Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘People are morons,’ said Connolly impatiently. ‘Try to help them and they spit in your face.’

  ‘He was a moron,’ McLaren countered. ‘Letting them in like that, just anyone off the street. People are rotten.’

  ‘The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,’ Atherton said, strolling in with a take-out cardboard cup of coffee. ‘Good to know compassion is alive and well in the modern-day police service. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.’

  ‘Where’d you get that?’ Connolly asked, eyeing the cup.

  ‘Went out for it,’ Atherton said.

  ‘And y’ didn’t ask anyone else? God, what’re you like?’

  ‘You’ve got a kettle. Maurice, don’t put that Mars Bar in your mouth like that. You look as if you’re having oral sex with it.’

  McLaren pulled it out quickly – which was not any sort of improvement – and said peevishly, ‘What you want me to do? Can’t eat it without putting it in me mouth, can I?’

  ‘Bite a bit off, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Thank you, Jim,’ Swilley said. ‘At last. It comes to something when you have to give a colleague eating lessons.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t got your brain,’ McLaren said sulkily.

  ‘Whoever’s got yours ought to give it back.’

  ‘Ah, you’re always givin’ out to the poor oul culchie,’ Connolly stepped in. ‘Would you not give him a break once?’ McLaren stared at her with his mouth open. No-one had ever stood up for him before. She looked at him kindly. ‘Shut your mouth, Maurice, for feck’s sake. I can see the last three meals you’ve eaten.’

  Mackay looked up from the racing pages of the Sun. ‘Anyone got anything for Lingfield tomorrow?’

  McLaren saw the chance to take the attention off his eating habits. ‘Two thirty. Horse called Make Or Break. Dead cert.’

  ‘Like the last dead cert you gave me?’ Atherton asked. He liked a flutter on the ponies now and then. ‘Remember Bredon Hill?’

  ‘Bredon Hill’s a good horse,’ McLaren said stubbornly.

  ‘I’m sure he’s very handsome. What I complain about is his serene, almost Buddhist approach to racing.’

  ‘You wanted an outsider,’ McLaren pointed out. ‘No point betting at five to four on, that’s what you said.’

  ‘It’s your own fault for asking him,’ Swilley said. ‘I’ve no patience with anyone who gambles. It’s a mug’s game.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Atherton. ‘A man has to have his pleasures.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ McLaren agreed glutinously, through the chocolate, caramel and fondant melting round his tonsils.

  Slider came in. ‘All right, settle down everybody.’ He spotted Atherton’s cup. ‘Anybody get me one?’

  Swilley gave Atherton a pointed look that failed by several furlongs to make him blush, and said, ‘I’ll go, boss.’

  ‘No, never mind now. I’ll have one later. All right, Lionel Bygod, age sixty-six, lived alone, apparently divorced, done to death by blows to the back of his head, several, while sitting at his desk. Some time yesterday afternoon or evening. Found by his housekeeper this morning. There seems not to be any other disturbance, no sign of break-in. He was wearing a very nice watch, and his wallet was still in his pocket with seventy pounds cash in it.’

  ‘So apparently not a burglary or robbery from the person,’ said Hollis, his other sergeant, who generally acted as office manager. His thin hair and scrawny moustache always had an unconvincing look, like the feathers of a chick just out of the egg, but he seemed more than usually dishevelled today, and his rather bulging eyes were reddened, as if he hadn’t been having much sleep lately.

  ‘So how’d they get in?’ asked Fathom, newish, callow, a big sweaty lad given to hair gel and powerful aftershave. ‘Those doors with the entryphone, you can’t slip the lock on ’em.’

  ‘Either they were let in, or they had a key,’ Swilley said impatiently. ‘Keep up!’

  ‘According to forensic,’ Slider said, ‘we can be certain from the blood pattern and lack of other traces that he wasn’t moved from somewhere else. That means he was killed where he sat.’

  ‘So someone crept up behind him,’ McLaren said.

  ‘That’s a lot of creeping up,’ said Norma. ‘All the way up those stairs, on lino.’

  ‘And there’s a floorboard on the landing that creaks,’ Atherton said.

  ‘He’d hear them coming. Unless he was deaf.’

  ‘There’s no suggestion he was deaf,’ Slider said. ‘You ignore small sounds from behind you made by someone you know is there, whereas if you think you’re in an empty house you’re likely to turn round to investigate. So I think it’s much more likely the murderer was someone Bygod had let in himself.’

  There was a little murmur around the room about that. Most of them knew about Bygod’s habit of giving advice and help to people who came in off the street; the others were soon enlightened by their neighbours.

  ‘There’s another thing to take into account. The murder weapon – the bronze statuette – was taken from the mantelpiece in the room. The murderer wiped his fingermarks off it afterwards and left it there. Which means—?’

  ‘An amateur,’ said Gascoyne. ‘A professional would have taken the weapon away with him.’

  ‘A professional would have brought his own weapon with him in the first place,’ Norma pointed out, ‘not relied on finding something when he got there.’

  ‘Unless it was spur of the moment,’ Atherton said. ‘He came to see the victim for some other reason and just did it when the overpowering emotion arose. Crime passionelle. Don’t you think that sounds like a fruity blancmange?’

  ‘Or,’ said Slider, ‘he’d been there before, and made a mental note that the statuette would do the job. However, the fact that he didn’t put on gloves does suggest a degree of lack of planning.’

  ‘Maybe there wasn’t time,’ Norma said reasonably. ‘Maybe moments when Bygod was sitting down with his back turned didn’t come all that often.’

  ‘I’ll take that one,’ said Connolly. ‘Sure, if your visitor starts puttin’ on the marigolds while you’re chattin’ about the weather, you might cop on that he’s up to something.’

  ‘Speaking of marigolds,’ Atherton said, looking at Slider, ‘you do realize the prime suspect has got to be the housekeeper, the angelic Mrs Kroll? She has a key, she has every right to be there, she can wander in and out of his room pretty much at will and pick her time. Any noises she makes behind him he’ll be programmed to ignore. We don’t know exactly what time he was killed, and we’ve only got her word that he went out that morning and wasn’t back before she left. She had the perfect excuse to have his blood on her clothes – and if she’s left any fingermarks anywhere, so what?’

  ‘All true,’ said Slider. ‘Except that she also had the perfect excuse to be wearing gloves and not to have to wipe fingermarks off the statue.’

  ‘She didn’t wear them for housework,’ Atherton said, but his face showed he immediately saw the problem.

  ‘Again, we only have her word for that,’ said Slider.

  ‘Well, she’s still the prime suspect,’ Atherton said.

  ‘I don’t disagree. We should look into her background and movements. See if we can find any evidence of when she actually did leave yesterday. Did you get a look at her husband?’

  ‘Very tasty. Big, butch, and angry,’ said Atherton.

  ‘Other lines of enquiry, guv?’ Hollis asked, making a note of the Krolls.

  ‘I’m not sure the local canvass is going to yield anything – people pass up and down the street all the time, in and out of the shops – but you never know. CCTVs – McLaren, see if any of the shops have got one that shows people passing. I know we haven’t got an exact time of death, but for now start collating from two o’clock yesterday afternoon. Fathom, see what London Transport’s got. Their buses have cameras that may have caught something.’

  ‘Right, guv.’


  ‘And forensic may have something to tell us. We should get some fingermarks, at least.’

  ‘If he did have a lot of ex-cons visiting him, that might prove interesting,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Otherwise – find out more about Bygod, obviously,’ Slider went on. ‘Basic background search. Was he retired? What did he do before that? Who were his friends? If he did go out to lunch yesterday, who with? There’s a diary and an address book coming over when forensic have finished with it. Connolly, that’s yours. Also the chequebook – Norma, see if there’s anything interesting in that. And look into his financial position. Was he, in fact, wealthy, and if so, where did the money come from and where did he keep it?’

  ‘When are we going to get a look at the contents of that document safe?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘When forensic have finished with it.’

  ‘Guv, I’ve been thinking,’ said McLaren.

  ‘The first time’s always the worst,’ Slider comforted him.

  ‘He was writing a cheque, right? I mean, there’s no doubt – he’d written the date when he got whacked.’

  ‘The pen seems to have been in his hand, and the cap was off,’ Slider said.

  ‘That’s probably how the murderer got him to sit down with his back turned,’ Mackay said.

  ‘Good point,’ Slider said. ‘I’m not sure it helps, unless we can work out who he might have written a cheque to. Of course, it might have been one of the visiting lowlifes. Mrs Kroll said he didn’t give people money, but again that’s just her view.’

  ‘But guv,’ McLaren objected, ‘my point is, if chummy did persuade him to write him a cheque, why didn’t he wait for him to finish, so’s he could have the money as well?’

  ‘Janey Mac!’ Connolly rolled her eyes – evidently it was a thing all girls could do, Slider observed with interest. ‘It’d be a bit of a dead giveaway, wouldn’t it, ya gobshite, if he goes hoofin’ down the bank with the last cheque your man wrote?’

  McLaren stood up for himself. ‘There’d be nothing to say what time of the day he wrote it. Even if it was the last. If it was me, I’d have waited and took it.’

  Slider took a minute to phone home, and got Joanna.

  ‘I wanted to catch you before you left. All serene?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been resting, with my feet up, if that’s what you mean,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Dad all right with the kids?’

  ‘He’s only just back with them. He took them out, even George. You’ll never guess where.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Tate.’

  ‘He took my children to an art gallery? We are talking about OMG Kate and Footy Mad Matthew, aren’t we?’

  ‘Turns out he was going there anyway today, to meet his lady-friend, and didn’t see any reason to put off his date for a brace and a half of grandchildren. They had lunch, looked at paintings, came home on the top of the bus. A good time was had by all. He should have been a general. The army could do with his marshalling skills.’

  ‘I hope he hasn’t worn himself out,’ Slider said guiltily.

  ‘He seemed all right. He’s gone back to his flat for a rest. The kids are packed and Irene’ll be here any minute. I’m going to get George fed and in bed before your dad comes back over. He won’t have anything to do but watch telly until you get home.’

  ‘Sounds like the army’s missing you, too. I won’t be late home. I’m just finishing up some paperwork here.’

  ‘How is it?’ she asked. ‘Sad or bad?’ It was a shorthand they had.

  ‘More sad than bad. It seems the chap was a bit of a philanthropist, and may have been whacked by one of his philanthropees, probably for some petty reason.’

  ‘All reasons are petty, weighed against a human life,’ she said.

  ‘Good luck with your concert. Don’t get too tired.’

  ‘Tell it to Prokofiev,’ she replied. ‘I have no say in the matter.’

  Just before he left, Porson sent for him. The old man looked tired, after a day with his seniors and the press officers.

  ‘Not much in the media yet, thank God,’ he said as Slider came in. Unusually, he’d got his bottle of White Horse out of the filing cabinet. Porson was not a big drinker, but it was going-home time in the real world, and his nerves were obviously strained. ‘Drink?’

  ‘No thank you, sir,’ Slider said.

  Porson poured himself a modest noggin. ‘I thought they’d have been all over it. Kind man bitten by the hand that feeds him, that sort of thing. Makes a good story. Lucky they had their minds in the usual place. MP caught cottaging in Hyde Park, so they’ve all run away to play over there. The local papers’ll be on ours, but we can live with that. What about this cleaner woman?’ His sharp eyes came up to Slider’s face. ‘She’s got to be a possible.’

  Slider explained the various matters relating to keys, fingermarks and choice of weapon.

  Porson looked gloomy. ‘She’d be a bastard to prove unless you get a good strong motive. She could leave herself behind all over the place and it wouldn’t mean a thing. Mind you, if it was me in her shoes, I’d’ve worn the gloves, cleaned the statue and put it back on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘Unless she wanted to make it look as if it wasn’t her,’ Slider said. ‘We’d have found traces on the statue eventually, and that would have put her squarely in the frame.’

  ‘Point. Except that they never think like that – lucky for us. Well, carry on. Hammersmith’s lost interest a bit what with one thing and another, and given it wasn’t anyone famous, but it only takes a slow news day and we’re back in the spotlight. The bugger of it is,’ he concluded gloomily, ‘showing someone was there isn’t going to get us anywhere.’

  Slider had already made the acquaintance of that particular bugger.

  He made Joanna go to bed as soon as she got home from the concert, and took her up a mug of Ovaltine.

  ‘Oh, Daddy!’ she simpered, fluttering her eyelids, but he could see how tired she was. They were too much, these long days and the strain of trying to be perfect in a fiercely competitive world; but he had expressed his doubts already, and could not press them without disrespecting her right to self-determination. He got on the bed beside her with his own mug, and she opened the batting – to keep him, he guessed, from saying the things he had just decided he mustn’t.

  ‘So how did it go? What’s it looking like?’

  ‘It’s looking like a long haul.’ He told her some of the details.

  ‘The housekeeper, obviously,’ she said at the end of it. ‘All you need is a motive.’

  ‘All!’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘In any case, motives are usually the feeblest of things. It could be something as small as him telling her off about not cleaning something properly. How would you ever find that out? And any forensic evidence about her is automatically out of play because she had every right to be there.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t see this one coming in quickly.’

  She sipped, and then as he drew breath to speak she got in first. ‘What about your dad’s escapade today? Isn’t that intriguing?’

  ‘I’m more amazed than intrigued. Kate voluntarily went to an art gallery? Which Tate was it – Original or New Improved?’

  ‘The Modern,’ Joanna said, ‘so I expect she’d heard of it somewhere on the “cool” spectrum. I’m more intrigued that he wanted to inflict them on his girlfriend.’

  ‘Which one was it?’

  ‘Oh Bill,’ she said reproachfully, ‘it’s been Lydia Hurst for ages. Lydia from the Scrabble club?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, recalibrating. ‘Do you think it’s serious?’

  ‘Introducing your grandchildren?’ Joanna said. ‘I think it’s a senior’s version of taking her home to meet the parents.’

  ‘He’s not brought her to see us yet,’ Slider complained.

  ‘Doesn’t want to frighten her off, maybe. This was a toe in the water. If she survived the children intact …’ She
shrugged.

  ‘Well, it’ll be nice for him to get married again, I suppose,’ he said, wondering what was the appropriate reaction – wondering, indeed, what he felt about such a notion. His mother had died so long ago, and his father had lived an almost monastic life in the farm cottage where Slider had been born, until his recent move to a granny-flat attached to their new house. In all those years he had never seemed to want female companionship, and the only woman Slider had heard him speak about was his mother. Then, suddenly, transported to Chiswick, he had blossomed out into a new social life, and the zimmer-dollies had been all over him.

  ‘I don’t know if they’d get married or just live together,’ Joanna said, slightly shocking Slider, who was old-fashioned about such things – well, anyway, about one’s own father living in sin: the rest of the world could do as it pleased. ‘But either way, we have to consider how it might affect us.’

  ‘How could it affect us?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘You don’t think his flat is big enough for two?’

  ‘Who says they’d even live there? She may want him to live in her house. Or they might want a new place entirely. And wherever they end up, don’t you think it’s certain to mean he’s not available, at least on the old basis, for babysitting?’

  Now Slider saw it.

  She went on, ‘We’ve been spoiled, having him here and on tap at any time of the day or night. He cancels his plans at the last moment for us, stays on when we’re late back, and never a word of complaint.’

  ‘But he loves doing it. He loves having time with George.’

  ‘Whether he does or he doesn’t, we’ve become dangerously reliant on him. And what about when the new baby comes? He’s not getting any younger, and two is a lot more than twice the work of one, especially when one of them is about to hit the terrible twos. I just don’t think we can afford to blithely assume everything’s going to go on the same way.’

  He saw all the problems lined up ahead, along with the delicate emotional minefields through which a way would have to be picked. His dad, of course, would protest that he loved taking care of his grandchildren, and being of the polite generation he would say it whether it was true or not – which was the problem with extreme politeness. It was hard to know where you stood. On the other hand, the suggestion that he was not up to the task might hurt his feelings; while on yet another hand the assumption that he was automatically free to babysit as if he had no private life of his own could mine yet another rich seam of hurt and resentment.