Playing for the Ashes (87 page)

Jimmy was indeed circling back in the direction of Cardale Street, but Lynley was unwilling to believe he’d be such a fool as to run directly into a trap. The boy had looked behind him more than once. Surely he would have seen that Sergeant Havers wasn’t with those who were trailing him.

He gained the far side of the playing field. It was bordered with a hedge. He crashed right through it, but he lost several seconds when he stumbled and fell to his knees on the other side.

Lynley’s chest felt banded round with heat. He hoped the boy would stay where he was. But as Lynley closed the gap between them, Jimmy surged to his feet and stumbled on.

He raced across a vacant lot where a burnt-out car sat on rotting tyres amid empty wine bottles and rubbish. He burst from the lot onto East Ferry Road, and dashed to the north in the direction of his home. Lynley heard the boy’s mother crying out, “I told you!” but even as she cried, Jimmy darted across the road, dodged a motorcycle rider who skidded and slid to miss him, and
flu
ng himself up the stairway to Crossharbour Station where even now a blue train from the Docklands Railway was sliding to a halt on the elevated tracks.

Lynley stood no chance. The doors of the train were closed on the boy and the train itself was pulling out of the station as Lynley thundered onto East Ferry Road.

“Jimmy!” his mother screamed.

Lynley fought to catch his breath. Jean Cooper reeled to a stop against him. Behind them, the journalists were fi ghting through the hedge. They were shouting as much at each other as they shouted at Lynley.

“Where’s he going?” Lynley asked.

Jean shook her head. She gasped for breath.

“How many stations are left on the line?”

“Two.” She dragged her hand across her brow. “Mudchute. Island Gardens.”

The railway line was straight, Lynley saw, running parallel to East Ferry Road. “How far to Mudchute?”

Jean dug her knuckles into her cheek.

“How far?” he demanded.

“A mile? No, less. Less.”

Lynley gave the train a last look as it disappeared. He couldn’t run it by foot. But Car-dale Street emptied into East Ferry Road sixty yards to the north, and the Bentley was sitting in Cardale Street. There was a slight chance….

He ran in the direction of the car. Jean Cooper followed hard behind him. She was crying, “What’re you going to do? Leave him be. He’s done nothing. He’s got nothing more to tell.”

In Cardale Street, Sergeant Havers was leaning against the Bentley. She looked up at the sound of Lynley’s approach.

“Lose him?” she asked, as Lynley gasped, “The car.
Go
.”

She clambered inside. Lynley started the Bentley with a roar. Stan and Shar darted out of the house, their mouths forming cries that went unheard over the engine, and as Shar fumbled with the latch on the front gate, Jean Cooper rounded the corner and waved them back.

Lynley stomped on the accelerator and swung from the kerb. Jean Cooper leapt into the path of the car.

Havers cried, “Watch it!” and grabbed on to the dashboard as Lynley slammed on the brakes and swerved to miss her. Jean pounded her fist against the car’s bonnet, then stumbled along its side and pulled open the back door. She fell inside, gulping, “Why…why’n’t you
leave
him? He’s done nothing. You
know
that. You—” Lynley took off.

They careened round the corner and sped south on East Ferry Road. They whizzed past the journalists who were limping breathlessly in the opposite direction, towards Cardale Street. Above them and just to the west of the road, the tracks for the Docklands Railway ran, making a clean line for Mudchute.

“Did you get the Manchester Road substation?” Lynley’s words came out in
fit
s and starts.

“They’re on it,” Havers said.

“Police?” Jean cried. “More police?”

Lynley sounded the horn at a lorry in front of them. He swung into the right lane and shot past it. The fashionable housing of Crossharbour and Millwall Outer Dock gave way to the dingy brick terraces of Cubitt Town, where flags of laundry fluttered from clotheslines strung width-wise across narrow back gardens.

Jean’s hand clutched the back of Lynley’s seat as they veered round an old Vauxhall that puttered along the road like a hedgehog. Her voice was insistent when she demanded, “Why’d you ring the police? You’re the police. We don’t need them. He’s only—”

“There!” Sergeant Havers’ arm shot out in the direction of Mudchute, where the land rose away from the road in knolls created over generations from the silted mud of the Mill-wall docks. Jimmy Cooper was scurrying up one of these knolls, scrambling southeast.

“He’s going to his gran’s,” Jean asserted as Lynley pulled to the edge of the road. “In Schooner Estate. My mum’s. That’s where he’s going. South of Millwall Park.” Lynley thrust open his door. Jean said, “I
tol
’ you where he’s going. We can—”

He said, “Drive,” to Havers and set off after the boy as his sergeant climbed over to his seat. He heard the engine rev behind him as he struck the first knoll and began to sprint up its side. The ground was moist from the last of April’s rain, and his shoes were leather. So he slipped and slid in the crumbly earth, once stumbling to his knees, twice grasping on to the white dead-nettle and the ratstail that flourished in the uncut grass. At the top of the knoll, the wind gusted unimpeded across the open expanse of land. It
flu
ng back his jacket and watered his eyes, and he was forced to stop and blink to clear his vision before going on. He lost four seconds, but he saw the boy.

Jimmy had the advantage of the trainers he was wearing. He’d made it through the knolls and was descending into the playing fields beyond them. But it appeared that either he thought he’d lost his pursuers or he’d given in to exhaustion, for he had slowed to a lopsided lope and he was grasping his waist as if he had a stitch in his side.

Lynley ran south along the top of the
fir
st knoll. He kept the boy in sight as long as possible before he had to descend and scale the second knoll. At the top of this, he saw that Jimmy had slowed to a walk, and with good reason. A man and a boy in matching red windcheaters were giving two Great Danes and an Irish wolfhound some exercise in the playing fields, and the dogs were tearing round in ambitious circles, from which they barked, snapped, and attempted to snare balls, rubbish, and anything else that moved. Having already experienced the Alsatian on Manchester Road, Jimmy wouldn’t want another run-in with an overlarge canine.

Lynley seized the advantage. He scaled the third knoll, half slid down its side, and began to sprint across the playing field. He gave the dogs as wide a berth as possible, but as he came within twenty yards of them, the wolfhound caught sight of him and began to bark. The Great Danes joined in. All three dogs headed in his direction. Their owners shouted. It was enough.

Jimmy looked over his shoulder. The wind took his long hair and threw it in his eyes. He shoved it away. He began to run.

He pounded out of the playing fields and into Millwall Park. Seeing the boy’s direction, Lynley allowed himself to slow. For beyond the park, Schooner Estate spread out its two-tiered blocks of grey and tan flats like a hand stretching fingers towards the Thames, and Jimmy headed unerringly towards this. He wouldn’t know that Sergeant Havers and his mother had anticipated his movements. By now they would have reached the estate. Intercepting him would be easy enough if he headed into the car park.

His course through the park was unveering. He raced across the grass and thudded through the flower beds that lay in his way. It was only at the final moment at the car park’s edge, that he feinted a run towards the
fla
ts to the east only to bring himself round at the last moment and charge south instead.

Over the wind, Lynley could hear Sergeant Havers’ shout, followed by Jean Cooper’s cry. He flew into the car park in time to see the Bentley storming after the boy, but Jimmy had the advantage over the car. He charged into the loop of the horseshoe that formed the southernmost section of Manchester Road. A lorry there crashed on its brakes to miss him. He skipped round it, gained the pavement on the other side, and hurdled over the metre-high fence that bounded the grey, prison-like expanse of the George Green Comprehensive School.

Havers propelled the Bentley onto the pavement. She was flinging herself out of it when Lynley caught her up. The boy had raced along the front of the school and was rounding its western corner.

Jimmy had an unimpeded course on the empty school-grounds, and he made the most of it. As Lynley and Havers gained the corner of the building, the boy had already crossed the yard. He’d used a rubbish bin as a mount for the back wall, and he was up and over it before they’d run twenty yards.

“Take the car,” Lynley said to Havers. “Go round. He’s heading for the river.”

“The river? Bloody hell! What’s he—”

“Go!”

Behind him, he heard Jean Cooper crying out something inarticulately as Sergeant Havers dashed back in the direction of the car. Her cry faded as he made for the wall. He grasped the top of it, used the rubbish bin to launch himself, and went over.

Another road lay behind the school. On its north side, it was faced by a wall. Its south side was built up with trendy river housing: modern brick communities with electronic security gates. These buildings ran along the crescent of the road in a nearly unbroken line. They ended at a stretch of lawn and trees, bordering the river. This was the only possibility. Lynley ran towards it.

He passed through the entrance where a sign identified the park as Island Gardens. At its far west end, a circular brick building stood, domed in glass and mounted by a white-andgreen lantern cupola. A movement of white shimmered against the red bricks, and Lynley saw Jimmy Cooper trying the building’s door. It was a dead end, Lynley thought. Why would the boy…? He looked to his left, across the water, and understood. Their run had brought them to the Greenwich foot tunnel. Jimmy was going to cross the river.

Lynley picked up speed. As he did so, the Bentley careened round the far corner. Jean Cooper and Sergeant Havers spilled out. Jean shouted her son’s name. Jimmy dragged on the handles of the tunnel door. The door didn’t move.

Lynley was closing in quickly from the northeast. Sergeant Havers and Jean Cooper were doing the same from the northwest. The boy looked in one direction, then the other. He took off east, along the river wall.

Lynley began to cut across the lawn to intercept him. Havers and Jean Cooper followed the path. Jimmy produced a final burst of speed and strength, leapt over a bench, and sprang onto the wall. He hoisted himself atop the railing of lime-coloured wrought-iron that fenced the gardens off from the river below them.

Lynley called the boy’s name.

Jean Cooper screamed.

Arms flailing, Jimmy plunged into the Thames.

CHAPTER
23

L
ynley reached the river wall first. Jimmy thrashed below him in the water. The tide was high, but it was still coming in, so the current flowed swiftly from east to west.

Jean Cooper screamed her son’s name as she reached the river wall. She threw herself at the railing and began to climb it.

Lynley pulled her back. He thrust her at Havers. “Phone the river police.” He tore off his jacket and kicked off his shoes.

“That’s Waterloo Bridge!” Havers protested as she struggled with Jean Cooper, holding her back. “They’ll never make it in time.”

“Just do it.” Lynley climbed onto the wall and hoisted himself atop the railing. In the river the boy was stroking ineffectually, hampered by the current and his own exhaustion. Lynley dropped to the other side of the railing. Jimmy’s head sank under the turbid water.

Lynley dived. He heard Havers shouting, “Bloody hell! Tommy!” as he hit the water.

It was North Sea cold. It was moving faster than he would have suspected from looking at it behind the safety wall in Island Gardens. The wind chopped against it. The tide’s
flu
x created an undertow. The moment that Lynley surfaced from his dive, he could feel himself being swept southwest, into the river but not towards the opposite shore.

He lashed his arms against the water, trying to keep himself afloat. He searched for the boy. Across the river, he could see the facade of the naval college, to its west the masts of the
Cutty Sark
. He could even make out the domed exit to the Greenwich foot tunnel. But he couldn’t see Jimmy.

He let the current take him as it would take the boy. His heart and his breathing thundered in his ears. His limbs felt heavy. Dimly he heard screams from Island Gardens, but with the wind, his heart, and his gasping lungs, he couldn’t make out what they were trying to tell him.

He twisted in the water as it carried him on. Treading, trying to locate Jimmy. There were no boats to come to his aid. Pleasure boats wouldn’t take chances in the gusty weather, and the last of the tourist crafts were gone for the day. The only vessels a
flo
at in the area were two barges chugging slowly up river. And they were at least three hundred yards away, too far to hail even if they could have built up the speed to reach Lynley in time to find the boy.