Hard Going (10 page)

‘What does he think you don't understand?'

‘Oh, he say he work very hard, but the money does not come. The bad men take it from him. He say he has bills to pay, debts. Ha!' A mirthless laugh.

‘What bad men are these?' Atherton asked. He slipped it in as casually as possible, but still Mrs Adamski took alarm.

‘I don't know. I talk too much. I am foolish old woman. There are no bad men.'

McLaren made a sound of warning, and Atherton glanced past him to see a scrawny, bed-draggled figure come slopping along the passage from the foot of the stairs. It was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a sleeveless vest, none too clean. Its feet were bare, it was unshaven, and its too-long hair was a mess, not improved by the slow scratching that accompanied the dragging walk. It appeared not so much to have descended from the apes as to have been overtaken by them.

‘What's going on?' he said in a plain Acton accent. ‘Gran? You all right? Who're
you
?' He addressed the last to Atherton, but reaching the door he finally spotted McLaren, who had been hidden from him, and alarm belatedly tensed all his muscles. ‘Who the fuck are you?' he asked in definite fright.

‘Ten o'clock in the morning, already he is awake!' Mrs Adamski said witheringly. ‘My grandson, Marek. Another lazy pig who lies in bed all day while his
mother
works.' She managed to inject a superb amount of scorn into ‘mother'.

‘I told you, Gran, it's not Marek, it's Mark,' the lad said sulkily. ‘Who are you people?'

‘The police, Marek,' Mrs Adamski said with heavy irony. ‘They have come to wake you up gently so you should not lie in bed all day and maybe hurt your back.'

‘Fuck, Gran, you don't talk to the police!'

This elicited a stream of furious Polish aimed at the lad, who showed no sign of understanding any of it. He rubbed one bare, dirty foot over the other, looking from Atherton to McLaren nervously. When the old woman stopped, he said, ‘Me dad's out, and me mum. Me gran don't know nothing. Me mum won't half be mad if you upset her.'

McLaren caught his attention. ‘Where's your dad?' he asked in the tone that brooked no prevarication.

‘He's out – at a job,' he added just in time.

‘Where?'

‘Out Hanwell.'

‘This is the job you've been helping him on?'

‘Yeah.' Reluctantly dragged out.

‘We'd like to have a word with him. What's the address?'

Alarm. ‘He might not be there. I mean, he might have to go and get stuff. Materials. Or something.'

‘I think you need to talk to us,' Atherton intervened firmly.

McLaren caught the ball and said, ‘Come and sit in the car – no need to upset your gran. We've got a few questions to ask.'

‘No! I don't have to. I'm not going!'

Atherton got up and stepped close, masking him from his grandmother with his body. He said quietly, ‘I can smell the weed on you. What have you got in your pocket?' Mark's hand made the automatic, guilty movement. Dope, Atherton thought – in both senses. ‘I can bust you for possession, we can toss your room and see what else you've got up there. Cuff you and take you away. How will your gran like that? Or you can sit in the car nicely and answer some questions. We're investigating a murder. This is serious stuff, Mark. You don't want to mess us about.'

He caved. McLaren led him out, while Atherton took a moment to soothe the old woman.

‘Where you take him?' she demanded fearfully.

‘Nowhere. Just outside to talk. Don't worry. You can have him back in a minute.'

Spirit flared. ‘You keep him! I don't want lazy pig. Every day he breaks his mother's heart!'

C
onnolly came into Slider's office, where he was talking to Hollis.

‘Guv, I've got something,' she said with a smile so bright Slider could feel the skin of his face turning brown.

‘Let me have it,' he said.

‘Sure God, you're going to love this!' she obliged. ‘It's the answer to all the questions about your man.' She had been on the computer all morning, and now proudly displayed the results. ‘He was a solicitor right enough. He'd a practice in Islington, specialized in criminal defence. Worked with this big-shot barrister called Wickham Williams QC.'

‘I've heard of him,' Slider said.

‘Have you, so?' said Connolly. ‘Well, he'd a name for defending bad lots, and apparently your man Bygod was the solicitor behind him.'

‘Ah,' said Slider, ‘so he could well have had criminals coming up his stairs in Shepherd's Bush.'

‘Maybe chummy was a disgruntled client he didn't manage to get off,' said Hollis.

‘Wait'll I tell ya,' Connolly said impatiently. ‘He was involved in this big case in 1996, defending a man called Noel Roxwell. Seems this Roxwell had been questioned a couple o' times for hanging around school playgrounds and talking to the kids. This time it was alleged he followed a girl called Kim North, age fourteen, on to a bus, got off at the same stop and caught her in an alley where he indecently assaulted her. According to the police report he kissed her and put his hand on her breast and made certain suggestions, before she ran away.'

‘Doesn't sound like a very big case,' Slider said.

‘I haven't got to it yet, boss,' Connolly said. ‘The North kid told her mammy, and the peelers came and nicked him, and when the word got around, this other girl in the same class, Debbie Crondace, came forward and said he done the same to her, only he'd gone all the way, done the nasty with her up against the wall, without her consent. So then it was all over the papers. Roxwell went to Lionel Bygod, who got him Wickham Williams to defend him.'

‘I think I remember hearing something about that case,' Slider said. ‘Roxwell. Crondace. The names ring a bell.'

Connolly nodded. ‘O' course, your man's previous counted against him, and the press was hostile. There was a big paedophile scare going on at the time. It looked like Roxwell was a goner. But Wickham Williams pulled the evidence apart, and apparently Roxwell was good in the box and the girl wasn't, and anyway, however it was, he got him off. So then there was a big fuss in the papers, and a campaign led by the Crondace kid's da to get the acquittal overturned. He went after Wickham Williams and our Mr Bygod – Crondace did – and the papers loved it, splashed it as the nobs' conspiracy against poor working folk, and all that class o' caper. Asking why any decent person would defend a pervert like Roxwell.'

‘I'm sure that went down well in the Inns of Court,' Slider said.

‘It got worse,' Connolly assured him. ‘The story spread that Bygod and Wickham Williams were kiddy-fiddlers themselves, part of a big circle, including Roxwell, that looked out for each other's backs. One remark Crondace made went viral – whatever the equivalent was in them days when they hadn't the social media. He said QC meant Queer Customer. O' course, something like that was jam for the press.'

‘Why didn't they sue?' Slider asked.

‘Well, boss, it happened that the silk dropped dead suddenly in the middle of all the fuss. Nothing wrong about it – apparently he'd had an undiagnosed heart condition, and maybe the strain brought it on. So Bygod was left alone to face the music. And instead of suing, he went to ground. Gave up his practice, sold his house, and disappeared.'

Swilley had come in to listen. ‘Interesting,' she said. ‘So there was something sinister about him after all?'

‘You automatically assume he was guilty?' Slider said. ‘A nice case of “give a dog a bad name and hang him”.'

‘If he wasn't guilty, why did he run? Why didn't he sue? If a solicitor can't sue, who can? Atherton said there was a pattern emerging.'

‘That was about him being a homosexual,' Connolly objected.

‘Paedophiles often are,' Hollis said. ‘Or at least, they're not particular one way or the other. Boys or girls, it's all the same.'

‘It would certainly provide a motive for his murder,' Slider said thoughtfully, ‘if he was reviled for getting a guilty man off.'

‘Right,' Connolly began eagerly.

‘If,' Slider interrupted, ‘there was any evidence that anyone had been after him in the intervening sixteen years.'

‘Well, we don't know, do we, boss?' Connolly said. ‘He went to ground. Maybe they'd only just found him.'

‘It's something to look into. I think I'll have a word with Jonny Care at Islington, see if I can get any more information on the Roxwell case. I'd like to know if there really was any substance in the accusations against Bygod – if he'd come to anyone's attention before that.' Care was the Islington DI he had worked with over the Ben Corley murder.

‘Anyway, it gives a reason for the break in his life, doesn't it, boss?' Connolly said. ‘Why his current friends never met anyone he knew before.'

‘And why he was no longer married,' Swilley said. ‘Even if he was innocent, it'd be hard for a marriage to survive that sort of trauma.'

Slider nodded. ‘The trouble with accusations of that sort is that, even if they're untrue, a taint always lingers. The old “there's no smoke without fire” argument.' He sighed. ‘We can talk all we like about justice, but a malicious accusation can never be wholly wiped clean.'

‘Cheer up, guv,' Swilley said. ‘Maybe he was guilty – think of that!'

‘Oh, how you comfort me,' said Slider.

Gascoyne came in. ‘Got one!' he said jubilantly. ‘One of the fingermarks on the stair rail matches with Jack Kroll. So he's definitely been in the house.'

Slider felt a surge of relief. Proper evidence at last! ‘Right. Radio that through to Atherton and McLaren straight away. No reason he shouldn't have visited, but if he denies he's ever been there, they can put him on the back foot.'

‘Should they bring him in, guv?' Gascoyne asked.

‘I leave that to Atherton. He'll know if he seems like a dodgy customer.'

Mark Kroll was about as hard to break as a slice of Madeira cake. Once outside, McLaren patted him down before putting him in the car, and the tin in his pocket that he had not wanted them to find turned out to contain a spliff, a small piece of foil-wrapped resin, and a book of matches.

‘Enough to nick you on, mate,' McLaren said. ‘If you want us to forget about it, you better cooperate.'

That was when he crumbled.

Now he sat in the back seat of their car, savaging a cigarette and his fingernails alternately, his left knee jiggling the well-known dance of shame, and confessed with only the gentlest of prods that the job in Hanwell they should have been doing had been abandoned because they could not afford to buy the materials. The householder had given them a substantial deposit, but that was all gone. Now she was ringing them all the time, asking when they'd be back to finish, and threatening to sue them.

‘Me and Dad stay out of the way all day. Dad's had to change his mobile and he's told Gran not to answer the phone. If they start coming round the house, I dunno what we'll do.'

‘So you weren't at the job in Hanwell on Tuesday?' Atherton said.

‘No, I told you. We can't even buy a can o' paint. Got no credit anywhere any more.'

‘So where were you?'

‘We went out in the morning, Dad and me, like usual, so's Gran'd think we was going to the job. He doesn't want her to know. She gets mad about the money – him not having any, I mean. Him and Mum had a terrible row the night before. I could hear 'em yelling at each other, and then Gran woke up and she went and joined in. I put the pillow over me head and stopped quiet.'

‘What was the row about?'

‘Like I said. It's always the same – money. I don't know exactly – a lot of it was in Polish. They always end up yelling in Polish when they get into it.'

‘So, tell me about Tuesday,' Atherton said. ‘Every detail.'

He looked puzzled, but complied. ‘Well, we left about half seven, had breakfast at this caff up West Ealing, Ruby's in Argyll Road. Spun it out long as we could. Then Dad leaves me and goes off in the van.'

‘Where?'

‘I dunno. He never said.'

‘And where did you go?'

‘I went and sat in the park a bit, had a fag, read the paper. I didn't have me wheels, see.'

‘Is that your Focus?' McLaren indicated the rust bucket at the kerb.

‘Yeah, but I couldn't come home to get it, case Gran saw me. Can't afford the petrol, anyway. So I was stuck, wasn't I? So I went down the snooker club, down Northfields Avenue, and stopped there all day.'

‘How did you manage without any money?'

‘I got some mates hang out there. They paid for the tables, and I bummed some fags off 'em. Dad picked me up about four o'clock on the Uxbridge Road, and we went home.'

McLaren got a call on his Airwave and got out of the car to take it. He beckoned Atherton out.

‘One of the fingerprints on the stair rail has come back to old man Kroll,' he said. ‘So it's starting to look tasty.'

Through the car window they could see Mark watching them with mad, frightened eyes from under his mess of hair. ‘I wonder how much he knows,' Atherton said. ‘I wouldn't trust him with important secrets if he was my son.'

‘Nah,' said McLaren from the depth of his copper's instinct. ‘He's a dipstick. That's why the old man went off and left him.'

They got back in. Atherton said, ‘So you didn't see your dad all day on Tuesday? Do you know where he was?'

‘No, he never said.' The boy was sweating now, and the smell of marijuana came out of his pores like curry out of McLaren's.

‘Have you ever been to the place your mum works – Mr Bygod's flat?'