Hard Going (13 page)

‘How did you like moving to London?’

‘Oh, I was very happy. What girl wouldn’t want to swap a place like Stamford for the big city? But of course as he got more successful we saw less and less of each other. Splitting up in the end wasn’t such a big step,’ she remarked, ‘because we were already pretty much living separate lives.’

‘He had a particular interest in the theatre, I believe?’

She looked slightly cross. ‘Oh, he was mad about it. Went to see all the plays. It got to be a bone of contention, if truth be told, because, well, I like the theatre as much as anyone – I’ve seen
Phantom
twice – but all that Shakespeare and stuff, people droning on and on and not the faintest idea what they’re talking about …! I tried to be interested at first, for his sake, and a nice musical’s one thing, but as to being bored stiff night after night – it’s not to be borne. And the seats are so uncomfortable! But Lionel got the bug at Oxford when he was doing his law degree. He was in the Drama Society, so I suppose he fancied himself a bit of an expert.’

‘He acted in OUDS?’

‘He actually wanted to be an actor at one time, but apparently his father didn’t approve, made him to go into law. But whether he’d have been any good … He didn’t do the acting at Oxford, you see, he did the backstage stuff – stage manager and lighting and so on. They always want people for that, because most people want to be on the stage, so anyone who’s willing to do the boring stuff is very popular. And of course a lot of those Oxford people went on to be professional actors, so he knew them personally, and when he went to a play he could go backstage and schmooze with them.’

‘Didn’t you find that exciting?’ Slider asked. ‘Meeting the celebrities?’

She sniffed. ‘It’s not like they were film stars. Well, he did do a production with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor once at the Oxford Playhouse, but I never got to meet
them
. Gyles Brandreth, yes – oh, and he knew that Diana Quick from back then. But that was about the best of it. Not exactly earth-shaking. And anyway, there’s nothing glamorous about the backstage of a London theatre. Dirty and dark and cramped. And there’s mice everywhere! And of course it was him they wanted to talk to, not me. I’d end up squashed in a corner longing for a gin and tonic while they talked rubbish about the play that I didn’t understand one word in three of. So, no,’ she ended with elaborate irony, ‘I didn’t find it exciting. I was happy for him to go without me.’

Slider was getting a pretty clear picture of the marriage and the difficulties thereof – highbrow, modest, gentlemanly Lionel and his lowbrow, impatient, scornful bride who wanted him to be more macho in the bedroom and in his profession – but he wasn’t sure it was getting him any closer to who killed him. And however modest and retiring he was, he must have been tough enough in his professional life, because he was in criminal law, and it was the solicitor who met the clients face to face, not the barrister.

‘How did he meet Mr Wickham Williams?’ he asked on the back of that thought.

She made a moue. ‘Oh, that was one of his theatre contacts again. Hugo was another theatre nut, like Lionel. He’d been at Oxford as well, and they could talk about it for hours. Bored everybody stiff at dinner parties.’

‘So they were friends as well as colleagues?’

‘Oh yes. I never really got on with Magda, though – Hugo’s wife. She was a barrister too, and I found her very cold, and a dreadful snob. At Hugo’s funeral the seating arrangements were just an insult – she had Lionel in the second row, just behind the family, while I was stuck way back. She said afterwards it was because Lionel was doing a reading so he had to be at the front but there wasn’t room for partners as well, and she apologized, but I could see the way she looked at me. She thought I wasn’t good enough for them because I didn’t go to university.’

There were certainly some old resentments there, Slider thought. This was a woman who knew how to hold a grudge. He imagined the Bygods’ married life being one long series of pointed silences, tight lips and plates being slammed down on tables.

‘One thing I meant to ask you was about next of kin,’ Slider reminded himself. ‘Were there any children?’

‘No,’ she said, sharply, in the sort of tone that said this was a topic best not explored.

Slider drew breath to ask the next question when the dog jumped up and started to bark, prancing towards the door. Outside there was the sound of a vehicle arriving, its door slamming, and a moment later the front door was opened and a man’s voice bellowed, ‘June? Juney!’

‘In here,’ she trilled.

‘Didn’t that parcel arrive?’ the cross voice went on, coming closer. ‘Didn’t you ring about it like I told you?’

The dog frisked back in, and hot on his tail came a very tall, lean man with wiry grey hair, pale blue eyes, and the raw complexion of a man who works outside but subscribes to the ‘real men don’t moisturize’ school of grooming. He was wearing smartly fitting jeans, a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, displaying strong, brown forearms, and desert boots. He seemed to be in his late fifties and his face gave the impression of being good-looking, until you examined it more closely and discovered the nose was too small and the mouth rather pink and petulant. It didn’t help, of course, that he was scowling furiously.

‘If I don’t get it today the whole job’s going down the pan,’ he began angrily as soon as he reached the door. ‘I
told
you to ring me if it—’ He stopped as he saw Slider, and his face registered uncertainty mingled with an incipient ingratiation as he wondered if he were a client.

Slider, who had risen politely, looked towards June for an introduction. Her lips were tightly closed and her eyes sparkled with something that boded her mate no good – the sort of something that said
must you show me up in front of visitors
? ‘This is Phil, Phil Buckland,’ she said. ‘Detective Inspector—?’ She’d forgotten the name.

‘Slider.’ They shook hands. Buckland’s was large, knuckly and hard as a plank. He evidently worked with them. ‘Mr Buckland,’ he said, managing to get a faint question mark on to it.

‘I only use Lionel’s name for my business,’ she added quickly. ‘I started it up when we first split up, before I met Phil, and the customers knew it, so it made sense not to change.’

‘What can we do for you, Inspector?’ Buckland asked, swallowing his irritation with an effort. He managed a golf-social, nineteenth hole sort of smile. ‘Don’t tell me June’s not been paying her parking fines again?’ He turned the smile on her with a hint of menace in it. It looked as though the parking fines were an old bone of contention.

‘It’s nothing to do with parking,’ she snapped.

‘Speeding, then. I told her not to paint that pink poodle on the van,’ he offered Slider merrily. ‘Makes it too conspicuous.’

‘Phil,’ she said warningly. ‘It’s nothing like that. It’s serious. Lionel’s been killed.’

‘Killed? What do you mean, killed? In a road accident, you mean?’

‘No, I’m afraid he’s been murdered,’ Slider said.

Buckland looked from one to the other, seeming puzzled. ‘Well, June doesn’t know anything about that,’ he said at last. ‘She’s not seen him in years. And I’ve never even met the man. What are you asking her about it for?’

‘For one thing,’ Slider said, ‘we don’t know who the next of kin is. You were saying there were no children?’ he said to June.

‘No,’ she said. ‘And his parents are both long gone. He hadn’t any brothers or sisters, either. I suppose I’m the nearest thing he had to family,’ she concluded with a nervous laugh.

‘You were no family,’ Buckland said roughly.

Slider thought how sad it was to end one’s life so thoroughly repudiated. He tried one last tack. ‘I believe he was quite well off,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know who he would have left everything to?’

‘Well, no,’ June said. ‘Of course, before we split up, he’d left everything to me, but that was a long time ago – what, sixteen years, now? I’m sure he must have made new arrangements since then. Knowing Lionel,’ she added, ‘he probably left everything to charity. If there was anything left. I don’t think he’d worked in years, and he was always giving it away.’ This last had an accusatory tone.

‘Is there anything else we can help you with, Inspector?’ Buckland asked briskly, with more than a hint of hoping there wouldn’t be. Outside the sun was declining and it was nearing the hour when a working man required his dinner on the table. With possibly a drink beforehand, as it was Friday and the start of the weekend.

‘I can’t think of anything at the moment,’ Slider said, leaving space for a return visit if necessary. ‘Thank you for your help.’

The three of them saw him out, Buffy much the most sorry to see him go. Buckland yanked the dog back in and shut the front door so fast that Slider almost lost a buttock.

On the tarmac outside there was another, much larger, high-side van, white, with bold black letters on the sides and back that read:

BARNET MULTIBELT LTD

MATERIALS HANDLING SOLUTIONS

INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE

Well, Slider thought, getting back into his car, you couldn’t get more industrial and manly than conveyor belts, could you? June Bromwich-as-was, having taken a wrong turning with the epicurean Bygod, had finally got her caveman in the bedroom.

EIGHT

Marital Arts

S
lider rang his old friend Pauline Smithers at Scotland Yard. She had done hard years in the former SO5 Child Protection unit, pursuing a vicious child pornography ring, the sort of job that burns you out, and from which you have to go into convalescence. Hence she was now in charge of the missing persons section of the Homicide unit. Following the rule that Met Police initials have to be changed every two years, it was called SD1 – SDs being the newer, sexier versions of SOs.

She was also now a Detective Chief Superintendent, though she and Slider had started at the same time and had been at Hendon together. The difference in their career trajectories had upset his first wife, Irene, no end.

‘Bill! Good to hear from you again.’

‘How are the missing persons?’ he asked.

‘It’s “missing persons and abductions with danger of the taking of life”,’ she corrected him sternly.

‘Having fun?’

She caved. ‘After child pornography, it’s the equivalent of a stay in a cottage hospital,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve got a good team – all old-fashioned coppers, no lightweights or prima donnas. I think there’s a sort of ox-bow effect going on, where the weighty, experienced and human candidates get washed into my corner and deposited, while the frolickers float merrily by on the main stream.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Slider said. Like him, she had never been happy with the politics in the Job. Unlike him, she had concealed her dislike better and learned to work round it. But of course, being a woman and headed for the stars had meant she was never able to marry. She had a very expensive riverside flat on the Isle of Dogs and a Siamese cat.

‘What can I do for you?’ she said. ‘You only phone me up when you want something.’

‘That’s cruel. How often do you phone me?’

‘True. Well, what is it?’

‘I wondered if you knew anything about Lionel Bygod from your former incarnation in SO5.’

‘That name sounds familiar. Context?’

‘He was the defence solicitor in the Noel Roxwell case.’

‘Oh, I remember that vaguely. It wasn’t one of ours, but I remember reading about it in the papers. Refresh me.’

Slider gave her an outline of the case. ‘What I want to know is whether there was any grain of truth in the accusations against Bygod, and whether he’s been up to anything similar since then.’

‘Well, it’s not my bailiwick now, of course, but I can ask around for you. Why do you think he
has
been involved in it?’

‘He’s turned up dead – murdered – and I’m wondering if there’s a revenge or vigilante element in it. He seems to have been a secretive sort of bloke – nobody knows much about him.’

‘And you think he may have been secretive for a reason,’ she finished for him. ‘All right, since it’s you asking, I’ll see what I can find out. I wouldn’t do it for just anyone, you know.’

‘I know. I love you, Pauly.’

‘Ha! If only! Famous words, Bill Slider – never backed up by any action, I note.’

‘Why don’t you come over to my place for dinner some time?’ he invited. And realizing that ‘some time’, in the context of an invitation, is as good as ‘never’, he added cordially, ‘What about this evening?’

‘This is your place with your wife, is it? And child, and dear old dad?’

‘They’ll all be there,’ he said, with a grin to himself. They had always played the game between them that she was hopelessly in love with him. There had, in fact, been a certain
tendresse
at one stage in their lives, but he had been too diffident to pursue it, and events had drawn them apart.

‘I’ll pass, then, thanks,’ she said, and added: ‘As a matter of fact, I’m seeing someone these days.’

‘Really? I’m glad to hear it. Who is he? Not another SO headcase, I hope?’ She had once gone out with a DCS in the drugs unit of SO7 who had brought her close to suicide.

‘We’re not all headbangers,’ she objected. ‘He’s in SD6.’ This was the Economic and Specialist Crime Command. ‘Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit. A nice steady nine-to-five job, no midnight stake-outs or high-speed car chases. He’s normal, Bill.’

‘Is it serious?’

She didn’t answer that. ‘I like him,’ she said instead. ‘His name’s Bernard and he’s nice and funny and I like him.’

He smiled to himself. ‘Well, if you won’t come to dinner, we must get together for a drink after work one evening.’

‘You always say that, and we never do it.’

‘This time we will. I’ll ring you.’

‘You always say that, too.’

‘Well, I don’t see that it gets us any further,’ Atherton said when Slider recounted his visit to the Bucklands.

‘More suspicions on your side of the argument,’ Slider pointed out.

‘That Bygod was a little light on his feet? In his ex-wife’s opinion? But where does
that
get us?’