Hard Going Read Online Free Page A

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