side of the main entrance and encrusted with statues and ornate architectural reliefs. The floodlights had given it a rather gaudy appearance, clothing it in amber in some places and gold in others, while a lush green copper roof was just about visible through the gaps between the towers. A central clock, supported by two bronze angels, indicated it had just gone three.
‘You still haven’t told me why we’re here,’ Allegra complained as Tom led her into the marble entrance hall to the ticket office.
He glanced across with an indulgent smile as he paid their entrance fee, as if this was a somehow rather foolish question.
‘To play blackjack, of course.’
FIFTY-SEVEN
Casino de Monte Carlo, Monaco 20th March – 3.02 a.m.
There was a compelling logic to the casino’s layout: the further inside you ventured, the more money you stood to lose. Although a simple conceit, it had, over the years, led to the evolution of a complex and intuitive ecosystem whereby those at the bottom of the food chain rarely strayed into the territory of the higher, predatory mammals.
This could be easily observed in the way that the outer rooms were mainly inhabited by sunburnt British and German tourists, their clothes creased from having been kept at the bottom of a suitcase for the best part of a week in anticipation of a ‘posh’ night out, their modest losses borne with thinly disguised resentment. The middle rooms, meanwhile, were populated by immaculately dressed Italian and French couples – ‘locals’ who had driven up on a whim and who seemed to play the tables with an almost effortless familiarity. The inner rooms, finally, had been overrun by Russians; for the most part overweight men dressed in black and clutching cigars as they would a bayonet, accompanied by daggerthin blonde women half their age wearing white to better show off their tans. Here they bet with an indifference that verged on boredom, the roulette table lavished with chips, each spin of the wheel a desperate plea to feel something, anything, in a life blunted by having forgotten what it means to want something but not be able to buy it.
As they walked through from the Salle Europe, Tom found his thoughts wandering. He had tried to resist it as long as he could, but it was hard not to be drawn back to the Amalfi, not to let the fairground flash of the slot machines and the piano play of the roulette ball grab him by the throat and catapult him back through time, as if he had stumbled into some strange parallel world.
It was as if he was watching a film. The echo of the shot being fired, Jennifer crumpling to the floor, the smell of blood and cordite, that first, disbelieving scream. A film that he could play, pause, forward and rewind at any time, although it would never allow him to go further back than the crack of the gunshot. That’s when everything had started.
‘Tom?’ The mirrored room slowly came back into focus and he saw Allegra’s hand laid in concern on his shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’ He nodded, the scream still silently ringing in his ears even though now, on closer inspection what struck him most about this place on reflection was less its similarity to the Amalfi than its differences.
Here, they played Chemin de Fer not Punto Banco, for example. The poker tables were marked in French not English. The roulette wheel had one zero, not two. And the air was seared with the bittersweet tang of a century and a half of fortunes being lost and made. Small differences on their own, perhaps, but pieced together and set amidst the jewelled chandeliers, stained-glass windows and ornate sculptures that adorned the casino’s soaring rococo interior, they breathed a soul into this place that Kezman could never hope to buy, and revealed the Amalfi in all its silicone-enhanced artifice.
‘Deal me in.’ Tom sat at an empty blackjack table and placed a five-thousand-euro chip on the box in front of him.
The croupier looked up and smiled. In his early forties, he was a tall precise man, gaunt and with a pianist’s long, cantilevered fingers.
‘Monsieur Kirk. Very good to see you again.’
He dealt him a king and a five.
‘You too, Nico.’
‘I was sorry to hear about your loss.’ For a moment Tom thought he meant Jennifer, before realising he must be referring to his father. That was almost three years ago now. It showed how long it had been since he was last here.
‘Thank you.
‘You don’t twist on fifteen,’ Allegra whispered next to him. ‘Even I know that.’
‘Seven,’ the croupier intoned. ‘Twenty-two.’ He scooped the cards and Tom’s chip off the baize.
‘See?’ Allegra exclaimed.
‘I’ve come for my gear,’ Tom said in a low voice, placing another five-thousand-euro chip down. ‘Is it still here?’
‘Of course.’ Nico nodded, dealing him an ace and a seven.
‘Eighteen. You need to stick again,’ Allegra urged. Tom ignored her.
‘
The croupier deftly flicked an eight over to him.
‘Twenty-six.’
Allegra tutted angrily.
‘You don’t like losing, do you?’ Tom said, amused by the expression on her face.
‘I don’t like losing stupidly,’ she corrected him.
‘Perhaps madame is right,’ the croupier ventured. ‘Have you tried the Roulette Anglaise?’
‘Actually, I was hoping to bump into an old friend here. Ronan D’Arcy. Know him?’
The croupier paused, then nodded.
‘He’s been in a few times. Good tipper.’ A pause. ‘Ugly business.’
‘Very ugly,’ Tom agreed. ‘Any idea where I can find him?’
Nico shrugged, then shook his head.
‘No one’s seen him since the fire.’
‘Where did he live?’
‘Up on the Boulevard de Suisse. You can’t miss it.’
‘Can you get me in?’
The croupier checked again that no one was listening, then nodded.
‘Meet me in the Cafe de Paris in ten minutes.’
‘I’ll need a couple of phones too,’ Tom added. ‘Here -’ He threw another five-thousand-euro chip down. ‘For your trouble.’
‘
‘You lost both those hands on purpose, didn’t you?’ Allegra muttered as they made their way back towards the entrance.
‘He charges a ten-thousand-euro fee.’
‘Fee for what?’
‘For looking after this -’ He held up the chip that the croupier had returned to him in change. Two numbers had been scratched on to its reverse. ‘Come on.’
Reaching the main entrance lobby, Tom led her over to the far side of the galleried space, where a mirrored door on the right-hand side of the room gave on to a marble staircase edged by an elaborate cast-iron balustrade. They headed down it, the temperature fading, until they eventually found themselves in a narrow corridor that led to the men’s toilets on one side and the women’s on the other.
Checking that they hadn’t been followed, Tom opened the small cupboard under the stairs and removed two brass stands joined by a velvet rope and an
