‘Tyler?’
‘No, the Bates escape.’
‘There’s no “got to” about it.’
‘But if we find out how he got away, it might give us a clue as to where he is.’ He saw this was not playing with his boss, and added, ‘Also they mustn’t be allowed to get away with it – whoever “they” are.’
‘If your suspicion, which is no more than a suspicion, has any truth in it, which is doubtful. Anyway, I can’t spare you from the Stonax case.’ Slider winced inwardly as he caught himself referring to it like that in front of Emily.
But Emily didn’t seem to notice. Her face was alight with eagerness. ‘Let me do it,’ she said. They both looked at her, Atherton with interest, Slider doubtfully. ‘Look, I’m an investigative journalist. It’s what I do. I know where to look things up and I know how to get people to talk to me. They’ll tell me things they would never tell a policeman. Let me do it, please! Let me take it off your minds while you get on with finding out who killed Dad.’
‘I can’t agree to it,’ Slider said at last, though with a little reluctance. If there was some connivance at Bates’s escape, he badly wanted to know about it.
‘You don’t have to,’ she said, and jumped over his difficulty for him. ‘In fact, you can’t actually stop me, you know. Once I leave here you won’t know what I’m doing, and as a free citizen I can exercise my right to ask questions of anyone I please.’
Slider sighed. ‘If you put it that way. But be careful.’
‘Of course.’
‘And understand that it will be without any official sanction whatsoever.’
She smiled suddenly, and it was good to see, like the first breaking of sun through clouds. ‘I never work any other way,’ she said.
Ten
Trapped Nerd
Joanna phoned from a curry house in Leeds at six o’clock.
‘We’re just getting something to eat between rehearsal and concert. There’s a whole crowd of us here, so don’t worry.’
‘I’d worry for the audience,’ Slider said, ‘with half the orchestra breathing out balti and vindaloo. I hope you’re not playing “Blow the Wind Southerly”.’
‘Ha ha. You’d have made a great musician,’ Joanna said. ‘How’s it by you, anyway?’
He told her what little progress had been made, but on a last minute decision did not tell her the idea about Bates being sprung, in case it worried her more. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘The Holiday Inn, and I’m sharing a room with Sue, so I won’t be alone. And a few others are staying as well, so we’ll be in company. It’ll be a chance to tell Sue about Jim and his new infatuation.’
‘Do you think she’ll mind?’ Slider asked, imagining Joanna spending the evening soaking up sobs and handing out Kleenex. It didn’t sound like a fun occasion to him.
‘Bound to, a bit, but I don’t think it’ll break her heart. It was her who decided they weren’t suited, and I’m sure now that she’s right. She needs someone more down to earth – and someone who’ll appreciate her, not try to make her live up to him.’
‘Ouch,’ said Slider.
‘Well, Jim can be a bit – challenging,’ she said carefully. ‘Much as we love him. Anyway, I suspect there’s a new interest in her life, which is always the best cure. I told you there’s quite a few of us here – in the curry house, I mean – which includes most of the brass section, and John Saxby, one of the trombones, is at our table and being very attentive to Sue.’
‘A trombone player?’
‘Don’t be snobbish. He’s really nice and quite gentle and thoughtful under that rough ey-oop exterior. He and Sue would be very good together.’
‘Matchmaker.’
‘I want my friend to be happy. I’d better go – someone else wants the phone. Wait, here’s a musical joke for you. How many clarinettists does it take to change a light bulb?’
‘Dunno.’
‘One, but you need a huge box of bulbs.’
‘Ha!’
‘Thought you’d like it. Tell Jim. And take care of yourself.’
‘I will. You too.’
‘I miss you so much.’
‘Me too.’
‘I might phone you tonight, when I go to bed. If it’s not too late.’
‘Phone anyway, even if it is.’
There was one last phone call before he knocked off for the evening, from Jimmy Pak, their civilian aide who specialised in computers. He reported that the computer had been delivered to him and he had had a preliminary look into it.
‘The good news is that I don’t think whoever took the Cyber-box has accessed it. It leaves a trace when it’s used, and the last access seems to have been four days ago when Stonax was still alive. I suppose they haven’t had time to work out the password yet.’
‘And can you stop anyone accessing it in the future?’
‘Yes, that’s not difficult. I’ve already done that. And I’ve got into his main files all right. That password wasn’t hard to figure. Most people use names and birth dates of their nearest and dearest when security isn’t a big issue. But I’ve found a whole lot of encrypted files in there, and I guess that’s the stuff you’ll want to access.’
‘Can you get in?’
‘Once I’ve got the password. I don’t suppose you have any clues to it? It would save time.’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh, well, never mind. I will work it out, I’ve never been beaten yet, but it will take time, that’s all. I’ll send you a print out by heading of what’s in the main body of files, in case there’s anything you’re interested in, and then concentrate on the encrypted stuff.’
‘Thanks, Jimmy. Have a good evening.’
‘Kidding? I’m just starting work. Night’s the best time for me. I sleep in the morning when people start making a noise.’
Slider put things away and locked his desk, thinking of the little shaggy-haired figure hunched over a keyboard under a pool of light from a desk lamp, clicking and mousing away through the silent hours like the shoemaker’s elves. It was an odd sort of life – but then that’s what most people thought about his.
Atherton found himself suddenly shy when he and Emily got back to his house, and she seemed a tense and ill-at-ease too. It could be the moment when what had happened so far backfired, when she felt repelled by the memory of what they had done and blamed him or herself for it. The knowledge that the relationship was on a knife-edge made him realise very clearly how important it was to him, and for once in his life he didn’t know what to do. He had developed a thousand ploys to cover every situation he normally found himself in with a woman, but he couldn’t use ploys on her. And he had never been in this situation before. He was terrified of getting it wrong, and the terror paralysed him.
Fortunately the siameses dashed into the breach, thundering into the room with competing loud remarks about the lateness of the hour and the absence of food in their dishes. Vash shinned lightly up Emily and sat on her shoulder, shouting chattily into her ear like someone talking to a deaf person, while Tig did his Wall of Death challenge, racing round the room at top speed without touching the floor. It broke the gathering ice, and Atherton offered up a silent thank you to the absent Sue for having forced him to take them on.
‘Hungry?’ he asked Emily.
‘Very,’ she said. ‘I don’t seem to have had any lunch.’
‘That often happens with police work. I read a thing about the First World War, where soldiers always said if anyone offered you food you should eat it, even if you’d just had a meal, because you never knew when the next meal was coming. I’ll see what there is in the fridge.’
She drifted into the kitchen after him, looking dead tired, and bleak around the eyes. The thing to do, he thought, was to keep her occupied. ‘Would you mind feeding the kits?’ he said. ‘Their food’s in the cupboard under the sink, in the big plastic bucket-thing.’
She did as he asked wearily and without commen
t, but in a moment was laughing as Tig and Vash climbed over and around her with the fluidity of ferrets, trying to get at the food before it got to the dishes. ‘They’re impossible! Look at this one, trying to jam his head into the bucket! Get out, you silly animal. Let me fill the bowl first! How much should I give them?’
‘A scoop in each bowl is fine. And if the water bowl’s empty, could you fill it from the tap, please?’
By the time she had done these things, he was ready to say, ‘How about chicken, bacon and avocado salad? The avocadoes are just about ready now.’
‘Lovely.’
‘And I’ve got a bottle of Meurseult in the fridge. Would you like a drink beforehand? I could do with a gin and tonic. Would you make them while I get the bacon on? And put some music on?’
So he kept her gently occupied, until Rachmaninov’s first symphony laid its firm opening notes down into the silence, and she came back to the kitchen door with two tumblers and offered him one. He thanked her and left the bacon to get some ice out and drop a lump into each drink. Then he paused on the brink of saying cheers, tripping over another of those invisible obstacles, because it wasn’t quite the right thing to say, was it?
She obviously felt it too, because she said, ‘Is it right to be like this? Food, music – a drink?’
‘You know it is,’ he said.
‘But it seems wrong to want to enjoy them. Isn’t it disrespectful? I ought to be in mourning.’
‘And you are. Aren’t you?’
She nodded. She knocked her knuckles against her chest and said, ‘It’s like a sort of sump of misery in here. I want to cry and howl, and I’m afraid to. I’m afraid to let go.’
‘That’s natural,’ he said. ‘It’s your own self defending itself. It’s too much to think about now. When the time comes that you can cope with it, you’ll do it. Your father would understand that.’
Her hand went up automatically to the locket and took hold of it: it fitted nicely into her closed palm, and Atherton imagined the smooth, warm feeling of it. Comforting.
‘Yes, he would,’ she said. ‘He was always so good about feelings. It can’t have been easy bringing up a teenage girl alone, but he coped with all the moods and floods and sulks and always managed to make me feel normal. You know?’
‘You weren’t normal?’
‘It wasn’t normal to live with your dad instead of your mum. But apart from that—’ She hesitated.
‘Anyone who is a bit out of the ordinary by definition can’t be normal. And that includes anyone who is more intelligent or more talented or more gifted than the rest.’
She looked relieved. ‘You do understand. Not that I’d say I was gifted or anything,’ she said, back-pedalling automatically, ‘but I was brighter than the other kids in the neighbourhood. And they knew it too.’
‘Kids always do. That’s why this business of not streaming never works. They always have an exact knowledge of the hierarchy, however you try to disguise it.’ He turned away to turn the bacon. ‘It just makes it harder for the bright ones, if you don’t let them be with other bright kids. They get bullied.’
‘Did you?’
‘Oh, yes. Beaten up regularly,’ he said lightly.
‘It makes you lonely,’ she said, as if commenting generally.
‘And being lonely gets you into all sorts of inappropriate relationships.’
He turned back and took up his glass again, and she said, ‘I’ve done that. Dad was so good about it. He always managed to make me see how inappropriate without setting my back up. You know how you always immediately want to do the opposite of what your parents tell you? Then, when I got a bit older, he said I should use as a rule of thumb whether I’d want to bring whoever-it-was back to meet him.’ She smiled. ‘That really narrowed the field!’
‘I bet it did,’ he said. His feelings were in such turmoil he had to turn away again, and concentrated on cutting and peeling the avocadoes. After a moment she put her glass down and took the second one and a knife and peeled along beside him. The cats finished their biscuit and sprang up on to the draining board to clean their whiskers and watch, their eyes on the chicken skin.
She said, ‘I’m not sorry about last night.’
‘Thank God for that,’ he said. ‘I’m not either. Are we OK, then?’
She didn’t immediately answer, but then said, quietly, and with a hint of the tears she was denying access to, ‘I think Dad would have approved of you.’
Slider drove home by a circuitous route, watching for motorbikes and black Focuses, and naturally enough there were plenty of both to keep him in a state of jitters. He was beginning to wind his way towards Turnham Green when he remembered that there wasn’t any food in the house. He thought of stopping at a supermarket, but the mental image of himself cooking in the empty flat was not convincing, so finally he stopped in Chiswick High Road, parked in a fortuitously empty space by the kerb, and walked down to the Chiswick Chippy and bought himself a rock and chips. There was a street bench on the pavement a little down from where he was parked, and he sat down there and opened his package and ate the fish and chips from the paper, while covertly watching the traffic and the passers-by.
He saw the black Focus go past twice. It wasn’t the same reg number that he had sent in before, but he was pretty sure it was the same car from the tinted glass and the way it slowed and idled a moment as it got to his part of the street. What innocent driver goes past the same spot twice at that time of night? He got out his mobile and rang through to the traffic division, gave the watchers the new number and urged them to send a patrol out right now. Then he slowed his consumption rate, lingering over each chip, and even eating the crumbs of batter in the bottom of the bag. They had used to call them ‘crackling’ when he was a kid. When the fish and chip van came round, if you hadn’t got enough money for chips you could get a pennorth of crackling to munch on.
He saw the unmarked patrol go by, but the Focus didn’t come past again. Had they seen him get his phone out and guessed why? He got up, dumped the vinegary paper into the nearest bin, and went to his car, and when the patrol came by again he signalled to them. They stopped beside him and wound down the window.
‘I think he’s taken fright,’ Slider said. ‘Maybe saw me phoning. But he might still be in the area.’
‘We’ll cruise around a bit, do a couple of passes by your house. Maybe we’ll spot him.’
Slider drove home, feeling weary and sick of the whole business. Was Emily’s theory right? If it was, it was the worst thing of all. He had given his life to the Job, and if the honesty and probity of those above him was going to come into question, then – well, it would be time for him to leave. He parked a way from his house, looked carefully for motorbikes before getting out, locked the car and crossed the road, walking on the opposite side, keeping to the shadow of the hedges and sending out his senses in all directions.
He saw nothing, heard nothing, until he got to the house. That morning when he locked the front door he had put a minute scrap of paper between the door and the jamb, at a point where the fit was too tight to allow it to fall unless the door was opened. The paper was no longer in place. As he fumbled out his key, he saw it in the corner of the porch, gleaming a warning at him. He let himself in carefully, listening, smelling, but the house was silent and seemed as usual. And yet, someone had been there. What had they done? Was it Bates, or one of his minions? Were they searching for something, or doing mischief? He remembered Bates’s area of greatest expertise: listening devices. Had he put in a mike somewhere? Or was that paranoia? What could Slider have to say that Bates could possibly find illuminating?
He closed the door behind him and, without putting on the light, walked slowly down the passage. The sitting-room was the first door, and it was just slightly ajar. He frowned. How had he left it? Not closed, that was for certain. They rarely closed that door. In fact, he rather thought it had been wide open that morning – wider than it was now, anyway. He eased out t
he side-arm baton that, feeling faintly foolish, he had slipped into his belt under his jacket before leaving the office. He didn’t feel foolish now. With the tip of it he pushed gently at the door, and felt a resistance. Was there something lying behind it? He got closer and pushed again, more firmly, and the door yielded. At the same moment there was a sensation of movement in the darkness above him, an indecipherable sound, a sharp pain in his head and shoulder, and then blackness.
Now someone was shaking his shoulder, a man’s voice saying, ‘Sir, are you all right? Sir?’
Slider groaned and opened his eyes and the light hurt. How was it light? Was it morning? No, it was electric light, he saw now, and he was lying on the floor in his own flat, in the doorway of the sitting-room, and his head and shoulder hurt abominably.
‘All right,’ he said, and the shoulder-shaking stopped. Slider squinted up. It was the traffic patrol man – what was his name? Willets, wasn’t it? – with his partner behind him, looking anxious. Slider struggled into a sitting position. ‘What happened?’ He remembered the blow in the darkness, and the details of Stonax’s death came back to him. ‘Was I coshed?’
‘Booby trap,’ said Willets. ‘We watched you go in as we went past, and then when we passed again and there were still no lights on, Wright said we ought to check if you were OK. You didn’t answer the door, and when I looked through the letter box I heard you groan, so we broke the glass panel in the door and let ourselves in.’
Now there’s broken glass to get fixed, the domestic part of Slider’s mind worried. ‘Booby trap?’ he said.
‘A bucket resting on the top of the door,’ said Willets. ‘A metal one.’ He gestured, and Slider turned his head, wincing, to see a large, heavy, old-fashioned galvanised bucket lying on the carpet. ‘Someone doesn’t like you, sir,’ Willets concluded, with questions sticking out all over his face.
Fortunately, Slider thought, he had not gone barging straight in, so the bucket had not hit him directly, but struck his head glancingly and the tip of his shoulder on its way down. The old schoolboy trick. Bates was making a fool of him. Had he meant to kill him? Well, probably not, but he wouldn’t have minded if he had.
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