Питер Джеймс: Dead if You Don’t

Thursday 10 August

The small white ball skittered over the numbers on the spinning roulette wheel, passing 36, 11, 30. Tappity-tap. Tappity-tap . It ricocheted off a diamond-shaped bumper. Tappity-tap . Danced. Rattling around the rim; hopping over the numbers 12, 35, 3 and catapulting back onto the rim.

Kipp Brown watched it in silent concentration. His nerves were tightropes. This was the moment, as the rotations steadily slowed. The moment when time froze.

‘No more bets,’ the croupier announced, like a recording on a timed loop. It was pretty pointless; Kipp had no more left to bet. It was all there in those neat towers of chips spread across the baize. Covering his regular numbers, his lucky numbers and a couple of random ones, too.

All there.

The school fees. The mortgage. The hire-purchase payments on his cars.

Tappity-tap .

The dumb ball had no idea just how much was riding on where it landed; no knowledge of just how much money Kipp Brown, the only punter at this table on the high-value floor, had bet on this spin of the wheel. It didn’t know just what this particular spin of the roulette wheel meant to Kipp. Nor did the bored-looking female croupier.

So much was riding on just six of the thirty-six black and red numbers. So much.

It was a perfectly formed ceramic ball, less than one inch in diameter. It had no brain. It had no knowledge that the man at the table, watching it the way a buzzard watches a field mouse from two hundred metres high, had bet the ranch on numbers 2, 4, 15 and their neighbours.

No idea at all.

No idea that, until recently, Kipp Brown had been one of the wealthiest men in the city. That on a July night last year he had walked away from this casino with over one million pounds of winnings — the biggest sum anyone had ever won in a single night at Brighton’s Waterfront Casino.

Nor did it know that since then he had lost it all again on the very same tables.

That in recent months, with his judgement skewed from the stress of his mounting debts and his train crash of a personal life, he had bet and lost all the equity in his house.

His business assets.

Pretty much everything.

2, 4 or 15. Please.

Tappity-tap . The ball rolled into number 2, then out again.

He sat, anxiously, nursing his drink. It was gone 11 p.m., and he should have left hours ago. He had to drive Mungo to school tomorrow morning and go straight on to an early meeting with a new, potentially large, client. He should be home, getting rest. His eyes were bleary. His brain was tired. Exhausted from chasing losses all evening. But he couldn’t help it. The wheel would come good eventually, it always did. Always had.

Hadn’t it?

If you stayed at the table for long enough.

Tappity-tap . It danced over 15. Then 4.

Yes!

Four! Fantastic, a home run! He’d done it!

Then as he watched, suddenly and inexplicably, as if pulled by some force, the ball bounced out of 4. Then out of 17, 11, 1, 31.

Come on.

Click .

It settled, nestling between two frets.

The number popped up on the screen above the table.

16.

Unbelievable.

He drained his complimentary Hendricks and tonic, picked out a piece of cucumber and munched it, solemnly and disconsolately, as he watched the croupier scoop away the neat stacks of chips.

A tall, fit man of forty-five, who normally had fine posture, Kipp Brown was stooping badly as he left the table and walked over to the cashier with his wallet full of maxed-out credit cards.

Behind him, he heard the sound that was the music of his life. His secret, second life that few people, other than his wife, Stacey, knew about — and, guiltily, he mostly only told her about his wins, rarely his losses.

Tappity-tap .

Followed by a loud cheer from the group of Chinese who were here, like him, most evenings. It sounded like one of them had a big win. Great. Lucky them.

Every night these Chinese guys were here, adding to their winnings, so it seemed to him.

And every night, just recently, he was here, succumbing to the classic gambler’s folly, chasing his losses. Like he had been tonight.

Except there wasn’t going to be any more chasing tonight. Not for him.

He was over his account limit with the casino. The cashier tried all six of his credit cards in turn. Then shook her head. She had the decency to look apologetic.

Friday 11 August

The twenty-one-year-old strapped to the steel table, in the windowless basement room, was pleading beneath the blinding white lights. But the sound of the Kinks, ‘Mr Pleasant’, turned up loud on a constant loop, drowned his voice out — not that anyone could hear beyond this dank, soundproof room with its rank smell and the open-barred door to the darkened pool area beyond it where, it was rumoured, Mr Dervishi’s crocodile lived. Ryan Brent did not believe any of this could actually be happening, could actually be real.

But his tormentor, Gentian Llupa, did. A handsome twenty-three-year-old, with close-cropped, gelled brown hair and a serious, concerned expression, Llupa’s one worry was that Ryan might die too soon. Before the one thousand cuts he had been instructed to administer, for the benefit of the camera, could be completed.

‘ Mr Pleasant is good

Mr Pleasant is kind

Mr Pleasant’s okay...

Hey, hey

How are you today? ’

Echoing the words, Gentian looked down at his victim. ‘So how are you today?’ Then he added, ‘How’s your day so far?’ It was his boss, Mr Dervishi’s, favourite expression and he liked it, too. All of Mr Dervishi’s close team used it, as a kind of code. Mr Dervishi instilled good manners and a code of behaviour in all his employees.

His boss was extremely particular. He would want to examine every incision on the naked young man’s body. Each one that he was about to make with the Stanley knife’s freshly inserted blade, as a lesson to the youth. Each cut would be anatomically correct. One thousand lessons. Starting with the ankle tendons, to make running away impossible. Not that escaping had ever been an option for him.

So many tendons in the human body! That was one of the things he had learned back in his home country of Kosovo as a medical student, before meeting Mr Dervishi and being offered more money than he could dream of to continue his studies in England. Although, currently, Mr Dervishi kept him too busy to resume his studies.

He was going to be working from a colour chart showing the tendons of the human body beneath the skin, which he had Blu-tacked to the wall beside the table. It was really there for Ryan Brent’s benefit, to give him an anatomy lesson. Gentian very politely told him in which order he would be proceeding. He had a ball of cloth ready to stuff into Brent’s mouth if he screamed too loudly, although Mr Dervishi did not want him doing that, he liked to hear his victim’s screams. He liked to show his collection of videos of what had happened to those who crossed him, to other employees. It was his way of ensuring loyalty.