Game Over

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Slider himself wondered how it would be possible to put Tyler on trial, when all he had to do was threaten to finger the PM. And would the CPS even consider making the attempt if the PM was able to say that Commissioner of the Met was implicated? Slider and Atherton agreed, unhappily, that it looked as though it was another of those cases that would be buried deep and the whereabouts of the grave forgotten, which, as Atherton pointed out, made it look bad for them. They would be bound to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act, and be under surveillance for the rest of their careers, if any, to make sure they didn’t spill the beans to anyone.

  But in the end it was pressure from the bottom that changed things. Porson kept agitating to Wetherspoon, and Wetherspoon, marvellously shaken out of his usual servile complacency, kept poking those above him. In the end the Assistant Commissioner, who quite fancied his boss’s job, leaned on the Home Secretary by reminding him that after the war the government had handed back the contaminated land to be run as a shipbuilding yard again, and who knew how many people had got sick and even died as a result? Even if they hadn’t known the site was contaminated, the potential for compensation suits was beyond computation. There was a hopeful passage of play at the break-down when the Home Secretary suggested the late Trevor Bates might conveniently be blamed for everything, and the Assistant Commissioner suggested to Wetherspoon that it might be best to go that way. But Wetherspoon countered by pointing out that by now far too many people at the bottom knew too much and would not be satisfied with that, and the Assistant Commissioner told the Home Secretary that since it was impossible to get the brown sauce back in the bottle, it must be Tyler’s head on a platter, or the whole Waverley B story to come out, with politically disastrous results. The Home Secretary pedalled hard on the PM’s paranoia, the PM persuaded the Commissioner to take early retirement in return for a full pension and a seat in the Lords, and Tyler’s fate was sealed.

  Slider was dog-weary, and sick to his stomach with the game-playing, by the time it was resolved, and it was small comfort to him that they let him be in on the final arrest of Richard Tyler. Deputy Commissioner Ormerod, who had used Slider to arrest Bates the first time, insisted on it, and even laid a huge, meaty arm across his shoulders and said, ‘You’ve deserved this. You deserve a medal, but I’m not in charge of that. But I can see to it that you’re in at the kill.’

  ‘And what happens afterwards?’ Slider was driven to ask. He still didn’t see how they’d ever allow him to be put on trial.

  Ormerod did not pretend not to understand. ‘There’ll be a deal of some kind,’ he admitted. ‘No mention of Waverley B in return for a lighter sentence. Something like that. But we’ve got to be realistic. He’s going down, let’s be glad of that, at least.’

  The words reminded Slider of what he had said to Bates, moments before he went over the top. He met Ormerod’s eyes, and read in them a different certainty; and he remembered how on previous occasions, felons who had been in a position to finger the government of the day in some serious manner had committed suicide – in their cells and in inverted commas – before coming to trial.

  ‘Tyler’s finished,’ Ormerod assured him. Slider tried to think of Phoebe Agnew. He thought of Ed Stonax. It was just an old-fashioned streak in him that didn’t want a right by way of two wrongs. ‘It’s justice,’ Ormerod concluded.

  Of a sort, Slider amended, but only inside his head.

  So Slider went along as a spear-carrier when the final drama was played out. Not that it was very dramatic. There was no kicking down of doors, of course, no raised voices. Tyler stared at them all with his feral, golden eyes, and if he was pale – well, his long, smooth face had always been unnaturally colourless.

  But there was no sign of panic or fear about him. He smoothed his hair back with one long, freckled hand, and said, ‘You have no idea who you are dealing with. You will be very, very sorry if you try to arrest me.’

  ‘I’m not going to try,’ Ormerod said. ‘I’m just going to do it.’ And he did it.

  In the middle of the recital of the crimes he was going to be done for, Tyler looked past Ormerod and met Slider’s eyes. ‘I should have killed you when I had the chance,’ he said emotionlessly. ‘How could Trevor make such a mess of it? How difficult can it be?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Ormerod said. ‘You’re just making it worse for yourself.’

  At which point, Tyler began to laugh. ‘Worse? How can it be worse?’

  It was the laughter Slider took away with him. Ormerod had meant well, but he couldn’t really say he had enjoyed it. Afterwards, it made him feel as if he had been a spectator at a bear-baiting – not that he had any grain of sympathy or pity for Tyler, but there had been an element of voyeurism in it that he felt dirtied by. He had to comfort himself with the thought that Tyler was going to pay a penalty, whatever it might turn out to be, and Mark was in jail, and Bates was dead. It didn’t bring back their victims, of course.

  And when the fuss had died down, they told him, the Clydebrae site was going to be quietly decontaminated. The Waverley B House of Fun would not claim any more lives. And maybe the terns would come back.

  When the arrest of Richard Tyler hit the newspapers, Sir Henry Paxton fled to America, which meant a lot of trouble trying to arrange an extradition order to get him back, and more diplomatic repercussions, because it was hard to get the Americans to pop him without knowing fully why. There was a lot of toing and froing before sufficient evidence of financial wrongdoing could be assembled not to have to mention any contaminated shipyards. But you could always get the Justice Department on large-scale fraud and wobbly accounting.

  A few days after that there was a small paragraph in the paper which caught Slider’s eye, reporting the death of Sid Andrew. He had committed suicide by hanging himself in the grounds of his luxury home in Northamptonshire. He had left no note, so Slider would never know whether it was remorse over his part in the Waverley B business that drove him to it, or the more general misery of realising that he was no longer a player and never would be again. But he was interested, in a mild, exhausted sort of way, to note Andrew had chosen the same suicide method as Angela Barlow.

  And the next day he finally remembered to remind Hart to telephone Reading Library and stop them harassing Mrs Masseter about the lost book; and he stood over her to make sure she did it.

  By the time all this was sorted out, it was the end of October, and Joanna was so large she had to have help getting out of chairs. She had been patient with him, knowing how much he was suffering and how much he had to do and how much all the powers that be were trying to make his life hell, but in the end she said, ‘It’s not for me, it’s for baby Derek. You know you didn’t want him to be born out of wedlock. And you also ought to know that doctors’ estimates of the birth date are just that – estimates.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, and saw her properly for the first time in weeks. ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I’ve made a mess of this. I’ve made a mess of everything.’

  ‘None of that,’ she said. ‘You’ve done what you had to do. Now can we for Pete’s sake get married before I go off pop?’

  ‘Of course. How shall we do it?’

  ‘I’m not walking up an aisle like this. Anyway, you have to book months in advance to get a church.’

  ‘Register office it is. When, and who do you want to invite?’

  ‘ASAP, and I’d like to invite everyone. Why don’t we book the register office, tell everyone we know, and see how many turn up?’ she said. ‘It’ll be self-limiting that way.’

  ‘But what about a reception afterwards?’

  She made a face. ‘I hate that word. Look, let’s just all go to the Tabard afterwards, and we can have a proper party some other time, after the baby’s born, when I’ll be in a better shape to enjoy it.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I wanted you to have the wedding of your dreams. After all, you’re only going to do it once.’

  ‘I love your co
nfidence,’ she said, getting as close to him as she could for a hug. He kissed her contritely, and she comforted him by saying, ‘Look, I never really saw myself done up like a meringue, with three friends bursting out of mauve satin behind me, and ten million photographs of the guests in weird configurations, and a rubber-chicken sit down, followed by a really naff band in blue dinner jackets and frilled shirts playing Tom Jones hits.’

  ‘You didn’t? I thought that was every woman’s dream.’

  ‘You’re my dream,’ she said. ‘But I’m afraid what I just described is exactly what my mum and dad always envisaged for me. However, they’re not marrying you, I am, so they’ll have to lump it. We’ll throw a monster bash after the baby gets here and let them wallow then.’

  ‘We’ll have to do something,’ he said gravely, ‘or we won’t get the presents.’

  ‘That’s the reason I’m marrying you at all,’ she said.

  And in the end, it wasn’t even Chiswick Town Hall and the Tabard, because man proposes and God disposes, and a couple of days before the date they had chosen Joanna phoned Slider up at work and said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I’m in labour.’

  He left at once and dashed home to collect her and take her to the hospital, and sat on a hard chair for what felt like hours while she was behind a curtain waiting to be examined, then walked behind her as she was taken in a wheelchair up to the labour ward, and hung around outside for what felt like more ages while she was undressed and got into bed and examined again.

  And when he was allowed back to her side, he took her hand and she said, ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t hold on any longer.’

  ‘What’s to be sorry about?’ he said, hoping he didn’t look and sound as nervous as she did.

  ‘You didn’t want Derek to be a bastard.’

  ‘No child of ours is going to grow up to be a bastard,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but he’s going to begin that way, poor little perisher.’

  ‘How long have we got?’ he asked. He grabbed the nurse who had been behind the curtain with her a minute ago as she went past. ‘How long have we got?’

  ‘Before baby gets here?’ the nurse said. ‘Oh, a couple of hours yet, I should think. First babies always take a long time.’

  He dropped Joanna’s hand. ‘Wait here,’ he said as he headed for the door.

  ‘Where the hell d’you think I’m going?’ she replied.

  She was beginning to feel resentful and abandoned when Atherton and Emily arrived. ‘All alone?’ Emily said.

  ‘He had to go and do something,’ Joanna said, having no idea where the baby’s father had disappeared to. She grimaced as another pain came.

  Emily came to the bedside and held her hand until it passed. ‘I’ll stay with you,’ she said. ‘Jim might have to go back to work if it’s a long time.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Joanna said. ‘Did I ever tell you how glad I am you and Jim got together?’

  ‘Oh, a few times,’ Emily said.

  There had been some tough days to get through, after the case was solved and the reaction kicked in, and Emily had to come to terms not just with her father’s death but her father’s murder. But in her grief and turmoil she always turned towards Atherton for comfort, not away from him, and through it all their relationship strengthened. And what with that, and the rounding up of her father’s estate to complete, and the hundreds of requests for interviews, and the memorial service to arrange, and the book she had decided to write about him to start researching, she had decided she was not going to go back to New York. There was too much now to keep her in England. Atherton’s relief had been mute but profound.

  Emily’s hands, Joanna noticed, were covered with scratches from playing with the cats. Greater love, she thought.

  At last Slider came back, followed by a very young man in grey flannels and a tweed jacket, with a black shirt and dog collar underneath. The hospital chaplain. Joanna started to laugh. ‘Really? Not really?’

  ‘Why not?’ he said, grinning sheepishly. ‘Father Bennet doesn’t mind.’

  ‘But is it legal?’ Atherton said. ‘Sorry, Father, no offence meant.’

  ‘It’s perfectly legal,’ he said. ‘It’s part of my duties to carry out priestly functions for patients in extremis.’ He blushed as this struck everyone simultaneously as an unfortunate phrase, and he lurched in a different direction. ‘But you don’t have to call me Father, you know. Richard is all right.’

  ‘I’ll stick with Father, if you don’t mind,’ Slider said.

  ‘And you do have to have the Marriage Authority with you?’

  ‘I’ve been carrying it around in my wallet for ages.’

  ‘Is it still all right?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘They don’t go off, like milk, you know,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you want to marry me?’

  ‘Of course I want to marry you. Only can we wait a sec, because I’m having another pain. Talk to Jim and Emily for a minute.’

  Shortly after that, Joanna became the second Mrs Slider, courtesy of Father “Call me Richard” Bennet, with James Atherton and Emily Veronica Stonax as witnesses. Slider even had the wedding ring to hand. He had bought that ages ago, too, and had snatched it up from the bedside cabinet drawer when he collected her to bring her to the hospital – not with Father Bennet in mind, but in a sort of desperation, thinking that at least he could give it to her to comfort her for his failure to get organised in time.

  And shortly after Father Bennet pronounced them man and wife, Joanna’s waters broke and she was wheeled away to the delivery room.

  ‘Just got in under the wire,’ Atherton remarked. ‘Talk about last-minute conversions.’

  ‘I think that was the nicest wedding I’ve ever been to,’ Emily said. ‘And I’m thrilled to be on the wedding certificate. I wonder if they’ll let us be godparents.’

  Not terribly long after that – though it seemed like an awfully long time to the protagonists – Baby Derek made his first appearance on this or any stage, squashed, red and wearing what appeared to be an ill-fitting black wig.

  ‘The teapot with the spout,’ Joanna said proudly when they told her it was a boy.

  ‘We’re not really going to call him Derek, are we?’ Slider asked her anxiously.

  ‘I thought we could call him George after my favourite husband,’ she said. Slider’s name was actually George William, but he had always been called Bill to distinguish him from his father, who was also George.

  They called him George, and James after Slider’s favourite lieutenant, and Edward after Emily’s father, since she was on the wedding certificate and they meant to ask her to be godmother. Emily cried when they told her, but they were the only tears that attended George James Edward Slider’s birth.

  Atherton had dashed out to get a bottle of champagne while Joanna was in labour, and had sweet-talked a nurse into putting it in the staff fridge to chill. It was interesting to Emily to watch his technique, because he had never used it on her. And so they wet the baby’s head with Bollinger, in plastic cups, and none the worse for that.

  And after that, there was still the monster bash to look forward to.