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.‘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.TenTrapped NerdJoanna 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]