Game Over (10 page)

‘It’s been a long day. Did you know Jim’s taking Emily Stonax home?’

‘I heard.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘It won’t hurt. She’s not a suspect. She wasn’t even in the country.’

‘I was in the country,’ she reminded him.

‘Well, we got away with it,’ he said, putting a hand on her knee. ‘Do you mind?’

‘About us or about Jim?’

‘He and Sue are really all over?’

‘They weren’t really suited. It’s a shame, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I think he’s just being kind – about Emily, I mean. I hope so, anyway. I wouldn’t like to think he’d take advantage of someone in her position.’

‘He wouldn’t. He’s a nice lad.’

‘Lad!’ She snorted. ‘You’re getting soft in your old age, you know,’ she added as he backed in to the last parking space in Turnham Green, which was fortuitously only fifty yards up the road from home.

Slider got out, and was just closing the car door when there was a tremendous roar. His instinct reacted before his mind had even worked out what the sound was, and he sprang like a springbok into the space between his car and the one in front as the motorbike howled past so close that the wind of it buffeted him. There was a crack, crash and tinkle as the wing-mirror of the car in front ripped off, hit the road and the glass shattered.

Joanna, on the pavement on her side of the car, gripped the edge of the roof with whitened fingers. He met her shocked eyes. ‘What the hell was that?’ she said through stiff lips.

‘Did you see it? Anything?’ he asked. Adrenaline was dashing about in his body like a headless chicken.

‘Nuh,’ she managed to bleat. Then she shook her head and said, in a more normal voice, ‘It was too quick. I wasn’t really looking. Just a blur.’

He went round the car and took her in his arms. ‘Are you all right?’

‘That’s my line,’ she said, and he knew she was. After a minute he released her, and she looked up into his face and said, ‘Was that
him
. Bates?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It could have been.’

‘He knows where we live? Or has he been following us?’

He took her by the elbows. ‘It might have been him, or it might have been nothing to do with him. But the point is this: if he wanted to kill me or hurt me he could have done so. If that was him, what he wants to do is frighten me, and by extension, you.’

‘Tell him he’s succeeded,’ Joanna said with grim humour.

They walked up the road and went indoors, Slider leading, eyes everywhere, senses on the stretch. But his instincts told him that there was no-one watching him, and there seemed nothing amiss in the house. They changed, washed, prepared a meal, and sat down with it. They didn’t talk until the food was gone.

Then Joanna said, ‘It’s not just us we have to think of.’

‘I know.’

‘There’s the baby.’

‘I know.’

‘I have to ask you again: do you think we’re in danger?’

He thought for an intense moment, but he could only say again, ‘I don’t know.’ He studied her face. ‘Are you afraid?’

She thought. ‘A bit. Not a lot, but a bit. Mostly I’m angry. No-one has the right to do this to us. It’s blackmail and I
hate
blackmail.’

‘Nice, normal, healthy reactions.’ He smiled, a trifle wearily. ‘I’m wondering if it might be better if you went away. Just for a little while.’

‘Until you catch him? But you don’t know how long that might be.’

‘I don’t want you to be here alone,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

‘Well, I’ve got Leeds tomorrow and Huddersfield the day after. My last two dates. I could stay up there overnight, if it helps.’

‘You weren’t going to drive back and then back again?’ he discovered.

‘Of course.’

‘In your condition?’

‘I’d sooner my condition slept in its own bed, thank you. But if it would stop you worrying . . .’

‘I think it would, a bit.’ Forty-eight hours wasn’t much time to catch him, but it was better than nothing. After that, they would have to talk again.

In bed, later, they held each other closely, and each pretended for the other’s sake to be asleep. After an hour or so they made love, carefully, because of the baby, and then they really did fall asleep.

In Atherton’s bijou artisan cottage, the teenage Siameses did their usual wall-of-death act, racing round the house without ever touching the ground, so fast they were just a blur. Sredni Vashtar and Tiglath Pileser – known as Vash and Tig for ease – were the legacy of his last attempt to get it together with Sue. She had persuaded him into getting them, but then when they finally broke up said she couldn’t have them because with her job she was away from home too much. There was truth in that; also, as she further pointed out, that he had had a cat before and she never had. So the kits stayed and mutated into mobile shredders. Once he had learned to put every piece of paper away and wedge the books into the bookcase, they worked out how to open the loo door and thereafter all his loo rolls became elegant white lace.

But they were a great ice-breaker and got Emily over any awkwardness there might have been in finding herself alone with Atherton in his house. Chatting about the cats, he took her bags up to the spare room and dumped them, showed her where the bathroom was, and then mixed them both a gin and tonic large enough to wash in. He left her playing with the cats while he went to the kitchen to start supper, and called over his shoulder that she should put some music on. He thought sorting through his CDs and then figuring out how to work the player would make her feel at home, and her choice of music might tell him something about her. He was eager to learn everything about her he could, but he didn’t know where to start. In the end it didn’t take her long either to select or to make the machine work. He was still chopping onion when she appeared in the kitchen doorway, glass in hand, with the opening chords of the
Symphonie Fantastique
behind her.

He glanced up. His heart looped the loop again. ‘Nice and noisy,’ he commented.

‘I started with the Bs,’ she admitted. ‘And it couldn’t be Brahms, Beethoven or Bach.’

‘No, I can see that,’ he said. ‘Too emotional.’

Her face cleared. ‘You understand. You know a lot about – well, stuff, don’t you?’

‘I did stuff at A Level.’

She watched him chop for a moment. ‘Can I help?’

‘Thanks, but there’s not really room in here for two.’

‘You like to cook?’

‘I like to eat, so there’s no alternative. Yes, I like to cook. I hope you like pasta. It’s just the quickest thing I’ve got ingredients for.’

‘I love pasta,’ she said. The cats had oozed past her into the kitchen and were winding themselves sinuously round his ankles, making suggestive remarks. ‘If you’ve got something to twiddle I’ll keep them out of your way. If you’re sure I can’t help.’

‘You can lay the table when the time comes. Thanks. There’s a catnip mouse on a string somewhere – probably under the sofa. Most things end up there.’

‘I see what you mean,’ she said a moment later, and brought out a sock and the inside bit of a toilet roll as well as the mouse. She was a good twiddler and the cats were soon absorbed in one of their monotonously ferocious games. ‘Your boss seems nice,’ she called out.

‘He is,’ Atherton replied. ‘He’s the best.’

‘That’s what Joanna said. She’s nice too.’

‘He’s the only man I can think of who deserves her.’

‘We had a good long talk in the canteen. She’s very sympathetic.’ She whipped the mouse across the room again and it disappeared under a writhe of cream fur. ‘She told me about this Bates person. Is he really dangerous?’

‘It’s hard to say. Usually these threats are only meant to frighten, but Bates was a pretty hard case.’ The chopping sounds stopped and he appeared in the doorway. ‘I don’t want you to think that anything will come in the way of your father’s investigation.’

‘I know,’ she said, looking up from her position, crouched on the floor. ‘But it occurred to me that I could help you. With two things going on you must be stretched, and I’m sure you never have enough staff. You read about it in the papers all the time, about the police being short-staffed. Obviously,’ she forestalled him, ‘I couldn’t do police things, I know that. But I could do research for you.’ He still looked at her doubtfully, and she urged, ‘I’m really good at that. It’s my job – a large part of it, anyway.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you are. I mean – yes, obviously you must be. You couldn’t use the police computer system, of course—’

‘I know that, but there must be lots of information in the public domain that might be useful to you. And then there’s all Dad’s paperwork to sort through. That’ll take a lot of time, if you don’t have enough people.’

‘I’ll have to ask Bill,’ Atherton said, ‘but, if you really want to get involved, I’m sure there’s something you could do.’ He smelled his onions catching and hurried back to the stove.

The pasta didn’t take long, and soon they were sitting down at the table with their bowls and a bottle of wine. He had a block of fresh Parmesan and leaned over to grate some for her.

‘This is really nice of you,’ she said. ‘To go to all this trouble.’

‘I told you, I like to eat.’

‘I didn’t mean only the food, but everything. It would have been hideous going to an hotel.’

‘That’s what I thought. Wine?’

‘Yes, please. I don’t want any risk of not sleeping tonight.’ She watched him pour, idly caressing the gold locket, something he guessed she did all the time and wasn’t aware of.

‘Nice locket,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Unusual. Is it old?’

‘Not to me – Dad sent it to me for my birthday last week. But it is antique, I think.’

‘It looks heavy.’

‘It is. Dad said it’s very valuable and warned me not to lose it, so I wear it all the time. It has his picture in it.’ Her eyes filled suddenly and dangerously with tears. ‘I can’t get used to the idea—’

‘I know,’ he said, getting up again, meaning to go round the table to her, but she shook her head, putting her hand up in a defensive gesture to stop him. He paused, awkwardly half up and half down, and she got out another tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose.

‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Please, sit down.’ He sat, watching her anxiously, and she said, ‘Will you tell me about you? I don’t want to talk about me because it will make me think about things, and I don’t want to think just now.’

‘Well, if you like,’ he said, feeling oddly shy about it. He had talked about himself often enough to women, but it was usually a seduction ploy – and they usually knew it as well as he did, so no-one was actually listening. But to tell her, really tell her, about himself would be – well, at the very least a novel sensation. ‘If you’re sure you want to know. It isn’t that interesting.’

‘I bet it is,’ she said.

It occurred to him that he had never seen anyone look more tired in his entire life. So he talked.

When they had finished eating, it was obvious that she was finished. ‘Would you like a bath?’ he offered.

‘I had a shower at the police station. I don’t think I’ve got the strength for any more washing.’ The wine and the gin had done their work – her eyes were closing as she spoke.

‘OK. You go in the bathroom and clean your teeth while I make the bed up, and then you can just fall in.’

It didn’t take him a minute to whip on a sheet and a duvet cover. She came back from the bathroom as he was doing the second pillow. He switched on the bedside lamp and said, ‘I hope you sleep all right. If you need anything in the night, I’m just across there. Call out and I’ll hear you.’

She nodded, seeming not to have the strength even to say goodnight. He backed out and closed the door, and went back downstairs.

In the middle of the night he woke with a start to the realisation that someone was in the room with him, and was half out of bed before he remembered that Emily was in the house; then she advanced to his bedside and he could see her dimly in the light filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside. She was wearing an outsize tee shirt which presumably did service instead of nightclothes, and he could see the gleam of the locket hanging against her chest. So she really did wear it all the time.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I can’t stop shivering,’ she said in a low tone. Her arms were wrapped round herself and she was hunched as if in pain.

‘Can I get you another blanket? An aspirin? A hot drink?’

‘No. Thanks. Can – can I get in with you for a bit? Just for the company? I can’t—’

That sentence didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. Silently he opened the bed to her and she climbed in, and he lay down and took her in his arms. She felt icy cold and was quivering and rigid with it. He held her quietly and gradually she warmed up and the quivering grew less. And then she started to cry.

It was like a summer storm, short and violent. He held her, cradling her head against his shoulder while she wept as if it were being torn out of her, and the hot tears soaked his neck. At last the tears eased and the sobbing died down, like thunder retreating. When she was quiet, breathing steadily, he thought she had fallen asleep.