Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Haven’t seen him,’ McLaren said cautiously. He looked at Hollis and then away, as if they shared a secret. ‘Maybe he’s in the bog.’

  But he came strolling delicately in at that moment, clutching a take-out Costa coffee. His eyes were pink and he looked to Slider as if he hadn’t slept, but Slider tried not to think about that.

  ‘What’s going down, dudes?’ he enquired ironically.

  ‘Kroll movements,’ Slider said. ‘You’re just in time.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ Hollis said. ‘Kroll’s gone past the gift shop again half eleven Tuesday morning, going the other way, and we’ve got his van on the move again five minutes later – caught him on the ANPR cameras at Hammersmith Broadway and King Street. Oh, and by the way,’ Hollis added, looking pleased, ‘he did get a ticket for parking in Sterndale Road, so we’ve got extra confirmation he was there.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Slider. ‘So where did he go after King Street?’

  ‘Well, guv,’ McLaren said, taking over, ‘we got him at the end of Chiswick High Road, the big roundabout there, and then we lost him for a bit, couldn’t make out what he was doing.’

  ‘But I found him going north past Boston Manor Station, on their security camera,’ Hollis said.

  ‘At the end he turns east on West Ealing Broadway,’ McLaren resumed. ‘So it looks as if he’s going a long way home. Very long way. Doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Unless,’ Hollis suggested, ‘he’s done the murder and he’s driving round trying to settle his nerves. And if that’s what it was, it makes sense of him getting another ticket for parking in Culmington Road, right by the back gate to Walpole Park. Maybe he went and sat in the park brooding about it and wondering what to do.’

  ‘That’s a lot of maybes,’ Slider said, frowning. ‘What time was he ticketed there?’

  ‘That’s the odd thing, guv. The warden notes the van’s there at half past twelve, and it never moves all afternoon. It was still there at quarter to four. The son, Mark, says the old man picked him up on Uxbridge Road around four, and we’ve caught the van heading east on Uxbridge Road at a quarter past, so that looks all right. And the old lady, his mother-in-law, said they got home about half past, so unless she’s in on it …’

  ‘Which I wouldn’t put past her,’ McLaren growled.

  ‘So between twelve thirty and four he’s away from the van and we don’t know where,’ Atherton said.

  ‘It doesn’t sound good,’ Slider said. ‘A big hole in the story. Although Mrs Kroll said he was still gambling all day Tuesday, trying to make the Changs’ money.’

  ‘We can’t take her word for anything,’ Atherton said.

  ‘No,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll have to check. There are quite a few betting shops within walking distance of Culmington Road. And pubs.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ McLaren said. ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘And what about Mrs Kroll?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I went through the TFL bus tapes and checked the bus routes she normally takes home,’ Fathom said. ‘We’ve got her getting on a 220 at the stop opposite Bygod’s flat. She gets off the end of Uxbridge Road, then she catches the 207 all the way home.’

  ‘The times,’ Slider urged. He had a bad feeling about this.

  ‘She gets on the 220 at twenty past two and she gets on the 207 at two thirty-seven.’

  ‘And her mother said she was home about three,’ Slider said. ‘So that looks solid. No holes anywhere.’

  ‘But, guv,’ Fathom said, frowning. ‘If Kroll, or her and Kroll, did the murder before half past eleven, why did she hang about in the flat till two o’clock?’

  ‘Searching for valuables, maybe,’ Hollis offered.

  ‘For two and a half hours?’ Atherton said.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Hollis asserted, but doubtfully.

  ‘She’d been working there ten years. She ought to know where everything was kept by now.’

  ‘Or,’ said McLaren, ‘she done it by herself in the afternoon.’

  ‘Then what did Kroll go there for?’ Fathom objected.

  ‘He goes to ask for dosh to pay off the Changs,’ McLaren said. ‘Bygod refuses. Kroll goes away. Mrs K gets to thinking about what a mean old bastard he is and finally cracks, whacks him, then pops off home, innocent as you please.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider thoughtfully. ‘Innocent as you please. She’d have to be a cold-hearted killer to pull that off without showing any emotion. And she’d have had blood on her clothes.’

  ‘Covered by an overcoat,’ Atherton pointed out.

  ‘There’s another possibility, I’m sorry to say,’ Slider said. ‘Kroll comes back in the afternoon in a different vehicle, or even by public transport, and he does the murder. He’s missing for long enough.’

  They looked crestfallen, and he sympathized. It was exacting work going through hours of tapes, and having assembled the evidence it was disappointing to have the hole pointed out to them.

  Hollis recovered first. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Betting shops and pubs within walking of Walpole Park. Public transport between there and Bygod’s place in the afternoon. And anyone who was on the bus with Mrs K, to see if they can tell what sort of a state she was in.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Atherton said, ‘maybe we can lean on them a bit more, get them to crack, and save ourselves a lot of work.’

  Slider’s phone rang. He answered it and listened, said, ‘Right,’ several times, then rang off and stood up. ‘Well, aren’t we having fun?’ he said. ‘That was Mr Porson. Trevor Oxley from Tower Hamlets rang. They very kindly tossed Crondace’s flat for us, and guess what?’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Atherton said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Oh, but I will,’ Slider said. ‘They’ve found bloodstained clothing.’

  TWELVE

  Rich Man’s World

  Mrs Kroll was more impressed than alarmed at the revelation that they had followed her movements all the way home. ‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ she said. ‘You see it in those American films about people being chased by the FBI, but I didn’t know it happened here.’

  ‘More often than you’d think,’ Slider told her. It was a lot harder work than the movies made it look, but he didn’t tell her that.

  ‘Well,’ she said triumphantly, ‘it just proves to you what I said all along. I worked my usual hours and went home. That’s what I told you, and now you know it’s true. So now you’ve got to let me go.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Slider said. ‘There’s the little matter of your husband’s visit to the flat, which just happens to take place on the day Mr Bygod was brutally murdered.’

  She sat up a bit straighter. ‘Now wait a minute—’ she began angrily.

  ‘No, you wait a minute,’ Slider said, stopping her. ‘You’ve been lying to me about that and I don’t care to be lied to, especially by someone who makes a parade of her apparent truthfulness. I know he visited the flat, you know it, and what’s more he doesn’t deny it. So let’s stop playing silly games. Because at the moment you both look like being charged with that poor man’s murder – and you might like to ask what’ll happen to your family on the outside when you two are inside doing life.’

  She was on her feet. ‘Don’t you dare threaten me! I had nothing to do with it!’

  ‘Sit down!’

  She sat, reluctantly, but her nostrils were white with suppressed anger. ‘I’m a good Catholic,’ she said. ‘I would never kill another human being – except maybe the Changs if I had the chance. That wouldn’t be murder, that’d be pest control.’

  ‘Then what was your husband doing at the flat?’

  There was a long silence. Slider felt the calculations filtering through her mind, drip by drip. He said quietly, ‘You might want to think about your mother. It’s not good at her age to be facing all this worry.’

  ‘She’s tough. She can take it.’

  ‘And how long Stefan and his charming companion will make her comfortable and welcome in their house.�
�

  He could see that hit home, but she said, ‘Stefan will do his family duty.’

  ‘And Mirela. Is she devoted to your family too?’

  She looked up at last, and gave him a long, bitter stare. ‘That girl would sell her own mother for the money to buy drugs, let alone mine. The hours I’ve spent … Might as well talk to the brick wall. Look—’ Oh, that blessed word, Slider thought. ‘All right, Jack did come to the house. We arranged it between us. We didn’t know where else to turn. Jack said, “Your boss is loaded, why don’t we ask him?” So I agreed. He came up that morning, we put it to Mr Bygod together, asked him for the money to get the Changs off our backs. Jack promised to pay it back as soon as he could get back on his feet. But he wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘Mr Bygod refused?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t give us money to pay off a gang running an illegal racket. He said we had to go to the police. Jack said how could he tell the police he’d been betting illegally? Mr Bygod said he would defend him free of charge, and if Jack helped put the Changs away he’d get off with a suspended sentence. But he said we had to act quickly. Jack said he’d think about it, and he went away.’ Another bitter look. ‘For all his book-learning and university degrees, that was the best Mr Bygod could say! If Jack split on the Changs to the police, he’d be dead long before it ever got to court.’

  ‘So Jack went away disappointed and afraid for his life. Mr Bygod had refused to give you any of the masses of money he didn’t need and you did. You were both angry and desperate. And later that day Mr Bygod ends up dead.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him!’ she shouted.

  ‘But Jack did?’

  He saw something flicker in her eyes. She had left the house at two – but had Jack Kroll come back? Had they communicated somehow? Had they both gone back and done the deed together? She worked at the King’s Arms from five to eleven, which made it tight timing, but still possible, and her mother was her only alibi for those two hours. Given that family came first with the Krolls, you couldn’t be sure Mama wouldn’t lie about it.

  ‘You’d much better tell me now,’ he said. ‘You know we will find out in the end, and then it’ll be the worse for you.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you,’ she said, and folded her lips down.

  Out in the corridor he met David Stevens coming away from Kroll’s cell.

  ‘Hello, Bill!’ Stevens cried with enormous good humour. His little dark eyes gleamed like those of a merry predator. His suit would have brought Giorgio Armani himself to his knees, his aftershave was so subtle you might believe you’d imagined it, his dark hair was styled to swooning point – though Slider noted with guilty pleasure that it was getting a little thin on top. Man proposes and God disposes.

  ‘So, what do you think of Jack Kroll?’ he asked. ‘Has he flung himself on your manly bosom and confessed everything?’

  Stevens brushed a lapel. ‘I think you can see I am unruffled. And I love you for bringing me in on this one.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Slider said.

  Stevens beamed. ‘Anything he says will have been given under the most severe duress, so even if he confesses the whole thing, I’ll have no trouble denying everything on his behalf.’

  ‘We haven’t laid a finger on him,’ Slider protested.

  ‘Of course not, old chum. You don’t have to. With the Chang brothers after his blood and family members on the outside, he’s under duress both ways. Whether you keep him in custody or threaten to let him out, you’re putting pressure on him, and I can’t lose. I think I can even smell the sweet fragrance of a compensation case ambling towards us through the forest of Judges’ Rules.’

  Slider smiled and shook his head. ‘You can’t scare me. You’re talking to DI Everything-By-The-Book Slider here.’

  Stevens roared with laughter. ‘You?’ he cried, wiping tears of merriment from his eyes. ‘Seriously, do I sense that the case against our friend is a little on the emaciated side, given that you haven’t charged him?’

  Slider was suddenly suspicious. ‘He didn’t tell you anything, did he?’ he discovered with glee. ‘He said he didn’t want a brief. All you know, you’ve got from the custody boys. He just sat there in silence.’

  ‘Not a blessed dicky,’ Stevens admitted with the frankness that was – occasionally – his saving grace. ‘But he will.’

  ‘You old fraud!’

  ‘Careful. That’s fighting talk where I come from.’

  ‘Well, we just called you in to cover our bottoms, anyway. It’s Mrs K who’s the weak link. She really wants to get out, and once we’ve got the last little bit of evidence on her husband’s movements, she’ll tell us the whole story.’

  ‘Story it is, as well.’ Stevens was suddenly serious. ‘I knew Bygod slightly, many years ago. He was a damn fine solicitor. It hurts when one of your own gets taken out. Man to man, I hope you nail him.’

  ‘You don’t have to defend him,’ Slider mentioned.

  Stevens grinned. ‘Hey, it’s me!’

  There was a message on his desk to ring back Pauline Smithers, which he did right away.

  ‘I’ve asked about your Lionel Bygod, and nothing doing.’

  ‘You mean there’s nothing on him?’

  ‘Nada. There was no evidence whatever at the time that he’d been involved in anything – my sources say it was believed the whole thing was a malicious lie, which is certainly what it looked like. And since then, nothing, not in Islington or Hammersmith.’

  ‘So he’s clean?’ Slider said thoughtfully.

  ‘As a whistle.’

  It was a classic case of give a dog a bad name and hang him. He thought of Bygod’s own wife – or ex-wife, he should say – saying she suspected him.

  There’s no smoke without fire. He must have done something. It can’t all be coincidence. All those people wouldn’t have said what they said if there wasn’t some truth to it, would they? Bah, humbug!

  ‘Thanks, Pauly.’

  ‘Just a word of caution, though, Bill. Not everyone comes to official attention, though we think we cast a pretty fine net. Underground means what it says. On paper he’s as clean as a whistle, but you can’t say for hundred per cent certain that he never got up to anything. You can’t prove a negative.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t added that bit,’ Slider said.

  ‘Just keeping an open mind. Every felon’s innocent till he gets caught.’

  ‘So are innocent people.’

  ‘You’re getting emotionally involved with this one, aren’t you? What am I saying – you always get emotionally involved!’

  ‘They only have us to fight for them, the dead,’ Slider said.

  She didn’t follow that up. ‘When are we going out for this drink?’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Once I’ve got this case figured out.’

  ‘And before you get snowed under by the paperwork,’ she postulated.

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘Next week sometime, then,’ she said with a grin in her voice, ‘knowing the way you work.’

  ‘I wish,’ said Slider.

  Norma came into his office with a mug of tea and a chocolate biscuit wrapped in silver paper. ‘Satisfied customer brought us in a box,’ she said. ‘Mixed chocolate fancy collection. I thought I’d grab one for you before the ravening hordes got the lot.’

  ‘McLaren’s found them, then, has he?’ Slider queried.

  ‘You know, boss,’ Swilley said gravely, ‘I’m thinking it’s unfair the way we pick on Maurice all the time. Maybe we ought to cut him some slack, lay off the food jokes for a bit.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  She grinned. ‘No, of course not. Got to have some pleasures in life.’ She became businesslike. ‘I’ve gone through the contents of the safe and I’ve got the financial information on Bygod. Turns out he was pretty well off after all.’

  ‘How well off?’

  ‘He wasn’t hurting, I can tell you that. Most of it was in shares and various bonds
and investment vehicles. He had one or two ready-access savings accounts, and transferred money from those to his bank account from time to time, and there were incoming dividends and other interest, along with regular sums from an annuity he seems to have taken out twelve years ago – I suppose when all the fuss died down and he was sorting his life out. His utilities and other regular bills were paid by direct debit, there was no mortgage on the flat, and he took out five hundred in cash every week, plus other irregular cash sums. It looks as though day-to-day he paid for things in cash.’

  ‘That fits with what we know about him not liking modern technology and gadgets.’

  ‘Right, boss. Anyway, I’ve done a rough calculation on the bonds and shares and so on, and it looks as though his assets were worth about two million.’

  ‘That’s not bad,’ Slider said.

  ‘I wouldn’t knock it back,’ said Swilley. ‘And you can add close to another million for the flat and furniture. Plus there was a life insurance policy for two hundred and fifty thousand.’

  ‘He had cancer,’ Slider said.

  ‘He took it out a long time ago,’ Swilley said, ‘so it would still be valid. So he was sick, was he?’

  ‘Doc Cameron says he probably only had a few months to live.’

  ‘Poor old guy,’ Swilley said.

  ‘Who was the beneficiary of the insurance policy?’

  ‘It wasn’t written to anyone, so it becomes part of the estate. And we still don’t know who the next of kin is. I don’t suppose he had a solicitor, being one himself, otherwise we could put out a query through the Law Society.’

  ‘Might be worth doing that anyway. I know he cut himself off from his old life, but there might be some people in the trade he kept up with, or at least who might have an idea who his nearest and dearest were.’

  ‘I don’t think he had any,’ Swilley said, and sounded dissatisfied. ‘Not much use having all that money if you don’t have anyone to share it with. And then you get murdered. It’s a hard way to go.’

  ‘Is there a nice one?’