The Finisher

12

While the five thousand were driving their protesting bodies along the roads and footpaths south of Bath, Diamond and young Gilbert enjoyed coffee and cake at the Holburne Museum and then took a gentle stroll to Great Pulteney Street. It was sensible to be posted somewhere near the finish, so they found a position fifty yards short of the big red gantry that stretched across the street. News of the leading runners was being relayed over the public address, but the two CID men didn’t pay much attention. For them this was a lazy Sunday, an agreeable way of earning overtime.

The finishing straight filled up and the marshals in their high-visibility jackets took control. Some of the crowd were getting updates by phone from the runners themselves. The sense of anticipation was rising.

A bigger buzz of excitement suddenly spread along the lines. An hour and twelve minutes was showing on the digital display on the gantry and shouts had been heard from the top of the street. Shortly after, a runner appeared. He had a clear lead.

“Told you, didn’t I?” Diamond said.

Harry Hobbs, the black guy Gilbert had been at school with, was about to finish first.

If Diamond expected to be congratulated, he was mistaken. Gilbert cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Up St. Mark’s!”

To whoops and screams of encouragement and near-delirium from the public address, Hobbs sprinted the final yards and breasted the tape in record time. “And what’s more,” the announcer added, voice breaking with emotion, “Harry is one of ours, a local lad, from Midsomer Norton.”

Some forty yards behind, the next two were in a sprint for second place. Both were black. Diamond wasn’t getting caught out again. He didn’t venture an opinion on their countries of origin. “Daniel Wanjiru and Martin Maiyoro, both of Kenya,” came the announcement.

More elite runners appeared soon after, with quite long gaps between small groups going at a pace Diamond couldn’t have kept up with for more than a few yards, even in his rugby-playing days. After crossing the line, they were wrapped in tinfoil blankets and escorted away by volunteers.

Paul Gilbert’s attention was on his old school chum, being photographed with the Kenyans. “Remember why we’re here,” Diamond said, feeling the need to reassert himself. “Keep an eye on the crowd. It only takes one idiot to spoil the day for everyone.”

Three more minutes and at least five hundred runners passed before it happened. A ripple of amusement animated the crowd. The two officers leaned in for a better view.

“That’s all we need,” Gilbert said.

A pair of streakers had joined in. Stark naked, male and female, they were dodging among the toiling runners doing dance moves and star jumps and jiggling their loose bits.

Pleased with himself, Diamond said, “Not one idiot, but two. I wasn’t far wrong, was I?”

“Nothing much to boast about,” Gilbert said.

He was given a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

“The bloke, guv. If I was him I’d keep it covered up.”

A sniff. “Haven’t you noticed? Modest guys like you and me are always surprised at what other people think is special.”

“Had we better stop them?”

“How?”

“Well, bundle them off the course and get them covered up.”

“What with?”

“My jacket for the woman.”

“And my hat for the man, I suppose? No, thanks.”

“Isn’t it our job to deal with them, guv?”

“You can if you want. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

Gilbert glanced at him uncertainly.

“The terrorist threat.”

“Right.”

“Anyone can see those two aren’t armed.”

Having got their few seconds of attention, the streakers discovered they were unpopular. Someone in the crowd threw a water bottle and hit the man’s back and he collided with a runner and fell heavily. He was hauled up by a marshal and led away. No one in the crowd wanted to come into contact with bare flesh, so there was no need to ask them to make room. The woman tamely followed and the show was over.

By this time, hundreds more runners had plodded into view. Diamond was still alert, but — if truth were told — not expecting a terrorist. He was keen to get a second look at the ex-jailbird, Tony Pinto. He wanted to be sure he could trust his own eyes. Had it been a lookalike, or had he truly seen that sicko up to his old game of chatting up a pretty woman? If so, why wasn’t he having a tougher time, as most prisoners do when they are released? How had he got fit enough to run a half marathon? How could he afford the race fee and the smart running kit?

These weren’t idle questions. He meant to follow them up at the first opportunity.

More than an hour went by and the crowd along the finish was still enthusiastic. Every runner was getting cheered and some had joined the supporters to look out for friends. Humanity at its most positive.

But Diamond was weary of scrutinising the finishers. He’d not seen Pinto or the blonde he had been running with. It was well possible that the woman had run by unnoticed, but he doubted that he’d missed the scumbag he’d once arrested, interviewed and charged.

More of the fancy-dress people were coming past now. When last seen, Pinto had been running strongly enough to have finished well ahead of that lot.

Maeve had survived the tunnel of death and a second, shorter, railway tunnel, refuelled at another drinks station, and was starting to believe she would finish the race. She was on a high, literally. The worst was over and all that was left was a steady downhill jog into Oldfield Park and from there into the heart of Bath. She turned a corner, heard a shout of, “Here she is!” Then “Miss Kelleeeeee!” and saw at least a dozen hands reaching to be high-fived. Buoyed up, confident and tearful, she slowed to make sure she didn’t miss one. The human contact after so long with her own insecurities and fears was as good as an injection of energy. Someone thrust a bottle of water at her and she grabbed it, gulped and got into her stride again.

Her first glimpse of the abbey was another thrill. She started striding faster, overtaking runners she’d trailed for the past hour and still finding the strength to wave back each time someone urged her on. Where had this come from? For so much of the race she’d feared she wouldn’t finish, yet here she was, going better than she had all afternoon. All those hours of pounding the streets in every extreme of weather were repaying her. The tumbles, the snarling dogs, the rainstorms, the sore nipples, the sensible eating, the proper kit — and the laundering it required — and the battles to push back the dreaded lactic threshold.

Another pocket of Longford Road kids screamed, “Go, go, go, Miss Kelly!” and behind them she saw the deputy head, Mr. Seagrove, waving his cap and shouting with them, in spite of the fact that twenty-six pounds had gone from his bank account. And she felt a lump in her throat when she reminded herself of all the other generous people who had sponsored her. And the one who hadn’t, her mother, unwilling to encourage such madness, but as a concession funding the expensive kit.

“Shall we call it a day, guv?” Gilbert asked. “Some of them will be crawling in for hours yet.”

“You can if you want,” came the answer. “I’m going to watch a bit longer.”

“An hour and forty minutes.”

“Is that all?”

“Since the winner finished. This lot are taking almost three hours for a thirteen-mile run. Some people could walk it in that time.”

“Look, I said you can knock off.”

“I’m thinking your guy dropped out. Blisters or something.”

“He’s not my guy. He’s a serpent.”

“He’d have passed us by now.”

“No way of telling, is there?”

“Later on there is. The list of all the finishers.”

The frustration was all too evident. “I’m not completely clueless about what goes on. I trust my own eyes better than a results sheet.”

“Masses of them have come through already. It would have been easy to miss someone.”

“Bugger off and leave me in peace.”

Paul Gilbert obeyed orders.

The crowd had thinned to little more than a single line each side of the street. There were long gaps between the pathetic also-rans coming in. The guy with the mike had given up commentating and put on a loop of “We Are the Champions.”

How many times Maeve had crossed the Avon in this mind-numbing foot slog she didn’t know, but at Pulteney Bridge she was over for the last. Then up Argyle Street towards the fountain in the middle of the road and already she could see the dreamed-of scarlet gantry across Great Pulteney Street, the finishing straight. It was a riot of balloons, flashing cameras, blaring music and red-shirted marshals ready to assist.

Her vision blurred as tears streamed down her face, and they weren’t tears of joy. Each step punished her badly blistered feet and brought sharp pains in her shinbones, knees and pelvis, but the thirteen-mile torture was almost over.

With a cry of triumph, she reached the line. She had an overpowering urge to hug somebody, her mother, her friend Olga, even po-faced Trevor. None of them was there, so she settled for a hapless marshal, who didn’t seem to mind the sweaty embrace.

“Well done, love. You deserve a medal and there’s one waiting for you with your goody bag.”

“No time for losers,” for the umpteenth time. Diamond’s head ached from the music and his feet were hurting, although he hadn’t run a step. He was getting hungry. He looked at his watch. Gone 3 p.m. Four hours since the start.

An ostrich with swollen ankles hobbled by.

Time to call it a day.

That evening, Diamond drank more beer than was good for him and watched TV with his long-term friend Paloma in her house on Lyncombe Hill. A crime drama was on. He had a feeling he’d watched it before. He may have dozed through some of it. When the commercials came on, he said, “I lose patience when the detective has that light-bulb moment and doesn’t share it with anyone else.”

“Dramatic licence,” Paloma said. “It’s the signal to the viewers to make up their own minds. People enjoy that. And they stay tuned to find out if they’re right.” She spoke from experience of looking at hundreds of scripts and screenplays. She had a successful business in TV and film, providing images for costume dramas.

“I’ve usually sussed it out already.”

“Clever old you. What’s bugging you tonight?”

“A blast from the past.” He didn’t often talk about work issues, but the Pinto case was done and dusted. No harm in sharing it with Paloma. It had made the headlines before he knew her.

After she’d listened, she said, “You let him get under your skin.”

“He got under Bryony Lancaster’s skin with a Stanley knife.”

“But it wasn’t murder, Peter. They’re not going to lock him away for life. Sometimes we all have to move on.”

“The girl still has her scars.”

“Have you seen her lately?”

“Not for a long time.”

“She could have had cosmetic surgery.”

“She’ll carry the mental scars for the rest of her life.”

“You can say that about anyone touched by a serious crime.” She took a deeper breath and released it before adding, “Admit it, you’re scarred mentally and so am I. There are times when it still hurts badly, but we don’t dwell on the past and I daresay Bryony doesn’t.”

He knew exactly what she meant. Her son was still serving a life sentence for murder. She visited him regularly and never spoke of what was said between them, if anything. The strain showed for days afterwards. “Do you think I should warn her Pinto is out of prison?”

“Why?”

“It could come as a horrible shock. It shocked me.”

“I wouldn’t. He’s not a threat anymore. He’s probably more scared of meeting her than she will be of him.”

“He didn’t look scared in that race today. He was as cocksure as ever.”

“Are you a hundred per cent certain it was Pinto?”

“Ninety-nine and counting. Most of us have a double somewhere in the world, I’ve heard.” He hesitated and grinned. He’d seen a chance to lighten the mood. “All right, I’ll say it for you. Two of me would be hard to take.”

“Doesn’t bear thinking about.”

The commercials had ended. Diamond watched the screen to the end of the show without taking anything in. He couldn’t shift Tony Pinto from his thoughts. “Why do people do it?” he asked Paloma when she’d switched off the TV.

“Do what?”

“Run. I can’t see the attraction.”

“All sorts of reasons. It’s the most basic of actions. Cavemen had to run to survive. If you’re the right shape and good at it, you’ll probably feel the urge to show your paces.”

“Me?”

“Not you specially. You have other talents.”

He lifted his glass. “Here’s to those, whatever they are. What I’m getting at is Pinto’s reason for doing the Other Half. Was he in it for the glory of sport or to pull girls?”

“From all you’ve told me, it was the latter.”

“In which case, he didn’t need to complete the run if he made a hit already.”

“I see what you’re getting at. They may have quit the race for a bit of how’s your father. Does it really matter?”

He ducked that question. “She didn’t look as if she was enjoying his company.”

“The woman he was running with? What age would she be?” Paloma was a couple of moves ahead in this verbal chess game.

“I’m not much use at ages. Thirties, maybe.”

“And how old is Pinto?”

“Forties.”

“Old enough to know what they’re doing, both of them.”

“Agreed.” By now he knew what was coming.

“So they’re grown-ups. Forget them.”

“I can’t forget he’s violent.”

“Did the woman finish the race?”

“I didn’t see her — but there were hundreds in British Heart Foundation shirts and I wasn’t looking for her particularly.”

“You won’t know her name, so you can’t check whether she finished.”

“She’ll have been wearing a number. There’s such a thing as CCTV.”

“And who’s going to scroll through hours and hours of video? You fall asleep in twenty minutes watching Midsomer Murders.”

He didn’t answer. She was right. He ought to let go.

After a pause, Paloma signalled a personal announcement by steepling her hands in front of her chin. “I’d better own up. I’ve taken up running myself.”

He jerked forward and stared at her, fully alert now. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. I was getting breathless walking up the hill from the station. I decided to do something about it, so I bought myself some trainers and now I pound the streets of Lyncombe Vale every other day. It’s doing me good. An inch off my waistline. Haven’t you noticed?”

“What time do you do this?”

“After I finish work and before I cook the meal. It’s a fascinating time. People are turning on the lights but they haven’t pulled the curtains. I see inside front rooms I’ll never visit. You’d never believe what some folk get up to at five in the afternoon.”

She was making light of this, but he disapproved and needed to let her know without getting heavy about it. “You want to be careful.”

“Looking in people’s windows?”

“No. Running through dark streets.”

She laughed. “Don’t go all protective on me, Peter Diamond, or I’ll throw you out. I don’t need looking after. If you want to join me, that’s another thing, but a moment ago you made your views on running very clear.”

“Can’t you do Pilates or something?”

Paloma’s steely look left him in no doubt he was out of order. “This is my choice, Peter. I enjoy it. Don’t glare at me like that. I won’t be entering marathons in the hope of meeting some sex-starved guy just out of prison.”

“If you mean Pinto I should bloody hope not.”

“He doesn’t sound like any girl’s dream date.”

“I’ve looked into that man’s eyes and seen something I never want to see again.”

“I’m forewarned, then. But the chance of him ever crossing my path is remote.”

Unusually for him, Murat was bragging. “I could have filled a sack with all the goodies I was offered. It was like Christmas Day. You should have been there.” He tipped the contents of one of the bags on the ground between his own blow-up bed and Spiro’s. “Help yourself.”

“I’m not hungry.”

They were at their latest sleeping quarters in the Parade Gardens under the colonnade that stands below the busy street known as Grand Parade. This prime location had become their private shelter after they had discovered a simple way into the gardens when the main entrance was locked. The inflatable beds had come from Argos, nine pounds ninety-nine each (the cash donated by a German tourist who took pity on them and may not have appreciated the value of a twenty-pound note) and the blankets from a stack left out for the refuse collectors by an old people’s home — courtesy of something overheard by Murat in the queue for charity bread and soup.

“Don’t be so sniffy, just because you were wrong,” Murat said. “I can’t eat them all. At least have some of the water.”

“I’ve got my own fucking water.”

“Be like that, then.”

After a pained pause, Murat started up again. “I know you didn’t like me taking the risk, but honestly, Spiro, if you’d been there you would have seen how safe it was. They’d finished their race and they wanted to talk about it to anyone who would listen. Real excitement. Sweaty people with smiles on their faces. Long time since I’ve seen anywhere as noisy as that.”

Spiro wasn’t listening. Murat’s experiences at the recreation ground were of little interest to him and he had no intention of sharing the trauma of his own terrifying showdown with the Finisher. Nothing could be the same again. What was done was done.

He was here tonight out of loyalty to Murat. Their shared experience as fugitives had forged a bond between them. He’d come to appreciate his big companion’s personal qualities, his openness, his trust, his simplicity in the best sense of the word, and his bravery. You can’t abandon a mate as staunch as that without warning him. All those months in the work party had taught him little about Murat or any of the others. The last few days had restored his trust in human nature. Here was one truly good, sweet guy who hadn’t been crushed into despair or cynicism.

“First thing tomorrow I’m leaving,” he said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“Why?” Murat said on a shocked, high-pitched note. “Just when we’re getting settled.”

“It’s not safe to be in Bath any longer, that’s why.”

“Has something happened?”

He sidestepped the question. “My mind is made up, that’s what’s happened.”

“Because of me?” Murat asked. “You think I’m too much of a risk after what I did today?”

“It’s not you. Get that out of your head, Murat. We disagreed, but that’s history now. I shouldn’t have ranted at you like I did. Like you say, your visit to the athletes’ village turned out all right. We’ve moved on from there. The truth is that I’m the problem here, not you.”

Murat shook his head.

“Really,” Spiro said. “I’m a marked man now and I’m getting the hell out of here and so must you. They’ll be onto you next. But this time we’re splitting and no argument. I’m going alone.”