Stephen Leather - Midnight

‘I hope so,’ said Nightingale. ‘I really, really hope so.’

Thomas gestured at the door. ‘Okay, let’s get back to it.’

M ia sipped her caramel latte and stared longingly at the packet of Rothmans on the table. Coffee and cigarettes went together like fish and chips, and coffee never tasted right if she wasn’t smoking. She looked out through the window at the three metal tables and chairs that had been set up on the pavement. She desperately wanted a cigarette but it was freezing cold outside and the weather forecast had been for snow. She hated winter, especially an English winter. She shivered and looked over at the customers queuing up to buy coffee. The door opened and as a cold wind blew into the shop a man joined the end of the queue. He was in his early thirties, maybe five years older than her, tall with jet-black hair and pale white skin. He was wearing a long overcoat that looked like cashmere and a bright red scarf around his neck.

She stared out of the window again for a while, and when she looked back at the queue the man had gone. She twisted around the other way and saw him sitting in an armchair by the toilets. He caught her look and smiled. She flashed him a tight smile and looked away. She picked up her pack of cigarettes and toyed with it. A grey-haired old woman sitting at the next table glared at her with open hostility as if she was daring Mia to light up. Mia scowled at her.

There was a mirror on one wall and she could see the man’s reflection. As she watched, he took a coin from his pocket, flipped it into the air and caught it. He slapped it down onto the back of his left hand, and then grinned as he looked at it. He put the coin back in his pocket, picked up his coffee mug, and walked over. Mia pretended not to see him.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. She turned to look at him. ‘I just had to come over and say hello.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Fate,’ he said. ‘My name is Chance.’

‘Chance?’

‘As in Chance would be a fine thing. May I join you?’

For a moment she thought of saying no, but then he smiled and she waved at the chair on the opposite side of the table. ‘It’s a free country,’ she said.

‘Well, it used to be,’ he said, and sat down, carefully adjusting the crease of his trousers. ‘I didn’t get your name.’

‘Mia,’ she said. ‘Is Chance your real name?’

‘It’s the name I answer to,’ he said. He had the most amazingly blue eyes. The blue of the sky on a crisp autumn morning, Mia thought.

‘So it’s like a nickname?’

‘Sort of,’ he said.

She sipped her coffee and watched him over the rim of her mug. He had the chiselled good looks of a TV soap star. A doctor in Holby City, maybe. She put her mug back down on the table. ‘What was that thing you did, with the coin?’

He shrugged as if he didn’t know what she was referring to.

‘Come on, you know what I mean,’ she said. ‘You were looking at me and then you tossed a coin and then you came over.’

‘And what do you think happened?’

She giggled. ‘I think you weren’t sure whether or not you wanted to talk to me so you tossed a coin to decide. Am I right?’

He shrugged carelessly. ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘I’d already decided that I wanted to talk to you, but I let the coin choose whether or not to follow through on what I wanted.’

She frowned. ‘That’s the same, right?’

‘As near as makes no odds,’ he said.

‘And you do that a lot?’ she asked. ‘Toss a coin to decide what to do?’

‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘Always. And not just any old coin.’ He put his hand in his pocket and took out a fifty-pence piece. ‘This one.’

She held out her hand and he gave it to her. She examined both sides but she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. ‘It’s just fifty pence,’ she said.

He took it back, made a fist of his hand and kissed the knuckles before putting the coin back in his pocket.

‘Are you serious?’ she said. ‘You let the coin make all your decisions?’

He shrugged again. ‘It’s more complicated than that, Mia,’ he said. ‘I give it choices, and it decides whether or not I proceed. That way fate takes responsibility for my actions.’

‘So you toss a coin to see if you’ll order a latte or a cappuccino?’

‘Not a coin. The coin. And no, I only ask it to decide on the important things.’

‘Like whether or not to talk to me?’

‘Sure,’ he said. He clinked his coffee mug against hers. ‘That was one of the big decisions of my life.’

She laughed and put her hand up to cover her mouth. Her fingernails were painted the same garish pink as her lips. ‘You could have just come over,’ she said. ‘I would have talked to you anyway.’

‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘If I’d just walked over, everything that happened would have been my responsibility. But doing it this way, the coin is responsible. Do you see?’

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘But what’s special about it? It’s just a fifty-pence piece.’

‘It’s not special,’ he said. ‘It’s just that it has to be consistent. It has to be the same coin every time or it won’t work.’

‘What won’t work?’

Chance sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck. ‘If I used different coins that would be just luck. What I do has nothing to do with luck, it’s all about fate.’ He winked. ‘So do you live near here, Mia?’

‘Just down the road,’ she said. ‘I always have a coffee here on the way back from Tesco.’ She pointed at the supermarket carrier bags at her feet.

He removed his hands from behind his neck and fished the coin out of his pocket. He held it in the flat of his right hand and smiled at her.

‘What?’ she said.

He flipped the coin, caught it deftly in his right hand and slapped it down onto the back of his left.

‘Heads,’ she said.

Chance shook his head. ‘It’s not your call,’ he said. He removed his hand. The coin had landed heads side up.

‘I was right,’ she said, jiggling her shoulders from side to side like an excited child.

Chance smiled and put away the coin. ‘Mia, why don’t I help you carry your bags home?’

‘You want to come home with me?’

‘Sure.’ He drained his coffee and got to his feet.

‘Is that why you tossed the coin? To see whether or not you wanted to go home with me?’

Chance reached down and picked up her bags. ‘That’s right.’

She laughed and again her hand flew up to cover her mouth. ‘You’re crazy,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Mia, you don’t know the half of it,’ he said.

‘What if it had landed tails?’

‘Then I’d have finished my coffee and left.’

She stood up and linked her arm through his. ‘It’s my lucky day,’ she said.

Mia lived in a mansion block in a quiet street ten minutes’ walk from the coffee shop. Chance carried her bags of shopping for her and made small talk as they walked, asking about her family, what she liked to watch on television, and where she liked to go of an evening. He listened intently and agreed with everything she said, which Mia took as a good sign. He was different from the type of men who generally tried to chat her up. He was good-looking and well dressed and he seemed genuinely interested in what she thought. It was only when she put the key into the lock of the door to the block that she realised she had spent the entire walk talking about herself. Other than that his name was Chance and he liked to toss a coin, she knew nothing about him. She looked over at him and he flashed her a movie-star smile.

‘Okay?’ he asked, as if sensing her momentary unease.