All the Lonely People (24 page)

“When were you due back in Liverpool?”

“She said she'd meet me at Lime Street. If the train was on time, we would have an hour or so together before I had to be back here. I'd booked a room for us at a place up in Mount Pleasant.”

“Train?” asked Harry. “Why not drive? It isn't far.”

“I'm banned from driving,” said Gallimore. “One of the penalties of being in this trade, I suppose. They picked me up on the M62 last Easter, I was twice over the limit, got a twelve months' ban. My lawyer's Pike, you must know him, he said I got off lightly.”

“So did you meet her at the station?”

“Of course not. The train was on time for once, but she wasn't there. I waited for twenty minutes until it was obvious that she wasn't going to show. I couldn't understand it. I called the hotel, but they hadn't seen her or taken a message. So I came back here.”

Harry recalled the man's abstracted manner on the night of Liz's murder. His story explained that, but it was still worth digging deeper.

“Carry on.”

Still looking at the gun, Gallimore said, “There's nothing much more I can add. Until I read the papers the following day, I had no idea about what had happened. I couldn't believe it. She was so alive, so . . .”

“You weren't sufficiently shocked to volunteer a statement to the police,” interrupted Harry. “Why not?”

“What could I say? I was in a difficult position, I . . .”

The self-justifications went on for over a minute. Harry barely listened. Beneath the glossy looks and fluent line in chat was jelly. But might Gallimore yet prove to be a murderer? Now was the moment to find out.

Without warning, Harry raised the pistol and pointed it at Gallimore's forehead.

“Are you quite sure you don't know Joe Rourke, Tony? Wasn't he the man you hired to kill my wife? Didn't the pressure get too much for you?” He watched the dark eyes glaze over as Gallimore stared in mixed horror and fascination at the Mauser. “Liz pestered you, didn't she? You had a nice set-up, it suited you to have a mistress, but you weren't so keen on a change of wife and all that maintenance pay. Liz had threatened to kill herself, now she was expecting a kid. Where would it end? You had the idea of getting rid of her. What better idea than to pay a yobbo you'd met in the Ferry to do the necessary while you were nicely alibied, tucking into a sandwich on British Rail? I'm sure the train times will stand up, the story tripped so easily off your tongue. You've obviously been practising just in case the police got a whiff of your identity. But I'm not fooled, Tony.”

Gallimore's hands shook as if he had Parkinson's disease. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped below zero as Harry slowly rolled out the final question.

“How much did you pay Rourke?”

It was a credible theory, soundly reasoned. Harry had been building up towards it for several days now. So many of the pieces fitted if Joe Rourke was a hired killer, Tony Gallimore his paymaster. The motive was there, so too plenty of circumstantial evidence. Rourke's sudden access to liquid cash, the photograph to help him identify the victim, the clumsy attempts to keep Liz under surveillance whilst waiting for the right moment to strike. And afterwards, Rourke's conversation in the club with Froggy, who must have stumbled onto the truth on the very night of the murder, a conversation which Marilyn had interrupted in front of Harry's own eyes.

But even as he watched the man his wife had loved squirm at the sight of the gun poised to blow his good looks away for ever, Harry became conscious of an agonising wrench inside his stomach, more acute than ever before. At once he realised that it was a physical sign of how wrong he had been.

Fragments of conversation came back to mind. Put together, they pointed away from Gallimore's guilt and towards a different culprit. Liz herself had told him all he should have needed to understand; on the night he had found her in his flat in the Empire Dock. And this very day a chance remark from Brenda Rixton should have helped him to work out what had really happened.

With infinite care, as Gallimore watched in bafflement and held his breath, Harry laid the Mauser down upon the desk. Now, at last, he knew the truth.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

At the other end of a crackling telephone line, Quentin Pike was saying, “You realise I shouldn't be telling you this?”

“Sure,” said Harry. His thoughts were racing and the offhand way in which he spoke failed to convey his gratitude to the man who had helped to fill in most of the gaps in his knowledge. With little more than a mild grumble, Pike had answered questions which Harry had not dared to put to Tony Gallimore.

Time was short, Harry was certain of that. The murder of Froggy Evison had been a panic move. Before long, the police would be on the trail. Yet Harry still had the desperate urge to be there before them. He didn't know why confronting the murderer was so important to him. Did the primitive thirst for vengeance still rule him or was there buried within his heart and mind some subtler need, the nature of which he could not understand?

“Where is this place, Quentin?”

“Woolton. It's called Paradise Found, would you believe?” Pike clucked his tongue in deprecation of the nouveau riche and their lack of taste, then explained how to get there.

It was eight o'clock. Miracle of miracles, Harry had found a public phone box in working order in the city centre within five minutes of leaving Gallimore at the Ferry. The club manager - he was not after all, Pike confirmed, legally its owner - had appeared bemused by Harry's sudden change of manner and mood. Without waiting for a reply to his accusation of murder, Harry had asked another question to which Gallimore said at once: “Yes, of course, didn't you know? But what has that got
to do
with - what you were talking about?” Harry hadn't trusted himself to answer; instead he stuffed the Mauser into its protective chamois and cursed his own stupidity.

“I don't suppose,” said Quentin Pike sadly, “that you are going to tell me what this is all about? But answer this - am I going to lose a client?”

“Don't worry,” said Harry soberly, “clearing this mess up will probably keep you in business till retirement. Thanks anyway.”

He hung up and strode to the M.G. Despite the purpose-fulness with which he moved, he had no clear idea of what he should or would do. All he knew was that there was no possibility this time that he might be mistaken. He understood why Liz had had to die. Strangely, he had felt a sudden spurt of pity on realising what had happened, but he had striven to banish any emotion which might cause him to waver at this late hour. One day, perhaps, he would feel differently, but tonight was not the time to sympathise with murder.

As he drove, an unbidden image of Liz leapt to the forefront of his mind. He remembered her in the flat at Empire Dock, saying: “I won't give you any hassle. I'll be out of your hair soon, I promise.” Harry pressed down on the accelerator. Would he ever be free of her, ever be able to start again? Or would she continue to haunt him - would he be unable to recall the provocative twist of her lips as she smiled without this wrenching, futile sense of having abandoned her to death?

Headlights flashed at him in furious remonstrance as he overtook a slow-moving van on a bend, and a warning blast on the horn of a passing Sierra reminded him to concentrate oh the road. Rain was beginning to fall and his wipers scratched the windscreen noisily, blurring everything in sight. As urban sprawl gave way to suburban dwellings of increasing opulence, he eased his speed and peered around in search of the avenue that, according to Quentin, led to his destination in Freshfield Close. Eventually he spotted it and, braking sharply, he took two sharp turns, bringing him into the boulevard where

he meant to confront the creator of his past week's agonies.

Tall conifers obscured the house, but looking down the drive, Harry saw a lamp burning above the porch and another light behind a curtained first floor window. Outside a front gate which bore a slate sign inscribed paradise found, someone was parking a Citroen hatchback. Harry slowed, straining through the darkness to identify the figure clambering out from the driver's seat and slamming the car door. The figure moved beneath a street lamp: a man, black-haired and strongly built, wearing a navy's jacket and jeans.

Harry pulled up behind the Citroen. The man had been about to walk up the drive of the house; now he looked back over his shoulder. Harry opened the door of the M.G. and the man spun round. Harry took a couple of paces forward. The rear quarterlight of the Citroen was shattered and he caught sight of a dark shape on the back seat of the car. Easy to guess it was a shotgun from which the barrels had been sawn off and that the car had been stolen by the man at the house gates. From fifteen yards away, Harry could feel the violence in the stranger: it sparked in the air like electricity.

“Rourke?”

In the clear evening air Harry's voice sounded unnaturally loud. He was cold and tense and the Mauser was rubbing painfully against his chest.

“Who's that?” The tone was threatening, but perhaps it carried a hint of fear as well. The two syllables were all Harry needed to confirm that this was the man who had attacked him outside the Empire Dock. And, for sure, stabbed Liz to death in Leeming Street.

Harry advanced. Twelve yards between them now. Ten. Eight. Rourke's hand slipped inside his jacket, a reflex action. Harry wondered if the knife was there.

Five yards short of the man, Harry stopped, “I know you murdered my wife, Rourke. I've been looking for you.”

“Yeah?” Joe Rourke stared at him defiantly. “Now you've found me. So what?”

Harrv took a sten forward. He felt no uree to rave or

rant. His own restraint surprised him; seemed strange and unnatural. He said, “How much were you paid, Rourke? How little was my wife's life worth?”

A scornful laugh. “Five grand.” The dark head tilted back; in the glow from the street light Harry could see the faint outlines of the scar tissue which Jane Brogan's attack had left under Rourke's right eye. “Two and a half up front. The rest after. It's all spent. Soon goes.” He might have been talking about money won on a bet.

“And Evison?”

“Not a penny.” Rourke spat on to the ground. “Had to clear him out, didn't I? He said he'd seen me follow her down Leeming Street while he was on his way to work at the club.”

“And he put the squeeze on you?”

“Yeah, the silly fucker. All the same, it was worth something, killing him. I came here to collect.”

Harry had guessed as much. “And?”

“And you're trying to fuck me about. I should've finished you off while I had the chance the other night. That fucking dog.” Another laugh. “No Alsatians here, though. You won't be lucky twice.”

As he finished speaking, Rourke whipped his hand out of the inside pocket. Harry saw steel glinting through the stubby fingers. There was a dark smear on the blade. Harry almost gagged at the sight of it. The man had not even bothered to clean the weapon that had killed Liz. Rourke took a step forward. This was their second encounter on a dark night and Harry knew it would be their last.

The Mauser. He remembered it just in time and with a single instinctive movement ripped the gun from its hiding place beside his chest. In his grasp it felt smooth and solid, it gave him courage. He pointed it straight at Rourke's marked face. For the first time, he looked directly into the murderer's eyes. Something shone in them - was it fear?

Shoot him, said a voice inside his head. Shoot him while you have the chance. He would do the same to you. What mercy did he show to Liz or to the baby that she carried?

“Put the knife down,” he said. Inwardly, he cursed his own weakness, the tremor that he heard in his voice.

Rourke did not reply. He threw himself forward like an animal intent upon the kill, clutching the knife at waist height. Harry swayed to one side as the blade came arching up in a savage blow aimed at his heart. It missed by inches and as Rourke followed through, the hard bulk of his body caught Harry's shoulder.

As they both went sprawling, Harry kicked out in desperation at his attacker's wrist. In the moment before the two men hit the ground less than a yard apart, Harry heard the knife fall too. As it clattered away just out of reach, Rourke let out a muffled cry. The impact of collapsing backwards on to the pavement knocked the breath from Harry's body and the cracking of the side of his head against the concrete slabs filled his eyes with tears. Yet it seemed as if he were too numb to feel pain and somehow he managed to cling on to the gun and, with it, the hope of staying alive.

Harry rolled over on to his side and saw Rourke stagger to his feet. The man seemed dazed; he took one look at the Mauser and stumbled on to the road, to the driver's door of the Citroen. Harry hauled himself up off the ground, first to a half-crouching position, then back to the vertical. As he did so, the Citroen revved furiously. Harry flattened himself against the fence edging the pavement, still gripping the gun so tightly that the metal bit into the flesh of his fingers, and watched as, with a squeal of brakes, the French car swept away and out of sight.

Harry hobbled back to the M.G. and started it up. Although Rourke had vanished, he had seen him turning at the end of the close. Back on the main road, he spotted the Citroen's sleek lines a hundred yards ahead. Harry put his foot down, oblivious of the aching of his head and the forty-mile-an-hour limit. Rourke must have realised he was being followed. He accelerated through changing traffic lights and hurtled off into the night. Harry held his breath, and with barely a sweep of his eyes from left to right drove straight through on the red.

Further on, the road narrowed into a single carriageway. Harry could, see Rourke manoeuvring the Citroen with dodgem skill around parked cars and slow movers, daring oncoming vehicles to bar his way. Harry kept on after him, spinning the steering wheel this way and that, offering a silent prayer of thanks for the lightness of the traffic. The M.G. might be rusty, but it responded like a racing horse to an Aintree jockey's whip. Harry's breath was coming in short gasps. He was closing on the killer's car.

I won't let him get away, thought Harry. If it's the last thing I do, he won't escape me now.

Twice at the last moment Rourke swerved off into side streets, but he couldn't lose the M.G. They were in South Liverpool now. The streets were built up with rows of terraced houses and there was a small shop on every corner. Few people were about, just one or two taking their dogs for a walk and the usual knots of teenagers shouting and jostling. The gap between the cars was down to twenty yards. Brakes screaming again in protest, Rourke took another tight corner at fifty, with Harry only seconds behind.

Down this way the buildings thinned and gave way to waste land. Harry recognised this place. They had chanced upon the road that circled the scrap heap of Pasture Moss. He glanced about him. Even under a starless sky he could make out the silhouette of the refuse tip. The scavengers had long gone home and the dark mound resembled a funeral pyre.

Harry pressed his foot down further. He was almost on Rourke's tail now. They were approaching another sharp curve in the road. Without warning, the Citroen veered crazily off course as it took the bend too fast. Skidding, it cut a swathe through a series of roadwork cones which cordoned off the sewer repairs which Harry had noticed on his visit here the previous day. A red warning sign went spinning into the darkness.

Seeing the danger, Harry stamped on the stop pedal just in time. As he lost speed, his attention Was split between the frantic effort of keeping the M.G. on the road and the horrific fascination of watching Rourke's desperate effort to regain control. The French car ploughed along the verge of grass and mud before slewing over the railway line that ran between the road and the tip. Finally the collision with the wire perimeter fence brought it to a shuddering halt.

From the other side of the-'road, Harry, heard the train before he saw it. He listened to the howl of the train's brakes as the driver realised what had happened and made a desperate attempt to achieve the impossible and avoid impact. Harry shut his eyes as the crash occurred and counted to twenty before opening them again. Over his shoulder, he could see that the train had at last pulled up. It had shoved the Citroen thirty yards down the track and the smooth lines of the front of the car were now mangled beyond recognition. As he watched, the engine of the wreck exploded and the first flames shot upwards, like orange fingers pointing to the sky.

Jesus Christ.

Only now did Harry become aware that his shirt was drenched with sweat. Panting, he gazed at the uniformed figures which dismounted from the train and hurried towards the burning car. The heat drove them back, but heroics were not called for in any case. Even if Rourke had withstood the neck-snapping jerk as the car flew off the road, he would have perished instantly in the blast that followed. The fire was merely destroying what was left of his lifeless carcase.

His eyes fixed on the blazing tomb, Harry felt again the sickness in his stomach. After his close encounter with the pavement during the struggle with Rourke, his head was throbbing. The whole of his body felt sore. But someone from the train was pointing in his direction and he could hear the sound of cars approaching in the distance. Groggily, he reached for the gear-stick. Time to go. This latest death was not the end of the nightmare for him. In the frenzy of his pursuit of Rourke, he had forgotten the woman who held the purse-strings. The woman who had priced his wife's life at five thousand pounds.

The woman who had paid Joe Rourke to murder Liz.