Game Over

Twelve

Thickening

It didn’t take Emily long to discover the local journalist from the Woburn Courier who had been responsible for the story of Tyler’s escape. She found Chris Fletcher at the magistrates’ court in Milton Keynes, and persuaded him outside for a chat.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work,’ she said when they reached the open air.

‘Dunt matter,’ he said equably. ‘I was busting for a smoke, anyway. Do you?’ He proffered the pack and she shook her head. ‘Mind if I do?’ He didn’t wait for her reply, but knocked one out, shoved it in his mouth and lit it like a starving man falling on bread. He was young, mid-twenties, she thought, and staggeringly badly dressed, with a tweed jacket that was far too big, a tie that looked as if it might have been used to tie up a dog, a grubby shirt with a crumpled collar, and cheap, scuffed shoes at the end of what looked like his old school trousers. The dress code for the magistrates’ court had evidently fallen hard on him. He had a snubby, rather pallid but not unattractive face, and spiky fair hair ending in an unfashionable mullet. His fingernails were badly bitten and his fingers badly stained with nicotine. Being a journalist at this level must be really stressful, she thought.

‘I won’t keep you long,’ she said. ‘I’m just interested in a story you filed back in July about an escaped prisoner—’

‘Oh, God, yes, that!’ he jumped in. ‘I thought I’d got it made! Big city here I come! But it all turned out to be rubbish and I got a rocket from my editor. He kicked my bum so hard I couldn’t sit down for a week.’

‘Would you tell me what happened?’

He was so eager to talk she didn’t have to give him a reason for asking. The fact that she was Press seemed to be enough for him.

‘Well, it was just luck I came across it, really, because I was going home one evening and there’s this cut through round the back of Apsley Guise – I live in Husborne Crawley?’ She nodded as if she knew what he was talking about so as not to slow him down. ‘Anyway, it’s just a lane and there’s never much traffic on it, so I wasn’t surprised to find myself on my own. Then I come round a bend, and there’s a barrier across the road. I was on my bike – I’ve got this mini Moto. It’s useful for getting about to stories, easier to park than a car – not that I could afford a car anyway on what they pay me.’

‘Right. You came across a barrier?’

‘Yeah. Well, I didn’t want to go back, so I pushed the bike round it. And round the next corner there’s a local cop I know, Colin Gunter, and he stops me. I look past him and I see a big Ring 4 van and some more police and a couple of patrol cars. So I says, “S’up Col?” and he says, “You can’t come down this way. There’s a prison van been held up.” So then he tells me this prisoner was on the way to Woodhill, the van got held up and he’s on the loose. So I go back and phone the story straight in, and I ring the Telegraph news desk as well. I’ve been doing that for a while, any time I hear anything good, because I’m hoping to make a name with them, and then they’ll give me a job.’

‘Why the Telegraph?’ she asked out of idle curiosity.

‘It’s what me dad reads. Anyway, the Courier puts my story in, but it’s hardly gone to bed when I get a call from Colin to say it was all a mistake, there was no-one in the van, it just broke down, and someone was having a laugh with him, telling him there was an escaped prisoner. I was well gutted, and the next thing the editor calls me in and chews my arse off. It was too late to stop the story, but nobody else had run it and in the end he just left it, cause he said it would look worse to print a retraction. And that was that. I never heard anything more about it.’

‘How did your editor know the story was wrong?’

‘Someone rang him from Ring 4 – the controller down in Luton – Trish Holland, I think her name is. Apparently this bloke was going to be moved, and then it was all cancelled at the last minute. That’s why they thought he was in the van, I s’pose. Anyway, it’s a shame, because it would have been a lot of fun if he really was on the run. We had one over the wall last year and we got three days’ front pages out of him before they caught him.’

‘The Telegraph didn’t print his name, I notice,’ she said.

‘Well, it was only a stop press, and I s’pose they wanted to check it before they ran it properly. Lucky for them they did. Unlucky for me, though – I’ll never get a job there now.’

She felt rather sorry for him, with his forlorn hopes and his lost scoop. She said, ‘The real news is always local. That’s the news that affects peoples’ lives.’

‘Are you local press?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and it was true, though New York was a rather more seething metropolis than Woburn.

The control centre at Luton was sited in a modern block on a small industrial estate, and Trish Holland was a middle-aged woman with a cosy figure and hard make-up. She allowed Emily into her presence with the ease most people seemed to accord to the press, but she grew defensive when she learned the subject for discussion.

‘There never was an escape,’ she said angrily. ‘It was all in the mind of that stupid reporter from Woburn. I suppose he thought he was having a joke. Everyone seems to like poking fun at Ring 4. I’d like to see them do a job like ours.’

‘Yes, and I want to do an article exactly on that point,’ Emily said warmly. ‘I want to put Ring 4’s side of things. It’s all too easy to make cheap jokes without knowing the facts.’

She ceased to bridle. ‘You’re completely right there. Facts were pretty thin on the ground in that story. It wasn’t even one of our vans.’

‘The reporter says he saw the Ring 4 logo on it.’

‘Doesn’t matter. All of our vans were accounted for. And it’s easy enough to hire a suitable van and fake a logo. Film companies do it all the time.’

‘That’s true. But you did, in fact, have a movement order for Trevor Bates?’

‘Yes, he was going to be moved, to Woodhill, and we had the usual paperwork to collect him from Wormwood Scrubs—’

‘The paperwork was all correct?’

‘Of course it was. A copy was sent to me and it was completely in order, otherwise I wouldn’t have put it through. Then at the last minute I was notified that he wasn’t being moved after all, so I cancelled the movement, and that was that. Far from having escaped, he was never in transit at all. He’s still in Wormwood Scrubs, as far as I know.’

‘Who was it who notified you of the cancellation?’

‘One of the directors of Ring 4, Mr Mark. He’d said he’d been notified by the Home Office of the change of plan. He faxed through the paperwork, I stood down the team, and no movement of any sort was made that evening.’

‘Well, thank you, that’s all very clear,’ Emily said. ‘I’m certainly glad to have heard your side of the story. Fortunately it never made it to the national press.’

‘No, and that boy will be more careful in future, after the wigging I gave his editor. But it’s all of a piece with the general attitude that Ring 4 is fair game.’ She went on to complain at length and in detail about various other bad stories Ring 4 had had told against it, and Emily listened for as long as she could bear it before apologising and extracting herself. She needed to get back to her computer to do some more checking.

Hart had discovered long ago in the Job that the recently bereaved rarely resent people coming and asking them questions. It accounted for how often people could be seen on television screens talking about their loss at a time when the uninitiated would have expected them to be prostrate, with the curtains closed. The big, savage grief generally held off for some time, and arrived when everyone else had got tired of the subject and gone away, leaving the bereaved unsupported.

Mrs Masseter lived in a tiny house in a dismal, raw new estate outside Reading. The estate was as featureless as the fields it had replaced, but not nearly so green or pleasant. Each little yellow-brick house had a paved-over front area to make up for the lack of a garage, and the tiny back gardens were mostly still nothing but bumpy developer’s grass between the cheap orange fencing, except where young inmates had already trampled them bare. The approach roads were laid in a series of unnecessary twists and cul-de-sacs, presumably to make the place look friendlier, and here and there along the pavements puny saplings were struggling to survive, shackled like starving prisoners to thick posts. Elsewhere empty holes showed where two out of three had already been uprooted by vandals. You can’t be nice to some people, Hart thought.

The Masseter house was tiny, the front door leading straight into a single sitting/dining-room with a kitchen alcove off it and French windows leading into the garden. Halfway along one wall an open-plan staircase led up to what could only be, Hart judged from the dimensions and some experience, two tiny bedrooms with a bathroom in between. Mrs Masseter was shapeless, grey-haired and hopeless, though probably only in her late fifties. She was pathetically eager to talk to Hart, and had her sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea listening to her life story before you could say knife.

Not that there was much to tell. The most important thing that ever seemed to have happened to her was her husband running off with the teller from the Halifax in Castle Street, a dyed blonde divorcée who was fifty-five if she was a day (the age seemed an additional affront to Mrs Masseter, as if she could have borne a twenty-year-old rival much more gracefully). The running off accounted for why she was living in this place, which was all she could afford once the value of the family home was split between her and her husband.

‘The law’s a terrible thing,’ she said, ‘when it can turn a person out of her own home just so her husband can buy a place for his fancy woman. The solicitor told me it was because Danny was grown up, so I was only due half the house. I said Danny’s still going to live with me – because there was no way he’d live with his dad and that woman – but they said he was nearly thirty and that’s all that mattered. He counted as a grown-up so he was reckoned to fend for himself. But my Danny’s never been able to look after himself. If it wasn’t for me, he’d never have a clean shirt to his back.’

The other important thing that had happened in her life was Daniel’s death, but she didn’t seem to be coming to grips with that. She spoke about her son in the present tense, as though death was some kind of trip he had gone off on, and from which he would be returning eventually with a haversack full of dirty clothes for her to wash.

‘He’s always going off on his protests,’ she said proudly, when Hart got the conversation round to him. ‘He’s a member of all those things, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and what have you. He really cares about things, animals and the environment and global warming and all that. And unlike some people I could name, he puts his money where his mouth is. His dad’s always griping about him not having a job, but I say to him, our Danny does have a job – saving the planet. And you can’t have a more important job than that, can you?’

‘He’s had some trouble with the police in the past, hasn’t he?’ Hart asked.

The question didn’t seem to bother Mrs Masseter. ‘Well, it’s bound to happen, isn’t it? I mean, the police have got to be on the side of the landowners, stands to reason. I’m not blaming you, dear, because I can see it’s your job. You can’t afford to worry about right and wrong. But Danny has to do what’s right for the planet and that. If it means clashing with the police – well, there you are. More tea? Help yourself to sugar. No, my Danny would never have got into trouble in the normal way. He’s a good boy and he’d never break the law, except in a protest. But he has to do what’s right, and he does, whatever it costs him. He’s that sort of boy.’

‘Do you know what he was involved with just lately? I gather he’d been back home?’

‘Yes, since he came back from Scotland, about three weeks ago.’

‘What was he up to in Scotland?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, dear,’ she said. ‘It was something to do with—’ She screwed up her face with effort. ‘Oh, he did tell me. Something about water, was it? And Cadbury’s? Oh dear, I can’t remember. Cadbury’s came into it, and Beryl somebody. Not Beryl Reid, but something like that.’

‘Cadbury’s?’ Hart queried. ‘Their factory’s not in Scotland.’

‘I’m sure he said Cadbury’s. Anyway, I know it was Scotland because he’d been going up and down for months now. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand a lot of what he goes on about, with his scientific words and all that. But I do know he said this one was very important and secret and the less I knew about it the better. He said it was high-powered stuff and it was going to cause a stink when it got out. Quite excited about it. And it’s the same one he’s been on for ages.’

‘Are any of the organisations involved? You know, Greenpeace and so on?’

‘I don’t think so. He never said they were. In fact – ’ she frowned again, considering – ‘he seems to be doing this one all alone. Usually there’s his friends tramping in and out – scruffy lot, and don’t some of ’em smell! But their hearts are in the right place, I suppose – and having meetings in his bedroom and making leaflets and placards and I don’t know what. But there’s been none of that this time, so I suppose he’s been doing it on his own. If it was deadly secret, maybe he couldn’t trust anyone else.’ She stared at nothing for a moment, and then said, ‘Except he did have this journalist person who was going to help him, a high-up, he said, who’d been in the government.’

‘Ed Stonax?’ Hart asked.

‘Could have been,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think that was his name. He was into all that eco stuff himself, this journalist, which was why Danny went to him. He sent him a load of stuff just recently – documents and that.’

‘Danny sent it to Mr Stonax?’

‘Yes, and sent it registered post, so that shows you how important it was. Danny was going up to London to see him after, only he had his accident.’ For a moment she faltered, as the jagged spike of the accident refused to fit into the woolly shape of her reality. ‘He sent me flowers,’ she went on. ‘When he heard about it.’

‘Mr Stonax did?’

‘He rang to see why he hadn’t heard from Danny, and I told him. And the next day these flowers arrived. Those big lilies that smell. Ever so posh.’ She looked round vaguely as if she expected to see them. ‘They don’t last long, that sort, but they’re nice.’

‘That was kind of him.’

‘Danny always said he was a real gentleman. A right proper sort. He was upset when he heard about the accident. It wasn’t Danny’s fault, you know,’ she added anxiously. ‘He wasn’t a tearaway. He wouldn’t have been speeding or anything. He was never in trouble that way. You can check if you like – never even had any points on his licence. It was a hit-and-run driver, they said – your lot said, only the locals, I mean. Hit-and-run.’ She paused, staring again. ‘So I suppose they’ll never find out who it was.’

She looked strangely stunned by the end of the last sentence. Hit-and-run, Danny with a broken neck and never coming home again, were things outside her experience. At some point she would have to come to terms with them, but for the moment her mind was defending itself like anything against realisation.

‘Would you mind if I had a look at Danny’s room?’ Hart asked.

Mrs Masseter jerked out of a reverie, and smiled as though she was glad to do so. ‘You can have a look, and welcome, but if it’s his papers or anything to do with his protests you’re interested in, you won’t find anything like that. Your lot have already got them.’

‘My lot?’

‘The police. A policeman came that same day and said they wanted all his papers and his computer. It was quite late when he came. Mike – my husband – had just gone, and I thought it was him come back when the doorbell rang. But no, he’d gone off home to be with her. Said she’d be upset, though what she’d got to be upset about I don’t know.’

‘This policeman—’ Hart prompted.

‘He was one like you,’ Mrs Masseter said, and as Hart was thinking he must have been black, she added, ‘not in uniform, I mean. A plain-clothes one, a detective, whatever you call yourselves.’

‘Did he give his name?’

‘Yes, it was Inspector something.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll think of it in a minute. It was an ordinary name, like Black. I think it began with a B. Or a G. Was it Green? Anyway, he said he wanted Danny’s things, and he went upstairs, and come down with all his papers in plastic bags – two lots he had to do, to take ’em all. And he took Danny’s computer – not the television bit, but the box bit that sits under his desk.’

Hart had a bad feeling about it. It was just not the way things were done. She got out her brief and showed it to Mrs Masseter again. ‘Did he show you his identification, like this?’

‘No, he just said he was Inspector whateveritwas – was it Sampson? No, not Sampson, but something like that. Strong, was it? Anyway, he said could he have Danny’s papers.’

‘Did he say why he wanted them?’

‘Well, no. I suppose it was some police thing. I mean, Danny wasn’t in trouble. I suppose it was because of the accident he wanted them.’

Hart rolled her mental eyes. ‘And you didn’t ask to see his identification?’

She frowned a little. ‘Well, it would’ve been rude, wouldn’t it? Like calling him a liar. Strong. I’m sure now he said his name was Strong – Inspector Strong.’

‘But if you didn’t see his ID, how did you know he was a policeman?’ Hart asked in despair.

‘Well, he said he was. Anyway, who else could he have been?’

Who indeed, Hart thought. ‘Would you mind if I just had a look at his room anyway?’

‘No, dear. You go ahead. It’s the one at the front.’

Hart climbed the narrow, cardboard stairs, turned carefully on the midget-sized landing, and took the one step necessary to bring her to the open bedroom door. The room was about eleven foot square, with a window on to the street, and a street lamp directly outside which must have flooded the room all night with yellow light through the thin curtains. They were patterned with lions, and matched the duvet cover on the single bed under the window, smoothed out and pulled taut by a mother’s hand. There was no dust anywhere, the carpet had been hoovered, and there was very little lying about. Either he had been a very tidy boy – boy? He was nearly thirty, she reminded herself – or his mother had put everything away.

The walls were bare except for two posters neatly put up with Blu-tack, one of an African elephant on the veldt, the other the famous view of the earth from outer space, all blue and white and romantic.

Along one wall was a cheap desk unit with shelving above and a wheeled office chair in front of it. On the desk the VDU, keyboard and printer sat forlornly, their wires fed down the trough cut in the back and leading to nothing but the footprints in the carpet where the box had stood. She couldn’t know, therefore, anything about the computer, but the printer was a very good one and the screen a new-looking nineteen-inch flat. In contrast to everything else about this house, it looked as though nothing had been stinted on the IT front.

But all the shelves and the drawers were empty. ‘Inspector Strong’ had taken no chances and cleared everything out. At the end of the desk there was a CD player with speakers, but there were no CDs anywhere to be seen. Strong must have taken those as well, perhaps on suspicion that a computer data disc might be hidden among them.

There was hardly room for anything else, except an upright chair with a haversack resting on it. Hart looked inside just in case, but it was empty except for half of a Snickers wrapper and a box of Bluebell matches. She lifted up the liner at the bottom and searched in the corners of the pockets, but there was nothing there but ancient crumbs and fluff. And that left only the beside table on which stood a bedside lamp with a frieze of cut-out elephants round the shade, a travelling alarm clock, a set of house-keys attached to a rubber fried egg, a water flask on a strap of the sort runners carry, and a paperback book. Presumably it was what Danny had been reading in bed.

Hart picked it up. Elephant Song. Either Inspector Strong hadn’t seen it – which was possible because it was behind the flask and not visible until you reached the table, and he must have been in a hurry – or he hadn’t thought it important. She flicked through to see if anything had been scribbled in it, but the pages were clean. But there was something – a piece of paper, folded into a long thin strip as though it was being used as a bookmark. She opened it out. It was a printed letter from Reading Borough Libraries. The following book(s) are overdue. Failure to return the book(s) may lead to increasing fines.

There was only one title: Analysis of Risks Associated with Nuclear Submarine Decommissioning, Dismantling and Disposal. Unsurprisingly, it had an asterisk beside it and was marked ‘Special Loan – Reading University Library’.

Well, how’s about that for light bedtime reading, Hart thought to herself. She turned the paper over. On the blank back of the form, in a scrawly, unformed handwriting in blue biro, was a sort of list.

Clydebrae

Scottish War Museem St Vincent St

Clyde Maritime and Shipping Museem (Govan)

public records office Argyle St

universty? Meekie book

Hager Loch (Museem?)

Then a word so scrawly she couldn’t read it properly. It looked like Newark. And at the bottom, scrawliest of all: cad ber.

Hart grinned to herself. He couldn’t even spell Cadbury’s, the dipstick, never mind know where the factory was!

She took the piece of paper with her and left the sad, empty little room to its thoughts.

Mrs Masseter looked up eagerly when she stepped off the bottom of the stairs. ‘All right, dear? I’ve kept it nice and clean and tidy, not that there’s much left since your Inspector Strong came. I’m just boiling the kettle again – you’ll have another cup?’

‘I found this in a book beside Danny’s bed,’ Hart said, showing her the paper.

She turned it automatically from the written to the printed side, and unexpectedly blushed. ‘Oh, I know, there’s been another of them just this morning. Asking for their book back, and I don’t know what to do – that inspector must have taken it with the other books because it’s nowhere in this house, that I do know. But if it’s a library book he oughtn’t to keep it, did he? I don’t want to get into trouble about it. Could you ask him to send it to them, dear? Only I don’t know where he is or anything.’

‘There’s some writing on the other side,’ Hart said patiently. ‘Can you tell me if that’s Danny’s writing?’

‘Oh, yes. Just some of his nonsense.’

‘Would you mind if I kept it?’

She looked doubtful. ‘Well, if you think it’s important. Only there’s the library book to think of.’

‘I’ll have a word with Reading Library,’ Hart promised, and Mrs Masseter’s face cleared like fast-forwarded clouds parting.

‘Thank you ever so much,’ she said. Her only son had been killed and she was shut in the human equivalent of a hamster cage without him for the rest of her life, but she was so relieved the library weren’t going to chase her for an overdue library book.

In an access of pity, Hart stayed for another cup of tea, which was not like her.