Game Over

Trevor Bates ringing him.

When he had finished she said, ‘Is it serious? I mean, is he really likely to do anything?’ Slider hesitated before answering, only so as to assemble his words carefully, but she misunderstood and said, ‘Please don’t just tell me not to worry. I want to know the truth. We’re in this together, you know – all three of us.’

‘I wasn’t going to hide anything from you,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s just that I really don’t know how serious it is. He wants to frighten me, that’s plain enough. Whether he’d go any further I simply don’t know. But I don’t want you to worry, and I do want you to be careful.’

‘Careful how?’ she said. She sounded a bit bleak. It was not a nice thing to have dumped on you – and she had the baby to worry about as well. The world had become hostile and comfortless, and who was to help them now?

‘When you come back today, come to the station first, and we’ll go home together.’

‘Oh. It’s that bad, is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, frustrated. ‘I wish I did.’

She heard the strain in his voice and hastened to take up the slack. ‘All right, I’ll see you later. Don’t worry about me – you’ve got enough to be going on with.’

Out in the main office, DS Hollis was back and was marking up the whiteboard. He was a laconical Mancunian with a scrawny moustache and pale green eyes like bottled gooseberries, but despite his odd appearance – or perhaps because of it – he had a wonderful way of getting witnesses to trust him and tell him All. He was always office manager by default, because he didn’t mind doing it and everyone else did, but Slider sometimes thought it was a bit of a waste of his talents.

Swilley and Atherton had their heads together in a serious and sotto-voce conversation, and from their glances upwards when he came in he guessed they were talking about him. But he was so glad to see them getting on together after the tensions in the past that he didn’t mind being the cause. Hart had brought in the first heap of statements and Mackay, the office swot, was stolidly working his way through them; while McLaren, the face that lunched on a thousand chips, was stolidly working his way through a Ginsters Mexican Chicken Wrap, which he was eating cold straight from the packet, the shiny sauce smearing his mouth like gloss lipstick.

‘Right,’ Slider said. ‘Ed Stonax.’ They all looked up. ‘First of all I have to tell you that there is a complete embargo on speaking to the press. That means any form of news media, and it means all of you. They’re going to be all over you—’

‘They’ve been ringing up already, guv,’ Hart said.

‘I’m not surprised. But you do not give them anything, repeat anything.’ He looked round the room and noted Fathom’s expression of insouciance along with his slight pinkness of complexion.

Fathom, meeting the boss’s eyes reluctantly, said, ‘What are we supposed to say if they ask us stuff?’

‘You say no comment. Can you repeat that? Two words, no comment. Say it.’

Fathom, realising he meant it, muttered sheepishly, ‘No comment.’

‘Good. Now, anything to report?’

Hart said, ‘I had a long chat with the next door neighbours, guv. Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot.’

‘Yes, I saw that.’

‘They never heard nothing.’

‘That’s a surprise,’ said Swilley.

‘Ooh, irony! You could put someone’s eye out with that,’ said Atherton.

‘They have their wireless on a lot,’ said Hart said imperturbably. ‘That’s what they call it, love ’em. But they did say that when they didn’t have it on, they could hear him typing through the walls.’

‘Wouldn’t that be normal? He was a journalist,’ Hollis said.

‘Yeah, but he’s been doing an awful lot of it lately. They always could hear him when he was working, because his desk is against the party wall, but they said for about the last week or ten days he was always at it. Whenever they turned off the radio they could hear him, and in the night, too. Like a death-watch beetle, Mr A said – whatever that is.’

‘A parasitical beetle that chews wood and destroys churches and makes a clicking noise,’ Atherton said. ‘How can you not know that?’

Hart shrugged. ‘Education’s failed me.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Can we get on?’ Swilley said in a pained voice.

Hart resumed. ‘Well, they didn’t have anything else to tell me except that they liked him and reckoned he was dead straight and dead public spirited. They said he was a real help with the tenants’ meetings, jollying people along and getting round the awkward customers and that. They wanted him to take over as chairman only he said he didn’t have the time. So he seems to have been a stand-up bloke.’

‘Nice to know,’ said Slider, ‘but it would have been nicer if they’d heard something.’

‘No-one we’ve interviewed so far heard anything,’ Fathom said.

‘But, guv, the front door’s broken,’ Hart said. ‘That could be something?’

‘Yes, I heard. In what way broken?’

‘It’s one of them where you buzz people in, but the buzzer wasn’t working and the door wouldn’t latch. Anyone could have just pushed the door open. It was supposed to have been mended yesterday, but the Arbuthnots said it was broken again today.’

‘Who was supposed to have repaired it?’ Slider asked.

‘There’s a sort of handyman, caretaker kind of person. He lives in the basement. Name of—’ she inspected her notes ‘—Borthwick, David Keith. He’s supposed to do repairs, or get people in if he can’t do them himself. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet.’

Slider nodded. ‘That’s something to follow up, anyway. What about the lift? That was out of order as well. Did the Arbuthnots say anything about it?’

‘No, guv,’ said Hart, ‘but I didn’t ask. I didn’t notice any sign. I just used the stairs anyway. Lifts give me the creeps.’

‘Something else to check on with the caretaker. Anything else?’

There was a general shaking of heads. ‘But we haven’t spoken to all the residents yet,’ Atherton said. ‘There was no answer from numbers five and nine.’

‘Right, follow up on them – Mackay, Fathom. Uniform’s still doing the street canvass. Interview the caretaker, Hart. See what you can get out of him. Someone has to go and see Candida Scott-Chatton. Swilley, you can do that. I have to take the daughter back to the flat this afternoon to see if anything’s missing. Hollis, records.’

‘Yeah, guv. Local slags, anyone doing householders, same MO, all that stuff.’

‘That should keep you busy. All right,’ Slider concluded. ‘Before we scatter, I have something else to tell you, not connected with the case.’ And he told them about Trevor Bates. There was some growled comment. No-one had been pleased when Bates had escaped. They had all put hard work into the case.

‘It will be handed over to SOCA, I imagine, though Mr Porson has promised to keep me informed,’ Slider concluded.

‘But, guv,’ McLaren objected, ‘we can’t just sit on our arses and do nothing.’

‘We’ve got a very important murder case on our hands,’ Slider reminded him.

‘Yeah, but Bates was our collar, by rights. And you’re our guv’nor.’ He looked round and saw agreement in every face.

‘We can’t get officially involved. However,’ he added to stem the protest, ‘there’s no reason we shouldn’t do what we can unofficially. At the very least I’d like everyone to keep his or her eyes open for any sightings of this man. I’d be grateful to have my back watched.’

‘We’ll do that all right,’ Hollis said, ‘but can’t we try and nail the sod? This was his old ground, and if he’s come back here, it gives us a chance, doesn’t it? We know the place as well as he does, and if anyone’s going to catch him, it ought to be us, not SOCA.’

Slider was pleased, but didn’t allow it to show. ‘We can’t let the Stonax case fail because we’ve got our minds elsewhere.’

Atherton spoke up. ‘We’ve all got enough brain cells to work both at once. Well, all of us except Maurice.’

‘Don’t be such a snot,’ Swilley rebuked him automatically.