Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Many suggestions come to mind,’ Slider said. ‘That they couldn’t find whatever it was they wanted. That they got something but it wasn’t enough, that the Changs have upped the interest. That she’s only pretending to be scared. Or that she’s scared, but not of the Changs any more.’

  ‘Scared of facing a murder charge, you mean?’ Swilley contemplated the idea. ‘I wonder which is worse – a spell in prison or the Changs? Hard one to call.’

  At the end of the corridor they met Mackay, with an interesting bruise coming up on his cheekbone where a wild flail of Mrs Kroll’s had found its mark. He had already been well teased by the uniforms on his woman-handling skills.

  ‘How is Mr Kroll?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Still staying shtum,’ Mackay answered. ‘Can’t get a peep out of him – won’t even have a cup of tea, and when did you ever meet a Polish builder who wasn’t ready for a cuppa?’

  ‘We’ll let him soak a bit longer,’ Slider said, ‘while you people upstairs get me some evidence on his movements on Tuesday.’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ Mackay said. They turned for the stairs together. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ he offered.

  ‘Thanks. While we wait for the Krolls to soften up to the right degree, we’d better have a look at a Crondace.’

  ‘Which one?’ Swilley asked.

  ‘All of them,’ Slider decided.

  NINE

  Parent Rap

  Once a client of the state, always a client of the state, so the saying went. The Crondace family, who had lived at public expense in a council dwelling in Islington at the time of the Roxwell case, now occupied three separate ones. Debbie, now aged thirty, had been displaced sideways into Hoxton, to a council maisonette with her three children by different fathers. Her mother had gone even further east, to a flat in Haggerston in a new block, built where the council had knocked down an eighteenth-century terrace in a fit of egalitarian frivolity.

  Mr Crondace had gone the furthest, to a flat in an old LCC block on the edge of Stratford Marsh, under the thundering shadow of the East Cross Route Blackwall Tunnel approach, with a delightful view over the industrial canal to the abandoned gasworks. Nudge him just a bit harder, Slider thought, and they could have set him down next to the sewage treatment works at Creekmouth – which would have been poetic justice since he had arrogated to himself the right to clear up what he saw as nasty smells.

  Mackay and Coffey did the long haul out to Stratford; Atherton and Connolly went first to Haggerston, where they found Mrs Crondace at home. She was a big woman, both tall and broad, with meaty arms and a face like clarified dripping. She was also chronically, terminally indignant – which at least meant she was glad to see them, being brim-full of a spleen that really, really needed an audience.

  The one-bedroom flat was neat and tidy, and though cheaply furnished even had some touches of finery to it: a fancy mirror – the shape reminded Atherton vaguely of the Isle of Wight – with seashells stuck round the edge, and a framed reproduction of the green Chinese lady. A budgie in a cage on a stand by the window chirped regularly but at long intervals, its head tilted in a listening pose between whiles, as if it was carrying on a conversation, the other half of which was audible only to itself.

  But there was a sourish, stale smell about the flat which, unlike most odours, grew more unpleasant the longer you were exposed to it. Atherton noted that though Mrs Crondace’s hair was tidily, even severely, scraped back into a bun, it was dirty, and concluded the smell was coming from her.

  ‘Wot you raking all that up again for?’ she demanded stridently, when he conveyed the reason for their visit. ‘Roxwell? Has he come back, the dirty nonce? I tell you, if he has, I’m going after him, you c’n say what you like. He ruined my Debbie, and he got away with it, the dirty little bastard.’

  ‘He was proved innocent in a court of law,’ Atherton said, to tempt her out.

  She was duly provoked. ‘Don’t give me that! He was guilty all right. He was let off after his paedo pals done their stuff, all them fag lawyers – and that judge was one of ’em an’ all. Don’t tell me! I can spot ’em a mile away. Justice? Don’t talk to me about justice! There’s no justice in this country. It’s all “who you know”, the old boy network, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. That Bygod – he was behind it all. You could tell from the namby-pamby way he talked he was one of them. Well, we scotched him good and proper, Del and me. He couldn’t show his face again by the time we’d finished.’

  ‘Sure, your husband did a grand job o’ that,’ Connolly said admiringly. Atherton saw what she was up to and left the talking to her.

  Mrs Crondace glared at them indignantly. ‘That useless git? It was me had to put the backbone in him! He’d have give up if I hadn’t shoved a rocket up his arse. Lazy sod was all “oh, we can’t do anything about it, the likes of us”!’ She imitated a ludicrous whine. ‘He’d have gone off down the boozer with his market pals and that’d’ve bin that. Sooner be swilling pints than standing up for his own daughter. Well, not while I got breath in my body. That Wickham whatever his name was, the barrister, he copped out, dying like that, but we fixed that Bygod once and for all. But that Roxwell got away in the end. Went abroad somewhere. If he comes back …’ She pounded one fist into the other palm with slow menace.

  ‘Now, I’m asking meself,’ Connolly said, ‘did you not let Mr Bygod off a bit light, the way it was? I mean, he still had his health and strength. He could set up somewhere else and start carrying on the same way all over again.’

  She scowled. ‘He wouldn’t dare. He knew we was watching him, Del and me. ’F he stuck his head up agen, we’d a blown it off.’

  ‘So you knew where he went, then, after he left Islington?’

  ‘We got our spies,’ Mrs Crondace said. ‘There’s a lot o’ good people out there as don’t like that sort. A ’ole network’s keeping an eye out for the likes of him.’

  ‘So where did he go, then? Mr Bygod?’

  She became suspicious. ‘Wot you asking me for? You lost ’im? Cuh! Find ’im your bloody self! Don’t ask me to do your job for you.’

  Connolly smiled encouragingly. ‘Well, you kind o’ did that already, didn’t you?’

  ‘Wot you talking about? Did what?’

  ‘Did the law’s job. He’s had his head bashed in, hasn’t he?’

  ‘What, Bygod?’ A slow smile spread across the wide, lard-pale face. ‘Blimey, that’s the best news I’ve heard in years! I knew somebody’d do for him in the end.’

  ‘We were kind of thinking it was you and Derek we should thank. You’ve saved us all a mort o’ trouble.’

  ‘Not me,’ she said with complete unconcern. ‘I’m saving myself for that Roxwell, if he ever shows his dirty face again.’

  ‘So, it was your husband, then?’

  ‘What, Del? He’s not my husband any more, that lazy sod. I divorced him. Neither use nor ornament, he wasn’t. He give up his stall ’cos he said he had a bad back. I give him bad back! I said you can go out to work or you can get out. I’m not wearing myself out waiting on you hand and foot. Bad back my eye! Wasn’t so bad he couldn’t go down the pub with his mates, was it? So I chucked him out and the council give him his own place, out Stratford.’

  ‘You keep in touch with him, then?’

  ‘See him now and agen,’ she admitted, eyeing them cautiously. ‘So you’re saying Bygod’s been done in? Well, whoever done it done a public service, that’s all I got to say.’

  ‘Did Del not discuss it with you?’ Connolly asked innocently.

  Atherton’s phone rang and he stepped out into the hall to take the call.

  Mrs Crondace stared vaguely after him, then answered Connolly. ‘He did not. If it was him. I’d a’ thought he was too fond of sitting on his arse, but good for him if he did! He never stopped talking about it, that I do know. Thought the world of our Debbie, he did. Never forgave them creepy lawyers.’

  Atherton came back in and said, ‘Sorry abo
ut that. Mrs Crondace, when did you last see Derek?’

  The lapse into more policeman-like speech seemed to alert her, though not alarm her. ‘Haven’t seen him in weeks,’ she said promptly. ‘Talked to him on the phone a coupla times.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘I dunno. Sat’d’y last, maybe. Or the Frid’y. Not since.’

  ‘Any idea where he might go if he’s not at home?’

  ‘Looked in all the boozers, have you?’ she enquired ironically.

  ‘I mean, if he was away for longer than that. A week, maybe.’

  ‘No idea,’ she said indifferently. ‘Wot, not at ’ome, is he? Well, he had a brother in Hackney – but he died last year, back-end. I s’pose he might still have a few mates in Chapel Market, but whether they’d give him house room’s another question.’ She snorted. ‘Maybe he’s gone to Spain to look for that Noel Roxwell. Finish the job.’

  ‘So you’re thinking he did do away with Lionel Bygod, then?’ Connolly tried, casually.

  Mrs Crondace gave her a ripely sardonic look. ‘Don’t ask me. That’s your job, innit? You’re the bloody p’lice. You figger it out.’

  ‘If we find out that you do know something about it but haven’t told us—’ Atherton began, but she interrupted him, unmoved.

  ‘Oh sod off,’ she said, without rancour. ‘Don’t gimme that old toffee. You can’t threaten me. What Del does is his own business – I ain’t responsible. And if you’d put that Roxwell away the first time round, like you should’ve, other people wouldn’t have to clear up the mess after you, would they?’

  The budgie chirped, stretched its wings, shuffled two steps along its perch, and resumed its listening stance.

  ‘For the record,’ Atherton said, ‘where were you on Tuesday?’

  ‘Tuesd’y?’ She pondered. ‘Oh yeah. Morning the sheropadist come, I had me feet done. Afternoon I went down the bingo, the Mecca down Hackney Road, stopped there till about nine o’clock and come home. Is that when he got done, then, that old Bygod, Tuesd’y?’

  ‘Did anyone see you at the bingo?’

  Her eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘No, I was all on me own,’ she said with ripe sarcasm. ‘It’s a bingo hall. What, you think I was the only one down there?’

  ‘Anyone in particular who can vouch for you?’

  ‘That’s for you to find out,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing your job for you.’

  The budgie chirped. It had a listless, imprisoned sound to it that Atherton disliked. Also the smell in the flat seemed to be coating the back of his throat. He thanked Mrs Crondace for her help, and took his and Connolly’s leave.

  Outside he said, ‘That was Coffey on the phone. It looks as though Crondace has done a runner. A neighbour says he hasn’t been around since last weekend.’

  ‘So it could ’a’ been him, then?’

  ‘What did you think of Madame Defarge?’ he asked, with a nod towards the flat.

  ‘I think she was full of shit,’ Connolly said. ‘I wouldn’t believe a word the owl bitch said. If she said rain was wet I’d go out and check.’

  ‘But what about the murder?’

  ‘If Crondace did it, she was in on it. Probably wouldn’t be there in person, though. She’d watch her own back. And she seemed powerful pleased with her alibi, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ Atherton said, ‘though that may just be because it’ll be a bugger to follow up. I think she relishes giving the police trouble.’

  ‘So now we’ve got to find Crondace?’ Connolly asked. ‘Mary ‘n’ Joseph, that’s going to be another needle in a haystack.’

  ‘At least,’ Atherton said. ‘Come on, let’s go and see the daughter. Maybe she’ll know where her dad is, if he really thought the world of her.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he? Three kids by different fathers. Sure, she must be a charmer to attract so much love.’

  Debbie Crondace was still living under the name of Debbie Crondace, so presumably hadn’t married any of the happy authors of her pregnancies. Atherton expected to find her a younger version of her mother, invigorated by the same spite and self-righteousness, but in fact she seemed merely lethargic. Her children were all at school, so either she had had no recent sexual liaisons, or she had at last worked out how to use contraception.

  They found her at home in a three-bedroom purpose-built maisonette of minuscule proportions. It still sported the original developer’s plain white walls and cheap beige carpeting throughout, both of which were much marked and stained. A glimpse through the open doors showed bedrooms hysterically cluttered with things heaped on beds and overflowing on to floors: clothes, plastic toys, comics, sports goods, food debris. The tiny kitchen was full of unwashed dishes and everything that would no longer fit in the bedrooms. All her children were boys, and the pervading odour in the house was of male sweat, trainers and cigarettes, but it was somehow less creepy and more bearable than the insidious reek in her mother’s flat, which Atherton had mentally put down as the smell of malice.

  The sitting room, which was about nine by twelve, contained only a much-abused three-piece suite and a vast flat-screen television. What else indeed did it need? To this room it was that Debbie led the way after she had opened the door and stared at them open-mouthed for long enough. Presumably it was where she had been when they rang, judging by the automatic way she resumed her place on the sofa facing the screen; and judging by the ample dent into which she slotted her behind, it was where she spent most of her days.

  There was an American confessions show on, with a strap-line along the bottom of the screen that said i slept with my daughter’s boyfriend. There were three assorted women flanking the host who all had curiously plastic-looking faces, and a whooping audience.

  ‘Could we turn the television off, please?’ Atherton asked.

  After an appreciable pause to process the request, Debbie switched it off with the remote, and then automatically reached for the packet of cigarettes in her cardigan pocket. She was wearing sweat pants, a T-shirt and a baggy brown cable-knit cardigan that reached almost to her knees. She was quite short – about five-four – but so wide it made her look shorter. The early-sprouting bosoms noted in the reports of the fourteen-year-old Debbie had spread into vast udders, and her buttocks and belly had come out in sympathy. You could have drawn her with a pair of compasses. In her doughy face there was still the hint that she might once have been puggily pretty, but her eyes were dull and her thick brown hair was unkempt. For whatever reason, she had obviously given up.

  She gave them no help by asking anything, sitting like a pudding and waiting for them to open the conversation. Her lack of curiosity suggested that visits from the police were not unknown, yet Atherton would have thought she’d have wanted to know if it was something to do with one of her three boys – or at least, which one. But she sat and smoked and stared at the screen as if it was still on. Could apathy go any further?

  He glanced promptingly at Connolly, who was evidently thinking the same thing, for she said, ‘Do you not want to know why we’re here, Debbie?’

  Debbie shrugged.

  ‘You get that many visits from the police, is that what it is?’

  ‘Me mum phoned,’ she said. ‘Said you’d prob’ly be coming round.’

  ‘And did she say what it’s about?’

  ‘That s’licitor, Mr Bygod. She said he’d been done in.’

  ‘Right, so. And what do you know about that?’

  Now there was a sideways flit of the eyes – reaction at last! ‘I don’t know nuffing about it. Why you asking me?’

  ‘Sure, you were a central player in the whole business. He let you down, getting that Noel Roxwell off. Made your ma and da mad as hell. You must have hated him like fire,’ Connolly suggested.

  ‘That was Mum and Dad,’ she said. ‘They was the ones made all the fuss.’

  ‘So you weren’t upset by what he did to you?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘Look,’ she said – the opening word to
many a gaping lie, many an imprudent confession. The fat of her face seemed to tense slightly.

  Connolly flicked a look at Atherton, who nodded to her, so she went on in her most comradely, inviting tone. ‘Is there something you want to tell me, Debbie? I think there is, isn’t there?’

  ‘Look,’ she said again. She darted a glancing, fearful look at Atherton and then back to Connolly. Atherton effaced himself into wallpaper; Connolly managed somehow to emit motherliness.

  ‘Go on. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Look, I didn’t know it’d go that far,’ Debbie said weakly. ‘I didn’t mean it to happen like it did.’

  Connolly said soothingly, ‘Ah, sure I know you didn’t. T’wasn’t really your fault, was it?’

  ‘No, it wun’t,’ she cried plaintively. ‘It was Mum. She made me. And then Dad got all upset and – well, I, like, couldn’t stop them. You don’t know what she’s like – Mum.’

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ Connolly sympathized. ‘Haven’t I just met her?’

  ‘And Dad – well, when he was mad, and he’d had a drink or two, you wouldn’t cross him. He’d even hit Mum. But I never knew anyone would get in trouble, honest I didn’t.’

  Atherton adjusted his mental template. This was not going to be a confession about the murder – or not immediately. But it might throw light on it. He silently willed both women on.

  Debbie’s hopeless, hunted eyes were on Connolly, and she smiled kindly and said, ‘Tell me all about it, why don’t you?’

  ‘I dunno where to start,’ Debbie said uncertainly.

  ‘Start from the beginning,’ Connolly said. ‘From that day when it happened.’

  ‘I only done it for a cigarette,’ Debbie said fretfully. ‘Kim, she dared me. Mum wouldn’t let me smoke, and one time she found a fag I’d bummed off some boy at school in my pocket she belted me, then she told me dad and he belted me. They both smoked like bleedin’ chimneys,’ she added bitterly. ‘All right for them!’

  ‘Tell me about Kim.’ Connolly moved her along. ‘Kim North, wasn’t it?’