Hard Going (15 page)

Mrs Kroll was evidently an adherent of the ‘best form of defence is attack' school. As soon as Slider appeared she fired her opening salvo. ‘What the hell is this all about? What're you lot going after us for? We've not done anything. Frightening my poor mother to death – if anything happens to her, I'm holding you responsible. You've got no right dragging us away and locking us up like this. What is this, communist Russia? Where's my husband? Hasn't he got enough on his plate without you lot harassing him? You got no right to arrest me. You can't keep me here. I'm going to sue the lot of you!'

And so on. Slider sat down opposite her, with Swilley taking her place standing off to one side, and let her run herself down. When she drew breath he said, ‘You assaulted a police officer, so we
did
have the right to arrest you, and we
can
keep you here. And you know perfectly well why your husband is here. This is a serious matter, Mrs Kroll, so let's drop the histrionics and talk seriously about it.'

Her nostrils flared. ‘You're not talking about Mr Bygod, I hope? You're not going to try to pin that on us? We had nothing to do with it. Why the hell should I wish the old geezer any harm? I'm out of a job because he's dead, and it was a good job, let me tell you. Why would I want to put him out of the way?'

‘Because you are in deep trouble and desperate for money. And Mr Bygod had money. When it comes to your lives or his …' He shrugged. ‘Your husband comes first.'

If her nostrils flared any more they'd be in danger of sucking the whole room inside out. Her eyes narrowed with fury, and she yelled, ‘That stupid, useless, brainless moron! I could kill him for what he's done to us. How many times have I told him,
begged
him to stop? But no, he's got to go back for more! “It'll be all right, it'll be all right!” Well it's not all right! But will he listen? No, he likes banging his head on a brick wall. Wish to God he'd knocked his brains out, the useless bastard! I'd be well rid of him!'

From this Slider gathered it was not Mr Bygod she was yelling about. ‘Your husband has a gambling problem,' he said mildly, to keep her going.

‘Oh, you
think
so?' she demanded with heavy irony. ‘He's spent every penny we had, can't buy so much as a bag of cement because he owes money everywhere, the Changs are after him – and I don't mean to give him a friendly hug. He can't go to work, can't show his face anywhere, but he still spent all day yesterday putting money on horses, and you say he's got a gambling problem.
You think so?
'

The last sentence rose to a scream which strained her throat so much that she broke into a paroxysm of coughing. Slider pushed a glass of water and a box of tissues towards her, and eventually she managed to stop, blew her nose, sipped some water, and then sat back, exhausted, looking at him with a flat expression.

‘The Changs are not people you want on your backs,' he said. ‘I know about them.' In fact, the knowledge was new – he'd just had a crash course over the phone from DI Fromonde at Ealing – but there was no need to tell her that. ‘They depend on their reputation for violence to make their fortune, so they're not the sorts to forgive a debt.'

‘You think I don't know that?' she said grimly. ‘Why don't you lot do something about them, instead of persecuting their victims like us? You bastards always go after the easy targets. You're all the same.'

Slider said, ‘Believe me, I have some sympathy with you. You were in a terrible bind. The only way out was to get the money, and get it right away. But who did you know who had that sort of cash? Only Lionel Bygod.'

She turned her face away. ‘Oh, give it a rest,' she said wearily. ‘I didn't kill him.'

‘Even if you didn't strike the blow, even if it was your husband who did the actual killing, you're still just as guilty. You were the one with the key, you planned it, you were there. I'm quite sure you're the brains of the family.'

‘You got
that
right,' she muttered, still staring at the wall, her profile to Slider. She looked pale, drawn, and somehow doomed. He thought of Bygod's beaten head to harden himself against her.

‘Your only hope is to cooperate,' he concluded. ‘Get your mitigating circumstances taken into account. But the clock's ticking on that. The time to speak up is now.'

She turned back to him. ‘I told you, he went out about half eleven and that's the last I saw of him. He didn't come home before I left at two. And my husband's never even been to the house. You got nothing on us.'

‘Your husband's never been to the house?' Slider asked, feeling the quickening of relief. ‘What not even once – to pick you up from work, or something like that?'

‘He's never been to the house,' she said with ironic emphasis. ‘What d'you want, me to draw you a picture?' Slider didn't answer, only regarded her gravely, and suddenly she grew nervous. ‘What you looking at me like that for?'

‘I wanted to see what you looked like when you told a lie,' he said.

She reddened. ‘Don't you call me a liar! Who the hell d'you think you are?'

Slider stood up. ‘I'm going to give you a little time to think about it. Your one hope is to tell the truth.'

‘You've got nothing on me!' she shouting, standing up, fists against the table top. ‘You got nothing!'

‘Think about it,' he said quietly, and went out, with Swilley behind him.

Out in the corridor, Swilley said, ‘She's good. Sounds very convincing.'

‘Good job we know she's lying. All the same, I'd like a bit more to take with me next time I go in. More leverage.'

‘Boss,' Swilley said, ‘it occurs to me that if they did get what they wanted at the flat, they'd have paid off the Changs by now. But don't you think she still seems genuinely scared of them?'

‘Many suggestions come to mind,' Slider said. ‘That they couldn't find whatever it was they wanted. That they got something but it wasn't enough, that the Changs have upped the interest. That she's only pretending to be scared. Or that she's scared, but not of the Changs any more.'

‘Scared of facing a murder charge, you mean?' Swilley contemplated the idea. ‘I wonder which is worse – a spell in prison or the Changs? Hard one to call.'

At the end of the corridor they met Mackay, with an interesting bruise coming up on his cheekbone where a wild flail of Mrs Kroll's had found its mark. He had already been well teased by the uniforms on his woman-handling skills.

‘How is Mr Kroll?' Slider asked.

‘Still staying shtum,' Mackay answered. ‘Can't get a peep out of him – won't even have a cup of tea, and when did you ever meet a Polish builder who wasn't ready for a cuppa?'

‘We'll let him soak a bit longer,' Slider said, ‘while you people upstairs get me some evidence on his movements on Tuesday.'

‘Yes, guv,' Mackay said. They turned for the stairs together. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?' he offered.

‘Thanks. While we wait for the Krolls to soften up to the right degree, we'd better have a look at a Crondace.'

‘Which one?' Swilley asked.

‘All of them,' Slider decided.

O
nce a client of the state, always a client of the state, so the saying went. The Crondace family, who had lived at public expense in a council dwelling in Islington at the time of the Roxwell case, now occupied three separate ones. Debbie, now aged thirty, had been displaced sideways into Hoxton, to a council maisonette with her three children by different fathers. Her mother had gone even further east, to a flat in Haggerston in a new block, built where the council had knocked down an eighteenth-century terrace in a fit of egalitarian frivolity.

Mr Crondace had gone the furthest, to a flat in an old LCC block on the edge of Stratford Marsh, under the thundering shadow of the East Cross Route Blackwall Tunnel approach, with a delightful view over the industrial canal to the abandoned gasworks. Nudge him just a bit harder, Slider thought, and they could have set him down next to the sewage treatment works at Creekmouth – which would have been poetic justice since he had arrogated to himself the right to clear up what he saw as nasty smells.

Mackay and Coffey did the long haul out to Stratford; Atherton and Connolly went first to Haggerston, where they found Mrs Crondace at home. She was a big woman, both tall and broad, with meaty arms and a face like clarified dripping. She was also chronically, terminally indignant – which at least meant she was glad to see them, being brim-full of a spleen that really,
really
needed an audience.

The one-bedroom flat was neat and tidy, and though cheaply furnished even had some touches of finery to it: a fancy mirror – the shape reminded Atherton vaguely of the Isle of Wight – with seashells stuck round the edge, and a framed reproduction of the green Chinese lady. A budgie in a cage on a stand by the window chirped regularly but at long intervals, its head tilted in a listening pose between whiles, as if it was carrying on a conversation, the other half of which was audible only to itself.

But there was a sourish, stale smell about the flat which, unlike most odours, grew more unpleasant the longer you were exposed to it. Atherton noted that though Mrs Crondace's hair was tidily, even severely, scraped back into a bun, it was dirty, and concluded the smell was coming from her.

‘Wot you raking all that up again for?' she demanded stridently, when he conveyed the reason for their visit. ‘Roxwell? Has he come back, the dirty nonce? I tell you, if he has, I'm going after him, you c'n say what you like. He ruined my Debbie, and he got away with it, the dirty little bastard.'

‘He was proved innocent in a court of law,' Atherton said, to tempt her out.

She was duly provoked. ‘Don't give me that! He was guilty all right. He was let off after his paedo pals done their stuff, all them fag lawyers – and that judge was one of 'em an' all. Don't tell
me
! I can spot 'em a mile away. Justice? Don't talk to me about justice! There's no justice in this country. It's all “who you know”, the old boy network, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. That Bygod – he was behind it all. You could tell from the namby-pamby way he talked he was one of them. Well, we scotched him good and proper, Del and me. He couldn't show his face again by the time we'd finished.'

‘Sure, your husband did a grand job o' that,' Connolly said admiringly. Atherton saw what she was up to and left the talking to her.

Mrs Crondace glared at them indignantly. ‘That useless git? It was me had to put the backbone in him! He'd have give up if I hadn't shoved a rocket up his arse. Lazy sod was all “oh, we can't do anything about it, the likes of us”!' She imitated a ludicrous whine. ‘He'd have gone off down the boozer with his market pals and that'd've bin that. Sooner be swilling pints than standing up for his own daughter. Well, not while I got breath in my body. That Wickham whatever his name was, the barrister, he copped out, dying like that, but we fixed that Bygod once and for all. But that Roxwell got away in the end. Went abroad somewhere. If he comes back …' She pounded one fist into the other palm with slow menace.

‘Now, I'm asking meself,' Connolly said, ‘did you not let Mr Bygod off a bit light, the way it was? I mean, he still had his health and strength. He could set up somewhere else and start carrying on the same way all over again.'

She scowled. ‘He wouldn't dare. He knew we was watching him, Del and me. 'F he stuck his head up agen, we'd a blown it off.'

‘So you knew where he went, then, after he left Islington?'

‘We got our spies,' Mrs Crondace said. ‘There's a lot o' good people out there as don't like that sort. A 'ole network's keeping an eye out for the likes of him.'

‘So where did he go, then? Mr Bygod?'

She became suspicious. ‘Wot you asking me for? You lost 'im? Cuh! Find 'im your bloody self! Don't ask me to do your job for you.'

Connolly smiled encouragingly. ‘Well, you kind o' did that already, didn't you?'

‘Wot you talking about? Did what?'

‘Did the law's job. He's had his head bashed in, hasn't he?'

‘What, Bygod?' A slow smile spread across the wide, lard-pale face. ‘Blimey, that's the best news I've heard in years! I knew somebody'd do for him in the end.'

‘We were kind of thinking it was you and Derek we should thank. You've saved us all a mort o' trouble.'

‘Not me,' she said with complete unconcern. ‘I'm saving myself for that Roxwell, if he ever shows his dirty face again.'

‘So, it was your husband, then?'

‘What, Del? He's not my husband any more, that lazy sod. I divorced him. Neither use nor ornament, he wasn't. He give up his stall 'cos he said he had a bad back. I give him bad back! I said you can go out to work or you can get out. I'm not wearing myself out waiting on you hand and foot. Bad back my eye! Wasn't so bad he couldn't go down the pub with his mates, was it? So I chucked him out and the council give him his own place, out Stratford.'

‘You keep in touch with him, then?'

‘See him now and agen,' she admitted, eyeing them cautiously. ‘So you're saying Bygod's been done in? Well, whoever done it done a public service, that's all I got to say.'

‘Did Del not discuss it with you?' Connolly asked innocently.

Atherton's phone rang and he stepped out into the hall to take the call.

Mrs Crondace stared vaguely after him, then answered Connolly. ‘He did not. If it
was
him. I'd a' thought he was too fond of sitting on his arse, but good for him if he did! He never stopped talking about it, that I do know. Thought the world of our Debbie, he did. Never forgave them creepy lawyers.'