Game Over

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘What do we do, guv?’ Fathom asked. He was sweating with excitement now. ‘Do we grab him? Let’s go get him! Run across the road and collar him!’

  But the figure was already astride the bike. Even if they ran, by the time they got across there he’d be moving, and then they’d be on foot and he’d be motorised. He’d be away and gone while they were scrambling back to the car.

  ‘Follow him,’ Slider said tersely. Atherton gunned the engine. ‘There he goes.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Atherton said.

  The bike swerved out of the opening and on to the road, executed a flashy U-turn round an on-coming taxi, and hammered off down the road towards Shepherd’s Bush Green. Atherton was after him, while Slider radioed the information to the dispatcher. ‘I bet he goes up the motorway,’ Fathom said. He was leaning forward as if he could make the car go faster that way, gripping the back of Slider’s seat, his breath whistling hot past Slider’s ear. ‘He’s gonna go up the motorway. That’s what I’d do. Bet he does. Bet he does.’

  But he didn’t. He went on past the big roundabout towards the Green.

  ‘He wants to lose us in traffic,’ Atherton said grimly, through clenched driving teeth. There was still a lot of it about, and it was easier for a bike to weave through it than a car. Slider was glad Atherton was driving. His reactions were years quicker and he was completely fearless behind a wheel.

  ‘What about the bubble, guv?’ Fathom suggested.

  ‘It might help me,’ Atherton agreed.

  ‘And it might make him nervous,’ Slider said. He reached out of the window on his side and slapped the blue light on to the roof. As the siren wailed he saw the motorcyclist look back over his shoulder. I’m going to look a complete plonker if it isn’t Bates, Slider thought. And he had a hideous mental image of Bates slipping quietly and at leisure out if the house while they chased a nobody. But it wasn’t Mark, and it would have taken time to brief an innocent extra, and there hadn’t been more than enough time to get the leathers on. Besides, nobody who wasn’t serious about getting away would ride a bike like that, and at that speed, through Shepherd’s Bush.

  Atherton squeezed the car between two frightened civilians who swerved apart and then back into their lanes, hitting their horns in sheer reaction. A chorus answered from the drivers behind who had been briefly inconvenienced. The motorcyclist was coming up to the far end of the Green with a choice of three directions to go. But the lights were red to go left towards Hammersmith.

  Atherton said, ‘He’s going straight on, down Goldhawk.’

  A gap opened up, and he accelerated with an affronted roar of the engine. Pool cars didn’t expect this kind of treatment.

  The rider looked over his shoulder again, one quick glance, and then instead of going straight on, at the last moment bent the bike at a fantastic angle and went right, taking the curve round the Green in front of the cinemas with the machine almost horizontal.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Fathom said.

  ‘Hold on!’

  Tyres screamed as Atherton swung the wheel hard right, and behind them there was a screech of brakes, a blast of horn, and a crunch and tinkle as someone was forced to veer and didn’t quite miss someone else. The wheels raced and then gripped again, and as the car lurched forward Fathom nutted the back of Slider’s head.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Shit! Sorry, guv.’

  The rider looked again to see if they had followed. It was a mistake. He had gone over at so steep an angle that the glance back was just too much. His balance went. The rear wheel went out sideways, the bike slewed left across the road and slid in a shower of sparks, hit the kerb and threw the driver off. There was a chorus of horns and brakes, and piercingly, heard even over the traffic, someone screamed. The rider rolled over and over at incredible speed, like a small black log hurtling down a mountainside. A truck, coming briskly round the corner from Goldhawk Road had no chance to brake and nowhere to swerve to. Slider felt his scalp go cold, heard Fathom swear, and saw the bike go under the wheels with a hideous series of sounds.

  But the speed the rider had rolled had saved him, taking him just clear as the truck lurched to a stop, scattering a tinkling of small glass and metal from the mangled thing under the wheels. As the traffic came to a standstill, leather-man staggered to his feet, pushing himself against the lorry’s snout to make his balance. Slider caught a glimpse of the lorry driver, white and rigid behind the wheel, eyes and mouth three shocked O’s, as Atherton swerved across to the kerb and stopped at a diagonal in front of all the mess.

  They were all out in a second, but leather-man was already on the move. He ran, limping stiffly the first few steps; glanced round, found some adrenaline reserve, and went like the clappers, limp forgotten. They pounded after him.

  ‘Bloody Mel Gibson,’ Atherton said tersely.

  There were pedestrians scattered about, halting and looking round, uncertain what was happening.

  ‘Police,’ Slider shouted. ‘Stop that man.’

  But no-one did. One man put out a feeble foot but leather-man easily avoided it. ‘What’s ’e done?’ Slider heard someone shout. His whole burning attention was fixed on the fleeing black figure. The accident must have hurt him. It would tell against him. Must do, when the adrenaline was used up.

  Leather-man’s hands went up to the helmet, dragged it off and dropped it. It bounced like a hand-grenade, plastic splintering. Slider’s heart sang as the long red hair fell loose and flew out behind the runner like a flag. No doubt then – it was Bates. The helmet business had slowed him for a second, and Atherton, pulling ahead of Slider, was almost within reach. Bates showed a white eye and dodged, round a bollard and across the road, thumping past the stopped cars of the first two lanes, dodging the crawling, gawping outer lanes.

  Atherton was ahead in the pursuit, and the heavy, less nimble Fathom was falling behind Slider. Strung out in a line they pounded after the black stick-figure with the flying red mane. Atherton almost had him and he dodged again, jinked left and right and then left again – dammit – back into the traffic and across the road. Slider jerked round to throw a diagonal course and cut him off, and Fathom ran into him from behind. Slider shouted something, he didn’t know what, and was off again.

  Why didn’t someone try and stop him? Bloody useless civilians! Whatever happened to civic pride? Bates was doubling back towards the cinemas now. Slider’s cut-across had made up a few yards. Bates looked round and for an instant their eyes locked, and Bates grinned – but he might have been gasping for breath. Always kept himself fit, Slider remembered, his own breath catching at him now. No, he was grinning. Bastard! Somehow, Slider accelerated.

  And at last some concerned citizens were acting. Out of the corner of his eye Slider saw a knot gathered about the stalled lorry; and ahead a group of men had formed a nervous-looking but moderately determined line across the pavement.

  Slider shouted again, to encourage them. ‘Police! Stop him!’ Two in the middle of the row linked arms.

  And there were a lot of people behind them, the usual rubberneckers gathering for a gape, beginning to solidify into a crowd. Bates must have seen there would be no way through, for he dodged right, down the alley between the two cinemas. ‘Gottim!’ he heard Atherton shout. The alley was a dead end. Slider allowed himself to slow just a fraction, so he could catch his breath. He could hear Fathom thundering up behind.

  Bates ran, still lightly, damn him, down the alley before them. The larger cinema, on the right, presented a smooth wall with nothing but three sets of fire doors, the sort that can only be opened from the inside. At the end was a high, blank wall, and a clutch of overflowing wheelie bins. The smaller cinema, on the left, had a fire escape down the wall at the far end, and with a sense of inevitability he saw that Bates was making for it. Why didn’t he just give up? Atherton evidently thought the same, because he yelled, ‘You can’t get away. You’re trapped.’

  Bates didn’t even look back. He leapt up the fir
e escape like a salmon, and Slider cursed inside his head – he hadn’t the breath to do it aloud.

  It was an old-fashioned, black-painted iron staircase, the short flights zig-zagging between small landings. Slider started up behind Atherton, smelling the metal and a sourness of garbage on the air, feeling the handrail clammy under his hand – it had started drizzling very lightly. Atherton’s nimbleness was matched now against Bates’s fitness, but the accident was telling and Bates was limping again. The two made the turns simultaneously like dancers, one short flight apart. Slider was another flight behind. His breathing went through an agony point and he tasted metal in the back of his throat, and then his second wind kicked in. He reached the roof almost on Atherton’s heels.

  Over the parapet and on to the flat concrete. There were ventilation outlets, steaming slightly in the drizzle, a light haar which became visible like a gauze veil as a security light was triggered. It was mounted over the square brick protrusion that housed the fire door back into the cinema. Bates ran to it and tried the door, briefly and hopelessly. It would only open from the inside.

  Slider stopped, turned back to where Fathom was just reaching the top of the fire escape. ‘Stay there!’ he shouted. He didn’t want Bates dodging them all in a Dick Van Dyke chase round the chimneys and nipping back down. Atherton had stopped too, facing Bates, who backed now, slowly, away from the fire door, his eyes darting round to assess the situation. The haar was standing on his red hair like jewels. Slider could see his chest rising and falling under the close black leather. The fox was cornered and spent.

  Slider walked forward towards him. ‘Give it up,’ he said. ‘There’s nowhere else to go. Come on, you know you’ve had it now.’

  ‘Come quietly, is that it?’ Bates said. His teeth were bared as he caught his breath, and his voice was higher and harsher than Slider remembered. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Plod. Not for you, that’s for damn sure. If you want me, you’ll have to take me.’

  Slider felt a weariness that was nothing to do with his trembling legs come over him. ‘Oh, don’t be so bloody silly,’ he said impatiently. ‘You’re cornered, you’re nabbed, and there’s nobody watching you but us, so you can drop the phoney heroics. This is real life, not a film.’

  ‘You don’t know the meaning of real life,’ Bates said, backing all the while towards the parapet. ‘You pathetic second-rater, do you really think you can get the better of me? You can’t touch me.’

  ‘You have friends in high places, I know,’ Slider said. ‘Don’t think they’re going to bale you out this time. You’re going down.’

  Bates reached the parapet, a low wall topped with flat stone slabs. He glanced quickly over to see if there was any escape that way, and began to inch along beside it. Atherton and Slider advanced steadily, adjusting to his direction. He reached the corner and glanced over the second side. Slider suddenly wondered if there was another fire escape. Bloody Nora, if he had to start running again . . .! ‘For God’s sake, give it up,’ he said.

  Atherton exchanged a glance with him. His look said it all: why didn’t they just grab him? Slider opened his mouth to answer that look when he saw that Fathom, disobeying orders, was creeping up from the right, the direction in which Bates was sidling.

  Bates glanced in that direction, scowled horribly, mouthed one short word of anger. He jumped up on the parapet, looking left and right for escape, staring at the next building – far too far away to jump, even for an egotistical athlete.

  As one man, Slider and Atherton stepped forward. Bates dodged left, running along the parapet. As if he could read his mind, Slider knew he was going to make for the fire escape. He turned his head back to Fathom, jerked an arm towards it. ‘Get back over there!’

  Perhaps Bates looked round too, or reacted to Slider’s arm movement. Slider replayed it afterwards a hundred times in his mind. Perhaps it was nothing but the sheerest accident. The parapet was damp from the mizzle; Bates had been limping, so he must have hurt his leg. Whatever it was, his foot slipped and he rocked off balance. His arms flailed, and his eyes met Slider’s in one awful locked instant of mutual knowledge. Slider and Atherton both leapt forward, arms out, hands reaching. But Bates was gone, and there was only rough concrete under their grasping hands as they leaned over, looking down into the alley. Someone said, ‘Christ!’ and he never knew who it was, Atherton or Fathom. Maybe even himself. And a sound came up to them, a ghastly thud of a sort that Slider hoped he would never have to hear again.

  Twenty

  Time Wounds All Heels

  After that, Slider felt as if his feet didn’t touch the ground for weeks. There was so much to do, and so much trouble to get through. The proverbial shit storm wasn’t in it. If it hadn’t been for Porson standing firm at his side, Slider could never have survived it. And by the time he and Porson were both called before Commander Wetherspoon, their superior at Hammersmith, and he said, ‘This is a dog’s breakfast of a case. I can’t make head or tail of it,’ Slider would almost have been grateful to say, ‘Oh, well, don’t let’s bother then.’

  But Porson, magnificent as the Old Man of Hoy, talked and talked at Wetherspoon, and pointed out with graven dignity so many matters of simple honesty, justice and pride in the Job that Slider wanted to cheer; and Wetherspoon, who wouldn’t have got where he was today without being something of a trimmer, was won over on to their side and in the end even said, ‘I’m not having politicians telling me how to do my job, thank you very much.’ And he went in to bat for them.

  So then it was the head of SOCA, and Ormerod, the head of the Organised Crime Government Liaison Team, who was higher yet, and so on to the Commissioner of the Met, and the Home Secretary himself. There was grave internal trouble because Bates’s escape could not have been managed without some complicity high up in the Met. Slider supposed that was what Pauline had been trying to warn him about. In the end there were two quite senior suspensions and an arrest of a political appointee in the Home Office just on the Bates escape alone. While Slider’s heart ached that any policeman had been able to be bought like that, he had to admit that, given the size of the prize Tyler and Bates were going after, they had been in a position to make the price very attractive indeed, even to a senior Yard officer.

  Through all this Tyler didn’t run, didn’t move a muscle, was so certain he was invulnerable and untouchable that he stayed put in his glamorous house and laughed at them.

  Thomas Mark ran, but without either Bates or Tyler to protect him he didn’t get far, and when they nabbed him, he didn’t take much persuading to roll over. They had his fingerprints from the black Focus, the paint match from the car to the damaged bike, mud under the wheel arches matching that of the lane, and Mrs Masseter’s identification. He was bang to rights for murder and perverting the course, and in the end he was glad to have the murder dropped to manslaughter and failing to report an accident in return for fingering Bates and Tyler, which he wasn’t unwilling to do anyway.

  ‘They were going to make millions out of Clydeview, and what was I going to get?’ he said resentfully. ‘I wanted a percentage, but they laughed at me. A flat fee, that’s what they offered me. And who was doing all the dirty work?’

  Slider, of his own interest, asked about Bates’s plans for him.

  ‘Oh, he was going to kill you,’ Mark said indifferently. ‘That was one of the things Tyler said when he got him out of jail. Kill Stonax for me and I’ll let you kill Slider while you’re at it. Of course, Tyler wanted you dead, too.’ He looked at Slider with mild interest. ‘You don’t half piss a lot of people off.’

  ‘So why didn’t he kill me straight away, when he had the chance?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I suppose he liked tormenting you,’ Mark said indifferently. ‘He was like that. Anyway, Tyler said he hadn’t to kill you before you’d nicked Dave Borthwick and charged him for doing Stonax. But you didn’t charge him.’

  ‘We knew it wasn’t him, you see,’ Slider said.

  Mark stare
d at him. ‘I reckon you’re not as stupid as Trevor thought you were,’ he said. ‘But he reckoned everyone was stupid, compared to him. And he was right, most of the time.’

  It was an epitaph, of sorts, Slider thought.

  It took an immense amount of time to assemble all the evidence against Tyler, and to squeeze out of Vollman Zabrinski the admission that the BriTech shares were held in Tyler’s name. When they were able at last to take Tyler’s house apart they found a mass of equipment that he had arranged to get out of Bates’s house and installed for Bates’s use. He claimed he had taken it out of Bates’s house for safe keeping, and since he had all the proper paperwork he at least had a workable defence for it, although a lawyer might argue that there had been no need for him to hook it all up.

  One of the interesting things that emerged was that both Stonax’s flat and his phone had been bugged. So they had known from his conversations that Danny Masseter was coming to see him and probably that he had received a parcel from him too. Slider considered that it might have been the imminent arrival of Stonax’s daughter that had moved his elimination up the agenda. He did not air that thought to Emily or Atherton, or even Joanna.

  It also emerged that Stonax had been trying for several days to get an appointment to see the Prime Minister privately and alone, and had not succeeded largely because he would not tell anyone what he wanted to talk about. That was reason enough to offer Emily for his murder. What interested Slider most about that piece of information was that Stonax had apparently chosen the political rather than the legal route to right the wrongs of Waverley B. He supposed it was simply old habit: politicians and journalists alike tend to think that the solution to everything is political.

  So then there were the political ramifications to get past, and they were immense. There was no way for them at the bottom to know how far anyone else in the government was implicated, even if it was only by turning a blind eye, but hints filtered down from time to time, relayed at the last link by Porson to Slider, that it had gone all the way to the very top, both on the political and the police side. Porson hinted that this made it unlikely any action would be taken, and Tyler all along remained supremely confident that knowing where an immense number of bodies were buried would make him untouchable. If he had to leave the country again, a High Commissionership in some agreeable country was the least he was ready to settle for.