Game Over (18 page)

‘And security doors,’ Atherton added. ‘That’s why the man who contacted Dave Borthwick pretended to be working for Ring 4. It’s probably the first name that sprang to his mind.’

‘I see. Well, here’s the thing that really intrigued me,’ Emily said. ‘You said the van was held up and Bates was freed, but there’s never been an inquiry into how it happened.’

Slider and Atherton looked at each other blankly, and then Atherton said, ‘There must have been.’

‘I’ve been through every record I can access, and there’s nothing. No internal investigation at Ring 4, no report by the Prison Service, no inquiry by the Home Office, nothing from Woodhill – which is also privately run, of course. And what’s more,’ she added, before they could say anything, ‘there was nothing in any of the newspapers either. Now don’t you think that’s odd? There was lots and lots about his arrest, rehashing the murder with all the sleazy details, because let’s face it the public loves that sort of thing so the papers latch on to it. Yet when this terribly interesting murderer goes missing from the back of a prison van, there’s nothing in the papers at all.’

‘There must have been something,’ Slider protested. He looked at Atherton. ‘I don’t read the papers, but you do. And you watch the television news. It must have been covered.’

Atherton was frowning. ‘We were told about it personally by Mr Porson,’ he said, ‘but I can’t remember at this distance whether I saw anything in the papers. I’m assuming I must have, but we were very busy about then and I can’t recall specifically—’

‘No need to rack your brains. You didn’t,’ Emily said with a little understandable triumph. ‘I’ve looked up every newspaper for the day and for two weeks afterwards, and the only report is in a local paper, the
Woburn Courier
, which says that a prison van was held up on the way to Woodhill and a prisoner, Trevor Bates, escaped. And there was a stop press in the
Telegraph
. Neither gives any details of how it happened, and the
Telegraph
doesn’t even mention Woodhill or Bates by name – it just says “a prisoner”. And after that, nothing. Now don’t you think that’s odd?’

‘It is odd,’ Slider said, ‘but I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.’

‘Well, look,’ she said, ‘the first report must have come from someone local to the hold-up, probably the local police. Someone on the local press must have had a contact at the
Telegraph
, and it made it to their late-edition stop press. But the next day the whole thing is killed stone dead. In normal circumstances there must have been a heck of a lot of people who would know who was in that van – the Ring 4 people, the people at Wormwood Scrubs where he went from, the Woodhill people who must have been expecting him – and all their wives and children and friends and secretaries, because people do talk to their families even in these inarticulate times. But nothing gets out. So either there was some very heavy duty leaning to keep it quiet, going on from the very top – which I suppose would be the Home Office?’

‘Ultimately, yes,’ Slider said. ‘I suppose they might have wanted to suppress it so as not to alarm people.’

‘But when dangerous prisoners escape,’ Emily said, ‘they usually put it out so as to warn people not to approach them.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘The other possibility,’ Atherton said, ‘which I suppose you’re building up to, is that he was deliberately sprung.’

Slider looked at him in surprise, but Emily was nodding. ‘It’s the only thing, to my mind, that makes sense. The whole thing was done secretly, so that only the people involved knew about it – and they wouldn’t tell.’

‘But that’s impossible,’ Slider said. ‘It would take connivance at a very high level. Someone very, very high up would have had to decide on it and plan it, and I can’t believe—’

‘Can’t you?’ Atherton said.

‘You’re being needlessly cynical. Even if there was one corrupt person high up in the Home Office, he couldn’t do it all on his own. There’d be high-level police involvement.’

‘But look,’ Emily said, ‘Bates did have connections with the government, and at a high level. He provided them with important services. Suppose it was thought to be for the greater benefit that he was got out and allowed to carry on performing those services, rather than mouldering in prison where he could do no good? That could be a good motive, even if it involved corruption in the execution. A lot of people, acceptable people, think it’s OK to do evil that good might come.’

‘That’s true,’ Atherton said. ‘And there are quite a few of them in the Job. You
know
that,’ he said to Slider. ‘We’ve all known cases where the evidence has been buffed up a bit so as to put a real villain away. When you
know
someone’s guilty and you just can’t get enough for the CPS – well, the temptation’s there. And I don’t believe there’s one copper in ten who would think that was morally wrong, even if they don’t do it themselves.’

‘We don’t do that,’ Slider said stubbornly.

‘But others do,’ Atherton said. ‘And maybe
we
should, now and then. How many times have we busted our balls catching some villain, and then he walks away because the CPS won’t prosecute?’

Slider shook his head in frustration. ‘You can’t start sub-dividing justice—’

‘Oh, justice! Since when was it about justice?’ Atherton said, as the frustrations of the Job burst out from years of restraint. ‘Was it justice when Richard Tyler murdered his mother and his lover and got away with it because he was an MP and a junior minister and had the prime minister’s ear? He swanned off to a cosy billet in Brussels, if you remember, instead of doing life in Pentonville.’

‘Richard Tyler?’ Emily queried.

‘I’ll tell you some time,’ Atherton said, calming down. ‘We’re getting a bit off the point, here.’

‘I’m glad you noticed,’ Slider said.

‘The point is that it might have been decided at the highest level that it was a good thing for Bates to be sprung.’

‘“Might” is not evidence,’ Slider said, ‘though I accept your main premise.’

‘I’ll tell you what
is
evidence,’ Atherton said. ‘The fact that Mick Hutton wasn’t asked to monitor the mobile number we gave Porson to give to Palfreyman.’

‘There could be any number of reasons for that. Quite possibly there was just an administrative delay in asking for it. And now, of course, there’s no point.’

Atherton shook his head. ‘You live in such a rosy world.’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ Slider said, ‘it’s me he’s threatening. That’s not so rosy. I just can’t let you rush off with suppositions that have no foundation.’

‘Richard Tyler,’ Emily said. ‘Why is that name familiar?’

‘I just told you it,’ Atherton said, regaining his humour.

‘He was a junior minister in the Department of the Environment,’ Slider explained.

‘Oh, of course, that must be it. Dad will have mentioned him.’ She frowned in thought. ‘Wasn’t he supposed to be a bit of a high flyer?’

‘They thought at one time he could become the youngest ever prime minister,’ Slider said. ‘We looked at him in a murder case. I was convinced he did it, but we had no evidence, nothing we could put up in a court of law. Then a couple of months later he got into some financial trouble, resigned his seat and was sent to Brussels.’

‘Something about insider dealing on some shares,’ Atherton said. ‘They couldn’t pin it on him but it was enough to have him sent into purdah for a bit.’

‘Porson said at the time that would be punishment enough,’ Slider said. ‘The fact that he’d never be prime minister now. But Brussels, with a big salary, bigger expenses and even bigger pension, and for doing what?’ Slider had seen Phoebe Agnew dead, at the hands – he believed – of her own son. And the gentle, bumbling Piers Prentiss, Tyler’s lover. It didn’t seem like enough punishment to him.

‘Yes, I remember it now,’ Emily said. ‘He was made EU Commissioner for Infrastructure. The big Euro engineering projects – airports, bridges, dams and so on. He’s coming back to England now, though.’

‘He is?’ Atherton said in surprise. ‘When?’

‘I don’t know when – it didn’t say. I read it on Reuters a couple of weeks ago. That’s why the name was familiar – I knew there was something! It was a piece about the US airbase on Terceira I was reading. There’s some kind of infrastructure project that the EU wants to do as a joint thing with the US – a motorway and a bridge, I think. It mentioned that Richard Tyler hoped to complete the deal as his last act as commissioner before returning to the UK – said he was going to be a special political advisor to Number Ten.’

Slider looked bitter. ‘Well, there’s a just reward for villainy.’

‘But he’ll never be prime minister,’ Atherton suggested to cheer him up. ‘Look, we’ve got to follow this up.’

‘Tyler?’

‘No, the Bates escape.’

‘There’s no “got to” about it.’

‘But if we find out how he got away, it might give us a clue as to where he is.’ He saw this was not playing with his boss, and added, ‘Also they mustn’t be allowed to get away with it – whoever “they” are.’

‘If your suspicion, which is no more than a suspicion, has any truth in it, which is doubtful. Anyway, I can’t spare you from the Stonax case.’ Slider winced inwardly as he caught himself referring to it like that in front of Emily.

But Emily didn’t seem to notice. Her face was alight with eagerness. ‘Let me do it,’ she said. They both looked at her, Atherton with interest, Slider doubtfully. ‘Look, I’m an investigative journalist. It’s what I do. I know where to look things up and I know how to get people to talk to me. They’ll tell me things they would never tell a policeman. Let me do it, please! Let me take it off your minds while you get on with finding out who killed Dad.’

‘I can’t agree to it,’ Slider said at last, though with a little reluctance. If there was some connivance at Bates’s escape, he badly wanted to know about it.

‘You don’t have to,’ she said, and jumped over his difficulty for him. ‘In fact, you can’t actually stop me, you know. Once I leave here you won’t know what I’m doing, and as a free citizen I can exercise my right to ask questions of anyone I please.’

Slider sighed. ‘If you put it that way. But be careful.’

‘Of course.’

‘And understand that it will be without any official sanction whatsoever.’

She smiled suddenly, and it was good to see, like the first breaking of sun through clouds. ‘I never work any other way,’ she said.

Ten

Trapped Nerd

J
oanna phoned from a curry house in Leeds at six o’clock.

‘We’re just getting something to eat between rehearsal and concert. There’s a whole crowd of us here, so don’t worry.’

‘I’d worry for the audience,’ Slider said, ‘with half the orchestra breathing out balti and vindaloo. I hope you’re not playing “Blow the Wind Southerly”.’

‘Ha ha. You’d have made a great musician,’ Joanna said. ‘How’s it by you, anyway?’

He told her what little progress had been made, but on a last minute decision did not tell her the idea about Bates being sprung, in case it worried her more. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

‘The Holiday Inn, and I’m sharing a room with Sue, so I won’t be alone. And a few others are staying as well, so we’ll be in company. It’ll be a chance to tell Sue about Jim and his new infatuation.’

‘Do you think she’ll mind?’ Slider asked, imagining Joanna spending the evening soaking up sobs and handing out Kleenex. It didn’t sound like a fun occasion to him.

‘Bound to, a bit, but I don’t think it’ll break her heart. It was her who decided they weren’t suited, and I’m sure now that she’s right. She needs someone more down to earth – and someone who’ll appreciate her, not try to make her live up to him.’

‘Ouch,’ said Slider.

‘Well, Jim can be a bit – challenging,’ she said carefully. ‘Much as we love him. Anyway, I suspect there’s a new interest in her life, which is always the best cure. I told you there’s quite a few of us here – in the curry house, I mean – which includes most of the brass section, and John Saxby, one of the trombones, is at our table and being very attentive to Sue.’

‘A trombone player?’

‘Don’t be snobbish. He’s really nice and quite gentle and thoughtful under that rough ey-oop exterior. He and Sue would be very good together.’

‘Matchmaker.’

‘I want my friend to be happy. I’d better go – someone else wants the phone. Wait, here’s a musical joke for you. How many clarinettists does it take to change a light bulb?’

‘Dunno.’

‘One, but you need a huge box of bulbs.’

‘Ha!’

‘Thought you’d like it. Tell Jim. And take care of yourself.’

‘I will. You too.’

‘I miss you so much.’

‘Me too.’

‘I might phone you tonight, when I go to bed. If it’s not too late.’

‘Phone anyway, even if it is.’

There was one last phone call before he knocked off for the evening, from Jimmy Pak, their civilian aide who specialised in computers. He reported that the computer had been delivered to him and he had had a preliminary look into it.