Hairline Pilot

Slider went back to the bedroom to say goodbye to Joanna. He murmured, 'I'm off, now,' but she didn't stir, so he didn't kiss her, in case it woke her. It was early, and she hadn't been sleeping very well lately. Actually, he had an idea she was only pretending to be asleep, but either way ... He listened a moment to her quiet breathing, then left.

Outside, the icy air romped into his lungs like something with claws. After a mild, wet Christmas and New Year the wind had gone round and was now hurtling with malicious glee straight from Siberia. Too cold to snow, he thought. It was still dark, the pre-dawn black and glittering as obsidian. No-one about, the houses shut tight, the cars sleeping nose to tail along both kerbs. When he started the engine it sounded offensively loud. He imagined cross stirrings in warm beds with still an hour to go before the alarm.

He was going in early to try to get a jump on the paperwork. He could get through a lot with no-one around and no telephones ringing. He turned on to the Chiswick High Road, the only moving car in sight, drove in the sickly lamplight past the shuttered shops and empty pavements. The traffic lights, all green, were round alien eyes watching him. The naked trees bent to the wind; a sheet of newspaper like an albino fruit-bat flapped across the road and wrapped itself round a lamp post.

He was aware of a low-level sense of dread. Getting up in the dark always made him uneasy. It was no coincidence that all the old religions had feast days in the dead of the year, involving lights and fires. The primitive part of the brain was still Stone Age, huddled in its bone cave, afraid the sun would not come back. Oh, let me not die in the black of night.

Other traffic was beginning to appear by the time he reached Shepherd's Bush; early birds were waiting at bus stops, huddled in the wind, or hurrying towards the tube. Mike's coffee stall, at the end of the market, showed yellow light, a haven of steam and comfort in the hollow dark. A couple of taxi drivers were shifting from foot to foot in the mean wind, hands clasped round mugs as thick as sanitary ware. Slider stopped at the kerb alongside and bought himself a takeaway styrofoam cup of tea and a bacon roll.

He parked in the station yard and went straight in and up the stairs without seeing anybody. The smell of the bacon neutralized the reek of rubber flooring and disinfectant. The only sound was a faint buzz from a mildly defective strip-light. No phones. There would be no-one up here but him – the Department was not manned at this hour.

He stepped into his own office, and for an instant before he put on the light he looked through the far door to the main office beyond, lit by the street lamps outside. For a while, Hollis, one of his sergeants, had been practically living there after his wife had thrown him out, sleeping in a chair and washing and shaving in the gents. Slider had turned a blind eye to this unauthorized occupancy. It had been comforting, somehow, to have Hollis there to greet him at whatever hour he came in, like the family dog. Recently, Hollis had found himself lodgings of some kind, and the CID room was empty, a place of shapes and shadows.

He clicked down the light switch, banishing ghosts, and padded towards the Matterhorn of papers waiting for him on his desk.

Connolly was the first one in. The light went on next door, and she crossed his line of vision, came back to his door, then went away again without speaking. A good chap, that Connolly: knew he did not want to be disturbed. He heard the pattering, clacking sound of her keyboard. Hollis was next. He heard his greeting and Connolly's low reply. The sounds of occupancy gradually accumulated, phones began to ring, daylight arrived grey and apologetic outside the window, but no-one broke into his concentration. He was deep down, occupied – safe.

Atherton, his other sergeant, and also his friend and bagman, arrived in the early afternoon, having been on a half-day awareness seminar about cyber-crime. Slider, who was just surfacing, heard him before he saw him. He was singing the Toreador song from Carmen:

Toreador, please don't spit on the floor. Use the cuspidor – Whaddaya think it's for?

Tall, elegant, beautifully suited, he lounged in to Slider's room like a refugee from a more gracious age. Slider stretched, crackingly, and registered that he was hungry. He hadn't stopped for lunch, and the bacon roll was a distant memory. 'How was the seminar?' he asked.

Atherton considered, searching for the right word. 'Technical,' he said at last. 'You wouldn't understand.'

'Oh, thank you. What am I, your granny?'

'They liked me,' Atherton said with a faux-modest smirk. 'In fact, I got the impression the unit boss wants to poach me.'

'I don't know about poaching. Many people would like to boil you,' Slider mentioned. 'In oil.'

'You woke up from your nap cranky. Don't worry, I'm not tempted.'

'Afraid of the competition?'

'I couldn't hack the uniform,' Atherton said, with a shudder. 'Facial hair, cargo pants, and a T-shirt that makes a statement.' He sat down on the window sill, crossing his feet at the ankle, folding his arms, ready for a chat. 'I met your friend Pauline's new boyfriend, by the way. Bernard Eason.'

Slider and Pauline Smithers had started out at Hendon together, but she was now a Chief Superintendent in a specialist unit in SCD1. They had teetered on the edge of romance for many years before he had married someone else and she had shot up the career ladder. They met for a drink now and then, and there was still a warmth between them.

'What's he like?' Slider couldn't help asking.

Atherton thought. 'A bit like you.'

'Stop that!' Slider said sternly.

'Not to look at. I don't know ... just something about him. I liked him. So what's going down in Groove Town?' He bent a slat of the Venetian blind and peered out. 'It's quiet out there,' he intoned. 'Too quiet.'

'Bite your tongue,' Slider said.

On cue, his phone rang. It was Nicholls, the relief sergeant downstairs, his north-west-coast Scottish accent soft as a sea breeze.

'There's a call coming in, Bill. A homicide. I thought you'd want a head start. I know how you've been longing for a corpus.'

'Now look what you've done,' Slider said to Atherton when he put the phone down and immediately it rang again.

The long post-Christmas lull was over.

There was something...