Throwing the door open, she was already launching into a tirade of abuse when Harry said quickly, “Mind if I come in?”
She stared. “What brings you here at this God-awful hour?”
“Dame,” he said, “it’s quarter to nine. All over the city kids are arriving at school, people are working. Besides, I got a message that you wanted to tell me something.”
She grunted. “You know I’m a creature of the night, darling. And you haven’t picked the ideal moment. Anyone else and I’d tell them where to go. Never mind, follow me.”
Leading him upstairs, she said, “Been in the wars, have you? You look the worse for wear.”
“Who isn’t?”
“Ouch,” she replied as they reached the landing, “I know I’m not at my best right now, but you don’t need to rub it in. This way.”
The sitting room of her flat was large, high-ceilinged and furnished out of a second-hand shop. A dark red Indian rug, which Harry recognised from Dame’s previous digs, was draped over one wall. In the middle of a faded settee was another old friend, a moth-eaten teddy bear unoriginally named Aloysius, whose amber eyes were fixed in a permanent, disapproving squint. There was a faint aroma of incense in the air. One of the internal doors opened into Dame’s bedroom and Harry could see a young man there, hastily sliding into corduroy trousers.
“Don’t worry, Rupert,” she called, “it’s not an angry husband or the man who comes to collect the rent.” She winked at Harry. “As you can tell, I’ve turned to cradle-snatching. Rupert’s at the Uni. We met last night at a party, wasn’t I lucky? He studies Economics and wants to become amerchant banker.” With a disgraceful leer, she added, “I hope he values my assets.”
Rupert came into the room, buttoning his shirt with clumsy movements. He was tall and willowy and around eighteen years old. In an accent picked up in some public school a couple of hundred miles away, he said, “Actually, I think I ought to be going, Dame. There’s a lecture at eleven, I really ought…”
“Suit yourself,” she said with a tired wave of the hand. “This is my solicitor, by the way. Harry, Rupert. Rupert, Harry.”
Harry nodded gravely as the student shot him a bewildered glance from under dark, feminine lashes. The boy said, “Hello. Right. Well. I’d better be off, then.”
“Cheeribye,” said Dame, yawning.
Rupert wavered in the doorway. “I–I’ll give you a call sometime.”
Dame arched her eyebrows, causing his pale features to redden. “I doubt it, darling, but I am in the book, should you ever want to continue our fascinating conversation about John Maynard Whatsisname.”
Rupert blushed again and was gone, one of his shoelaces still flapping wildly as he hastened down the stairs. Sitting herself down beside Aloysius, whom she gave a comradely punch in the stomach, Dame sighed and said, “You must forgive me, Harry, I picked him up at a party last night. Never could resist a pretty face.”
“Sorry to interrupt.”
She shook her head. “Think nothing of it. Your arrival provided an opportunity for him to slip away without commitment. The alternative would only have been pretence and promises that wouldn’t be kept. I know the score, all right.” She contrived a grin. “I regard myself almost as a social service these days, passing on all my experience to a younger generation, more or less anyone who has a spot of energy and is willing to learn. Price is reasonable, too. A few drinks, a meal. Any road — you didn’t come here to listen to me sermonise on the subject of men.”
“My neighbour told me you’d remembered something.”
“Your neighbour, yes.” Dame regarded him thoughtfully. “A lady who seems very solicitous about your welfare.”
He didn’t want to get involved in a discussion with Dame about Brenda, or to embark on up-dating her about the death of Froggy Evison and his interrogation by the police. Firmly, he said, “What came to mind?”
“After I saw you on Sunday, I went round to see Matt the next morning. To have a bite of lunch, talk things over. He said that he’d been talking to Maggie and to you. And he told me there was something he’d forgotten to mention, about this character who was following Liz. She told him that she’d tried to play it craftily when she was trying to work out whether he was really after her. He used to be hanging around in the city centre when she left the Freak Shop at lunchtime and in the afternoon. One time, she told Matt, she waited round a corner in the Cavern Walks and the guy almost cannoned into her. Then he mumbled something and went on his way. But she managed to see that his face was battered. Scratched, you know, as though he’d been in a fight. That made her all the more certain he was one of Coghlan’s roughs from the gym, according to Matt.”
Slowly, Harry said, “Now that is interesting.”
Dame ran a hand through her hair. “I told him you would want to know. It’s only a little thing, I realise, but you’d look on it as another link in the chain. Matt was doubtful. He reckons the last thing you need is to get embroiled any deeper in this whole bloody mess. I see what he means, but…”
He nodded. “Yes, thanks. You’re right. Dead right. And, Dame, there’s another thing — did you tell anyone at any time that Liz was pregnant?”
With a puzzled frown, she considered. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Sure you didn’t mention it to Matt, for instance? Before your last conversation with him, I mean.”
“No, I’m fairly certain of that. Why do you ask?”
Harry made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Something’s been nagging at me, that’s all.”
Dame tickled Aloysius under his chin and confided in him, “Harry doesn’t change, does he, Al? Loves to be enigmatic.” Turning back to Harry, she said, “Can I offer you anything? Coffee, booze, and illicit substance? You can bolster my ego, tell me that Rupert can’t recognise a good woman worth cherishing when he sees one.”
“I have to go,” said Harry, “but you already know that you can do better for yourself than some scrawny undergraduate who isn’t even ambitious enough to want to change the world.”
“Yes, darling, but so few worthwhile members of your sex realise what they are missing where I am concerned. A good man is hard to find, as well as vice versa.”
He grinned. “Okay, Dame, keep in touch. I’ll be seeing you.”
She blew him a kiss and he climbed back down the stairs. He felt infused with a new vigour, as though Brenda’s love-making had the restorative properties of a patent cure for his hangover of grief and guilt. He drove back to the city centre fast, but not recklessly, alive again with a mental checklist of people to see and questions to ask.
At the Freak Shop, the exotically-coiffed Tracey was wrapping up a wad of Swedish magazines for a middle- aged man with a caught-in-the-act expression. When Harry approached the counter she nodded in the direction of the bead curtain. “If it’s the boss you want, he’s in the back.”
Parting the beads, Harry found Matt poring over a pile of invoices; his pen was poised and his mouth pursed in disapproval. John Lennon looked down from the wall with the cool superiority of one who had made a fortune without ever having to fret about who paid the bills. The short man glanced up briefly and waved Harry towards the rickety chair.
“Becoming a regular visitor, aren’t you, mate? With you in a minute.”
Harry reversed the chair and perched on it, legs astride. “How did you know that Liz was pregnant?”
Matt jabbed the point of his pen so sharply into the document he was studying that the paper tore. Jerking his head to look at his visitor, he said brusquely, “What do you mean?”
“Don’t try to fob me off, Matt. You and I should have too much respect for each other to piss about.”
“I’m not…”
“You knew she was pregnant. You told me so yourself last Sunday. The police deny telling you. So does Dame. No one else was aware of it. So how did you find out?”
In the pause that followed, Matt avoided Harry’s eyes, instead looking blindly at the sheaf of papers in front of him. When at last he spoke, his voice was subdued. “Liz told me.”
“Yes?”
The round face grimaced as Matt made an evident effort to keep himself under control. That surprises you, doesn’t it, mate? That she let me into her secret, but not you.”
Harry shrugged. “You were an old friend. When did you learn the news?”
Matt hesitated. He seemed to be trying to frame his reply with care. This kind of moment often cropped up in cross-examination, when a witness’s story was about to crack. Harry decided to bluff. “She hadn’t worked for you the week she was killed, yet she was only two months gone. Odds were, she’d not long found out herself.”
