Read Game Over for Free Online

hands full.’
    ‘I presume I should leave my mobile switched on, so that the tracing unit can do the necessary?’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Porson, miles away.
    ‘You’ll let me know what’s being done?’
    The attention snapped back to the present. ‘Of course, laddie. I’ll keep you in the loop. Anything they tell me, I’ll tell you.’
    Which wasn’t the same thing, of course.
    ‘But meanwhile, you concentrate on the Stonax business. That’s sacrospect. We want answers on that and we want ’em quick.’
    When Slider got back to the CID room it was quieter than a Trappist library. The troops that were back were eating sandwiches at their desks. ‘Hey,’ he said.
    ‘We got you one, guv,’ Mackay reassured him crumbily. ‘It’s on your desk.’
    ‘I got you a jumbo sausage baguette,’ Norma Swilley added informatively.
    McLaren leered at her automatically. ‘Jumbo sausage? Oy-oy!’
    ‘The king of single entendre,’ Norma said witheringly. ‘I’ve got the report on that car, boss.’
    ‘Come through,’ he said, heading for his office. ‘McLaren, get me a cup of tea.’
    ‘What did I do?’ McLaren protested.
    ‘It’s your turn,’ said Slider.
    ‘Since when?’
    ‘Since the sausage remark.’
    The sausage was still warm, and they had remembered the mustard. What it was to have a highly trained team at your fingertips! He took a huge bite. He was ravenous. Swilley perched on his windowsill – it seemed to be everyone’s preferred place for making reports to him – and looked at her notes. The weather was still warm enough for her not to have gone into trousers, for which the man in him was grateful. He was happily spoken-for, but there was no harm in admiring the scenery, even if you were on a non-stopping train.
    ‘Right, boss, that reg number you gave me belonged to a Renault Clio that was scrapped last month. Registered owner was a Brian Delaney, address in Rodney Road, Lambeth, got it for his eighteenth birthday and totalled it on the Old Kent Road the day after. I spoke to his dad. He sounded genuine. Want me to chase up where the wreck went?’
    Slider shook his head. ‘It’s easy enough for someone to get the information and use the reg number without involving the wrecking yard. The important thing is that the number doesn’t match the car, which means there was something going on.’
    She didn’t know why he was asking about the car, of course, and looked at him receptively. When he didn’t immediately go on, she said, ‘I also checked on black Focuses stolen in the last three months. There were six in the Met area, and one, stolen from an address in Isleworth, had tinted windows. But it didn’t have any damage on the rear quarter. D’you want the details?’ She gestured to the papers in her hand.
    He shook his head again, but it was in thought rather than negation. He said, ‘You’d better let the stolen cars unit know that it might be operating under that reg number. And put out an all-units – if it’s spotted anywhere, they can bring it in. But I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. He may well have more numbers. Have you got the mobile phone dump yet?’
    ‘They’ve not come back on it yet. I’ll chase them up,’ Norma said. ‘Can I know what it is, boss?’
    ‘I’ll tell everyone,’ Slider said. ‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll be out for a rundown on what we’ve got so far.’
    When he was alone, he took another mouthful of sandwich and dialled Joanna’s number. ‘Hello, Inspector,’ she answered him before he spoke. She had number recognition, of course.
    The sound of her voice gave him a frisson, as always, and he reflected how lucky he was to have found his soulmate against all the odds. He had been married fairly joylessly to Irene for fourteen years but, being the sort of person he was, he hadn’t been looking for anyone else. A promise was a promise in his book, and he had meant to stick by her and do his best to be a good husband. It