Hard Going (16 page)

Atherton came back in and said, ‘Sorry about that. Mrs Crondace, when did you last see Derek?'

The lapse into more policeman-like speech seemed to alert her, though not alarm her. ‘Haven't seen him in weeks,' she said promptly. ‘Talked to him on the phone a coupla times.'

‘When was the last time?'

‘I dunno. Sat'd'y last, maybe. Or the Frid'y. Not since.'

‘Any idea where he might go if he's not at home?'

‘Looked in all the boozers, have you?' she enquired ironically.

‘I mean, if he was away for longer than that. A week, maybe.'

‘No idea,' she said indifferently. ‘Wot, not at 'ome, is he? Well, he had a brother in Hackney – but he died last year, back-end. I s'pose he might still have a few mates in Chapel Market, but whether they'd give him house room's another question.' She snorted. ‘Maybe he's gone to Spain to look for that Noel Roxwell. Finish the job.'

‘So you're thinking he did do away with Lionel Bygod, then?' Connolly tried, casually.

Mrs Crondace gave her a ripely sardonic look. ‘Don't ask
me
. That's your job, innit? You're the bloody p'lice. You figger it out.'

‘If we find out that you do know something about it but haven't told us—' Atherton began, but she interrupted him, unmoved.

‘Oh sod off,' she said, without rancour. ‘Don't gimme that old toffee. You can't threaten me. What Del does is his own business – I ain't responsible. And if you'd put that Roxwell away the first time round, like you should've, other people wouldn't have to clear up the mess after you, would they?'

The budgie chirped, stretched its wings, shuffled two steps along its perch, and resumed its listening stance.

‘For the record,' Atherton said, ‘where were you on Tuesday?'

‘Tuesd'y?' She pondered. ‘Oh yeah. Morning the sheropadist come, I had me feet done. Afternoon I went down the bingo, the Mecca down Hackney Road, stopped there till about nine o'clock and come home. Is that when he got done, then, that old Bygod, Tuesd'y?'

‘Did anyone see you at the bingo?'

Her eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘No, I was all on me own,' she said with ripe sarcasm. ‘It's a bingo hall. What, you think I was the only one down there?'

‘Anyone in particular who can vouch for you?'

‘That's for you to find out,' she said. ‘I'm not doing your job for you.'

The budgie chirped. It had a listless, imprisoned sound to it that Atherton disliked. Also the smell in the flat seemed to be coating the back of his throat. He thanked Mrs Crondace for her help, and took his and Connolly's leave.

Outside he said, ‘That was Coffey on the phone. It looks as though Crondace has done a runner. A neighbour says he hasn't been around since last weekend.'

‘So it could 'a' been him, then?'

‘What did you think of Madame Defarge?' he asked, with a nod towards the flat.

‘I think she was full of shit,' Connolly said. ‘I wouldn't believe a word the owl bitch said. If she said rain was wet I'd go out and check.'

‘But what about the murder?'

‘If Crondace did it, she was in on it. Probably wouldn't be there in person, though. She'd watch her own back. And she seemed powerful pleased with her alibi, didn't she?'

‘Yes,' Atherton said, ‘though that may just be because it'll be a bugger to follow up. I think she relishes giving the police trouble.'

‘So now we've got to find Crondace?' Connolly asked. ‘Mary ‘n' Joseph, that's going to be another needle in a haystack.'

‘At least,' Atherton said. ‘Come on, let's go and see the daughter. Maybe she'll know where her dad is, if he really thought the world of her.'

‘Why wouldn't he? Three kids by different fathers. Sure, she must be a charmer to attract so much love.'

Debbie Crondace was still living under the name of Debbie Crondace, so presumably hadn't married any of the happy authors of her pregnancies. Atherton expected to find her a younger version of her mother, invigorated by the same spite and self-righteousness, but in fact she seemed merely lethargic. Her children were all at school, so either she had had no recent sexual liaisons, or she had at last worked out how to use contraception.

They found her at home in a three-bedroom purpose-built maisonette of minuscule proportions. It still sported the original developer's plain white walls and cheap beige carpeting throughout, both of which were much marked and stained. A glimpse through the open doors showed bedrooms hysterically cluttered with things heaped on beds and overflowing on to floors: clothes, plastic toys, comics, sports goods, food debris. The tiny kitchen was full of unwashed dishes and everything that would no longer fit in the bedrooms. All her children were boys, and the pervading odour in the house was of male sweat, trainers and cigarettes, but it was somehow less creepy and more bearable than the insidious reek in her mother's flat, which Atherton had mentally put down as the smell of malice.

The sitting room, which was about nine by twelve, contained only a much-abused three-piece suite and a vast flat-screen television. What else indeed did it need? To this room it was that Debbie led the way after she had opened the door and stared at them open-mouthed for long enough. Presumably it was where she had been when they rang, judging by the automatic way she resumed her place on the sofa facing the screen; and judging by the ample dent into which she slotted her behind, it was where she spent most of her days.

There was an American confessions show on, with a strap-line along the bottom of the screen that said
i slept with my daughter's boyfriend
. There were three assorted women flanking the host who all had curiously plastic-looking faces, and a whooping audience.

‘Could we turn the television off, please?' Atherton asked.

After an appreciable pause to process the request, Debbie switched it off with the remote, and then automatically reached for the packet of cigarettes in her cardigan pocket. She was wearing sweat pants, a T-shirt and a baggy brown cable-knit cardigan that reached almost to her knees. She was quite short – about five-four – but so wide it made her look shorter. The early-sprouting bosoms noted in the reports of the fourteen-year-old Debbie had spread into vast udders, and her buttocks and belly had come out in sympathy. You could have drawn her with a pair of compasses. In her doughy face there was still the hint that she might once have been puggily pretty, but her eyes were dull and her thick brown hair was unkempt. For whatever reason, she had obviously given up.

She gave them no help by asking anything, sitting like a pudding and waiting for them to open the conversation. Her lack of curiosity suggested that visits from the police were not unknown, yet Atherton would have thought she'd have wanted to know if it was something to do with one of her three boys – or at least, which one. But she sat and smoked and stared at the screen as if it was still on. Could apathy go any further?

He glanced promptingly at Connolly, who was evidently thinking the same thing, for she said, ‘Do you not want to know why we're here, Debbie?'

Debbie shrugged.

‘You get that many visits from the police, is that what it is?'

‘Me mum phoned,' she said. ‘Said you'd prob'ly be coming round.'

‘And did she say what it's about?'

‘That s'licitor, Mr Bygod. She said he'd been done in.'

‘Right, so. And what do you know about that?'

Now there was a sideways flit of the eyes – reaction at last! ‘I don't know nuffing about it. Why you asking me?'

‘Sure, you were a central player in the whole business. He let you down, getting that Noel Roxwell off. Made your ma and da mad as hell. You must have hated him like fire,' Connolly suggested.

‘That was Mum and Dad,' she said. ‘They was the ones made all the fuss.'

‘So you weren't upset by what he did to you?' Connolly asked.

‘Look,' she said – the opening word to many a gaping lie, many an imprudent confession. The fat of her face seemed to tense slightly.

Connolly flicked a look at Atherton, who nodded to her, so she went on in her most comradely, inviting tone. ‘Is there something you want to tell me, Debbie? I think there is, isn't there?'

‘Look,' she said again. She darted a glancing, fearful look at Atherton and then back to Connolly. Atherton effaced himself into wallpaper; Connolly managed somehow to emit motherliness.

‘Go on. Tell me what happened.'

‘Look, I didn't know it'd go that far,' Debbie said weakly. ‘I didn't mean it to happen like it did.'

Connolly said soothingly, ‘Ah, sure I know you didn't. T'wasn't really your fault, was it?'

‘No, it wun't,' she cried plaintively. ‘It was Mum. She made me. And then Dad got all upset and – well, I, like, couldn't stop them. You don't know what she's like – Mum.'

‘I've an idea,' Connolly sympathized. ‘Haven't I just met her?'

‘And Dad – well, when he was mad, and he'd had a drink or two, you wouldn't cross him. He'd even hit Mum. But I never knew anyone would get in trouble, honest I didn't.'

Atherton adjusted his mental template. This was not going to be a confession about the murder – or not immediately. But it might throw light on it. He silently willed both women on.

Debbie's hopeless, hunted eyes were on Connolly, and she smiled kindly and said, ‘Tell me all about it, why don't you?'

‘I dunno where to start,' Debbie said uncertainly.

‘Start from the beginning,' Connolly said. ‘From that day when it happened.'

‘I only done it for a cigarette,' Debbie said fretfully. ‘Kim, she dared me. Mum wouldn't let me smoke, and one time she found a fag I'd bummed off some boy at school in my pocket she belted me, then she told me dad and he belted me. They both smoked like bleedin' chimneys,' she added bitterly. ‘All right for them!'

‘Tell me about Kim.' Connolly moved her along. ‘Kim North, wasn't it?'

‘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.