Hard Going (18 page)

‘Worth a try, sir,' Slider said.

‘It could work,' Atherton said. ‘It's Mrs K who's anxious to get home – worrying about her old mum.'

‘Why isn't Kroll worrying about her?'

Atherton shrugged. ‘Hard to know, when a person won't speak, guv. Maybe he doesn't like her. Or he's in such a funk about himself he can't think about anyone else.'

Connolly came in. ‘Boss, I've talked to all the friends of Bygod I can get hold of.' She exhibited a sheaf of paper. ‘I can go over all this if you want, but there's nothing new here. It's all what a great guy he was and how much we'll miss him and we don't know a thing about him. Some friends!'

‘On the specific points I asked you to check?' Slider enquired.

‘They all thought he was well off. Livin' on the pig's back, so he was. But they didn't know about anything in the house that anyone might've wanted to rob. And several of them said the document safe wasn't kept locked. They remembered because they'd mentioned to himself at some time that he'd left the key in, and he'd said it was just papers in there, nothing valuable, and it was just to keep them safe against fire an' flood.'

‘It still doesn't mean there
wasn't
anything valuable in there,' Atherton said, ‘or in the house. Only that these friends of his didn't know about it. And if I had a safe of any kind, I'd certainly put the idea about that there was nothing in there worth nicking.'

‘So what was the point of me asking?' Connolly demanded indignantly.

‘It's a very different matter,' he went on, ignoring her, ‘for a housekeeper who's in there every day, going into every room, left there alone when the master's out, overhearing his phone calls, maybe looking through his mail. She'd have a level of information not available to all these so-called friends.'

‘All of which may be true,' said Slider, ‘but it's not evidence.'

Gascoyne put his head in. ‘Crondace's fingerprints are on record, sir,' he reported. ‘He had his dabs taken when they pulled him in for threatening behaviour.'

‘And?' Slider asked.

‘No match with anything in Bygod's house.'

Slider got to his feet. ‘Negative again! I've got more negatives than a wedding photographer.' He went to his door and looked into the CID room. ‘I want evidence. Doesn't anyone have any evidence for me? Come on, I'm buying here. No offering too small.'

At the far end McLaren was at his desk with Fathom behind him, leaning over his shoulder. They both looked up, Fathom straightened, and McLaren removed the end of a Ginster's jumbo sausage roll from his mouth (was there something sinister in McLaren's phallic choice of junk food these days, Slider wondered) and said, ‘We got something, guv.'

‘At last,' said Slider. ‘Come and tell me. No, leave the hostage.'

‘Sausage,' McLaren corrected automatically, but he put the greasy love-toy down on his desk, though with a lingering regret. ‘We been looking for Kroll's motor,' he reported, as the others gathered round, ‘and we got it all right. I been on the ANPR and Jerry's been on the TFL, and we've got his movements on Tuesday about sussed out.'

‘Well, give, then,' Atherton urged irritably. ‘Never mind the dramatic pauses. We're all hanging on your lips. Well, flakes of pastry are hanging on your lips, actually, but we're right up there among them.'

‘Sweet Baby Jesus and the orphans, would y'ever give him a chance?' said Connolly to Atherton; and to McLaren, ‘Work away, Maurice. He's narky as arse when he hasn't had his nap.'

McLaren barely blinked, having long ago developed, perforce, a carapace against banter. ‘Right,' he said. ‘We've got him going west on the Uxbridge Road at the junction with Horn Lane at a quarter to eight, and the same camera coming east just after half past nine. That fits in with his son Mark's statement that they went for breakfast in West Ealing, after which Kroll dumps him and goes off. Then we lose him for a bit—'

‘Gloriosky!' Atherton said, rolling his eyes.

McLaren was unmoved. ‘But there's a lot o' betting shops along the Uxbridge Road, and Mrs K says he was still trying to get on the ponies on Tuesday, so we reckon he could well have been parked up somewhere while he went in one or more of 'em.'

‘OK, where
do
you pick him up again?' Slider asked.

Fathom answered. ‘I got him on a TFL control camera, guv, just after ten, waiting to turn right down Askew Road, then five minutes later on Goldhawk Road, turning right down Hammersmith Grove.'

‘So he's headed in the right direction,' Connolly said, a little current of excitement in her voice.

Fathom nodded, pleased. ‘Yeah. And we reckon he must've cut through the Trussley Road tunnel—'

‘Fathom, you absolute moron,' Atherton interrupted, ‘never mind the Baedeker tour, get him somewhere we care about!'

Fathom looked wounded. ‘I'm coming to it. We got him at the junction of Lena Gardens and Shepherd's Bush Road. There's a TFL camera practically outside Bygod's house.'

‘Yes,' said Slider. ‘I saw it.'

‘He pulls out into the middle of the road to turn down Sterndale, and then he's facing the camera and you can see him in the driving seat.' He looked round them triumphantly. ‘He must've gone down Sterndale to park up, because we've got nothing on him for a bit.'

‘If he did park in Sterndale Road he might have got a parking ticket,' Swilley offered. ‘It's all residents' parking down there, and they're pretty hot on it.'

‘Look into that,' Slider said. He saw McLaren had more to say and turned back to him. ‘Go on.'

‘This is the best bit, guv,' McLaren said. ‘There's this gift shop place – Ludlow Hearts and Crafts, it's called.'

‘Yes, I remember,' Slider said.

‘It's between Sterndale Road and Bygod's flat, and it's got this kind of poncey wooden dressing-table thing in the window with a mirror on it. And Kroll stops in front of it and he looks in the mirror and kind of brushes his hair back, and walks on. The shop's got a security camera pointed at the door, and it's caught it all.'

‘I thought you were checking security cameras,' Swilley said. ‘How come you didn't get that before?'

‘Because I told him to start at two p.m.,' Slider said. ‘We had no idea, if you remember, when the murder took place.'

‘That's right, guv,' said McLaren, ‘and it wasn't until Jerry got the van in the area at twenty past ten that I went back and looked.'

‘Was that the time?'

‘Ten twenty-two on the CCTV film,' said McLaren. ‘And where's he going, if he's not going to Bygod's, where his wife's going to let him in to kill the old boy and rob whatever there is to rob?'

‘Yes,' said Slider. ‘You've done marvels. Well done, both of you.'

‘We got him bang to rights, didn't we, guv?' Fathom said excitedly.

‘Yes,' said Slider, wanting to be generous. He knew how tedious it was to go through hours of blurry CCTV footage, how hard to keep your attention honed through it all. And they had certainly caught both Krolls out in the lie that Mr Kroll had never been near the flat. But the time was wrong – wasn't it?

‘Get back to work and find when the van moves again, and where it goes. I must go and ring Doc Cameron,' he said.

‘Half past ten?' Freddie said thoughtfully. ‘That would make it twenty-four hours from when I saw him. I said twelve to eighteen, didn't I?'

‘You did,' Slider confirmed.

‘Hmm. Well, you know it's not an exact science. So many factors to take into account. I'd have thought twenty-four was a bit on the generous side, but anything's possible.'

‘Possible,' Slider said. ‘Can I quote you on that?'

‘You sound like a man with a hot tip.'

‘Our top suspect's been nailed almost to the door at that time.'

‘Oh, I see. Well, it's perfectly possible—'

‘
Perfectly
possible, now. Any advance on that?'

‘You have to woo me, not force me,' Cameron warned daintily. ‘Okay, allowing there may have been some chitty-chatty up there first and the fatal blow may not have been struck until, say eleven thirty or even twelve, and there's not that much difference between twelve and two, and two is more or less two thirty …'

‘And it's not an exact science anyway,' Slider concluded for him. ‘Thanks, Freddy. I'll take your perfectly possible and see what I can do with it.'

‘Can't threaten to let him go now,' Porson said, with a hint of regret.

Slider knew how he felt. Someone who wouldn't talk got right up the constabulary nose.

‘Still,' Porson went on, brightening, ‘we've got good reason to keep him. All that plus the fingermark inside the house – though it'd be nice if someone actually saw him going in. All those people walking up and down the road all day long, and Kroll's a big bloke, not exactly your shrinking violet in the crannied whatnot – someone ought to've seen him. Going in or coming out. Coming out'd be nice, looking all sweaty and guilty – he'd have caught the eye, all right. And the woman, too – she'd have come out with him. Two for the price of one.'

‘I'm on it, sir,' Slider said. ‘But you know that sort of canvass takes time.'

It was a matter of putting the question out to the general public via leaflets, boards and the media, and hoping the right witness both spotted it
and
was willing to come forward. Often those who did know something hesitated to ‘get involved'. Or were at work and felt it could wait until the weekend. It took days at best, sometimes weeks, before the evidence came in.

Porson nodded. ‘But you've got plenty to be going on with. Enough maybe to get a confession, then the rest is case-building. There's no smoke without straw. Those Krolls have got some explaining to do. Go get 'em, laddie. Put the pressure on.'

Jillie Lawrence, one of the uniformed officers on loan, had been given the task of checking Mrs Crondace's alibi. The chiropodist was easy enough, although she faffed a bit at first about disclosing her schedule, because of what she called ‘patient confidentiality'.

‘I don't want to know what you did,' Lawrence said. ‘I only want to know if you were there.'

‘It's the Human Rights Act,' the chiropodist blethered. ‘I'm not allowed to tell anyone anything about the patients. I could get in trouble,' she added, with frightened fawn's eyes. She was a thin, pretty Indian girl and looked about twelve, Lawrence thought. Is it me, or is everyone getting younger? And the young have no sense of priorities. They live in a little bubble where the worst thing they fear is an elf-an-safety knuckle rap from their supervisor. The wider world only impinged on them through television, which was itself an unreality. News was entertainment. None of it really happened. Only Mrs Gupta, who did your assessment and could write bad things about you, was real.

‘You'll get in worse trouble with the law if you don't show it me,' Lawrence said brutally. ‘Obstruction of the law could have you inside. Fancy going to prison?'

But Lawrence could see she didn't really believe in prison either. She showed the schedule in the end only because Lawrence's personality was stronger than hers. Lawrence rolled her mental eyes. Modern policing, when it came to young people, was a battle for credibility. At least most older people had proper respect for the law – or anyway, a healthy fear of consequences.

Still, there was no doubt that Mrs Crondace had had her regular treatment on the Tuesday morning, which was only what Lawrence expected because DI Slider had said nobody gave an alibi with that sort of smugness unless it was solid, and she had faith in DI Slider's judgement.

The bingo part of the alibi took longer. She had to ask about who the regular players were, which was practically everybody, then whittle it down to those who always came on a Tuesday, then sift out those who knew who Mrs Crondace was. And nobody really wanted to talk while the calling was going on, in case they missed a line or – God forfend – a jackpot.

At the end of the process she managed to persuade two women to come out of the hall during a brief break and allow her to buy them a cup of tea and a cake in the café.

Mrs Crondace? Yvonne, her name was – they pronounced it
Ee
-von. Oh yes, they said, they knew her. They said it without marked enthusiasm, and after a bit of coaxing Lawrence got them to admit they didn't like her much. She was not very nice.

‘Hard,' said Mrs Green.

‘Hard as nails,' Mrs Orton elaborated. ‘Mind you, she's lucky – always wins something. I could do with a bit of her luck,' she went on wistfully. ‘You start to wonder when someone always gets the lucky card.'

‘I wouldn't put it past her to've fixed it somehow. Hard, she is,' Mrs Green said.

‘And coarse. Ever so coarse. She talks too loud and swears too much. She's not our sort.'

‘But was she here last Tuesday?' Lawrence pressed them.

‘Oh yes. I came about half past two, and she was already here. And she was still here at six when I left.'

‘I came half past five,' said Mrs Green, ‘and I saw her. She left about half past nine – Yvonne did. I remember because I stayed on for the super jackpot, they have that at ten, and I was glad she was going, 'cos she wins too often. I thought I'd have more chance if she was gone.'

‘Did you get it, dear?' Mrs Orton asked eagerly.

‘Course I didn't. I'd've told you,' said Mrs Green. ‘Two numbers short. It was that woman from the estate got it – her with the glasses and the hat. What's her name? Big woman.'

‘Maureen, is it? With the hat?'

‘No, Marjorie, that's it. You're thinking of Maureen Fisher. She's—'