The Liverpool Trilogy (34 page)

He put the kettle on. ‘Who was that?’ he asked when she joined him in the kitchen.

‘A Gloria Benson,’ she answered. ‘Something to do with Howie. She wouldn’t say, not on the phone. Lawyers are like that, aren’t they?’

People who gave false names almost always clung to their real initials. Gloria Benson was Glenys Barlow. Lucy would probably be there. Easterly Grange had given him away, and doctors were supposed not to do that kind of thing. There was no point in asking Trish not to go, because if Glenys had Howie’s phone number, she probably had the address of Styles.

In that moment, the longest three days of Alan’s life began their slow, torturous countdown. There was one option, yet he couldn’t face it. Were he to pre-empt Lucy and her lawyer by telling Trish the full truth, he’d be out on his ear and foraging with the seagulls. And there was always the small chance that Gloria Benson might be the real name of the caller.

‘You’ve gone white,’ Trish told him.

‘Just a headache. I’ll take a couple of painkillers.’ But the real pain would not be shifted, since it was rooted in terror.

A doctor was privy to all kinds of information. No one had sent for Lexi’s notes, though she would need them soon, since she was a type one diabetic. Like most who were condemned to become pincushions twice daily, the woman had seldom mentioned the fact. His practice nurse had noted the condition, and Richard must have signed a repeat prescription, though he had no memory of the occasion. Ah, yes – it was one of those automatics that went to her pharmacist. Even without a prescription, Lexi could obtain insulin from the chemist with whom she was registered.

He read and reread her bulky file, found occasions on which she had been treated for depression, thanked God that her history was in hard copy rather than on a computer. He added his own comments, dating them to accord with the day on which he had struck her from his list.
There are some symptoms of depression again, and I feel she should attend a surgery closer to her home. Should she fail to improve mentally, she may become
. . . He paused.

If he wrote the word ‘suicidal’, that might be a step too far, and it could attract attention. Yesterday had been dog dirt; today’s gift was a letter printed from a computer and addressed to Moira. It informed her that her husband was sleeping with whores, many of whom were being treated for STIs. She wasn’t giving up, and Moira would be back in a few days.

He stood at the window and looked at the little parks across the way. Footpaths allowed members of the public to walk through the gardens, though they were owned by householders on this side of Mersey View. His patch was a simple lawn with rose beds in it. Moira loved roses. He would have to do something, because anything addressed to Moira was given to her by Shirley. And he wasn’t always available when the post came, since employees of the Royal Mail seemed to adhere to no strict timetable these days.

Murder was a subject about which he had seldom thought. He’d treated a killer, a pleasant man who had eventually been arrested and found guilty of shooting his wife and her lover. On the day of the crime, Richard had sedated the distraught culprit, just an ordinary bloke who had snapped after pretending to find his wife covered in blood.

‘And I snapped over a bit of dog muck.’ No. He had snapped because his poor, sick wife had become a target. She could have just months left. If she got pneumonia again, it could well be weeks. And he would not allow those weeks to become infected by a disorder named Lexi Phillips.

He finished his task, stating that in his opinion she needed a doctor on her doorstep in case the depression grew worse. In his bag, he often carried insulin against the odd occasion on which one of his patients forgot to take the dose. Hyperglycaemia was dangerous, and a doctor needed to be prepared. For the same reason, he carried chocolate and glucose, since a hypo was no fun either, and elderly patients sometimes had nothing sweet in the cupboards. Insulin could be a killer. For a depressive diabetic, it offered an easy enough exit from life.

He phoned Tom Rice. ‘How’s the ankle? Is it? Good, good. Look, things have gone quiet, so send a bill and I’ll give you a bit extra to compensate for loss of business. What? Yes, I’ll let you know if and when I need you again. Bye.’ There. That was another job done. Richard hadn’t wanted a witness appointed by himself to be at the scene of the crime. What crime? Did he have the stomach for it?

Since taking the oath, he had saved many lives. The acutely ill who could not be made safe by him had been passed on to hospitals, but Richard was an excellent diagnostician. He was also human, and he didn’t like all his patients, but he did his best no matter what the circumstances. There had been a handful of mistakes, and he sometimes kicked himself inwardly after managing not quite well enough. This was a different kettle altogether. To kill, to stop someone taking in oxygen, to look into eyes from which all light had been taken deliberately – that was a horrible idea.

A few years earlier, Richard had attended a teenager who had chosen to die at home in the company of his loved ones. After three runs of chemo, there was little hope, and the brave young man had parked himself and his bed in the dining room of a clean but shabby terraced house. The courage of that intelligent, gentle boy had left a mark on Richard’s heart. His ambition had been to join the RAF as a pilot. But, as those blue eyes had closed for the last time, the doctor had become a third parent, and he had wept with the family. They were believers, and the real father had said, ‘Enjoy your flight to heaven, son.’

Was one life more valuable than another? And who was he to preside as judge? A strong opponent of the death penalty, he often decried southern states in America where locals bayed for blood whenever a murder occurred. In his opinion, they were mad Bible-thumpers who carried on as if they were still in wagon trains surrounded by the indigenous population whose land they planned to steal. They were backward, stupid, ill-educated, and he was thinking of joining their ranks.

Did Lexi have a better side to her nature, one to which he might appeal successfully? Could she be bribed? He knew she wanted to own her house and to furnish it better. But if he were to provide her with the means of achieving that, she might very well continue her campaign, because she was obsessed. He had dealt with obsessive behaviours and had passed them along to specialists who had achieved some degree of success, but Lexi was particularly tenacious and disillusioned. She wanted to be a doctor’s wife, and imagined herself living a different life, one to which she felt she was entitled.

He wasn’t a murderer. He couldn’t do it, could he?

Williamson Square was its usual busy self. Children played in a fountain whose jets rose at unpredictable intervals from the ground, and shrieks of delight turned the place into a playground. Pigeons quarrelled over scraps deposited by humanity’s careless lunch hour, and a couple of attractive young people sat on a bench opposite Liverpool’s Playhouse Theatre.

‘Your name could be up there soon,’ Simon suggested.

‘Yes, and you’ll be in London taking advantage of some poor young nurse while I’m at a safe distance.’

‘No I won’t.’

‘Yes, you will.’

‘See?’ he said. ‘We’re already practising for pantomime.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We have to do it. We have to go and tell Dad. We’ve had a lovely tapas lunch, enough coffee to give us both strokes, and now you want to go to the Albert Dock.’

‘I’ve never seen the Albert Dock.’

He shrugged. ‘Just think water, old bricks, and new shops selling silk scarves and prints of both cathedrals. It’ll still be there tomorrow. As for the ferry across to Birkenhead, we can take that any time. You’re procrastinating in a public place. You could get arrested for breach of the peace or behaviour likely to result in a disturbance.’

She delivered a withering glance. ‘He’s your father.’

‘And your father-in-law. We’re in this together, Rocko.’

‘Who the hell’s Rocko?’

Simon sighed. ‘I was being a Chicago gangster.’

‘Don’t give up the day job. Come on, then.’ She looked down at herself. ‘I should have worn something more . . . demure.’

‘Wrong.’ He pulled her to her feet. ‘He appreciates a fit maud.’

Lizzie didn’t need an explanation. Fortunately, nobody had been lumbered with Maud as a forename for about a hundred years. ‘I know he fancies my mother, and he frightens me to death. He’s almost lecherous.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Absolutely, unquestionably and for always.’

‘Do you trust me?’

‘See above – same answer. You’re not just my lover, sweetie, you’re my best friend in the world. I just can’t stand your dad. Your mum I could eat on toast – I love her to bits.’

So he set out to explain his father. He asked how Lizzie would feel if sex just stopped, how she might react if she had to change nappies on an adult, the very man to whom she was married. ‘It was never a fragile marriage, darling. He’s not young, but not old enough to give up on life. We’re animals, Eliza. The saintly man who’s with your mother is unusual, but Dad isn’t. He adores Mum, yet he’s staring down a long, dark corridor called loneliness. Sex helps to switch on the lights for a brief period. My mother understands that.’

Lizzie sat down again and looked at a man with a little stall. He was selling tea towels, tablecloths and other items of linen. Behind him, a woman berated her child, while two teenage girls giggled, heads together, as they shared a private joke. A drunk sat on the ground, a precious bottle clutched to his chest.

Two policemen dashed across the square in pursuit of nothing at all. They ground to a halt, spoke to the mother of the naughty child, then to the man selling household fabrics. Heads shook, and the cops gave up chasing the invisible, settling instead for the drunk, as he was the only piece of culpable humanity on the scene. ‘The whole of life in one little square,’ Lizzie commented. ‘Come on, then. Into the lions’ den.’

They drove up the dock road, Lizzie exclaiming over the beauty of stone walls punctuated by little turrets. Narrow-gauge railway lines crossed their route, and Simon tried to illustrate the history of the area. ‘Men queued ten deep for jobs. Starving kids chased wagons for a handful of molasses, and more than a few were run over and killed. It’s been a cruel place, yet it managed to be glorious. It will be again, once the big liners start to dock here. Liverpool’s coming back to life.’

‘Built on the blood of slaves,’ Lizzie said.

‘Yes. I think the first ship sailed in 1699. The
Liverpool Merchant
picked up over two hundred Africans and deposited them in Barbados. It’s regrettable, yet it happened and carried on happening. But we can’t always pay for the sins of our forebears.’

‘Slaves picked the cotton we spun in Bolton. We’re all guilty.’

‘Yes, we are. Just blame London – I always do. The money men invented the system, while we poor, ragged northerners endured the industrial revolution on their behalf.’

Lizzie looked at him. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Not at all. Although if in doubt blame London is a pretty sound principle.’

‘But you love London.’

‘I love you, and you aren’t all good. If I told your mother what you did last night while I was sitting so innocently . . .’

They both started to laugh. Lizzie could hear the edge of hysteria in the noise she was making, and she hoped that her new husband wasn’t noticing. She knew that he, too, was afraid, but for a different reason. His father was a one hundred per cent northerner. In his mind, Simon had grown up in the north, had been educated by taxpayers in the north, and should practise in the north.

‘He’ll hit the roof,’ she said.

‘Let him. He can probably fly, anyway. Worshipped by so many, he has to be superhuman.’

The rest of the journey was made in silence. Lizzie wished with all her heart that Mums could have been here. She’d always been the anchorman, the roots of the family, the one to whom everyone turned when things looked grim. Except for Dad, of course. He’d never turned to anyone. And where was he, anyway? Another bloody disappearing act by the famous Alan Henshaw. Was he alive, dead, or somewhere in between? Fathers were a damned nuisance.

Simon parked the car. Lizzie, holding on to the thought that fathers were pests, leapt from the vehicle, across the pavement, up steps and into the house. He was reading a newspaper. ‘Hello,’ he said, eyes travelling from her face to her bosom.

‘We’re married,’ she gabbled. ‘We married at Waterloo register office last Wednesday, and I love him. I’ll always love him. And he loves me, and he’s coming to London and working at Guy’s.’

Richard laughed. He was still laughing when his son entered the room.

‘Dad?’

‘She’s a character, son,’ Richard pronounced. ‘How old are you, Lizzie?’

‘Twenty-one in January.’

‘Moira was about that age when we married.’ He folded the newspaper. ‘Hang on, this calls for a toast.’ He left the scene.

‘How did you manage that?’ Simon whispered.

‘I didn’t. My boobs convinced him.’

‘I told you they were a bit good. Mind you, there’ll have to be some improvements if you want to catch up with your mum.’

The cushion fight was still ongoing when Richard returned with champagne in an ice bucket. ‘How long has this marital strife been happening?’ he asked.

Liz stopped long enough to ask whether Richard knew a good lawyer.

‘It’s her,’ shouted Simon. ‘Last night, I was sitting there minding my own business when this woman here, who is a complete stranger to me, crawled across the floor and—’

He had no chance. Lizzie clouted him in the face with a brown suede cushion. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she screamed. ‘Don’t you bloody dare.’

Richard felt tears pricking. He turned to fetch glasses. ‘Give up, Simon,’ he advised. ‘There’s only ever one winner, and its gender isn’t male.’ He poured the bubbly, raised his flute and drank to bride and groom. Then he passed each of them a full glass, sat down and told them about Moira, how they had met, how beautiful she had been, how wonderfully naughty. ‘She was mad,’ he concluded.