All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards

resume of Liz’s late night visit to his flat. When he had finished, there was a long pause before Maggie took a deep breath and said, “You don’t think - there’s anything suspicious about her death?”
    Harry winced and she said quickly, “Sorry, that was stupid of me. But I meant, do you believe it was any more than a street attack that went horribly wrong?”
    â€œIt’s possible. The police are being cagey but they certainly haven’t handled it as though they’re satisfied with the simple explanation.”
    Shaking her head, Maggie said, “You can’t think that Mick . . .”
    â€œI don’t know what to think. But there’s a great deal I want to find out.”
    She placed her small, white hand on his. The fingers were cool, the pressure firmer then when they had greeted each other. “Keep out of it, Harry. This is a dreadful day, but for all her faults, I won’t accept that anyone would wish to do Liz harm. It’s sure to have been an ordinary street crime. If killing a person can ever be ordinary. And if it wasn’t . . . ”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œThen you shouldn’t meddle.” She closed her eyes for a moment. When she spoke again there was a harsh urgency in her tone. “Let the police sort it out. That’s their job. Don’t get involved.”
    He might have said: You don’t understand, I was her husband, I am already involved. But instead he remained quiet, wondering why Maggie, too, now appeared to be frightened.

Chapter Eight
    Instead of returning to the office, Harry wandered about the city for an hour, struggling against the dull ache in his head and the weakness of his limbs in a vain effort to marshall his thoughts. He yearned to act, to take some positive step towards achieving vengeance for Liz’s death. It wasn’t enough to wait for the police investigation to take its course. Yet his sluggish brain refused to tell him what to do.
    His shoes slid on pavements greasy after another fall of rain and when he looked around he saw Liverpool with a stranger’s eyes. Streets littered with discarded till receipts, rotten apple cores and polystyrene hamburger cartons. Illicit dealers flogging dustbin bags and cheap brooches from upturned crates. Teenage kids with green hair loafing at corners and men in leather jackets trying to sell socialist propaganda. Today everyone had a face as grey as the sky. Vandals had ripped up a row of saplings planted under the shadow of St. George’s Hall and sprayed shop walls with slogans about football, sex and anarchy. Normally he took the shoddiness of it all for granted, but this afternoon the sight of the place hurt him as much as would a scar across the face of a friend.
    Harry quickened his pace as he approached each newspaper stand; the early evening editions were already on sale. Hoarse relish filled the vendors’ voices as they shouted their reminders that Liz was dead.
    â€œMurder of City Girl!”
    Harry flinched the first time he heard the cry, but soon it was commonplace, as much a part of the background as the smell of onions from the hot dog sellers’ carts and the intermittent screeching of the buses’ brakes.
    â€œMurder of City Girl! Murder of City Girl!”
    People were buying the papers; he could see one or two of them devouring Ken Cafferty’s prose. Liz had always wanted to be the centre of attention and in death her wish had come true. He remembered her once quoting Andy Warhol’s dictum that everyone should be famous for fifteen minutes and wondering aloud when her moment would come. Real life was never good enough for her; television and movies, the admen’s images of a better life just over the rainbow, had seen to that. She would have revelled in her name being on everyone’s lips. He could picture her grinning and with a careless toss of the black hair, saving only half in jest, “Maybe this makes it