The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mysteries)

by Martha Grimes

  Nor was the landscape anything to praise: hard, dry, suffocatingly hot, thirsty and monochromatic. Melrose had never seen a colorlessness to match it except at his tailor’s, when the old man, in the hope of educating him in the difference between superior and inferior cloths, brought out a cheap tan tweed and set it against a fawn merino wool. Somehow the neutral color of the wool had glowed next to the turgid tweed.

  But then he saw Kilimanjaro.

  “Does all Tanzania look like this?” said Patty. “It’s all one colorless color.”

  “Of course not. If you’d just raise your eyes you can see that mountain in the distance. That’s Kilimanjaro.”

  “Wow.” Even Patty could be wowed. A mile or so along, Patty said, having erupted from her funk, “Maybe that’s it, the town.”

  The map told them it was. Signless, directionless, and utterly lacking in horses, grocers, saloons and gunplay. It was vacant. It was dust.

  He found the office in a narrow building where he got a permit.

  “Yes,” said the official in charge, “a Scotland Yard policeman spoke with the minister. You understand, of course, that Block C, which is mined by TanzaniteOne, is out of bounds.”

  “Would it be possible—”

  The man didn’t even let him finish the sentence before the perfunctory “No.”

  “May I ask why? It would almost seem they’re hiding something.”

  He did not even bristle. “The problem is safety.”

  “But TanzaniteOne is the best of them, isn’t it? The most modern. Safety would be far less of a problem.”

  The official kept shaking his head almost laboriously, as if sheer effort might overcome the stubbornness of this rich, sniffy Englishman. As he handed Melrose the permit, he said, “You have permission to go to the mines in Block D. The manager of Blue Vein mine, Mr. Adisa, will take care of you.”

  What care was taken? Mainly it was getting through the barbed wire that surrounded each of the small mines. The manager, Sayko Adisa, was a pleasant, round-faced youngish man. He was the one who opened the barbed-wired gate for them.

  There looked to be some thirty or more miners aboveground, crowded round the step to the rough-framed one-room office where they were headed.

  Others were standing round the opening to the tunnel, which looked exactly as he’d pictured it: a hole growing blacker the farther the wooden ladder descended. The top of it was outlined by splintered, broken boards.

  Patty burst out, “Oh, can I go down there?”

  Adisa’s “No!” was more kindly spoken than Melrose’s “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “But we want to see them hack it out of the walls!”

  “Believe me, Miss Patty, you would not think it worth the trouble when you got down there and had to crawl on your belly like snake.”

  “But, see—” And here she pointed to a row of children sitting on a bench against the fence, eating something. “—you’ve got kids here who’re doing it, from the looks of them.”

  Adisa was about to answer when a miner coming up the ladder poked his head over the rim, followed by his thick shoulders. At first Melrose thought the gray he was seeing was just the hard hat and shirt. But as the figure completed his rise from the pit, Melrose saw that the whole man was the color of graphite—head to toe, hard hat to boots.

  Melrose felt a chill. These teams of men were down there for hours at a time every day. How long would the lungs collect this stuff before raging emphysema or something worse set in? And the children, my God.

  Yet this miner was smiling, probably at the sun, the light of which touched his lashes coated with slivers of silver. In his hand he held a thumb-size stone that the others gathered round to see.

  “Is that a piece of rough tanzanite?” Melrose said.

  Adisa laughed. “Wish it were! You can see small strip of tanzanite. But mostly graphite around laumontite, maybe two carats tanzanite.”

  Patty, of course, headed in her own direction, toward the kids on the bench. Melrose asked Adisa if that was all right: “I mean, is it safe for her to go wandering around?”

  Adisa smiled. “No. But as you see she’s not wandering. The children are limited to one little area when they’re aboveground.”

  Melrose stopped. “You don’t mean those kiddies go down the mine, do you?”

  “They do, yes. Sad, but their families need the money.”

  Sad, but was it legal? Melrose didn’t voice this question. “It’s so dangerous, though, in this kind of small operation, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes. The expense of safety measures like big mines use, well, we just don’t have the money, do we? Please, sit.” They were in the small office now, a desk and several chairs the main furnishings. There was one cot. “So many of our small mines are closing. Too expensive to run because we have to go deeper and deeper to find a vein. The big operations have the equipment for that; we don’t.”

  “So business, I take it, has not been good?”

  “How could it be, with all the smuggling? Millions from Arusha to the Masai Mara—”

  “Kenya?”

  Adisa nodded. “From Kenya, then to India and China. Most of the cutting is done in Jaipur. It is terrible, what is lost to Tanzania. Eighty percent of receipts, I hear. They tighten the inspection, maybe in Nagamba, but there are all of the private cars moving between Arusha and the Masai. It is impossible to control the smuggling.”

  Melrose thought for a moment, then said, “We saw some vehicle inspections taking place in Longido. Police station. Incidentally, do you know these policemen? There’s one who looks pretty high-ranking. Tall man, I think an inspector, or a commissioner of some kind?”

  “Probably Inspector Buhari.”

  “And do you know him?”

  “He inspects this mine. To that extent, I do.”

  “Has he ever warned you about any, ah, irregularity?” Melrose had no idea how to ask exactly what this inspector did.

  “No more than in all the mines. He complains about the children. Employing anyone under age eighteen is illegal.” Adisa shrugged and looked toward the yard. “But we all use them. This police inspector has tried for years to bring charges against any mine that does this, but he’s only one policeman and how much time do they have to spend on this issue? There are many government bills on the books about child labor, but what good does that do? There are too many of our little mines and not enough labor inspectors. I have never seen one here.”

  “But he’s fair? Honest?”

  “Yes. But, like I say, his biggest worry is the children. When he comes, he often talks to them.”

  Melrose rolled a mental ball around, like a cue ball on a snooker table. Then, click, he hit it with a cue. “What I’m really interested in doing is buying into an existing mine. Rather than opening one on my own. I’ve seen several, and am considering two or three. Yours is one.”

  Adasi’s eyes opened wider. “And who are the others?”

  “The Zane mine. Do you know it?”

  “Ah, yes. It is very successful, more than any other I know.” He looked downcast.

  “Why would that be?”

  “More lucrative seams, I guess.”

  When they were back on the A104, Patty reached into her backpack and drew out a small rough stone.

  “And where did that come from?”

  “Abi. At the mine.”

  “Who’s Abi when she’s at home?”

  “One of those kids. This is tanzanite. She took it from the mine. It’s so small nobody noticed.”

  Melrose was shocked. “Patty! You’ve just smuggled something out, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, don’t be so stuffy. Anyway, I didn’t smuggle it, Abi did.”

  “Sophistry, that is.” Melrose had pulled over to the side of the road and was now inspecting the stone. It looked like a smaller version of what the miner had brought up. Tanzanite embedded in graphite. The graphite made up most of it, he imagined. The whole was probably not more than two
centimeters, less than an inch. “There’s probably not even a carat of the gem in there. Well, you’ll have to leave it behind, nonetheless.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  He started up the car again, giving her a sideways glance. He didn’t care for the easy acquiescence.

  * * *

  Back at Mbosi Camp once more, he called Jury and reported on his trip to the Merelani Hills.

  “Sorry, Richard. I found out nothing about Leonard Zane’s mine or possible smuggling. And I learned nothing useful about Banerjee. Or, rather, Buhari.”

  “But you did. He loves children.”

  Artemis Club, London

  Nov. 7, Thursday night

  29

  Although Jury was not a gambler, he was drawn to this room at the Artemis Club with its mirrored walls and high ceilings, its bronze light fixtures, its French doors leading onto a terrace with a wrought-iron balustrade that overlooked a surprisingly large garden. Where had this space come from in the City, otherwise occupied by skyscrapers of high finance? He liked the half-moon bar at which sat well-tailored men and women fashionably dressed in sequined and otherwise embellished gowns. For a room packed with gamblers and dealers, it was not only rich but genteel.

  What really drew him was Marshall Trueblood’s table. Trueblood could make what Jury assumed was plodding luck look like a hurricane of skill. Jury took a seat between a trim, mustached, gray-haired man and a woman awash in a sea of emerald: at her neck, her ears, her wrists, her fingers. She looked as if she’d sink under the weight, but she didn’t; she simply placed her bet when Trueblood asked for them. “Bets, please.”

  There were three other players to the lady’s left, but Jury hadn’t time to note anything other than their existence because he was trading twenty-five for a short stack of five chips. He noted the sign on the table that advised the minimum bet was five, which was probably why Trueblood had shoved those chips toward him. The maximum bet was two hundred. He was glad of that.

  Jury didn’t know where the skill came into this game. You weren’t playing against the other players, but against the dealer. So there were only two hands to watch: yours and his. You had cards; he had cards. He had rules; you didn’t. He had to take a hit if he had under seventeen; you didn’t. Jury shoved in another green chip and then said, “Double,” in what he hoped was a carelessly knowledgeable tone. Trueblood just gave him a nod. Jury held a ten and a queen. The card showing in front of Trueblood’s was a ten. He turned over his hold card: a seven. They were the only players left. Trueblood treated Jury to a thin smile and took another card from the shoe and turned it over—it struck Jury as a deliberately slow-motion turn—it was a four.

  “Twenty-one,” said Trueblood, with a look at Jury in case he couldn’t count, and he raked in all the chips. There was something so pitiless in Trueblood’s look that Jury wanted to snatch his chips back, but Trueblood was too fast for him

  This time Jury took out a fifty and asked for the ten-quid chips. He got five in return for his money. Trueblood looked at the green chips: Jury could almost see them getting up on little chip legs and strolling away.

  The emerald-bedecked woman next to him slipped some fifty-pound notes toward Trueblood, who then shoved back five black chips. Since she already had a small mountain of green chips—at least three hundred pounds’ worth—Jury thought it rather a showy thing to do; but, then, look at that ring, that bracelet.

  The other players sat with their current stash. Jury’s current stash was his five blue chips; perhaps he should have put another fifty with it and asked for one black chip. One chip. That would have been a real showstopper.

  Trueblood dealt and asked for bets. Jury folded. He had a three and a five. Even with an ace, he’d have only nineteen and the dealer already had a ten showing. Jury would have bet all his chips the hold card was a face card.

  More bets. Trueblood fulfilled requests for hits. All four players to his left busted. The gentleman to Jury’s right doubled down with a king and a jack.

  Too bad. The dealer had a king and a queen. The house won again. Surprise.

  Jury decided his luck, or whatever Trueblood was making of his luck—wasn’t about to change, so he took his chips and went looking for something he knew how to play. Which was nothing. He considered roulette, since that seemed to demand even less skill than twenty-one, though he was probably dead wrong about that, too.

  “Trying to decide where to lose your money, Superintendent?”

  Leonard Zane stood at his elbow. That was a break, the only one in the evening’s play: Jury wouldn’t have to go looking for him.

  “Where else to lose it, you mean? I just tried out your new croupier.”

  “How was he?”

  “Ahead.”

  “Good.”

  “Way ahead.”

  “Better.”

  “I think he cheats.”

  Zane burst out laughing. “I doubt that.”

  “Don’t they ever?”

  “Yes, but not here.”

  “Can’t a truly practiced roulette croupier tell where the ball will land?”

  “No.”

  “So there’s no cheating?”

  “Of course there is, but by the players.”

  “Such as?”

  “You want a short course in cheating?”

  “Definitely.” Jury was watching Trueblood, who had been replaced by another dealer and was now talking on his mobile while walking across the room toward the bar. His moving to the bar, ordering a whisky and lighting up a cigarette was the signal to tell Jury that Diane Demorney was on her way to the club.

  Zane picked up a couple of chips from the roulette table, nodding to the dealer. “This trick is old; it’s hiding chips. Take a thousand-quid chip—”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “Yes.” Zane held up a dark blue chip between index and third fingers. He put a black chip on the felt and slid the dark blue chip beneath it.

  Trueblood was at the bar now, drinking a whisky. That meant five minutes.

  “So instead of betting two hundred,” said Jury, “you’re betting a thousand plus a hundred, but the dealer thinks it’s just two black chips?”

  “You catch on quickly.”

  “What happens if you lose? The dealer takes your chips.”

  “You have to pick them up before he does that.”

  “But that’s against the rules.”

  “Of course it is. You bumble around, apologize, then set down two black chips.”

  Jury frowned. “That strikes me as an awfully sloppy operation and one that would cause a lot of suspicion.”

  “It does, but a lot of players have made a lot of money doing it.”

  “Well, enough of your games,” said Jury, with a smile, “and now back to mine. Would you mind having another look at the crime scene, Mr. Zane?”

  Zane frowned. “You mean outside? Why?”

  “Because it’s the crime scene and it’s yours.” Jury’s smile broadened. “And I’m asking.”

  Leonard Zane smiled himself and shrugged. “All right.”

  They stepped through the front door of the club and across the driveway to the spot where Robbie Parsons had stopped his cab.

  “Where were you standing when the cab stopped?”

  “Standing? I wasn’t. I mean I was still inside, as I told you.”

  “You were in the library, the room on the left, I think you said.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t go outside until I heard the commotion, the shouting. Look, Mr. Jury, you’ve heard all of this before, what’s the point of hearing—”

  Just then a limousine was pulling up in front of the Artemis Club. The chauffeur got out and walked round the car to the passenger door.

  “What’s this?” said Leo Zane thoughtfully, as they recrossed the drive.

  The chauffeur was assisting a woman gowned in black and white, who, when standing on the pavement in very high heels, proved to be Diane Demorney. She looked
sensational. She had gone all-out, no problem for Diane, who was very much an all-out person. The gown struck Jury as an architectural wonder much like the Sydney Opera House, with its sharp angles and shadows, its curves and points around her shoulders. She stood there waiting for somebody to light the cigarette pushed into a white holder as long as her heel was high.

  Leonard Zane stepped forward immediately with his silver lighter. He did not seem to question that here was a guest who was appearing out of nowhere, unless he’d misread the invitation list.

  “Thank you,” said Diane, looking upward at the classic facade of the club. “Very unpretentious. Which can only mean, very successful. You are Mr. Zane, aren’t you? I’ve heard about you.”

  “But I haven’t heard about you. Enlighten me,” he added, drawing her arm through his.

  “Oh, I intend to do exactly that once I get to your blackjack table.”

  And she apparently was, if Jury could go by the increase in chips before her.

  Jury sat on a bar stool surveying the room. He became aware for the first time that there was no color. Everyone was dressed in black and white. All of the dealers were wearing evening dress, and perhaps it was expected that the men in attendance would also wear evening dress, which they did. But the women? It surely wasn’t a prerequisite that they too must dress in black or white, and yet that was the way they were dressed. Black chiffon, white satin, a bold black-and-white stripe. Diane Demorney had melted into the small gathering of players at the blackjack table. A bit of color was furnished by a flash of emerald or a wink of tanzanite. But all of this arrangement in black and white struck Jury with a sense of hazard.

  And in the doorway smoking a cigarette stood Leonard Zane himself.

  Jury was now alone at the bar. Everyone else was at the tables. He could see Diane’s back and Marshall Trueblood’s face, saying something to her. Diane had before her one stack of chips that Jury could see, and probably others he could not. He wondered how much she was betting and if Zane had removed the limit. Jury would have enjoyed watching this little sparring match between Trueblood and Diane (for he had no doubt that Diane knew her way round a card table), but he did not want to drag Zane’s attention from Diane to himself. He stayed planted at the bar.