Downstream, beyond the bridge, a head broke the surface. Reston came up with a mighty heaving gasp and almost immediately began toiling through the water, heading diagonally for shore. Mal set off after him. As she swam between two of the bridge pilings, the channelled current gave her extra impetus. She thrashed along, spitting warm, foul water out of her mouth. Reston was nearly fifty yards ahead, and whether he did or didn’t know she was hot on his heels, he powered hard. Mal dug deep and powered hard too.
A small wooden dinghy with an outboard motor hove to beside Reston. The three young men on board extended hands to him over the gunwales. Concerned citizens trying to help, but Mal knew if Reston got onto the boat he would commandeer it and be off at a rate of knots.
“No!” she spluttered. “Jaguar Warrior in pursuit. Do not touch that man.”
Above the idling motor and their own shouts, the young men didn’t hear. They grabbed Reston’s wrists and started to haul him out.
Up on the bridge a voice echoed Mal’s cry. It was Aaronson. Again the demand went unheard, but Aaronson backed it up with a well-aimed shot from his l-gun, which was set at antipersonnel level and so would not to do too much damage to property. The bolt of plasma hit the dinghy’s prow, charring and splintering. The three boaters got the message. Reston was dropped back in the river, and the dinghy reversed away with some haste.
Reston resumed his bid for dry land. Mal was now much closer to him, just a few strokes behind, cutting through the swirls of surf left by his kicks. Reston reached the shallows and rose to his feet. The riverbed was thick, sticky mud. He waded laboriously towards a rusting, weed-draped ladder that would take him to street level. Mal, with a final frantic burst of effort, lunged out of the water after him.
For once, being less heavily built than her quarry served her well. She didn’t sink as deeply into the mud as Reston did, and was able to traverse it more quickly. At the same time that Reston latched a hand onto a rung of the ladder, she latched a hand onto the back of his running singlet. She yanked hard, catching him off-balance, pulling him down into the mud.
“You had to make a run for it, didn’t you?” she panted. “Had to make life as difficult as possible.”
Reston reared up from the mud, but Mal whacked him back down with an elbow jab to the crown.
“I was trying to appeal to the gentleman in you,” she said. “I thought you’d appreciate decency.”
Reston struggled to rise again, while also aiming a punch at Mal’s knee. She foiled him with another vicious, stunning strike to the head.
“Just stay put, will you? You’re under fucking arrest.”
Reston grabbed for her ankle but she kicked his hand away with one muck-caked trainer.
“I said stop resisting. You’re only going to get hurt.”
He was weakening, exhausted. Mal was exhausted too, but charged up with adrenaline and righteousness. She stamped on Reston’s chest, forcing him so far down into the slimy shoreline ooze that his face almost went under. The mud sucked at him and held him fast, resisting his best efforts to writhe out of it. He scrabbled and clawed, but couldn’t free himself.
Helmeted heads appeared above, peering over the embankment’s barrier railings. Mal looked up, still with one foot on Reston’s sternum like a safari hunter posing with a fresh kill.
“Got him,” she said. “I want three of you down here now, with handcuffs and leg manacles. We’re bringing him in.”
Cold, wet, trembling, steeped in mud up to her thighs, Mal had never felt better.
TEN
Same Day
Within minutes, a bedraggled, mud-encrusted Stuart found himself being prodded at gunpoint into the back of a paddy wagon.
He liked to think he had given the Jaguar Warriors a run for their money. He’d known, though, from the moment they sprung their little surprise for him on Tower Bridge, that there was a strong possibility the outcome would be this. When that boat had come by he thought his luck had turned, but it was not to be. He was in the authorities’ clutches now. At the mercy of Jaguar Warriors. Things could have looked less bleak, but Stuart refused to be discouraged. As long as he was alive there was always a chance of turning the situation around. Something could be done.
He was made to sit on one of the narrow benches lining the interior walls of the paddy wagon. A chain was clamped onto his handcuffs, the other end secured to an eye-bolt in the floor. Jaguars crowded in on either side of him. Chief Inspector Vaughn planted herself directly opposite, so near that her knees were almost touching his. She looked extraordinarily pleased with herself, and frankly Stuart didn’t blame her.
The rear doors slammed and the paddy wagon revved and pulled away.
Stuart noticed noses wrinkling around him.
“Yes, I know, I stink,” he said. “Phew! Sorry about that, everyone. The Thames isn’t the most pleasant of rivers to take a dip in. And all this mud too. Ninety per cent human waste, probably, and the rest fish shit.”
The Jaguar to his right chuckled. Vaughn shot the man a look and he instantly fell silent.
“Confined space,” Stuart continued. “Can’t be much fun for you people. At least the chief inspector here’s as guilty of reeking as I am. Although of course in every other respect she’s come up smelling of roses.”
“Do you ever shut up, Reston?” Vaughn snapped.
“I just felt I should apologise.”
“Well, don’t. Don’t feel you should do anything.”
The paddy wagon rumbled on for a little while. The rear section was windowless, partitioned off from the driving cab. A dim overhead bulb was the only illumination, and for Stuart there was nothing to see but policemen and l-guns.
“Nice takedown, by the way,” he said to Vaughn. “You are one persistent little bloodhound, and no mistake.”
“Why, thank you,” she replied in a sarcastic drawl. “Coming from you, that’s such a compliment.”
“I like to pay beautiful women compliments.”
“Ye gods, what a charmer. I’m getting moist between the legs.”
Several of the Jaguars chuckled at this, and Vaughn was happy to let them.
“I mean it, though,” Stuart said. “You are beautiful — as beautiful as you are formidable. I’m sure I’m not the only man here who fancies you. And I know for a fact that you have something of a reputation. Homework, remember? Word is, your morals are loose and your knicker elastic even looser.”
Vaughn’s expression soured and hardened. “I’d advise you to stop talking right now.”
“Queen of the quickie. Just ask anyone at the Yard.”
Stuart hadn’t in fact spoken to anyone at the Yard. He’d found out about Vaughn’s background by ringing a journalist famed for his Jaguar contacts and offering him a hefty sum of money in return for a spot of private freelance research. The journalist, after a little delving, had come back with the story about Vaughn and her brother and also with rumours, unconfirmed, that the woman liked to put it about a bit and went on the occasional bender. “In every other respect,” the hack had told him, “she’s a model cop. They’ve all got bad habits, and hers, such as they are, are far from being the worst.”
Vaughn was looking daggers at him across the van. “Are you trying to piss me off, Reston? Does it amuse you? Because believe me, down in the holding cells you’re not going to find life nearly so amusing.”
“I’m just making light conversation. Trying to get us better acquainted. You can’t feel this thing between us?” Stuart gestured as expansively as his restraints would permit. “The sexual tension?”
A Jaguar sniggered, then stopped sniggering when he realised no one else was.
Vaughn’s grey eyes had turned to iron.
“I do,” Stuart went on. “I’m looking forward to spending some time being interrogated by you. We can put that reputation of yours to the test. You don’t even have to untie me. I don’t mind a bit of the kinky stuff, and neither, I suspect, do you. We’ll just — ”