by Jill McGown
“No,” said Keith. You did what Mr. Waterman wanted you to do, or you didn’t. All you needed to know was where and when it had to be done; why it had to be done was Mr. Waterman’s business, not yours. If you needed anything repeated, you hadn’t been listening in the first place. If you had a problem with it, you turned it down, simple as that. Keith never turned anything down, and never asked questions.
Besides, with Jerry in the room, all he could do was say yes and no, because Jerry didn’t know just how much ducking and diving he really did, and he never would.
“Why?”
Charlotte’s brown eyes looked into Lloyd’s with the same frankness that characterized her mother’s interview technique. Even the silence following the question seemed to have been passed on through the genes.
And it had long been a source of wonder to Lloyd that the two-year-old mind, unable to grasp as basic a concept as left and right, only capable of stringing two or three words together, not up to the task of simple arithmetic, was entirely happy to encompass something as fundamentally challenging and abstract as “why.”
He glanced up at Judy. “Why?” he repeated.
Judy looked from him to Charlotte. “Because your daddy says so,” she said.
“You’re not supposed to do that!” Lloyd protested. “The child is asking for a logical explanation as to why she should go to bed when we’re the ones who are complaining about being tired, and she’s wide awake.”
“That is why.”
Charlotte was looking solemnly at each of them as they spoke. There was no way she could follow what they were saying, but she gave every indication of doing so, and it captivated Lloyd every time she did it. He looked back at her.
“Because you need a lot more sleep than we do,” he said, knowing he was laying himself wide open.
“Why?”
“Because everything about you is growing very fast. And that takes a lot of energy. So does learning to walk, and run and jump. So you use up a lot of calories, and that means you have to rest to get more energy to use up even more calories tomorrow.”
She liked long, complicated answers that she didn’t understand, but this time she frowned. “Carlies,” she said, quietly, to herself.
Lloyd put his forehead close to hers, looking into her eyes. “Calories are units of heat energy, though you’ll find that one calorie is more usually expressed as 4.1868 joules.”
She giggled.
“How on earth do you know that?” asked Judy. “Or are you making it up as you go along?”
“Of course not! Would I lie to Charlotte? A calorie is 4.1868 joules.” He grinned. “I don’t know what I’d do with one joule, never mind 4.1868 of them, but it’s a fact, isn’t it, Chaz?”
Charlotte and Judy both smiled, and Lloyd shook his head slightly, looking from one to the other. The same soft dark hair, the same nose, the same smile. He might have had nothing to do with Charlotte—he had searched in vain for some aspect of his appearance or personality—because from day one, she had been just like Judy. He gathered Charlotte up in his arms. “Who’s daddy’s gorgeous girl?”
“Chaz!” she squealed, as he tickled her.
“You wouldn’t have thought she was daddy’s gorgeous girl if you’d been shopping with her this afternoon. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”
“Again!” shouted Charlotte.
Lloyd tickled her again. “She’s two. They’re supposed to have tantrums when they’re two. What did she want, anyway?”
“If I’d known that, I’d have given it to her—believe me, I’m quite prepared to give in to blackmail. But I hadn’t the faintest idea what she wanted.”
“Sometimes it’s just that they can’t express themselves,” said Lloyd, as Judy joined them on the floor. “It must be a bit frustrating, knowing what you want to communicate and not being able to.”
“Especially for a Lloyd. Come on, you two—it’s bedtime. Who do you want to give you a bath, Charlotte?”
“Tickle me!”
Judy tickled her. “Who do you want to give you a bath?”
“Again!”
“No. Bath. Who?”
Charlotte gave that some thought. “Nana.”
“Nana’s watching television. You can have Daddy or me.”
Judy’s mother lived with them now, in their pleasantly elderly detached house. It was in the old village of Stansfield, where life still moved at a slightly slower pace than it did in the town itself, a new town built in the fifties, after the war. No one had been too sure how well the setup would work, but so far, Gina had been a godsend, and there had been no more difficulties than you would expect in any family, once they had got over being too polite to one another.
“Daddy.”
“All right,” said Lloyd. “Come on, Droopy Drawers.” He stood up with Charlotte hanging round his neck, and some difficulty. As he turned to leave the room, she squirmed round.
“Mummy bath!” she shouted, her arm reaching back imploringly to Judy.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Lloyd said. “Make up your mind.”
She thought again for a moment. “Daddy bath. And Mummy bath.”
Lloyd felt himself swell with pride as his daughter hurdled another linguistic barrier. “Both of us?” He raised his eyebrows at Judy. “Is that all right with you, Mummy?”
Judy gave him The Look. “It’s perfectly all right by me. But,” she added sweetly, “if you ever again address me as ‘Mummy,’ I’ll divorce you.”
Tony Baker hadn’t been prepared for the excitement that he was feeling. He could see why the Malworth regulars might find it passed the time pleasantly enough, but his life was not like theirs. He didn’t need artificially created excitement.
Eighteen years ago, he had had the tabloids clamoring for his story, the one that landed it paying him an enormous sum of money. When they had discovered that he was an ex-journalist and could write it himself, they had paid him even more, and had given him a weekly column on crime, which he still wrote.
But the real turning point had been when he had made a TV documentary about the whole business. Then someone else had made a TV movie about it. One thing had led to another, and since then he had appeared on countless chat shows, been invited to premieres, and had been honored by the Queen. He had fronted a very successful television series that was still being shown on satellite and cable channels around the world, and in that series he had traveled to wherever serial killers had followed their inclination, especially if there was any doubt as to the perpetrators of the acts. He had interviewed people on death row; some that he was quite certain had killed repeatedly, and some that he felt just as certain had been victims of miscarriages of justice. He had witnessed three executions. So his forty-seven years of life had been, to say the least, interesting.
So what was it that had his pulse racing, was causing his breathing to be shallow and nervous, was making his hand shake with excitement, for God’s sake? He smiled, laughing at himself for being so susceptible to something so simple and mindless. He was waiting for just one number on his bingo card.
Tony Baker was working, contrary to appearances, bingo not being his recreation of choice. But he had been playing it every night for a week, and for the first time each of the numbers on his card was neatly marked with a bright pink splodge of ink from his bingo marker pen, except one. His objective research had become personal. It was the last house of the first half of the main session, and it was the Link game, when all of Waterman’s bingo clubs played the same game together. Eight hundred and sixty pounds was up for grabs.
He didn’t need the money—the pile he had made from his story had been invested carefully. Since then his life had settled down into a routine of producing and presenting a TV series every two years on the connection between crime and leisure, each time concentrating on a different leisure activity. The accompanying book routinely made the bestseller lists; he understood how to catch the public’s interest.
His
first love, however, was murder. It fascinated him, and, if the viewing figures were anything to go by, it fascinated a lot of people. The networks just said that he’d already done that when he suggested it, but he might try thinking of attacking the subject from a new angle, make a determined try for another murder series. Even Jack the Ripper still had legs if you thought of a new perspective.
But for the moment, his bread and butter was gambling. During his research into the gambling habits of the human being, he had won a few times; he’d made money now and again on horse races, slot machines, the gaming tables. He’d even won a quite sizeable amount on a football pool. It had been better than losing, that was all. It hadn’t given him a thrill. But this . . .
This was different. And it was a valuable addition to his research, because what had seemed to him a particularly boring and unproductive way to spend one’s leisure time, with no input at all from the gambler, had suddenly become very appealing, and he had to try to analyze why.
He looked round the big, bright hall, with its bar running along the length of one wall, fruit machines along the length of the other, and in between them rows of plastic-topped tables strewn with bingo tickets, drinks, snacks, their occupants listening intently for the numbers. It wasn’t at all like the image he had of bingo. These days it was high-tech, with the numbers flashing up on a screen as they were called. There were no balls dancing about in a drum to produce the numbers—random number selectors were used now. And gone were the old-fashioned nicknames for the numbers. Now, it was all very slick and clinical.
The average age was probably not much above his, at a guess. The customers weren’t young, but they weren’t in their dotage either. It was mostly women, of course, still. What men were there were all years older than him; they hadn’t yet tempted young men into bingo halls. But the youths who frequented Waterman’s nightclubs might be surprised if they did venture into his bingo clubs, because they didn’t look all that different, and the drinks were a lot less expensive. There was music, and a restaurant, and the chance of coming out richer than when you went in. No wonder the place was packed.
The bingo caller intoned the numbers—it was all jokes and double entendres between games, but during games, he was Mr. Efficiency, with a straight face. This was serious.
Tony heard his number, saw the confirmation on the screen, felt his blood pressure go off the scale, like the weight hitting the bell on a test-your-strength sideshow, and heard his own voice shout “House!” at the same time as another, female voice. He felt elated and irritated both at once, as she doubtless also did.
Her card was checked first. She sat a couple of tables away from him, and he realized that it was Wilma, one of his interviewees, who had won. She was a faithful member whose biggest win until now had been forty pounds, two years ago. Wilma was in her fifties, maybe sixties, her graying hair cut short, and her face was flushed as her numbers were checked off with the caller. Like him, she was alone at the table. Mostly people came in pairs or groups, but there was the odd solo player.
His turn now, and he too was confirmed as a winner, after producing his club card.
“Just stay there, Mr. Baker,” said the checker. “A steward will bring your winnings to the table.”
The steward was young Stephen Halliday, his landlady’s son, whose fair hair was gelled into spiky obedience, and whose white shirt was dazzling against the red jacket and tie that Waterman’s stewards wore. Stephen was very particular about his shirts, but it was of course his mother who washed and ironed them. Tony had been brought up to look after himself, and felt that Grace should acquaint Stephen with the intricacies of the washing machine before he got much older.
It was through Stephen that Tony had discovered the delights of the Tulliver Inn in Stoke Weston, a travelers’ inn since the seventeenth century, which nowadays still did a very good bed-and-breakfast and evening meal. He hated provincial hotels; a village inn was much more to his liking. The only drawback was Grace Halliday herself, a blonde, forty-something divorcee, who was itching to get her hooks into him. Tony nodded to Stephen as he went to the woman’s table first.
“Here you are, Wilma—not bad for ten minutes’ work.”
Wilma, still slightly pink, smiled at him as he counted out the money. “You’re looking very handsome tonight,” she said.
“. . . two hundred and fifty—thank you, Wilma. You’re looking good too, especially now you’re rich—three hundred, three hundred and fifty, four hundred, four hundred and ten, twenty, thirty. There you go,” he said, tucking in the flap of the envelope. “Your place or mine?”
“Oh, I should be so lucky!”
Stephen came toward him with the satisfactorily thick envelope, and took out the notes. “Fifty, one hundred, one-fifty . . .”
Waterman paid out in cash up to a thousand pounds; he thought that the thrill of being given a bundle of banknotes was all part of the fun, and he was right, thought Tony. It was much more satisfying to see the money being counted than to be handed a check.
Tony had come to Bartonshire a month ago, purely to try the Waterman experience. He could have stayed with Mike Waterman at his enormous house, but he had felt that accepting his hospitality might prejudice his findings, and had turned him down. Having had to endure Grace Halliday’s inane chatter and fluttering eyelashes, he wished he hadn’t. But he would only be here for another two weeks; he would survive.
“. . . three-ninety, four hundred and ten, four hundred and thirty. Spend it on something you don’t need.”
“I will,” said Tony, picking it up. The envelope’s edges were decorated with a repeat design of two champagne glasses and a champagne bottle having just popped its cork, with the words “Bull’s Eye Bingo Winner” printed on it. Underneath, in the same print, were the words “Congratulations, Tony!” He smiled. Waterman added finishing touches that cost him virtually nothing, but it worked.
“That’s me finished,” said Stephen. “I’m getting off early tonight.”
“Do you want a lift home?”
“No, it’s all right, thanks,” said Stephen. “I’ve got the bike out back.”
“Oh, you got it fixed, did you?”
“Fingers crossed. It got me here, so it seems to be okay.”
Stephen left, walking quickly toward the staff area, and Tony stood up, taking his jacket from the back of the seat, and made for the exit. As he pushed open the big glass door, he literally bumped into Michael Waterman.
“You’re not leaving, Tony? It’s only the interval.”
“I’ve just taken some money off you, Mike, and I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”
“Oh—but it’s the national game in the second half,” said Waterman. “You could win two hundred thousand quid if your luck’s in.”
“I’ll pass,” said Tony, with a grin. “I think I’ve had my share of luck for tonight.” He put his jacket on. Mike Waterman might want to stand out here all night chatting, but he didn’t.
“Do you have any children, Tony?”
“No.”
Waterman sighed. “Ben’s been home for the weekend, and if I saw him for five minutes at a time I was lucky. He’s off out somewhere, and . . . well, the house seemed a bit empty. That’s why I’m here—I thought the bingo club atmosphere might cheer me up.”
Tony wanted to get off, but it seemed a bit impolite just to go, if the man needed cheering up. He could surely spare him five minutes. He took a surreptitious glance at his watch. Five minutes—no more than that, because Grace would have his meal ready for him. This new insulin program that he was trying out was supposed to mean that a delayed meal was no longer such a problem, but Tony was used to eating when he’d arranged to eat, and besides, he wasn’t cut out to be a counselor. And apart from anything else, he was cold.
Stephen spent some time getting ready before he left the club; finally, he used his fingers to brush a touch of gel through his fair hair, tweaking it into the peaks that he currently favored, then ri
nsed his hands, straightened his tie, and stood back a little from the mirror to see the effect.
“You’re beautiful, Steve—don’t worry.”
The voice belonged to Jim, one of the other stewards, as he emerged from a cubicle, the only place that any of them could have a cigarette without getting caught. The customers could smoke, but the staff couldn’t, and the smokers among them found that quite hard to take.
Stephen flashed Jim’s reflection a mock toothpaste-ad grin—one that was free of the pollutants of cigarette smoke—and he knew that the comment had been only half in fun. He was vain; he knew that. Everyone made fun of the care he took with his appearance. But his public loved him for it.
That was how he thought of them, the bingo regulars whose cars were parked nose-to-tail outside. They had to get here early if they wanted to park on the road outside; most people had to use the big car park on Waring Road, a five-minute walk away. But Stephen could always leave his bike at the back of the club, so he didn’t have that problem.
One last check, then he pulled on his leather biking jacket, picked up his helmet, went out into the club and pushed open the door to the street just as another of his colleagues passed.
“Oh, you’re bound to pull tonight, Steve,” she said.
“He doesn’t need to,” came Jim’s voice from behind him. “He’s getting plenty already, aren’t you, Steve?”
Stephen practically walked into Michael Waterman, who was standing right outside the club with Tony Baker. He felt himself flush as he walked quickly away, hoping Mr. Waterman hadn’t heard. But he had been using his mobile phone, not taking any apparent notice. Stephen smiled. Mr. Waterman was always on the phone; if he wasn’t ringing people he was texting them. Stephen wondered what he would have done if he had been born a century earlier. He would probably have had a flock of carrier pigeons at the ready.
Stephen had been a steward at the Bull’s Eye bingo clubs for almost three years now, ever since he’d left school, and he enjoyed it. He liked the women—they were mostly women—who played bingo; they were unpretentious, always ready to have a laugh. And they loved him, for some reason. He was always getting joke propositions. He liked Mr. Waterman, but if he ever found out about him and Ben, there would be trouble. Of course, Jim had only been making a joke—he knew nothing about it, and no one at all knew that he was going to meet Ben. But Stephen hoped Mr. Waterman hadn’t heard, all the same.