Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘It was the missing will that was puzzling me,’ Slider explained. ‘The only person who would automatically get his money was his wife. Then when Mrs Bygod telephoned me this morning to ask how long it would be before the murder was cleared up, I started to wonder. Everyone talked about his “ex-wife”, but we were just assuming there had been a divorce.’

  ‘But why wouldn’t he divorce her,’ Connolly said, ‘after the way she treated him?’

  ‘Diana Chambers said he never held grudges. And he had no-one else. Diana was his great love and she wouldn’t marry him, his son was gone. Why go through the palaver of a divorce when there was no need from his point of view? And from hers – I imagine Buckland had had his fill of marriage by now and preferred just to live together. And as long as she stayed married to Lionel, anything he had would come to her in the end.’

  ‘Until the point,’ Atherton gloated, ‘when he came to tell her their son had resurfaced and he was changing his will to leave everything to him.’

  ‘Blimey, that’s a bit rough,’ McLaren said. ‘I mean, even if she was a cow, he’d let her expect to get it all them years …’

  ‘He left something to Diana Chambers,’ Atherton said. ‘Maybe he left something to June, as well – we don’t know. But not enough, when she was expecting to get the lot.’

  Slider took it up. ‘Buckland’s business is in trouble, they’ve got their old age to provide for, she’s been relying in a quiet way on Lionel coming good in the end, and suddenly he turns up and tells her it’s not going to be. Probably he told her he didn’t have long to live, as well, so she knows she has to move quickly.’

  ‘So she plans to kill him?’ Swilley said. ‘My God, that’s cold.’

  ‘Well,’ said Slider, ‘I’m not sure if it was that. They were at the flat a long time – I suspect they went to plead with Lionel, or argue with him, at any rate. But he was determined to give the bulk of the money to the son June hated and disowned. Maybe the contemplation of what they were losing was just too much, Buckland lost his temper and whacked Lionel on the head. Disaster. Then all they could do was snatch the new will and leg it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Porson. ‘Well, there’s plenty of questions for them to answer, anyway – enough to bring ’em in.’

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ said Slider, ‘that if we put pressure on them separately one of them might turn on the other. I didn’t get any great sense of harmony in that house.’

  ‘Good point.’ Porson looked at his watch. ‘Getting late. What do you want to do?’

  ‘I find it always unsettles people more if they’re picked up at night rather than in daylight,’ Slider said.

  ‘Buckland’s out on a job this evening,’ Gascoyne said. ‘The secretary mentioned it. Putting new belts into the checkouts at a supermarket. She was letting me know how hard he works, out day and night while June sits at home doing nothing. She doesn’t like June.’

  ‘It’s a big club,’ Connolly muttered.

  ‘Even better,’ Slider said, growing cheerful. ‘We can pick ’em up separately and keep ’em apart until the right moment.’

  The Harmony Shopping Centre in Willesden was showing its age. Built small and cheap at the beginning of the fashion and overtaken in the nineties and noughties by larger, more luxurious malls, it now sported cracked tiles and chipped floors, planters where nothing grew but rubbish, and enough streaked concrete to turn even Le Corbusier blind. The big names had abandoned it, a lot of shops were boarded up, and the smaller traders left behind gave it a ramshackle air. Even the supermarket was only a PaySave, a small, local chain. It alone had lights on inside. Barnet Multibelt’s van was parked in the loading bay outside it at the back, and the security guards let them – Mackay and two uniformed officers – in the same way, raising the metal shutters for them with the look of alert glee that usually comes over people when they realize someone else is in trouble and they are going to witness them copping it.

  Back at the station, Slider was warned that both teams were on their way back with their quarries. ‘Good. Process Buckland, put him in the pokey, get his fingerprints checked against the lift from the door in the flat. When June comes in, put her in the interview room and I’ll come and talk to her first.’

  He let her wait a bit before going in, with Swilley to intimidate her with her tallness and beauty. June Bygod was looking small, dishevelled and cross anyway, and gave Swilley a look of extreme disfavour. She transferred her angry gaze to Slider and evidently thought he would be the softer option, because she tried to smile, though it was plainly an effort.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you dragging me out of my house at this time of night?’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Slider said, sitting down. ‘I wanted to ask you a few questions.’ He allowed himself to look her over, guessing it would annoy her to be discovered in a shapeless pair of slacks and an elderly jumper covered in dog hair, make-up rather worn after a day’s use, and no jewellery.

  She bridled. ‘Well, there was no need to come rushing over practically in the middle of the night. Why couldn’t you call tomorrow and be civilized? I’m perfectly willing to help you, but I don’t see why my leisure time should be interrupted. I was just brushing my Lhasa Apso.’

  Slider heard Swilley turn her snort of laughter into a cough, but couldn’t help glancing at her hair, which was sticking up at one side, perhaps where someone had guided her head into the back of the car. She put a hand up to it automatically and snapped, ‘And that’s another thing! Sending uniformed policemen like that! What will the neighbours think?’

  ‘I think you’re losing sight of an essential point,’ he said. ‘We are investigating a murder. That’s rather more important than your poodles and pekes, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I don’t have a peke.’

  ‘The murder of your husband, what’s more.’

  ‘Ex-husband,’ she snapped.

  ‘Really? But you’re not married to Mr Buckland, are you?’

  ‘What’s that to do with you? It’s not a crime. A lot of people live together these days. If Phil and I choose not to get married, that’s none of your business.’

  ‘Of course, you couldn’t marry him even if he wanted to marry you,’ Slider went on smoothly, ‘because you and Lionel were never divorced. Why was that?’

  She was silent, calculation flickering behind her eyes. No use claiming they were divorced if the police could prove otherwise. And besides, she needed to be married to Lionel to get the money. Her eyes shifted off a point to the left of Slider’s head. ‘We just never got around to it. We’re as good as divorced, anyway. We’ve lived apart for seventeen years. What more do you want?’ The eyes came back, more confident now. ‘If that’s all you wanted to ask, you could have done it on the telephone.’

  ‘Actually, I didn’t really want to ask you questions. I brought you here to tell you a few things. You wanted to know about the progress of the case, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, but it seemed she sensed something was not as it appeared, because she didn’t relax. ‘Have you – have you caught someone?’

  ‘We confidently expect to be charging someone very soon,’ Slider said. ‘Some new evidence has come to light.’

  He waited, to make her ask, ‘Oh? What’s that, then?’

  ‘A car. A black Range Rover with two people in it. We think we’ll be able to identify them when we’ve enhanced the photograph. And most importantly, a fingerprint inside the flat.’

  ‘Oh?’ said June, but it took her two attempts to articulate the sound. Her mouth must have suddenly got very dry. Her eyes disconnected as she seemed to think furiously.

  Slider smiled sinuously, and told her. ‘It was on the door to Lionel’s study. Whoever wiped the door knobs held the door steady with an ungloved hand. Funny how often it’s the little mistakes that trip the criminal up.’

  She didn’t say anything, but her eyes grew hot and her lips tight at the word criminal. It wa
s also funny, Slider thought, how little criminals ever thought of themselves that way.

  Hollis met him outside the interview room, eyes bright. ‘It’s a match, guv,’ he said eagerly. ‘Buckland’s prints.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Slider said. ‘Did he give any trouble?’

  ‘He blustered a bit at first, but then he went quiet. Got a bit thoughtful. I’d say he’s worried.’

  ‘Has he said anything?’

  ‘No, guv. He’s not a happy bunny, though. They’ve given him a cup of tea and left him to stew.’

  ‘All right. Give me two minutes to get to the screen room, then bring June in to him and leave them alone.’

  It was quite cosy in the screen room, with Atherton and Swilley at the monitors and the others packed in behind. Mr Porson was there as well, with a cup of tea at which Slider looked with envy. His own mouth was dry – he’d had nothing since the meeting, and he’d done a lot of talking since then.

  ‘All set?’ Porson asked, and took a luxurious gulp.

  ‘She’ll be brought in in a moment,’ Slider said.

  In the lit room, Buckland was sitting at the table, wearing the regulation paper suit, and looking as low and scared as a beaten dog. Interesting, Slider thought, that he wasn’t holding up better: it suggested he had not had any close dealings with the police before. He took a sip at the tea in front of him, and replaced the mug abruptly as the door opened and then closed behind June.

  He started up, his expression veering between hope and bewilderment. ‘Juney? What are you doing here? What’s going on? Have they—?’

  He got no further before she was across the room and fetched him a clout, across the side of his head.

  ‘You idiot!’ she hissed. ‘You bloody stupid useless moron! You left a fingerprint!’

  ‘You what?’ he protested. He had sat down again, perforce, and had his hand to the side of his face.

  ‘A fingerprint! All your bloody fingers and thumbs, you stupid bastard.’

  ‘I never!’ he said. ‘What are you talking about? I wiped the thing and the doorknobs, and I never touched anything else. I had my hands in my pockets.’

  ‘You wiped the doorknob, but you held on to the door while you did it!’ she cried in exasperation raised to such a power it seemed as if her head might explode. ‘They just told me. They’ve got a full set of prints off it. It’s only a matter of time before they match it with yours—’

  ‘They took ’em when they brought me in,’ he admitted, looking frightened.

  ‘Well, you’re stuffed, then,’ she said, folding her arms over her chest and giving him a tight nod.

  He reddened. ‘What’re you talking about, I’m stuffed? It was you did it.’

  ‘Only because you’re such a lousy coward you’d never’ve had the balls.’

  ‘I was never going to! You were the one that lost your temper and bashed his head in!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she cried. ‘The point is they’ve got something on you. There’s no point in both of us getting done for it.’

  He was on his feet, his face suffusing with anger. ‘Oh no you don’t, my girl! You’re not landing this on me! D’you think I’m an idiot?’

  ‘You are an idiot! This is your fault, and if you were any sort of a man you’d take it and let me out of it.’

  ‘You killed him, not me!’

  ‘I only did it for you, didn’t I? It’s your business that’s down the toilet.’

  ‘Like hell you did. I’m not taking the blame for you—’

  She flew at him, battering him ineffectually with her small plump fists and making a mewing noise, while he tried to restrain her.

  ‘I think we’ve got enough, don’t you?’ Slider said.

  ‘Better get in there before they murder each other,’ Porson growled as the eager couple grappled in apoplectic rage. ‘Love and marriage, eh? Go together like a horse and wassname.’

  ‘Carnage,’ Atherton offered.

  Night ran into morning and morning became all day with the interviews, the processing, the conferences and the paperwork. Slider didn’t get home, but at times like those policemen were capable of running just about for ever on a tank empty of everything but adrenalin.

  However, at a late lunch hour he emerged from Porson’s office and returned to his own to find Joanna there. She kissed him and said, ‘Congratulations. Now I’m going to come the wifey and make you go upstairs for lunch. Emily’s here too, she’s just gone to winkle Jim out.’ She cocked her head a little. ‘Don’t look like that. You can spare half an hour, can’t you? You’ve got the villains under lock and key.’

  He allowed the tense frown to slither off his face. ‘Of course I can. Actually, I’m more thirsty than hungry. I keep getting brought cups of tea and not getting round to drinking them.’

  ‘You’ll be hungry when you’ve stopped being thirsty. Come on, I’m dying to hear all about it.’

  ‘What day is it?’ he asked as they headed for the door.

  ‘Wednesday. Why?’

  ‘Oh good. It’s hotpot Wednesday.’ He answered her questioning look. ‘Wet food – easier to suck off the spoon.’

  ‘So at what point,’ Emily asked, toying with green jelly that she had picked up at the counter without thinking, ‘did she decide to kill him?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ said Atherton. ‘She may have had it in the back of her mind all along, that it would come to that. She claims it was a spur of the moment thing, that she lost her temper because he was being so unreasonable.’

  ‘So she didn’t mind talking about it?’

  ‘Couldn’t shut her up once she’d started. You often find that. Once they’ve broken that first barrier and admitted it, they just want to tell you everything. Boasting about how clever they’ve been – despite the fact that they’re sitting there in custody, which is not the cleverest position to be in.’

  Monday morning’s post at the Buckland house had brought several nasty bills, plus a billet aigre from the mortgage company. Heated discussion over the next thirty hours had resulted in the expedition to visit Lionel, plead with him for money and, if he wouldn’t see reason, for one of them to steal the will while the other distracted him. Slider thought that even the apparently good-tempered Lionel might have become annoyed at the second such appeal to his purse in one day, and found it easy to refuse the wife who had always made it clear she despised him.

  ‘But it was a cockeyed thing to do anyway,’ Emily complained.

  ‘You want criminals to be logical?’ Atherton countered.

  ‘Seriously. She knew the son had reappeared, you say? So even if she took the will, he’d only got to come forward and claim, and he’d get the dosh.’

  ‘She didn’t think he would come forward,’ Slider said, replete with hotpot and feeling a bit sleepy now. ‘He’d been in hiding for so long, I think she just expected him to disappear again – and he might have, you know. He might never have heard of Lionel’s death, and if he did hear about it in a roundabout way, he’s quite diffident enough to think Lionel had changed his mind again. He didn’t seem like the sort to relish making a fuss.’

  ‘For that sort of money?’ Emily objected.

  Slider shrugged. ‘Anyway, he might have found it difficult to prove he was Lionel’s legitimate son. Possession of a birth certificate – even if he had one – might not cut it, if his mother denied him.’

  ‘She still really hates him, then?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘She has the rigidness of mind of the not-very-bright,’ said Slider. ‘To her he became a non-person, and she holds to that. He simply doesn’t exist.’

  ‘But then,’ Emily put in, ‘why did Lionel tell her? If he knew how she felt about the son, why did he go and tell her, not only that Danny had reappeared, but that he was going to leave him all his money? I mean, she was never going to take that well.’

  ‘He was curiously naive for a solicitor,’ Slider agreed. ‘Diana Chambers said he was utterly truthful, without rega
rd for the consequences. I suppose he thought June had the right to know about Danny. And if he knew she had been expecting to inherit his money all those years, he’d think she had the right to know he was changing his will, too.’

  ‘It strikes me as a bit mean, disinheriting her completely,’ Joanna said. ‘Not that I’m condoning her – I mean, she’s obviously bonkers as well as unpleasant – but still.’

  ‘He thought she was all right with Buckland. And he wasn’t cutting her out completely. He told her he was leaving her twenty thousand.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then,’ Joanna said, with a wry look.

  ‘He even offered to give her an advance to tide her over – that was the cheque he was writing.’ Slider pushed his plate away and pulled his tea towards him. He’d left it too long again, and it was cold. ‘Destroying the will wasn’t a completely pointless idea, you know, even if Danny had come forward and been able to prove his identity. Because the intestacy rules would still have given her more than under the new will. She’d have got all his personal possessions, plus two hundred and fifty thousand, plus a lifetime interest in half the rest of the estate. A not insubstantial amount. But of course she wanted it all. Funny how often murder comes down to greed,’ he concluded, pushing the cup away again.

  ‘You’re not to get depressed about it,’ Joanna said, laying a hand over his. ‘You’re just tired. You’ve done a good job.’

  But Lionel Bygod is still dead, Slider thought, though he didn’t say it aloud for fear someone would mention that he hadn’t had much longer to live anyway. Those months had been his, and no-one had the right to take them away. And he would have spent them getting to know his son again.

  ‘So what will the result be?’ Emily asked, abandoning the jelly without regret. ‘Will they go down?’

  ‘Oh yes, no doubt about it,’ Atherton said. ‘I suppose the defence might try to parlay Buckland down to manslaughter, because he gave her up so readily, and he didn’t actually strike the blow. But he’ll still go away for a long time, and she’ll get life.’