Game Over Read Free Page A

it out for Slider to see. It was a biro, an ordinary, amorphous, cheap biro, white with a black top and no cap, the sort that charities send you in begging envelopes in the hope that you’ll use it to write them a cheque. The body had been lying on it.
    ‘I’ll dust it for prints,’ Bailey said. ‘You never know.’
    ‘If there are any, they’ll only be Stonax’s,’ Slider said. ‘Although I wouldn’t have put him down as a cheap biro man. I’d have thought he’d have a gold Mont Blanc.’
    ‘Maybe it’s chummy’s?’ said Bailey.
    Maybe – and how lovely it would be, Slider thought, to get a clear and perfect lift of the murderer from it. But life was never than easy. ‘Send it off anyway, Bob,’ he said. ‘There may be something else on it that will help.’
    Porson, their Detective Superintendent, arrived as Slider was preparing to leave.
    ‘Chuffing Nora, it’s bloody madness out there,’ he complained, stamping into the vestibule, his vast ancient coat swirling about him like a cloak. As he came to rest, Slider noticed that one of his shirt collar points was curling upwards, there was a shiny grey stain of what looked like porridge on his tie, and a ghostly line of dried shaving-soap along his jaw. When his wife was alive she would never have allowed him to leave the house in a less than perfect state of hygiene. Slider wondered if he was having difficulty coping.
    ‘Bloody press are going bezique,’ Porson rumbled on. ‘Just because it’s one of their own. Always the same when a journo gets hit. You’d think the world revolved around ’em.’
    ‘He wasn’t a journo any more, sir,’ Slider pointed out.
    ‘What does that lot care? And he was telly, as well – that makes him a god. Telly and BBC. They’re going to be all over us like a cheap rash. I’ve had a word with that Forster woman at Hammersmith and she’s going to co-ordinate the TV coverage.’ Mo Forster was the new Press Officer for the area.
    ‘Does that mean one of us will have to go down to the publicity suite and do an interview?’ Slider asked, feeling depressed. Porson hated doing it as much as he did, but Porson had the rank to get out of it.
    Porson’s face didn’t soften – it was built like a bagful of spanners and softening wasn’t an option – but there was a sympathetic gleam in his eye as he answered. ‘No, laddie. Mr Palfreyman’s doing all the fronting. Too important to be left to the likes of us to mess up. In fact – ’ he almost smiled – ‘I’ve been given a pacific injuncture to pass on, that we’re to avoid talking to the press at all costs.’
    ‘Thank God for that,’ Slider said.
    Palfreyman, head of the Homicide Advice Team, had been busily empire-building ever since he came to Hammersmith, and the chance to be the face on the screen in a big case like this must have set him drooling.
    ‘Thank Him all you like,’ Porson said shortly, scowling. ‘But don’t forget that what Mr Palfreyman wants to be remembered for is solving the case. He doesn’t want to be up there looking like a prat, being questioned about a cock-up. So if anything goes wrong it’ll be my gonads in the cross-hairs. And when I say mine, I mean yours.’
    ‘Of course, sir.’
    ‘Right. As long as you know.’ The massive eyebrows resumed normal position. ‘You know me, laddie. Threats are water off a duck’s bridge to me. But this case is going to have a searchlight on it all the way. What’s the story so far?’
    ‘There isn’t much yet. No forcible entry, no ransacking. Deceased killed with a single blow to the head, pockets emptied and watch removed. I think it’s meant to look like robbery from the person.’
    ‘Only it’s not?’
    ‘Of course, it could be. We haven’t had a chance yet to see if there’s anything else missing.’
    ‘But this bloke moved in high places, probably pissed off some arsey people, and it could be a hit?’
    ‘Yes, sir. There are things about it that don’t sit right