Grief Encounters

by Stuart Pawson

  He was ahead, with two reds gone, so he placed two of the big chips on black. Fiona, standing behind him, stroked his neck. He felt for her leg and traced circles on the tender place behind her knee until he felt her quiver and her fingernails dig into him. Red again. He’d lost.

  A waitress who could have been Bardot’s granddaughter took orders for drinks and they asked for cocktails. The Arabic-looking player was betting on groups of four numbers and losing regularly, with a rare win to keep him interested. The chips had lost any value to Richard, were merely plastic tokens, not real money, and he started gambling the smaller ones on single numbers, chosen by Fiona, while waiting for the right sequences to come along. The American was following the Arab, shadowing his bets as if the secrets of the wheel were written in the desert’s sands.

  Richard had a losing spell and began to panic. He was out with another man’s wife, playing the high roller, which was fun, but his own wife enjoyed the casino almost as much as he did. He could afford to lose a certain amount, but he’d catch hell from Teri. The ball settled into the red pocket and the croupier pushed his winnings towards him. He was in front again, the crisis was over, and he felt as if neat adrenalin were coursing through his veins.

  He played on his winnings for twenty minutes, the original €1,000,000 pushed to one side. Gambling with the casino’s money, as the punters liked to call it. Black followed black again, so he put one of the big chips – worth €50,000 – on red, and promptly lost it.

  But now black had come up three times in a row. There’s another system that rooky gamblers use, known as doubling your bets. The theory is that when you lose you simply double your stake for the next bet and keep doubling until you recoup your losses. There are fancy names for it, like negative progression, or the Martingale system, but it’s a dangerous strategy, smacking of desperation. Doubling up is for fools.

  Richard calmly slid the last of his winnings, all £100,000-worth, onto the baize mat and waited for the capricious ball to determine whether a similar amount would come his way or if his stake should vanish into the casino’s vast gaping coffers. The colours and numbers on the wheel were a blur as they sped by under his gaze, the light flickering on the centre crosspiece of the wheel like the swinging watch of a hypnotist. Richard felt himself sway as the ball began its fandango and he gripped the edge of the table.

  Round and round it went as he tried to follow its progression, willing it to bounce out and find another home. But it didn’t. There it was, firmly lodged in a black pocket. He’d lost again.

  They’d been in the casino for nearly three hours, and Richard had on the table exactly the same amount of money as when he started. The croupier stacked the losers’ chips in his rack and Richard reached out with his left hand and steered his original million in front of him. He wasn’t dispirited: the previous three hours hadn’t been wasted; no, they were an investment.

  He felt as if he were breathing pure oxygen, was on a high better than anything he’d experienced by chemical induction. The colours of the table were dazzling bright – green, red, gold, black and the richest mahogany he’d ever seen, and Fiona’s fingers were kneading his neck muscles, probing under his collar, finding nerve endings that he didn’t know existed. He wanted her, right there and then, on the table with the American and the Arab looking on. But most of all he wanted to win, to beat the system, to prove that he, Richard Wentbridge, could walk out of the casino a winner, with the uniformed lackeys bowing their heads reverentially as he passed and the most beautiful woman in Monaco hanging onto his arm and his every word, ready to submit to his every whim.

  It had to be red. Five blacks in a row were unthinkable. Fiona was wearing her lucky colour and he could see into the future. More than that: he could control the future. It must be red. It had to be. He had a vision of the Arab taking Fiona’s dress off her and something curdled inside him, an anger he never felt when confronted with Teri’s lovers. But this was his moment, his chance to steal the limelight that surrounded his pal Tristan wherever they went.

  The croupier invited them to place their bets and Richard slid four of the big chips into the red diamond, nervously tapping another on the edge of the table.

  Four blacks in a row, he was thinking. It might never happen again. Surely this was his time and his place. As the ball began its second revolution he snapped out of his trance and shoved his remaining chips after the others.

  The Arab looked at him then courteously gathered in the chips he’d placed on various bets. ‘Good luck, monsieur,’ he whispered.

  The American showed no similar finesse. ‘Holy Moses!’ he exclaimed and followed the big money, placing a more modest bet alongside Richard’s.

  The ivory ball appeared to defy gravity, following its orbit like a doomed satellite, soon to fall prey to Newton’s laws and plunge into the Sun. Only the croupier breathed.

  As it slowed the ball fell into the 12 red pocket, jumped out again, ran around the lip of the wheel for half a revolution before falling into the 29 black slot. This time it stayed. The croupier’s rake shot out like a striking cobra and dragged all Richard’s chips off the mat. All one million euros’ worth.

  ‘That’s me done,’ the American said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We found a seat in the square and ate our sandwiches watching the people go by, wondering what the hurry was, what was so important that they had to phone someone while on the move. I seem to be watching things go by more and more often, these days. Must be something about my time of life. I told Dave about the conversation with the bank robbery’s investigating officer and his assurance that it was petrol that Ennis doused the girl with.

  ‘Poor lass must’ve been terrified,’ he said.

  ‘What do they talk about?’ I wondered.

  ‘Who?’

  I nodded towards a young man in a suit, striding across the square with an umbrella hooked over one wrist, phone clamped to his ear. ‘Him. And her. And her.’

  ‘They have social lives, Charlie. Friends and all that. And jobs that give them time to lead lives other than work. Did you know that…’

  But my phone was ringing so Dave didn’t finish his question, and I suddenly felt as if I belonged. ‘This could be it,’ I said, pulling the phone from my pocket. ‘This could be my invitation to the ball,’ but the number on the display was all-too familiar. ‘Charlie,’ I said, and listened.

  I stood up and put the phone away. ‘Message for me. Let’s go.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Graham Mellor.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Fifteen minutes later I was talking to him, learning first hand that he was a second-year chemeng student at Leeds University. ‘Chemical engineering?’ I queried.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘OK. That sounds a proper subject. What you’ve told me sounds very interesting, Graham, so do you mind if we go over it again, and I’d like to record our conversation, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Good. Let’s start with the papers.’

  ‘Right. I sent last Thursday’s Evening Post and a copy of the Leeds Other Paper to my parents for them to see what properties are for sale around here. They’re not happy with my present arrangements and are thinking of buying something, moving into the buy-to-let business. They’ve never done anything like that before, so it’s a big deal to them.’

  ‘It’s not to be undertaken lightly, Graham,’ I told him. ‘Where do your parents live?’

  ‘Hucknall. It’s just outside Nottingham.’

  ‘I know it. Go on.’

  ‘Right, well, I sent them the papers and yesterday my mother rang me about an article in the Other Paper about this woman who’s been murdered. There was an artist’s impression of her and she said they met her when they came up here to look at a house, back in early August. I’ve looked in my diary and it was 6 August, a Saturday night.’

  Magdalena’
s body was found on the Sunday morning. ‘Where did they meet her?’ I asked.

  ‘At the Hairy Lemon.’

  ‘What the devil’s the Hairy Lemon?’

  ‘It’s a pub the students use. I believe it used to be called the Wig and Gavel. The locals had a petition about the name change, but they lost.’

  I said: ‘Three hundred years of history down the pan to please you lot. What did your parents think of it?’

  ‘Not much. It was my idea we go there because a local girl called Corinne Bailey Ray was singing. Have you heard of her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You will. It was a bit crowded but I managed to find seats at a table at the back for them. I wandered off looking for my girlfriend. They left before Corinne’s second set, but Mum reckons they were sat with the woman in the drawing, and spoke to her.’

  I needed to know about that conversation. ‘What time do you estimate they left, Graham?’

  ‘About nine-thirty.’

  Estimated time of death for Magdalena was between ten and one a.m., and her body was found lying on the grass near Shibden Park, twelve miles away as the crow flies, at seven next morning. I needed to know about that conversation more than anything else in my life.

  ‘Do your parents know that you’ve contacted me?’ I asked.

  ‘Er, yeah, I made it right with them.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have to talk to them. You’d better give me their number.’

  ‘You idiot! You bloody stupid idiot!’ Teri Wentbridge tore herself out of her husband’s arms and stomped out onto the deck, slamming the door behind her. The Foyles had gone for a walk, and Richard Wentbridge had taken the opportunity to confess his gambling losses to Teri.

  She went to the front of the boat, stared down at the water, gripped the handrail, impotent in her bare feet to vent her anger in the midst of all that quiet, seductive wealth. She strode to the other end and looked up towards the casino and the palace; seeing only them and not the solid wall of depressing tenements, compressed together like a termite mound, that formed the Principality of Monaco. Her shoes were there so she stabbed her feet into them and walked round the deck, disappointed that her heels didn’t mark the surface.

  Richard’s hand fell on her arm. ‘Come inside,’ he said, and she followed him into the cool of the main cabin, pulling away from him to show that it was her idea to go back inside, not his.

  ‘I said I’m sorry.’

  ‘You bloody, bloody idiot. A million pounds, just like that. Can we afford to pay for this trip?’

  ‘Of course we can. I’ll have a word with Tristan; he’ll understand.’

  The colour bloomed in Teri’s face. ‘You’d better not. It’s bad enough Fiona knowing. Is there something going off between you two?’

  ‘Well…you know there is.’

  ‘I meant more than that. More than screwing her brainless at every opportunity. Are you two plotting something?’

  ‘Of course not. Where did you get that idea?’

  ‘I’ve seen the way you look at each other. A million pounds, up in smoke, just like that, to impress Fiona.’

  ‘It was a million euros, not pounds. It’s nowhere near as much.’

  ‘It’s not far off.’

  ‘Listen, Teri,’ he pleaded. ‘I know I was out of order being there with Fiona and not you, and I’m sorry about that, but I’d have done the same no matter who was with me. There’d been four blacks. Five blacks on the trot is unheard of. The odds against it happening are ridiculous. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand I’d have won. Anybody will tell you that.’

  ‘Uh!’ she snorted. ‘So where does that leave us? Can we still afford to have friends?’

  ‘We’ll be all right. It’s just a blip in our fortunes. And I’ve been thinking about things, about the game. I’ve decided that doing it for kicks is good fun, but now we’ve proved how good we are we ought to start making some money out of it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not now, kiddo. I’ll tell you when we go home.’

  We’d had a few days of cloudy weather but the high-pressure system came back and settled right over Sparky’s house. This meant hot days again although the evenings were chilly. ‘Back-endish,’ as my mother would have said. Mr Wood went off fishing in Ireland for two weeks, chasing the uneatable, and Gareth Adey had a heart attack.

  I’d deployed the troops and made myself another coffee, and had carried it downstairs to have with Gareth, just to be sociable. He’s regarded as a bit of a pratt, because he can be, but he’d rather do you a good deed than a bad and he gets the job done eventually. I don’t think he’s ever been a Morris dancer, but I could imagine it. He was slumped over his desk, clutching his chest in agony.

  I ran down the short corridor, flung the door open and shouted: ‘Help! Gareth’s office!’ at the top of my voice, and dashed back to him.

  He was breathing in short, shallow gasps and his lips were blue. I unfastened his tie and undid his belt and the buttons of his shirt, telling him that he was going to be all right. Figures appeared around us and we pulled his chair away from the desk and rocked it backwards to make him more comfortable. Somebody arrived with a mouthpiece for CPR and said there was a defibrillator somewhere at the front desk. Outside I could hear the ambulance’s siren growing louder.

  I rode with him to the hospital and one of Gareth’s bobbies followed in a panda. When we’d seen him settled and been assured by a doctor that he was doing fine we went and told his wife the bad news. She was too upset to drive herself, so we took her to the hospital and left her there, sitting by his cot in intensive care.

  I rang the super at HQ and apprised him of the situation. He said that I was in charge and asked if I needed any help. I didn’t want some fast-track whizz kid with as many GCSEs as he had zits telling me how to run my fiefdom, so I told him we’d manage.

  ‘What about Magdalena?’ he asked. ‘Are we any nearer a result?’

  ‘I’m hoping to do a substantive interview in the next few days,’ I replied. ‘I may have something for you then.’

  We hadn’t allowed for the race riots. I was looking forward to lording it from behind Gilbert’s desk, issuing directives about wearing short-sleeved shirts and important stuff like that, when a member of one of our minority groups stabbed a member of an alternative minority group. Or, to put it another way, a Rasta jacked-up a Paki.

  That night the windows of most of the shops in what Dave refers to as our multi-ethnic quarter were smashed and there was a stand-off in the town centre between large groups from both sides. The whites demonstrated their neutrality by joining in the looting, whoever threw the brick, and it was a good time to put feelers out for a new DVD player or iPod. I cancelled all leave and prayed for rain.

  I’d telephoned Graham Mellor’s parents and arranged to drive down to see them, but I had to call it off when the jihad started. His mother had answered the phone, and sounded quite eager to talk, and talk, and talk. I told her that I’d rearrange a meeting as soon as I could. The stabbed youth, who was born in the town, was soon out of danger but his attacker escaped. He was stabbed in the stomach but never saw his assailant, and the twenty or thirty other people present in the youth centre all just happened to be looking the other way. I put everybody I could on the streets in the evenings, looking for the ringleaders and agents provocateurs who always flock to where there’s trouble, and confiscated the films from all the CCTV cameras.

  We had two days of it but Friday lunchtime, just as the media started to arrive in force, the sky darkened and the rain came. The workers of Heckley arrived in the morning wearing T-shirts and shorts and went home under brollies and raincoats. Gullies and gutters overflowed briefly and buses ploughed on through flooded roads. Two hours later it was all over and people were remarking how it had cleared the air. Shopkeepers took the boards off their windows and normality settled like a dove on the peaceful town of Heckley.

  I heaved a sigh of relief th
at blew the papers off my desk and rearranged the shift patterns to give some of the troops a weekend off. My team had been diverted to the stabbing enquiry because that’s where the public’s interest lay and where all the kudos was to be earned for the next day or two. The public interest being as defined by the tabloid press, and the kudos handed out or withheld by the self-appointed, so-called community leaders. Magdalena had been relegated to the back burner for a day or two but she stayed in my thoughts as I worked out the best way of nailing her killer.

  Graham’s parents lived in a detached house on the edge of town, handy for the M1 and the park-and-ride into Nottingham, as Mrs Mellor told me when I rang them to rearrange what she called ‘our little talk’. It was a modest but spacious house, built of brick at a time when people wanted gardens and nobody foresaw that one day we’d all have cars. The front garden wall had been demolished and their two-year-old Vauxhall Zafira stood on a paved area where once had bloomed roses and wallflowers. Most of the neighbours had made similar modifications. The car was freshly polished, the double-glazing sparkled in the Saturday morning sun and a water feature gurgled happily under the window. Two artificial butterflies with twelve-inch wingspans clung to the upper storey wall and a small dog came dashing to meet me, held back by a gate at the side of the house.

  Mr Mellor opened the door when I was still ten feet from it. I held my ID out, saying: ‘Inspector Priest. You must be Mr Mellor. Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘It’s Roy,’ he told me as we moved into the front room after the obligatory handshake, ‘and this is my wife, Veronica.’

  ‘Hello Mrs Mellor,’ I said. ‘Thanks for finding the time to see me.’

  ‘Veronica,’ she said. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony, here. People can take us as they find us, and that’s that.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ I replied, ‘I’m Charlie. Charlie Priest. Do you mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Of course not. Do you like lemon cake?’

  ‘Um, yes please.’

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on. If you’re like the policemen on the telly you’ll enjoy a good strong cup of tea.’