‘Tell me,’ Albazi asked, ‘who did this? Did they hurt you? Drug you?’

  ‘His hands look like they’re stuck to the wall,’ the male officer said.

  Then when Sharka tried to reply again, Albazi realized he was unable to open his mouth to speak. He saw what looked at first like a line of spittle between his lips, but then as he looked closer he saw it was solid. He reached out a finger and gently touched the area. It felt hard.

  Then he realized.

  ‘Your lips, Skender, someone’s glued them shut, right? With some kind of superglue?’

  Sharka nodded.

  ‘His hands, too,’ the female officer said, examining them carefully but gently. Addressing Sharka, she asked, ‘Are you able to move them at all, sir?’

  He shook his head.

  Albazi heard her colleague radioing for an ambulance. He turned to her and said, ‘I think warm water and soap might help.’

  There was a staccato voice through the radio. Then the tall officer said, ‘There’s an ambulance on its way, sir, they’ll know best what to do.’

  The female officer was checking Sharka’s pulse. He looked at Albazi, bewildered and, for the first time that Albazi had ever seen, frightened.

  ‘You’ll be OK, man. I need to know what happened. Who did this to you? I need to know this.’

  But in reality, he knew already. The message on his phone was from the same number the anonymous caller had used when he was in Song Wu’s office less than an hour ago. A burner for sure.

  In her office, Song Wu had been quizzing him earlier about Skender. Now he realized it was more than just quizzing, it was a subtle hint, which in hindsight could not have been clearer. She sent messages to people when she was angry with them. Brutal messages.

  ‘Do you have any idea who might be responsible for this?’ the tall officer asked.

  ‘No, none,’ Albazi lied. ‘But Skender must have let them in. He either knew them or they tricked him.’ He squeezed his arm, just a little. ‘I’ll get you sorted,’ he said.

  Sharka’s face contorted into traces of a smile and he nodded.

  ‘Did you recognize who did this?’ he asked. And from the look in his eyes, Albazi knew he did.

  But Sharka again shook his head.

  26

  22 July 2007 – Looking back

  Two days later, at 2 p.m., I was back at the Casino d’Azur. It gave me the greatest pleasure to walk up to the cashier who had not that long ago told me my credit card had been declined. Now, using some of my inheritance, sliding £5,000 in cash – fifty-pound notes – across the counter, I told her the denominations of the chips I wanted.

  I headed with my stash over to a roulette table with no punters, and an even more bored-looking than usual croupier. He looked a little like Clive Owen in the movie Croupier, but without the good looks or charm. His bow tie was wonky, he had a dusting of dandruff snow on the collar and shoulders of his tuxedo and he wore a watch that looked as cheap as it did flashy. I can remember him so clearly and yet he barely even acknowledged me, I could have been air.

  I perched on a stool, carefully stacked my chips on the baize at the edge of the table. Six piles of red, black and purple chips, each with a black-and-white chequered rim. The red were £5, the black £25 and the purple £100. I was so nervous. I needed this to come good today, I really needed it.

  Before placing any bets, I watched him set that wheel spinning slowly, then flick the ball. Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle. Silence. The ball nestled in black 28. He spun again. Red 19. Both numbers were within a close arc around zero. The next was way off target – if zero was his target – black 24, on the far side of the wheel. But then the next was red 3, just one number away from green zero.

  And the next was black 15, just one number away from zero again, this time on the other side of the wheel. Shit, this guy was good!

  I waited for another throw.

  Red 32. This number was adjoining zero!

  He had his eye in, for sure. But, if I placed a bet, would the sly bastard still continue on his bored strategy or change it, to beat me?

  I placed a tentative, fairly low opening bet, covering several numbers either side of the wheel. One hundred pounds in total. And one came up! But I’d gone for low odds, so my winnings weren’t huge – my stake back and a net gain of thirty quid. But an encouraging start.

  The croupier was on autopilot as he pushed a purple, black and single red chip towards me, his mind was somewhere else altogether, and from his expression it wasn’t anywhere great.

  Then, as I contemplated my next bets, I was conscious of someone joining me at the table. For a moment I thought it was the Chinese man, but when I glanced up, I saw a man I wouldn’t normally have bothered to look at twice – at first. He had a tattoo of a serpent rising up above the collar of his pink shirt. I’ve never gone for men or women with overtly visible tattoos, I can’t explain why, but I’ve always found them a turn-off.

  Tattoo man wasn’t in any way pretty boy movie star or catwalk handsome. He was swarthy – Greek, I guessed – correctly, it turned out. But there was something attractive about him – he had a presence. He exuded confidence in the way he moved, the way he sat and placed his stack of chips on the table and the way he turned and nodded at me with an amiable smile. ‘Nice win,’ he said, with a slight accent. He looked like he owned the place. He was the kind of man who would always look like he owned whatever place he was in. And, as he fixed his hooded, brooding eyes on mine, he looked, for an instant, like he even owned me.

  It occurred to me he might be one of Albazi’s henchmen. But he looked too classy. An expensive, lightweight bomber jacket over chinos, and a gorgeous Hublot watch – I only knew the brand because Roy had always liked their designs, but they were way above what I could afford to buy him. His dark brown hair was short, but not quite close-cropped. He smelled faintly of a very masculine fragrance.

  I shook my head, eyeing the mountain of chips he had in front of him. ‘I should have put down more.’

  He shrugged and spread a bunch of chips over several numbers just before the croupier intoned in a small voice, ‘No more bets.’

  The ball came to a halt between the frets either side of the number 4. One of his bets – a purple, one-hundred-pound chip – lay smack in the middle of the number. Netting him a gross £3,600.

  ‘Nice one,’ I said, as the croupier began stacking his winnings.

  He shrugged again and held out his hand. ‘I’m Nicos.’

  ‘Sandy,’ I said, shaking it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. He again spread a bunch of chips across the roulette board, before turning back to me.

  ‘What does it look like?’ I replied.

  ‘Is anything what it looks like?’

  ‘You sound like my husband,’ I replied. ‘He has a very irritating habit of answering a question with a question.’

  ‘Is he a cop?’

  That knocked the wind out of me. ‘Why do you say that?’

  He shrugged again, his powerful-looking shoulders. ‘Takes one to recognize one.’

  That instantly made me wary. ‘You’re a police officer?’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Here in Sussex?’

  He shook his head. ‘In Greece.’

  ‘OK.’ I frowned. ‘So, from the few words we’ve exchanged, you’ve come to the conclusion my husband’s a police officer?’

  ‘A detective,’ he said. ‘Who probably doesn’t know his wife has a gambling habit.’ He smiled and stared even harder at me. ‘What else does he not know?’

  I don’t know why I said it – it was completely reckless. But I felt safe with this guy. ‘I guess . . .’ I hesitated for a moment. ‘I guess he doesn’t know I’m not working on my marriage.’

  He barely showed any reaction. ‘It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out, Sandy.’

  I saw him glance at my wedding ring. And noticed he wasn’t wearing one. The roulette wheel was rattling slowly across the frets.

  It stopped at black 31. Where he had two purple chips.

  ‘You’re on a roll!’ I told him.

  ‘Maybe. So far so good. But if you stand by the roulette wheel for long enough, all your chips will eventually disappear into the casino’s bank.’

  ‘So why are you doing this?’ I asked as he spread even more chips over an array of numbers.

  ‘Why? Because I’m laundering money,’ he said, nonchalantly.

  ‘What do you mean, laundering money?’

  ‘Hiding it from the Inland Revenue, Sandy. I play the arc – it’s a roulette strategy where I’ll lose around three per cent of my money, if I play for long enough. But no one in the Revenue will have any way of finding out how much I’ve bet and how much I’ve lost.’

  For some moments, I thought this hunk was crazy. ‘What business are you in that you need to hide – launder – money, Nicos?’

  ‘Zero!’ the croupier announced.

  Brazenly, without lowering his voice, and without a trace of disappointment as the croupier cleared away all his chips on this losing throw of the wheel, he replied, ‘I’m a drug dealer.’

  27

  22 July 2007 – Looking back

  ‘A drug dealer?’ I said, unsure for a moment whether he was joking. But he just sat staring back at me and gave me a smile. I hoped he was joking.

  I should have been instantly disappointed in him, but I wasn’t. My rebellious streak liked the idea of me, the wife of a detective, sitting at the roulette table with a drug dealer. Kind of reminded me of that TV series I loved – Roy had liked it too – The Sopranos. Watching it had been something we’d enjoyed together in recent times. Thinking about that made me feel guilty for a moment.

  Nicos looked me directly in the eyes. He knew, as well as I did, that we both felt some attraction to each other. He asked, smiling, ‘Does that put you off me?’

  ‘Why are you a drug dealer?’

  ‘Why are you a gambler?’ he shot back.

  ‘There you go again,’ I said. ‘Just like my husband, answering a question with a question.’

  He raised his thick, dark eyebrows, smiling again. ‘We’ve barely met and we’re already bickering like an old married couple.’

  He said it with such charm and such good humour that I laughed. ‘Maybe if all couples got their bickering out of the way within the first five minutes of meeting, there would be a lot more marriages that lasted.’

  He gave me a kind of wistful smile that seemed to contain so many secrets, then turned his attention back to the table and the wheel, which was already spinning, the ball rolling at speed around the rim. He spread chips across some of the grid of numbers, with careful precision, then looked at me. ‘No bets?’

  ‘I thought I might see what I could learn from you.’

  The ball rattled around the frets.

  ‘No more bets,’ the croupier said.

  This was the moment in the game that I always found the most exciting. The final seconds as the wheel slowed down, the rattling continuing as the ball, almost with a mind of its own, dropped first into one slot and then another before popping out back onto the rim, and finally coming to rest in yet another slot. But Nicos wasn’t even looking at the wheel, he was looking hard into my eyes.

  Then he picked up one of his chips from his stash. A purple one with the same black-and-white chequered edge as all the others. He held it up between his finger and thumb.

  ‘Seventeen,’ the croupier intoned. He followed it, as if imagining he was in Monte Carlo, by adding, ‘Dix-sept, noir.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Nicos had laid a whole stack of purple chips on 17, but he didn’t even glance away to acknowledge the croupier, as his substantial winnings were pushed towards him. He just continued to hold that purple chip in front of my face. ‘You want to see what you can learn from me, Sandy? This is what you can learn. What do you see?’

  ‘A purple chip.’

  ‘Take it,’ he urged.

  ‘Take it?’

  He held it out. ‘Take it. Hold it. Tell me what this chip means to you.’

  He put it in my hand. Was he gifting it to me? As I closed my fingers around it I was puzzled, unsure what he was getting at. ‘The fact that it’s purple means it is worth one hundred pounds?’

  ‘You’re heading in the right direction.’

  The wheel was spinning again.

  ‘I guess – I could put it on a number, or red or black, or a group of numbers on the table and maybe win a lot of money, or lose it all. Or I could take it to the cashier and walk away with one hundred pounds in cash.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘No more bets,’ the croupier announced. He might as well have been talking to himself.

  ‘I’m not with you, Nicos.’

  He looked straight back at me. ‘You are, you’ve told me exactly what the chip means to you. You can have a flutter on the gaming table and maybe turn it into several more chips, or you can take it to the cashier and walk away with £100. What you are holding in your palm is currency. Money. Money is the only thing in life you can really trust to be what it is.’

  ‘Unless it’s a forgery?’ I quizzed.

  He shrugged dismissively. ‘When was the last time you were denied anything because the coin or banknote in your hand was a forgery?’

  ‘So far, never.’

  ‘Well, the chip you’re holding, you know the cashier here will give you one hundred pounds in cash for it. You know what that money will buy you – in a supermarket or a garage or nail studio or a London theatre. It’s a certainty. You have a one-hundred-pound chip, the cashier isn’t going to tell you it’s only worth ninety pounds. You go to the checkout at Tesco and the person there is not going to tell you that your one hundred pounds in cash is only going to buy you eighty-five pounds of stuff. Money is the one thing in life you can trust. The only thing.’

  ‘The only thing?’

  ‘Sure. People lie – spouses, business partners, friends, siblings. Money is dumb, money never lies. It’s binary – everything or nothing. You have it or you don’t.’

  I tried hard to think of something that would contradict him, but I was distracted by the wheel spinning again. I tried to hand him back the purple chip, but he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. ‘Put it on a number. Or any combination. If you win, you can pay it back; if you lose, it’s gone, it was nothing. Have you ever been on a winning streak – like a real winning streak, where you just could not lose?’

  ‘When I started gambling,’ I said. ‘That’s what got me hooked.’

  He smiled, those hooded eyes opening wider and appraising me. ‘There is nothing on earth that can match the feeling of a winning streak. It’s better than any drug, any amount of booze, any orgasm, right?’

  ‘Any that I’ve had so far,’ I conceded.

  He suppressed a smile.

  A dangerous look. Dangerous for me. Because I fancied him. But I tried to play it cool – and to remember why the hell I was here in the first place, this afternoon. To try to convert my meagre inheritance of £30,000 into the £150,000 I owed Roel Albazi.

  But I didn’t want to stop talking to Nicos, because he fascinated me.

  Keeping my voice low, I asked, ‘What drugs do you deal in?’

  ‘Cannabis. Nothing else. I’m not a moralist, but I believe it should be legal – so I’m just doing my bit to help the process along.’

  ‘That’s your justification?’

  He shook his head. ‘You have power over your mind, not over outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.’

  ‘Meaning?’ I asked.

  As he replied, he placed a bunch of chips over more numbers and sections of the board. Not wanting to be left out, I put down a few randomly, including the purple one he had given me, barely looking at what I was doing. The wheel began to spin.

  ‘Do what you believe in, what you really believe in. Live your life doing that. If you do anything else, anything you don’t really believe in, then you are a failure. You want to know the best description of success I know?’

  ‘I’ve a feeling you are going to tell me.’

  His eyes stayed deadpan. He shrugged and said, ‘Success is the person who wakes up in the morning, and goes to bed at night, and in between gets to do what they want to do.’

  ‘So you’re a success because you are a drug dealer and that’s what you want to be?’

  He spoke flatly, without emotion. ‘A dealer in a drug that should be legal. A drug that helps people through illness, a drug that helps people realize their potential and their dreams.’

  The ball rattled over the frets. I wasn’t even sure which colour and which combination of numbers on the board I had covered.

  ‘Twenty-two,’ the croupier announced, sounding even more bored, probably because he didn’t have our attention. ‘Vingt-deux, noir.’

  All my chips were cleared away. It took only a quick glance at my stash to see that my original £5,000 was already halved.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink at the bar?’ Nicos asked suddenly.

  I’d found before, on occasions when I was losing steadily, that stepping away from the table and returning later could change my luck. It was 2.30 p.m., a strange time to be having a drink, but what the hell, one drink might help.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, secretly justifying it to my baby bump. ‘A vodka Martini, Grey Goose – and an olive.’

  He gave me an approving look, and five minutes later we were seated on bar stools, having given our orders. Nicos asked, in a very caring tone, ‘OK, so what’s really going on?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You are a very troubled lady, aren’t you?’

  I stared hard back into his eyes. Those alert, nut-brown, all-seeing eyes. ‘What kind of detective were you, in the Greek police?’

  ‘I was in the army first, doing my military service. When I got my – discharge, I think you call it – I joined the police in Athens. After four years I got offered a promotion to detective, which I took. Then someone saw I was good at interviewing suspects and I was made an interrogator. I did it for six years, interviewing everyone from political asylum seekers to drug dealers – and I just got disillusioned. I thought to myself, here I am, Nicos Christoforou, on a shit salary, interrogating these arrogant drug dealer bastards with vast sums stashed away we’ll never find. Sure, they’ll get hefty jail sentences, but when they come out in ten years’ time – less for good behaviour – they’ll be multimillionaires, and in ten years’ time I will still be Nicos Christo-forou, still on a shit salary.’