Hard Going (8 page)

‘No will, guv. It's all just papers, like the housekeeper said. These, his passport, exam certificates and legal qualifications, deeds to the flat, and the rest are financial – share certificates and bonds and that sort o' thing,' said Hollis. ‘I've given 'em to Swilley, since she's doing the financial stuff. But there looks to be a lot of 'em. Looks as if he might have been well off.'

‘Nothing it would do anyone any good to steal, though,' Slider said. ‘Unless, of course, something else
was
in there, and is no longer.'

‘Which brings us back to Mrs Kroll,' Atherton said, ‘who was the most likely one to know. And we've only her word for it that he never locked the safe.'

‘Check that with Mr Plumptre,' Slider told him. ‘Who's looking into his other friends?'

‘Nobody yet,' said Atherton.

‘Well, put Connolly on to it, and make that one of the questions she asks: what was in the safe, and did he lock it? And who was his next of kin?' he added in a slightly fractious tone. ‘Why hasn't anyone come asking for him?'

Gascoyne came in, with McLaren lingering at his shoulder. It was getting crowded in here. ‘I've got the first of the fingerprint results, sir. The marks you were interested in on the study door come back without a match.'

‘That's disappointing,' Slider said. ‘But not unexpected.'

‘Marks on the desk were the victim's, and only his, same on the document safe,' Gascoyne went on. ‘Housekeeper's are all over the place, as you'd expect, except in the bathroom, so it sounds as if she might have been telling the truth about not wearing gloves.'

‘Also disappointing,' said Slider.

‘Don't you hate it when people are caught out telling the truth?' Atherton said.

‘And the mass of prints up the stairs I've still to go through,' Gascoyne concluded.

McLaren intervened. ‘I might have something for you to work on, Phil,' he said, squeezing past to get Slider's attention. ‘I been looking into the Krolls, like you asked, put 'em into Crimint.' This was the Met's intelligence data base. ‘The old man's come up flagged all over the place.' He grinned happily. ‘Must be the only crooked Polish builder in London. No criminal record – yet – but he's been tugged plenty of times.' He spread out some sheets on Slider's desk. ‘This is him, Jacek “Jack” Kroll. Lives Eastman Road, Acton Vale – got a yard behind his house backs on to Acton Park Industrial Estate. Got a son, Mark, age nineteen, works with him. No previous.'

‘Is that the one that lives at home?' Slider asked.

‘Yeah. Doesn't stop him claiming social security, though. Older son, Stefan, twenty-six, he does have a record, possession and handling stolen goods and a lot o' driving offences, going back to joyriding age twelve. Nothing on the daughter, Judy, twenty-four. She's on welfare an' all, got two kids, living with a bloke in Birmingham, according to Terry Cleaver at Ealing.' Acton came under the Ealing Borough command.

‘So what has Jack Kroll been up to?' Atherton asked for them all.

‘They've tugged him several times on suspicion of illegal dumping,' said McLaren. ‘Dun't sound like much, but it can be big business. Also he's a bit too close to a bloke that owns a scrap metal yard, who they think is behind a load o' lead thefts in West London, going all the way out to Hounslow. Cleaver says he thinks Kroll is shifting the stuff on his lorry, may even be knocking it off under cover of doing building jobs.'

‘Well, he certainly sounds tasty,' Slider agreed. ‘None of that gives a connection to Lionel Bygod, however.'

‘Except his wife,' said Atherton. ‘Anything on her?'

‘No, she's clean,' said McLaren, ‘but Acton's been keeping an eye on her, anyway. She's seen hanging around with the female her son Stefan lives with, by the name of Mirela, or Mary, Dudnic. This Dudnic's got form as long as your arm for drugs and prostitution, and she's coming up in court on a charge of dealing next month.'

Slider twiddled his pen thoughtfully. ‘All very nice, but what motive does that suggest for killing Bygod?'

‘We don't know,' Atherton said reasonably, ‘that something valuable
wasn't
stolen from the safe. By someone who didn't have to break in and who knew the safe would be unlocked – or maybe knew where the key was kept.'

‘If she was going to rob him, why would she wait ten years to do it?' Slider asked.

‘Some sudden need,' Atherton said.

‘Well, it's pure speculation,' Slider said, ‘but given that she did have the key, it's worth having a closer look at them. Trouble is, we don't have an exact time of death, so we don't know when they need an alibi for. Still, check out what they were doing for the whole of that day. Are Kroll's fingerprints on record?' McLaren nodded. ‘Right then,' he said to Gascoyne, ‘check if any of the unidentified ones in the house are his. And check for the son Stefan and Mary Dudnic as well. We've no particular reason for suspecting them but it's best to clear as you go, otherwise this sort of thing is apt to come back and bite you later.'

The crowd drifted away. Atherton was last out. He said, ‘On the basis that the stupidest answer is usually right in these cases, you'd have to put your money on Mrs Kroll and her key. But I'd still like to know more about the mysteriously reticent, strangely out of his place ex-solicitor.'

‘Go to, with my blessing,' Slider said. ‘I can't join you in hoping for complications – a solid case against the prime suspect would be a joy – but he certainly seems to have been an oddball.'

‘Fortunately, one with an odd name,' said Atherton, ‘so it ought to be easy enough to find stuff on him.'

He was almost out of the door when Slider called, ‘You might look in his address book for the Nina who called him and left messages.'

‘According to Mrs Kroll,' Atherton qualified gloomily.

M
olly Shepherd lived in Overstone Road – just a stone's throw from Bygod's place, Connolly noted – but she taught at a school in South Ealing, and Connolly sought her out there.

It was a plain, dull, 1970s' building, three storeys high with enormous picture windows, the liberal educationists' reaction to the high, narrow windows of the Victorian school buildings that everyone had been educated in until the Second World War. The Victorians had assumed that if children could see out, they wouldn't concentrate on their lessons. The liberal educationists thought that demanding concentration from children amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Classes were in session when Connolly arrived, and the building was quiet. She stepped in gingerly, her nostrils quivering at the hated smell. Why did schools everywhere smell the same, she wondered – kind of rubbery. A youth with his hair a mad, waxed ziggurat, his tie at half mast and his trousers apparently falling down, hove into view, lounging along the corridor. He stopped dead at the sight of Connolly and looked furtive, but she hailed him cheerily before he could leg it, and asked him where she could find Mrs Shepherd.

‘Dunno,' he said, staring at her, eyes blank, mouth ajar, as if he had evolved from a fish. ‘She ain't my teacher,' he added after some thought. ‘You a parent?'

‘Do I look like a parent?' Connolly said exasperatedly. He shrugged, as if it were a mystery beyond his grasp. ‘Where's the head teacher's office, so?'

He pointed, and shuffled off, his duty to the world discharged. Connolly watched him go, and her police instinct coupled with her taxpayer's outrage drove her to call to him. ‘Hey!'

He looked back apprehensively.

‘Why aren't you in class?'

‘Goin' a' toylit,' he mumbled. His hand strayed guiltily of its own accord towards the shirt pocket hidden under his pullover. She remembered the whiff of tobacco she had caught from him and concluded he was sneaking off for a fly fag, the gom.

‘Education's wasted on the likes o' you,' she said, turning away. It was a better world when they were allowed to send them down mines and up chimneys.

Given her aversion to hanging around schools, it was a piece of luck that Mrs Shepherd was not in a class, but on a free period, and even greater luck that she was alone in the staff room, marking work, when Connolly tracked her down. She seemed to be in her fifties, a neat, brisk woman with a well-controlled figure, firm face, and rather nice wavy brown hair that looked as if it belonged on someone else, too soft and loose and inviting for this professional pedagogue.

‘I've just put some coffee on,' she said cordially. ‘Won't be a minute. Sit down. Which one of them is it? My money's on Kelly Watson. We've already got a sweep going on whether she gets pregnant or expelled first.'

Connolly sat and told her why she was here. Her face changed.

‘Oh, God, yes, Lionel,' she said. ‘Such a terrible thing! It's hard to believe it. Have you any idea who did it?'

‘How well did you know him?' Connolly countered this unhelpful opening.

‘Oh, I've known him for years – what is it? – nine or ten, anyway – though I'm not sure one ever really
knew
Lionel, if you know what I mean. He was a very private person.'

‘How did you meet him?' Connolly asked, settling back into the armchair. The staffroom was catastrophically untidy, with books and stacks of exercise books everywhere; dirty coffee mugs; newspapers; personal belongings stuffed in bags of various types from plastic carrier to canvas sport; bits of clothing; bits of equipment on their way from one class to another; and, messily pinned on peg boards all round the walls, notices and appeals and leaflets and timetables in profusion. It was all horribly reminiscent. Connolly sat, the most miserable of captives, trying not to allow her eyes to wander towards the freedom beyond the big window. Outside there was sunshine and gently waving treetops. Inside, the smell of bodies, and the coffee machine, hawking and spitting like an elderly chain-smoker.

‘It was at a planning meeting, actually – I was part of a group protesting about a development in Brook Green, and he'd just joined the local Residents' Association, which was representing one of the neighbours. We happened to be sitting next to each other, and after the meeting a bunch of us went off for a drink. He and I took to each other and we were friends from then on.'

‘What was he like? As a person?'

‘Oh, lovely, a lovely man!' she said with enthusiasm. ‘Gentle, rather shy, which was odd when you think he was a solicitor. Very intelligent, educated of course. Just the
best
company. He knew so much about everything, you could never run out of things to talk about – and I don't mean he was a bore, either. He listened as well as talked. Everybody loved Lionel.'

The door opened and a dreadlocked female child stuck its head in. ‘Please, miss, Mrs Gandapur says—'

Mrs Shepherd's face snapped into ferocious denial. ‘No!' she bellowed.

The child blenched. ‘But, miss—'

‘
Out
!'

The head was withdrawn, and she resumed her pleasant mien. ‘What were we saying?'

Connolly had been at school herself within living memory, and in Dublin at that. She adjusted smoothly. ‘Did you and him have a romantic relationship?'

‘Oh, goodness, no, nothing like that. He was just a dear friend. He was such a kind man – he'd do anything for you.'

‘He was pretty well off, wasn't he?'

‘I think so,' she said, offhandedly. ‘He didn't flash it about, but he always seemed to have plenty – and I bet some of those paintings in his flat are worth a bob or two. He was generous with it. When a group of us went out, often he'd just quietly pay the whole bill. If you said anything, he'd say, “From each according to his means.” I don't think money meant much to him, actually.'

‘Is that why he lived in that flat?'

Mrs Shepherd raised her eyebrows.

‘I mean, it's not a posh sort o' kip, is it – a flat over a shop?'

‘Oh, that was Lionel all over. He was an odd creature in many ways. Didn't have a car, for instance – said living in London, he had no use for it. Went everywhere in taxis – must have cost him a fortune in the end, probably would have been cheaper to run a car. But he wasn't keen on modern machines.'

‘No computer?' Connolly suggested.

Mrs Shepherd smiled. ‘That's right – how does anyone live without a computer, these days? He hated the social media. He could do a very good piece – funny, but you knew he meant it – about young people who never spoke to another human being face to face. He said Twitter and Facebook ruined people's lives – well, we all have to cope with that problem,' she added with a frown, ‘we teachers. Internet bullying, “sexting”, terrible lies being spread about people, obscene pictures posted on YouTube, kids driven to suicide. Well, I don't need to tell you. Funny, we used to think Lionel was behind the times when these things first came out and he condemned them,' she added with a sigh, ‘but I wonder now if he wasn't ahead of the times after all. He saw the dangers before we did.'

The door opened again. A pallid, spotty youth said, ‘Please, miss, is Mr Sullivan here?'

The bellow returned. ‘Does it look as if he's here, you half-witted object?
Get out
!' The door closed. ‘It's like Piccadilly Circus in here this morning,' she said in a normal voice. She got up and fetched the coffee.

When she was settled again, Connolly picked up the thread. ‘But his kitchen and bathroom are fierce modern, full o' gadgets.'

‘Yes, funny that, isn't it? But I suppose he liked his comfort, and he did love to cook. Very good at it, too,' she added, almost wistfully.

No more din-dins at Lionel's, Connolly thought. ‘Did you ever meet his wife?' she tried.