years of restraint. ‘Was it justice when Richard Tyler murdered his mother and his lover and got away with it because he was an MP and a junior minister and had the prime minister’s ear? He swanned off to a cosy billet in Brussels, if you remember, instead of doing life in Pentonville.’
‘Richard Tyler?’ Emily queried.
‘I’ll tell you some time,’ Atherton said, calming down. ‘We’re getting a bit off the point, here.’
‘I’m glad you noticed,’ Slider said.
‘The point is that it might have been decided at the highest level that it was a good thing for Bates to be sprung.’
‘“Might” is not evidence,’ Slider said, ‘though I accept your main premise.’
‘I’ll tell you what
‘There could be any number of reasons for that. Quite possibly there was just an administrative delay in asking for it. And now, of course, there’s no point.’
Atherton shook his head. ‘You live in such a rosy world.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ Slider said, ‘it’s me he’s threatening. That’s not so rosy. I just can’t let you rush off with suppositions that have no foundation.’
‘Richard Tyler,’ Emily said. ‘Why is that name familiar?’
‘I just told you it,’ Atherton said, regaining his humour.
‘He was a junior minister in the Department of the Environment,’ Slider explained.
‘Oh, of course, that must be it. Dad will have mentioned him.’ She frowned in thought. ‘Wasn’t he supposed to be a bit of a high flyer?’
‘They thought at one time he could become the youngest ever prime minister,’ Slider said. ‘We looked at him in a murder case. I was convinced he did it, but we had no evidence, nothing we could put up in a court of law. Then a couple of months later he got into some financial trouble, resigned his seat and was sent to Brussels.’
‘Something about insider dealing on some shares,’ Atherton said. ‘They couldn’t pin it on him but it was enough to have him sent into purdah for a bit.’
‘Porson said at the time that would be punishment enough,’ Slider said. ‘The fact that he’d never be prime minister now. But Brussels, with a big salary, bigger expenses and even bigger pension, and for doing what?’ Slider had seen Phoebe Agnew dead, at the hands – he believed – of her own son. And the gentle, bumbling Piers Prentiss, Tyler’s lover. It didn’t seem like enough punishment to him.
‘Yes, I remember it now,’ Emily said. ‘He was made EU Commissioner for Infrastructure. The big Euro engineering projects – airports, bridges, dams and so on. He’s coming back to England now, though.’
‘He is?’ Atherton said in surprise. ‘When?’
‘I don’t know when – it didn’t say. I read it on Reuters a couple of weeks ago. That’s why the name was familiar – I knew there was something! It was a piece about the US airbase on Terceira I was reading. There’s some kind of infrastructure project that the EU wants to do as a joint thing with the US – a motorway and a bridge, I think. It mentioned that Richard Tyler hoped to complete the deal as his last act as commissioner before returning to the UK – said he was going to be a special political advisor to Number Ten.’
Slider looked bitter. ‘Well, there’s a just reward for villainy.’
‘But he’ll never be prime minister,’ Atherton suggested to cheer him up. ‘Look, we’ve got to follow this up.’
‘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!’
