All the Lonely People , livre ebook

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149 pages

English

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All The Lonely People is the curtain-raiser to a successful nine-book series featuring Liverpool solicitor Harry Devlin. Devlin finds himself number one suspect in a murder case that is far too close to home. The victim is his estranged wife, Liz, who is found murdered in a dingy alleyway. Determined to find her killer and prove his innocence, Harry begins a journey that takes him into the city's underworld and shatters forever his illusions about the woman he loved. Now beautifully presented in eBook format, avid readers of crime will love reading this gripping, well-written thriller.

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Thriller

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	06 mai 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781781662755
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

All the Lonely People
Harry Devlin Book #1
Martin Edwards

First published in 1991
This edition published in 2021 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 1991, 2021 Martin Edwards
The right of Martin Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Introduction © 2012 Frances Fyfield
Appreciation © 2012 Michael Jecks
Excerpt from Suspicious Minds © 2016 Martin Edwards

Author’s Note
“Fiction in any form,” Raymond Chandler once said, “has always intended to be realistic.” Like many exaggerations, his remark contained at least an element of truth and the Liverpool in this book resembles in some respects the maritime city of the real world. But there are limits on “realism” in the confines of a novel and in the unlikely event that readers are in any doubt, I should therefore emphasise that all the characters, firms, businesses and incidents described in All The Lonely People are imaginary. And there is no such place as Pasture Moss.

Dedicated to my parents

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all
—Aristotle: Politics
trans. Jowett, bk. I ch. 2

Introduction
Harry Devlin is a real lawyer, operating at the blunt, sharp end of the law that features the smell of the cells, the scent of desperation, the small time crooks, desperadoes and drunken losers who are the stock in trade of his native city, once known as the Venice of the North. However, his Liverpool of the early nineties is not glamorous; nor is Devlin’s trade. He deals in litter and detritus; his judgement is not always sound and he knows the symptoms of loneliness like the noise of his own breath. He can hum the song, too.
Martin Edwards breaks boundaries with his hero, creating not the slick, American advocate beloved of the times when this book was written. Nor a self sufficient loner who listens to jazz, nor a cynic, but a flawed man who has never learned to ration compassion or realise that not everything is his fault. It’s a brave move to make a hero out of a loyal and jilted man whose wife has betrayed him big time. El machismo Devlin isn’t: brave in the real sense, he certainly is.
What distinguishes this book and those that follow and what makes them classics of a kind is this marvellous quality of compassion and the celebration of all that is heroic in the corrupted ordinary. Devlin and his author love and forgive their clients and their friends even when they hate them, and that is the lot of the humane man. You don’t stop loving people because aren’t nice and you can’t stop loyalty if it happens to be in your blood.
She said you weren’t a fat cat, more like Robin Hood in an old suit. So says Liz, Devlin’s wife, but bravery is not sartorial, anyone more than loyalty is founded on reason.
Another distinguishing feature of this book is the descriptive prose. Martin Edwards excels in his evocation of a place he refuses to romanticise, and as a fellow lawyer, I have never read better descriptions of the criminal circus down in the cells below the Magistrates Courts on a Monday morning, where pity, brute force, ambition and pragmatism juggle for space against a background smell of bleach. If you’re lucky, that is. Edwards wins on smells alone.
Influenced as he is by the best of English lawyer writers, such as Michael Gilbert and Cyril Hare, Martin Edwards has produced a character of which Raymond Chandler would approve, i.e, a man who goes down mean streets and is not himself made mean.
And who, in true English style, gets it wrong before he gets it right.
Smashing, honest to God, right up to the mark stuff.
Frances Fyfield

Chapter One
Your mind’s playing tricks, Harry Devlin said to himself.
As he reached for the front door key, he could hear a woman laughing inside his flat. Yet when the police had called him out on duty four hours earlier, he had left the place in darkness, empty and locked. For a moment he paused, as if frozen by the February chill. Had she come home again at last?
The laughter stopped. In the silence that followed he glanced up and down the third floor corridor, sure he must have been mistaken. But a long evening in Liverpool’s Bridewell, trying to persuade grizzled detectives that two and two did not make four and that his latest client was innocent, had drained his imagination. It was midnight and he was too cold and weary for make-believe.
She laughed again and this time he knew he was not dreaming. He would have recognised that sound of careless pleasure after an eternity, let alone a lapse of two years. A wave of delight swept over him, succeeded after a moment by puzzlement. He realised that the door was ajar and, taking breath in a deep draught, strode through to the living room.
“So what kept you?”
She spoke as though resuming a conversation and the lazy tone was as familiar as if he had last heard it yesterday. Curled up in his armchair, she was watching television: Woody Allen’s Love and Death.
He drank in the sight of her. The black hair—in the past never less than shoulder-length—was now cut fashionably short. Nothing else about her had changed: not the lavish use of mascara, nor the mischief lurking in her dark green eyes. All she wore was a pair of Levis and a tee shirt of his that she must have found in the bedroom. She had tossed her jersey and boots on to the floor. On the table by her side stood a tumbler and a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker. She scarcely glanced at him as she murmured her greeting; she was captivated by Diane Keaton, turning Woody down.
“Liz.” The croakiness of his voice was embarrassing.
In response she favoured him with the gently mocking smile that he remembered so well from their time together. She said, “Your reactions may be slow, darling, but there’s nothing wrong with your memory.”
“How did you get in here?”
“The duty porter. I told him I was an old friend. The truth, if not the whole truth, you’ll agree. I explained it was your birthday and that I wanted to give you a surprise. He seemed to think you’d be pleased to see me. Showed me up himself.” She pulled a face of comic disapproval. “You ought to complain about the lousy security. I might have been your worst enemy.”
With a rueful grin, he said, “Aren’t you?”
“Careful, that’s almost grounds for divorce.”
The heating in the room was oppressive. She had switched it up to furnace level. Already he felt a moistening of sweat on his brow. Shrugging off his raincoat and jacket, he dropped into an armchair, scarcely able to take his eyes off her.
“Nice place you have here.”
A wave of her slim hand encompassed the lounge. It was furnished in the same home-assembly teak they had bought during their engagement. In one corner, a top-heavy cheese plant leaned precariously towards the curtained windows. The walls were lined with book-crammed shelves: Catch-22, Uncle Silas and Presumed Innocent sandwiched a clutch of old movie magazines and an ink-stained guide to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Sheaves of paper spilled from every available surface, covering half the carpet. Legal aid claim forms awaited completion amid scrawled notes about his cases and a jumble of junk mail.
“Splitting up must have suited you,” Liz said breezily. “No one to nag about tidiness.”
Crazy, he thought. He’d rehearsed this moment a thousand times, when she came begging for a second chance. The right words should come easily. So why did he feel a schoolboy’s tongue-tied inadequacy?
He contemplated an elegant tracery of cobwebs, hanging from the ceiling above her head. “Life’s certainly different these days.”
“I’ll bet. So where have you been, you old stop-out? I was here before nine. Good job you don’t lock the drinks cupboard.”
“The police lifted a client of mine. A petty burglar, trying to finance his taste for smack. I’ve been down in the interview room all evening.”
“Harry, why do you bother?”
“Guilty or innocent, he’s entitled to justice. Same as you or me.”
Liz groaned as if hearing a joke for the hundredth time. He knew that she knew that for most of his criminal clients, conviction was an occupational hazard. And once more tonight, after the drawn-out sequence of questions and lies, bluffs and denials, the ritual had ended with the man’s signature scratched on the statement that would send him to jail, enabling everyone else to go home, their jobs done. Chances were that tomorrow or the next day he’d have a change of heart and solicitor and some cowboy from Ruby Fingall’s firm would try to get his name in the papers, building a case on police brutality.
“I know what you’re going to say.” He mimicked her old refrain: “‘How can you defend those people?’ But it’s my job, remember?” Fishing in his pocket for a pack of Player’s, he said, “So why have you turned up after so long?”
“I thought you might want someone to celebrate with