Hard Going (3 page)

Slider frowned. ‘But the deceased wasn't anyone important, was he?'

Porson shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know, but that's irrevelant. I think they're jealous about the Corley case. Touch of the green-eyed wassname.' In his impatience with life, Porson's way was to take random swipes at language, like a bored waitress wiping tables in an airport eatery. ‘We did ourselves a bit of bon with that, and they want some of what we've got. Give 'em half a chance and they'll be all over this like a cheap rash. So I want the investigation done by the book and double-quick time. Don't want any excuse for Mr Wetherspoon to cast nasturtiums on our efficiency. What's it look like so far?'

Slider shrugged in his turn. ‘No obvious signs of burglary. And it doesn't look professional.'

‘Domestic? Blast,' said Porson.

Slider concurred. Human passions took a lot more fathoming out, and amateurs didn't tend to have their prints or DNA handily on record. They might be more liable to leave traces behind, but you had nothing to compare them with until you'd identified them by other means. And other means tended to take time.

Porson looked round at the immediate area. ‘And this is a bad place.'

Slider knew what he meant. At intervals along the pavement edge trees had been planted, the tall, handsome London planes beloved of Victorians, which had now reached magnificent full size. It was a soft, early autumn day and the buttery sunshine was filtering through the leaves, turning them to glowing shades of lemon and lime. Beautiful – but they would restrict any view of the door from across the road, either by a casual gazer-from-the-window or a CCTV camera, should there happen to be one. Nearby there was a bus camera on a tall pole, but of course that was focused straight down the road. Some of the posh shops might have cameras pointed at their doors which could possibly show people walking past, but without a precise time of death, that might not narrow the field in any meaningful way.

Porson came out of his reverie. ‘Still, we've got it and they've not, and a nod in the hand's as good as a wink. And I want to keep it that way, so I need you to stay on your toes.' There was a furious clicking sound, like a troupe of asthmatic cicadas, heralding the arrival of the press, and Porson glanced over his shoulder, then gathered his coat around him in a curiously dainty gesture. ‘The Bavarians're at the gate. I'm off. Keep me in the picture.'

He scuttled off, the better, Slider reflected, actually to stay
out
of the picture.

Slider called Swilley to him, and briefed her about the disposal of his personnel.

H
aving dispersed the available troops on canvass, DC Kathleen ‘Norma' Swilley took the Italian restaurant for herself. She was a tall, athletic woman, good looking in a blonde, small-nosed, wide-mouthed, Californian way. From the beginning she had had to fight her way through the various misogynies of the Job – even now, marriage and motherhood hadn't discouraged the chancers, or those who insisted that because she rejected their advances, she must be a lesbian. But she had found refuge in Slider's firm. Slider only cared that she was a good policeman, and was the one work colleague who had never hit on her, so he had her undying loyalty.

The restaurant was unimaginatively called Piazza but was obviously a posh one. She found the door unlocked, but it was not yet open: the lights were off, it felt cold, and the only sound came from the gloom of the far interior, where a man was clinking about with bottles, setting up.

‘Hello?' she called out.

He came hurrying towards her at once, dressed in the pan-global uniform of white shirt and black trousers, a tall man, with thinning fair hair, and the sort of knobbly peasant face that looked as if it had been roughly marked out of clay with thumbs, then decorated with a small, bristly moustache like desert grass.

‘
Bella signorina
!' he cried as he approached. ‘So much regret!
Siamo chiusi
! We are closéd. But you will come back later, please, so beautiful
signorina
!'

He beamed at her, a smile that seemed so genuine it made all the difference from being called
bella
signorina
in any other Italian restaurant. She almost found herself smiling back.

‘It's all right, you can drop all that stuff,' she said, showing her warrant card. ‘Police.'

But he continued to smile, and his eyes seemed kind. ‘But it is true, you are beautiful,' he insisted. She made a discouraging face, and he went on, ‘To tell you truth, I am not Italian anyway.'

‘No kidding,' said Swilley.

‘I am from Kurdistan,' he admitted modestly.

‘Is that right, Mr—?' Swilley enquired, for the notebook.

‘Here I am called Cesar,' he said. Now he had dropped the
eh, Luigi!
stuff, his accent was faint and unclassifiable, residing more in his cadences than anything specific.

‘Real name? For the record,' she said.

‘Sinar Serhati. I will spell it for you.' When she had it down, he asked, ‘Is there some trouble? I see so many police outside.'

‘I'm afraid there is. It concerns the man who lives upstairs.'

His eyes widened. ‘Mr Bygod? Has something happened to him? Please God he is all right?'

‘I'm sorry to say he was found dead this morning.'

Serhati's face registered immediate concern and dismay. ‘Oh, please, no! This is terrible! He was such a nice man – and very kind to me.'

This was good, Swilley thought – he evidently knew Bygod more than casually. ‘I'd like to ask you a few questions about him, if I may,' she said.

‘Of course,' said Serhati, still with the sorrowful cast. ‘Please sit down, and would you like some coffee? I'll ask Naza to bring some.'

Swilley assented, and watched him go to the back and call out to someone out of sight. He returned and sat opposite her at a small table, gave her a searching look, and said, ‘Was it his heart?'

‘Why do you say that?'

He shrugged. ‘Only that at his age it is usually heart.'

But she could see from his expression he didn't think it was. Of course, the police would hardly come asking questions about an infarct. It was a problem in the Job, that simply turning up alerted people to the fact that something was wrong, and put them on their guard.

‘I'm afraid it looks as though someone killed him.'

Interesting. He didn't look as shocked at that as he might have. He sighed. ‘These are bad times,' he said quietly. ‘So much trouble in the world.'

‘What was the nature of your relationship with Mr Bygod?' she asked.

‘He was a customer,' he said at once, ‘but he was also very good to me. He helped me buy this place.'

‘He gave you money?'

Serhati looked hurt. ‘No! I would not ask him for money. He helped me get loan from the bank. Told me where to go, how to apply. Helped me write a business plan. All sorts of advice. You see, I was a waiter here. Ever since we came to England – Naza, my wife, and me – I have been waiter, and Naza worked in kitchens, but our dream was to have our own restaurant. We saved and saved but never enough. Then I came here, and after a year I was made manager. The owner, Mr Batelli, he owns four restaurants, he can't run them all himself. He liked me, and I did well for him, and then one day he said, “How would you like to buy?”'

‘An
Italian
restaurant?' Swilley asked.

‘No-one eats Kurdish food – not even the Kurds,' he joked. ‘But the business is the same. Naza and I are Kurdish, my chef is Spanish, his assistant is Greek, I have one Polish waiter, one from Kosovo, and one from Portugal. Mr Bygod used to call it United Nations. But restaurants are like that everywhere. Catering is the great melting pot, Mr Bygod used to say.'

A little, round woman came scuttling from the back with the coffee and a plate of thin cinnamon biscuits. She cast one nervous look at Swilley, Serhati said something to her in a very foreign language, and she scuttled away again. ‘My wife, Naza. She doesn't speak so good English.'

Which sounded to Swilley like a warning off. But there seemed no reason yet to interview her and she let it pass. She sipped her coffee, which was excellent. ‘Was Mr Bygod a good customer?'

‘The best sort. He loved food, he appreciated it. We like people who enjoy what we serve them. And always good wine. He knew a lot about wine. He helped me make up the wine list after I bought the place.'

‘So was he well off, do you think? Had plenty of money?'

Serhati shrugged. ‘There was no show about him. He wore nice clothes, but not flashy. His house was comfortable the same way. I would call him an old-fashioned English gentleman. He spoke like that – like a lord, like Oxford-and-Cambridge. Maybe he had money – I don't know. I don't think it mattered.'

She understood what he meant, or thought she did – that someone like Bygod would be the same whatever his circumstances. But money always mattered. Nice clothes cost money at some point in their history. So did an Oxford education. She wondered if Serhati knew that Oxford and Cambridge were separate places.

‘Why do you think he helped you?' she asked.

‘Because he was a good man,' Serhati said with faint surprise, as if she shouldn't have needed to ask.

‘He liked you,' she suggested.

He shrugged. ‘I suppose he did. But it was not only me. One of my waiters, too, a boy from Syria – he had trouble with the immigration. He's gone now,' he added hastily, ‘but Mr Bygod helped him with the papers.'

What Swilley was getting from this was an unusual degree of involvement with a local restaurant by a customer, particularly a Londoner. She decided to probe a little further. ‘So you've been in his house,' she said casually, not making it a question.

He paused the fraction of an instant as if weighing his response – a suspicious pause, it could have been, except that he came from an oppressed people, where such caution was probably a survival tactic; where simply coming to official attention was all you needed to find yourself in trouble. He seemed to settle into his skin a little as he concluded the truth had to be told. She recognized the look as an act of courage – or perhaps of hard-won trust. ‘He asked me up there several times when he was helping me with the bank papers, and once when I had a problem with the Public Health inspector. It was not a social thing.'

Yes, what about the social thing, Swilley wondered. ‘Did he eat here often?' she asked.

‘Often for lunch, at least once a week, sometimes more. Not so often for dinner. But I think he ate out a lot. Like I said, he liked food.'

‘Did he come here alone? Or did he bring friends?'

‘Most often alone. Sometimes with friends. Men around his own age – English men. I think they talked business. But they seemed to know each other well – they laugh and joke a little too.'

‘So, always men,' Swilley suggested. ‘Never women.'

He did not seem to find that a pointed question. ‘Maybe he took women somewhere else,' he hazarded. ‘But last week he brought a lady. I was pleased. She was not young, but beautiful, and—' He waved a hand, searching for the word. ‘Glamorous. Like film star, maybe, but not so much. Beautiful for a woman of her age, the way sometimes French women are, do you know?'

‘When was that, exactly?'

He thought. ‘Thursday? Yes, I think Thursday. Lunchtime.'

‘Do you know her name?'

He shook his head regretfully. ‘He didn't introduce.'

‘What did they talk about?'

‘I don't hear, but I think maybe business – serious mostly. But I saw him hold her hand once across the table, and she smiled at him. I think they were fond of each other.'

‘Was that the last time you saw him?'

‘No, he came in to lunch on Saturday. Alone. That was just like usual.'

Swilley lost interest. Serhati seemed like a dead end. She wound up the interview with questions about the previous afternoon. He was not much help. The restaurant closed between three and seven and he and his wife and all his staff had gone home as they usually did between sessions. He hadn't noticed anyone going to Mr Bygod's door during the hours he was here, but then he wouldn't notice when he was working. People passed by all the time, and he couldn't see Bygod's door unless he stood right by the window, which he never did.

‘If you think of anything that might help us, please get in touch,' Swilley said, giving him a card, and he hurried to open the door for her. As she passed him, going out, he touched her arm, briefly and shyly.

‘How did they do it? I mean, was it – bad?' She froze him off with a look, and he said instead, humbly, ‘I'm sorry. I only pray he didn't suffer.'

And, surprisingly for her, she took pity on him and said, ‘I think it was quick.'

The cleaner's name was Angela Kroll, and she called herself Mr Bygod's housekeeper. She had had blood on her clothes, so they had been taken away and she had been given coveralls and slippers to wear until her husband could collect her and bring a new set. ‘But they've put her in the soft room and given her coffee,' Atherton reported when they got back to the station.

In Atherton's view the soft room, which is what he called the interview suite where they took witnesses rather than suspects – people they
didn't
want to intimidate – wasn't any great shakes, but it was better than the bare rooms behind the front shop. It had carpet and upholstery and smelled of air freshener rather than feet and vomit.

‘Kroll is the German word for someone with curly hair,' Atherton went on chattily as they trod up the stairs. ‘So what we have here is a curly-haired angel. You can't get any purer than that.'

‘Try not to let it prejudice you against her.'