Grief Encounters (27 page)

He listed the statistics first, making it sound like the biggest heist ever: second only to the great train robbery; biggest in Yorkshire; nearly a murder; violent; hardly any money recovered.

‘But we got them all,’ he went on. ‘The ringleader was a man called Ennis. Peter Paul Ennis. Nasty piece of work. Threatened to set a girl alight, sprinkled her with petrol. He denied everything, but the others grassed him up when they learnt how much he made out of it. That’s why the judge came down on him. He showed no remorse, the money wasn’t found, and he terrorised that poor girl. Twenty-five years, he got. I expect he was out in what? Twelve?’

‘He served full term,’ I said. ‘All twenty-five. He came out last August, and because he’d served full term he was free to go where he wanted, without leaving a forwarding address. He wasn’t on licence.’

‘So you don’t know where he is?’ There was a note of alarm in his voice, as if I was ringing to tell him to watch his back.

‘Yes we do.’ I assured him. ‘He’s back inside. He’s stir-crazy, couldn’t hack it on the outside after all those years, so had himself put away again. When you were investigating him did you ever meet his girlfriend, a lady called Magdalena?’

There was a long silence as he thought about it. I wasn’t sure how old he was but he could have been quite ancient or not much older than me.

‘Magdalena?’ he repeated. ‘No, I never met her. Ennis was a loner, we thought. Actually, most of the investigation revolved around his fellow conspirators. It was such a professional job that we decided that they’d be the weak link, so we looked for them. We were right. They soon started flashing their new-found wealth around and that led us to Ennis. We had him bang to rights, so the investigation was wound down.’

I wasn’t sure it would stick nowadays, but I’d had an admission out of Ennis, so justice had been done. I said: ‘You must have been delighted.’

‘And proud,’ he replied. ‘It was the highlight of my career. I retired two years later, but I knew I’d never have another case like that one.’

I did the maths and decided he was ancient. Still as bright as a button, though. ‘Tell me about the petrol,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard conflicting reports. Was it petrol or was it water? Ennis swore to me that it was non-inflammable carpet cleaner.’

‘It was lighter fuel. If anything, more volatile than straight petrol. We took it to the fire station and they did tests on it, saw them with my own eyes. It was highly inflammable, believe me.’

‘Scout’s honour?’ I asked. It wouldn’t be unknown for the tin to be switched to strengthen the case against Ennis.

‘It was lighter fuel, as it said on the tin. He even struck a match during the robbery, to frighten the girl. She was within an ace of being burnt alive. So why are you looking into the case again? What’s brought it up?’

I couldn’t be bothered telling him all about Magdalena, so I said: ‘The money was never found so the case was never actually closed. We were hoping that Ennis might lead us to it, but he’s as mad as a snake.’

He was happy with that and wished me luck. I thanked him for his help and rang off.

Dave came in, pushing the door open with his backside because he was carrying a bundle of paper bags in one hand, his car keys between his teeth and a five-foot fluorescent tube in the other hand.

‘Where did you get this?’ I asked as I helped him unload.

‘The caretaker’s cupboard. We’ll all be having epileptic fits if we don’t do something about that flipping light. The beef looked nicer than the ham, so that’s what I’ve brought. Is that OK?’

A bluebottle had followed him in and was buzzing around the room, bumping into things because its compound eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom after the brightness outside. I drew one at school, once, and remembered about the compound eyes. The biology mistress, Miss Forté, used to come and sit next to me because she liked to watch me draw. That was probably the first time I fell in love.

‘I said is that OK?’

‘Sorry, Dave. I was miles away.’

‘I brought beef. Is that OK?’

‘That’s fine.’

‘And, ’specially for you, strawberry yoghurt.’

‘You’re an angel. What say we go have a picnic in the square?’

‘Is that your lucky red dress?’ Richard asked.

‘It’s my lucky colour,’ Fiona told him. She didn’t disclose that the original hadn’t survived her boyfriend’s removal technique. They were freshly showered and powdered, tanned and perfumed, her hair floating around her face like a swirling mist, his freshly gelled and spiked, as they strode purposefully towards the casino. To the casual onlooker they were a typical, well-heeled cosmopolitan couple, out to enjoy themselves by gambling away some of their wealth.

In the casino they passed the tables where the proper gamblers played, ignored the wheels in the main hall and headed towards the furthermost recesses, where the lowering of the lights was compensated for by the raising of the stakes, and formal dress was de rigueur. The doorman outside the
salon privé
gave a smile of recognition and reached for the door handle, but Richard gave a slight shake of the head and pointed forward, towards the
salon super-privé
, where the high rollers played. The doorman gave him a look that said ‘Of course, monsieur, my mistake,’ and let go of the handle.

The
salon super-privé
is normally opened by appointment only, for known clients, but where money is involved rules can be surprisingly flexible. Messages were passed, some electronically, some by imperceptible gestures, and when the handsome couple arrived at the heavy door it was pulled open without any hindrance to their progress. Richard smiled an acknowledgement to the doorman and they plunged into the room’s opulent gloom. Outside, they’d not noticed the two large paintings in the Romantic style depicting the muses of Folly and Fortune, gazing down on all who fell under the spell of the wheel.

The two men already at the table looked up at the newcomers and Richard gave a
do you mind
gesture, which was rewarded by a wave of the hand towards the vacant places. One of the players looked like the American they’d seen before, now resplendent in dinner suit and black tie. The other was a heavy man with a moustache and perspiration problem. The woman standing behind him with her hands on his shoulders was over six feet tall, with platinum blonde hair and high cheekbones. Fiona looked at the couple and a shiver of recognition ran through her.

Richard spread his chips on the green baize then divided them into small towers. There were nineteen at €50,000 each and a further ten at €5,000, making a total of €1,000,000. He couldn’t afford to lose it, but had no intention to. If he stayed on the even money bets he’d win as many as he lost. And he had a system.

Every spin of the wheel comes up red or black, regardless of the number. The chances of it stopping on the same colour for three consecutive spins were slim. Therefore, if it came up red twice in a row, you bet on the black. Richard didn’t appreciate that this broke one of the cardinal rules, namely:
what has gone before can have no effect whatsoever on what is about to happen
. It was true that the chances of three in a row were relatively slim – the same as for a tossed coin falling heads three times in a row – but that was before the first two rolls.
After
them, the odds were even money on the third roll being the same. It was written in the rules of mathematics.

He started modestly, with €5,000 on black, and lost. Then he won twice which put him €5,000 ahead. After half an hour he was €10,000 down and looking for another win. Red came up twice so he put one of the big chips, all €50,000 worth, on black. It came up, and he was well in front.

From then on he played with the big chips, rolling one between his fingers,
à la
James Bond, as he watched the ball dance across the numbers. They were made of ivory, inlaid with gold wire, and embedded inside each was a unique radio frequency ID tag that enabled the management to monitor each client’s worth as well as protect against forgery. Black came up again and the male croupier pushed his annual salary towards Richard as nonchalantly as he might pass a bowl of sugar across the table to his wife.

Croupiers go to training school for six months before they are allowed on the tables. There’s a popular belief that they spend most of that time practising how to make the ball land on a certain sector of the wheel, opposite any big bet. It’s probably not true, but it may be. It may just load the wheel another couple of points in favour of the casino. Richard didn’t believe it, but it was another good reason to stay with the fifty-fifty bets. Nobody could control them.

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.