‘Not yet, sir. There’s something else I need to talk to you about.’ He closed the door and told him about the telephone call from The Needle.
Porson frowned, fiddling with a paper clip. ‘He knew you were in the car?’
‘It may have been a lucky guess. Or he may have been able to hear the engine noise in the background.’
‘Or he may have been following you,’ Porson concluded. He thought a moment. ‘If he knew you were on your mobile, he must have known we could trace the call.’
‘I’ve put Swilley on it already.’
‘Then as soon as he rings again we can pinpoint him?’
‘Yes, and he must know that as well as we do,’ Slider said.
‘Hmm. What’s he up to?’ Porson said.
‘Playing us for fools, if I know anything about him,’ Slider said. ‘It won’t be that easy to catch him.’
The eyebrows levelled out. ‘Well, it’s out of our hands now, anyway. He’s a big player and he’s wanted in high places. I’ll pass it on to Mr Wetherspoon and he’ll pass it to SOCA, or whichever SO is handling him. It’ll take it off our budget and manpower, at least.’
‘That’s a blessing, sir,’ said Slider.
Porson gave him a scowl for the irony. ‘Don’t you think of going after him on your own!’ he barked. ‘I’m not interested in mock heroics!’
‘How do you feel about the real kind?’ Slider murmured, though he knew he shouldn’t.
Porson looked more kindly at him. ‘You know and I know these slags just want to put the frighteners on us. Nine times out of ten they don’t mean it. But Bates – well, I’m not saying be worried, but keep your wits about you. I don’t want one of my officers walking into a trap, and there’s something queer about this. Doesn’t smell right.’ He rapped the end of the paper clip on the desk in an irritated rhythm. Slider was interested that Porson’s nasal radar was making him uneasy, too. ‘Why’d he have to surface now, of all times?’ Porson burst out at last. ‘Just when we’ve got our hands full.’
‘I presume I should leave my mobile switched on, so that the tracing unit can do the necessary?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Porson, miles away.
‘You’ll let me know what’s being done?’
The attention snapped back to the present. ‘Of course, laddie. I’ll keep you in the loop. Anything they tell me, I’ll tell you.’
Which wasn’t the same thing, of course.
‘But meanwhile, you concentrate on the Stonax business. That’s sacrospect. We want answers on that and we want ’em quick.’
When Slider got back to the CID room it was quieter than a Trappist library. The troops that were back were eating sandwiches at their desks. ‘Hey,’ he said.
‘We got you one, guv,’ Mackay reassured him crumbily. ‘It’s on your desk.’
‘I got you a jumbo sausage baguette,’ Norma Swilley added informatively.
McLaren leered at her automatically. ‘Jumbo sausage? Oy-oy!’
‘The king of single entendre,’ Norma said witheringly. ‘I’ve got the report on that car, boss.’
‘Come through,’ he said, heading for his office. ‘McLaren, get me a cup of tea.’
‘What did I do?’ McLaren protested.
‘It’s your turn,’ said Slider.
‘Since when?’
‘Since the sausage remark.’
The sausage was still warm, and they had remembered the mustard. What it was to have a highly trained team at your fingertips! He took a huge bite. He was ravenous. Swilley perched on his windowsill – it seemed to be everyone’s preferred place for making reports to him – and looked at her notes. The weather was still warm enough for her not to have gone into trousers, for which the man in him was grateful. He was happily spoken-for, but there was no harm in admiring the scenery, even if you were on a non-stopping train.
‘Right, boss, that reg number you gave me belonged to a Renault Clio that was scrapped last month. Registered owner was a Brian Delaney, address in Rodney Road, Lambeth, got it for his eighteenth birthday and totalled it on the Old Kent Road the day after. I spoke to his dad. He sounded genuine. Want me to chase up where the wreck went?’
Slider shook his head. ‘It’s easy enough for someone to get the information and use the reg number without involving the wrecking yard. The important thing is that the number doesn’t match the car, which means there
She didn’t know why he was asking about the car, of course, and looked at him receptively. When he didn’t immediately go on, she said, ‘I also checked on black Focuses stolen in the last three months. There were six in the Met area, and one, stolen from an address in Isleworth, had tinted windows. But it didn’t have any damage on the rear quarter. D’you want the details?’ She gestured to the papers in her hand.
He shook his head again, but it was in thought rather than negation. He said, ‘You’d better let the stolen cars unit know that it might be operating under that reg number. And put out an all-units – if it’s spotted anywhere, they can bring it in. But I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. He may well have more numbers. Have you got the mobile phone dump yet?’
‘They’ve not come back on it yet. I’ll chase them up,’ Norma said. ‘Can I know what it is, boss?’
‘I’ll tell everyone,’ Slider said. ‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll be out for a rundown on what we’ve got so far.’
When he was alone, he took another mouthful of sandwich and dialled Joanna’s number. ‘Hello, Inspector,’ she answered him before he spoke. She had number recognition, of course.
The sound of her voice gave him a frisson, as always, and he reflected how lucky he was to have found his soulmate against all the odds. He had been married fairly joylessly to Irene for fourteen years but, being the sort of person he was, he hadn’t been looking for anyone else. A promise was a promise in his book, and he had meant to stick by her and do his best to be a good husband. It wasn’t her fault they had grown apart. But then he had met Joanna and everything became instantly different. It had plunged him into a tornado of troubles, doubts and self- loathing as he tried to square his sense of duty towards Irene and the children with the visceral conviction that his life lay with Joanna. Well, they had been through some difficult places on the rocky road to divorce, Irene’s remarriage, and the present blissful state of Joanna’s expecting their first child, but in all the turbulence the one thing that had never wavered was his conviction that he and Joanna were meant to be together and would get through it somehow.
‘Where are you?’ he asked, hearing sounds of conversation in the background.
‘The Spotted Dog,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken Mum and Dad out for a pub lunch. Madly gay, isn’t it? I love the way they’ve branched out since Dad retired. Eating out was completely unthought of when I was a kid.’
‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘They’re still agitating about the wedding,’ she said. ‘I keep telling them that it’s a matter of finding the time to do it, but they narrow their eyes and look sceptical. They think you’re trying to wriggle out of your responsibilities.’
‘If only they knew, I’m desperately trying to wriggle in,’ Slider said sadly.
‘I know. I tell them that. They’ll understand one day,’ she said. ‘They want us to call the baby Derek after Dad’s father.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘I thought that would prove a nice counter-irritant,’ she chuckled.
‘What if it’s a girl?’ he asked flinchingly. Did he have a vague memory that the paternal grandmother had been named Gladys?
‘Rebecca,’ said Joanna.
‘Oh. How come?’
‘Heroine in a book Mum’s reading. She thought it was a pretty name. They can’t understand why we don’t want to know which sex it is, given that we can.’
‘Very modern of them. Look, I can’t really chat, I haven’t got long.’
‘I know, you must be busy.’ The shout had come in before she left. ‘Is it awful?’
‘I’ll tell you about it when I see you. But, listen, something else has come up.’ And he told her briefly about
