All the Lonely People Read Online Free PDF Page A

young as herself.
    So the message he had sent via Ronald would not have got through to Liz. He tried to bite back his disappointment. “That would have been my wife,” he said, more briskly than usual. “If she calls again, Suzanne, put her straight through.”
    With an effort, Harry pushed Liz away from the centre of his thoughts and leaned back in his seat, trying to compose his face into the unshockable expression with which he aimed to greet his clients’ tales of bad luck, infidelity and crime. Giving advice was easy, not like believing all that he was told.
    One gross indecency and a case of car theft later he made his way to reception, where a young couple were arguing about the new house Jim was buying for them. Swings and roundabouts, Harry reflected: we may lose the property deal and get the divorce. He tapped the window which separated the switchboard girl from the clientele. Suzanne was immersed in a Mills and Boon about an amorous sheikh. With a reluctant pout, she slid aside the glass partition.
    â€œAny more calls for me?”
    She leafed through a wad of pink telephone notes. “The Magistrates’ Court - please call before noon. Your accountant’s chasing after your tax return. A new gross indecency, Lucy’s booked him in for three o’clock.” Smirking, she added, “Nothing from your lodger.”
    â€œJust my wife’s idea of a joke,” he said, feeling defensive and resenting it. Suzanne sniffed and returned to fictional romance.
    From his own room, he dialled the flat number. No reply. After waiting three full minutes he banged the receiver down on its cradle. Perhaps she had gone to Coghlan’s house to pick up her things and would ring back shortly. The frustration of having missed speaking to her gnawed at him like an ulcer. Ploughing through the files, with their commonplace tales of greed and confusion, seemed as tedious as reading out-of-date tide tables. He lit cigarette after cigarette, only to find that smoking did not have its usual calming effect, and he kept stubbing the ends into his ashtray before he had finished. Now and then the phone would trill; each time he snatched at it only to be connected to clients fretting about their alimony or industrial injury claims. He uttered the necessary words of reassurance and ended the conversations as soon as he could.
    Had Coghlan returned home earlier than expected? A worrying thought. Harry had never met the man who had destroyed his marriage, but knew a good deal about him. Mick Coghlan’s name cropped up as often in gossip down at the Bridewell as it did in the columns of the city’s Press. He ran a gym on the edge of Chinatown and liked to portray himself as a pillar of the community, forever raising money for charity, a local scally made good. Liz had talked of his generosity when she had broken the news to Harry that she was moving out. But whispers in the city had long had Coghlan down as the most ruthless scion of an old Liverpool family of villains, a man suckled on crime. People said his money had come from a series of armed post office raids in the mid eighties but his C.V. included nothing more damning than a couple of minor convictions for wounding. From time to time, a client or policeman would mention Coghlan in conversation, unaware of the quickening interest with which Harry listened. A hard man, they would say, and ruthless. Harry found himself shivering. If Coghlan came back to find Liz packing her bags, might he go berserk? Perhaps that wild story about his wanting her dead was no exaggeration.
    He took a full audio tape to his secretary, whose desk was in a glassed-in cubicle they called the typing pool. It was Lucy’s lunch break and she was listening to pop music on Radio City. Her grey eyes filled with concern. “You look terrible,” she said.
    â€œA late night and a lousy morning, that’s all.”
    As she was shaking her head in gentle