Thicker Than Water

’ I fished a pen out of some recess of my greatcoat and wrote my mobile number on a beer mat, then held it up for Harold to take. He hesitated for a moment, then nodded brusquely at the counter top, indicating that I should put the beer mat back where I’d found it.

‘If I see him,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell him. If I remember. I’m not saying I’ll remember.’

‘Thanks.’ Harold walked away and I drank the Guinness, which in Liverpool is almost as good as it is in Dublin. Then for the hell of it I went over and fed a few coins into the one-armed bandit.

There’s something about watching your hard-earned cash disappear very quickly into a machine’s impassive maw that encourages philosophical detachment. It’s a very pure transaction: almost spiritual. All you’re buying is a few seconds’ worth of flashing lights, and a near-subliminal flicker of hope.

The towel was up by the time I’d finished that pint, and true to form the doors at either end of the bar were standing open. It doesn’t have quite the same impact in summer, but I was done anyway.

I left the pub, walked down to Rice Lane and caught yet another cab: this time out to Aintree, where there was a small B&B I remembered. It was called the Orrell Park. It took in a lot of travelling sales reps, and consequently stayed open all hours. They had a room for me at a knock-down price, and it was - just about - worth every penny. It even had a kettle and some sachets of Douwe Egbert’s, so I made myself a treacly black coffee and ate a complementary pack of digestive biscuits: not much by way of supper, but I’d make it up with an artery-hardening English breakfast in the morning.

In the meantime I lay on the bed with my shoes off and worked out a plan of campaign for the next day. There were a few other people I could shake down for a possible sighting of Anita or Richie, but they could wait until the afternoon. My morning was going to be devoted to Steven Seddon.

I wondered about Harold Keighley’s sudden changes of mood. He definitely hadn’t been happy to hear Richie’s name, or else to hear that I was looking for him; and he’d said in so many words that I wasn’t the only one.

Maybe Dick-Breath had landed himself in some kind of trouble and was lying low for reasons of his own, using the Breeze as a poste restante. But in any case he was only relevant to me as a possible bridge to Anita, and if Harold was right and she hadn’t been seen around in a long while, then I was probably just chasing my own tail to start with.