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Martin Edwards

All the Lonely People

Chapter One

Your mind’s playing tricks, Harry Devlin said to himself.

As he reached for the front door key, he could hear a woman laughing inside his flat. Yet when the police had called him out on duty four hours earlier, he had left the place in darkness, empty and locked. For a moment he paused, as if frozen by the February chill. Had she come home again at last?

The laughter stopped. In the silence that followed he glanced up and down the third floor corridor, sure he must have been mistaken. But a long evening in Liverpool’s Bridewell, trying to persuade grizzled detectives that two and two did not make four and that his latest client was innocent, had drained his imagination. It was midnight and he was too cold and weary for make-believe.

She laughed again and this time he knew he was not dreaming. He would have recognised that sound of careless pleasure after an eternity, let alone a lapse of two years. A wave of delight swept over him, succeeded after a moment by puzzlement. He realised that the door was ajar and, taking breath in a deep draught, strode through to the living room.

“So what kept you?”

She spoke as though resuming a conversation and the lazy tone was as familiar as if he had last heard it yesterday. Curled up in his armchair, she was watching television: Woody Allen’s Love and Death.

He drank in the sight of her. The black hair — in the past never less than shoulder-length — was now cut fashionably short. Nothing else about her had changed: not the lavish use of mascara, nor the mischief lurking in her dark green eyes. All she wore was a pair of Levis and a tee shirt of his that she must have found in the bedroom. She had tossed her jersey and boots on to the floor. On the table by her side stood a tumbler and a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker. She scarcely glanced at him as she murmured her greeting; she was captivated by Diane Keaton, turning Woody down.

“Liz. ” The croakiness of his voice was embarrassing.

In response she favoured him with the gently mocking smile that he remembered so well from their time together.

She said, “Your reactions may be slow, darling, but there’s nothing wrong with your memory. ”

“How did you get in here?”

“The duty porter. I told him I was an old friend. The truth, if not the whole truth, you’ll agree. I explained it was your birthday and that I wanted to give you a surprise. He seemed to think you’d be pleased to see me. Showed me up himself. ” She pulled a face of comic disapproval. “You ought to complain about the lousy security. I might have been your worst enemy. ”

With a rueful grin, he said, “Aren’t you?”

“Careful, that’s almost grounds for divorce. ”

The heating in the room was oppressive. She had switched it up to furnace level. Already he felt a moistening of sweat on his brow. Shrugging off his raincoat and jacket, he dropped into an armchair, scarcely able to take his eyes off her.

“Nice place you have here. ”

A wave of her slim hand encompassed the lounge. It was furnished in the same home-assembly teak they had bought during their engagement. In one corner, a top-heavy cheese plant leaned precariously towards the curtained windows. The walls were lined with book-crammed shelves: Catch-22, Uncle Silas and Presumed Innocent sandwiched a clutch of old movie magazines and an ink-stained guide to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Sheaves of paper spilled from every available surface, covering half the carpet. Legal aid claim forms awaited completion amid scrawled notes about his cases and a jumble of junk mail.