“You surprise me. So how did you leave it?”
“He’ll talk to the others and fix a time when we can see the drones in action.”
“Where?” An idea sprouted in Diamond’s brain.
“Up at the campus site on Claverton Down.”
“Which part?”
“The playing fields.”
“That’s no use.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a billiard table. We want to give them a real test. Combe Down is the place. Plenty of scrub and uneven ground, trees, old quarries, the canal. Let’s see how they perform over difficult terrain.”
“They won’t want to damage their drones.”
“They’re no bloody use to us if they can’t work in testing conditions. Get the demo sorted for as soon as possible. I’ll be there and I’ll make sure Georgina is as well.”
He still hadn’t found where Pinto was living. Posting Paul Gilbert outside the probation office all afternoon had not worked. Paul had called to report that he’d waited and seen nothing of the guy. The safest bet would have been to try contacting the police delegate to the MAPPA committee, but going through official channels would be a giveaway that he was hot on the trail of an allegedly reformed ex-con. He called Brian Johns, the helpful guy from the Other Half team, and listened patiently to the speech about confidentiality.
“I appreciate where you’re coming from, but I really do need to know. It’s a police matter.”
“Yes,” Johns said, “but there has to be some overriding emergency. I gave you the details of that woman — I forget her name...”
“Belinda Pye.”
“... because she didn’t finish the race and there was concern about her.”
“Correct, and now I’m concerned about another runner called Tony Pinto.”
“Did he finish?”
Finished Belinda, if my worst fears are right, Diamond thought. “One of the last, I think, but we need to contact him urgently.”
“Is it a medical emergency?”
“It may well be.”
A sigh. “Wait a moment.” A few seconds passed. “All we have for Pinto’s address is a post office box number. There’s a mobile number.”
Diamond noted them. Should have expected this, he thought. The far side of the moon is easier to reach than bloody Pinto.
With no confidence of a result, he tried the mobile number.
Unrecognised.
The box number would be impenetrable without legal documentation. For the present, Pinto’s privacy was safe.
Spiro felt bad about abandoning Murat. The desolation on that already troubled face would stay in his memory forever. The plain truth was that Murat now had a better chance of remaining free if he was unaccompanied. Whether he could survive alone on the streets was another question. He wasn’t streetwise or independent-minded. He didn’t want to make decisions for himself. He was loyal, truthful, uncomplaining and willing to learn, but alone with his memories he would be a tortured soul.
“I’ve been thinking about your situation,” Spiro said when they were both in their blow-up beds. They generally exchanged a few words before sleeping. “Maybe after all you should stay on in Bath. You’re much better than me at picking up the language and you make friends and blend in.” He was speaking as much to his own conscience as to Murat. “You’ll get to know some of these guys we see every night at the food van. They aren’t all druggies and alcoholics. They can tell you’re no threat to them. They’ll show you what’s safe to do in this town and what isn’t.”
“If it’s okay for me, why can’t you stay here as well?” Murat asked.
“Me, I’m a marked man now. I don’t think I said before. I was unlucky. I was recognised. The Finisher knows I’m here. I’m getting out.”
“Him?” Murat said, and he rolled over to look at Spiro. “How can he know? Did someone tell him?”
“Something like that.” Spiro didn’t want to revisit the moment, even in his imagination.
“But nobody in this town knows who we are,” Murat said. “I haven’t told a soul.”
“I’m not blaming you. It’s my own stupid fault. The wrong place at the wrong time. Say your prayers and go to sleep.”
Some minutes later, Murat started up again. “Where will you be if I want to link up with you later?”
“How would I know? Anything could happen.”
“Where are you heading?”
“Shut the fuck up and get some sleep, man.”
They were the last words spoken between them. Spiro would be burdened by guilt, but he knew what would happen if he gave even a hint of his plan to Murat.
Before dawn when Murat was mumbling in his sleep, Spiro got up, stuffed a few things into a carrier bag and left. He didn’t take the inflatable bed or the blanket, figuring they would come in useful to Murat as goodwill offerings to other rough sleepers.
In fact, he returned to the railway station where a few bikes had been left in the racks overnight, helped himself to his best ride yet, a Claud Butler with a wide spread of gears and semi-slick tyres, and was out of Bath on the Kennet and Avon Canal towpath before Murat would be awake. This time he headed in a new direction out of town, the way the runners had gone in the half marathon, a winding route that almost turned back on itself to bypass the hills to the east, but one that should be quiet at this time of day.
He was going nicely when the rain started after only about thirty minutes. He didn’t intend to get soaked, so he vowed to take shelter under the next bridge he reached, a huge four-arched construction that turned out to be an aqueduct allowing the canal to pass over the river and the railway. This, he realised with a shock, was the scene of his nerve-shattering experience the day before: the Dundas Aqueduct. He’d approached it from another direction.
Quick change of plan. He’d take the drenching and ride on. There was no reason why the Finisher should be around today, but this place gave Spiro the creeps.
At intervals along this canal, longboats were moored, apparently privately owned. Some were people’s homes and some looked as if they hadn’t been used in months. He had the wild idea of boarding one and seeing if he could get the engine working. He knew how to hotwire a car, so why not a boat? He could take the bike on board and make slower but less obvious progress and he’d have a roof over his head at nights. There might even be food inside.
An attractive idea, but he felt a visceral need to put quick miles between himself and Bath.
By mid-morning he was as wet as any of the ducks in the canal, yet starting to feel safer. He’d reached a place called Caen Hill and was looking downhill towards a town called Devizes. So how did the canal continue to function? By means of a flight of sixteen locks, side by side, enough to test the patience and arm muscles of anyone using a longboat. Spiro, freewheeling, sped by them all and congratulated himself on resisting his earlier temptation to become a bargee.
How would he survive in the longer term? He liked what he’d seen so far of England. The people, the down-and-outs he’d met, were mostly all right and less nosy than Albanians. What he would need was a job that paid a living wage, cash in hand and no questions asked. Not easy, but not impossible. He’d learned a few skills back home. He could clean cars but, from all he’d seen, the car-cleaning was monopolised here by immigrant groups who made sure the work was shared only by people of their own nationality. Cleaning shop windows was more open to private enterprise, but first you needed the bucket, squeegee and a portable A-frame ladder. Every job brought its own problems.
Near Devizes he found a board with a map of the canal. Miles of it were left to travel before it joined the River Kennet and a town called Reading. At the speed he was going he’d be there by nightfall.