Game Over

‘All my people are. And the SOCA must want him very badly indeed. Try not to worry, darling—’

‘I know. Bad for baby Derek.’

‘You’ve decided it’s a boy, then?’

‘I just don’t like the name Rebecca. I sat next to a Rebecca at school and she used to pick her nose and eat the bogies.’

‘Lifelong prejudices are born that way. Let’s call it Gladys if it’s a girl.’

‘Deal. Anything new?’

So to give her something to think about, he told her about Atherton and Emily Stonax. She was not as surprised as he expected her to be. ‘I could see she was interested in him.’

‘But on the very day she finds her father’s been murdered?’

‘That’s the very day you most need comfort. I hope for his sake that’s not all it is. But I had a long chat with her and she’s got the intellect he needs, and the same sort of interests.’

‘Funny, I’ve never heard him say, “Phwoah, look at the brain on that!” or “I wouldn’t half like to give her a game of chess.”’

‘Scoff away, my lad. But don’t forget you’re talking about the man who once dated two solicitors.’ Someone spoke behind her, and she said, ‘I’ve got to go. They’re calling us. Shostakovich five waits for no man. Love you.’

‘Me too,’ he said, seeing McLaren hovering in the doorway.

‘Chicken!’ she laughed, and rang off.

Freddie Bell’s gaming empire was run from his headquarters offices over the Lucky Bells Casino on Leicester Square. Above the offices there was reputed to be a penthouse flat of surpassing magnificence where Freddie himself lived, when he was not at his manor in Gloucestershire, his stud in Wiltshire, his castle in Aberdeenshire, his villa in Monte or his apartment in New York. The man was seriously rich. He had casinos wherever they were legal, ‘arcades’ on high streets and sea fronts, fruit machines in every pub and chippy, betting shops, hotels and motels, plus an interest in several London theatres and a promotional company that specialised in musicals and operas. Atherton had done his homework before heading for Leicester Square. Despite naming his casino empire after himself, he preferred to be called an impresario, which suggested either a desire to become respectable or delusions of grandeur; although, Atherton thought, he was so rich and powerful it probably wasn’t possible for him to be delusional about it. In his younger days, though, he had been so famous for settling disputes with his fists, it had been suggested his empire ought to have been called Seven Bells rather than Three.

The Lucky Bells was his largest casino in the UK, though he had one in Las Vegas that made it look like a corner shop in Droitwich. All the same, it was big, and Bell owned the whole building on a long lease, which given the value of real estate in central London ranked it high among his assets. It had the gaming rooms downstairs; entertainment suites, restaurants and control room on the first floor; and the offices of Three Bells Entertainment Enterprises Ltd on the second. It was one of the grand old buildings in Leicester Square, stone faced, with a fancy frieze all round under the roofline depicting dryads, puff-cheeked Bacchuses and fat bunches of grapes, and false columns between the vertical window lines which ended in busty caryatids. All rather louche and appropriate, Atherton thought. The casino wasn’t open yet when he arrived, but he found one door at the end unlocked and went in. With its prosaic main lights on and the cleaners patiently mowing up and down the vastness of hideous carpet, its night-time glamour was exposed as tawdriness, its luxury fake, glittery and naff. It was sadder, Atherton thought, because it had obviously cost a lot of money to get it to look like a WAG’s dream. To have spent so much on chandeliers like those, and a carpet like that, made the crime against taste all the greater.

He had hardly had time for more than a cursory glance when he was fielded by a man already in dinner jacket, whose dead-fish eyes and bulging unsuitedness to his suiting marked him instantly as a bouncer – or security specialist as he no doubt liked to be known these days.

‘We’re not open, sir.’

‘I’ve come to see Mr Bell,’ Atherton said, showing his brief. ‘He’s expecting me.’

The flat eyes sharpened an instant, memorising Atherton’s appearance. He turned his head slightly, revealing the curly black wire behind his ear, and spoke to his lapel. Atherton could hear the faint bat-squeak of the reply, and saw the nearest security camera up on the ceiling turn minutely towards him. He half expected to be patted down and was rather disappointed to be seen as so little of a threat.

‘Would you come this way, please, sir,’ the man said, leading Atherton towards the back where, behind a screen wall, there was a bank of lifts. He unlocked one with a key from a bunch chained to his belt, showed Atherton in, pressed 2, and stepped out before the door closed. ‘Someone will meet you at the lift,’ he said.

Someone did, and it was a relief for Atherton that it turned out to be a smart and pretty woman, who smiled and offered her hand in a friendly way and said, ‘I’m Lorraine Forrest, one of Mr Bell’s assistants. He’ll see you right away, if you’d like to come this way.’

Atherton suppressed the obvious riposte as she walked off, revealing a very nice posterior in a tightly fitting skirt, and made himself wonder instead if she shortened her name to Rain. It was a belter of a name in these eco- nutty days.

He caught her up. ‘What’s he like?’ he asked, in a low voiced, chums-on-the-way-to-the-headmaster manner. ‘I mean, I’m a bit nervous, what with all this.’ He waved his hand to indicate the Empire. ‘He’s a multibillionaire. What’s it like to work for a man like that?’

‘He’s very nice,’ she said, giving him a humorous look, ‘and I like working for him, and I don’t think you’re the slightest bit nervous, so stop trying to yank my chain. Here we are. Go in, and he’ll be there in a second.’

She shoved him in a motherly sort of way through the door into a vast office, rather dim because of the low ceiling, the tinted glass in the huge windows and the acres of purple carpet on the floor. It was deafeningly quiet. Despite looking down on Leicester Square, with its crowds and fairground rides and all London’s traffic nearby, there wasn’t a sound from outside – quadruple glazing at least, Atherton thought. There was no sound of air conditioning, either, though the air was neutrally cool and odourless. There had been something of an air-brake type of resistance when the door closed behind him, which gave him the hint that the room was sound-proofed and therefore probably miked as well. Standing still, he allowed his eyes to wander casually round the room and spotted four good sites for hidden cameras, which probably meant there were more than four. They were watching to see what he’d do when left alone. Freddie Bell was taking no chances, and given his wealth and the nature of his business, it was probably just as well. Atherton looked straight at the suspect light fitting and gave a big grin. No harm in letting them know he knew.

The right-hand wall of the office was covered floor to ceiling with bookcases, and given that the books were all matching sets of leather-bound hardbacks, he guessed that there wouldn’t be much choice if you actually wanted to read one. Sure enough, immediately after his grin, one whole section swung inwards, revealing a false door, and Freddie Bell himself walked in and closed it behind him.

‘Inspector Atherton?’ he said.

‘It’s Detective Sergeant, actually. But thanks for the promotion.’

‘What, I don’t merit the top man?’ Bell said jovially.

He advanced across the hampering carpet but did not extend his hand. Atherton was tolerably acquainted with his appearance from newspapers and the television, but those media could not convey the sheer animal presence of the man. He was not unusually tall, probably five-ten or eleven, but he was massively bulky, as if he had been designed on a grander scale, perhaps for a planet with a different gravity. His shoulders bulked under his suit jacket as if they’d been borrowed from a Hereford bull. His hands were huge, decorated with a heavy gold ring on the third finger of each, and a watch so massive you could have clubbed seals with it. His head seemed bigger than normal, but his features were big enough to fit it, with a thick nose and a prominent underlip, and blue eyes under strong, fair eyebrows. His light brown hair was cut in a fashionable disarray that must have cost hundreds each time to get it to look so casual: it stood out slightly from his head, which gave the impression that it was being forced outwards by the tremendous pressure from inside the skull that held the brains of this huge and successful empire.

All in all, Atherton thought, you could see what he was – a man who had made his own fortune from nothing and was increasing it all the time, a man in control, a man of power. His suit was fabulously expensive and well cut, his shoes and tie were to swoon for; but strip him of all that, and place him in any surroundings, and Atherton would have bet he would still have looked like an emperor. The power came from inside. Atherton was suddenly