Hard Going (8 page)

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.

FIVE

Driving Miss Crazy

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.

‘No. I heard from someone that he had been married once, or they
thought
he had been married, but he never mentioned a wife. In fact, he never said anything about his past, or his family, his career before he retired, anything like that.’

‘Did you ever meet any of his friends from before he came to Hammersmith?’

‘Never a one. Strange, don’t you think? That’s what I meant, about wondering whether you ever really knew him.’

‘Did he have any lady friends while you knew him? Romantic friends, I mean.’

‘Not that I know of. Actually, I’ve always sort of subconsciously wondered if he was gay.’

‘How come?’

‘Oh, nothing tangible. Just the lack of lady friends, as you put it, and something about him as a person – you know, the bachelor life, the quaintness, the antiques, the nice clothes, fond of cooking, knew all about wines. Epicene – is that the word?’

It could be the word for all Connolly knew. She thought about Atherton – there was something of that about him, especially the cooking and the clothes. But he wasn’t gay – far from it. If mattress surfing was an Olympic event, he could have represented Britain. No reason old Lionel should have been gay either. Love a God, could a man not own a spatula without his credentials being questioned?

‘Anything else?’ she asked.

Mrs Shepherd thought about it. ‘He was terribly fond of the theatre. And very knowledgeable. He must have seen every play ever written. Loved his Shakespeare, even the ones nobody reads any more – you know,
Coriolanus
and so on. Loved Tom Stoppard, too, for the wordplay. He used to go a lot, I do know that. And he organized trips to the theatre for groups of his friends. I’ve been several times. He usually ended up paying for that, too.’

‘Why would that make him gay?’ Connolly asked, still processing
curry o’ l’anus
. What the feck was that?

‘Oh, it doesn’t, I didn’t mean that. But from the way he talked, he seemed to know quite a lot of actors personally, as well as the plays, so I put him down as a bit of a luvvie. It was just another piece of the jigsaw, you know.’

Somewhere a bell rang. Mrs Shepherd made getting-up movements and said, ‘The hordes are about to descend on us. And I’ve got playground duty, God help me.’

‘Just one more question,’ Connolly said, wondering what it should be. She didn’t feel she’d got much further, but there seemed no way in to this man’s life. ‘Do you know one of Lionel’s friends called Nina?’

‘Nina? No, no I don’t think so.’ She paused in thought. ‘No, I don’t think I’ve ever met a Nina. Who is she?’

‘Apparently she telephoned him now and then, left a message with his housekeeper.’

‘Oh! The sinister Mrs Danvers,’ said Mrs Shepherd, with half a smile.

‘I think the name is Kroll, Mrs Kroll,’ Connolly corrected her.

‘I know, dear, it’s a reference,’ said Mrs Shepherd. ‘I shouldn’t take too much notice of what Mrs Kroll says, if I were you. I don’t think she’s very reliable. Several times when I’ve rung up and Lionel’s been out, I’ve left messages which she hasn’t passed on. And sometimes she’s simply refused to take a message. Lionel lets her have all too much rope, in my opinion. She’s the sort who takes advantage.’

The door opened, and a knot of adults shot in as if expelled from the corridor like peas from a pea-shooter. ‘Tea!’ cried the front runner desperately. ‘Haven’t you put the kettle on, Molly? What have you been
doing
?’

Connolly made her escape so that the Shepherd could explain herself any way she liked.
Calling a detective constable ‘dear’, the cheeky skanger
! she thought as she made her way down the corridors against the flow and bedlam of youthful humanity. It was like one of those nightmares where you can’t make any progress towards your goal. She suppressed a panicky feeling that she’d never get out.

Slider sent Atherton for brains and McLaren for muscle on the Krolls Quest – it did sound a bit Dragons and Dungeons, that. Atherton was slightly offended at the idea that he might need McLaren, but Slider said he didn’t know what he might get into, and he didn’t want him suddenly having to send for back-up. McLaren did not look hefty, like Fathom, or powerful, like Gascoyne, but he had a whippy strength, was fast and hard and, since he possessed no imagination, fearless.

Getting into the car beside him, Atherton winced and said, ‘For God’s sake!’