“Froggy!”
The man with the bulging eyes had been opening the side door to the Ferry Club when Harry hissed his name. Instinctively, he pivoted, right arm raised to ward off an assault. Scowling into the unlit gloom of the alleyway, he called out, “Who’s that?” He sounded nervous.
Harry moved out of the shadows. After a fifty-minute wait in the freezing night with only two dustbins full of decaying debris for company, his mind was as numb as his hands and feet. Since speaking to Jane Brogan, he had been fired only by the belief that answers to some of his questions might be found here. If Rourke was a regular, the people from the Ferry might know how to trace him.
“We crossed paths last Thursday evening. You spilled beer over me.”
Froggy stared at him with, Harry thought, relief rather than fear. Had he been expecting to be waylaid by someone else?
“What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“I don’t know you,” said Froggy belligerently.
“We’ve never been introduced, that’s true. My name is Devlin.”
Froggy screwed his face into a frown. He hesitated for a moment before making a defiant gesture with his left hand and saying, “So what?”
“Can we go inside?”
“I’ve got work to do.”
The man was enveloped in a navy blue anorak a couple of sizes too big for him. Harry seized the anorak’s loosely flapping belt and hauled Froggy’s face up to his. At close quarters he was again conscious of the unpleasant smell he had noticed during their last encounter.
“I won’t keep you long. Now let’s have a chat in the warm.”
If Froggy had contemplated further protest, a second glance at the set of Harry’s jaw caused him to think better of it. “Five minutes, that’s all I can manage,” he said, striving for dignity. “The boss — ”
Harry shoved him in the direction of the door. “Lead the way.”
Once inside, Froggy pressed an internal light switch and pulled open a door marked staff only. Harry followed him into a tiny room containing two ancient wooden stools, cleaning materials and the wherewithal for making tea and coffee. A few dried-up biscuits were scattered over a dusty formica worktop. In the harsh light given out by a shadeless bulb, Harry noticed an earwig sliding away into a crack by the skirting board. Froggy tossed the anorak over the biscuits and waved him towards one of the stools.
“Take the weight off your feet.”
“I’m not stopping.” Harry took a photograph out of his jacket pocket. “Recognise her?”
He had taken the snap of Liz on holiday in Malta four years ago. She was sitting on a stone wall overlooking the Grand Harbour at Valletta. Her skin had a Mediterranean tan and she was wearing a skimpy tee-shirt, very short shorts and sandals. He hadn’t been able to find a picture that gave a better likeness when rummaging through his flat after returning from Aneurin Bevan Heights.
Froggy’s nostrils twitched as he calculated pros and cons. “Nice-looking chick,” he temporised.
“You know who she is?”
A throaty, man-of-the-world chuckle. “Don’t reckon I’d forget her in a hurry. Customer here, is she?”
“Was, Froggy. She’s dead.”
As the man went through a pantomime of non-comprehension, Harry said steadily, “She was stabbed last Thursday, the night you jostled me at the bar here. You’ll have read about it in the papers. Her name was Liz Devlin.”
“So you’re the solicitor,” said Froggy slowly. He tried to convey the image of a man upon whom realisation is beginning to dawn, but Harry didn’t doubt that he had recognised the photograph straight away.
“You’ve got it. Now, do you know her?”
A gleam of cunning appeared in the protuberant eyes, belying the innocent uncertainty of his words. “I don’t get it. She was mugged, wasn’t she? Why are you asking all these questions?”
Harry laid a hand on Froggy’s shoulder. “She used to meet someone here, isn’t that right?”
Froggy made as if to resist but, catching sight of Harry’s expression, again changed his mind. “Okay, I may have seen the lady here once or twice,” he admitted, “but I never spotted her with anyone special. ‘Course, I’m rushed off my feet most nights.”
“Do me a favour,” Harry said. “You know Mick Coghlan?”
Froggy gave this as much consideration as a judge called upon to deliver a verdict, but all he said was, “Doesn’t he run the gym up Brunner Street?”
From outside the door came the sound of light footsteps — a woman’s heels clicking towards them. Harry released his grip on the other man.
“Don’t waste time.”
“Haven’t seen Coghlan in this place,” said Froggy, shaking his head.
The footsteps paused. “Okay,” said Harry softly, “what about a feller by the name of Rourke.”
“Froggy!”
A woman’s voice, smokily distinctive, saved the man from having to reply. Even so, Harry noted the flash of alarm in the prominent, red-veined eyes at the mention of Rourke, and the grateful way in which Froggy turned as the door of the room creaked open. “Herself,” he whispered with a gap-toothed grin.
A tall, sinuous figure in a close-fitting sweat shirt and jeans was framed in the doorway. Auburn hair spilled on to her shoulders and her curved fingernails shone scarlet under the glow of the naked bulb. A subtle, expensive fragrance accompanied her into the room as she regarded the two men from under long lashes. “Sorry,” she said huskily, “am I interrupting something?”
“No problem,” said Froggy. “I’m just on my way to check the cellar. This is Mr. Devlin. He’s — he’s my solicitor.”
Even as the woman’s pencilled eyebrows rose, the man said in a tone of finality, “Okay, then?” to Harry and bustled out.
Angie O’Hare’s features relaxed into a smile as she settled her gaze on Harry. She wouldn’t see forty again and, without the camouflage of stage make-up, the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were plainly visible. Yet there was something hypnotic about the look on her face. Harry had sensed the strength in her when listening to her sing last Thursday night and now he felt the force of her personality catching hold of him, much as a torch beam might transfix a moth. He felt his interest in Froggy melting away.
“Have you taken to visiting club-land in search of clients, Mr. Devlin?” she said at last. “Or is our Froggy such a valued customer that he has you at his beck and call twenty-four hours a day?”
Harry said, “I have a little unfinished business with Mr… do you know, I’ve forgotten his second name.”
The eyebrows lifted again, but she said, “Evison, I believe.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Don’t tell me he really is a client of yours.”
“No.” Harry was suddenly conscious of the incongruity of his dress: the casual jacket, open-necked shirt and moth-eaten scarf. “But I’m glad you’re prepared to believe that I’m a solicitor.”
Angie smiled again. “The solicitors I’ve come across haven’t been as conventional as you might expect. But then, I haven’t known many.”
“Count your blessings.”
“You’re too defensive, Mr. Devlin. The lawyer I use is a very good man. Quentin Pike.”
“I know him.” Yes, and Quentin could never be accused of cultivating tedious respectability. According to local gossip, he spent most of his time seducing pretty trainee lawyers whom he picked up at week-end Law Society advocacy conferences at which he discoursed on the technique of persuasion.
Angie leaned against the work surface, resting her elbows on the dirty heap of Froggy’s anorak. She didn’t seem anxious to leave, or for Harry to go. For some reason that pleased him. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of the tiny room, the aroma of her perfume was almost over-powering; like a truth drug, it made him want to unburden himself to her. He found himself saying, “I heard you sing on Thursday night. Eleanor Rigby and all the rest.”
“The old favourites,” she said lazily. “Have to keep the customers satisfied.”
The rich colour of her hair and the provocative jut of the well-formed breasts beneath the shirt would have done justice to a woman fifteen years younger. He hadn’t wanted to succumb to her charm and flirt with her, but she was hard to resist. He broke the eye contact and said, “I lost touch with your career.”
Angie grimaced. “Most people did. I had some hard times. Tastes change. Female vocalists went out of fashion.”
“I was glad to hear you again.”
“Thank you.” She moved her face nearer to his and Ma Griffe assailed Harry’s senses. “Tell me, though, what really brings you here?”
With this woman, he felt no need to prevaricate. He wanted to tell her about Liz. Quickly, and without either emphasis or embarrassment, he ran through the chain of events that had brought him to the Ferry the previous week and said that he wanted to trace the man whom his wife had, he guessed, planned to meet here that fatal night. The singer listened gravely. She didn’t indulge in easy exclamations of shock or sympathy and Harry was grateful for that. As he talked, he saw the sparkle fade from her eyes, to be replaced by an awed, almost haunted look.
“Do you know who he was, this missing boyfriend?”
“Maybe the man she used to live with, Mick Coghlan. Or someone she’d apparently once had a fling with, by the name of Rourke. Though she’d mentioned someone else to me and some of our friends — a rich businessman called Tony.”
Angie breathed out and brushed his hand with the tips of her scarlet nails. Softly, she said, “You must be hurting badly, Mr. Devlin, but is this going to achieve anything? Chasing around after all your wife’s lovers?” She sighed. “What are you trying to prove?”
“How can I rest while the man who killed her is free?” He didn’t say anything about his thirst for a direct, physical revenge. That was still taboo, a secret whose existence he scarcely dared to acknowledge, even to himself.
Her tone gentle but decisive, she said, “Don’t you think you ought to ask yourself — is she worth it?”
“What do you mean?”
The auburn head dipped. “I never met her, Mr. Devlin. And yet — the picture you paint makes me think I wouldn’t have taken to her if I did. Faithless, selfish, greedy… isn’t that the truth about your wife?” He stared at her, galled by the scathing words after the way in which she had seemed to understand him. Seeing the bitterness of his reaction, she continued earnestly, “I’m sorry, that must sound callous after everything you’ve been through. But wouldn’t you be better putting the past behind you? Think it over. Surely it makes sense.”
He drummed his fingers on the formica table, scattering the dust, but said nothing. After a short pause the nails touched his icy flesh again and she said, “Mr. Devlin?”
“Call me Harry,” he said.
“Harry, you’ve got to understand — there’s no going back. You seem to reproach yourself for something, God knows why. If she was the type who played around, she never would have changed. Once a marriage cracks at the seams, you can’t ever put it back together again.”
For a minute or more, neither of them spoke. Then Harry said, “You may be right. Probably are. Makes no difference, I’m afraid.”
Someone knocked and a fair, tousled head appeared round the door. Harry recognised Angie’s keyboard player. In a thick Scouse accent he enquired, “You ready, gorgeous?”
The singer nodded. “With you in a second, honey.” She cast a final glance at Harry. “Coming to see the show?”
He said no, but thanks all the same. At the door of the little room, Angie O’Hare turned to face him. He moved towards her so that their cheeks were no more than six inches apart. “I’m sorry about your wife, Harry, truly I am,” she said, “but you must get over it. For your own sake. That’s the sad thing about life, isn’t it? If you don’t look after yourself, nobody else will.”
No point in arguing. “I was glad to meet you,” he said, “I liked hearing you sing about all the lonely people.”
They stood there for a moment or two. Then the auburn hair bobbed and Angie said, “Goodbye, Harry.” She followed the blond man towards the rising tide of disco music from the dance floor beyond the far end of the passageway. Harry gazed after her, relishing her proud, upright carriage and the sway of her buttocks in the tight jeans. He hadn’t fallen in love with Angie O’Hare, but he could imagine what it would be to love her.
Left to his own devices, he wondered whether to pursue Froggy for further interrogation. The other staff, too, perhaps. But his conversation with the singer had unsettled him and after a few seconds reflection he swung on his heel and walked out by the way he had entered. Outside, he pushed through a group of drunken early evening revellers, oblivious to their jeers and invitations to a fight. He was trying to rid himself of the ghost of Liz that Angie O’Hare had conjured up, the ghost of a woman faithless, selfish and greedy, a woman not worth yearning to avenge.