The Losing Game (6 page)

“Good. Because if he does it, and you get caught helping him in any way, you’d be talking conspiracy to murder. You could get life.”

“I know. I’d never help him. No. It’s not that.” Dante found himself squirming. He didn’t squirm. He knew his mind. Yet….

“Then what?” Jim’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not?
Are
you?”

“No. I’m not sleeping with him.”

Jim could be coarse about many things, but never about sex. He never spoke of it, not even in jest. In all the years Dante had known him, he’d never set foot in Le Plaisir. Not once.

Dante poured a splash of milk into his teacup and followed it with tea from the pot.

Calm, Dante. Calm and collected.

“You should have seen him. At first he seemed placid, but when we spoke, there was something… dangerous. I think he might do it.”

Jim barked out a laugh as Dante’s breakfast arrived, swimming in extra Hollandaise, just as he liked it. He inhaled deeply and kept his eyes on his plate.

Jim let him savor a full mouthful of egg before he said, “Bollocks. He was probably embarrassed for getting the wrong end of the stick, and he didn’t want to lose face.”

Dante stirred his tea, for the second time, his jaw set. Jim curled the fingers on his prosthesis into a fist and rapped his knuckles rhythmically on the table.

He’d lost his fingers first, then his hand, then his arm to the elbow—to a couple of thugs working for the Mayfair gang. After that, Jim retired from personal protection and took up as a restaurateur.

He lowered his voice. “What are you thinking?”

Dante jabbed his knife into his ham. “He’s going to try to do it. I’m sure of it.”

Jim closed his eyes for a moment. “How sure?”

“I’d bet on it.”

“I knew it!” Jim banged the table. The crockery rattled, and Dante’s tea sloshed up the side of his cup. Patrons turned in their seats. “You’re a wicked fuck, Dante Okoro. And out of your mind. He’s never going to do it.” More quietly, he said, “What are you willing to bet?”

Dante hadn’t considered it until then. He’d been trying to steer the conversation back toward the possibility that he could help Lucas. He honestly hadn’t decided he would take a step onto
this
dark path until he did.

A wager. Familiar old turf. Dante knew where to squeeze Jim and how hard. That old buzz ran up his spine, and he didn’t have to think a second longer. So perhaps this was what he’d meant to do all along.

“If Lucas Green murders Richard Shaw, and I can prove to you that he did, you and Carol are going to come to the shop. Together. You’re going to choose five toys or pieces of gear, and you’re going to use them all.”

Jim’s wife Carol would be sure to let Dante know whether Jim had kept to his end of the bargain. She’d positively revel in ensuring that he did.

Jim’s face went slowly from pink to carmine. “Carol’s been talking to Lois, and Lois has been talking to you.”

“People talk.” Dante tried not to look smug. “Look at it this way. If I’m right, which you’re convinced I’m not, you still win. I’d be doing you a favor.”

Jim lifted his coffee cup, saw it was empty, and dropped it down again. “Fuck. All right. Because it ain’t ever going to happen anyway. But you, on the other hand….” Jim’s eyes wandered off to wherever his imagination went a rambling. Dante didn’t doubt he had a place he went to in his mind, and that it was as sordid a landscape as his own.

Perhaps he should have asked Jim to lay his stake first. The glint in Jim’s eye was as bright and sharp as sunlight glinting off a shard of glass. “You’ve got until Christmas for him to do it. Without you interfering in the slightest, I want proof—not just that Shaw is dead, but that Lucas Green did it. If not, you’re going to give Kit and Lois the deposit for their own place. You’re not going to interfere while they look or offer an opinion unless they ask for it. You’re even going to help them move their stuff.”

The bastard.

Dante poked at his egg. “Sounds fair enough. Actually, it seems a little too fair.”

“That’s because I’m not finished.” Jim closed in, aimed, and fired. “On top of that, you’re going to ask Kit if she’d like to invite Sharps to stay for Christmas.”

“Sharps? Why would she ask him?”
That scruffy little toerag.

“You know damned well why. You just don’t want to see it.”

Jim had been on the ramble all right, and Dante had a good idea who with. “Which of them was it? Lois or Selena?”

The pair of them doted on Jim. Uncle Jim. Uncle you-can-talk-to-me-Jim, while I make you your favorite sandwich. Damn and fuck it all. Sharps probably didn’t even know how to hold a knife and fork properly, and Dante was expected to….

“Come on, Dan. Let’s shake on it. If you think Lucas Green’s really going to top Richard Shaw, what do you care what your half of the wager is?” Jim held out his left hand. “You can go on for as long as you like guilt-tripping the girls into staying with you and pretending Kit doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

Dante took Jim’s hand, and they shook on it. Then Jim left Dante to his breakfast and his good, old-fashioned newspaper—the local rag, because Dante couldn’t stand the broadsheets, and he liked the crossword. But the print was too blurry, and his hunger had gone with the last gulp of his tea.

Dante left his congealed egg and a twenty on the table. He turned right out of the Rose and Crown and strode in the direction of Roseport Quay and Electronics Warehouse.

At the marina, the rigging rattled a jangling tune against the swaying masts of moored sailing yachts. The icy wind whistled mournfully, singing a sad song that brought with it the dull, decaying stench of stagnant seawater. Dante turned up his collar and walked faster. Going to see Jim had been the right thing to do. He couldn’t get involved with Lucas in any way, no matter how tempted.

Avery was going to talk to Lucas Green, and that was the best a friend could do. Maybe the man would seek counseling, if that’s what he needed. If he went ahead and murdered Richard Shaw, then that was his business and his alone.

Dante would not interfere in Lucas Green’s affairs. He had concerns enough of his own. Dante was not responsible for his feelings, intentions, or actions, no matter what he knew of them, or what might have been said in a heated moment.

However, in the interests of his wager only, and for no other reason, Dante needed to keep an impartial eye on Lucas Green. And Richard Shaw.

LUCAS SCANNED
late departure offers to East Asia but didn’t buy. Grace’s death had left a gaping hole that couldn’t be filled, and everything that might bring him joy fell into it. He didn’t want to ruin the chance that one day he might go and find it every bit as wonderful as his imagination told him he would.

The working week dragged. The computer screen flickered. Lucas batted it in frustration, then had to leap out of his chair to catch the new lightweight monitor before it swung into the pile of reviews clogging his desk.

Paper
. In this day and age. The waste and inefficiency drove him insane. As did his monitor arm.

Lucas opened the drawer to the right of his chair in search of his screwdriver. He wouldn’t bother the IT department for a job he could take care of himself. After winding a small strip of sticky tape around the screw, he jammed it back in the hole and returned the screwdriver to its home in his desk organizer.

A telephone rang distantly. Not from Lucas’s desk, someone else’s in another office along the corridor. He pushed his fringe off his face and tried to focus. End-of-year reviews. Bonus payments. Dante Okoro and his dimples. How did a man with so much presence have
dimples
? And why the hell, a week on, was Lucas still thinking about him? Particularly when the last man he’d slept with was Adam.

Adam, who’d furnished Lucas with a gun and a ray of hope.

Dante was nothing and no one. He didn’t deserve a second thought.

He heard Grace’s teasing voice, laced with laughter.
You like him. You like him.
Lucas has a crush on the sexy man in the sexy shop. Lucas wants to play with him and his toys.

Lucas felt the familiar prickle at the back of his eyes, the same as he did every time Grace lit up the dark clouds clogging his mind. What a bright light she was. Vivacious, possessed with a joie de vivre that had carried Lucas to occasional flights of fancy that someday he would grow to be like her.

He didn’t hope for that anymore. He was glad he was like he was. No one would ever suspect him of being capable of doing anything out of the ordinary—anything extraordinary. Lucas’s blandness was his alibi.

The numbers on Lucas’s computer screen blurred and moved with a life of their own. Someone coughed. Lucas blinked, looked over his desk, and saw Lily, slow-waving. His eyes were drawn to her bright red leggings and her pixie boots with the tinsel around the cuffs.

Christmas decorations, including seasonal attire, were strictly forbidden at Excelsior Financial Services Inc. until December. There was still a week left of November.

She said firmly, “Never mind you haven’t replied to my last three instant messages. It’s Friday. No more excuses. I’m taking you to lunch.”

“Not today. I’ve got a million reviews to finish.”

“You’ve got to eat.”

“I brought an apple.” He held it up.

“You’re going to waste away. You’re going to get trapped between two sheets of paper and end up filed away in a drawer marked—”

“Confidential?”

“I was going to say ‘out of circulation.’”

“I’m still here.”

The words sounded empty and pathetic. The Lucas Green of seven months ago had wheeled Lily out of the call center under the false pretext of a telephone conference. The company making her new ergonomic desk needed more information about her wheelchair and the extent of the paralysis caused by her spina bifida.

It was, in fact, a job they’d taken care of the week before, but Lucas had fancied a hot chocolate and a natter. He’d put the “Meeting in Progress” sign on his office door and locked it.

Lily pleaded, “Come on, Lucas.”

He might have changed his mind, was about to, but Neil Pratt (if ever a name was more apt) grabbed the doorframe and swung his head through the doorway. “Are you coming, Lily?”

She turned her head slightly, not enough to be able to look at him. “Sure. Just a sec.”

He vanished, and Lily came closer, lining her wheelchair alongside the front of Lucas’s desk. “You’re not going to bail on the Christmas party? You’re still going to be my date?”

“Everyone knows I’m gay.”

“Not the point. Everyone knows I’m more interested in women than men. Even Neil. That doesn’t mean he won’t try to stick his tongue down my throat.” She shuddered theatrically.

“Lily, if he’s harassing you, there are procedures.”

“Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah.” She backed up her wheelchair and wheeled out of Lucas’s office, pausing in the doorway. “You need sex. Hot, sweaty, dirty sex. And no, I’m not offering.”

Then she was gone, leaving Lucas with nothing but the sound of her laughter and a weird ache in his chest. She’d come by to see him nearly every day for months and months. If he didn’t pull out of this funk, she’d stop, and his job would be even crappier than it already was.

Lucas jumped up from his chair and made a run for the door. He jogged down the corridor, but it was empty. Lily and Neil must have already got into the lift. It was probably for the best. Those reviews wouldn’t write themselves.

Back in his office, slumped in his chair, Lucas took a bite out of his apple and pulled a folder from the top of the pile. He didn’t bother opening it.

He wouldn’t concede that Dante was right, that there was no point in avenging Grace. No, it wouldn’t bring her back, but it would make a point. Lucas could travel afterward, with the small amount of money he’d inherited from his parents, and then the share he got when Grace died. Grace would have liked that. She would have approved.

The summer Grace had finished her A levels, she bought a train ticket with her eighteenth-birthday money and backpacked through Spain and France and Italy. At the time Lucas was seventeen—there were only fourteen months between them—and halfway through his A level courses. Their parents had urged him to go too. They’d lend him the money. That way Grace would have company.

Grace had said with wholehearted enthusiasm, “We could pick up cute Spanish boys together.” But she’d also said previously how much she was looking forward to doing something big on her own, and no matter how many times she assured Lucas he wouldn’t hold her back, he didn’t believe it.

Lucas had declined Grace’s offer, citing too much schoolwork as an excuse. Grace, meanwhile, had taken Europe by storm. She e-mailed nearly every day and begged Lucas to meet her in Venice. She’d joined up with some Danish students, and she’d shown one of them Lucas’s picture. He was keen to meet him. But Lucas didn’t go, and at the time he couldn’t honestly say why.

I hadn’t wanted to be a disappointment, Grace. I hadn’t meant to—I was shyer then, and I wasn’t ready to meet boys—but I let you down. Just like I did, so many times after.

I can’t let you down again.

A wave of nausea started in Lucas’s gut and finished with a pounding in his temples.

Fuck it
. He knew he shouldn’t leave the reviews, but he needed some air. He sent a hasty message to his line manager:
Not feeling great. Going home. Will come in tomorrow morning and finish reviews.
Nadia would be at lunch with the management crowd. He wouldn’t have to feign illness as he passed her office.

Lucas walked to the bus stop. When the bus pulled over at Tangier Road, a mile from his home stop, he got off and went into the florist.

Few cemeteries like the one on the north coast of Roseport Island remained. There was no space. But two generations ago, the Green family had bought a plot big enough for themselves and their children, including spouses. Little had they known there would be enough room for their grandchildren too.