Hard Going Read Free Page B

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.

TWO
    Don’t Cry for Me, Ardent Cleaner
    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