.
She stood opposite him with folded arms, still weighing him up. “Smoke?”
“I’m trying to give them up,” he said.
“Life’s too short for that,” she said, fishing a cheap cigarette from a pack lying on top of one of the hi-fi speakers. “Reckoned you was from the Social. They hound you these days, the minute you get a quid or two.” Lighting up, she added, “Word’s got round, Joe isn’t here any more. Kids broke in at the week-end. They used to keep their distance when he was around. No one would’ve dared to do this place over while he was living in it. I’d only gone downstairs to empty the rubbish. I’d left it over a week, thinking the Corporation would fix the lift. I heard Wayne screaming and ran back in, but they’d already scarpered, hadn’t they? Didn’t get away with much, just a handful of me records. Little bastards.”
When Harry muttered sympathetically, her response was a casual toss of the matted hair. “Happens every day, dunnit? It’s this dump, the kids know there’s nothing down for them. You could die in this hole and no one would know the difference. I should’ve listened to me dad.”
“Yes?” Get her talking, thought Harry, take it slowly. Let her feel relaxed.
“He hates me, does me dad.” The girl’s face suddenly burst into life, blazing with pent-up fury, as if she were challenging Harry to contradict her. “He’d never let me back in the house. His wife, me step-mum, keeps it spick and span. They both think I’m a slut — maybe they’re right. They were about Joe.”
“They didn’t care for Joe?”
She snorted. “Wouldn’t have him in the house! They told me he was no good, they soon found out he’d been inside, I was never much of one for keeping things secret. Me dad said he’d chuck me out if I didn’t drop Joe. Worst threat he could’ve made, wasn’t it? By then I was expecting Wayne. I told the old sod where to go. Typical me, pig-headed. I never listen until it’s too late.”
“When did you find out that Joe was seeing my wife?”
She considered. “Fortnight ago, three weeks maybe.” With a harsh laugh she said, “Caught him good and proper, didn’t I?”
“How?”
“Found her photograph in the pocket of his jeans. I was only after a few bob to pay of the ‘leccy bill before they cut us off. I knew he was flush, he’d just brought that coat and the stereo. Fell off the back of a lorry, I suppose. Anyhow, I found three hundred in fifties and this woman’s picture tucked away. A real looker. The bastard! I thought.”
“What did you do, Jane?”
“Took the money, didn’t I, what else?” A smile flashed for a moment, lighting up her face. “And then I screamed at him, asked who the bloody hell she was. He flew into a rage, cuffed me good and proper.” She brushed the fair hair off the side of her face. “You can’t see the bruises now, they’ve faded, but there’s the mark where his knuckle cut me, it’s not healed up yet.” A red groove ran down from the base of her left ear.
Harry felt sick in his stomach. Another violent thug with a criminal record… had Liz been out of her mind? He said grimly, “Rourke admitted he was seeing her?”
The girl snorted. “He’d had flings before. I can put two and two together.”
Harry looked around again at the room. It was as cold and dismal as a crypt. Why would Liz have got herself hooked up with Joe Rourke, who lived in a slum like this, when she already had Tony, that elusive paragon with money, looks and style? As he asked himself the question, an idea began to form in his mind. Was Tony a myth? Might Rourke have been the father of her unborn child?
“So what happened?”
“After he hit me, he told me to shut up, it was none of my business. I raved at him. Then all the noise woke up Wayne and he started shrieking too. All three of us was going at it hammer and tongs. When Wayne wouldn’t quieten down, Joe’s temper really blew. He cracked Wayne, hit him across the face to make him calm down. Poor little mite, it only made him scream worse.” She paused, scowling at the memory. “That finished me, I can tell you. I scratched Joe across the cheek — you can see the bloodstain on the cushion there where he wiped himself. I made a real mess of his face, really tore into it. I was glad. He was a vain bastard, it served him right. I thought for a minute he was going to kill me, but then he backed off. Decided I wasn’t worth it, I suppose. I told him to get out and he said he’d been meaning to anyway. He’d get himself a real woman, not a boring cow with a whining kid.”
