to see if there’s any sign that Bates is there. Tomorrow we can get Mr Porson to stump up a search warrant and we can go in and take the place apart.’
‘Guv, let me come,’ Fathom said. He looked excited. ‘Please. Just in case. You might need another hand. I was just going home. I’ve got nothing else to do.’
It would have been like kicking a puppy. He looked at Atherton, who shrugged minutely. ‘It’s not going to be exciting,’ he warned. ‘Just sitting in a car looking at a house.’
‘But I need the experience,’ Fathom said cunningly. ‘I have to learn.’
‘All right, you can come. But you do exactly as you’re told at all times, and keep your mouth shut,’ Slider said.
‘Deal,’ said Fathom.
There was just an outside chance, Slider thought, that something might happen. And Fathom was a big lad. In a pinch, one might overlook the dorky gloves.
The Holland Park house was large, beautiful, elegant – white stucco, with a portico and steps up to the door. The tall windows of the drawing-room were lit behind drawn curtains; the upper floors were in darkness. There were also lights on in the semi-basement, which had blinds on the windows. In the original arrangement of these houses, that was where the servants had hung out. Nowadays the semi-basement was often a separate flat. Slider wondered if Thomas Mark was down there. From what he knew of both Tyler and Bates, they would have been too grand to let the minions bunk in with them.
As to whether Bates was in there at all, Slider quietly drew his companions’ attention to a new-looking and very powerful radio mast on the roof.
‘Now what would Richard Tyler want with a mast that powerful?’ he said.
‘It’s the only way to get Jazz FM?’ said Atherton.
‘There’s a satellite dish, too,’ Fathom noted. ‘A big one.’
‘Maybe he likes Sky Sports.’
‘Not the right sort of dish.’
There was a car parked on the gravelled forecourt, a black Lexus; and a motorcycle, a powerful-looking Triumph.
‘And there’s the bike,’ Slider said.
‘There’s more than one Triumph in the world,’ Atherton said, though it sounded a bit messianic.
‘Can you see Richard Tyler on a bike? No, I feel it in my bones, Bates is in there.’
Fathom leaned forward from the back seat. ‘Shall we go in and get him?’ he asked eagerly. He was already reaching for the door handle in his excitement.
‘Steady, lad, or I’ll have to put the child lock on. We can’t go prancing in there on a whim. We’ve got no authority to search the place, and all that would happen is that Tyler would refuse us entry and be put on his guard. By the time we got back with the right papers, Bates would be dust on the horizon and any evidence we might hope to pick up would be destroyed.’
‘So you really did only want to look,’ Fathom said, disappointed.
‘What did you think? I’m not going to shout “Go, go, go!” just so you can get to kick the door in with your size twelves.’
‘On the other hand,’ Atherton said, ‘we’ll have to watch the place now we know there’s a chance Bates is in there. Hadn’t we better call it in and make it official?’
‘It’ll have to be twenty-four-hour surveillance. I’d better get Mr Porson out of bed. Can you radio the station and see who they can get here by way of temporary back-up – out of uniform, of course.’
Porson seemed rather glad than otherwise to be called out. Slider wondered if he had trouble sleeping. He said he would come straight in and sort out the paperwork for a surveillance request. At the station, they said they’d get someone over for surveillance as soon as they’d got them into their civvies – about half an hour, if they could hang on. Atherton said they could, and they settled down, with Fathom’s tangible disappointment like a fourth person in the back seat, to watch the quiet house and wait for support to arrive.
But only minutes later there was a movement across the road.
‘Someone’s coming out,’ Fathom said. A dark figure was coming up the steps from the semi-basement. ‘Is it Mark?’
It was a man in all-over motorcycle leathers and a dark-visored helmet. Little runt of a man. ‘Not big enough for Mark,’ Slider said, hearing his own voice cool and far away, while his blood tingled with adrenaline. ‘I’d say it was probably Bates.’
‘Where the hell’s he going?’ Atherton complained.
‘Escaping. It’s my fault,’ Slider said. ‘I told you to radio in. Pound to a penny he’s been monitoring the station radio. Why the hell wouldn’t he? I just didn’t think of it.’
‘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.
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
