Metanoia: No Such Thing as a Miracle - Only Bad Intelligence

By David John Wheeler

Joe, a bright young American, fails to confront the reality of separation from his English scientist wife. His life's in a tailspin.

When his wife unexpectedly returns center stage in his life, she is the pregnant concubine of a wealthy ex-terrorist, the target of assassins, and at the center of a spectacular demonstration of her consort's suspicious powers.

Joe's struggle to unravel the mysteries surrounding his wife ensnares him in a world of suffering and violence as he becomes the unwitting ally of her persecutors.

Joe is mentally unready and spiritually unsuited for what lies in wait for him. He cannot accept the evidence of his senses. His mind unglues as he hunts for a rational explanation of what is happening to him.

His dream of winning back his wife disintegrates before his eyes, painfully demolished by an unborn baby that he wishes had never been conceived, a baby whose life his wife and her consort value above his, a baby whose fate and mysterious significance hang in the balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543912029

Book preview

FUTURE

Prologue

In the late summer of 1992, Joe Daniels was all of twenty-eight years old. It had been nine years since he flew to England, as an Oxford-bound, blue-eyed, American Rhodes scholar, young enough to believe that he was pretty much done with growing up. He had left his parents’ home in Washington, D.C., aged nineteen, too soon after their death as passengers in the car he was proudly driving.

It was four years before he recovered his natural bounce, and teenaged out-going optimism. The catalyst for the re-emergence of the All-American boy inside him was Evelyn, the bright and ambitious young neuroscientist who restored his love of life, and led him away from the cliff edges of dejection and culture shock. They married in the summer of 1987. He threw himself into sports and began his research for a DPhil in modern political philosophy.

Everyone who met them saw how happy they were in each other’s company. Joe’s love for his English rose came from deep inside his being and pervaded every facet of his life. He could hardly believe that such a woman loved him so much. And she was amazed and unimaginably grateful that such a broodingly handsome and dynamic individual could enter the cloistered life of a single-minded egghead and touch so many switches in her heart.

Evelyn’s perceptiveness, her quirky charm, and unshakeable determination blew away the burden of guilt and the sense of life’s unfairness that had been draining Joe’s energy and dulling his mind. He found pure contentment in every moment they spent together; he felt childlike bliss whenever she was near, an intense desire to be forward looking, productive, living proof of how thankful he was that they had met.

Joe’s re-born buoyancy lasted three years. It evaporated the day Evelyn walked out of their Oxford apartment and out of his life. No warning, no explanation, and no forwarding address. She deserted her prestigious neurological research post, leaving behind her unfinished papers, her notes, her complex equations, and everything she owned. She disappeared from the face of the Earth for two years. Joe’s search for her led nowhere. She reappeared only once, after a year, staying for less than an hour at his new flat in London, telling him that she still loved him, explaining nothing, and disappearing for another year.

No one could have been ready for such a sudden, unexpected, inexplicable parting. By the time of her brief reappearance, Joe’s gregarious, proactive personality had regressed into ham-fisted introspection that darkened as each day passed without contact.

In the summer of 1992, unknown to Joe, Evelyn was preparing a demonstration of the knowledge that she had kept hidden for the past three years.

She had watched in secret while the husband she loved slid back into depression, and further and further from his marriage vows. She would have done anything for it to be otherwise; anything, that is, except reveal the discovery that burdened her with such responsibility.

Whatever people understood about reality back then, by 1992 Evelyn was about to set science on a new course and transform human understanding of how nature works.

She had resolved not to lose her self-control, but her doubts and fears were growing exponentially. She needed Joe at her side. He was the only person she could trust in a world that, despite all her precautions, was more hostile with each passing day.

She longed to be with him, but she had left it late. She had always known that he would oppose what she believed she had to do. Now he would be furious that she had not told him earlier. Worse, anything she revealed to him could put him in danger, too. Yet she could not continue much further carrying the weight of the future of humanity in her own body.

She needed Joe to understand what she had done. She wanted him to know the dangers she now faced; but she wanted to show him in a way that would not leave him at risk. She wanted to allow him the freedom to choose whether he wanted to help her or not.

She needed to know if he could still love her.

In the late summer of 1992, unnoticed by the competing parades of variously conscious organisms on Planet Earth, the Megaverse was poised to enter another phase of its own awakening.

1 – ACCIDENTAL

Joe edged the ageless, canvas-topped, open-sided Land Rover slowly along the narrow West End back street, heading leisurely toward a set of red traffic lights, fully expecting them to switch to green.

The long, floor-mounted gear lever shuddered steadily under the palm of his left hand. He gripped it tighter, letting the heavy vibration from the engine spread along his arm. He did this too often. His left shoulder ached.

He leaned forward, ready to shift down to second so that he could pull away as the lights changed, but instead, they remained fixed on red.

In such a moment, lives can change.

Joe braked slowly to a halt, and eased into neutral. His mood altered. He decided to savor the rare early evening calm of that late summer’s day in London’s fair city. He was in no rush to get to the casino.

Leaning back in his once-beloved, now-neglected, mud-splattered ex-Army pick-up, he asked himself, for no particular reason that he was aware of at the time, what other species of animal allows a set of colored lights tell it how to behave.

He took his feet off the pedals, his hands off the wheel, and stretched his arms and legs with exaggerated effort. He was trying to re-capture the nonchalance of his teens, but, at the same time, he did not want to risk splitting the satin seams of his cheap, black, badly fitting croupier’s suit. He breathed in deeply through his nose, letting his lungs fill slowly and completely.

The smell of traffic fumes still lingered in the cool city air.

For months afterward, he would believe that it was nothing more than random chance, nothing more than an unconscious reflex that set in motion all the events that were to follow.

As his chest swelled, he gulped unexpectedly. The contradictory movements in his throat closed his windpipe, locked his tongue solidly across the back of his mouth and left him gasping silently for oxygen.

The lights finally changed. Red and amber; then green, just the way they always do in England.

He was stuck there, mouth wide open, helplessly trying to swallow. From close behind him, he heard the gentle toot of an automobile horn. He felt foolish, and, even more foolishly, he tried to look as if he had not a care in the world, as if he was in complete control, the way some people act as if nothing had happened when they have been badly hurt.

He heard more beeping from behind. He let the driver display his annoyance rather than acknowledge that Joe’s excellent posing had somehow gone wrong.

Slowly, carefully, leaning back further, and looking as casual as he could, mouth still gaping, he unclipped his black bow-tie and loosened the collar of his white dress shirt, as if he had all the time in the world.

He could no longer breathe. In less than a second, he had lost command of his body. A peculiar, unnerving sensation gripped his body. His eyeballs locked wide open in an involuntary stare. His field of vision appeared to wobble momentarily, as if there had been a tremor in reality.

The honking behind him grew meaner and nastier as the driver violently pounded on his horn, but Joe was oblivious to it. An uncontrollable, irrational panic welled inside his body. He was confused, incapable of linear thought. He felt an overwhelming sense of dread, as if some archetypal phobia buried deep in his mind had suddenly come to life and taken control of his brain. He felt that he was going to die, helpless and hyper-tense. Adrenaline surged through his body, his throat swelled, and his blocked windpipe held back waves of nausea. One clear notion rose into consciousness. He was going to die without seeing Evie again.

The doom-laden sound of whip-cracks filled his head, as if black leather sails were flapping wildly in a hurricane sweeping through his skull. His life was about to end. Echoes of Evie’s name reverberated against a thick wall of muffled noise that coated his ears like cement.

As suddenly as it started, the noise stopped. He realized it was only the honking of car horns behind him, as they reached a crescendo of long blasts, filling the street with angst. He leaned forward to engage first gear. That simple movement released the air from his lungs. He could breathe again.

The moment had passed, as if it had never happened.

He let the Land Rover pull forward. As he headed across the junction, the lights changed to red again. He drove away to the continuous, raging horn-blast of the car behind him; a tiny, bright red customized Fiat 650 with a rollaway sunroof, left still stuck at the traffic lights. ‘The hell with it’, he thought, ‘I just tasted the end of my life, and it was meaningless. I’m not going to get upset about holding someone up a few seconds.’

He could not wait to shake that knowledge of death right out of his head; but it was too late. The future was already at work.

It was an unusually quiet evening. The West End traffic had thinned to a trickle. The irritable rush of the late afternoon was over, and the restless chaos of nighttime club land was still to come. Overhead, a cloudy yellowish-gray sky, streaked with murky pastels of blue and pink, spread smooth above London, like a film of petrol stretched high across the city’s consciousness. Square-shaped buildings stood empty, their windows black, looking down on brightly lit stainless-steel shop fronts.

Joe drove carefully through the one-way system toward the tall, red-bricked gentility of residential Mayfair. He had grown accustomed to traveling on the left side of the road, though he doubted that any American could ever feel at home in the one-way mentality of London’s cramped and historically compromised road system.

He thought of the places where he had learned to drive back in the States; the disciplined freeways of New England, and the wide avenues of Washington, with parking spaces wherever you needed them, and road names that you could see before you had gone past them. His America had been a teenager’s Walk/Don’t Walk world where automobiles were at the heart of all his social highways. That is, until the accident.

In London, endless rows of cars littered the sidewalks like the price tags of progress, urban cholesterol choking every artery of British life.

Culture shock still ran deep within Joe. His London was a mess of the daily uncertainties that Brits seem to accept without complaint; but for him, his mind hopelessly disoriented, life in England’s capital had become an endless stream of petty, time-consuming frustrations. The three people he loved the most had each torn a giant hole of grief in his stomach.

His reliable Japanese watch said the time was seven twenty-seven. He was late for work, but so what, he did not give a damn.

The red Fiat that had been caught behind him pulled hurriedly past the Land Rover, setting off bittersweet memories in Joe’s head of sounds and images that would never return; memories of warm nights in Rome, walking hand-in-hand with Evie along cobbled streets and across centuries-old piazzas, past the bubbling hiss of fountains, and under the shadows of ancient, towering statues. He could feel Evelyn’s warm and slender arms wrapped confidently round him, her head close to his wide chest, her tousled hair shaking from side to side as they spoke excitedly about their plans for the future. Her clear, soft laughter thrilled his ears. Evie. She was only twenty-three when they honeymooned in Rome.

Evie, the very same wife who, three years later, the best three years of his life, quietly walked out of their marriage, with no explanation; leaving his rekindled faith in life shot down in throat-searing flames. Even her briefest of reappearances a year ago had done nothing to lift the state of confusion in which he lived. ‘Damn,’ he thought, ‘I’ve become as negative about life as these cynical Brits’.

In London, no day had passed without him thinking about her, and usually about his parents, too. Memories shifted endlessly in his brain; like psychic shrapnel, inescapable, thought-numbing, mental aching interspersed with the sudden twisting pains of unwanted associations. He longed to hear their voices again for real.

When Evie left, Joe became a stranger in his own world, a spectator wandering in an empty arena. Nothing in his life made any kind of sense. He had begun to believe he would never feel right again, like a concert pianist who woke up one morning to find his fingers were on the wrong hands.

Joe shook himself hard. This is London, he reminded himself, not Rome, not Washington, D.C.. There were restaurant tables spilling onto the West End streets, crowds of drinkers outside the pubs, but he wanted to hear excited Italian voices, and warm, spontaneous laughter carrying high above the rooftops; strangers talking to each other, not politely ignoring each other.

He told himself that all those thoughts and memories crowding his head were not healthy. ‘Just because a tiny red Fiat goes past. An out-of-place, out-of-time, left-hand drive Italian car in right-hand drive England. It’s just another auto for god sakes. It means nothing. It’s of no significance to me.’

Joe had stayed in the UK too long. Living there without Evelyn had made him a memory addict. The remotest associations triggered off thoughts of Evie and his parents, and had him craving for the fix that never came: to be back with them. At twenty-eight, without Evie, he was shriveling inside, and he knew it. What was worse, he no longer cared.

One of the cassettes that he left scattered on the passenger seat had fallen to the hot floor by his feet. He reached down for it, and without looking to see what it was, slammed it into the player, turning the volume full on. Charlie Mingus’ double bass shuddered into Duke Ellington’s Money Jungle; a little piece of an America he craved but had never experienced. Jazz, R&B and Rap: he loved them with the off-center passion of an overseas, white outsider.

Ever since his parents had died, in that dammed auto accident, he had developed a morbid taste for music that helped him taste the hurting for which he had no words of his own.

He learnt very quickly that, in England, his parents’ death and his wife’s betrayal were things that should never be talked about, not if he had any sense. People’s embarrassment was usually a cover for their lack of interest, but maybe a universal deep-seated desire to avoid all talk of death and loss. Other people had made the emptiness inside him worse. He had lost his faith in people, but not in music. Music helped him in ways that people and religion never could. He was swaddling himself like a baby in music, and he knew it.

That summer evening on the West End streets of London, Joe heard Mingus and Ellington rise from their graves and justify their lives right there under the dashboard. He listened to the rapidly pounding double bass and caught a glimpse of Mingus’ overblown ego.

Joe turned the volume full on. I love this music, he shouted, loud enough to reach the rooftops. There was an anguished crack in his voice. For a second, the Duke was there beside him, perceptive and urbane. Joe imagined he was sensing the melancholic vitality of a musical genius. He felt close to the Duke. He thought he heard the political correctness, the complexity. I love you, Duke, he screamed out loud, as if the jazz giant could hear him.

A few gray-suited street termites, ties loosened, turned and stared as they scuttled toward the subway and the TV screens of home, looking to see where the noise was coming from. Across the street, a police officer, young and smooth faced, was eyeing the young American hard, not sure if there was a law he should be enforcing here.

The raucous, distorted sound activated a tetchiness in Joe that needed little awakening.

He revved the engine mercilessly and sped after the little Fiat that had overtaken him. He tried to hold his position as both cars raced toward Berkeley Square. ‘If I can overtake this little car’, he thought, ‘Evelyn will come back into my life’. He knew it was a stupid, superstitious thought. Childish. Even as it arose, he felt disappointed in himself; people’s instinctive longing for magical powers was a sad sign of their inadequacy as adults, a pathetic regression into childhood fantasies.

From high in the Land Rover, Joe could see the Fiat driver’s head through its wide-open, sliding soft-top. The man was an Arab, in his early twenties. Joe recognized him vaguely as a punter at the so-called sporting club where Joe had worked for the past year. The Arab was tubby and flash in a tight three-piece cream suit. Sitting in his Fiat 650 he looked like a businessman in the wrong transit lounge.

As Joe pulled past, he saw that the Arab wore a heavy silk tie, clipped to a satin shirt with a gold tiepin that flashed with the glint of diamonds. Heavy gold bracelets hung from his wrists and his fingers were sheathed in elaborate, chunky gold rings.

The Arab looked over his shoulder, up at Joe. He was shocked; his face became tense and suspicious. He accelerated, preventing Joe from overtaking him.

Joe knew that this driver had been furious back at those traffic lights. So Joe sped forward till he was back alongside him, and smiled down in a friendly way to show that he had no wish to upset the guy.

The Arab’s large brown eyes narrowed. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Something had troubled him. He looked downwards toward his passenger seat. He looked at Joe again. His eyes shot round in all directions as if they were about to launch out of his smooth, chubby face. Joe wondered if it was the music, still blaring out from the Land Rover’s dashboard. Perhaps the Arab had remembered where he had seen Joe before.

Whatever it was, the Arab decided to return Joe’s smile. For a brief moment, his mouth overflowed with guileful teeth, and even more gold. Joe was about to return this unexpected friendliness, when, with a shiver of anxiety, he realized the Land Rover was at the entrance to Berkeley Square and traveling far too fast. Joe braked abruptly.

The Fiat immediately pulled ahead. Joe saw its right indicator flashing. He honked his horn furiously at the driver and pointed wildly at the one-way sign with its arrow to the left. The Arab kept looking over his shoulder, a look of panic in his face, a look that Joe could not understand. The Arab had not seen the sign. The Fiat drifted right, until it was completely on the wrong side of the street.

Joe waved even harder, urging the Arab to turn left. The Arab’s expression was one of naked fright, as if he was scared of Joe. He failed to grasp what Joe was trying to tell him. He was looking back at the very moment he needed to be looking at the road ahead. Joe stopped signaling to him, hoping the Arab would look away, but in vain.

There was an arrowhead island in the middle of the road, bending traffic into the square on the left side, letting it out of the square from the right. The Fiat was still accelerating, as if the driver was trying to get away from Joe as fast as he ever possibly could. The Arab had not seen the arrow sign to the left. For the first time in his life, Joe experienced déjà vu, a powerful premonition of impending disaster.

The Fiat curved away, turning to the right, straight into the square and the oncoming traffic. Joe felt his stomach knotting; something inevitable was about to happen, something that he desperately wanted not to happen.

A Ford Transit van, about to turn left out of the square, bore down on the Fiat. The Arab tried to swerve. Out of the corner of Joe’s eye, as he turned left, he saw the Fiat’s windscreen shattering. He heard the sound of thin metal yielding to thin metal. He stopped the Land Rover in the square and switched the engine off. The music stopped. The sudden quietness enveloped Joe as he sat there, paralyzed, unable to think, unable to turn his head, unable to look back at the Fiat.

He knew this feeling. He did not want to have it again. Adrenaline was pumping into his nervous system again, paralyzing him. His stomach churned into a knot of revulsion. For years he had wondered how he would cope if he was ever involved in another road accident.

He knew what he should do. He knew how Mom and Da would have wanted him to behave; just the way he knew he should have tried to cope back then, on the day they had both died. And just like then, he couldn’t do it; just like then, he was too frightened to turn, too frightened of what he might see.

Not Washington, he mouthed to himself. Get out and help. He braced himself; drew in a short, sharp breath, and forced himself to turn around and look back. The Transit van had struck the Fiat at an angle, smashing into the driver’s door.

Joe leapt out of the Land Rover and raced toward the Fiat.

The driver of the van, a stocky man with greasy, receding hair and blue, oil-stained overalls, had already jumped out and was leaning over the mangled hood of the Fiat, staring in through the broken, partly frosted windscreen.

An elderly pedestrian in a long gray overcoat strode purposefully across the road straight up to the Fiat, leaving a slim briefcase standing upright in the middle of the street, immaculate and surreal.

A young girl stood rigidly at the edge of the sidewalk, stroking the back of one hand with the palm of the other. Quite needlessly, the old man motioned to her, dramatically warning her to stay back. This was not woman’s work. She appeared to be transfixed anyway, unable to move.

The Arab was sitting upright in his seat, his right shoulder covered in a shawl of glass still attached to the windscreen. A steel rod that belonged to the Fiat’s elaborately padded headrest had snapped in two and pierced his neck. Blood pumped out in weak spurts.

Joe heard wind rustling in the trees in the center of the square.

The driver of the Transit van opened the undamaged door opposite the body of the Arab and put his foot inside. There was a clutter of maps and glass on the dashboard. As the driver stretched across the Arab’s body, blood splattered across his overall, soaking deep into the thick cotton and spreading in purple circles across his chest and sleeves. The van driver switched off the ignition and shouted viciously through the windscreen at the old man.

You saw. He was on the wrong side. Nothing I could do about it. The van driver’s receding forehead glistened with sweat as he leaned on the Arab’s body. The Arab’s eyes stared ahead, motionless. Just seconds before, those eyes had been darting back and forth. Now they were the unnerving witness of nothing but the finality of death.

Joe stood by, looking on, mesmerized. He remembered the peculiar expression on the Arab’s face. He felt an overpowering need to shut the Arab’s eyelids. Had he been closer to the door, he might even have done it.

Instead, Joe closed his own eyes and turned away. He wanted to run.

He looked back into the car and saw the van driver grubbing amongst papers strewn across the Arab’s feet. Bloodstained photos lay on the passenger seat. One was of an old man, an Arab with a beard. Joe wondered if it was the dead driver’s father. Joe always carried a picture of his parents with him along with his favorite picture of Evie. One of the pictures on the seat, of a young white couple, already blemished and discolored, could easily have been a photo of him and Evie. He wondered if they were close friends of the Arab; if they would go to his funeral; if they would miss him.

Joe’s brain was reeling. If he had not pretended to be taking his time at the traffic lights when the Arab was behind him; if he had not raced alongside the Fiat afterwards; if he had only given a clearer warning signal as the Fiat came up to the junction, this Arab would still be alive. Joe felt like a murderer. His instincts were screaming at him to leave the scene of the crime. Now. Fast.

The van driver reached into the Arab’s jacket, searching the inside pockets, oblivious to the sensitivities of those around him. As he lifted one side of the jacket, he revealed a shoulder holster complete with side arm. He stood back abruptly, realizing that what he was doing was not right. He turned to Joe, worried. Normal people do not carry guns in England.

Joe looked into the square. Something was out of whack. He inched backwards toward the Land Rover, mirroring the van driver’s frown.

Other cars drew up around them. The young policeman that Joe had passed in the street came running around the corner into the square, trying at the same time to speak into the walkie-talkie that was attached to his lapel.

Joe spotted the young girl come to life. She snatched the briefcase from the edge of the sidewalk and walked away hurriedly. The old man did not notice. He was too busy beckoning to the Policeman and signaling to the cars to keep back.

Joe’s impulse to leave was irresistible. He did not want to be part of this accident. He needed to leave these people to each other. He had an overpowering sense of foreboding, an ominous sense that he would never escape the memory of this Arab looking back in fear as he drove to his death.

Joe climbed into the Land Rover and started the engine, hoping to slip out of the square before the police officer noticed him. He cursed as the tape blared out again. The policeman looked up. Joe ejected the tape instantly.

As he pulled away, he edged past an incongruous, slowly moving stretch limo, whose affluent-looking occupants were straining their necks to see the dead Arab.

Joe looked in his rear mirror at the young policeman. He was staring into the Fiat. Joe was relieved. He knew he must be ridiculously conspicuous in his black, satin-edged suit and dangling bow tie. He hoped the officer would not look up again as the Land Rover left the square. He didn’t. Joe gulped and let out a sigh. A little shiver traveled down his neck and along his arms.

Joe parked the Land Rover in a cul-de-sac next to the casino. He pulled a bright yellow and blue anorak off the back seat, grabbed the tapes from the passenger seat and stuffed them deep into the large jacket pockets. He left Money Jungle sticking out of the cassette player, deliberately inviting a thief to take it. He would never listen to it again.

He shivered and hurried around the corner to the gaming club’s entrance.

2 – CONVERGENCE

Joe had no way of knowing, but the lives of two groups of people were about to collapse into each other’s realities and collide with his.

The first group was in the limo that had paused alongside the accident. They were close to the end of a two-hour journey from Stansted Airport.

Sitting next to the chauffeur was Rintner, an emaciated, reptilian-looking, German industrial chemicals magnate.

Cramped into the middle row were three overweight business associates.

In the back row, the businessmen’s trophy wives sat sulking in luxurious, exclusive designer coats.

Rintner’s private jet had arrived late. He was not pleased. Apart from coldly formal initial introductions in the VIP lounge, he showed no interest in his associates or their partners. He had not spoken throughout the journey. The others knew not to speak either. Few who knew Rintner spoke in his presence unless he spoke to them first.

The husbands raised their eyebrows knowingly to each other whenever Rintner was not staring at them in the rearview mirror, something he did constantly. The women sat in silence, wondering whose shoes were the most expensive.

Rintner understood, accepted and readily exercised the power he had over others. He was not a conversationalist. He was not a sociable person. Harsh inscrutability was less problematic for him, and more productive.

The accident had excited the wives. The chauffeur had slowed almost to a halt. Was this an opportunity for the wives to reprise a favorite theme: ‘Life is so tough for other people – we’re so lucky’? It was not. Rintner was impatient.

Hurry, he said. His rasp of a voice was hardly audible, but the driver obeyed instantly. Rintner turned to face his guests, speaking in English with meticulous precision. We are here to emerge safely from this evening’s test of our composure, not to exult at the misfortune of strangers.

The wives squirmed. He had a reputation for reading people’s minds and then re-setting them.

The second group of people, five in number, two elderly men and three young women, travelled in the middle of a convoy of three bulletproof vehicles. The vehicles at the front and back bristled with armed Arab bodyguards and snarling, salivating, muzzled Egyptian hound dogs.

The customized vehicles sped through the London streets, maintaining formation as they edged forward aggressively through the light city traffic.

Moving as one unit, the vehicles ignored speed limits and ignored the two police cars that had followed them throughout the day – to the mosque in the morning, to their hotel in the afternoon, and now to the casino in the evening.

3 – THE REAL WORLD – CASINO-STYLE

Leaping up the worn marble steps, Joe pushed through the narrow glass doors, curling his fingers into an ornate brass W on the large semi-circular door handles.

He walked straight toward the receptionist as she stood at her counter, all best smiles and painted face. She pressed a telephone against her bony chest, unconsciously pointing at the black bra strap that peeked out beneath her silver Lurex blouse.

She waved at him with a limp flap of her free hand, and tapped her finger against her thickly powdered neck.

Joe realized she was discreetly reminding him that his bow tie was hanging loose from his still open shirt collar. He ignored her. He didn’t care about the casino’s strict dress code at the best of times, but five minutes after he had seen a man killed, a dress code seemed like an added insult in a real world of such ruthless randomness.

Two car jockeys in full 18th Century livery leaned over the counter, their backs to him. They were entering automobile license plate numbers into one of the computer terminals behind the counter. Under the guise of security, they were openly monitoring the movements of the gamblers as they drove from gaming club to gaming club. It was a blatant invasion of privacy, but it made many of the casino’s members feel important. Joe walked straight past the jockeys, hoping that they would not notice him.

Oi! came an ugly, insulting, Cockney hello. Oi. Scholar.

Joe turned around and got a twitchy wink from the creased white-leather face of one of the jockeys, a man called Terry who was in his early thirties but looked closer to fifty.

Well, did you find out? he said. His voice was loud and clear, but his lips hardly moved.

What? No, said Joe, without a hint of apology. Terry had met Joe at a nightclub party a few nights ago. Some oddball Oxford undergraduates had recognized Joe. Joe had not wanted to mix with them, but Terry was desperate to get to know them. The undergrads had dads in the City and mums in the media and, so far, nothing more than dandruff up their noses. Something Terry was anxious to fix.

Later, then, OK, said Terry coldly, not giving up and assuming that Joe would be going to the all-night Covent Garden pubs after work. Joe had never understood how Terry kept his job at the club. Everyone there knew how Terry made his real money. He was a drug dealer, specializing in coke.

Joe pretended not to hear and continued to walk down the wide corridor toward the narrow staircase that led up to the gaming room.

Terry kept his own taste for the pure stuff to himself, but Joe recognized the signs. He had seen plenty of the white powder when he was a kid in Washington and he knew what it did to people. Terry was hooked, way past the possibility of free choice. Joe had asked him once how he managed to get away with it. What me? Never touch the stuff. Leave it out. Anyway, I don’t supply fuckin’ punters, do I? Or any of the staff. Might do the odd favor for Mrs S, though, he said with a twitchy wink. It’s safe. I’m well in with the management. I’m too useful to them, like, and I know too much. Take it from me. Joe had no time for him.

The worn red carpet felt hard and rough beneath his thin-soled, poor-quality patent leather shoes. He had not noticed it before, but something about the carpet repulsed him.

Foxhunting prints hung on the walls, reflecting the glare of badly placed lights. Small, semi-circular, spindly-legged, glass-topped reproduction Louis XIV tables stood at regular intervals along the corridor; with untidy piles of rule-cards and scorecards scattered across them. This was as near to class as the club’s decor would ever get under its present management.

Joe passed through another set of glass doors, even wider this time and with elaborately etched, almost indecipherable, gold lettering covering every inch. He tried unsuccessfully to stop his eyes from automatically picking out the elaborately disguised words that repeated endlessly in continuous lines from top to bottom: Wymondhams Sporting Club. Evie would have described it as a conditioned reflex, acquired twelve months ago when he had first worked there. It had begun to irritate him. He did not like the way a year-old insight into a none-too-clever pattern had stuck in his brain and determined what he saw each time he went through the doors. A little reminder that he had failed to stop his past invading his present and blocking his future.

Joe walked up the stairs quickly. At the bend halfway up, he entered a small, low doorway marked Gaming Staff Only, He ducked his head and stooped into a narrow, poorly-lit, dust-covered room with closely packed metal lockers stacked tight against hot, noisy pump housings. The combined sounds of rattling lockers and throbbing motors carried directly into his ears, traveling through large, box-shaped ducting that long-gone fitters had crushed into low ceiling cavities and lagged under bulging tin sheathes that pressed unpleasantly against his hair.

The changing room was empty. He was late again. For months now, it was only a question of time which would come first, losing the job because of his bad attitude or jacking it in because he couldn’t stand it anymore.

The only thing keeping him there, apart from Mrs S, was the sickening thought that, for him, one job was as pointless as another.

He locked his over-jacket away, put the key round his neck, made his exit and shuffled up the rest of the stairs. At the top, he paused, lifted his shoulders, took a deep breath and strode through two sets of heavy velvet curtains into the large gaming room.

It had once been a Georgian ballroom, hung high with crystal chandeliers and echoing to the refined sounds of Mozart and Vivaldi. Now it was a dark electronic grotto, where green baize topped tables bathed in dim cones of subdued light from concealed fittings behind false low ceilings and artful panels, and where muffled Muzak bounced off painted walls covered in glossy red, gold and black numbers.

The barely audible music instantly re-awoke his distaste for everything in the casino. He also realized that, unnoticed till that moment, Mingus’ bass line from Money Jungle had been juddering continuously inside his head.

At that precise thought, the floor squelched under his foot. Perhaps the casino’s ruby-red carpet tiles were loose there, he did not know. Once again, for a fraction of a second, his perception seemed to wobble and he had the strongest imaginable physical sensation that warm blood was pumping out from a tiny black line on the floor. He saw a crimson fluid spreading under his feet and stepped back involuntarily to prevent it getting on his shoes and trousers. He felt his lips turn inwards and stretch back across his mouth. The edges of his front teeth touched together. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw hundreds of glinting carpet tiles reflected above the nearest table in one of the low-hanging balls of tiny square mirror tiles that hid the security cameras.

Joe immediately recalled the image of the Arab in the Fiat and realized that he must be in a state of low-level shock. He also realized what it was he had not liked about the red carpet when he first walked into the club. It was the same color as the blood leaving the Arab’s neck.

The guilt-laden feeling that he had played a part in the Arab’s death returned, even stronger than before, even though he knew there was no rational reason for him to feel in any way responsible. He told himself that he had done nothing wrong, that it was no crime to catch your breath and make someone wait at traffic lights. Yet he could not shake that feeling away. He had chosen to race the Fiat after it had overtaken the Land Rover. Was that a crime? It was not something he needed to do. Why did he do it? What was his intention? Did having an unconscious intention make him responsible?

He wondered about the Arab’s family. They probably did not know yet that he was dead.

There were not many gamblers in the gaming area as Joe dawdled to the tables. The huge low-ceilinged room felt even more enclosed than usual; ominously claustrophobic.

He unhooked one of the aging gray ropes that separated the punters from the staff and walked into the roulette pit toward James, the pit boss, who stood posing elegantly in an immaculate dress suit, expensively tailored in nearby Savile Row.

Glancing disdainfully toward Joe, James raised an eyebrow in the direction of Table Twenty-Seven. This was the table with the lowest value chips in the casino. It was also the oldest table in the club and the one where James sent novice dealers.

Table Twenty-Seven pulled in punters with the least money; the only table where they could buy into a game for a few quid. Joe assumed that James was putting him there as a punishment for being late.

Joe said nothing. He was indifferent, and walked slowly toward the end of the gaming room, nearest to the single entrance and exit, where Table Twenty-Seven stood isolated and empty at the end of the roulette pit.

Joe tapped the shoulder of the tall, fair-haired croupier dealing there. The man cleared his hands laboriously, in strict accordance with gaming procedures, and turning, looked down at Joe through blue-tinted, steel-framed glasses. He was from Germany, where he had qualified as an infants’ schoolteacher, but had been unemployed for a year. His name was Kurt and it suited him.

You are late, he snarled.

Joe smiled softly and blocked Kurt’s exit.

Always you must do something stupid. Kurt had difficulty controlling his disgust. Let me come from this trainee’s table.

Joe spread his fingers across the green baize as Kurt pushed past him. Joe looked to his right at the table inspector sitting by the wheel, on his high chair, clipping his nails. They both ignored the slowly turning wheel. Joe stared at the inspector’s gaping face. It reminded Joe of a toolbox with one too many hammers crammed into it, so that the lid could not close.

Spin up, twat, came a hiss from somewhere inside the toolbox. The inspector stretched his stubby fingers out in front of him and inspected his cuticles. His eyes did not glance once at the table, not even for a second.

The ball was in Number 12. Joe picked the innocuous little ivory sphere from between the shiny bronze inserts that framed each side of the number. Joe looked at the sole punter standing at the table, a frail man in his mid-forties, who gambled on this table almost every night. His name was Sachs. He was a wheel-watcher who placed a few fixed pattern bets on the table, but laid his main bet at the last minute, just as the ball was dropping and ‘No more bets’ was called, hoping he could judge where the ball would finally come to rest.

Joe studied the smooth, creamy white ball in a half-hearted and unappreciated parody of the inspector and his manicure. According to the rules, he should have put the ball back in Number 12, but instead, he put it back in Number 25, smiled brightly at Mr Sachs and tugged the cross-shaped spindle of smooth steel that rose from the center of the wheel, sending the numbers gently spinning in a glittering blur of red, black and gold. The highly polished marquetry of the large mahogany wheel housing mirrored the subdued light from the green metal shade above the table. Nobody had noticed the number change, not even Mr Sachs, who had nonetheless continued to stare directly at the wheel throughout.

Joe thought of the eight hours he had to endure that night. He felt as touchy as the flippers on the two fake pinball mechanisms that stood close by; shiny guardians of the exit, mechanical temptresses flanked by slot machines ready to extract any last coins the luckless might still have on them before they left.

He let the wheel continue to turn. He had yet to spin the ball. Neither the inspector nor Mr Sachs seemed to be aware of that. Eventually, he picked the ball out of the wheel once more, but, instead of spinning the ball in the opposite direction to the turning wheel, he deliberately sent it rattling in the wrong direction round the deep groove at the inner lip of the wheel housing.

Joe looked pointedly at the ball as it continued to travel round and round in the same direction as the slowly rotating wheel. Still the inspector was preening himself and still Mr Sachs’ eyes were staring at the turning numbers. Neither of them noticed Joe’s deliberate mistake. As the ball dropped down the sloping surface toward the spinning numbers, Joe waited for the anxiety in Mr Sachs’ face to reach its peak, watching his permanently corrugated forehead pressing even more tightly onto his eyebrows.

No spin, whispered Joe to the inspector, who suddenly lurched forward and grabbed the ball.

No spin, he shouted, angrily, the last number was .... His voice trailed off. They were at the casino’s only 50p-a-chip table, with no convenient little electronic terminal at the end to show him the previous numbers.

25, suggested Joe. The inspector could see his smile. He placed the ball in Number 25, only to hear Mr Sachs whining that It was 12. It’s your job to know, Inspector.

Unobtrusive and alert as ever, James immediately appeared at the inspector’s shoulder. He leaned gracefully over the table, and inquired happily, Trouble, Mr Sachs? He pursed his lips suggestively while Mr Sachs cringed in discomfort at James’ proximity.

The last number was 12. I ought to know. 25 is one of my numbers.

"We’ll soon sort this out for you, Mr Sachs, said James softly, You miserable little wanker". Mr Sachs gave no indication that he had heard, though he must have done. James spoke sharply to the inspector.

What was it? A no-spin?

It’s this poxy Scholar again. The inspector nodded in Joe’s direction with false patience, as if Joe was an irritant they both had to endure.

What was the last number?

25 said the inspector smugly.

Croupier, what was the last number, said James, loudly.

12, said Joe breezily, smiling at Mr Sachs.

That was two spins ago, idiot, lied the inspector, instantly matching Joe at games playing.

James had lost interest. He put his smooth-skinned hand on the inspector’s knee, and sniggered, We do not bugger the regulars, dear; and get off the Scholar’s back will you. James picked the ball delicately from the wheel and with his little finger cocked in the air, replaced the offending object oh-so-carefully into Number 12. You wouldn’t want to upset Mrs S.

James was barely thirty years old. He had been one of RADA’s most promising students. No one knew what indiscretion made him leave a promising career in acting and enter the gaming industry; unconfirmed rumors ranged from pedophile pornography to a homosexual liaison with a young Royal.

There, Mr Sachs, he said comfortingly, winking at Joe and leaving just a hint of Eau Sauvage in the air as he vanished to another table.

Joe tugged the spindle again, reversing the spin of the wheel once more. He felt a tiny satisfaction at the little charade that he had just enacted. In his own irreverent way, he had revealed some of the absurdities of gaming. The pit boss, the inspector, the punter and the poor croupier, they all knew that it made no difference whatsoever which number the ball was in before it was spun or what direction the wheel span in relation to the ball. Science and casino profits had long proven, beyond any doubt, that the number that comes up next has nothing to do with the number that came before.

All punters know, deep in their hearts, that rigid laws of chance govern the run of numbers. And everyone knows that punters, like most of humanity, do not want to accept that everything in life is the result of random chance. If punters ever did admit this to themselves, there would be no roulette tables and no casinos. Joe knew the casino’s management encouraged superstitions and irrational belief in lucky streaks. Joe refused to pretend that punters’ foolishness might have some basis in fact and not in greed and compulsive habits. He did not want to sink to James’ level, cynically pandering to the helpless addictions that nonetheless, he knew he was helping to foster and exploit.

The tiny incident over, Joe’s mind slipped back into thoughts of the accident and then of Evelyn. Mr Sachs removed his bets, ready to pounce again. With only half his brain present, Joe heard the changing sound of the ivory ball as it slid from its groove and rolled down and around the sloping surface of the wheel housing, first hitting one of the embedded metal studs and then clattering onto the rotating wheel as it bounced in and out of the numbers.

Still watching the table, to prevent last minute cheating, Joe heard the ball come to rest and he slowed the wheel with his right hand. His eyes darted to the winning number and returned instantly to the table. He shuddered involuntarily as he called the winning number.

25, red.

He pointed to the square numbered 25 on the green baize tabletop. There were no bets on it.

Very meaningful for all of us gathered together here in chapel this evening, said Joe, tapping the empty square.

Where were you, Mr Sachs, sneered the inspector, One of your numbers, eh? What a cryin’ shame.

Mr Sachs eyed them both suspiciously. Joe span up.

Two fat Greeks, wearing almost identical baggy brown suits, sauntered past the table on their way out of the casino restaurant. The Raptopoulos brothers were big money spenders, of the nasty kind that could liven up the evening.

They were unlikely to play at Table Twenty-Seven, but Joe tried to attract their attention by catching the elder brother’s eye and looking him up and down with a contemptuous laugh. The brother smiled in mild amusement, as if Joe had some dirt in his eye. The ball was spinning, just about to drop.

What was the last number, sonny, said big brother.

25, said Joe, deliberately looking disinterested.

The younger brother slid two fifty-pound notes from his wallet with the deft flick of a stubby thumb.

You can pay for our dinner. It was lousy, he said, waiting for the ball to drop and deliberately talking in a loud voice. The Chef was too busy fawning over a bunch of ragheads. Arabs! You tell me who made them rich? You make sure you treat us better, yes?

No more bets, called Joe. At the mention of the word ‘Arab’ his mind was right back in Berkeley Square. It was going to take a long time to get over the memory of a young man with gold teeth, sitting bolt upright in the front seat of a Fiat 650, his life blood pumping from his throat in rhythmic spurts.

25 and the neighbors, barked big brother, as the ball clattered on the numbers, raising his voice so that people at the next table would be able to confirm what he had said.

No more bets, said Joe automatically, knowing exactly what was about to happen, but not caring, his mind was elsewhere. Suppose the young Arab had kids? What would they be going through when they found out their father was dead? What would they think of him, if they knew he had walked away from the scene and gone to work as if nothing had happened? Would the Arab’s wife want justice for her husband? Would she accept that it was just an accident?"

You’ve got a bet, called the inspector abruptly, just as the ball slotted in Number 30.

Too late, Maître, smiled little brother. The dealer called ‘No more bets’.

Joe had seen this performance a dozen times before. If one of the brother’s numbers had come up, they would demand payment. Joe was not interested. He was thinking about the gun under the Arab’s jacket.

Get lost, the inspector snarled at the little brother. Go fuck yourselves somewhere else.

So, the Raptopoulos brothers stayed. The younger brother laid his hundred pounds down on the table again. On another night, Joe might have felt a slight sense of satisfaction at keeping them on the table, but not that night.

30 and the neighbors, said the elder brother cockily.

30 and the neighbors by twenty pounds, said the inspector, pre-empting the next trick.

By ten pounds, Maître, and give me cash chips, croupier, not colors. I won’t be staying on this tupp’ny ha’penny table.

As he said this, the elder brother looked straight at Mr Sachs. The sneering insult merely deepened Mr Sachs’ furrows of concentration on the wheel.

Joe followed procedures and called the bet, pushing ten five-pound cash chips across the table and cutting ten more onto the rim of the wheel with the other hand. For no good reason, he was trying to be flash, but as he rammed the fifty-pound notes through the bronze slit that led into the sealed cash box beneath the table, the small plastic paddle he used for this all-important job split in two in his hand.

Jesus H., said the inspector, snapping his finger to get James to replace it. Only a creep like you could do that.

Joe span up and a minute later, there was James again, with a spare paddle. Joe was amazed at James’ ability to be wherever he needed to be, at exactly the moment he needed to be there.

Joe, I have never seen that happen before. James smiled warmly. Too warmly. He looked at Joe almost admiringly. It would have to be you, wouldn’t it?

The ball dropped. To everyone’s surprise, it had slotted into Number 30 again. Raptopoulos the Elder had won three hundred and fifty pounds. Joe had started the evening with an unlikely death, a broken paddle and two repetitions. He was feeling unsettled, as if a false spring had brought him out of hibernation only to face a renewed winter.

Cash chips, said Raptopoulos, lighting a cigar. He came around the side of the table and slapped Joe’s shoulder in an intended breach of casino rules. Joe paid out and watched the two of them walk away. He recognized one of the casino’s plain-clothes security staff as he sidled up to the elder brother. He leaned close and spoke into the curly black hair that covered the Greek’s ear. The elder brother turned around and looked toward Joe, then brushed the security man aside with one contemptuous push.

Spin up, then, you prat, said the inspector, with illogical distaste in his voice, as if Joe had something to do with Raptopoulos’ little win.

Joe watched the security officer continue to walk toward Table Twenty-Seven. He parked himself, straight-faced, right beside Mr Sachs. Joe thought nothing of it. He had no reason to think anything of it.

Later, Joe would go over each of these minor events in his head, but all they revealed to him was his state of mind at the beginning of the evening. Until that day, he felt he had a handle on how the world fitted together. He thought he knew the way it worked and the kind of people that inhabited it, and, for a short while at least, every single person in the casino continued to confirm every low-grade expectation that he had come to have of them.

Two old ladies with faces like painted papier-mâché masks joined the table. For several spins, their fingers hovered nervously over their handbags before they finally bought into the game for the minimum five pounds each.

Joe lost all interest in roulette and dealt the game mechanically while he looked around, watching the waiters as they moved swiftly amongst the strategically placed marble coffee tables and leather armchairs, busily rattling teapots and sugar bowls on tiny silver trays. Years of cigar smoke and poor ventilation had given the gaming room an air of ageless permanency, a respectability almost, that lifted it above the phony plushness of its furnishings.

A middle-aged Jewish couple came to the table. Greasy make-up covered the wife’s jowled face. Her eyes pounced to the table. She wore a black dress of heavy, encrusted lace, stretched tight over the heavy rolls of her thick waist. She carried a shiny, gold-colored handbag. Her portly husband stood behind her. wearing a suit whose top trouser button wasn’t done up, his small mouth slobbering on a thick cigar, making his pencil-line mustache wobble continuously above his thin lips.

Gimme a color, son, he said, the cigar moving unsteadily in his mouth.

The inspector’s eyes watched Joe as he made a travesty of gaming board procedures by cutting out seventy red chips from the side of the wheel and pushing them across the green baize without once looking at his hands. Unlike most of the dealers, after nearly a year at the casino Joe had become sloppy, not slick. The management preferred to have novices dealing in its UK casinos, because novices stick to the rules. The government-controlled Gaming Board had a very simple and effective technique for enforcing its rigid procedures – they shut offending casinos straight down.

The Star Group of betting shops and casinos has very simple techniques for handling lazy dealers like Joe. If their faces do not fit, they sack them, and if they do, they offer them a job on a cruise ship or at one of their less rigorously controlled casinos in Africa or Asia.

Joe was different. Unlike every other male dealer at the casino, he had not been made up to inspector by the time he had been there six months. Everyone that worked there, including Joe, knew exactly why he had survived at Wymondhams. His relationship with Mrs S.

The taller of the two papier-mâché women passed something to her friend. Joe turned and looked her straight in the rouged face. He knew they were about to cheat. They knew that he knew, but they continued to do their Laurel and Hardy act, puckering their faces into pictures of sweet innocence.

Losers never learn. They go on losing until they have nothing left to lose except the delights of self-deception. At that point, they know they have to stop. It’s usually too late.

Joe looked to see if the security officer had noticed, but he was no longer there. Nor was Mr Sachs. Joe looked round and saw them both standing together some way off. The security officer was whispering in Mr Sach’s ear. They both turned and looked directly toward Joe, then instantly turned away when they realized he was watching them. This seemed a little strange at the time, but such trivial incidents were common in a world of endless temptation and tight security. Joe thought no more of it.

He returned to watching the two papier-mâché women, waiting for them to make their move. The smaller of them carried a handbag over her broad, bare arms. Her hands hid beneath her heavily billowing chest, busily kneading the fatty substances in the large folds of her stomach. For some reason, her expression reminded Joe of the young girl he had seen at the roadside, stroking the back of her hand, seemingly unable to cope with the sight of an accident and all the while looking for a chance to steal the old man’s briefcase.

This particular old woman wore a pale green dress that clashed with the faded blue of her bulging eyes. Joe watched those eyes as they stared listlessly into the table, rolling sporadically from one fixed position to another like wet pebbles in a bowl of dried-up mascara. They looked as if their real owner had left them there in somebody else’s keeping.

The lady in the black lace dress pushed the taller of the two friends to one