Gordon Parrish

Gordon Parrish is 22 and has already worked in three different places, two of them in Liverpool. He was born in the working-class district of Everton, the son of a dockworker and a seamstress, and was the first in his family to finish secondary school. At 18 he landed a job as a collector at an insurance firm, thanks to an influential neighbor, and thought life had finally straightened itself out.

He lives in a rented room on the upper floor of a semi-detached house in Walton, with a landlady who cooks for him on Sundays and complains about the smell of brilliantine on the sheets. Above the bed he pinned a magazine clipping with the portrait of an American singer. He spends what money he has on suits, polished shoes and dinners he can't afford. He says appearance is half the business.

He is a young man with a thin, clean-shaven face, brown hair combed back with brilliantine and a mustache too slim for his age. He wears a dark gray wool overcoat over a pinstripe suit, a wine-colored tie, and always holds an unlit cigarette between his fingers, which he never lights in anyone's house. Charming and talkative, he smiles too much and treats the detective like a client to be won over.

About his professional past, his account is a practical man's: he was a collector, Arthur's colleague for four years, and left the firm on his own to work at his future father-in-law's fabric shop. Insurance, he says, is a sad business. On Tuesday night he was driving around the city, visiting the shop's customers, since Tuesday is delivery day and no one notes the hour of a lad delivering cloth.

Gordon speaks of Arthur with a colleague's respect and of Edith with the tenderness of someone who frequented their home. It may be the loyalty of a young man who lost a couple he knew. It may be the eloquence of someone who learned early to persuade with a smile. The detective will have to decide which.