Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  He caved. McLaren led him out, while Atherton took a moment to soothe the old woman.

  ‘Where you take him?’ she demanded fearfully.

  ‘Nowhere. Just outside to talk. Don’t worry. You can have him back in a minute.’

  Spirit flared. ‘You keep him! I don’t want lazy pig. Every day he breaks his mother’s heart!’

  SIX

  Repaint and Thin No More

  Connolly came into Slider’s office, where he was talking to Hollis.

  ‘Guv, I’ve got something,’ she said with a smile so bright Slider could feel the skin of his face turning brown.

  ‘Let me have it,’ he said.

  ‘Sure God, you’re going to love this!’ she obliged. ‘It’s the answer to all the questions about your man.’ She had been on the computer all morning, and now proudly displayed the results. ‘He was a solicitor right enough. He’d a practice in Islington, specialized in criminal defence. Worked with this big-shot barrister called Wickham Williams QC.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ Slider said.

  ‘Have you, so?’ said Connolly. ‘Well, he’d a name for defending bad lots, and apparently your man Bygod was the solicitor behind him.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Slider, ‘so he could well have had criminals coming up his stairs in Shepherd’s Bush.’

  ‘Maybe chummy was a disgruntled client he didn’t manage to get off,’ said Hollis.

  ‘Wait’ll I tell ya,’ Connolly said impatiently. ‘He was involved in this big case in 1996, defending a man called Noel Roxwell. Seems this Roxwell had been questioned a couple o’ times for hanging around school playgrounds and talking to the kids. This time it was alleged he followed a girl called Kim North, age fourteen, on to a bus, got off at the same stop and caught her in an alley where he indecently assaulted her. According to the police report he kissed her and put his hand on her breast and made certain suggestions, before she ran away.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a very big case,’ Slider said.

  ‘I haven’t got to it yet, boss,’ Connolly said. ‘The North kid told her mammy, and the peelers came and nicked him, and when the word got around, this other girl in the same class, Debbie Crondace, came forward and said he done the same to her, only he’d gone all the way, done the nasty with her up against the wall, without her consent. So then it was all over the papers. Roxwell went to Lionel Bygod, who got him Wickham Williams to defend him.’

  ‘I think I remember hearing something about that case,’ Slider said. ‘Roxwell. Crondace. The names ring a bell.’

  Connolly nodded. ‘O’ course, your man’s previous counted against him, and the press was hostile. There was a big paedophile scare going on at the time. It looked like Roxwell was a goner. But Wickham Williams pulled the evidence apart, and apparently Roxwell was good in the box and the girl wasn’t, and anyway, however it was, he got him off. So then there was a big fuss in the papers, and a campaign led by the Crondace kid’s da to get the acquittal overturned. He went after Wickham Williams and our Mr Bygod – Crondace did – and the papers loved it, splashed it as the nobs’ conspiracy against poor working folk, and all that class o’ caper. Asking why any decent person would defend a pervert like Roxwell.’

  ‘I’m sure that went down well in the Inns of Court,’ Slider said.

  ‘It got worse,’ Connolly assured him. ‘The story spread that Bygod and Wickham Williams were kiddy-fiddlers themselves, part of a big circle, including Roxwell, that looked out for each other’s backs. One remark Crondace made went viral – whatever the equivalent was in them days when they hadn’t the social media. He said QC meant Queer Customer. O’ course, something like that was jam for the press.’

  ‘Why didn’t they sue?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Well, boss, it happened that the silk dropped dead suddenly in the middle of all the fuss. Nothing wrong about it – apparently he’d had an undiagnosed heart condition, and maybe the strain brought it on. So Bygod was left alone to face the music. And instead of suing, he went to ground. Gave up his practice, sold his house, and disappeared.’

  Swilley had come in to listen. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘So there was something sinister about him after all?’

  ‘You automatically assume he was guilty?’ Slider said. ‘A nice case of “give a dog a bad name and hang him”.’

  ‘If he wasn’t guilty, why did he run? Why didn’t he sue? If a solicitor can’t sue, who can? Atherton said there was a pattern emerging.’

  ‘That was about him being a homosexual,’ Connolly objected.

  ‘Paedophiles often are,’ Hollis said. ‘Or at least, they’re not particular one way or the other. Boys or girls, it’s all the same.’

  ‘It would certainly provide a motive for his murder,’ Slider said thoughtfully, ‘if he was reviled for getting a guilty man off.’

  ‘Right,’ Connolly began eagerly.

  ‘If,’ Slider interrupted, ‘there was any evidence that anyone had been after him in the intervening sixteen years.’

  ‘Well, we don’t know, do we, boss?’ Connolly said. ‘He went to ground. Maybe they’d only just found him.’

  ‘It’s something to look into. I think I’ll have a word with Jonny Care at Islington, see if I can get any more information on the Roxwell case. I’d like to know if there really was any substance in the accusations against Bygod – if he’d come to anyone’s attention before that.’ Care was the Islington DI he had worked with over the Ben Corley murder.

  ‘Anyway, it gives a reason for the break in his life, doesn’t it, boss?’ Connolly said. ‘Why his current friends never met anyone he knew before.’

  ‘And why he was no longer married,’ Swilley said. ‘Even if he was innocent, it’d be hard for a marriage to survive that sort of trauma.’

  Slider nodded. ‘The trouble with accusations of that sort is that, even if they’re untrue, a taint always lingers. The old “there’s no smoke without fire” argument.’ He sighed. ‘We can talk all we like about justice, but a malicious accusation can never be wholly wiped clean.’

  ‘Cheer up, guv,’ Swilley said. ‘Maybe he was guilty – think of that!’

  ‘Oh, how you comfort me,’ said Slider.

  Gascoyne came in. ‘Got one!’ he said jubilantly. ‘One of the fingermarks on the stair rail matches with Jack Kroll. So he’s definitely been in the house.’

  Slider felt a surge of relief. Proper evidence at last! ‘Right. Radio that through to Atherton and McLaren straight away. No reason he shouldn’t have visited, but if he denies he’s ever been there, they can put him on the back foot.’

  ‘Should they bring him in, guv?’ Gascoyne asked.

  ‘I leave that to Atherton. He’ll know if he seems like a dodgy customer.’

  Mark Kroll was about as hard to break as a slice of Madeira cake. Once outside, McLaren patted him down before putting him in the car, and the tin in his pocket that he had not wanted them to find turned out to contain a spliff, a small piece of foil-wrapped resin, and a book of matches.

  ‘Enough to nick you on, mate,’ McLaren said. ‘If you want us to forget about it, you better cooperate.’

  That was when he crumbled.

  Now he sat in the back seat of their car, savaging a cigarette and his fingernails alternately, his left knee jiggling the well-known dance of shame, and confessed with only the gentlest of prods that the job in Hanwell they should have been doing had been abandoned because they could not afford to buy the materials. The householder had given them a substantial deposit, but that was all gone. Now she was ringing them all the time, asking when they’d be back to finish, and threatening to sue them.

  ‘Me and Dad stay out of the way all day. Dad’s had to change his mobile and he’s told Gran not to answer the phone. If they start coming round the house, I dunno what we’ll do.’

  ‘So you weren’t at the job in Hanwell on Tuesday?’ Atherton said.

  ‘No, I told you. We can’t even buy a can o’ paint. Got no credit anywhere any mor
e.’

  ‘So where were you?’

  ‘We went out in the morning, Dad and me, like usual, so’s Gran’d think we was going to the job. He doesn’t want her to know. She gets mad about the money – him not having any, I mean. Him and Mum had a terrible row the night before. I could hear ’em yelling at each other, and then Gran woke up and she went and joined in. I put the pillow over me head and stopped quiet.’

  ‘What was the row about?’

  ‘Like I said. It’s always the same – money. I don’t know exactly – a lot of it was in Polish. They always end up yelling in Polish when they get into it.’

  ‘So, tell me about Tuesday,’ Atherton said. ‘Every detail.’

  He looked puzzled, but complied. ‘Well, we left about half seven, had breakfast at this caff up West Ealing, Ruby’s in Argyll Road. Spun it out long as we could. Then Dad leaves me and goes off in the van.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I dunno. He never said.’

  ‘And where did you go?’

  ‘I went and sat in the park a bit, had a fag, read the paper. I didn’t have me wheels, see.’

  ‘Is that your Focus?’ McLaren indicated the rust bucket at the kerb.

  ‘Yeah, but I couldn’t come home to get it, case Gran saw me. Can’t afford the petrol, anyway. So I was stuck, wasn’t I? So I went down the snooker club, down Northfields Avenue, and stopped there all day.’

  ‘How did you manage without any money?’

  ‘I got some mates hang out there. They paid for the tables, and I bummed some fags off ’em. Dad picked me up about four o’clock on the Uxbridge Road, and we went home.’

  McLaren got a call on his Airwave and got out of the car to take it. He beckoned Atherton out.

  ‘One of the fingerprints on the stair rail has come back to old man Kroll,’ he said. ‘So it’s starting to look tasty.’

  Through the car window they could see Mark watching them with mad, frightened eyes from under his mess of hair. ‘I wonder how much he knows,’ Atherton said. ‘I wouldn’t trust him with important secrets if he was my son.’

  ‘Nah,’ said McLaren from the depth of his copper’s instinct. ‘He’s a dipstick. That’s why the old man went off and left him.’

  They got back in. Atherton said, ‘So you didn’t see your dad all day on Tuesday? Do you know where he was?’

  ‘No, he never said.’ The boy was sweating now, and the smell of marijuana came out of his pores like curry out of McLaren’s.

  ‘Have you ever been to the place your mum works – Mr Bygod’s flat?’

  ‘No,’ he said with a simple bewilderment that sounded genuine.

  ‘Has your dad?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. Why would he? Look, I haven’t done nothing. Can I go now? I gotter go to the toilet.’

  Atherton shook his head. ‘Where’s your dad now?’

  ‘I dunno!’

  ‘Guess,’ he suggested, with menace.

  Mark evidently tried. The effort made him look miserable. ‘Maybe some pub. Or down the betting shop. He goes there a lot.’

  ‘He’s got a gambling habit, your dad?’ McLaren said.

  He nodded, and said dolefully, ‘Bloody right!’ Little bits of misery came spurting out of him under the pressure like leaks in a hosepipe. ‘They row about it all the time.’

  ‘Your mum and dad?

  ‘She said if he didn’t stop betting she’d kill him.’

  ‘Is that why there’s no money?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘It’s worse ’n that.’

  ‘What’s your dad got into?’ McLaren urged.

  ‘I can’t tell you! Me dad’d kill me.’

  ‘You’re in enough trouble already, chap,’ McLaren said. ‘Don’t make it worse for yourself. What d’you think your mum and gran will say if you get nicked?’

  The knee jiggled, the eyes flitted, the hands fidgeted madly as he lost his mellow; and the mellow – or a long history of mellows – had already robbed him of his wits. He needed someone to tell him what to do. He wasn’t capable of thinking anything out for himself.

  ‘Who are these bad men your gran told us about?’ Atherton tried. ‘Are they after your dad?’

  He looked so scared they knew they were on to something.

  ‘Look,’ he cried, ‘my dad’s a good man. He’s never done nothing wrong.’

  ‘What about the illegal fly-tipping?’ McLaren put in. ‘And the stolen lead? And cheating that woman out of her deposit.’

  ‘It’s not his fault! He’s into them for thousands. You don’t get it! They said they’d break his knees if he didn’t get the money. Then he’d never be able to work again. He’s a good man, my dad! It’s them you ought to be going after.’

  ‘Oh, we will, don’t you worry,’ Atherton said. ‘But you’ve got to help us. Tell us what you know about them.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he wailed. ‘Dad’d kill me. And they’d go after me if I talked. You don’t know what they’re like. You got to help my dad – you got to.’ He started to cry. ‘Mum don’t understand. She thinks he’s mad to go on gambling, but it’s the only way to get that sort of money. But he never wins enough,’ he wept. ‘He keeps on trying, but it’s never enough.’

  A fairly clear picture was emerging, Atherton thought. A runnel of snot was hanging from the snivelling youth’s nose and he handed him a tissue, waited until he’d cleaned up, and said firmly, ‘Tell me.’

  The Roxwell business had been before Jonny Care’s time, but he put Slider on to one Gerald Hawes who had been a detective sergeant on the case. Hawes had retired from the Met and was living out in Greenford where he worked freelance as a carpenter, making bespoke furniture and built-in cupboards.

  ‘It was always a hobby of mine,’ he told Slider. ‘I love wood. Now I can indulge myself all day long, and earn a crust at the same time. Come through to my workshop. We can talk privately there.’

  The house was a modern one on a new estate, with picture windows and an open plan layout intended to give a sense of space and dignity to a basically cramped and cheap design. They passed by the open door to the lounge where a stout, grey-haired woman was sitting watching daytime television. ‘The wife,’ Hawes said briefly, but didn’t offer to introduce Slider; nor did the wife turn her head from the quiz show that was absorbing her.

  Hawes was a cheerful, overweight but bouncy man with thinning hair and glasses. Behind the lenses he still had copper’s eyes: any other copper – and probably any career criminal – would have made him immediately. He led the way into a large extension that had been built on behind the garage and fitted out into a workshop with every facility, well-lit, spacious, and smelling deliciously of wood shavings and varnish. It was not without creature comforts – an armchair, a table bearing an electric kettle and toaster-oven, a small fridge, a radio quietly playing Classic FM.

  ‘I sit in here a lot,’ he said, noting Slider’s cataloguing of the scene. ‘Pat’s always got the telly on – drives me mad. I read and listen to the wireless in here, do the crossword, and we meet up at bedtime for cocoa.’ It was said jokingly, but Slider read an old, accustomed hurt under the lightness of tone. Policemen’s marriages were always strained. The wife, so much alone at home, living with the knowledge that the Job meant more to her man than she did, generally turned either to anger or indifference, or found a more sympathetic mate. That’s why the divorce rate was so high; but it seemed the Haweses had found an accommodation of sorts.

  ‘So,’ Hawes said, ‘that old Roxwell case has come alive again, has it?’ He walked over to a large rocking-horse that was evidently under construction, and picked up a piece of glasspaper. ‘Make yourself comfy. Mind if I carry on with this while we talk? It’s meant for one of the grandkids, but it’s taking me so long, she’ll be on her A levels before I get it finished.’

  Slider waved assent, and sat down in the arm chair. Hawes began rhythmically and lovingly rubbing at the horse’s neck.

  ‘You didn’t sound
surprised that I was asking about the Roxwell case,’ Slider said.

  ‘Well, no. It was a nasty business, and there were always question marks about it. What’s your interest, if I may ask?’

  ‘The defence solicitor, Bygod.’

  ‘Oh, really? Has he been getting into trouble? You know, I never truly believed he was a nonce. You know how you get a feeling for people. But when he disappeared, I had to wonder. No smoke without fire, and all that sort of thing. What’s he been up to?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Slider said. ‘Murdered.’

  The rubbing hand stopped, and Hawes looked up. ‘Oh,’ he said, with a world of meaning. He pondered. ‘Well, there were threats against him, as I expect you know. But it was all a long time ago.’

  ‘Tell me about it, will you? Everything, from the beginning.’

  ‘There was no doubt Roxwell was hanging around the school playground. He said he just liked watching the children play – and of course, twenty years earlier nobody would have thought twice about it. But we’d all had to get a lot more suspicious by that time, and one of the mothers complained so of course we had to give him a tug. Then we found he’d been a scout master once and had to give it up when some of the parents heard things about him. No charges were ever made, but once you’re on the radar …’ He shrugged. ‘As far as the original charge went, the Kim North business, he denied he’d been following her. He said he was going home to his mother, and it’s true she lived in that direction. She’s dead now – his mum. Never got over it, all the nastiness. Anyway, he said he was just walking in the same direction as Kim, and when they got down the alley she turned and waited for him. She said she asked him why he was following her. He said she asked him for a cigarette. She said he offered her one. They apparently got talking while they smoked. Roxwell said she flirted with him, and said, “I’ll give you a kiss if you give me the rest of the packet.” Kim said he just suddenly lunged at her, grabbed her tit and kissed her against her will.’