Hard Going Read Online Free PDF

Atherton’s eye over her shoulder. All these people tramping in and out, and some of them low-life, if Mrs Kroll was to be believed, was going to make a real cat’s-tangle to unravel.
    â€˜You say he was divorced. Did he have any female friends?’
    â€˜I told you, I don’t know anything about his private life.’ She hesitated.
    â€˜Yes?’ Slider encouraged. ‘You thought of something.’
    â€˜Sometimes a woman phoned for him, didn’t sound like one of the parasites. Posh voice, sort of low and sexy.’
    â€˜Name?’
    â€˜She’d just say, “Tell him Nina rang.”’
    â€˜So you answered the phone for him?’
    â€˜When he was out,’ she said indignantly. ‘I told him to get an answer-machine, but he didn’t like stuff like that. Old-fashioned, he was.’
    â€˜There was no computer in the house,’ Slider mentioned.
    â€˜He didn’t want one, said all he needed was his typewriter. I said what about the Internet, but he said there were books for information, and people should talk face to face or on the phone. He said talking to machines would destroy society.’
    Slider remembered something Atherton had once quoted him, originally said by Albert Einstein: ‘I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will have a generation of idiots.’ You only had to see a group of youngsters out for the night, all texting away instead of talking to each other, to suspect old Al had a point.
    â€˜If you ask me he was dotty,’ Mrs Kroll went on. She started to heat up. ‘Got no TV either. Who doesn’t have a telly? Got this old radio he carried round to listen to the test match and the news. God knows what he did in the evenings.’
    Slider wondered too. Reading, or gadding about? ‘Was he a well man, would you say?’
    â€˜Seemed all right. He never complained.’
    â€˜He could get about all right? Or was he frail?’
    â€˜Frail?’ she said derisively. ‘He wasn’t that old.’
    He saw Atherton make a gesture, and asked, ‘Was he hard of hearing?’
    â€˜Not that I know of. Look, he may have been getting on, and he may have been weird about computers and such, but there was nothing wrong with him as far as I know.’ She stirred restively. ‘Is my old man here yet? I want to go home. I can’t sit about here all day talking to you. I’ve got stuff to do, you know.’
    â€˜They’ll ring up to us when your husband arrives,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘Just tell me what your usual routine was. You arrived at eight every morning?’ He said the wrong time deliberately so she would have to correct him. It would get her going.
    â€˜Half past,’ she said promptly. ‘I’d clear up the kitchen from his breakfast, and the night before if he’d cooked for himself. He went out to eat a lot, but he liked cooking as well.’
    â€˜So you’d know from the dirty dishes if he’d had people in.’
    â€˜I suppose so,’ she said sulkily.
    â€˜Go on. You cleaned the house?’
    â€˜Hoovered, dusted, polished. Made the bed. Bathroom. Put his laundry in the machine and ironed the dry stuff. Cooked him lunch sometimes if he wasn’t going out. Left at two sharp. That was it. Like I said, there wasn’t that much work – you don’t really need to clean a house every day – but he wanted me to be there.’
    â€˜Even when he wasn’t there? When he went out?’
    â€˜That was when I got the chance to clean his study properly. When he was in, he always sat in there. I cleaned round him, but it’s not the same, and if I was Hoovering and the phone rang I’d have to stop. Which it did, a lot.’
    â€˜And if visitors came?’
    â€˜I’d leave the room. Keep out of the way.’
    â€˜That must have been annoying for you,’ Slider said kindly,