Grief Encounters

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘So where do you girls want to go this afternoon?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Shopping,’ they replied in unison.

  ‘Where?’

  Teri: ‘St Tropez.’

  Fiona: ‘Monte-Carlo.’

  Tristan appeared, accompanied by the skipper of the Amelia Rose and the chef to help with their luggage, although they were travelling light. After handshakes all round they made their way down the waterfront and along one of the network of piers to where the yacht was moored. Fiona twisted this way and that as they passed the bigger boats with their helicopter pads and parked Maseratis, remembering the days in Dubai when this was the norm and not a treat. Signs on the gangplanks indicated that stiletto heels were discouraged, and she noticed the Jimmy Choo slingbacks lying on the decks where they’d been slipped off. Teri kept her eyes on the captain as she followed him. He was younger than she remembered, and had good shoulders and a firm backside. She could see his underpants through his snow-white trousers.

  They went to St Tropez, with Tristan steering when they were in open water, and moored at the Marines de Cogolin. It was hot and busy, so the two men were content to follow their wives into the cool of the boutiques on rue Henri Saillon and ogle the beautiful shop girls. High on the list of must-haves for the two women were handmade sandals from Keklikian, as worn by everybody who mattered on the Cote d’Azure. Richard weighed the flimsy footwear in his hand, looked again at the price ticket and wondered how many humming birds were killed to make a pair. Never mind, he was thinking, tomorrow we hit the casino.

  I sent Serena round to forensics with the answerphone tape, for them to work whatever magic they could on it. But most of all I needed a copy on a regular-sized tape or disc.

  When she came back with it I told her to contact Mrs Dolan, the blind lady, again, and invite her to assist us. Mrs D finished work at twelve, and was delighted to help, so Serena went to collect her.

  ‘Does your gift work over the telephone?’ I asked, after reminding her who I was. We were in my upstairs office and Serena had made us coffee. I watched her place Mrs Dolan’s carefully in front of her and touch her fingers against it.

  ‘Of course I remember you,’ she replied. ‘Red and grey. Yes, it works with all sounds, choose where they come from.’ She ran her fingers round the rim of the coffee mug we’d given her, felt for the handle and raised it to her lips.

  ‘I see you quite often,’ I said, ‘coming across the square. You amaze me with your confidence. I follow you across the road.’

  ‘It’s probably misplaced confidence, Inspector. I don’t see the danger all around me. If you’re going to go blind, do it when you’re young, while your powers to learn are at their height. What is it you want me to do?’

  ‘Listen to this,’ I said, ‘and tell me if you would recognise the voice elsewhere.’ I pressed the play button and the muffled voice filled the room for a few seconds. I rewound and played it another twice. ‘Is it any use?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. It’s a bit woolly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Like a sheep shearer’s jumper,’ I replied. ‘Our forensic department are trying to clean it up, but they take their time and I’m impatient. Do you see anything at all?’ I rewound the tape and played it again.

  ‘I see something, but it keeps changing. It’s as if the colours are all mixed up and muddy. I see a colour, but it’s unstable and keeps sliding into another colour. What do you want me to compare it with?’

  ‘Some phone calls, see if a voice matches the one on the tape.’

  ‘Right. I’ll try. Play the tape to me again, then play the others, one at a time.’

  ‘We don’t have them on tape, I need to ring them. This is a live show.’

  ‘Oh. So how do I listen?’

  ‘It’s a loudspeaker phone. And we can record the whole conversation.’

  ‘So I’ll be hearing it through a telephone line and a cheap loudspeaker.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Do you think that would change things too much?’

  ‘It’s a lot to ask for.’

  ‘You could always listen on a party line.’

  ‘I’m still not sure. It would pick up more outside noise. The colours I see are strong but they’re ephemeral; they change easily, tip over into something else.’

  I said: ‘So you think it’s a waste of time? Fair enough, but I’d like you to try again when we’ve cleaned up the tape, if you don’t mind. You did such a good job with the robbers. Thanks for coming in, Mrs Dolan. Serena will take you home when you’ve finished your coffee. It was just a mad idea I had. So how old were you when you lost your sight?’

  ‘I could talk to them myself,’ she said. ‘On the phone. That would cut out the loudspeaker.’

  ‘Oh. What would you say?’

  ‘Dial the first number and listen,’ she said, so I did as I was told.

  After three rings a voice said: ‘Atkins plumbers.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Mrs Dolan greeted him. ‘I’m ringing on behalf of the Royal National Institute for the Blind. I was wondering if you would care to sell a few tickets in your area for our grand Christmas draw? The first prize is £2,000 and all proceeds go directly into RNIB funds to assist the visually impaired. May I put you down for a couple of books?’

  ‘Um, how much are they?’ young Atkins asked.

  ‘One pound per ticket and there are fifteen in a book.’

  ‘Just send me one book, love. I’ll have them myself. I’m not very good at selling things.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you. Can I just check your postcode?’

  ‘LS26 7JQ.’

  ‘Any joy?’ I asked after she’d replaced the handset.

  ‘I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I sold a book of tickets, though.’

  Next it was the turn of Atkins senior. He sounded tired, or stoned, and declined with profuse apologies. ‘I’d forget all about them,’ he explained, ‘then feel guilty when I find them, months too late.’

  From there it was all downhill, and I renewed my respect for unfortunates who have to earn a living by telephone canvassing. Nobody was downright abusive, but they made it quite clear that their time was being wasted and they didn’t approve of scroungers who cold-called at inconvenient times. After each call she turned her face my way and gave a shake of her head.

  The last one said: ‘Instead of bothering me, young lady, why doesn’t the RNIB simply cash in some of the billions it already has invested?’ and slammed the phone down.

  ‘Young lady,’ she repeated. ‘The cheeky whippersnapper.’

  ‘There’s no more,’ I told her. ‘It might not have worked, but it’s been an interesting exercise.’

  ‘That last one,’ she said. ‘I can’t be sure; not like with those robbers, but he was the closest.’

  ‘Really!’ I said. ‘That’s great. That’s just great.’

  ‘So how many tickets would you like, Inspector?’ she asked.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They breakfasted on the boat and meandered back along the coast, anchoring at the Iles de Lérins for a sunbathe and snorkel. Louis, the chef, made them lunch of les petits farcis and morue à la Niçoise made with fish he’d caught himself, earlier in the morning, followed by fresh fruit salad in Cointreau and two bottles of Brut Imperial. After that it was snoozing in the shade as they cruised along the coast towards Monaco and its casino.

  The roulette wheel is a device for randomly selecting a number between 0 and 36. The ones in the casino in Monte-Carlo are a hundred years old, made with mahogany and lignum vitae and inlaid with brass, ivory and ebony. They run on Timken bearings and are constantly monitored for any bias towards certain numbers. If the management didn’t spot the bias, the clientele soon would. The croupier spins the wheel and invites bets. The gamblers watch it rotate as if it were divinely driven, guessing which pocket the ivory ball will bless with its presence when it stops its wild dance around the perimeter. The surroundings are hus
hed and opulent, the clientele sophisticated, the atmosphere exclusive. God, or the fairies, or Joan the Wad, or whatever force you believe controls your destiny, does its stuff and a number is chosen. The croupier’s rake reaches out and pulls in the stake money. Sometimes, but not always, it pushes a few tokens towards a lucky punter.

  Pulling a ticket out of a paper bag would have chosen a number just as effectively, but a certain mystique would be missing, and it’s that mystique that drives men to lose fortunes and throw themselves off tall buildings. It’s that mystique that keeps the casino owners in Ferraris, Rolexes and Gucci shoes.

  Our new Chief Superintendent (Crime) rang me. He’d been studying the Magdalena case and my reports over the weekend and decided that an unbiased outside opinion from a fresh mind was called for, meaning his own.

  ‘It’s usually the simple solution, Charlie,’ he told me. ‘The one that’s staring you in the face. Look for the sex angle, look for the money, and what are you left with?’

  I waited for him to tell me. After a few seconds he said: ‘Are you there, Charlie?’

  ‘Yes, boss. I’m listening.’

  ‘I asked you what you were left with.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Um, Peter Paul Ennis?’

  ‘Exactly! Lean on him, Charlie. It’s been going on long enough. Let’s have a result, eh.’

  ‘Right, sir. Thanks for your help.’

  I put the phone down. Trouble was, Ennis wanted to go to jail. It was the only life he knew. I didn’t have any great objections to making his wish come true, but there was always the chance that he’d change his mind when it came to court, and say we beat the confession out of him. And when I send someone to jail I do like it to be the right person.

  I jammed the phone between my chin and shoulder while I found a number in my notebook, and a few seconds later asked to speak to Miss Birchall.

  ‘Who wants her, please?’

  ‘My name’s Detective Inspector Priest.’

  ‘One moment.’

  She sounded headmistressly when she answered, and I pictured her behind a big wooden desk like the one in my old headmaster’s office, then decided she’d be more likely to have a high-tech one, with a flat screen VDU and multiple telephones dotted about. She’d have a PC World calendar on the wall and a Microsoft mouse mat. My old headmaster had a cane leaning in the corner, the end pickling in a jar of vinegar to make it sting more. It never did me any harm.

  ‘Gillian Birchall.’

  ‘Hello Gillian,’ I said. ‘It’s Charlie Priest. Hope I haven’t dragged you away from anything important.’

  ‘Uh!’ she snorted. ‘You might not think our Christmas Nativity play is important, but believe me, on the night it’s the most important thing in the world. How can I help you?’

  ‘It’s not totally unrelated. I’m looking through the file, such as it is, and I’m thinking that perhaps we’re neglecting the creationist angle. Perhaps we should take a closer look at your more fundamentalist governors. Do you have a school chaplain, anything like that?’

  ‘We’re attached to St Ricarius church,’ she replied, ‘and the vicar takes a service for us at various festivals. That’s about it. He’s available, of course, if anyone wants spiritual guidance.’

  ‘Where does he stand on creationism?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve never asked him, but he’s a pragmatic sort of bloke. I can work with him.’

  ‘Give me his number, please, and I’ll come over and have a chat about fundamentalists, for any general background information he can give me. I won’t mention you, of course.’

  She didn’t suggest I call in to see her for tea and buttered crumpets while in the vicinity. I put the phone down and gathered my thoughts before ringing him. I don’t lie awake at night, going through the arguments for and against evolution, but it is something I have strong feelings about. Intelligent design is something that some creationists have come up with as an alternative to Darwinism. Evolutionary theory, as defined by Charles Darwin, says that we are all descended from a common origin, our differences being caused by favourable mutations accrued over about four billion years. The creationists believe that everything was created by God one wet Tuesday morning about five thousand years ago. Intelligent design is their attempt to describe how things like, say, our eyes came about. They claim they couldn’t be a result of a series of happy accidents called natural selection, that there must have been some great design responsible for them. Evolution has masses and masses of evidence to support it; everything else relies on blind faith. Creationists are down there with the flat-earthers, or those who believe that every unexplainable light in the sky is proof of alien visitors. I dialled the vicar’s number.

  In many ways, Monaco is totally egalitarian. If you dress the part, you’re in. Paying the bill is another story. Tristan and Richard wore black suits and bow ties; their wives in dresses that would have passed muster along the coast at a Cannes opening night. They caught a taxi up the hill to the casino, and were dropped off outside its elaborate frontage. The tourists in their sweat-stained T-shirts turned away from ogling the parked Lamborghinis and Aston Martins to watch the four of them trip up the steps towards the entrance, where a doorman inclined his head as if they were old friends before they were swallowed by the thermostatically controlled gloom of the interior.

  The men held back, behind their wives, steering them with fingertips on their spines through the main hall with its countless slot machines. They walked purposefully, ignoring the roulette games where businessmen from Brussels, Rotterdam and Sutton Coldfield, watched by their overweight wives, lost ten Euros a spin trying for a 35-to-1 win on a lucky number. They didn’t see the elaborate rococo decoration of the opulent hall, with its gilt and mirrors, its frescoes of allegoric scenes and its historic bas-reliefs as they headed into the depths of the building, towards one of les privés, where the stakes were much higher. Another doorman watched them with an expert eye as they approached, was happy with what he saw and pulled the door open for them. Inside, credit cards were offered and paper tubes of coloured chips with elaborate designs were gratefully received.

  There were five players at the table they chose: two Chinese; a middle-aged man straight from Sticksville USA; a Frenchman fondling his girlfriend who looked about twelve; and a woman on a high stool with more lipstick on her craggy features than the Arc de Triomphe has pigeon shit. Richard and Tristan circled the table like predatory sharks, watching the wheel’s silent spin, absorbing the electricity in the filtered and cooled atmosphere, feeling for the power that all gamblers believe in. They moved into place at opposite sides and the other players adjusted their positions slightly to accommodate them.

  There are two rules in roulette that ought to be self-evident, but few of the players understand them. There is no such thing as a run of good luck. Ignore this at your peril. The second rule is really an explanation of rule one: What has gone before can have no effect whatsoever on what is about to happen. They watched a couple more spins and each peeled the wrapping off a tube of chips, placing them on the table. They noticed that the Chinamen had huge piles in front of them and appeared to be doing well, concentrating hard on the wheel, betting on blocks of four numbers in two different places on the baize mat. The Frenchman pushed a couple of chips to where his girlfriend indicated, as if he were feeding a cuckoo and not expecting a return, more interested in nibbling her ear than in gambling, and the woman studied the mat as if she could read it like the tea leaves, and placed a pile of four chips on number 10. She hesitated, then split the pile between 10 and 31. The Yank said: ‘That’s me out,’ and shambled off, poorer but no wiser, and they regrouped to absorb the space he’d left.

  ‘Faites vos jeux,’ the Filipino croupier said, and spun the wheel again. She was wearing a backless dress slashed down the front and little else except for hair as black as a raven’s wing that reached to her waist. Falling in love with your favourite croupier was an occupational hazard for the regular visitor, and enco
uraged by the management. Tristan and Richard had watched a couple more spins and thought they caught the measure of the wheel. One of them put a gold-inlaid chip on red and the other put one on evens. Teri squeezed Tristan’s hand and moved closer to him as the ivory ball streaked around the rim of the wheel like a wall-of-death rider, held there by centrifugal force until its speed dropped. As it came round for the third time the croupier said: ‘Rien ne va plus,’ and in three more revolutions it fell into the middle and began a crazy dance, skipping and leaping from number to number, finally settling in number 29, which is an odd number and happened to be coloured black. They had each lost £500.

  Jonathan Leary was intrigued and invited me over to see him there and then. Tell someone you’re a cop and need some help from them and they’re hooked. It works with women and it worked with the vicar of St Ricarius. Dave wasn’t in the office but Serena was, so I asked her if she could tear herself away from what she was doing and come for a ride.

  ‘Oh, it’s not important,’ she replied with one of her smiles, ‘and I’m always ready to go skiving off.’

  ‘We’re not skiving off,’ I told her. ‘We’re pursuing investigations. How’s your mileage, this month?’

  ‘I haven’t reached my quota yet.’

  ‘Good. We’ll go in your car.’

  Serena’s parents came from Bangladesh when we needed workers for the wool and cotton industries who would accept low wages so we could compete with cheap imports from places like, well, Bangladesh. It didn’t work, but they were an enterprising race and her father opened one of our first corner shops where you could buy a pint of milk and your cornflakes right up to midnight. Soon he had a string of them, and he became a strong voice for integration and moderation. Some didn’t like it, and he suffered the usual broken windows and graffiti, but he always retained his dignity and worked hard on behalf of his community. Two years ago he was elected mayor of Heckley.