The Man Whose Dream Came True (22 page)

Fiona. It seemed natural that he should use her assumed name, that she should sit down at the table and let him buy her a drink. She sat there opposite him with her slim legs crossed, wearing the dark glasses, and he knew suddenly that his luck had changed and that he was being given a chance to alter all the decisions that had been made so disastrously in the spring. When he thanked her for writing she simply smiled. She had changed, she was now totally at ease, a quite different figure from the nervous girl who had come into this bar carrying her suitcase.

‘Are you still with Carlos?’

‘For the moment.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He’s an awful bastard.’ She raised the glasses briefly and he saw a bruise round her left eye. Then she lowered them again. ‘However. He’s in Bristol opening up a new place. I’m on my own.’

‘Come with me, Fiona.’

‘To your flat? At Marble Arch?’ She smiled and he smiled back, although impatiently.

‘It’s important. Don’t you see I’m lucky, meeting you means I’m lucky. I want you with me when I play.’ It was true, he could feel the luck in him. First the money coming from Hussick, then meeting her again, it had to mean that he was lucky.

‘To
play.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘The bank always wins, you said so yourself.’

‘Not if you’re with me.’

‘You couldn’t go to one of Carlos’ places. One of his boys might know you. Anyway I couldn’t come with you, he’d slay me.’

‘There are other places.’

‘Yes.’ She contemplated him for a moment. ‘You’re a born sucker, you know that? I want another drink.’

He ordered one and then tried to get over to her somehow the seriousness and the importance of it. ‘For a gambler there’s a time when things are right, you understand? I can’t tell you how I know it, but this is the time. If I make a real killing I’ll never play again, I shall go away, get out of England.’

‘Alone?’

‘It doesn’t have to be alone.’ She merely smiled.

They went to a club she knew in the Edgware Road called the Triple Chance. It was early, and there were only a dozen people in the club, half of them playing blackjack and the rest roulette. He bought chips for the whole of his money. She shook her head when he offered her half of them.

‘I never have any luck.’

‘You’ve got to take them. Don’t you see, we repeat it all, just the way it was.’

‘You’re a nut.’ But she took the chips and they sat down at the table. The croupier was a brass-haired boy with a broken nose. Tony began to play a modification of the Rational system. Fiona bet on the first dozen and then on the last, with occasional bets on red and black. After half an hour he had won a little, she had lost half her chips. The time was eight o’clock.

‘When do we knock off work? I’m hungry.’

‘We’ve got to stay here.’

‘Like hell
we
have.’ She pushed the rest of her chips towards him. He was alarmed.

‘Don’t leave me, Fiona. Please. Give me another half hour.’

‘All right, but I’ll tell you something. You’re not going to get very lucky playing that way. If you finish fifty pounds up you’ll be doing well.’

What she said was true. The Rational system is designed to give a regular but small profit. If he wanted to win a lot of money he would have to abandon systematic play. He began to bet à cheval, and put five pounds on the numbers 3 and 4. Number 3 came up at odds of eighteen to one. He repeated the bet and put another five pound chip between numbers 13 and 14. Number 13 came up. He enlarged the bet to include all numbers with 3 in them. In five minutes he had won five hundred pounds. His mind was quite blank. He could not have said why he pushed all the chips on to a carré of the numbers, 13, 14, 15, 16, which would pay out nine to one.

The brass-haired croupier shook his head. ‘Two-fifty limit.’

Fiona spoke fiercely to the croupier, pointed to a bald man sitting next to her. ‘He’s been betting over that.’

‘On pair and impair, madam. That’s different.’ His stare at her was mocking, an insult. Tony felt incapable of speech.

‘If you’ve got a limit like that, you should put it up.’

‘It’s on the wall, madam. Behind you.’

Tony began to take back some of his chips. ‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t break my concentration.’

‘To hell with that. It does matter. Where’s the manager?’

‘Do you want the manager, sir?’ the croupier asked Tony.

He was about to say that he didn’t, when the manager appeared. He was a willowy man with a long face. He wore a purple dinner jacket and a lilac dress shirt, and he smoked a black cigarette in a white holder. His voice had the drawl of an Oxford aesthete in the Twenties. ‘Something the matter, Bob?’

Bob told him what was the matter. He said languidly to Tony ‘Very happy to accommodate you.’

Did he want to bet five hundred, the whole of his money? He no longer knew. His hand moved uncertainly towards the chips and it was Fiona who gripped it. The broken nosed boy spun the wheel.

The ball rolled about and came to a stop. ‘Sixteen,’ the croupier said. ‘Red. Even.’ His glance met that of the Oxford aesthete, who removed his black cigarette from the holder and stubbed it out. The chips, black, red and white were pushed across the table.

‘Leave it,’ Fiona said fiercely. ‘Leave it.
Now.’

He got up from the table.

Because he had known that he would win, that he must win, he was able to take it all coolly. And the same coolness marked his further actions, for he knew exactly what had to be done next. For three-quarters of an hour they drove about London in a taxi, looking for the place that he knew must exist. She sat with him in the taxi, overwhelmed. ‘Five thousand pounds,’ she repeated over and over again. ‘You’ve won five thousand pounds.’

‘Four thousand nine hundred. I had a hundred to start with.’ In the end they had to drive out to London Airport. It was Thursday night. He made a reservation for two on the Saturday morning KLM flight to Caracas. Because it was late they gave him a reservation slip instead of the tickets, and he paid the money.

She turned down the corners of her mouth when she heard where they were going.

‘Caracas. I’m not even sure where it is.’

‘Venezuela. Perfect climate. You’ve got a passport?’

‘Yes. Carlos made me get one, said I might need it sometime.’

‘Get a smallpox inoculation tomorrow. It’s compulsory.’

She giggled and then was serious. ‘You won’t be able to take all that money out.’

He had not forgotten what Jenny said, and now he was able to improve on it ‘I’m going to buy one of those dummy books that people use for cigars. I shall put the money in that and post it to myself at the Grand Hotel, Caracas. We’ll be there when it arrives. It’s a million to one against its being opened.’

‘We shall want some– I shall take two-fifty with me.’ On the way back to London he said, ‘You do want to come.’

‘Yes. I’ve had Carlos. And you know that day, when you found out I wasn’t Fiona Mallory. I wanted to stay. Your face then, if you could have seen it.’ She began to laugh and he laughed too. It was almost the first time in his life that he had laughed at himself. ‘We’ll make a good partnership,’ she said, and he knew she was right.

Her flat was in Hill Street. When they arrived he handed the driver a ten pound note and told him to keep the change. It was a wonderful feeling.

The flat was interior decorator’s Regency, with everything possible done in stripes. She poured drinks from a cocktail cabinet done in differently striped woods. ‘To Caracas. Do you know something? Hours ago I was hungry. I’ll make bacon and eggs.’

‘I don’t want bacon and eggs.’

She giggled. ‘In the bedroom the ceiling’s white stars in a blue sky. You look up at it.’

‘Or you do.’

In the bedroom she took off his jacket, felt inside it for the wallet, spread the money on the bed and started to kiss it. ‘Doesn’t it make you feel good?’

He pushed her back. ‘Come on.’

‘I’m keeping these glasses on.’

‘It’s the first time I’ve made love to a girl in dark glasses.’

Five minutes later they heard voices in the sitting-room. She had scrambled off the bed, but they were both still naked when the door opened. Carlos Cotton stood in the doorway. He was wearing a dark pinstripe suit and a sober tie. He stood staring at them. Then he said ‘Get dressed,’ and closed the door.

There were two other men with Cotton in the living-room when they entered it, and Tony had seen them both before. One was the bruiser named Lefty. The other was the small dark man who had stubbed out a cigarette on his hand. Cotton had a glass in his hand.

‘I won’t ask you to have a drink, I see you’ve helped yourselves.’ He spoke to Fiona. ‘It’s a fine night and I decided to drive back. Just as well. Take off those glasses.’

She took them off. Her bruised eye was half-closed. The other eye was wild, frightened.

‘I like to see who I’m talking to.’ He turned to Tony, his manner calm, his voice quiet. ‘You’ve given me a lot of trouble.’

Tony did not know what to say. ‘And now you’ve had one on me, friend. You’d better go.’

Cotton was letting him go. He could hardly believe it. He moved towards the door and then turned. ‘Fiona.’

‘You get out. I shall be all right.’ Her good eye rolled despairingly at him. He thought, once I get out I can call the police. Cotton spoke again in his mock-cultured voice.

‘Lefty and Milky will see you safely away. We call him Milky because he drinks a lot of milk. That’s sensible, isn’t it?’

He had begun to say that it was when the two men closed on him. Lefty quickly jerked his arm up behind his back so that he cried out with pain, but he managed to turn.

‘Fiona, I’m not going to leave you.’ He felt the absurdity of the words as they were uttered.

‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ She was staring at Cotton, she did not even look at him.

Lefty gave him a push. They were outside the flat and in the lift before the hold on his arm was relaxed. ‘Now we can be nice and friendly,’ the big man said in his hoarse whisper.

In the flat Fiona said, ‘Carlos. Please.’

‘Get packed.’ She stared at him. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you. Just get packed and go. I thought you had class. I don’t like tramps.’

‘You don’t like tramps.’ She laughed. ‘That’s good. You’re a tramp yourself. Do you think you fool anybody with the way you talk?’

‘Get out before I change my mind.’

He followed her into the bedroom and stood watching. When she had finished she turned with her hand to her mouth. ‘Carlos, what are they going to do to him?’

‘Nothing. He wasn’t here. Right?’

‘He wasn’t here,’ she repeated. Her teeth were chattering. When she got outside she begun to cry.

At the entrance to the apartment block Tony pointed towards Shepherd Market. ‘I’m going that way.’

‘Why, so are we,’ Lefty said. ‘Just nice for a stroll, isn’t it, Milky?’

‘That’s right.’ Milky had a clear tenor voice.

There are street lights, Tony thought, it’s as bright as day, they can’t do anything to me here.

His arm was suddenly jerked behind his back again and now they had turned into a narrow passage between houses, big black walls reared up on either side. They’re going to hurt me, he thought unbelievingly, and he put his hand into his jacket to get out the money, to tell them that he would pay them if they left him alone. He thought of that scene in the lavatories with Bradbury, of white delicate Jenny, and of the other dark alley from which he had escaped. I shall escape from this too, he thought, it’s my lucky night. But the gesture he made towards his wallet had been wrongly interpreted. The karate chop across his neck was decisive. His run of luck had ended.

Milky put on a pair of gloves. He took the money from the wallet, an unexpected bonus, but left everything else. Later they gave the money to Carlos and it was split three ways. A couple of weeks afterwards Carlos met a girl named Eleonora Mainwaring, and she moved in with him. She was the daughter of a baronet and, as he said frequently, had genuine class.

It was early morning before a passer-by noticed the body. The dead man’s identity was quickly established, and so was the fact that he had won a great deal of money in a gambling club. He was obviously the victim of a gang who had followed him around. The police thought it likely that the girl with him, who never came forward, was a finger for the gang but they were never able to prove this. The other contents of Jones’ wallet were littered round the body. It had rained during the night and everything was sodden. A wet piece of paper which had fluttered away to the other side of the passage remained unnoticed. In due course a road sweeper picked it up, found it illegible, and pushed it down a drain. It was the air reservation for Caracas.

(in order of first publication)

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

(in order of first publication)

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

(in order of first publication)

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

(in order of first publication)