All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards

Through the door is the bed in which she slept. Yesterday morning she was alive and said thank you, for making her feel safe.
    â€œPerhaps I could start, sir, by asking when you last saw your wife.”
    Harry’s lips were dry. “Yesterday. Yesterday morning.”
    The policemen exchanged glances. They had not expected that reply. Macbeth seemed to be breathing harder, although he continued to hold his tongue. His superior kept the next question casual.
    â€œAt what time?”
    â€œShortly after eight in the morning.”
    â€œAnd where was that?”
    â€œHere, in this flat.”
    Skinner scratched his nose, perhaps to conceal his surprise. “She visited you here?”
    â€œYes. She stayed the night.”
    The chief inspector frowned. Sitting opposite, his sergeant’s eyes began to gleam with that brooding hostility which Harry could identify, but not comprehend.
    â€œAm I right in believing,” said Skinner, “that you were separated from your wife, but not divorced?”
    Harry nodded.
    â€œAn amicable arrangement?” asked the policeman softly.
    There was something here which Harry didn’t understand. A secret from which he was excluded. He fumbled for a cigarette and found an old pack of Player’s in his dressing gown pocket. His hands trembled as he lit up. Instinct urged him to choose his words with care. Cautiously, he said, “Is any separation amicable?”
    â€œThat’s a lawyer’s reply, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.” Skinner was curt. “Now - were you still on friendly terms or not?”
    â€œI hadn’t seen her for two years. We weren’t on any terms at all.”
    â€œYet she called on you,” said Skinner, “and spent a whole night with you.”
    â€œNot with me.”
    Skinner’s eyebrows curved like question marks.
    â€œI mean, we didn’t sleep together. She took the bedroom, there’s only one, you can see how tiny this place is. I had the sofa.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œI doubt it,” said Harry. Anger began to surge inside him, providing an anaesthetic against pain and giving him strength to confront the puzzle. What in God’s name had happened? And what were they withholding from him?
    â€œTell me, then.”
    Harry exhaled and with a jerky movement stubbed out the half-finished cigarette. “Liz was waiting for me the night before last. I arrived back at midnight. She’d talked the porter into letting her in.”
    â€œWhy had she come?”
    â€œShe’d started an affair with a married man. Unfortunately her other boyfriend found out. That frightened her.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œThe boyfriend is Mick Coghlan. Runs the gym in Brunner Street.” He moistened his lips. “Your people must have a cabinet full of files on him.”
    Skinner inclined his head.
    He already knows about Coghlan, thought Harry. Christ, what’s going on?
    â€œYou’re sure - I mean, you are definite that Liz is dead?” Harry looked quickly from one man to the other. “There hasn’t been - some sort of a mistake?”
    He knew the answer before it came. For the first time the sickening realisation hit him that he had been here before. Eighteen years ago, when staying at a friend’s house, the adults had taken him to one side and told him his parents would not be coming home again. Harry had not believed it then, and it had taken weeks - no, months, surely? -for the truth finally to sink in. Trouble was, he had always had a secret faith that a mistake had been made, some bizarre error of identification. Forcing himself to admit that there had been no such mistake had been the hardest lesson of his life. Since then he had blotted out the memory of the breaking of the news. Until now.
    His parents had died through the randomness of fate, hit when crossing the road by a fire engine which had burst through red traffic lights. The driver