Hard Going (21 page)

M
rs Kroll was more impressed than alarmed at the revelation that they had followed her movements all the way home. ‘I didn't know you could do that,' she said. ‘You see it in those American films about people being chased by the FBI, but I didn't know it happened here.'

‘More often than you'd think,' Slider told her. It was a lot harder work than the movies made it look, but he didn't tell her that.

‘Well,' she said triumphantly, ‘it just proves to you what I said all along. I worked my usual hours and went home. That's what I told you, and now you know it's true. So now you've got to let me go.'

‘Not so fast,' Slider said. ‘There's the little matter of your husband's visit to the flat, which just happens to take place on the day Mr Bygod was brutally murdered.'

She sat up a bit straighter. ‘Now wait a minute—' she began angrily.

‘No, you wait a minute,' Slider said, stopping her. ‘You've been lying to me about that and I don't care to be lied to, especially by someone who makes a parade of her apparent truthfulness. I
know
he visited the flat, you know it, and what's more he doesn't deny it. So let's stop playing silly games. Because at the moment you both look like being charged with that poor man's murder – and you might like to ask what'll happen to your family on the outside when you two are inside doing life.'

She was on her feet. ‘Don't you dare threaten me! I had nothing to do with it!'

‘
Sit down
!'

She sat, reluctantly, but her nostrils were white with suppressed anger. ‘I'm a good Catholic,' she said. ‘I would never kill another human being – except maybe the Changs if I had the chance. That wouldn't be murder, that'd be pest control.'

‘Then what was your husband doing at the flat?'

There was a long silence. Slider felt the calculations filtering through her mind, drip by drip. He said quietly, ‘You might want to think about your mother. It's not good at her age to be facing all this worry.'

‘She's tough. She can take it.'

‘And how long Stefan and his charming companion will make her comfortable and welcome in their house.'

He could see that hit home, but she said, ‘Stefan will do his family duty.'

‘And Mirela. Is she devoted to your family too?'

She looked up at last, and gave him a long, bitter stare. ‘That girl would sell her own mother for the money to buy drugs, let alone mine. The hours I've spent … Might as well talk to the brick wall. Look—' Oh, that blessed word, Slider thought. ‘All right, Jack did come to the house. We arranged it between us. We didn't know where else to turn. Jack said, “Your boss is loaded, why don't we ask him?” So I agreed. He came up that morning, we put it to Mr Bygod together, asked him for the money to get the Changs off our backs. Jack promised to pay it back as soon as he could get back on his feet. But he wouldn't do it.'

‘Mr Bygod refused?'

‘He said he couldn't give us money to pay off a gang running an illegal racket. He said we had to go to the police. Jack said how could he tell the police he'd been betting illegally? Mr Bygod said he would defend him free of charge, and if Jack helped put the Changs away he'd get off with a suspended sentence. But he said we had to act quickly. Jack said he'd think about it, and he went away.' Another bitter look. ‘For all his book-learning and university degrees, that was the best Mr Bygod could say! If Jack split on the Changs to the police, he'd be dead long before it ever got to court.'

‘So Jack went away disappointed and afraid for his life. Mr Bygod had refused to give you any of the masses of money he didn't need and you did. You were both angry and desperate. And later that day Mr Bygod ends up dead.'

‘I didn't kill him!' she shouted.

‘But Jack did?'

He saw something flicker in her eyes. She
had
left the house at two – but had Jack Kroll come back? Had they communicated somehow? Had they both gone back and done the deed together? She worked at the King's Arms from five to eleven, which made it tight timing, but still possible, and her mother was her only alibi for those two hours. Given that family came first with the Krolls, you couldn't be sure Mama wouldn't lie about it.

‘You'd much better tell me now,' he said. ‘You know we
will
find out in the end, and then it'll be the worse for you.'

‘I've got nothing more to say to you,' she said, and folded her lips down.

Out in the corridor he met David Stevens coming away from Kroll's cell.

‘Hello, Bill!' Stevens cried with enormous good humour. His little dark eyes gleamed like those of a merry predator. His suit would have brought Giorgio Armani himself to his knees, his aftershave was so subtle you might believe you'd imagined it, his dark hair was styled to swooning point – though Slider noted with guilty pleasure that it was getting a little thin on top. Man proposes and God disposes.

‘So, what do you think of Jack Kroll?' he asked. ‘Has he flung himself on your manly bosom and confessed everything?'

Stevens brushed a lapel. ‘I think you can see I am unruffled. And I
love
you for bringing me in on this one.'

‘Uh-oh,' Slider said.

Stevens beamed. ‘Anything he says will have been given under the most severe duress, so even if he confesses the whole thing, I'll have no trouble denying everything on his behalf.'

‘We haven't laid a finger on him,' Slider protested.

‘Of course not, old chum. You don't have to. With the Chang brothers after his blood and family members on the outside, he's under duress both ways. Whether you keep him in custody or threaten to let him out, you're putting pressure on him, and I can't lose. I think I can even smell the sweet fragrance of a compensation case ambling towards us through the forest of Judges' Rules.'

Slider smiled and shook his head. ‘You can't scare me. You're talking to DI Everything-By-The-Book Slider here.'

Stevens roared with laughter. ‘
You
?' he cried, wiping tears of merriment from his eyes. ‘Seriously, do I sense that the case against our friend is a little on the emaciated side, given that you haven't charged him?'

Slider was suddenly suspicious. ‘He didn't tell you anything, did he?' he discovered with glee. ‘He
said
he didn't want a brief. All you know, you've got from the custody boys. He just sat there in silence.'

‘Not a blessed dicky,' Stevens admitted with the frankness that was – occasionally – his saving grace. ‘But he will.'

‘You old fraud!'

‘Careful. That's fighting talk where I come from.'

‘Well, we just called you in to cover our bottoms, anyway. It's Mrs K who's the weak link. She really wants to get out, and once we've got the last little bit of evidence on her husband's movements, she'll tell us the whole story.'

‘Story it is, as well.' Stevens was suddenly serious. ‘I knew Bygod slightly, many years ago. He was a damn fine solicitor. It hurts when one of your own gets taken out. Man to man, I hope you nail him.'

‘You don't have to defend him,' Slider mentioned.

Stevens grinned. ‘Hey, it's me!'

There was a message on his desk to ring back Pauline Smithers, which he did right away.

‘I've asked about your Lionel Bygod, and nothing doing.'

‘You mean there's nothing on him?'

‘Nada. There was no evidence whatever at the time that he'd been involved in anything – my sources say it was believed the whole thing was a malicious lie, which is certainly what it looked like. And since then, nothing, not in Islington or Hammersmith.'

‘So he's clean?' Slider said thoughtfully.

‘As a whistle.'

It was a classic case of give a dog a bad name and hang him. He thought of Bygod's own wife – or ex-wife, he should say – saying she suspected him.

There's no smoke without fire. He must have done something. It can't all be coincidence. All those people wouldn't have said what they said if there wasn't some truth to it, would they?
Bah, humbug!

‘Thanks, Pauly.'

‘Just a word of caution, though, Bill. Not everyone comes to official attention, though we think we cast a pretty fine net. Underground means what it says.
On paper
he's as clean as a whistle, but you can't say for hundred per cent certain that he never got up to anything. You can't prove a negative.'

‘I wish you hadn't added that bit,' Slider said.

‘Just keeping an open mind. Every felon's innocent till he gets caught.'

‘So are innocent people.'

‘You're getting emotionally involved with this one, aren't you? What am I saying – you always get emotionally involved!'

‘They only have us to fight for them, the dead,' Slider said.

She didn't follow that up. ‘When are we going out for this drink?'

‘Soon,' he said. ‘Once I've got this case figured out.'

‘And before you get snowed under by the paperwork,' she postulated.

‘Deal.'

‘Next week sometime, then,' she said with a grin in her voice, ‘knowing the way you work.'

‘I wish,' said Slider.

Norma came into his office with a mug of tea and a chocolate biscuit wrapped in silver paper. ‘Satisfied customer brought us in a box,' she said. ‘Mixed chocolate fancy collection. I thought I'd grab one for you before the ravening hordes got the lot.'

‘McLaren's found them, then, has he?' Slider queried.

‘You know, boss,' Swilley said gravely, ‘I'm thinking it's unfair the way we pick on Maurice all the time. Maybe we ought to cut him some slack, lay off the food jokes for a bit.'

‘Are you serious?'

She grinned. ‘No, of course not. Got to have some pleasures in life.' She became businesslike. ‘I've gone through the contents of the safe and I've got the financial information on Bygod. Turns out he was pretty well off after all.'

‘How well off?'

‘He wasn't hurting, I can tell you that. Most of it was in shares and various bonds and investment vehicles. He had one or two ready-access savings accounts, and transferred money from those to his bank account from time to time, and there were incoming dividends and other interest, along with regular sums from an annuity he seems to have taken out twelve years ago – I suppose when all the fuss died down and he was sorting his life out. His utilities and other regular bills were paid by direct debit, there was no mortgage on the flat, and he took out five hundred in cash every week, plus other irregular cash sums. It looks as though day-to-day he paid for things in cash.'

‘That fits with what we know about him not liking modern technology and gadgets.'

‘Right, boss. Anyway, I've done a rough calculation on the bonds and shares and so on, and it looks as though his assets were worth about two million.'

‘That's not bad,' Slider said.

‘I wouldn't knock it back,' said Swilley. ‘And you can add close to another million for the flat and furniture. Plus there was a life insurance policy for two hundred and fifty thousand.'

‘He had cancer,' Slider said.

‘He took it out a long time ago,' Swilley said, ‘so it would still be valid. So he was sick, was he?'

‘Doc Cameron says he probably only had a few months to live.'

‘Poor old guy,' Swilley said.

‘Who was the beneficiary of the insurance policy?'

‘It wasn't written to anyone, so it becomes part of the estate. And we still don't know who the next of kin is. I don't suppose he had a solicitor, being one himself, otherwise we could put out a query through the Law Society.'

‘Might be worth doing that anyway. I know he cut himself off from his old life, but there might be some people in the trade he kept up with, or at least who might have an idea who his nearest and dearest were.'

‘I don't think he had any,' Swilley said, and sounded dissatisfied. ‘Not much use having all that money if you don't have anyone to share it with. And then you get murdered. It's a hard way to go.'

‘Is there a nice one?'

‘There are nicer,' Swilley said, with truth. ‘The other thing, boss, SOCA sent over a mobile phone they found in the pocket of a suit in his bedroom wardrobe. Switched off. Very basic, pay as you go, the sort old people have for emergencies only.'

‘I suppose these days you can't be sure of finding a telephone box that works.'

‘Right,' Swilley said. ‘I've got the call record back, and the calls he made were mostly to his own flat – presumably ringing when he was out to give Mrs Kroll instructions or ask her something. Otherwise theatre box offices and restaurants, minicab companies and cab ranks. But it seems he did give the number to someone. The one number he rang that went to a private person also happened to be the only number that rang him.' She paused dramatically.

‘And?' Slider prompted, with anticipation.

Norma smiled happily. ‘I think we've found Nina.'

The number Bygod had rung went back to a mobile phone in the name of Anna Klimov, with an address in St John's Wood.

‘I Googled the name,' Swilley said. ‘It turns out that it's the real name of the actress Diana Chambers.'

Slider was impressed. ‘The grand dame of the theatre,' he said. He had seen her on stage often in her younger days – and his – when he had worked Central and before marriage and children had claimed his evenings. She had been gorgeous then – well, she was pretty handsome now – and he had been sufficiently smitten to sit through the whole Oresteia cycle at the Old Vic because she had been starring in it, in flimsy Greek robes. She had a voice that went right to the roots of your hair and massaged your scalp, and eyes like liquid velvet. And though in later years she had done quite a few films, she had remained true to live theatre and always seemed to be in
something
in the West End. Atherton would know what the latest thing was – he still went, while Slider, alas, didn't.