The Amber Knight (3 page)

Present Day – Casino Grand Hotel, Sopot. Baltic Sea resort near Gdansk

Adam Salen flicked up the corners of the cards that lay face down on the blue baize in front of him. The nine of clubs and the seven of hearts – sixteen. He glanced at the dealer’s nineteen before flashing an insincere smile at the German businessman whose rolls of fat spilled over the stool next to his. Perspiration oozed from every pore of his obese body, but the man was smirking like a chocoholic in a sweet shop. On the table between them and the dealer was twice the gambling allowance Adam allowed himself, which amounted to more than two months wages for most Poles. Did the German have twenty or twenty one?

‘Card.’

The dealer slid one out of the shoe and across the table. Adam flipped it over. The five of diamonds. He used it to turn the others.

Furious, the German pushed his cards aside with podgy, be-ringed fingers.

‘You know what they say about being lucky at cards?’ Helga Leman shovelled a neat pile of chips towards Adam.

‘I know what they say.’ He picked out three high value chips from the pile and returned them to her. ‘Is it true?’

‘How would I know? Goodnight, Herr Dobrow, better luck tomorrow,’ Helga smiled at the German as he heaved his bulk off the stool and waddled in the direction of the Casino dining room.

‘With half price meals on offer to gamblers, the casino will still lose money on that one.’ Adam turned to the tuxedo-clad waiter behind him. ‘Mind if I borrow your tray?’

‘Not at all, Mr Salen. Lucky night?’

‘Luckier than you, by the sound of it,’ Adam replied, as angry voices escalated around the roulette table.

The waiter flexed his muscles and sized up the situation. But there were more able-bodied staff than patrons in the casino. The men were uniformly massive, six feet or more, their brawny bodies shoe-horned into ill-cut evening suits, their bull necks constrained by starched collars and black ties. In contrast the girls were all small-boned, fragile; their Hollywood make-up and Barbie doll hair at odds with the severe lines of their black mini-skirts, white and candy-striped shirts and bow ties.

‘You’re going to lose everything!’ The protester was thin-faced, with the dark skin and eyes of a gypsy. He had embraced the worst American fashion had to offer. His baggy Bermuda shorts and short-sleeved Hawaiian silk shirt would have driven off a parakeet.

‘It’s mine to lose.’ His companion elbowed him aside and proceeded to blitz the squares on the roulette table with high value chips. Adam did a rough calculation. There had to be more than three thousand American dollars on the table.

Two more waiters discreetly abandoned their trays and stepped closer. The diminutive brunette behind the wheel moved her hand downwards to press the panic button, but both the manager and under-manager were already making their way across the floor.

‘The idiot’s dropped forty-six thousand dollars in the last two hours.’ Helga scooped the used cards from the baize in front of Adam and posted them through the slot in the table.

Adam glanced at the gambler. ‘Isn’t that Brunon Kaszuba?’

‘You know him?’

‘His wife works for the Salen Institute.’

‘I hope you pay her well. It costs a lot to keep a man with his habits.’

The manager nodded to the girl running the roulette.

‘Last bets,’ she called, before setting the wheel in motion. With every eye in the room concentrated on the ball, it was a good time for Adam to study Kaszuba.

He conceded that women might find him attractive: thick blond hair, blue eyes, stocky, muscular frame without an ounce of fat. But his speech was slurred, and there were red-threaded veins in the whites of his eyes. Like the gypsy, he had ignored the dress code of the casino. His purple track-suit could have been bought in an exorbitantly expensive designer shop, or a back-street market. To Adam’s undiscerning eye, the outfit had the tacky air he associated with both outlets.

Adam had heard rumours about Brunon Kaszuba, none of them good. He was a drunk and a clean-up man for the Russian Mafia and wasn’t too particular what he brushed under the carpet as long as he was paid. Looking at him in the flesh, he could believe every word.

He tried to imagine Kaszuba and his wife together, and failed. Magdalena was efficient and businesslike, her clothes severe, her demeanour cool to the point of frigidity but, if Kaszuba had been her first indulgence, perhaps she’d decided she couldn’t afford any more. He turned away and noticed a tall, slim dark man hovering on the fringe of the crowd. A man with Slavic eyes who was watching Kaszuba even more intently than he was. A man he’d seen somewhere before but couldn’t recall exactly where.

The rattling slowed to a series of clicks as the ball bounced from cup to cup. The silence shattered in a collective short-lived sigh. The assistant croupiers moved in to scoop the losing chips into black plastic refuse sacks and Kaszuba went berserk. The spectators melted against the walls. Responding to the manager’s signal, two of the largest “waiters” stepped forward and pinned Kaszuba’s arms to his sides. His companion ran in their wake mewing ‘I told you so,’ as Kaszuba was frog-marched, red-faced and protesting, to the door that led to the wide stone staircase outside the building.

The manager disappeared through the restaurant into his private office. Adam knew the casino paid the police a generous retainer. Kaszuba wouldn’t be allowed to linger outside for long. The floor show over, more gamblers drifted towards the door than returned to the tables.

‘Kaszuba’s experience has made them cautious,’ Adam commented to Helga as she helped him pile his chips on to the tray.

‘Fifty thousand American dollars is a lot to lose.’

‘That depends on how much effort went into making it.’ He turned towards the cashier’s kiosk. ‘I’ll be in the bar when you finish.’

‘You know I don’t like being taken for granted.’

‘I thought you might be interested in helping me disprove the theory on luck in cards.’

After he had cashed his chips, Adam took a double vodka on to the terrace that overlooked the bay. The sea glowed a deep, phosphorescent green. Lights glittered in a looped necklace of shimmering brilliants on the double tiered pier to the right of the hotel and in a circle on the paved area beneath him. Lovers’ shadows entwined on the sands. It was easy to imagine Sopot as it had been in its heyday, at the turn of the last century before two world wars had shattered Europe. Then, the aristocracy of northern Europe had flocked to the town and the heirs of Tsars had slept in the suites of the Grand Hotel.

‘I thought that shift would never end.’ Helga stood beside him, her shoulders swathed in a mink jacket that was too warm for the spring night.

He finished his drink and abandoned his glass on the balustrade. ‘I’ll find a taxi.’

‘I don’t understand why you don’t buy a car. You can easily afford one,’ she pouted.

‘It’s easier to travel by taxi. There are no worries about whether the car will still be there when you need it. Besides,’ he wrapped his arm around her furry shoulders, decided he disliked the sensation and felt for her hand, ‘a car’s a liability in the old town of Gdansk.’

‘So you walk, like a peasant.’ She scrunched her pert nose disdainfully.

‘If I didn’t, I’d end up with a stomach like Herr Dobrow.’

‘Then I wouldn’t like you any more.’ She slipped her hand beneath his waistcoat. Wriggling her fingers she slid them below the waistband of his trousers into his boxer shorts.

Extricating her hand, he gripped it hard. ‘You’d like me well enough if I had Dobrow’s money.’

‘Not if you were as mean with it as he is. He won five thousand dollars last night and only gave Jadwiga a five dollar tip.’

‘Sounds about the right percentage for Jadwiga.’

‘You don’t think she’s as pretty as me?’ she demanded, fishing for compliments.

‘If I did, she’d be here and you’d be looking for a lift home.’ He stared wistfully at the beach. Knowing Helga would balk at the suggestion of a walk, let alone in sand that would scratch her three-inch heels: he descended the steps, stumbling as his foot connected with something soft and pulpy in the dark corner at garden level.

‘Careful, I think a drunk’s fallen asleep here.’ He kicked out gently. When the body failed to respond he crouched down.

‘Who is it?’

‘Get the manager.’

‘Who is it?’ she repeated, hysteria mounting at the serious tone of his voice.

‘No one who can hurt you. Now get the manager, please.’

‘Trust a fucking American,’ Josef Dalecka complained as he abandoned his police car on the pavement in front of the Grand Hotel and negotiated a path between the tables and upturned chairs of the outdoor cafe to the shuttered ice cream kiosk where Adam was talking to the hotel and casino managers. ‘If a Pole fell over a body at this time in the morning, he’d wipe the blood from his shoes and carry on minding his own business like a sensible fellow, but not you, Adam. Oh no, you have to disturb the hotel staff just as they’re coming off duty, and roust police officers out of their beds.’

‘It’s one of the Mafia boys, sir.’ Josef’s long-suffering lieutenant, Jankiel Pajewski, who’d arrived earlier, left the police doctor who was hauling equipment out of his car and joined them.

‘All the more reason to leave him where he is until morning. Do we have a name?’ Josef demanded.

‘Rat is all I’ve ever heard, sir.’

‘Gypsy, tall, thin, dark?’

‘That’s him.’

‘I’ve given the surgeon my shoes. I’ve hung about dutifully waiting for your arrival, and I’ve told security and Jankiel everything I know, which isn’t much, so can I go home now, please?’ Adam looked across to the wall where Helga was sitting sipping brandy and regaling her fellow croupiers with an embroidered account of their discovery of the body.

‘No way, Adam. If I’m not allowed to sleep, neither are you. Where’s the corpse?’

‘At the foot of the steps that lead down from the bar terrace, sir.’ Jankiel led the way to the side of the building. Josef shook his head at both managers who tried to follow them.

Josef beckoned Adam forward as they drew close to the spot where the surgeon had rigged up portable spotlights behind an inadequate screen of black cloth stretched over a wire frame. The gypsy lay on his back in a puddle of congealed blood, arms and legs flung wide. An obscene slash in his neck had half severed his head from his body, exposing his spine.

‘You seen him before?’ Josef asked Adam.

‘In the casino tonight. He was with Brunon Kaszuba.’ Adam patted his pockets in search of a cigar. He didn’t smoke often, but he felt in need of something to disperse the metallic reek of blood that tainted the still night air.

‘That’s a name to conjure with. Were they playing the tables?’

‘Kaszuba was playing roulette. I didn’t see that poor bastard place any bets.’ Adam tapped a cigar from a pack and offered it to Josef.

‘Did Kaszuba lose?’

‘Fifty thousand dollars, according to Helga.’ Although only the doctor and Jankiel were within earshot Adam lowered his voice. Casinos were notoriously cagey about their clients’ business.

‘Damn, there goes the obvious motive.’ Josef couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice. ‘No self-respecting thug would knife a gambler with empty pockets outside a casino. Did this fellow seem upset at Kaszuba’s losing streak?’

‘He didn’t look happy about it.’

‘Give me a rundown on how he died,’ Josef asked the surgeon.

‘By the quantity of blood and angle of the wound I’d say he was killed on this spot. Tufts of hair have been pulled from the front of his head, which suggests he was grabbed from behind. The cut was made left to right, probably by a right-handed man. The edges on the throat and the wind-pipe are clean, so the blade was sharp, either new or well-honed. Death would have been instantaneous.’

‘All the hallmarks of the professional, sir,’ Jankiel observed.

‘I noticed,’ Josef responded.

Used to Josef’s vitriolic tongue and temper, Jankiel continued. ‘There’s no sign of a weapon and only one bloody footprint. It matches Mr Salen’s shoe.’ He held up the swathe of plastic sheeting the doctor had wrapped around Adam’s offending shoe. ‘That,’ he pointed to a bloody handprint on the wall behind the body, ‘also belongs to Mr Salen.’

‘You could have been more careful,’ Josef scolded Adam.

‘It’s dark in this corner.’

‘It is.’ Josef glanced at the ring of lights set in the paved area in front of the hotel. ‘How did you know you’d stumbled into a body?’

‘I kicked it and it didn’t move.’

‘Could have been a drunk.’

‘Drunks don’t leak blood. I laid a hand on him.’

‘Were you alone?’

‘Helga was with me, we were on our way home. I’ve had a long day and she’d just finished a ten hour shift,’ Adam said.

‘The luscious Helga. I must have a word with her.’

‘She didn’t see a thing. When I realised he was dead I sent her into the hotel to get the manager.’

‘Were you with Helga all night?’ Josef motioned Adam to join him as he walked over the hotel gardens towards the sea.

‘No, I left her in the casino after Kaszuba was thrown out, cashed my chips…’

‘You won?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘What were you playing?’

‘Blackjack, not that it’s any of your business.’

‘And after you cashed your chips?’ Josef prompted.

‘I took a vodka on to the terrace and waited for Helga.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘Anyone who cared to look,’ Adam snapped, exhaustion making him irritable.

‘How long were you out there?’

‘I don’t know – five – ten minutes perhaps.’

‘Did you hear or see anything?’

‘The usual, lovers on the beach…’

‘I didn’t know you were a voyeur.’

‘Josef, I’ve been up since five,’ Adam reminded him irritably.

‘Haven’t we all?’

‘Can’t this wait until morning?’ Adam pleaded.

‘I suppose so, if you give me your passport.’

‘What?’ Adam glared at him.