Hard Going
Authors: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Table of Contents
Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House
Two: Don’t Cry for me, Ardent Cleaner
Seven: The Dog it was that Dyed
Thirteen: Love Among the Rubens
Fourteen: Kissing Presumed Fed
Eighteen: A Mall and the Night Visitors
Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House
THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER
A CORNISH AFFAIR
COUNTRY PLOT
DANGEROUS LOVE
DIVIDED LOVE
EVEN CHANCE
HARTE’S DESIRE
THE HORSEMASTERS
JULIA
KATE’S PROGRESS
LAST RUN
THE LONGEST DANCE
NOBODY’S FOOL
ON WINGS OF LOVE
PLAY FOR LOVE
A RAINBOW SUMMER
REAL LIFE (
Short Stories
)
The Bill Slider Mysteries
GAME OVER
FELL PURPOSE
BODY LINE
KILL MY DARLING
BLOOD NEVER DIES
HARD GOING
HARD GOING
A Bill Slider Mystery
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
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First published in Great Britain 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
First published in the USA 2014 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
110 East 59
th
Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2013 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
The right of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 2013.
Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia author.
Hard going. – (A Bill Slider mystery; 16)
1. Slider, Bill (Fictitious character)–Fiction.
2. Police–England–London–Fiction. 3. Murder–
Investigation–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.
I. Title II. Series
823.9’2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8331-5 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-474-4 (ePub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
ONE
Quietus Interruptus
S
lider’s wheels were in dock. Atherton came to fetch him, elegantly suited as always, but wearing a – in Slider’s opinion – lamentable pair of suede shoes.
‘There’s nothing wrong with suede shoes in the right context,’ Atherton protested, following the direction of his eyes. They had had this conversation before. Of course, when you’d worked together for a long time, you’d had most conversations before.
‘I must have been frightened in the womb by Kenneth Clarke,’ Slider said. Atherton followed him back into the kitchen. Five pairs of eyes turned on them: Slider’s father, wife Joanna, children from his first marriage, Kate and Matthew, and baby George. No doubt if the foetus in Joanna’s womb had developed eyes yet, they too would be rolling in their direction in mute accusation.
Slider had been going to take Matthew and Kate to the Westfield shopping centre – which, oddly, they regarded as a treat.
‘At least it came at the
end
of his week off,’ Atherton offered.
‘He hasn’t finished breakfast,’ Joanna said with wifely reproach. There was half a slice of toast and marmalade on his plate displaying a profile of his dentition that would have made a forensic scientist burst into song.
‘I drove as slowly as I could,’ Atherton said meekly.
‘What is it?’ Matthew pleaded. ‘Is it a big case?’
Big case
. Slider tutted inwardly. They all watched too much telly.
‘It’s a murder,’ Atherton admitted.
‘Cool!’ said Matthew.
‘Gross!’ said Kate.
‘Can I come, Dad?’ Matthew pleaded.
Slider’s father answered for him. ‘Course you can’t. And it’s not “cool”. Some poor soul is dead.’
Matthew blushed – he was terribly sensitive about being told off, even in the mildest terms – but Kate merely rolled her eyes. It was her response to everything. She must have eye-muscles like a boxer’s biceps, Slider thought.
‘I’m sorry, kids,’ he said. ‘It can’t be helped. Your mother will be fetching you tonight.’ He looked at his father. ‘Are you all right looking after them?’
‘Looking after us?’ Kate said derisively. ‘What are we, little kids?’
‘Are you working today?’ Atherton asked Joanna.
‘Rehearsal for tonight,’ she said. She was a violinist with the Royal London Philharmonia. ‘Festival Hall. All-Prokofiev programme. First violin concerto, symphony number one and the Scythian Suite.’
Atherton was a classical music buff from way back – unlike Slider, who’d had to learn as he went along: when he first met Joanna he could barely tell the 1812 from Beethoven’s Fifth.
‘I don’t know the Scythian Suite,’ Atherton said. ‘What’s it like?’
Joanna thought a moment. ‘Like The Rite of Spring’s lesser known younger brother.’
‘Good?’
‘Twenty minutes of agony. Too many dots!’ she moaned.
‘I meant, to listen to?’
‘Some of it’s not bad,’ Joanna said, ‘but mostly it’s tinsel.’
‘Tinsel?’
‘Gretel’s lesser known gay brother,’ Slider suggested.
‘At least it finishes with a fortissimo,’ said Joanna, ‘so the audience will know when to clap. Quiet endings confuse them.’
‘We’re so shallow,’ Atherton scoffed.
Slider intervened. ‘We must get going.’ He bent to kiss her and she kissed him back with enthusiasm.
‘Eeuw!’ Kate complained routinely. ‘Get a room!’
Slider ignored her. ‘Don’t get too tired,’ he said.
‘Now he tells me,’ Joanna retorted.
‘And don’t skip lunch.’
Atherton lashed round a dithering Ford Focus, missing it by a coat of paint, and asked, ‘Is she all right? Joanna, I mean.’
‘She gets tired,’ Slider said, ‘but she won’t admit it.’
‘That’s a big programme,’ Atherton commented. ‘All Prokofiev. No nice go of Haydn to rest your brain.’
He skimmed between a big red bus and a lurking traffic island. The incoming Labour council had installed hundreds of them to use up a budget surplus left by the outgoing lot. Locals called the new administration the Road Island Reds.
‘You look tired too,’ said Slider. ‘You look like hell, in fact. Everything all right?’ He knew Atherton’s girlfriend Emily, a freelance journalist, was away again, and wondered if he were missing her.
‘Me? I’m fine,’ Atherton said, which was the equivalent of a ‘Keep Off’ notice.
‘Do we know anything about the shout?’ Slider asked instead.
‘Only that it’s in Shepherd’s Bush Road,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Slider. ‘We can go home for lunch.’
Shepherd’s Bush Road was the main north–south road from Shepherd’s Bush to Hammersmith. With two of its four lanes dedicated to buses, it was barely adequate for the traffic in the first place; filling the space in front of the house with a variety of police wagons and do-not-cross tape had terminally fouled up the flow. Slider slapped on the spinner and Atherton used the bus lane, but even so they had to wiggle through side roads at the end to get near enough.
The house they were looking for was halfway down, in a block just before Brook Green: a tall, handsome Victorian façade, yellow London brick and white stone facings, shops on the ground floor, and flats above. As well as hiding the roof behind a curious ornate parapet, the original builder had ambitiously named the block Empire Terrace, with raised lettering on a white stone panel topped by a sort of decorative pineapple. That’d cause some fun if it ever fell, Slider thought.
The shops in Shepherd’s Bush Road became posher the further you got from the Bush end, and in this block, as well as the inevitable estate agent, there was a tapas bar, a high-end Italian restaurant, a fishmonger’s also selling expensive kitchen equipment (inevitably called The Kitchen Plaice), a dress shop with a double-barrelled name, and a knick-knackery sort of gift emporium called Ludlow Hearts and Crafts.
‘Well, you can’t get more upscale than Ludlow, now can you?’ Atherton commented. ‘Down our end there’d’ve been an Asian supermarket, a kebabery, a newsagent’s, a betting shop and a caff specializing in chips.’
‘We’re not in Kansas any more,’ said Slider.
A uniformed PC, big, blond Eric Renker, was guarding a smartly painted red door between the Italian and the dress shop, and a number of other woodentops were hanging around, some ready to man the barriers if the crowd of happily concerned citizens pursuing their right to gawp got bigger, and two resignedly directing the traffic round the blockage. Among the vehicles Slider recognized the forensic wagon up alongside the nick’s own Sprinter, and the sleek Jaguar belonging to Freddie Cameron, the forensic surgeon.
Two of Slider’s own DCs were there. Phil Gascoyne, newly transferred from Uniform, tall and fit from years of chasing drunks round Shepherd’s Bush Green, was chatting to Rita Connolly, a peaky-faced Dubliner who looked almost too slight to be a policeman, though she was tough enough in reality. She had recently had her pale hair cut really close, giving her head the frail look of a Christmas tree bauble. Since Gascoyne regularly shaved his own fair locks to a stubble, an accidental head-clash between the two of them would probably cause a ringing in more ears than theirs.
‘Doc Cameron’s just gone up,’ Connolly volunteered as Slider and Atherton arrived. ‘And forensic’s still in there.’
‘What do we know about the deceased?’ Slider asked.
‘We’ve got a name, sir – Lionel Bygod,’ said Gascoyne, and spelled it.
‘A “y” instead of an “i”?’ said Atherton. ‘That’s unusual.’
‘Unusual is good,’ said Slider. Made it easier to be sure who you were talking about when the subject wasn’t called Smith, Brown or Robinson. ‘Who found him?’
‘His cleaner, housekeeper, whatever you’d call her,’ said Connolly. ‘Fine class of a woman with a chip on her shoulder. Half eight this morning. Back of his head’s bashed in. His lordship Bob Bailey doesn’t want us in there yet,’ she added with scorn. She didn’t like the crime scene manager for personal reasons, but they were often resented because they were civilians and not subject to police command. ‘So here we are, hangin’ around like the smell o’ gas, waiting on his pleasure. Will I go and get the teas?’ she concluded resignedly.
Her tone said
because I’m the woman
, but Slider liked to surprise. ‘No, Gascoyne can go. But later. I’m going in.’
A steep flight of stairs led to the first floor where Bob Bailey intercepted them and told them that what he gratuitously dubbed ‘The Murder Room’ was the big reception room at the front. ‘But you can’t go in. My boys and girls haven’t finished yet.’