Hard Going by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

all over the papers. Roxwell went to Lionel Bygod, who got him Wickham Williams to defend him.’
    â€˜I think I remember hearing something about that case,’ Slider said. ‘Roxwell. Crondace. The names ring a bell.’
    Connolly nodded. ‘O’ course, your man’s previous counted against him, and the press was hostile. There was a big paedophile scare going on at the time. It looked like Roxwell was a goner. But Wickham Williams pulled the evidence apart, and apparently Roxwell was good in the box and the girl wasn’t, and anyway, however it was, he got him off. So then there was a big fuss in the papers, and a campaign led by the Crondace kid’s da to get the acquittal overturned. He went after Wickham Williams and our Mr Bygod – Crondace did – and the papers loved it, splashed it as the nobs’ conspiracy against poor working folk, and all that class o’ caper. Asking why any decent person would defend a pervert like Roxwell.’
    â€˜I’m sure that went down well in the Inns of Court,’ Slider said.
    â€˜It got worse,’ Connolly assured him. ‘The story spread that Bygod and Wickham Williams were kiddy-fiddlers themselves, part of a big circle, including Roxwell, that looked out for each other’s backs. One remark Crondace made went viral – whatever the equivalent was in them days when they hadn’t the social media. He said QC meant Queer Customer. O’ course, something like that was jam for the press.’
    â€˜Why didn’t they sue?’ Slider asked.
    â€˜Well, boss, it happened that the silk dropped dead suddenly in the middle of all the fuss. Nothing wrong about it – apparently he’d had an undiagnosed heart condition, and maybe the strain brought it on. So Bygod was left alone to face the music. And instead of suing, he went to ground. Gave up his practice, sold his house, and disappeared.’
    Swilley had come in to listen. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘So there was something sinister about him after all?’
    â€˜You automatically assume he was guilty?’ Slider said. ‘A nice case of “give a dog a bad name and hang him”.’
    â€˜If he wasn’t guilty, why did he run? Why didn’t he sue? If a solicitor can’t sue, who can? Atherton said there was a pattern emerging.’
    â€˜That was about him being a homosexual,’ Connolly objected.
    â€˜Paedophiles often are,’ Hollis said. ‘Or at least, they’re not particular one way or the other. Boys or girls, it’s all the same.’
    â€˜It would certainly provide a motive for his murder,’ Slider said thoughtfully, ‘if he was reviled for getting a guilty man off.’
    â€˜Right,’ Connolly began eagerly.
    â€˜If,’ Slider interrupted, ‘there was any evidence that anyone had been after him in the intervening sixteen years.’
    â€˜Well, we don’t know, do we, boss?’ Connolly said. ‘He went to ground. Maybe they’d only just found him.’
    â€˜It’s something to look into. I think I’ll have a word with Jonny Care at Islington, see if I can get any more information on the Roxwell case. I’d like to know if there really was any substance in the accusations against Bygod – if he’d come to anyone’s attention before that.’ Care was the Islington DI he had worked with over the Ben Corley murder.
    â€˜Anyway, it gives a reason for the break in his life, doesn’t it, boss?’ Connolly said. ‘Why his current friends never met anyone he knew before.’
    â€˜And why he was no longer married,’ Swilley said. ‘Even if he was innocent, it’d be hard for a marriage to survive that sort of trauma.’
    Slider nodded. ‘The trouble with accusations of that sort is that, even if they’re untrue, a taint always lingers. The old “there’s no smoke without fire”