Hard Going (32 page)

‘I'll take it,' Slider said. ‘Are you happy?'

‘About your dad and Lydia? Very. She seems good for him.'

‘But she's no pushover,' Slider said. ‘I sense a hint of steel inside that should keep his life interesting.'

‘I hope it will sustain her when she's doing her share of babysitting,' Joanna murmured sleepily. ‘I can't get over it – sitters on tap.'

‘I told you we'd work something out.'

‘“We”? I see the hand of Father Christmas in this. It's a miracle not of our making.'

‘But we're such nice people, you see,' said Slider. ‘If we weren't, they wouldn't want to live on top of us.'

‘Underneath,' Joanna corrected, but she was asleep, really.

I
t was distinctly colder on Tuesday, with a high pale sky, strangely translucent, like onions cooked in chicken fat; and a brisk wind that found out every gap around door and window. Joanna hunched herself into a chunky sweater to get the breakfast. ‘We'll have to think about putting the heating on,' she grumbled. George in his chair, crust in hand, waiting for his egg, looked impervious. He seemed to have his own inbuilt central heating and never felt the cold. He sang to himself and supplied his own rhythm section with the spoon.

Some days it was agony to drag yourself away from the knobbly normality of home and face a world in which the sane rules did not apply, in which people did unspeakable things, and so often for pitifully meagre reasons. Everything Slider had learned so far suggested Bygod was a nice, even an admirable man. He drove with his mind slipping loosely over words, images, impressions, half out of gear – often the best way to allow cells to bind together. The day let him through indifferently, as if watching events in some other part of town. He parked in the yard, scurried through the sharp wind into the building, and mounted to the familiar 1970s' ugliness of his office, his desk, and his pile of paperwork, where he sank gratefully below the surface as into a tepid but welcome bath.

Connolly was the first to disturb him, lounging in looking smart in a black cloth trouser suit over a lime green roll-neck. She had dangly earrings that looked like tiny bunches of green grapes. Slider stared at them blankly as his mind drifted back up.

‘I've found the taxi that picked up your man on Tuesday after lunch, boss,' she said. ‘Cruising black cab picked him up in Shaftesbury Avenue just before three o'clock. He musta walked straight down to Shafters after leaving the restaurant. Cabbie left him home to Shepherd's Bush, got there about quarter to four. So far no-one else has come forward to say they picked him up again that day, so …'

‘It looks as though he was home between three forty-five and seven,' Slider said, picking it up.

‘Gettin' whacked,' Connolly concluded. ‘Narrows it down a bit, so.'

‘It does. Better have another look at any CCTV footage we've got, refine it to those hours. I'll talk to Mr Porson later today about leaflets, now that we've got the time fixed a bit better.'

‘Right, boss. Oh, and I got on to Melbury Cars in Ken High Street, and the last time he hired a car was the Sunday right before he died. He picked it up ten o'clock and brought it back seven in the evening with two hundred and thirty miles on the clock.'

Slider didn't know if he felt pleased or sorry. Now there was a whole lot more stuff to check, and who knew if it would yield anything as useful as a lead? Two hundred and thirty gave you a radius of about a hundred miles from the centre of London, which was a large world, and so full of a number of things. ‘Run and get me the road atlas, will you?' he said. ‘And pass the car's reg number to McLaren and Fathom, get them to start looking for it on the ANPR for Sunday.'

‘Right, boss,' said Connolly.

‘Oh, and ask Swilley to come in.'

‘OK.'

‘And see if you can rustle me up a cup of tea.'

Atherton came into his room just as he was trying to mark out a hundred mile radius on the atlas with a drawing-pin and a piece of string. Annoyingly, of course, he couldn't get it all on one page, except on the overview page, which didn't give any useful detail.

‘Bit of a pointless exercise,' Atherton commented. ‘Why not wait until you get a ping from the ANPR?'

‘I just wanted an idea of where he
might
have gone,' Slider defended himself.

‘He
might
have gone anywhere,' Atherton said, leaning to look over his shoulder.

‘At least we can be sure he went
somewhere
,' Slider countered. Like anyone else who lived north of the river, he was looking to the north of London first – south always seemed a direction of bleakness and desperation. And – lookie here – what was around ninety miles directly north of London, straight up the A1? ‘Stamford,' he said aloud. ‘With Colleyweston, where he was born, just three or four miles to the west of it.'

Atherton looked. ‘What are you suggesting?'

‘He knew he was dying. He'd just seen his son and made his will.'

‘We assume.'

‘And it was a lovely day that Sunday – a lovely autumn day. Maybe he went for a nostalgic look around at the scenes of his youth – why not? Stamford's a fine old town. And it's pretty country. Green hills. The woods changing colour. A nice day out to say goodbye.'

‘You're such a romantic,' Atherton said. ‘Don't forget he met and married the lovely June, loyal spouse and the joy of his heart, in Stamford.'

‘Yes, but given that Colleyweston is not a metropolitan hub, he probably had most of his youthful Saturday nights out in Stamford, too. He probably had a lot of memories.'

‘Might have had some friends in the area,' Atherton admitted. ‘You could be right.'

‘It's just an idea. Ask McLaren to look for the car in that area first. And try ringing round the pubs and restaurants. If he went that far, he probably ate somewhere up there.'

Atherton shrugged and turned to go, saying over his shoulder, ‘If he paid cash, as was his usual method, they won't have any record of his name.'

‘But he was a good tipper,' Slider pointed out, ‘and they tend to be remembered.'

If Sinar Serhati was disconcerted by another appearance of the police at the Piazza, he didn't show it. He greeted Swilley with a white smile and a wide gesture of welcome, gestured her to a seat at the nearest table, and offered her coffee again.

‘No, thanks,' she said. ‘I've just got a few more questions to ask you. Won't take long.'

‘For you,
bella signorina
—' he began gushingly, and then, catching her eye, broke off short, shrugged, and said, ‘Sorry. Force of habit. But please, sit down, and tell me how I can help. I suppose you haven't found out yet who killed poor Mr Bygod?'

‘We're getting there,' Swilley lied. ‘Just need to clear a few things up. Now, you said the last time Mr Bygod was in here was on the Saturday before he died. He had lunch.'

‘That's right.'

‘Was he alone?'

‘Yes, he often lunched alone on a Saturday. I think he liked having the time to himself. He'd have half a bottle of wine and some spaghetti and some olives. He said once it reminded him of Sorrento when he was young.' Serhati glanced round at his restaurant, and the greyness of Shepherd's Bush outside, and shrugged. ‘He was a nice man,' he concluded.

‘Okay.' Swilley nodded. ‘Now, on that day, did he have any papers with him?'

‘Papers?' Serhati prepared a negative, then clapped a hand to his mouth in almost comical dismay, his eyes wide above it. ‘
Dio mio
, I forgot! Not at lunch, but earlier. Should I have told you? Will I get into trouble?'

Swilley, interested that he exclaimed in Italian rather than Kurdish, concluded that the restaurant had got deeper under his skin than he knew, and said, ‘Just tell me now. It might be important, it might not.'

‘He came in in the morning, early, must have been about half past eleven – I was just opening up – to book his favourite table for one o'clock. We are busy Saturday lunchtime – it is best to book. Then he said he had a favour to ask me. I said, “Sure, anything,” and he asked if Tiago and I would witness his signature on a document. Tiago is one of my waiters, he was helping me lay the tables. Anyway, Mr Bygod signed and we signed and that was that. He said he was going to do a few errands and he'd be back at one o'clock, and went away.' He gave a rueful shrug. ‘I'd forgotten all about it. It didn't seem important at the time so it went out of my head.'

‘Did you see what was written on the document?'

‘No,' said Serhati. ‘I don't know what it was. It was folded kind of long and thin, and all there was on the part he showed us was a line for his signature and two lines for ours. He explained we were just signing to say we had seen
him
sign it. Tiago said afterwards it was probably some financial thing, a deed, maybe property or something.' He looked at her hopefully. ‘Is it all right? I just forgot, is all.'

‘No, that's fine,' she said. ‘Don't worry about it. So, when he came back to lunch, did he mention this document? Did he say anything about it?'

‘No, no, he never mentioned it again.'

Telling Slider about it on her return, she said, ‘It looks as though that could have been the will, boss. Your hunch was right. What made you think of it?'

The fact was that what looked like a hunch was usually the result of long experience and subconscious filtering of ideas, the pay-off for basic hard work. There was no such thing as a free hunch.

‘The timing just seemed right, that's all, given that we knew he went in there on the Saturday,' said Slider. ‘And he knew them, and knew they'd be around for a while. Pity Serhati didn't see anything else, though – the executor's name or anything.'

‘Or even that it
was
definitely the will,' Swilley added.

‘Two witnesses, in the presence of the signatory and of each other,' said Slider. ‘I don't know what else it would be.' He pondered for a moment. ‘Well, thanks,' he concluded. ‘I don't know that it helps much, except to help confirm that he
had
made a new will before he went to see Danny on Tuesday.'

Swilley stirred discontentedly. ‘But if Danny was his only kin, he'd have got the money anyway. Diana Chambers is the only one who needed him to make the new will. And she'd have wanted it to be found.'

‘I know,' Slider said unhappily.

Porson was unexpectedly consoling. ‘Can't be helped. Sometimes you have to do it the hard way. Needs must what can't be endured.'

‘I'm afraid they were hoping for a quick turn around at Hammersmith,' Slider ventured.

Porson scowled, his eyebrows leaping together like two rams in combat. ‘You let me worry about that. Everyone always wants a result yesterday. But you can't break eggs without straw. Better to do it right than do it quick. Have you got anything left?'

‘We seem to have eliminated the obvious. But we know he had lots of people coming to him for help,' Slider said.

‘The more the merrier. Gives you more to work with,' Porson said, undismayed. ‘Better start charting 'em all, get working on their movements, alibis, etcetrea. Progress of elinimation.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And we'll go ahead with the leaflets. Get something sketched out, will you? We'll put a couple of people out in the street handing 'em to passers-by, do the bus routes, get 'em through all the letterboxes on the block. Give the carpet a shake, see what falls out.' He seemed to take heart from Slider's air of gloom. ‘Buck up, laddie. You know how it goes – eventually someone'll come forward. Someone must've seen chummy go in or come out, even if he doesn't remember it now. Slow and steady wins fair lady.'

Slider murmured agreement and took his faint heart back to his own office. He had hardly sat down when the phone rang. He recognized the tortured RP vowels of June Bygod/Buckland before she had got any further than asking if he was him.

‘How can I help you?' he asked, with a little wisp of hope curling upwards that she might have some information, might have remembered someone who wanted Lionel dead – preferably a sinister man, seven feet tall with red hair, a scar on his face and an unusual tattoo on the back of his hand.

‘Oh, I was just wondering,' she said, with a deprecatory laugh. She sounded nervous. ‘Have you made any progress?'

The spark was doused. ‘We are following up a number of leads,' he said as quellingly as politeness allowed.

‘Yes, I'm sure you're working very hard,' she said. ‘But I wondered if you had any idea when all this will be over. I mean, it's upsetting to think of poor Lionel's killer walking about loose out there. It would be nice if it was all sorted out and we could put it behind us, get on with our lives.'

I didn't know you cared
, Slider said, but not aloud. ‘I'm afraid I can't tell you at this stage how long it will be.'

‘No, of course not,' she said, as if disappointed. ‘I expect these things take time. I suppose if you don't find out who did it, eventually you'll have to write it off – close the file or whatever the right expression is?'

‘No murder case is ever closed, madam, until it's solved,' he said firmly.

‘Oh, quite, but – you'd sort of put it to one side, wouldn't you?'

‘We're a long way from that stage yet,' he said. ‘Don't worry, we'll track the culprit down all right. And now, if you'll excuse me, my other phone's ringing.'

He disconnected himself, and sat staring at the wall for a long moment, pondering. What had she meant by the call? Did she think they needed geeing up? Or was it—?

Atherton came in. ‘Bullseye!' he said. ‘You win your choice of a cut glass vase or a fluorescent pink teddy.'