The man shifted from side to side, one hand pressed against the stool between us, the other flat to the marble of the bar. He was missing nails on the first two fingers of his one hand, like they’d been torn off. ‘You know what they call that?’ he asked quietly.
‘Call what?’
‘The mathematical advantage?’
I glanced over the man’s shoulder. Still no sign of Lee. It must have been five or six minutes since he’d left. The man moved in even closer when he didn’t get a response, his fingers inches from mine. I glanced down at his missing nails, then back up at him.
‘It’s called “the edge”,’ he said.
He stayed like that for a moment and then, finally, moved his hand off the stool and on to the marble, as if signalling for service. At the other end of the bar, the barman started to come over but then the man made eye contact with him – a tiny, fractional swivel of the head – and the barman stopped immediately, as if he’d been hit by a truck. When I looked back at the man, something had changed in him – something subtle – and a ripple of alarm passed through me.
We stayed like that for a moment, the ding, ding, ding of the slots ringing around us, then I slid off the stool, pulled a couple of $10 bills out and left them on the counter for the barman. I turned back to the man. He was about five inches shorter than me, but it didn’t make me feel any easier around him. He was still standing in the same position, body turned to the bar, hands flat in front of him, head turned towards me.
‘You off to bed?’ he said.
‘Something like that.’
I went to step around him – but then he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into him. His grip was like a vice. I stumbled, completely knocked off balance. Then instinct kicked in: I pushed back at him and ripped my arm free.
‘What the fuck is the matter with you?’
He realigned himself: both hands flat to the counter. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice.’
‘Let me give you one: don’t ever touch me.’
I went to leave.
‘Someone will always have the edge over you, David.’
I stopped. Turned back to him. ‘What did you say?’
‘You’re just flesh and bones like everyone else.’
‘What?’
There was a threat in him now, as if he’d completely changed his appearance somehow. His eyes seemed darker. His face was twisted up like an animal about to strike. ‘Go back home to your wife,’ he said, looking me up and down. Then he leaned in and dropped his voice to a whisper: ‘And do both of you a favour: stay out of our business.’
‘What the hell are you talking about? I don’t even know you.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But you know Lee Wilkins.’
He nodded once, eyes fixed on mine, then pushed past me and headed out into the casino. Inside a couple of seconds, he was disappearing into the crowds.
Inside ten, he was gone.
PART TWO
November 2012
2
The boy trudged across the shingle beach, six feet from where the waves were breaking on the shore. Their noise was immense: a roar, like an animal, and then a deep, visceral boom which passed right through him. When the tide began its retreat again, sucked back into the sea, the pebbles became caught in the wash and he could hear a soft, chattering sound, as if thousands of voices were calling from beyond the sea wall. On the other side of the eight-foot wall was the village: old fishermen’s cottages, a pub, a few shops and businesses. This side of it were boats, lined up on the beach, masts chiming in the wind.
He adjusted the straps of the backpack and heard the equipment clatter around inside: the line, a new net he’d bought with the money from his paper round, and some old bacon his mum had given him that morning. He was carrying the bucket in his hand. It was early November, freezing cold, but winter was always the best time to go crabbing. In the winter there were no tourists – which meant he didn’t have to share the crabs.
The village was set in a bowl, with coves cut into the faces of the hills on either side. In order to get to the coves, you had to climb over a series of rocks that rose up out of the shingle at both ends of the beach. To the boy, the rocks – polished and hewed by the relentless power of the sea – looked like the tail of a dragon, the bulk of the creature still submerged somewhere beneath. On the other side of the tail, in the coves beyond, hundreds of rock pools had formed in the grooves and chasms of the beach. That’s where the crabs would be; washed up and spat out by the tide.
The boy started the climb.
Carrying the bucket at the same time made it harder. Normally his dad hauled all the equipment for him, but he was away with work and had told the boy he was big enough now – at almost thirteen – to go by himself. ‘As long as you’re careful,’ his dad kept saying. The sea spray and the rain could make climbing more difficult but he was doing okay: after five minutes he’d got up on to the top of the tail and was looking down at the first of the coves. It was about thirty feet across by sixty feet deep, with a thin sliver of shingle running from the shoreline to where the hills at the back started their steep ascent. The rest was just rock pools, sea washing over them, foam bubbling in the clefts and rifts. He started down, bucket – gripped in his hand still – clattering against the rock, his eyes fixed on where he was placing his feet. Wind roared in, once, twice, pulling him around like it had reached out and grabbed him – but then he jumped the last few feet, on to the shingle, and the wind died instantly as he stepped into the protection of the cove. All he could hear now was the sea breaking on the beach behind him.
Placing the bucket down on the shingle, he removed his backpack, unzipped it and started taking out the equipment. Crab line. Short-handled net. Bait. He attached the bait to the line, grabbed the net and the bucket and made his way across the cove, to the rocks at the back. As long as you’re careful. He placed his feet down just as deliberately as before, not wanting to have to explain to his dad how he had managed to snap the line, or cut himself, or both. Halfway across, he heard the sea crash again behind him, an even louder and longer roar than previously, and when he looked back he saw a wave rolling in towards him. He wasn’t worried about getting wet, but he was worried about getting knocked over, so he reached forward and grabbed hold of a thin column of stone. The sea washed in, almost knee high, soaking his trousers and boots, and flattening out in the space ahead of him. Once it started drawing out again, he looked to the backpack and saw it was safe, perched in a high groove where he’d placed it after getting the equipment out. He headed to the rock pools right at the back of the cove where it would be too far for the sea to reach him. There, he could drop the line into the pools without fear of being soaked a second time. High tide had been an hour ago. The waves may have been loud, may have been fierce, but they were slowly retreating. In another hour, they’d be weakened. An hour after that, they’d hardly make it to him at all.
He placed the bucket down next to him, made sure the bait was secure and then sat next to the deepest rock pool in the cove. It was about ten feet down. The boy dropped the line in, feeding it out of a box his dad had made for him. It was like a fishing reel, with a small handle on the side that he could use to draw the line back in. He held the box with his left hand, and let the line run over the first two fingers of his right hand so he could feel any movement, however slight, if a crab went for the bait.
Then he noticed something.
Twenty feet away from him, right at the back of the cove, between the last of the rock pools and the sharp incline of the hill, it looked like someone had left some bait behind. He shifted on the rock, trying to get a better view from where he was sitting, but all he could see was a white slab of meat. Chicken maybe, or pork. His dad always said bacon was best, but the boy had caught loads of crabs with pieces of old chicken. Oily fish was good too, but not as good as meat. Crabs generally weren’t fussy eaters, but if the bacon didn’t get them interested, the boy figured he could use the bait left behind as a back-up plan. If someone hadn’t taken it with them, they obviously wouldn’t miss it.