as you went, he ought at least to make sure the man was accounted for. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Check it out. Discreetly.’
‘Sure, they’ll never know I’ve been there,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll be in and out like Jimmy the Dip in a punter’s pocket.’
Slider had just got back to his office when Joanna rang. ‘Is it any use asking you about having the children over at the weekend?’ she asked. ‘Irene just rang. She and Ernie want to go to a bridge rally thing at Aylesbury, organized by Rotary. Sooner them than me.’
‘I’m with you on that one,’ Slider said, settling in behind his desk. The cup of tea someone had brought him before he was interrupted had got tepid. He didn’t like tea unless it was almost too hot to drink. He pushed it sadly away.
‘Well, she sounded really keen. Did you never play together?’
‘Oh, once or twice. I don’t mind it as a game, but I can’t treat it like a religion, like these real bridge enthusiasts. But Irene liked it as a way to meet what she called nice people.’
‘Aren’t we nice people?’ Joanna said indignantly.
‘I’m a policeman, and you’re a policeman’s wife. Of course we’re not nice.’
‘I’m a musician.’
‘Comes out the same. Irene never approved of anyone who worked unsocial hours. I think ideally she’d have liked to marry a solicitor – office hours, nice suits and plenty of money.’
Joanna laughed, but a little reproachfully. ‘She can’t really be that shallow. You loved her once.’
‘I’m sorry. I did, of course. And she has many good qualities. I just never brought out the best in her. Dad always used to say there was only one reason marriages broke up – you weren’t suited to each other.’ Hollis appeared in the doorway, with Atherton behind him. ‘I’ll have to go. Someone wants me.’
‘I certainly do,’ Joanna said seductively. ‘And just as soon as you get home I’m going to get you out of those wet clothes and into a hot bath, young man.’
He grinned, feeling his automatic twitch of reaction to her. Even after all this time . . . Ain’t love grand? ‘Stop it, people are watching,’ he said. ‘What was it you phoned me for?’
‘This weekend. Having the children.’
‘Oh yes. Of course, by all means, but you know I can’t promise I’ll be there. But if you’re willing. And around.’
‘I’m around except for Saturday night – repeat of Friday’s concert. But your dad can babysit.’
‘Thank God for Dad,’ Slider said.
‘I’ll second that,’ said Joanna.
‘Guv, we’ve got to the end of the possibilities on that reg number,’ Hollis said, the list in his hand. ‘We struck off all the 03s to start with. McLaren says that car on the CCTV couldn’t be that old. It’s got the all-in-one intake grille, and that didn’t come in until 2008.’ He looked at Slider, who got the significance.
‘Right.’ He nodded.
‘McLaren might be a pain –’ Atherton put it into words – ‘but he does know about cars.’
‘So that cut it down a good bit,’ Hollis went on. ‘Then we ran the possible 08 numbers that were issued to BMWs, and there weren’t many of those.’ He looked down at his list. ‘Just six, in fact. We’ve checked them out and they’re all accounted for. D’you want me to go over them with you?’
‘No, I trust you. So what does that leave us with?’
Hollis picked it up. ‘There was one car, with the last letter a W. It was an Astra, not a BMW, but it was in an RTA a couple o’ months ago and written off. Went to a scrapyard in Stanmore – Embry’s.’
It was a well-known ploy. Just as those wanting a false identity trawled churchyards for names of people who died in infancy but would have been the right age had they lived, so those wanting false number plates trawled scrapyards for dead cars of the right vintage.
‘It’s worth looking into,’ Slider said. ‘Let’s put that number through the ANPR. If we get a ping on a dead one, we’ll know we’re in business.’
‘Might get a picture of the driver, too,’ Atherton said. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’
‘It would be wonderful,’ Slider said, ‘if it were Robin Frith. But if it’s a complete stranger . . .’
‘Anyone can hire a professional killer.’
‘Yes, but tracing him back to the one with the motive is the good trick,’ Slider concluded.
The ANPR did its thing and the number of the scrapped car duly came up, striking joy into all hearts.
‘What you might call,’ Slider said, looking round at the happy faces, ‘a motorized transport.’ Given that the carcase belonging to the number was mouldering in its unmarked gave, it was the strongest indication that they were on the right lines.
‘The first ping is at the West Cross roundabout,’ Atherton enthused, ‘a few hundred yards from Masbro Road and the obvious way out of Shepherd’s Bush for anyone trying to get far, far away in as short a time as possible.’
The computer picked it up on the A40 at Hanger Lane, and then at Henley’s Corner on the North Circular, turning on to the M1. At Five Ways Corner, where the M1 and the A41 join, it was seen again, and at Apex Corner it was on the A41. The final ping caught it at the roundabout where the A410 joins the A41.
‘Nothing after that,’ Hollis said, ‘so it didn’t stay on the A41, or it would’ve been caught at the next roundabout, which is the M1 Junction 4.’
‘If he’d wanted to be on the M1 he wouldn’t’ve come off at Five Ways,’ McLaren pointed out.
‘So the assumption is he came off on to the A410, and since the car – or at least the number plate – doesn’t appear again, he must have gone to ground somewhere near there,’ said Slider.
‘The number hasn’t been noted anywhere since,’ Atherton confirmed. ‘Though we asked Hendon to keep a look out, in case it moves again.’
‘And by a strange and yet delightful coincidence, the first place on the A410 is Stanmore,’ said Slider. ‘Ladies and germs, I think we have our getaway car.’
‘Now all we have to do is find the driver,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s a pity the computer didn’t give us a good look at him.’
‘This is the best photo,’ Hollis said, ‘when he were stopped at traffic lights on the A410 roundabout, but it’s not clear. You can see it’s a man, dark-haired, with a dark top on.’
‘It
Slider also looked. ‘Frith was very tanned. Doesn’t this man look a bit pale?’
‘Just the way the light works,’ Atherton said. ‘You can’t tell if he’s tanned or not. The more I look at it, the more it looks like Frith to me.’
‘Hmm,’ said Slider. ‘Not certain enough. Pity. We need to get Frith’s fingerprints to rule him definitely in or out. Unless Connolly establishes an alibi for him, I’m getting close to the point where I think we’ll have to pay another visit to Ealing Common – loath as I am to upset them needlessly – just so we don’t keep chasing our tails. But first let’s have a look at the scrapyard, take this photo, such as it is, along, see if someone who looks like this was hanging around there recently.’
‘Send McLaren,’ Atherton suggested. ‘He can talk cars for hours.’
Slider looked at his watch. ‘Too late tonight. They’d be shut by the time he got there. It’ll have to be tomorrow morning.’
Connolly was back from Hemel Hempstead, looking pleased with herself. Slider, Hollis and Atherton were still in the factory, Slider toiling over the paperwork, Hollis filling in rotodex cards and Atherton still trawling for information on either Windhover or the Geneva Foundation. The latter two followed her to Slider’s office to hear her report.
‘Archers is a big place, guv. I don’t know why, but I was expecting some little High Street seed merchant, pet shop sort o’ yoke. But it’s got a forty-foot frontage, and they’ve a grand big yard at the back for lorries, and a warehouse beyond like a barn. Me heart sank when I saw it, thinking it would be all impersonal; but they knew who Robin Frith was all right. There was this nice owl me-dad sort o’ feller – grey hair and specs – in a brown overall who turned out to be Mr Archer himself. I told him Robin Frith had recommended me to come there, and his face kind o’ lit up as if I’d mentioned his favourite nephew. Then it turns out he’s known Frith all his life, used to see him compete in juvenile classes when he was at Merridee’s – that’s the Chipperfield stable. His daughter was about the
