Hard Going Read Online Free Page B

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.’
    Atherton smiled sinuously. ‘How well you know me.’ He looked keen, like a pointer in the presence of the guns. Slider could almost read his mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if the suspiciously named angel had done it? They’d find a motive, prove that the pattern of blood on her clothes could only have come from wielding the weapon, and – bingo! All done and dusted in time for tea.
    And of course, sometimes it happened that way. And often you got a confession to boot. People who had done someone to death in a moment of wildness, even where they had tried to cover up afterwards, were curiously eager to talk about it. And who was more willing to hear than your friendly plain-clothes police officer?
    Angela Kroll had nothing particularly angelic about her appearance, though glamour was not enhanced by the coveralls and a face scrubbed of make-up. She seemed to be in her late forties, a stringy, whippy sort of woman with large knuckly hands, a pale, indoors face, poor teeth, and no-coloured hair, straight and dragged back tight to her skull into a ponytail. It was hard to tell if she was upset about her employer’s death. Her eyes were jittery and her expression was guarded, but even the most innocent of civilians could get a little nutty in the presence of the police. Who didn’t have secrets in their lives? It was one of the ways you could spot the professional criminal under questioning: they were too much at ease.
    Slider started her off with the easy stuff to get her loosened up – name, address, marital status. She lived in Acton Vale with her husband, had three grown children, one still at home. Her husband was a builder. Kroll – no, it was a Polish name. She had a flat, North London accent and tended towards the terse and monosyllabic, but whether that was habitual, or nerves, Slider couldn’t tell.
    ‘How long have you worked for Mr Bygod?’ he asked.
    ‘Ten years,’ she said with a shrug that meant ‘more or less’.
    ‘And you’re his – housekeeper, you said?’
    ‘I clean, do his laundry, cook sometimes.’
    ‘You go in every day?’
    ‘Not weekends. Eight thirty till two, Monday to Friday.’
    ‘Is he married?’
    ‘Ex wife. Before my time.’ She seemed to read something into the question and bristled slightly. ‘I’m his housekeeper, that’s all. I know nothing about his private life.’
    ‘You seem to keep the house beautifully clean,’ Slider said soothingly.
    She shrugged again. ‘There’s not really enough work, but I stretch it out. He likes me to be there.’
    ‘To answer the door for him,’ Slider suggested.
    ‘When he’s out. If he’s in, he does it. With the entryphone. If it’s the postman or something, he sometimes asks me to go down.’
    ‘He didn’t like the stairs?’
    ‘He never went down to answer the door. He buzzed people up. Or not. Depending.’
    ‘On what?’
    ‘On whether he wanted to see them,’ she said witheringly.
    ‘Did he go out much?’
    ‘Sometimes. I don’t know