Game Over

place tonight.’

‘And interrupt love’s young dream?’

‘Facetiousness is my thing. It doesn’t work for you,’ Atherton informed him. ‘If you’re worried about the proprieties you can have my room and I’ll sleep on the sofa.’ And, of course, creep up to Emily in the spare room once the lights were out.

Slider couldn’t bear to argue any more. His head hurt too much. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll come, just for tonight.’ When Joanna got back he’d have to think of something else. But at least he’d get one evening of Atherton’s cooking. Those fish and chips had given him heartburn, though that probably wasn’t their fault, but a result of the subsequent dramas. As a long-serving policeman, he didn’t usually have any difficulty digesting grease. ‘It’s Porson I feel sorry for,’ he said, to turn the attention away from himself. ‘The old boy really feels it.’

He had reported in to Porson as soon as he arrived, and found the super pale and shaken.

‘I’m just about sick of this,’ he said once he had ascertained that Slider was not seriously hurt. ‘They’ve tied me up hand and foot. Bates is SOCA business now, and you know what these SO units are like. Jealous as fishwives, and if you tread on their toes, you’re in all sorts of grief. I’ve been told categorically not to pursue him, and my pension’s on the line, laddie, as you well know. But I’m not having my officers put in jeopardy and do nothing. What are SOCA doing? Sitting round scratching their targets. So you can go after him with my blessing, and anything you want, just ask. If it costs me my pension, well, that’s not an absorbent price in the scheme of things. Only,’ he had added, rather spoiling the magnificent defiance, ‘don’t let the Stonax case slip, will you?’

‘No, sir.’ Slider hesitated, wondering whether to voice any of Emily’s and Atherton’s conspiracy theories. He was beginning to have a suspicion of his own, though against his will. Why had the Stonax murder been left with him? Usually high-profile cases were whisked away to the specialist units for the greater glory of some desk jockey with a degree in looking good. He had been led by the nose to conclude that Borthwick had done it, but what if it was not the villains who were doing the leading, but the ‘them’ of Atherton’s paranoia?

But if the idea that such things could be would make him sick, they’d make Porson sicker. He had become, since his wife died, something of a shabby tiger, but he was not yet tamed. Slider decided to say nothing, at least yet, and to ask instead for something deliverable.

‘Could you get the traffic unit to find that Focus as a matter of urgency? I’ve got another reg number for it, so the likelihood is that they’re going to change it again, but there aren’t that many black Focuses with the same dint in the same place. I’m pretty sure it’s one of Bates’s close cronies driving it around, and if we get him, we might get a lead on Bates.’

‘Consider it done,’ Porson said. ‘I’ll sit on them and put a rocket under their arses, don’t you worry. Anything else?’

‘I can’t think of anything at the moment,’ Slider said.

‘Come to me if you do. Now, what are we going to do about Borthwick?’

‘The report on the oil marks was waiting on my desk when I got in,’ Slider said. That was another surprise, that it should have come through so quickly. Conspiracy was like oranges – once you got the smell in your nose, you couldn’t get it out.

Porson evidently agreed. ‘They must have priorised it,’ he said. ‘You don’t normally get presidents for non- human fluids. So what was the result?’

‘It’s a match for the sample taken from Borthwick’s bike,’ Slider said. ‘He says he’s never been in the flat at all, so that, plus the victim’s watch, make a pretty firm basis for a charge.’

‘Yes,’ Porson said, starting his lope up and down in the space between his desk and the window. ‘And then you’d have to try to trace the movements of that motorbike the old dear saw, which means watching endless CCTV tapes, and God knows what else besides trying to prove he did it when we know he didn’t. Which all adds up to a lot of running around with our heads up our blue-arsed flies.’

‘Displacement activity,’ Slider said, as Porson continued to pace.

‘We’ve got to do it, and we’ve got to make it look good,’ Porson decided. ‘It’s a pity that oil report came so quickly. But we can hold him pending more evidence. I’ll think of something to tell the muppets. He’s still co- operating?’

‘Yes, sir. I think he’s quite enjoying it. Bit of a holiday for him. He likes the food.’

‘The man’s sick! He hasn’t asked for a solicitor? He’ll have to have one, otherwise the press’ll cotton on and start moaning about human rights. But it’s got to be one we can trust.’

‘I’ll find one, sir.’

‘And get him what he likes to eat, and whatever he likes to read. Keep him happy. Meanwhile find out who did do it. What lines have you got to follow?’

‘We’re trying to trace and interview people who were in the pub the night Borthwick says he met the man, Patrick Steel.’

‘No luck on the name, I suppose?’

‘No, sir, but I don’t want to waste too much time on it because it’s almost certainly a false name.’

‘I’ll get one of Carver’s firm to chase it up, take it off your books. Go on.’

‘We’re looking into Stonax’s past life, and talking to friends and colleagues to try to find what he was busy with recently. It seems likely his death was connected with one or the other.’

‘Or both. Could be two halves of the same coin. Well, get on with it, then. And let me know if you get anything on Bates.’

Joanna rang him from the hotel room at half past nine. ‘I’ve just had an enormous breakfast,’ she said. ‘Egg, bacon, black pudding, the lot. I shall have to play standing up. There’s not room in there for breakfast and the baby if I sit down.’

‘How is baby Derek?’

‘Oh don’t! If we start calling him that it’ll stick.’

‘Only if the wind changes.’

‘Don’t talk to me about wind! You were right about the curry yesterday. Derek-stroke-Gladys is fine. Listen, about tonight – I can’t see the point in staying in a hotel. I’d much sooner come home after the concert.’

‘No, I don’t want you to do that,’ Slider said, wishing he didn’t have to tell her, and wondering how shocked she would be.

‘I know you think I’m made of tissue paper,’ she said, ‘but Huddersfield isn’t that far, and the traffic will be light that time of night, and I’m used to driving back after concerts. I’d just sooner sleep in my own bed.’

‘Well, I’m afraid that’s not possible anyway,’ he began, trying to assemble the right words.

She jumped right in. ‘Oh God, something’s happened! What is it? Tell me. Are you all right?’

‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. Remember the baby and try to take this calmly.’

‘You’re making me more nervous telling me to be calm. What happened?’

‘Someone broke into the house yesterday and set up a booby trap, which I sprang when I went home. It was the old schoolboy trick, a bucket balanced on the top of a door.’

‘For God’s sake,’ she said, sounding more bewildered than anything.

‘I don’t think it was meant to hurt me seriously. I got a cut on my head and a bruise on my shoulder but I’m all right, apart from a headache.’

‘Oh, Bill!’

‘Please don’t cry. I’m all right.’

‘I have to cry, it’s my hormones. Was it Bates?’

‘I suppose so. It’s his sort of speed. He likes making a fool of me and wants to scare me.’

‘Well, he’s scaring me, so tell him he’s succeeded and he can stop.’

‘Anyway, you can see why I don’t want you to come home tonight. I’m going to stay the night at Atherton’s, so you’ll be better off at a nice, comfortable hotel. Then tomorrow come here when you get back and we’ll decide what to do. We might have caught him by then, you never know,’ he added in the vain hope of cheering her up.

But she was a sensible woman, he thanked heaven, and did not waste more time on useless remonstrance. ‘All right, if it will take a weight off your mind, I’ll stay. Oh, Bill, I do miss you! Please be careful.’

‘I am being. Truly. That’s why I’m not sleeping at home tonight.’

‘I have to go. Rehearsal starts at ten thirty.’

‘Drive carefully,’ he said.