Game Over

Sixteen

Armageddon Too Old For This

Joanna arrived early, in buoyant mood, and bearing gifts: bacon rolls for herself, and doughnuts for everyone else.

‘I left so early I didn’t get breakfast before I left,’ she said. ‘God, it’s good to be back!’

Everyone clustered round for the goodies, including Emily, whose presence by now caused no surprise or comment. ‘I’ve found some things out about Bates’s company. Should I tell you now?’ She addressed the comment to Slider, but obviously with the rest of the team in mind.

‘Go ahead,’ he said. It would save repeating it all later.

‘Well, you know he had this electronics firm called OroTech? His own baby, built up from nothing over many years, so he was virtually the sole owner.’

‘Virtually?’

‘Ten per cent was owned by someone else, the shares registered to a holding company. I thought it was interesting that he would give up any part of his company, because from all I can find out he was pretty much of a control freak, but when I looked at the date of the transfer, it was within six weeks of his being awarded the government IT contract. So I wondered, you see, whether it was a quid pro quo.’

‘You give me the contract, I give you a hand in the profits?’ said Atherton. ‘Sounds feasible. Obviously it must be Tyler.’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ Slider said. ‘If it was, Emily would have told us. What’s this holding company?’ he asked her.

‘It’s called Vollman Zabrinski. It’s a sort of offshore wrapper, if you like, but I can’t get in to check individual holdings, and obviously they won’t answer my questions. It would have to be a police inquiry.’ She looked from Slider to Atherton and back.

‘I’ll ask Mr Porson,’ Slider said. ‘Might have to go through Interpol, though, which will take time. Anything else?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Emily said. ‘Two years ago OroTech split off its property division, Key Developments. And shortly afterwards it did a merger with British Electronics Systems, or BriSys, and the two became BriTech.’

Atherton clapped his hands together in satisfaction. ‘Which then tried to merge with Anderson-Millar and was snubbed, until Sid Andrew came up with his brilliant idea.’

‘I wonder, though,’ Slider said, ‘whether it really was his idea. He didn’t seem all that bright to me. Maybe it was Richard Tyler’s invention, and he just let Sid do the fronting, and Sid got ideas above his station. He did say Tyler got the credit, while he got the sack.’

‘Whoever thought of it, it does mean than Bates was in on the whole Waverley B business,’ Atherton said, ‘and we’ve got even more connections between him and Tyler.’

‘I wonder if Stonax – I mean, Mr Stonax, sorry . . .’ Swilley corrected herself with a blush. Emily made a negating gesture with her hand. ‘I wonder if he knew about the Bates-Tyler connection.’

‘Or if he didn’t before, maybe that was what he was working on after he left the DTI,’ Joanna suggested. ‘Did he never mention any of this to you?’ she asked Emily.

‘Not a thing. Which now I think of it was a telling point, because he used to like talking to me about his campaigns and investigations. But this one he played really close to his chest, so I ought to have known it was something serious.’ She sighed. ‘But if he didn’t want to tell, he wouldn’t have. You couldn’t force my dad to do anything he didn’t want.’

The same thing occurred to everyone simultaneously – that he had been forced, by a threat to Emily – but no-one said it. She obviously thought it too, because she looked unhappy and lowered her eyes for a moment.

Swilley spoke, mostly to break the awkward silence. ‘So what’s become of the Waverley B shipyard in all this?’

‘Sid Andrew said AM-BriTech were selling it,’ Slider said.

‘That’s not strictly true,’ Emily said. ‘They closed the yard as soon as their merger went through – which was pretty cynical, but I suppose that’s business for you. The gates closed at the end of May last year.’

‘And the election was in April,’ Atherton said. ‘That’s pretty cynical too. And now it’s going to be developed. I’ve seen the plans on the internet. It’s in a fabulous position, you see – on a sort of promontory sticking out into the Clyde, so it has water on three sides. It’s close to Glasgow – City of Culture, isn’t that what they call it now? – which is bursting at the seams with young money looking for somewhere to spend itself. It has good transport links. And there’s even an old railway line they’re talking about reviving. That was hinted at on the website, and it would mean a public money injection. “Infrastructure investment” is what they call it these days.’

‘And what’s it going to be?’ Joanna asked.

‘A mixture of leisure, retail and residential,’ Atherton said. ‘Shops, galleries, hotels, restaurants, small retail units – craft workshops and the like – and some swanky flats with river views.’

‘Like Salford Quays,’ Joanna said.

‘I was just going to say that,’ said Hollis. ‘Have you been there?’

‘We went out there when we did a concert in Manchester last year,’ Joanna said. ‘We had some time to kill between seating rehearsal and concert, so we thought we’d go out there for a meal. It was quite impressive, but a bit sad, I thought.’

Hollis nodded. ‘Like when they turn the great old mills into yuppy flats.’ He had been born in Oldham, where now there was nary a mill.

‘Still,’ said Joanna, ‘a generation breathes easier.’

Slider looked at Atherton. ‘That name rings a bell. Didn’t you report that Freddie Bell said Mr Stonax asked him about Salford Quays?’

Atherton nodded. ‘He asked what sort of money there was in a development like that, and Bell told him it depended on how much you had to pay for the land.’

‘You’re building up to something,’ Joanna said. ‘I know that look.’

‘The Waverley B development – or the New Clydeview Centre as they’re going to call it . . .’

‘What else?’ said Joanna.

‘The development is being done by Key Developments, Bates’s company which he took care didn’t get taken over in the takeover. And since he’s also a large shareholder in AM-BriTech, I dare say the price charged for the land won’t be too heartbreaking.’

There was a silence as these facts were absorbed. Then Swilley said, ‘So is that it? Is that the whole conspiracy? That Bates and Tyler were doing some fancy financial footwork together to make a profit out of the old shipyard?’

‘Isn’t it enough?’ Atherton asked. Their old resentment seemed to prickle the air for a moment.

Swilley frowned. ‘I don’t see how that makes a case for killing Stonax – sorry.’

‘Please, you don’t have to mind me,’ Emily said. ‘I know he’s dead. That’s why I’m here, to try to help find out why.’

‘OK, I’ll stop saying sorry,’ Swilley said. ‘What I’m saying is that Ed Stonax knew about the fix that went in over Waverley B and the election, and that’s what they got rid of him from the department for. Developing a site as a leisure complex is what goes on all over the country all the time, and apart from maybe the “infrastructure investment” you were hinting at, Jim, having Tyler’s fingerprints on it, there’s no extra scandal for anyone to disapprove of. The development would bring regeneration to what was presumably a run-down area, and surely that’s a good thing all round? OK, a few people are going to get extremely rich on the back of it, but blimey, we all know that happens. It’s not something to kill anyone for.’

‘And what about Danny Masseter?’ asked Hart, who had come to feel rather proprietorial about him. ‘Where does he fit into it?’

‘And why was Bates sprung – if he was sprung?’ Hollis asked. ‘Couldn’t be just to enjoy the fruits of his labours, could it?’

‘He was a friend of Tyler’s – isn’t that enough?’ Atherton said.

‘I wouldn’t have thought Tyler had any friends,’ Slider said. ‘Not of the sentimental sort. But you’re right, Norma – this doesn’t tie up all the ends. In fact, it leaves me with just as many questions as I started with.’

Hart’s phone rang, and she went over to answer it. She came back smiling. ‘That was Reading,’ she said. ‘Mrs Masseter recognised Mark from the photograph as the bogus Inspector Steel.’

‘Good,’ Slider said. ‘So we’ve got him for impersonating a police officer, obstructing the course, and burglary, just for starters. Get his description and photograph out to all units. He’s to be arrested on sight.’

‘And if the car damage matches the motorbike,’ Hart said happily, ‘we can have him for murder.’

‘You’ve got to link him with the car first,’ Mackay reminded her.

‘We’ll do it. Poor old Danny,’ she said. ‘By Grabthar’s hammer, I will avenge you.’

‘By what?’ Slider said.

‘Best not to ask,’ said Joanna, who had seen the film.

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this,’ Joanna said when she and Slider were alone, ‘but I have to have some more clothes. I didn’t pack all that much because it was only two days. I have to go back to the flat.’

‘Not on your own,’ Slider said.

‘You went on your own,’ she reminded him.

‘And look what happened to me.’

‘Yes. You didn’t manage to avoid it, so how will your coming with me make things better?’

‘I saw the warning signs, without which I could have been much worse hurt.’

Joanna looked anxious. ‘It’s not that dangerous, is it? It was only a prank – the bucket? Painful for you, but not life-threatening.’

‘His threats have escalated,’ Slider said, choosing his words carefully. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never known, how seriously he means them, but I can’t take chances, especially not with you. If you tell me what you want, I’ll go and get it.’

‘Not on your own, to quote somebody I know and love,’ Joanna said. ‘You’d never find half what I want, and you’d get the wrong things. Besides, the whole thing about threats is that they are blackmail, and you don’t give in to blackmail. It’s my flat and I won’t be kept out of it by some creep of a criminal.’

‘Bravely spoken,’ Slider said, but he didn’t smile. ‘All right, we’ll both go – but you’re to do exactly as I say, if anything happens.’

‘OK,’ Joanna said, making certain mental reservations. Probably he could read her mind – they had been together a long time – but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Slider drove by a roundabout route, and this, and his constant checking in the mirrors, began to work on Joanna’s nerves. He had been hurt before – the memory of it chilled her – and Atherton had been seriously wounded some years back, so badly wounded that his nerve almost went and he was on the verge of leaving the Job. Being pregnant made you feel differently about all sorts of hazards. She had never given a thought to the hazards of falling over until the baby started to show. Now being at the top of a flight of stairs gave her pause. She didn’t let it stop her using stairs, but she thought about it. She wondered suddenly if, once the baby arrived, she would ever feel the same again about ponds, electrical sockets, bleach bottles, large dogs and any number of other pieces of previously ignorable life furniture. She had given a hostage to fortune in loving Bill, but it was the baby that had made her realise all the ways in which the ransom could be levied.

But you can’t give in to it, she thought, otherwise there was no point in being alive at all. She wondered, though, how often Bill had been afraid for her, how often he was afraid for his other children. He never spoke of it, but that would be Bill anyway. Men’s courage was different from women’s. What they had decided to put up with come what may, they didn’t see the need to talk about. She reached across and laid a hand on his thigh as a huge gust of love went through her. He took his hand briefly from the wheel and laid it on hers in acknowledgement.

There was a parking space right in front of the house, for once in a blue moon, and for a moment he wondered if that was ominous. Then he told himself not to be a fool; and not to appear one, either, by driving past it and parking further away, which was what he would have done had he been alone. But after all, if they were following him, they knew by now where he was going – would have known it as soon as he turned into the road. He parked, told Joanna not to get out until he opened the door, checked all the mirrors minutely, then got out and went round to her side. The day-empty street mocked his precautions. A car went past and he tensed, but it was a silver Peugeot with a young woman driving it.

‘OK,’ he said, letting Joanna out. He helped her to her feet, and as her face reached a level with his, he saw that she was nervous now. ‘This is silly,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you some new clothes.’

‘You will not,’ she said. ‘That would be silly.’

He walked up the path with Joanna behind him, scanning the house for any signs of change, scanning the path for any hint that anyone else had been there. He got the key out, inspected the lock and the door, turned it cautiously, and let himself in.

The door opened without resistance, and a tiny alarm bell rang in his head before he realised what it was: there should have been a heap of junk mail impeding it, but there was no mail at all lying there. How many days in the year was there nothing in the post? He couldn’t remember a single one, except for bank holidays. He had stepped in as he thought this. The windowless hall passage was always dark, and Joanna, stepping in behind him, reached automatically for the light switch, just at the instant that his nose and brain, working separately, suddenly joined forces in a flash of horror. His hand shot out, grasping her wrist, and he turned her with its leverage and pushed her with his whole body back out of the door.

‘Gas!’ he said as he ran her back down the path. She stumbled because he was pushing her, but he had his arm round her now and bore her up as well as along. Out of the gate, across the pavement. There was a big plane tree growing opposite the next door house, and he pushed her into the shelter of its trunk. ‘Stay there,’ he snapped and flung himself at the boot of his car.

‘Bill! What are you doing?’

He rummaged frantically in his tool kit and found a big screwdriver.

‘Bill!’ Joanna cried, her voice rising in terror as he headed back to the house. ‘Bill, don’t!’

‘Stay there!’ he flung over his shoulder.

Under the small bay window of the sitting-room stood the white meter box. He flung himself to his knees with frantic haste, wrenched open the flap with the screwdriver, and twisted the shut-off lever closed. Then, with the horrid sensation of the sweat of fear in his armpits, he ran back to Joanna, reaching for his mobile.

She was so white he thought she was going to be sick. But her fear turned itself nimbly into anger. ‘How dare you? How dare you risk yourself like that?’

‘I had to turn off the gas,’ he said. ‘Thank God the meter box was outside.’ She began to cry. He conducted her across the road, further from the house. It could still go up, though the worst was averted now the gas was shut off at the main. ‘I have to ring the bomb disposal squad,’ he said. ‘Hush, it’s all right.’ He put his arm round her, and let her cry on his shoulder while he spoke to them. It was just her hormones, he told himself.

The subsequent fuss took a big chunk out of the day. The road had to be sealed off and the house and the ones either side had to be evacuated – though fortunately, because of the time of day, that only involved one old lady and a cat, the rest of the flats being empty. Then the squad went in to do a sweep. There were two triggers, it turned out. One was the light switch by the front door – it was damn lucky, said Cattishall, the head of the squad, that Slider’s reactions had been so fast.

‘It’s lucky I’ve got a good sense of smell,’ Slider countered.

The other trigger was in the kitchen, and was particularly cunning and nasty. It was a friction device fixed in the runner of the sash window, so that if Slider had smelled the gas and come in without using the light, as soon as he pushed up the window – the natural first action – it would have acted like a match striking a matchbox. All the gas taps had been left fully open and there was a considerable volume of gas inside the house.

‘Makes you nostalgic for the old shilling-in-the-meter days,’ Cattishall said. ‘It would have run out before too much harm was done.’

Once everything had been made safe, Slider and Joanna both went in to pack up everything they thought they might need to take with them, before the flat was boarded up completely. Packing a suitcase, Joanna was calm, but unhappy.

‘I hate this. I’m sick of it. How can people be allowed to ruin your life like this? It’s my home! I hate that blasted Bates.’

‘You’re not meant to like him.’

‘Oh, Bill,’ she said tragically, ‘when will it all be over?’

‘When we catch him,’ Slider said.