Charles Cumming - A Divided Spy - A gripping espionage thriller from the master of the modern spy novel

‘What does it say here?’ he began, reading from the leaflet in his abrasive London accent. ‘ How to play responsibly .’

Chapman smiled at Martinelli, but the eyes were dead, menacing. He turned the page.

‘ Remember. Gambling is a way for responsible adults to have some fun .’

Martinelli had never had the balls to read the leaflet. They said that the addict had to want to quit. He felt his stomach dissolve and had to steady himself against the wall.

‘ Most of our customers do not see gambling as a problem. But for a very small minority, Jim, we know that this is not the case .’

Chapman looked up. He moved the side of his mouth in a way that made Martinelli feel like he was going to spit at him.

‘ If you think you are having trouble controlling your gambling, this leaflet contains important information on where to seek help .’ Chapman lowered the leaflet and looked into Martinelli’s eyes. ‘Do you need help, Jim?’ He tilted his head to one side and grinned. ‘Do you want to talk to someone?’

‘I’ve got five grand on the table. Upstairs.’

‘Five? Have you?’ Chapman sniffed loudly, as if he was struggling to clear his sinuses. ‘You and I both know that’s not what we’re talking about, don’t we? You’re not being straight, Jim.’

Chapman took a step forward. He raised the leaflet and held it in front of him, like a man singing a hymn in church.

‘ Only gamble what you can afford to lose ,’ he said. ‘ Set yourself personal limits. Only spend a certain amount of time at the tables. ’ He stared at Martinelli. ‘Time, Jim. That’s what you’ve run out of, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘Five grand. Upstairs. Let me play.’

Chapman walked towards the basins. He looked at himself in the mirror, admiring what he saw. Then he kicked out his leg behind him and slammed the bathroom door.

‘I can tell you that you’ve got a problem,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that if you don’t give me what’s owed by tomorrow morning, I won’t be – how do they say – responsible for my actions.’

‘I understand that.’ Martinelli could feel himself freezing up, his mind going numb.

‘Oh you understand that, do you?’

‘Can you just let me past?’ Martinelli pressed away from the wall and moved towards the basins. ‘Can you open the door, please? I want to go upstairs.’

Chapman appeared to admire his display of courage. He nodded and opened the door. An ominous smile was playing on his face as he indicated that Martinelli could leave.

‘Don’t let me stop you,’ he said, stepping to one side with the flourish of a matador. ‘You go and see what you can do, Jim. Be lucky.’

Martinelli climbed the stairs two at a time. He needed to be back at the tables in the way that a man who has been held underwater craves to reach the surface and to suck in a deep breath of air. He headed back to his seat and saw that a play was coming to an end. The pop and clatter of the ball, the rapt attention of the gamblers waiting for it to settle.

‘Six. Black,’ said the croupier.

Martinelli saw that the Chinese tourist had a split of five grand on five and six. A small fortune. The croupier placed the dolly on the winning square and began to sweep the losing chips from across the table. Then he paid out what he owed – more than eighty grand to the Chinese in a stack of twenty, with no discernible reaction from either man.

Martinelli took it as a sign. He waited until the table was clear, then moved his stack of chips on to black. All or nothing. Take it or leave it. The house always wins. Fuck Kyle Chapman.

Then it was just a question of waiting. The bloke from Dubai put his usual spread on eighteen through thirty-six, the other Arab going big on six-way splits along the baize. It worried Martinelli that the Chinese stayed out of the play, wandering over to the bar. It was like a bad omen. Maybe he should take back his chips.

‘No more bets, please, gentlemen,’ said the croupier.

Too late. Martinelli could do nothing but stare at the wheel, praying for the chance on black, mesmerized – as he had always been – by the counterpoint of spokes and ball, the one hypnotically slow, the other a blur as it raced beneath the rim.

Slowing now, the ball about to drop. Nauseous with anxiety, Martinelli took his eyes away from the wheel and saw Kyle Chapman standing in his eyeline. He had come back upstairs. He wasn’t looking at the wheel. He wasn’t looking at the baize. He was looking directly at the man who owed him thirty thousand pounds.

Martinelli’s eyes went back to the table. All or nothing. Feast or famine. He heard the rattle and click of the ball, watched it drop and vanish beneath the rim like a magic trick.

The inspector looked down. He would see it first. The croupier leaned over the wheel, preparing to call the number.

Martinelli closed his eyes. It was like an axe falling. He always felt sick at this moment.

I should have put it all on red , he thought. The house always wins.

Thomas Kell stood on the westbound platform at Bayswater station, one eye on a copy of the Evening Standard , the other on the man standing three metres to his left wearing faded denim jeans and a brown tweed jacket. Kell had seen him first on Praed Street, reflected in the window of a Chinese restaurant, then again twenty minutes later coming out of a branch of Starbucks on Queensway. Average height, average build, average features. Tapping his Oyster card on the reader at Bayswater, Kell had turned to find the man walking into the station a few paces behind him. He had ducked the eye contact, staring at his well-worn shoes. That was when Kell sensed he had a problem.

It was just after three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon in June. Kell counted eleven other people waiting on the platform, two of them standing directly behind him. Drawing on a long-forgotten piece of self-defence, he placed his right leg further forward than his left, shifted his weight back on to his rear heel as the train clattered into the station – and waited for the shove in the back.

It never came. No crowding up, no crazed Chechen errand boy trying to push him on to the tracks as a favour to the SVR. Instead the District Line train deposited half a dozen passengers on to the platform and eased away. When Kell looked left, he saw that the man in the faded jeans had gone. The two men who had been standing behind him had also boarded the train. Kell allowed himself a half smile. His occasional outbreaks of paranoia were a kind of madness, a yearning for the old days; the corrupted sixth sense of a forty-six-year-old spy who knew that the game was over.

A second train, moments later. Kell stepped on board, took a fold-down seat and re-opened the Standard . Royal pregnancies. Property prices. Electoral conspiracies. He was just another traveller on the Tube, traceless and nondescript. Nobody knew who he was nor who he had ever been. On the fifth page, a photograph of an aid worker murdered by the maniacs of ISIS; on the seventh, more wretched news from Ukraine. It was of no consolation to Kell that in the twelve months he had spent as a private citizen following the murder of his girlfriend, Rachel Wallinger, the regions on which he had worked for the greater part of his adult life had further disintegrated into violence and criminality. Though Kell had deliberately avoided making contact with anyone in the Service, he had occasionally run into former colleagues in the supermarket or on the street, only to be treated to lengthy discourses on the ‘impossible task’ facing SIS in Russia, Syria, Yemen and beyond.