Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Yeah. She and me was mates at school. Anyway, we’d seen this bloke, whatsisname.’

  ‘Noel Roxwell.’

  ‘Yeah. He went home the same way as Kim and me. So one night, I’d not been in school ’cos I had the curse, and she’s on her own, and she waits for him in the alley and says give us a fag. So he says all right. So he does. So they both have a smoke, and they’re chatting, like, and then he goes, “I’ll give you all the fags you want if you’re nice to me.” So she says, what, nice like this? And she gives him a kiss. And while he’s still kind of thinking about it, she grabs the packet out’f his hand and runs for it.’

  Connolly nodded calmly, as if this was all par for the course. ‘And how do you know about it? Did she tell you?’

  ‘Yeah, she come straight round my house. She goes, “I got something to tell you,” so we goes out for a walk, and she shows me the packet o’ fags. So we both have a smoke and she tells me about it, and then she says you should do it too, and I say I don’t want to, and she says go on, you’ll get fags for it, and kissing him’s nothing, it’s not like you got to do much. And then she dares me. Well, so I goes, “All right, I will, then.”’

  She paused, evidently not used to ordering her thoughts into a narrative. Connolly encouraged her. ‘Go on. What happened next?’

  ‘Well, Kim, she didn’t really smoke properly, not then, and we had three each, one after the other, and she starts feeling sick, so she gives me the packet and goes home. An’ I goes home and hides the packet under me mattress. Well, Kim, when she gets home, her mum’s all, “Where’ve you been?” and she feels sick an’ that, and she starts crying. And her mum’s on at her, so she says this bloke stopped her in the alley and kissed her and touched her up. Well, her mum goes ballistic, and she goes down the p’lice.’

  ‘And what about you? How’d you get involved?’

  She frowned, remembering. ‘Well, it was the next day, or the one after that, me mum found the fags in me room, and she went mad. I just wanted to stop her, that was all. She kept going on and on. And Kim’d got out of it all right – everybody was on her side now and being nice to her – so, well, I said this bloke had given ’em me, the same bloke as Kim.’ She stopped, flushing with guilt.

  ‘You told your mum he’d forced you to have sex,’ Connolly suggested gently.

  Debbie looked up. ‘It wasn’t my fault! It was Mum. I only just sort of mentioned something, but she jumped on it, and then it was did he do this and did he do that, and she went on and on, and I just sort of – said yes. Just to shut her up. She wouldn’t let go of it. And then she got Dad in and it all sort of—’

  ‘Got out of control,’ Connolly suggested.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said eagerly, glad of the understanding. ‘I never meant it to happen. I never thought anyone’d get in trouble. But once Mum and Dad went down the p’lice I couldn’t get out of it. I couldn’t say I’d made it up – they’d’ve killed me. I mean – I couldn’t, could I?’ Her appeal was desperate and awful. ‘It just went on, week after week,’ she said, in a low, miserable voice. ‘P’lice and social workers and doctors and lawyers. And Mum and Dad, it was like they loved it! They had the neighbours round, and reporters, and everyone making a fuss of ’em, and their pictures in the papers, and Dad was down the pub talking about it, and people coming up to him on his stall in the market. He had the telly filming him one day. And then he started this anti-paedo campaign … well –’ she sighed – ‘it was like I’d started something, like some bloody great …’

  Her voice trailed off as a choice of simile failed her. Illustrative language wasn’t her forté.

  But Connolly could imagine perfectly well how a rather dim fourteen year old with forceful parents could be both run over and carried away by a juggernaut she had set in train with no intention but to save herself a telling-off. No, it would have taken a degree of character she plainly hadn’t got, to say at any point in the process that she had made it up. Connolly could imagine her being dragged along, silent and miserable, terrified that the majestic forces of the law would pin her down and extract the ghastly confession from her that it was all a lie. Fortunately for her, girls in her position were by then treated with kid gloves and helped in every way possible to assemble their testimony. And with Kim’s accusation against Roxwell, and his having already come to the attention of the police, weight of belief would have been on her side.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘the doctors examined you?’

  Her misery intensified a degree. ‘They said it was too late to get anything – like, you know, evidence. But they said I wasn’t a virgin.’

  There was a brief silence as Connolly contemplated the ramifications of that. Atherton made a gesture that she caught out of the corner of her eye, and she asked, ‘Where’d you get the bruises on your wrists?’

  ‘What? Oh, that was Dad. He grabbed me and shook me when Mum told him, called me a slag, but Mum stopped him and said it weren’t my fault, and then he went off on one about Roxwell instead.’

  ‘Have you seen your dad lately?’ Connolly asked casually. ‘Has he been round?’

  ‘He come Sat’d’y before last to take the boys to the Arsenal match. That’s the last time.’

  ‘He’s fond of your boys?’

  She shrugged. ‘S’pose. They all like the footy. Mum always hated it, wouldn’t have it on. But my kids are mad about it. So he, like, comes here to watch if there’s a big match.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him since that Saturday?’

  She shook her head. Then belatedly, alarm came to her. ‘You’re not going to tell ’em, Mum and Dad? About – you know. Me making it up. They’d kill me.’

  ‘We’re not going to tell them,’ Connolly said.

  She subsided, sinking further into her pothole as the spine it had taken her to make the confession dissolved again. Then, but with much less alarm, she asked, ‘Will I get into trouble?’

  Perjury and perverting the course of justice could get you twenty years. She’d been a juvenile at the time, but there were all the years since when she could have said something. Connolly glanced at Atherton, and he said, ‘We’ve got more important things on hand at the moment. Has your dad been talking about the old case lately – about Roxwell and Mr Bygod?’

  She sniffed. ‘He never stops talking about it. It’s like it’s the only thing that’s ever happened to him.’

  ‘So when you last saw him, he was still talking about getting revenge, was he?’ Atherton almost held his breath, but she didn’t seem to make the connection between his question and the death of Lionel Bygod – or maybe she had forgotten already that that was what they had come about.

  ‘Yeah. He talks big, my dad, but it’s all talk. He’d never do anything. Long as he’s got his beer and his footy. Mum says it’s a wonder the bleedin’ sofa ain’t grown on to his bum.’

  Outside in the fresh air, Connolly breathed deeply and said, ‘Talking about her dad growing a sofa on his arse! Love a God, she’d want to cop on to herself.’

  ‘That was her mother talking,’ Atherton said. ‘I don’t think our Debbie would have the wit to think critically about her father. Or about anything at all.’

  ‘You’re right, she never even wondered what we’d come round for,’ Connolly noted. ‘All the same …’

  ‘Yes, all the same,’ Atherton agreed. ‘Her dad was still obsessed, and now he’s missing, and her view that he’s all mouth and trousers is probably her mother talking again.’

  ‘And the mother’s sharp enough to cover their tracks by saying that, knowing she’d repeat it. So it could be them,’ Connolly concluded. ‘What now?’

  Atherton looked at his watch. ‘Lunch,’ he proposed.

  ‘Shouldn’t we get back?’

  ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. We don’t get many perks in this job, but eating out is definitely one of them.’

  Connolly gave a glance around. ‘Here?’ she protested.

  ‘Don’t be precious. We’re
only a stone’s throw from Islington, and Upper Street is crammed with nice cafés and restaurants.’

  ‘Are you buying?’ Connolly asked.

  He looked at her suspiciously. ‘This isn’t a date,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, but I’m smashed broke,’ she said. ‘And you with the grand sergeant’s wages!’

  ‘If this is Irish charm, I should warn you I’m immune.’

  ‘But you could never say no to a female.’

  ‘You’ve got me there. All right, I’m buying.’

  ‘Ah, you’re such a dote,’ she exclaimed, beaming. ‘And I’m so starved I could eat a nun’s arse through the convent gates.’

  ‘I think we might do better than that,’ Atherton said gravely.

  TEN

  Yvonne the Terrible

  There had been a steady trickle all morning of people ‘coming forward’, as the police and media jargon had it, as the news of Bygod’s death spread through the community. Unfortunately, no-one had anything useful to offer. They wanted to say that Bygod had been kind to them, had helped them in various ways, was a nice man – ‘a real gentleman’ was the most common description – and that they wished, rather wistfully, they could do something to help find his killers. It was notable that nobody knew anything about his private life, or his life at all before he came to Hammersmith. It seemed he had kept the secret of his past from everyone.

  Slider had been with Mr Porson, and returned to the CID room to find both his teams were back. ‘All right, report,’ he said, settling himself on the edge of a desk. ‘You first,’ he said, nodding to Mackay and Coffey.

  They told of their abortive visit to Crondace’s flat. ‘We asked all the neighbours we could find, guv. Nobody’s seen him later than last Saturday,’ said Mackay.

  ‘This old woman next door had the key so we went in,’ said Coffey. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Place is a tip. Filthy. Empty beer cans and takeaway boxes everywhere. Dirty clothes. Dirty bed sheets. He’s really let himself go.’

  ‘There was a free newspaper lying inside the front door,’ Mackay said, ‘and the old lady says it comes on a Tuesday morning, so it looks at though the latest he could’ve been there was Monday night. This other neighbour said he drinks down the Navigation – that’s his regular – so we went there.’

  Slider knew the area slightly, and with Mackay’s description he could imagine it: a dreary place of derelict Victorian warehouses, modern industrial units, shabby lock-ups, breaker’s yards, and vacant lots behind graffitied hoardings; the whole much intercut with railway lines, canals and abused rivers. Here and there on the main roads were isolated blocks of flats, sticking up like icebergs from the surrounding sea of bleakness: some former LCC buildings from the 1930s, a few raw-looking, flat-faced low-rises from the 70s; and where the buses stopped, a forlorn shop or two.

  The Navigation was a survivor from the age of canals, when the whole area was thriving with workshops, small factories and wharves. Now it stood at the end of a stained concrete approach road, with a wasteland of ragwort, buddleia and car tyres around it. The canal – the River Lea Navigation, after which it had been named – ran behind it, shut off by steel palisade security fencing, though Mackay and Coffey had noticed that two of the upright pales had been removed by vandals, and a beaten path through the weeds showed that the gap was well-used.

  The Navi had done its best with bright paint, pub grub and decent beer, and it had its faithful clientele. ‘You wouldn’t think there was anyone living round there, guv,’ Mackay said, ‘but I suppose they come out of the woodwork come opening time. Anyway, there was a lot of people in there for a weekday lunchtime. Old boys with caps and roll-ups, old Dorises drinking Mackeson. And a lot of warehousemen and blokes in overalls and working clothes as well.’

  So, given the time of day, they had had a pint each and sausage and chips and, thus licensed, got talking to the landlord, Reg Driffield, who knew Derek Crondace.

  ‘He knew him all right!’ said Mackay.

  Crondace was in there most nights drinking and shooting his mouth off, Driffield said, rolling his eyes as he polished a glass. He was a big drinker all right – big man, great big belly on him, red face like a side o’ meat. Used to be a market trader – didn’t work now, lived on disability benefit, supposed to have a bad back. Never seemed to bother him, though. Mind you, carrying all that weight in front, you’d be bound to get a twinge or two, eh? Driffield had winked.

  Yes, he drank a lot – don’t know how he could afford it on benefits – but on the whole he wasn’t any trouble. Argumentative, yes, and he could be foul mouthed, but Driffield just told him to put a sock in it if he got too noisy. Mostly he was just a bore, going on and on about that old court case.

  What? Oh yes, he talked about that all right. Didn’t hardly talk about anything else! They’d had all the details of it till they were sick of it. Made you feel almost sorry for the feller – Roxwell was his name. Not that Driffield held with nonces – string ’em up, was his view, prison was too good for ’em – but it sounded like Crondace’s precious daughter had been a bit of a madam and probably led the bloke on. And Crondace was all mouth about what he was going to do to this bloke if he ever found him again, but to Driffield’s mind all mouth was about what it was. The more talk the less action, that was what Driffield had observed in a long lifetime of keeping bar and listening to the old humbugs who grew mushrooms on the same stool night after night.

  Yes, Crondace had been in Saturday night. No, he seemed about the same – drinking his pints, boring everyone to death. He’d moaned a bit about his old woman – ex-wife, but like he said you’d never know it the way she still bossed him about. He went on about his grandkids never coming to see him. That was all par for the course. He’d had a bit of a shouting match with somebody about football – also par. There was an Arsenal vee Tottenham match coming up and somebody said they thought Spurs might have a chance. Crondace wouldn’t have it, shot his mouth off, Driffield had to shut him up before he got it punched. They were all Arsenal supporters at the Navi, but Driffield wouldn’t have any nonsense if someone wanted to put up a contrary view. Free country, wasn’t it? It was football, not World War Two.

  Say again? Oh yes, Bygod – that was the lawyer in the case. They knew all about him. Well, Crondace was always talking about him, threatening to go and sort him out. Said it was all his fault the nonce had got off. On Saturday – yes, Driffield thought he had been issuing the usual threats, but that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Mind you, Driffield didn’t stand around and listen, did he? In one ear and out the other, as far as Driffield was concerned, or you’d go barmy.

  Well, Crondace was there till closing time, and he went off pretty tanked up, bit doddery on his feet and slurring his words a bit, but that was nothing unusual. About a quarter past eleven, time Driffield had got him out of the gents and shoved him out the door.

  No, as a matter of fact, and now they came to mention it, he hadn’t been in since. He didn’t always come in on a Sunday, but most other nights he was there. Practically his second home. Lovely and quiet it had been without him, though the till was probably down, ha ha, because the old bastard could certainly neck a few. Was there something wrong? Not ill, was he? Oh, certainly, of course – if he came in again Driffield would let them know right away. Or if he heard anything. Hoped he wasn’t in trouble of any sort.

  They had left a card with Reg Driffield, finished their pints, had a chat with one or two of the customers, who’d had nothing really to add that they hadn’t already heard, and came away.

  ‘So it does look as though he might have done a runner, guv,’ Mackay concluded.

  ‘Which might mean he did something he had to do a runner for,’ Coffey added.

  And they looked at Slider hopefully.

  Porson drummed his fingers on the desk. He was a tall man and had to lean over to do it because he was standing up – he was hardly ever seen sitting – which made him look as though he was about to launch him
self into a forward roll.

  ‘So now you’ve got Kroll with a money motive, and Crondace with revenge.’

  ‘We haven’t exactly got Crondace,’ Slider reminded him.

  ‘And Kroll’s still not talking?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. I had another go at him, but he just sits and glowers, won’t open his lips.’

  Porson straightened and paced up and down in front of his window. ‘I like the revenge motive better, and Crondace is the only person we know has actually issued threats against the victim.’

  ‘And he is missing,’ said Slider. He felt like a waiter pushing the dish of the day because they had to get rid of it.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Porson thoughtfully. ‘Missing is as missing does. One swallow does not make a meal, you know. There’s any number of reasons he might have gone walkies.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Except that he’s a creature of habit and it hasn’t happened before. I don’t think his daughter knows where he is, but the wife – or ex-wife, rather – is a different matter. According to Atherton, she’s sly, and a lot sharper than her daughter – probably sharper than Crondace, too. She’s the motivator of the family. If anything’s going on, she’s in on it, I’d bet on that.’

  Porson sighed. It was not a sound an investigating officer liked to hear from his boss. ‘Well, we’d better find him,’ he said. ‘What borough’s that, Stratford Marsh? Newham, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tower Hamlets, sir. He’s just on the boundary.’

  ‘Better. I don’t know anyone in Newham. Hamlets is Trevor Oxley. All right, I’ll get on to him and see what I can work up. Have to be tactful – can’t go in like a bowl in a china shop. Meanwhile, we ought to keep an eye on Mrs Crondace, in case he turns up there, or she leads us to him.’

  ‘And the Krolls, sir?’

  ‘Find anything in the house yet?’

  ‘They’re still looking. Nothing so far.’

  ‘Well, we’ll keep ’em until the search is done anyway. Although …’ In thought, he cracked his knuckles mightily, with a sound like a road roller going over a bag of walnuts. ‘I’m wondering if Kroll’s not a bit too comfortable. Where he is, the Changs can’t get at him. Wonder if you mightn’t get more of a rise out of him if you threaten to turn him out on the street.’