Hard Going (33 page)

In the lit room, Buckland was sitting at the table, wearing the regulation paper suit, and looking as low and scared as a beaten dog. Interesting, Slider thought, that he wasn’t holding up better: it suggested he had not had any close dealings with the police before. He took a sip at the tea in front of him, and replaced the mug abruptly as the door opened and then closed behind June.

He started up, his expression veering between hope and bewilderment. ‘Juney? What are you doing here? What’s going on? Have they—?’

He got no further before she was across the room and fetched him a clout, across the side of his head.

‘You idiot!’ she hissed. ‘You bloody stupid useless moron! You left a fingerprint!’

‘You what?’ he protested. He had sat down again, perforce, and had his hand to the side of his face.

‘A fingerprint! All your bloody fingers and thumbs, you stupid bastard.’

‘I never!’ he said. ‘What are you talking about? I wiped the thing and the doorknobs, and I never touched anything else. I had my hands in my pockets.’

‘You wiped the doorknob, but you held on to the door while you did it!’ she cried in exasperation raised to such a power it seemed as if her head might explode. ‘They just told me. They’ve got a full set of prints off it. It’s only a matter of time before they match it with yours—’

‘They took ’em when they brought me in,’ he admitted, looking frightened.

‘Well, you’re stuffed, then,’ she said, folding her arms over her chest and giving him a tight nod.

He reddened. ‘What’re you talking about,
I’m
stuffed? It was
you
did it.’

‘Only because you’re such a lousy coward you’d never’ve had the balls.’

‘
I
was never going to! You were the one that lost your temper and bashed his head in!’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she cried. ‘The point is they’ve got something on you. There’s no point in both of us getting done for it.’

He was on his feet, his face suffusing with anger. ‘Oh no you don’t, my girl! You’re not landing this on me! D’you think I’m an idiot?’

‘You
are
an idiot! This is your fault, and if you were any sort of a man you’d take it and let me out of it.’

‘
You
killed him, not me!’

‘I only did it for you, didn’t I? It’s your business that’s down the toilet.’

‘Like hell you did. I’m not taking the blame for you—’

She flew at him, battering him ineffectually with her small plump fists and making a mewing noise, while he tried to restrain her.

‘I think we’ve got enough, don’t you?’ Slider said.

‘Better get in there before they murder each other,’ Porson growled as the eager couple grappled in apoplectic rage. ‘Love and marriage, eh? Go together like a horse and wassname.’

‘Carnage,’ Atherton offered.

Night ran into morning and morning became all day with the interviews, the processing, the conferences and the paperwork. Slider didn’t get home, but at times like those policemen were capable of running just about for ever on a tank empty of everything but adrenalin.

However, at a late lunch hour he emerged from Porson’s office and returned to his own to find Joanna there. She kissed him and said, ‘Congratulations. Now I’m going to come the wifey and make you go upstairs for lunch. Emily’s here too, she’s just gone to winkle Jim out.’ She cocked her head a little. ‘Don’t look like that. You can spare half an hour, can’t you? You’ve got the villains under lock and key.’

He allowed the tense frown to slither off his face. ‘Of course I can. Actually, I’m more thirsty than hungry. I keep getting brought cups of tea and not getting round to drinking them.’

‘You’ll be hungry when you’ve stopped being thirsty. Come on, I’m dying to hear all about it.’

‘What day is it?’ he asked as they headed for the door.

‘Wednesday. Why?’

‘Oh good. It’s hotpot Wednesday.’ He answered her questioning look. ‘Wet food – easier to suck off the spoon.’

‘So at what point,’ Emily asked, toying with green jelly that she had picked up at the counter without thinking, ‘did she decide to kill him?’

‘Hard to say,’ said Atherton. ‘She may have had it in the back of her mind all along, that it would come to that. She claims it was a spur of the moment thing, that she lost her temper because he was being so unreasonable.’

‘So she didn’t mind talking about it?’

‘Couldn’t shut her up once she’d started. You often find that. Once they’ve broken that first barrier and admitted it, they just want to tell you everything. Boasting about how clever they’ve been – despite the fact that they’re sitting there in custody, which is not the cleverest position to be in.’

Monday morning’s post at the Buckland house had brought several nasty bills, plus a
billet aigre
from the mortgage company. Heated discussion over the next thirty hours had resulted in the expedition to visit Lionel, plead with him for money and, if he wouldn’t see reason, for one of them to steal the will while the other distracted him. Slider thought that even the apparently good-tempered Lionel might have become annoyed at the second such appeal to his purse in one day, and found it easy to refuse the wife who had always made it clear she despised him.

‘But it was a cockeyed thing to do anyway,’ Emily complained.

‘You want criminals to be logical?’ Atherton countered.

‘Seriously. She knew the son had reappeared, you say? So even if she took the will, he’d only got to come forward and claim, and he’d get the dosh.’

‘She didn’t think he would come forward,’ Slider said, replete with hotpot and feeling a bit sleepy now. ‘He’d been in hiding for so long, I think she just expected him to disappear again – and he might have, you know. He might never have heard of Lionel’s death, and if he did hear about it in a roundabout way, he’s quite diffident enough to think Lionel had changed his mind again. He didn’t seem like the sort to relish making a fuss.’

‘For that sort of money?’ Emily objected.

Slider shrugged. ‘Anyway, he might have found it difficult to prove he was Lionel’s legitimate son. Possession of a birth certificate – even if he had one – might not cut it, if his mother denied him.’

‘She still really hates him, then?’ Joanna asked.

‘She has the rigidness of mind of the not-very-bright,’ said Slider. ‘To her he became a non-person, and she holds to that. He simply doesn’t exist.’

‘But then,’ Emily put in, ‘
why
did Lionel tell her? If he knew how she felt about the son, why did he go and tell her, not only that Danny had reappeared, but that he was going to leave him all his money? I mean, she was never going to take that well.’

‘He was curiously naive for a solicitor,’ Slider agreed. ‘Diana Chambers said he was utterly truthful, without regard for the consequences. I suppose he thought June had the right to know about Danny. And if he knew she had been expecting to inherit his money all those years, he’d think she had the right to know he was changing his will, too.’

‘It strikes me as a bit mean, disinheriting her completely,’ Joanna said. ‘Not that I’m condoning her – I mean, she’s obviously bonkers as well as unpleasant – but still.’

‘He thought she was all right with Buckland. And he wasn’t cutting her out completely. He told her he was leaving her twenty thousand.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right then,’ Joanna said, with a wry look.

‘He even offered to give her an advance to tide her over – that was the cheque he was writing.’ Slider pushed his plate away and pulled his tea towards him. He’d left it too long again, and it was cold. ‘Destroying the will wasn’t a completely pointless idea, you know, even if Danny had come forward and been able to prove his identity. Because the intestacy rules would still have given her more than under the new will. She’d have got all his personal possessions, plus two hundred and fifty thousand, plus a lifetime interest in half the rest of the estate. A not insubstantial amount. But of course she wanted it all. Funny how often murder comes down to greed,’ he concluded, pushing the cup away again.

‘You’re not to get depressed about it,’ Joanna said, laying a hand over his. ‘You’re just tired. You’ve done a good job.’

But Lionel Bygod is still dead, Slider thought, though he didn’t say it aloud for fear someone would mention that he hadn’t had much longer to live anyway. Those months had been his, and no-one had the right to take them away. And he would have spent them getting to know his son again.

‘So what will the result be?’ Emily asked, abandoning the jelly without regret. ‘Will they go down?’

‘Oh yes, no doubt about it,’ Atherton said. ‘I suppose the defence might try to parlay Buckland down to manslaughter, because he gave her up so readily, and he didn’t actually strike the blow. But he’ll still go away for a long time, and she’ll get life.’

‘So, that’s good then,’ Emily said, looking at Slider.

Atherton looked too. ‘He gets like this,’ he told her. ‘Adrenalin withdrawal. Plus the Universal Guilt syndrome – but he always has that.’

‘I
can
hear you,’ Slider pointed out.

It wasn’t just adrenalin withdrawal. He had spoken several times both to June and Buckland since they were charged. Buckland was miserable and frightened, June furious and defiant, but neither had the slightest remorse, or pity for their victim. Buckland simply had no room to think about Lionel in the clamour of his own woes; June still hated and despised her former husband, and utterly repudiated her son. Her attitudes had not softened a whit, and he wondered tiredly if people could ever fundamentally change. It made so much of what he did seem pointless. You could revenge the dead, but what good did that do them?

He tried to console himself with the thought that father and son had at least been reconciled for that brief time. He hoped very much that Danny would open his club, and that he would call it Bygod’s. A gay tranny cabaret club would be a curious, ironic but somehow satisfying memorial to the mild solicitor who championed the underdog.

Atherton was still studying his guv’nor’s bent brow. ‘Mr Porson’s throwing buckets. I don’t know what more you want,’ he complained.

Slider pulled himself together. ‘A hot cup of tea would be nice for a start.’

• Cover
  
• Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright
  
• One: Quietus Interruptus
  
• Two: Don’t Cry for me, Ardent Cleaner
  
• Three: Huddled Masses
  
• Four: Private Citizen
  
• Five: Driving Miss Crazy
  
• Six: Repaint and Thin No More
  
• Seven: The Dog it was that Dyed
  
• Eight: Marital Arts
  
• Nine: Parent Rap
  
• Ten: Yvonne the Terrible
  
• Eleven: Algorithm and Blues
  
• Twelve: Rich Man’s World
  
• Thirteen: Love Among the Rubens
  
• Fourteen: Kissing Presumed Fed
  
• Fifteen: Sic Monday
  
• Sixteen: Trannyshock
  
• Seventeen: Reigning Men
  
• Eighteen: A Mall and the Night Visitors