Game Over (9 page)

Atherton said, ‘Emily’s pining for a cup of tea. Could you show her the way to the canteen?’

‘It’s all right, I can find it,’ Emily said.

But Joanna said, ‘I’m dying for one myself. Do you mind if I come with you?’

‘No, I’d be glad of the company.’

‘Will you tell me when he gets back?’ Joanna asked Atherton, and they went off together.

‘So you’re Inspector Slider’s . . . partner?’ Emily said, a little hesitantly, as they walked up the stairs.

‘Soon to be wife,’ Joanna said. ‘It’s just that it’s so hard to find a time when we’re both free. Whenever we do tentatively fix a date for the wedding, something always comes up.’

‘Like my father.’

‘I’m so sorry. I hope you didn’t think I meant—’

‘No, no. Look, if we’re going to sit and have tea together, you’ll have to not tiptoe round me. The whole thing’s too awful for me to know what I feel about anything yet. I’m pretty numb, if you want the truth.’

‘Probably just as well,’ said Joanna.

The canteen was almost empty. They got tea and Joanna, feeling they needed a sugar hit, picked up a packet of two giant chocolate chip cookies, and they made their way to a table by the window.

‘It must be strange for you,’ Emily said when they were seated. ‘What’s it like to be with a man who investigates murders for a living?’

‘I used to mind it terribly at first,’ Joanna said, tearing the end off the cookie packet. ‘I’ve had to switch off from it a bit, they way they do. They can’t get emotional or it interferes with their judgement.’ She handed one of the cookies to Emily, who took it absently. ‘All the same, he minds dreadfully. He’s always very depressed at the end of a case, when the adrenaline lets him down and he’s able to let his feelings loose.’ She smiled faintly. ‘That’s where I come in – general hand-holding, head-cradling and so on.’

Emily nodded seriously. ‘That must be tough. How did you meet him?’

‘He investigated the murder of a violinist I shared a desk with. I was about her only friend, but even I didn’t know her well. It was so sad and awful.’

‘It must have been.’

‘He was married to someone else at the time, but I don’t think she’d ever really understood what he felt about these things. He did tend to keep his feelings very much to himself. You know what men of his generation are like. So it all built up and he had a kind of nervous breakdown. And out of the mess, he and I got together and we’ve been together ever since.’

‘So, good coming out of evil. I wish I could think anything good would come out of this.’ She broke off a small piece of cookie and watched her fingers turning it into crumbs. ‘Is he good?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Bill? He’s the best. And he never gives up. Best of all, you can talk to him, and he really listens.’

‘And the other one? Sergeant Atherton?’

‘Jim is Bill’s friend as well as his bagman, so he’s my friend too. He’s brilliant in his way.’

‘Is he seeing anyone?’

Joanna thought it an odd question, but took jetlag into account. ‘He was going out with a friend of mine, another violinist, but they split up a while back.’ She didn’t say, ‘Why do you ask?’ but her tone asked the question clearly enough.

Emily said, ‘He offered me his spare room. I didn’t want to be treading on anyone’s toes.’

‘You won’t be.’ Speculation was so rife it was lucky Emily was not looking at her just then.

‘Why d’you think he did it?’ Now she looked up. ‘Offered?’

‘Just kindness,’ Joanna said firmly. ‘He’s a kind person underneath.’

Emily nodded wearily. ‘That’s what I thought. I’m glad I was right.’

Five

To Err is Divine . . .

T
he basement of Valancy House ran under the whole building so it was very spacious. The caretaker’s flat occupied only part of it: sitting-room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, reasonably sized, according to Hart, but dark and depressing, with bars at all the windows, which looked out on to the small yard at the back where the dustbins lived. ‘Still, to get a flat that size in this area, you’d put up with a lot worse,’ she concluded. ‘I reckon Dave Borthwick knows he’s lucky, ’cos to my mind he’d never earn enough if the flat didn’t come with the job.’

‘Not very bright?’

‘Not very anything,’ Hart said, ‘except muscle-bound and ugly. Though I reckon we’ll find he’s well tasty. If he’s not got a record, my arse is an apricot. Sorry, boss.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ Slider said graciously. ‘We’ll put Hollis on it when we get back. Borthwick’s record, I mean, not . . .’

‘Gotcha.’

The rest of the basement was windowless, stone-floored, the walls clad to shoulder height with those glazed brown tiles beloved of Edwardians, the bare bricks painted above with pale green distemper, lit by naked forty-watt bulbs hanging from flexes that were probably the originals. Footsteps echoed down there, and there were distant mysterious groans, thumps and gurgles of pipes, and a monotonous dripping as if an unseen tap somewhere had a faulty washer.

‘I could feel right at home here,’ Hart said chirpily. ‘My school was just like this.’

Part of the space was taken up with the pit of the lift-shaft and the bottom of the stairs. There was an open area around them, a door in the adjacent wall into the flat (battered metal with a massive keyhole) and then various rooms around the perimeter, linked by corridors. Presumably at one time the caretaker had had a lot more to do for the residents than in modern days. One room was evidently the coal-store, for there was a chute leading up to a circular bronze hatch in the pavement above, and a lingering, ghostly smell of coal, though it was swept clean. Next door was an ancient boiler squatting on a concrete dais, though all its pipes had been removed.

‘Must’ve used to run the central heating. They’ve all got individual gas boilers in the flats now,’ Hart said.

In another room was an array of grey metal cupboards housing the fuses and access to the circuits for the whole building. One cupboard, Slider noticed, had a sticker on the front, a white plastic circle with a telephone logo in the centre and the words RING 4 SECURITY around the perimeter.

‘That, presumably, is the security door,’ said Slider.

He tried the door but it was locked. The sticker looked newly applied and did not quite cover an elderly paper sticker underneath, which was triangular rather than round, so its faded, frayed corners just showed.

‘This is what I wanted to show you, guv,’ Hart said, leading him to another room, the one nearest the door to Borthwick’s flat.

There was a massive metal sink in the corner with a single cold tap above it – the source of the dripping sound – and the marks on the walls of various machines and pipes long removed. It looked as though it had once been a laundry, either self-service or for the caretaker or his wife to perform service washes. Or perhaps people had kept servants in the old days. It was an interesting speculation to Slider, who always wanted to know how people had lived in times past, but not nearly as interesting as the object which occupied the centre of the room: a large Triumph motorbike, propped on its foot stand, an oil-stain underneath it, and a tool-kit spread out on a filthy square of canvas beside it.

‘Borthwick’s?’ Slider asked.

‘Yeah. I thought you’d like it,’ said Hart with pleasure.

‘How does he get it out? Not through his flat?’

‘Nah. There’s a door into the yard under the stairs over there. For taking the rubbish out.’

‘Locked?’

‘One of them push-bar jobs. It looks in good nick. But it doesn’t matter, does it?’ She went to the reason for the question. ‘The stairs down to here are open, anyone could come down, and we know the security door wasn’t working.’ She thought a bit more. ‘But why d’you think the murderer might come down here?’

‘Just covering the bases,’ Slider said. ‘You always need to know where the access points are. So, Borthwick’s got a bike, has he?’

‘Yeah,’ said Hart. ‘I wonder if he’s got leathers, an’ all.’

Emily and Joanna had gone to a second cup of tea and a pack of three custard creams. They were still talking (Emily was intelligent about music and interesting about journalism, so the conversation generated itself spontaneously) when April behind the counter, telephone in hand, called across, ‘Mr Slider’s back, love.’

‘Do you mind?’ Joanna said, rising. ‘I want to talk to him.’

‘So do I,’ said Emily.

They got down to the CID room to find new events already in train. Slider hadn’t even got as far as his room. He put his arm round Joanna and kissed her cheek but his attention was on Norma Swilley, at her desk and on the phone.

Atherton, coming up beside Emily, explained. ‘It’s not about your dad, it’s another case.’ And to Joanna, ‘Someone’s using the mobile that Bates called on this morning.’

‘Really? Then if you can get a trace on it, you might catch him?’

Slider glanced at her. ‘In theory. But in practice—’ He broke off as Swilley looked up.

‘Boss,’ she said, with a shadow of puzzlement in her eyes, ‘Mick Hutton says he hasn’t had an official request yet to monitor that number. Not from any of the SOs. No-one has.’

That was strange. Wouldn’t they be eager to follow up the only lead they had on a wanted, dangerous, jailbreak master criminal? But there was no time to wonder about it.

‘It’s their loss and our opportunity. Let’s get after him. Mackay, McLaren – who’s next door from uniform?’

‘Renker and Gallon.’

‘Good.’ They were both big, hefty lads. ‘Get ’em. Norma, stay on the line with Hutton and liaise with us through Atherton.’

‘You’re going?’ Atherton asked, seeing Joanna’s eyes widen. Slider gave him a silencing look. Of
course
he was going!

Fathom spoke up excitedly. ‘Guv, let me come.’

Atherton, still holding Slider’s eyes, said, ‘He might not be alone.’

Slider nodded. ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Fathom, heading for the door through which the other two had already disappeared. ‘But do exactly as you’re told.’

‘Yes, guv,’ Fathom said, grinning in triumph as he followed.

Into the small silence that followed, Norma said, ‘He’s still on the line.’

‘What
is
all this?’ Emily asked.

Atherton had gone to his phone to establish the link with Slider, so Joanna answered.

‘Come over here, out of the way, and I’ll tell you about it,’ she said.

She found her hands were shaking a little. She so badly wanted Bates caught; but Slider had gone himself, and a cornered fox was unpredictable.

The time seemed to drag by horribly, but in fact they were not away very long. When Slider came back into the room Joanna’s heart clenched with relief; only afterwards did she realise with sickening disappointment that his rapid return meant it had been a false alarm.

‘You didn’t get him?’

‘Oh, we got him all right,’ he said grimly. ‘“Him” being a fourteen-year-old boy.’ He held up the evidence bag with the mobile in it. ‘Jason Clifton. Found it lying on the front garden wall of a house, partly hidden by the privet hedge. He’d just come out of school, couldn’t believe his luck. Pocketed it, then as soon as he’d put a bit of distance between himself and the site, he rang up a mate to boast about it, and was still having a long, luxurious chat when we turned up.’

‘You believe him?’ Joanna asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Slider said wearily. ‘I think it was Bates’s idea of a joke. I think he bought the mobile for the single purpose of making fools of us. The only possible help it might be is that he might have hung around to see the fun, so we’re bringing the boy in for questioning as soon as we’ve got hold of his appropriate adult. But I doubt if he can tell us anything. We know what Bates looks like. What we don’t know is where to find him.’

‘I suppose,’ Joanna said hesitantly, ‘he wouldn’t be at home? Is that a silly question?’

‘The house was sealed up when he was arrested, and they’ve been watching it ever since he was sprung from the security van,’ Atherton answered.

‘
They
being?’

‘SOCA – the Serious Organised Crime Agency.’

‘And is that the same SOCA that didn’t get the mobile phone monitored?’ Joanna asked.

‘Good point,’ Atherton said. He looked at Slider. ‘Should we maybe check that it
is
being done?’

‘If you can think of a way to do it discreetly,’ Slider said.

‘I’m on it, guv,’ Hart said. ‘Phil Warzynski at Notting Hill’s an old mate of mine.’

In the car on the way home, Joanna asked for more detail on the Bates business, but there wasn’t much more Slider could tell her.

‘I’m glad the others are going to help you try and find him,’ she said.

‘So am I. Though they’re putting themselves on the line – could be disciplinary action if they’re found out.’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. They love you, stupid.’

‘You look tired.’