was now tackling a thousand-pager about sex in Hollywood. Without looking up, she said, “Your lodger — sorry, your wife — called again. She said she’d be out this afternoon, but she hopes to see you tonight.”
Relax, Harry told himself, nothing’s gone wrong after all. Coghlan isn’t a teenage hoodlum: losing Liz wouldn’t be the end of his world. Follow Jim’s advice and don’t look back. Yet like a client urged to be calm in the witness box, he found it easier said than done.
He chain-smoked his way through the rest of the afternoon and rang the flat a couple of times without result. Shortly before six, Jim came into the tiny room.
“I’m off to the match.” An F.A. cup-tie at Anfield, already twice postponed due to the snow last week. “There’s a spare ticket here. Ronnie can’t make it. Want to come?”
“No, thanks, not tonight.” Ridiculously, the tone of the invitation, too deliberately casual, irked him: it resembled a treat for a matrimonial invalid.
His partner’s face was a blank. “Suit yourself. I’m in tomorrow.”
Since the break-up of his marriage, Harry had developed a habit of stopping off at the Dock Brief on his way home. In the absence of Liz there was no need to break the routine. The pub was tiny and invariably packed to overflowing. Above the counter was a sign which said in GOD WE TRUST — ALL OTHERS PAY CASH and its walls were covered with photographs of Liverpool in days gone by: the old Lyceum, Exchange Station and the overhead railway known universally as the dockers’ umbrella. The real name of the place was the Anchors Aweigh, but its popular title was ingrained into city folklore and seemed appropriate to its mix of customers: professionals and businessmen at lunchtime and in the early evening, ship-workers and assorted locals as the night wore on. As he often did these days, Harry outlasted the other men in suits, propping up the counter whilst in the background deals were struck and pint pots occasionally shattered.
As Harry drank, questions about Liz’s whereabouts swam around in his mind. Where had she been all day and would she be waiting for him at the flat when he got back in? The alcohol didn’t help him to find any answers and in the end he banged the glass down and pushed through the melee round the bar out into the drizzling night.
The walk to Empire Dock took ten minutes. In the lobby, he ran into Brenda Rixton, the woman who lived next door. She had been chatting with the porter, but joined Harry as the lift arrived. Although he wasn’t in the mood for casual conversation, there was no escaping it.
“Miserable evening, isn’t it? And turning so cold, too!”
“Sure is, Brenda.”
“That’s better! At last you’ve dropped that Mrs. Rixton nonsense. Neighbours ought to be on first name terms, don’t you agree?”
Within the enclosed space, her perfume was overpowering. Harry hated lift travel and the lack of a sensible place to focus his eyes. Unwillingly, he looked straight at his companion. She was tall, almost his height, with fine blonde hair and a willowy figure encased within a pink sweater and matching slacks. Although she was in her forties, Harry reckoned, she had the inquisitive smile of a young girl who is anxious to know everything. Only the fine lines etched into the skin around her blue eyes hinted at age and a loss of innocence.
With gentle irony, she said, “I gather you’ve taken a lodger.”
Liz must have been amusing herself again. He forced a non-commital smile.
“I met her this evening when I got back from work,” said Brenda, adding, “I admire your taste. She’s extremely attractive.”
They had arrived at the fourth floor. Stepping out, Harry found himself saying, “That’s no lodger, Brenda, that’s my wife.”
“Your wife? But I thought…”
“Yes, well, she has a strange sense of humour. We’re separated, but she may be around for a couple of days till she sorts herself out.”
“I see,” said his neighbour, although her baffled expression made it clear that she did not.
They stopped at her front door. “Mustn’t loiter,” said Harry with fake breeziness. “Plenty of paperwork to tackle, I’m afraid.”
She wagged her index finger. “All work and no play. It isn’t good for you.”
He was already unlocking his own flat. “Goodnight, Brenda.”
Tonight no Liz awaited him. Her return must have been brief. He could detect no signs that she had eaten here, but in the bedroom he almost fell over a couple of heavily strapped suitcases left behind the door into the hall. There was a carrier bag full of cosmetics and odds and ends of clothing bought from George Henry Lee’s. So she planned to use the flat as a hotel for one more night at least. But where was she now? He changed into a sweater and jeans and flicked the television on. A choice of a repeated sitcom or snooker, a chat show or a documentary on AIDS. He groaned and went to examine the contents of his fridge freezer.
As he was lighting the gas on the cooker he caught sight of half a sheet of paper resting against the coffee pot. A note from Liz. Scrawled in her flowing hand, it said: Missed you again! I’ll be at the Ferry Club by eleven. Come over why don’t you?
Her easy assumption that he would come running after her angered him. During their time apart, he had found it easy to forget that the centre of Liz’s universe was herself. Screwing up the piece of paper, he fed it vengefully to the gas flame. But he didn’t bother to deceive himself. When Liz called, he had always followed. Sometimes he was afraid he always would.
Chapter Four
The Ferry Club was hidden at the heart of a maze of side streets behind Lime Street Station. Harry walked past empty burger bars and curtained Chinese restaurants, shuttered shops and barricaded redevelopment sites whose walls were covered with fly-posters advertising a political rally at the Pierhead. As the minutes ticked away towards eleven, Liverpool was quiet. Even the Ferry looked almost discreet as he approached. No neon lights, just a notice confirming that Reginald Anthony Gallimore was licensed pursuant to Act of Parliament for singing, dancing and the sale of intoxicating liquor, plus a yellow placard pinned to the door which said that Angie O’Hare, Hit Recording Artist, and Russ Jericho, Popular Comedian, were starring tonight.
At the entrance, a drunken tramp was about to pick an argument with a couple of bouncers, mean and muscular in their ill-fitting dinner suits. Their sniggers suggested they were hoping that he would provoke them into violence. A sign by the pay desk said MEMBERS AND BONA FIDE GUESTS ONLY — BY ORDER, but when Harry handed over his money he was allowed straight through with no questions asked.
The interior of the club was a raucous contrast to the desert calm of the city streets. The queue at the bar was three deep and dozens more people sat at tables grouped in a semi-circle facing the stage. Drinking, talking, a few even listening to the Popular Comedian, a flabby elephant of a man who was tossing old mother-in-law gags out of the side of his mouth in a treacle-thick Scouse accent.
“Y’know, I’m not saying she’s ugly,” Harry heard him mutter, “but I’ve seen better faces on clocks. And the size of her! Bleeding hell, she could eat a banana sideways. Y’know, I reckon she could sing a duet on her own.”
Now and then members of the audience got up and walked straight in front of the act to the bar, but no one seemed to care, least of all Russ Jericho. It gave him the chance to paper over the cracks in his act. When a fat girl in a mini-dress plodded by he interrupted a racist joke about a bald Pakistani to say, “Last time I saw an arse like that, it was being whipped by Lester Piggott.”
Harry’s gaze travelled around the room. Glittery pillars supported a plasterboard ceiling on which pin-point lights flickered in rotation, red, green and blue. Two overhead fans whirled in a doomed attempt to dispel the fug of cigarette smoke and cheap scent. Young girls chatted to each other, feigning not to stare at the leather-jacketed lads sinking pints in silence near the door. Within easy reach of the bar, painted women in short black skirts and fish-net tights watched out for men who might pay for the pleasure of their company.
Liz was nowhere to be seen. Harry stifled a grunt of irritation and looked at his watch. Five past eleven. Perhaps she would be along in a minute. He decided to buy a drink and as he waited for service he reflected that the Ferry hadn’t changed much since his last visit with her. They must have been married eighteen months then and he had already discovered the fascination which clubland held for her; as with so much else, he didn’t share her
