Free All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards Page B

more than usual. By keeping you guessing, he’s taking no risks. After all, you wouldn’t be the first lawyer in the past few years to have flipped and turned to murder. And remember, my friend, most killings are domestics. That can’t surprise you, you handle divorce work.”
    â€œMaybe you’re right.” Harry stood up. “Thanks for coming in, anyway.” He tried to make it sound like a dismissal. Cafferty had not responded to an invitation to chat; he had simply been hanging round outside New Commodities House waiting for the chance to catch Harry for a one-to-one talk about Liz’s death. But he took the hint and got to his feet.
    Offering his hand, Cafferty said, “Appreciate your time. “Specially on a day like this. It’s rough for you, it won’t have sunk in properly yet. Doesn’t matter how long the two of you have been split up, she was still your wife.” For an instant his face clouded. “Believe me, marriages have deeper roots than people realise. Jenny, my first, she buggered off fifteen years ago with some snotty-nosed kid on an assignment from the Mirror and I dream about her to this very day.”
    Harry showed him out and agreed to call if there was any further news. Suzanne on the switchboard, shiny-eyed at being involved - if only at one remove - in a case of violent crime, attracted his attention. “Message for you, Mr. Devlin.” She had abandoned her surliness, no doubt as a mark of respect for the bereaved. “Your sister-in-law, Mrs. Edge.”
    â€œRing back. I’ll take it in my room.”
    The phone was trilling as he walked through the door. He hadn’t spoken to Maggie for eighteen months, since they’d bumped into one another in the Playhouse bar during the interval of a Willy Russell play, but it might have been yesterday as she came on to the line. Her voice was as warm as ever, although it faltered a little as she commiserated with him. For a short while they exchanged words inadequate to express their shared sense of shock, before Harry said, “I must see you soon, there are things we ought to discuss.”
    â€œYes,” she said. “Yes, of course. When would suit you?”
    â€œI was hoping, right away. Can you manage that?”
    â€œWhere, Harry?”
    â€œYou know the Traders’ Club in Old Hall Street? We have a firm’s membership there. At least we’ll be able to talk without being disturbed. Meet me there in forty minutes and I’ll sign you in for lunch.”
    Someone rapped at the door as he put the receiver down. Jim came in and sat on the edge of the desk. His rugged features were darkened by dismay.
    â€œNothing I say will be right,” he began, his manner diffident for once. “But I am sorry. I understand what she meant to you.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œHave the police said anything much about what happened? Do they have any ideas?”
    â€œThey spent most of the morning turning my flat upside down because Liz stayed overnight with me. They give the impression I’m suspect number one.”
    â€œOnly routine. You know that better than me.”
    â€œI suppose so. As to the rest, it’s early days yet. At least they don’t think it was intended as a rape. A mugging, maybe, but it’s far from clear. I have my own views on the subject, for what they’re worth.”
    â€œWhich are?”
    Harry told him about Liz’s fear of Coghlan. Each time he recalled their conversation, Liz’s anxiety seemed no more justified than before. But for the fact that now she was dead. The bitterness of self-reproach darkened his voice as he said, “I was so sure she was fantasising. But now I look back, I realise that she was telling the truth about the way she felt. And I didn’t lift a finger to help! Christ, I was married to her. I should have been able to tell the difference between her ideas of fact and