Geoff called him back. “You won’t find Froggy that way. Nothing for the likes of us there. Too close to the buildings. And will you look at this? Criminal, what some folk throw out.” He held aloft a man’s double breasted jacket in a bilious shade of green.
Spots of rain began to fall. “No sign of Froggy here,” said Harry. “I’d best be off.”
“What’s he done?” asked Geoff.
“I told you,” said Harry, “it’s his wife.”
“Gerraway. I’m not soft.”
Harry dropped the accent, which had already been wearing thin. “I need some information from him, that’s all.”
Geoff grinned. “It’ll cost you then, if I know Froggy. Always on the make, that feller. No self-respect.”
Harry gazed back at the tip and the thin dark line of scavengers, strung out along the horizon. Some of them had started a fire, perhaps to burn the plastic casing off a worthwhile haul of copper wire. The smoke drifted up into the sky and the wind took it in the direction of the distant rows of council housing.
“Thanks anyway.”
“No sweat. When you find him, tell him about this. He’ll be sick as a pig, will Froggy. Been on the look out for a decent jacket for ages, he has.”
Harry returned to the main road via the public entrance. Nothing would induce him to endure that stink again today at such close quarters. He had to skirt round a diversion caused by a gang of labourers working lethargically on the repair of sewers that lay beneath the road and by the time he reached the M.G., the drizzle had become a downpour. But on Pasture Moss, the rooters’ work went on.
He drove straight back to Baden Powell Street. The brick-carrying infant was nowhere to be seen and he reached the door of number eleven unmolested. He banged on the cracked wooden panels and heard a woman bellow, “Wait yer hurry.” After half a minute she answered the door, a large woman with short brown hair and an air of truculence. Geoff’s comparison hadn’t flattered the ox.
“Froggy in?”
“And who might you be?”
Acting the well-intentioned simpleton, Harry invented a story about a bet placed at the Ferry Club; he owed Froggy a tenner and now he was in a position to pay. Trying to find this man was beginning to strain his imagination, but however implausible the line, big Myra was sufficiently impressed to offer to take the cash and hand it over to her bloke when he came in. Harry explained that this wasn’t enough; he wanted to have a private word with Froggy.
Losing interest, she shrugged. “Can’t help you, mister. You say he’s not down at Pasture Moss? The bookies’ then, or the boozer. But don’t ask me which one. I’m past caring.”
“When he comes back, can you ask him to give me a ring? My name’s Harry Devlin. From Empire Dock. The number’s in the book.”
“If I remember,” she said and banged the door shut.
As he drove back to the city centre, he attempted to gather together in his mind the various scraps of the puzzle. Liz claimed to have been involved with a wealthy, married businessman, but there was no proof that the man had ever existed. She was trying to disentangle herself from Coghlan, but had found time for some sort of fling with a roughneck called Joe Rourke. Rourke might be connected with Coghlan; then again, he might have been the father of the unborn child. She had spurned Derek and never taken Matt seriously. Froggy knew something about Liz’s link with one of her lovers, or else about the circumstances of her death. He might have been the man who had followed her, though Harry was sure that his had not been the voice of the masked assailant outside Empire Dock. More and more, it seemed that Evison held the key. In his absence, it might be worth having a further word with Matt.
He parked in the multi-storey by the Moat House Hotel and walked over to the Freak Shop. An old man with bloodshot eyes was taking a close interest in the exotic lingerie. Behind the counter, Matt Barley raised his eyebrows at Harry’s expression.
“Can we talk in private, Matt?”
He summoned a purple-haired girl called Tracey to take over and led the way through the bead curtain into his inner sanctum. Shifting a pile of sex aids supposed to help the incapable to achieve the physically improbable, he squatted on a chair and said, “And what can I do for you?”
“Maggie told me that you’d mentioned Liz was being followed. Or believed she was, at least. It rang a bell in my mind, because she did say something of the sort last Wednesday night, only I was too preoccupied to pay much attention.”
Matt nodded. “Whether it was true or not, I dunno, but she certainly said it. I thought if there was someone hanging about, he might have been one of Coghlan’s runners. Or even a private detective of some kind if he was wanting to check up on whether she was playing away from home.”
“The details, the description — did she say anything more?”
“Can’t recall. Your first instinct was probably right. If she was killed on purpose, Coghlan must have been behind it. There’s no one else.”
Harry scratched his nose. “Do you know someone by the name of Joe Rourke? I think he was involved with Liz recently.”
The little man stared. “Never heard of him. And how do you mean “involved”?”
Harry told him about his visit to Aneurin Bevan Heights. Matt didn’t hide his disgust. “Yet another stud?” He pointed a finger at Harry. “Now will you admit the truth and take her off that pedestal?”
“Never mind about that. The truth about her death is what I’m looking for.”
“Christ! Why don’t you open your eyes? She was a whore, Harry, a gorgeous whore, and we all knew it.” The roundface blazed with rage. “Admit it! She made a laughing stock out of us all.”
Harry said quietly, “I hadn’t appreciated that you felt so strongly, Matt. Did you hate her so much?”
The little man was shouting now. “I loved her, you oaf! Worshipped her. From the time she was the kid who lived next door, wearing a sensible school skirt and knee-length socks. She was fun, she was generous to a fault. She could wrap me around her little finger and I’d have done anything to make her care for me a tenth as much as I did for her. But she was a whore all the same, that was her nature. We are what we are, and that’s what killed her. It’s the truth.”
They glared at each other for a moment. In the space of a few hours, Harry thought, both Derek and Matt have told me that they were crazy about her. She teased them and, as if that were not enough, tried to tempt Jim from the straight and narrow. When she fancied a bit of rough, she picked up Rourke in the Ferry Club. Couldn’t she leave any man alone?
He bit his lip. This was the wrong time to row with an old friend. Aloud, he said, “I’ll be making tracks, Matt. See you around.”
He strode out without another word. So far his enquiries had yielded a battering and a sick realisation of the extent of Liz’s wantonness. Once again, he had half a mind to abandon the hunt to the professionals who knew what they were doing. He wouldn’t give up, of course, to do so was not in his nature, but as he paced Mathew Street he realised he needed a break from his self-imposed task. Forget about her for a few hours, he urged himself, come back to it fresh tomorrow morning.
Calling in on the office, he skipped round Lucy’s well-intentioned questions about his accident on Monday night and exchanged a few gruff words with Jim. At five he pushed the non-urgent mail to one side and headed back to the Empire Dock.
Brenda popped round as soon as she arrived home and didn’t conceal her delight at the invitation to dine at the Ensenada. “That’s marvellous,” she said. “Of course I’d love to, but what shall I wear?”
Harry laughed. A normal, foolish conversation with a woman. That kind of thing had been in short supply for too long. They chatted for a while about matters of no consequence. Brenda seemed more relaxed in his company than ever before, less fussily anxious to please.
After leaving her to get ready, he shaved and changed into the only suit he possessed which was unlikely to make Pino sniff with dismay. He was adjusting his tie in front of the mirror when the doorbell rang. Brenda was there, wearing a body-hugging black velvet dress beneath a long red cape. Pearls glinted at her neck. She looked ten years younger.
“Will I let you down?”
