by Peter James
‘Simona! Hey!’ Tavian raised his hand in greeting.
Simona slapped him a high five.
‘How are you? Where’s Romeo?’ Tavian greeted her.
She shrugged. ‘I saw him earlier. How are you all? How’s the baby?’
Cici beamed at her, but said nothing. She rarely spoke. It was Tavian who responded.
‘They tried to take the baby, two nights ago, but we ran!’
Simona nodded. The authorities did that: they would take the baby from you, but leave you. They would put the baby into some kind of state home. Like the ones she had run away from, repeatedly, from the time she was about eight years old until, four or five years ago now, she had managed to stay away permanently.
There was a silence. They were all looking at her. Tavian and Cici smiling, the others vacantly, as if they expected her to have brought something – food, or perhaps news – but she had brought nothing out of the dark, wet night.
‘Have you found anywhere new to sleep?’ she asked.
Tavian’s smile momentarily faded and he shook his head forlornly. ‘No, and the police are worse recently. They are hitting us all the time, moving us on. Sometimes, if they have nothing else to do, they follow us through the night.’
‘The ones who tried to take the baby?’
He shook his head, extracted a bent cigarette stub from a box and lit it, rocking the baby gently with his free arm. ‘Not them, no. They called someone, some special unit.’
‘I heard of a good place, where there is space – along by the heating pipe,’ Simona said.
He shrugged indifferently. ‘We’re OK. We are managing.’
She never really understood this group. They were no different from herself and they had no more than she had. In some ways she was better off, because she at least had a place to go to that was her home. These people were completely nomadic. They slept wherever they could – in alleys, in the shelter of shop-front porches, or out in the open, huddled together for warmth. They knew about the heating pipes, but they never went to them. She did not understand that, but there was a lot about the people she met that she did not understand.
Like the man approaching them now, laden with carrier bags. The man she had seen at the confectionery stall. He was middle-aged, with a slightly smug smile that made Simona instantly wary of him.
‘You look hungry, so I bought you some food,’ he said, and beamed enthusiastically, holding the bags out.
Suddenly they were all pushing past her, jostling, grabbing at the bags. The man stood there releasing them contentedly. He was of stocky build, with a pleasant, cultured-looking face and well-groomed hair. His open-neck white shirt, his brown jacket, his dark blue trousers and his shiny shoes all looked expensive, but she wondered why, on a night like this, he was not wearing a coat – he could clearly afford one.
Just one bag he held back, waiting until the rush had subsided and people had retreated, each inspecting their sudden windfall, and then he handed it to Simona. She peered inside at a treasure trove of sweets and biscuits.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘help yourself. Take everything. It’s yours!’ He was looking at her intently.
She dug her hand in, took out a Mars bar, unwrapped and bit into it greedily. It tasted so good. Incredible! She bit some more, then more still, as if afraid someone would snatch it from her, cramming the last of it into her mouth until it was packed so full she could barely chew. Then she dug her hand into the bag again and took out a chocolate-coated biscuit, which she began to unwrap.
Suddenly there was a commotion. She felt a painful thud on her shoulder and cried out in shock, turning round, her bag falling to the floor. A cop was standing behind her, black truncheon raised, a leer of hatred on his face, about to strike her again. She put her hands up and felt a blow on her wrist so hard and painful she was sure he had broken it. He was raising his arm to strike again.
There were police all around them. Seven or eight of them, maybe more.
She heard a loud crack and saw Tavian fall over.
Cici screamed, ‘My baby, my baby!’
Simona saw a truncheon strike Cici full in the mouth, busting her gums open and splintering her teeth.
Truncheon blows were hailing down on them all.
Suddenly she felt her hand being gripped and was jerked backwards, clear of the police. As she turned, she saw it was the man who had bought the sweets. A tall, bony cop with a small, rat-like mouth, brandishing his truncheon as if it was going to hit them both, shouted out something. The man dug his hand into his jacket pocket and produced a cluster of banknotes.
The cop took the money and waved them away, then turned his attention back to the mob, raising his truncheon and bringing it down with a sickening thud on someone’s back – Simona could not see whose.
Bewildered, she stared at the man, who was pulling her hand once more.
‘Quick! Come, I’ll get you away.’
She looked at him, unsure whether she could trust him, then back at the mêlée. She saw Cici on her knees, screaming hysterically, blood pouring from her mouth, no longer holding the baby. All of the street people were on the ground now, a shapeless, increasingly bloody mound, sinking further and further beneath the hail of batons. The police were laughing. They were having fun.
This was sport to them.
Moments later, still being pulled by her rescuer’s iron grip, she tripped down the stairs of the station’s front entrance, out into the pelting rain and towards the open rear door of a large black Mercedes.
18
The problem with buffets, Roy Grace always found, was that you tended to pile your plate high with food before you had actually studied everything that was on the table. Then, just when you were already looking terminally greedy, you noticed the king prawns, or the asparagus spears, or something else that you really liked, for the first time.
But there was no danger of his doing that now, at Jim Wilkinson’s retirement party. Although he had not eaten much all day, he had little appetite. He was anxious to get Cleo into a quiet corner and ask her what she had meant by the text she had sent him earlier, at the quayside.
But from the moment he arrived at the Wilkinsons’ packed bungalow, Cleo had been engaged in conversation with a group of detectives from the Divisional Intelligence Unit and had given him no more than the briefest smile of acknowledgement.
What the hell was up with her? he fretted. She was looking more beautiful than ever this evening, and was dressed perfectly for the occasion in a demure blue satin dress.
‘How are you doing, Roy?’ Julie Coll, the wife of a chief superintendent in the Criminal Justice Department, asked, joining him at the buffet table.
‘Fine, thanks,’ he said. ‘You?’ He remembered suddenly that she’d had a mid-life change of career and had recently qualified as an air stewardess. ‘How’s the flying?’
‘Great!’ she said. ‘Loving it.’
‘With Virgin, right?’
‘Yes!’ She pointed at a bowl of pickled onions. ‘Have one of those. Josie makes them herself – they’re fab.’
‘I’ll go back to my seat – perhaps you could put some on my tray when you bring it over.’
She grinned at him. ‘Cheeky sod! I’m not on duty now!’ Then she speared a couple of onions and piled them on the heap on her plate. ‘So, still no news?’
He frowned, wondering what she was referring to for a moment. Then realized. It never went away, however much he tried to forget. There were reminders of Sandy all the time.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Is that your new lady over there? The tall blonde?’
He nodded, wondering how much longer she would be his lady.
‘She looks lovely.’
‘Thanks.’ He gave a thin smile.
‘I remember that conversation we had a while back, at Dave Gaylor’s party – about mediums?’
He racked his brains, trying to think. He remembered Julie had lost a close relative and had pick
ed his brains about a good medium to go to. He did vaguely remember they’d had a conversation, but could not recall any details.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve just found a new one – she’s really brilliant, Roy. Amazingly accurate.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Janet Porter.’
‘Janet Porter?’ The name did not ring a bell.
‘I haven’t got her number on me, but it’s in the book. She’s on the seafront, just near the Grand. Call me tomorrow and I’ll give it to you. I think you’ll be astonished.’
During the past nine years since Sandy’s disappearance, Grace had lost count of the number of mediums he had been to. Most of them had been recommended highly, just like this one now. None of them had come up with anything positive. One had said that Sandy was working in spirit for a healer and that she was happy to be back with her mother. A slight problem with that one, Grace had decided, since her mother was still very much alive.
A small handful of the mediums, the ones he had found most credible, had been adamant that Sandy was not in the spirit world. Which meant, they explained, that she was not dead. He was left as baffled today as he had been on the night of her disappearance.
‘I’ll think about it, Julie,’ he said. ‘Thanks, but I’m sort of trying to move on.’
‘Absolutely, Roy. I understand.’
She moved on too and for a few moments Grace had the buffet to himself. He eyed the new Chief Constable, Tom Martinson, who had only been in Sussex for a few weeks, wanting to ensure he got to chat to him. Martinson, who was forty-eight, was slightly shorter than himself, a strong, fit-looking man with short dark hair and a pleasant, no-nonsense air about him. At the moment he was busily tucking into his food, while engaging energetically in conversation with a group of brown-nosing officers who were surrounding him.
Grace forked a small slice of ham and some potato salad on to his plate, ate them on the spot and put the plate down, to avoid the hassle of walking around with it.
Then, as he turned around, Cleo was standing right behind him, a glass of what looked like sparkling water in her hand. In total contrast to how cold she had sounded over the phone, she was smiling warmly. Beaming.
‘Hi, darling,’ she said. ‘Well done, you’re not that late! How did it go?’
‘Fine. Nadiuska’s happy to wait until the morning to start the PM. How are you?’
Still smiling, she jerked her head, signalling him to follow. At that moment, he saw the Chief Constable break away from the group and head, alone, to the buffet table. This would be the perfect moment to introduce himself!
But he saw Cleo beckoning and did not want to risk her getting caught in another conversation with someone else. He was desperate to know what was going on.
He followed her, weaving through a packed conservatory, acknowledging greetings from colleagues with just a cursory nod. Moments later they stepped outside into the back garden. The night air felt even colder than at the harbour and was thick with the smell of cigarette smoke, wafting over from a mixed group of men and women who were standing in a huddle. The smoke smelled good and, if he’d had his cigarettes with him, he would have lit up. He could have done with one, badly.
Cleo pushed open a gate and walked a short distance down the side of the house, past the dustbins and into the carport at the front. She stopped by Wilkinson’s Ford Focus estate. They were private here.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ve got some news for you.’ She shrugged, twisting her hands, and he realized it wasn’t for warmth but because she was nervous.
‘Tell me?’
She twisted her hands some more and smiled awkwardly. ‘Roy, I don’t know how you are going to take this.’ She gave him an almost childlike smile of bewilderment, then a kind of hopeful shrug. ‘I’m pregnant.’
19
The tall man walked up the spiral staircase, then stopped at the top for a moment, checking that his valet-parking stub and his coat-check ticket were securely slotted inside his crocodile-skin wallet. Then he surveyed the Rendezvous Casino’s high-value floor unhurriedly and thoroughly, taking it in the way a policeman might take in a room.
In his late forties, he had the lean physique of a man who works out. His face was craggy and his thinning jet-black hair was slicked back. He looked handsome under tonight’s dimmed bulbs, but coarser in broad daylight. He was dressed in a black cashmere blouson jacket over an open-neck plaid shirt, with a heavy gold chain around his exposed neck, expensive jeans, Cuban-heeled snake-skin boots and, even though they were indoors and it was nearly ten o’clock at night, aviator sunglasses. On one wrist he wore a chunky gold chain-link bracelet and on the other a large Panerai Luminor watch. Although he looked, like he always did, as if he did not belong here but in some more flash establishment, he was one of the casino’s regular high-rollers.
Chewing a piece of gum, he observed the four roulette tables, the blackjack tables, the three-card poker tables, the craps tables and the slots, his eyes behind those glasses scanning every face, then the restaurant at the far end, again scanning every diner, until he was satisfied. Finally he strode unhurriedly towards the table he liked, his regular table, his lucky table.
Four people were already playing and looked as if they had been there a while. One was a middle-aged Chinese woman who was another regular here; with her were a young couple who were dressed for a party they had either been to or were on their way to, and a stocky bearded man in a thick jumper who looked as though he would have been more at home in a geology lecture.
The wheel was spinning slowly, the ball rolling around the rim. The tall man laid £10,000 in bundles of £50 notes on the green baize roulette table, his eyes fixed on the male croupier, who gave him a nod, then said, ‘No more bets.’
The ball tumbled off the rim, rattled and clacked, bouncing across the trivets, then was silent, settled in. Everyone, except for the tall man, craned to look as the wheel slowed further. Deadpan, the croupier said, ‘Seventeen. Black.’
The number popped up on the electronic display screen behind the wheel. The Chinese woman, who had covered most of the table with chips, except for 17 and its immediate neighbours, swore. The young, slightly drunk girl, who was almost falling out of her black dress, gave a small whoop of joy. The croupier cleared away the losing chips, then prepared the payouts for the winning ones, paying the biggest first, while the tall man kept his eye on his bundle of notes.
Then the croupier took the bundle and counted the cash with practised hands. He almost did not need to, as he had done it countless times before and knew exactly how much it would be. ‘Ten thousand pounds,’ he said clearly, for the benefit of the punter and for the voice-recording equipment. The Chinese woman, who was in her fifties, gave the tall man a respectful glance. This was big money by this casino’s standards. The croupier stacked up his chips.
He took them and began to play immediately, rapidly covering the twelve numbers of the Tier, as well as placing some on the outside of the layout on Odd, but the majority he put down on the previous six winning numbers as displayed on the electronic board by the wheel. He covered the numbers straight up as well as all splits and corners. In moments his chips covered large areas of the board, like pins marking conquered territory on a map. As the croupier moved to spin the wheel – he was under a direction to spin it every ninety seconds – the others scrambled to place their bets too, stretching across the table, stacking up their chips on top of those of other players.
The croupier gave the wheel a gentle spin and flicked the ball into play.
Down on the floor below, the report from the CCTV room operator was brief and clear in Campbell Macaulay’s earpiece.
‘Clint is here.’
‘Usual place?’ the casino director murmured, his lips barely moving.
‘Table Four.’
Casinos had been Campbell Macaulay’s world all his working life. He had risen up through the ranks, from croupier to pit boss to manager, eventual
ly running them. He loved the hours, the atmosphere, the calm and the energy that coexisted inside all casinos, and he also liked the whole business side of it. Punters might have the occasional big win, just as they had the occasional big loss, but in the long term the business model was remarkably steady.
There were really only two things he disliked about his job. The first was having to deal with the compulsive gamblers who financially ruined themselves in his – and other – casinos. Ultimately, they did the industry no good. And equally he disliked the phone calls waking him in the middle of the night in his time off to tell him that a regular small-time player, or a complete stranger, had just put a huge bet – maybe £60,000 – on a table, because that was the kind of thing that occurred when you were becoming the victim of a gaming scam. Which was why anyone suspicious was carefully watched.
If you were a good gambler, and you understood everything about the game you were playing, you could greatly reduce the amounts you lost. In blackjack and in craps, gamblers who knew what they were doing could make it close to a level playing field between themselves and the casino. But most people did not have the knowledge, or the patience, which had the result of pushing the casino’s profit margin from just the few percentage points of its advantage on most of the gaming tables, to an average 20 per cent of the amount a punter played with.
Immaculately coiffed, and dressed as he was every day and night in a quiet, dark suit, perfectly laundered shirt, elegant silk tie and gleaming black Oxfords, Macaulay glided almost unseen through the downstairs poker room of the Rendezvous Casino. This space was busy tonight, with one of the regular tournaments they held. Five tables, occupied by ten players each, just off the main room. The players were a shabby, slovenly bunch, wearing everything from jumpers and jeans to baseball caps and trainers. But they were all local people of substance and paid good entrance money.