Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘I’ll come,’ Slider said, abandoning the shepherd’s pie without regret. Anyone but Gascoyne would have found out a lot more, even if Athill had been unwilling, but he couldn’t blame the lad. He was so honest and straightforward, at least Slider would never fear he’d leak.

  Athill had a faint, flat northern accent and sounded middle-aged, and Slider, who could never talk to anyone on the phone without trying to picture them, mentally gave him a beard and a round, comforting face. Tony Haygarth could have played him.

  ‘Oh, yes – thanks for ringing back,’ Athill said. ‘Well, we’ve found your Derek Crondace. I’m afraid it’s not good news.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Slider asked.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  Mr Wetherspoon had done a bit of glad-handing with Tower Hamlets’ Borough Commander, who had put pressure on Trevor Oxley’s firm to get some bodies out in the field and trace this bastard before he became a real headache. Diligent enquiry established that no-one who might have expected to had seen him since the Saturday night in the Navigation; and further probing at the Navi had established that he had been extremely drunk when he left, and that it was his custom to squeeze his bulk through the adjacent gap in the fence and make his wambling way home along the canal towpath.

  Trying to retrace his last known movements had led them to a vagrant who slept under the bridge where the road crossed the canal, who said he had not seen Crondace that evening.

  ‘Of course, he’s an alky, so we didn’t think his word was worth much,’ said Athill, ‘but on the other hand he did know who Crondace was – seen him on many occasions, even talked to him – and as he said he hadn’t seen him since, we started to wonder. There’s nowhere before the bridge anyone could leave the towpath, and a witness at the pub had definitely seen Crondace get through the fence and set off. There’s no boat traffic along that cut, so short of some kind of alien abduction …’ He paused sympathetically.

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider, seeing it all.

  ‘Also,’ Athill continued, ‘Mrs Crondace made a complaint that nobody was taking her husband’s disappearance seriously and threatened to go to the press. So we dragged the canal.’

  ‘Right,’ said Slider.

  ‘It seems he’d fallen in and got himself tangled up with a loose piece of steel piling that was half off and bent over on the bottom. Got his trouser leg caught on a bolt, apparently, couldn’t get himself free and drowned. Probably in the state he was it didn’t take much. They haven’t done the post-mortem yet – I thought I’d better let you know right away – but from what the forensic surgeon said the condition of the body’s consistent with it being that Saturday night that he fell in. He was pretty bloated. In fact, the pressure of gases would probably have brought him up in a day or two anyway, without dragging for him. The divers said—’ He paused. ‘Well, he wasn’t a pretty sight. He’d got no ID on him, but the key in his pocket fitted the front door to his flat, and his clothes match what he was wearing in the Navi, and given we were looking for him, and his size and everything – it all fits.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘I’ll let you have the full report when I get it, but it looks as though you can write him off.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider again. ‘Thanks.’ He remembered something. ‘There was some bloodstained clothing in his flat?’

  ‘That’s right, a shirt and a towel. We’re still waiting for the analysis on that,’ said Athill, ‘but he had a cut on his forehead, so it could have come from that. Apparently in the pub Saturday night he had a plaster over it, said he’d tripped over a paving stone Friday night on his way home. Said he was going to sue the council – boasting about it. More likely he was just drunk and fell over,’ Athill added with a shrug in his voice, ‘blood ran down on to his shirt and he staunched it with the towel. My betting is the analysis’ll show it’s his own blood, but I’ll let you know when it comes back if it’s anything else.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slider. ‘But if he died on Saturday it doesn’t matter to us. Well, good luck with informing the wife. From what I know she’ll enjoy the drama to the best of her bent.’

  ‘Won’t be me,’ Athill said philosophically. ‘That’s what delegation’s for.’

  And then there were none, Slider thought as he replaced the receiver. So now it was going to have to be the hard yards, leaflets and door-knocking and TV interviews, appealing to the public for witnesses who had seen anyone going into or coming out of the house; and sifting through the inevitable flood of misinformation, self-promotion and delusion for some nugget of truth that might be useful.

  And if it wasn’t Kroll or Crondace – or Head – who was it who hated him enough to kill him? Well, perhaps there were others of the Crondace mindset; or perhaps he had been involved in something they hadn’t discovered yet. But only Kroll had made sense of the cheque-writing. If only Bygod had managed a few letters of the payee’s name before getting whacked … But life was never that easy.

  At least he would have the pleasure of telling Mr Porson it wasn’t Crondace, and imagining Mr Wetherspoon’s reaction when he told him. Disappointing bosses was not good for the career, but it was such fun.

  Atherton was unusually quiet in the car on the way to Soho. Slider, who was driving, glanced sideways at him, was about to ask what was up, and then hesitated. Cursed as he was with McLaren’s information, he already knew more than he wanted about Atherton’s private life. If he hadn’t known about Jane Kellock, he wouldn’t have asked, would he? He’d have just assumed Atherton was having a moody and left it at that.

  Or would he? Wouldn’t it be natural just to say, ‘What’s up?’ to a colleague who was also a friend? He cursed McLaren anew – now he didn’t even know what was natural any more. The traffic down Kensington Road congealed ahead at the lights, and when it halted him, he said casually, ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Everything?’ Atherton enquired unhelpfully.

  Slider bit the bullet. ‘With you and Emily.’

  ‘Didn’t it look all right?’

  Slider took that as a warning off. ‘Delicious meal, by the way,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  Atherton sighed. ‘I just—’

  Slider’s scalp prickled. He held his breath, but nothing else came. Fine by me, he thought. But then it wasn’t. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anyway, it was no use saying to yourself that men didn’t do this sort of thing when a friend seemed to be hurting. At last he said, ‘You just what?’

  Atherton took his time, selecting his words. ‘I’m beginning to feel that I’m not right for this sort of thing. Living with someone. Permanency. Being with just the one woman for ever.’ Slider made an encouraging noise. Atherton went on, ‘It’s never worked for me before, why should it work this time?’

  ‘Because you love Emily?’ Slider hazarded.

  ‘Yes, but – is that enough?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Slider said, because he seemed to be doing just that. ‘I’ve always been married. I’ve always wanted to be married. I never wanted to live alone.’

  Atherton sighed again. ‘You see, I think it’s a matter of whether you’re cut out for it or not. I like living alone. I like having the place to myself and doing what I want without having to worry if it’s going to annoy someone else.’

  Slider thought of Joanna’s comment about a life of lonely promiscuity. Was this angst really because he just wanted to be able to have sex with lots of women? ‘But what happens,’ he tried tentatively, ‘when you get old and company’s hard to come by?’

  Atherton snorted. ‘Oh yes, that’s a really good reason to get married – so you’ll have a captive handmaid to wait on you when you get old and ugly.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that—’

  ‘Yes, you did. Anyway –’ he became serious again – ‘I do like having Emily around, I do like being with her, I’m just not sure I want to be with her all the time, without the option.’ He shrugged. ‘You’ve
only got to look at how the average marriage pans out. I don’t want that to happen to us. There’s nothing like constant exposure to someone to dim the magic.’

  Slider thought of Joanna. Sometimes it just got better and better. And he loved the intimacy most of all. The thought of having to start again from scratch with someone else appalled him. He wouldn’t last five minutes in Atherton’s trousers. He had never understood the thrill of the chase – not where women were concerned, anyway. The thrill of tracking down a criminal, yes, but when he went home at the end of the weary day, what he really wanted was exactly that – home.

  But he had always felt that way, even when he was a young Turk. How sad was that? ‘I must be light on machismo,’ he muttered.

  ‘You?’ Atherton said. ‘No chance. You’re the original alpha male, my ol’ guv’nor. You’re the testosterone king, the silverback who rules the tribe with the fist of iron in the velvet glove. You’re—’

  ‘Enough!’ Slider protested. ‘I get the point: I shall remove my nose from your business forthwith.’

  They drove in silence for a bit, but then Atherton said, ‘Trouble is I don’t want to lose her.’

  Slider hesitated a block or two, but then said lightly, ‘Seems to me Emily’s perfect for you, given how much of the time she’s going to be away. Long absences and blissful reunions. Like a lighthouse keeper.’

  Atherton grunted in amused response, and Slider left it at that. It was what happened in the long absences, of course – how the keeper dealt with the mermaids thronging the sea around the lighthouse.

  La Florida in Wardour Street was one of those strange, dim restaurants that survives by having been in the same place for so long that no-one notices any more how dingy it is. Slider had telephoned his old friend Det Sup John Lillicrap, who had worked drugs in Soho for years and knew the place inside out, to ask him about it.

  ‘Respectable,’ Lillicrap had said. ‘Never had any trouble with them. Bit of an institution with the locals.’

  It was always a surprise to outsiders that Soho had locals. It seemed to the superficial glance such an obvious tourist place that it was hard to imagine people actually living there, but they did – and not only prostitutes, either. A vast army of ordinary working people inhabited the council blocks and housing-association buildings hidden in the courts and down the side streets behind the brash façade, and the multitude of flats and bedsits above the street level shops, clubs and restaurants.

  ‘Does a lot of lunchtime trade with office workers,’ Lillicrap went on, ‘and evenings the locals mix with the tourists looking for a cheap meal.’

  ‘Is the food not good?’ Slider asked, because this did not seem to fit in with Bygod’s reputation.

  ‘Oh, it’s good all right, but not fancy. Bit of a mixture – mostly Italian and Spanish but with a couple of Greek dishes thrown in, and there’s generally a curry or two – all home-made. It’s owned and run by a Turkish family.’

  Of course, Slider thought. Who would run an Italian-Spanish-Greek-Indian restaurant in London but a Turkish family?

  ‘Chap called Ali Berrak,’ Lillicrap went on, ‘with his wife Ferahna, two daughters, a son-in-law, and I don’t know how many cousins and nephews and nieces. They come and go. Ali’s getting on a bit now, so I don’t know how much cooking he still does, but he likes to sit in there and chew the fat with the customers.’

  Chew the fat? Slider cancelled tentative plans to eat there.

  ‘What’s the joke, anyway?’ Lillicrap asked. ‘What’s your interest?’

  ‘Trying to trace the movements of a murder victim. He lunched there on his last day with someone. So this Berrak’s reliable, is he?’

  ‘He’s honest,’ Lillicrap said. ‘I don’t know how reliable he is. Depends what you ask him, I suspect.’

  ‘Right, thanks. I’ll take my chances,’ Slider said.

  So he left the rest of the team to their toils – trying to trace taxi-drivers who had transported Bygod, solicitors who had known him professionally, members of the public who had witnessed his murderer arriving or leaving – called Atherton and set off for his old stamping-ground. He had started as a young constable in Central, and always returned there with that mixture of familiarity and surprise that so much was the same and so much had changed.

  The La Florida was shabby, with a hand-painted fascia with the name in loopy pink writing and a stylized sun and moon to either side; there were red gingham half curtains across the bottom of the windows, menus and printed sheets about specials obscuring much of the top half; and a neon palm tree, in pink, green and yellow, flashing on and off in the glass door above the word open. Inside, the low ceiling and half-covered windows made it dark, though by the time Slider and Atherton arrived it was open for business and at least half the tables were occupied. They had red gingham cloths over them, and candles stuck in Chianti bottles for evening illumination – which could have been a tongue-in-cheek glance at retro, but Slider suspected they were simply still there from the first time round. The candles were not lit now, and instead the inadequate lighting came from wall sconces with candle-shaped bulbs.

  There was an appetizing smell of food in the air, and the lunchers looked like office workers, the young noisily chatting in pairs and groups, older businessmen in suits talking seriously, singletons with tablets or mobile phones to occupy them. An old, squat, nut-faced man with long but thinning hair dyed aggressively black was sitting at the bar, in a worn grey suit with no tie, and nursing what looked like a glass of pastis. He clocked Slider and Atherton at once with professional eyes, black and noticing between half-closed lids, and before anyone else had had a chance to approach them he had caught a passing waiter by the arm and despatched him to bring them to him.

  ‘My friend! My friends!’ the old man exclaimed with expansive insincerity, shaking their hands like a G-man doing a lightning pat-down. Slider wanted to count his fingers. ‘Come, sit down, sit down, have a drink with me! What will it be? A glass of raki – just right for this time of day. Stimulates the appetite, readies the stomach. Two glasses of raki for my friends,’ he commanded the watchful youth behind the bar. ‘Sit, sit, you making the place look untidy!’

  He smiled, showing several gold teeth in what was otherwise a menacing display. The boy slapped two tumblers of clear liquid and a small flask of chilled water down, followed by a bowl of olives, and removed himself to the other end of the bar.

  ‘Mr Berrak?’ Slider asked, though he knew the answer.

  ‘Of course! And welcome to my humble restaurant. You will honour me by eating lunch here – at my expense of course.’

  ‘Thank you – you’re very kind – but we aren’t here to eat.’

  Berrak shrugged, sipped his raki, and gave them a stripping-down sort of look, without even the semblance of bonhomie. ‘What is this about?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘This morning enquiries about a customer. Now you here with more enquiries in your eyes. I begin to feel persecuted. I run an honest business here – and you are not my local police friends.’

  Slider tried to look disarming. ‘I promise you we’re not here to make trouble. And Mr Lillicrap has already told me I can trust you absolutely.’

  The smile was back. ‘Ah, my friend Mr Lillicrap! How is he? A long time since he has eaten here. He likes my duck curry. He likes it very much.’

  ‘Yes, he told me it was excellent,’ Slider lied. ‘I wanted to ask you some more questions about the man who lunched here last Tuesday, Mr Bygod.’

  ‘Already I told the young lady all I know. He booked the table. He came. He ate. He went. What more do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to know something about the person he met here.’

  Berrak shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember him, okay? I get the name from the book, the time from the receipt. I don’t know him, never seen him before, so I don’t remember him.’ He waved a hand. ‘So many customers, can I remember everyone who comes in?’

  I bet you do, though, Slid
er thought. He smiled. ‘Of course, I’m sure you can’t. But perhaps the waiter who served him can help me? I wouldn’t trouble you, but it is very important.’

  ‘How should I know who served him?’ Berrak objected.

  ‘It will be on the till slip, won’t it?’ Slider said pleasantly. The till, he could see, was a modern electronic one, the sort on which the bills were made up with a table number and the waiter’s name in case of disputes. ‘Or I could ask around your staff, if you prefer,’ he added, knowing that Berrak would hate that. It would be too obvious to the punters that something was wrong. He gave Slider a scorching look, then addressed a rapid flood of Turkish to the boy behind the bar, who replied, received some instruction, and went away.

  ‘His name is Mesud. I bring him to you,’ Berrak said. ‘Please sit here, drink your drink, try to look like customers, be discreet when you talk to him. He is a good boy. He is my sister’s grandson so I know this. Do not upset him.’

  ‘I’ve no wish to upset anyone,’ Slider said.

  Berrak sighed and heaved himself off the stool to make way for a slender youth who had come out from the back and who, at a barked command from the boss, perched himself resignedly, facing Slider. He was olive skinned and dark-haired with full lips, luscious black eyes and long eyelashes like a gazelle’s. Close to, he was not as young as his slenderness had at first implied – he looked closer to thirty than twenty. Berrak gave him one further instruction in Turkish and went away to schmooze the tables, perhaps to turn attention from what was happening at the bar. Slider took one quick glance around and was sure that no-one was interested – had not, indeed, even realized that the police were present. Professionals like Berrak often forgot the numbing indifference of the average punter to anything but his own concerns.

  ‘Now then, Mesud – that is your name?’ Slider said, hoping that he spoke English and wasn’t part of a devilish plot to make him look foolish.

  But he said, ‘That’s right,’ in an ordinary London accent. ‘It’s about the old bloke who had lunch here last Tuesday, is it? Uncle Ali said you lot was asking about him. I dunno if there’s anything I can tell you. I didn’t know him. I only knew the name from the reservations book.’