Game Over

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.’

‘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.