Errors of Judgment(107)

Gabir stood up abruptly and left the table, his face dark, and everyone followed, the game forgotten. The commotion was coming from the sitting room. Among the shrill exclamations of female outrage Anthony could hear Tom shouting, ‘You unbelievable Arab bastard!’

Gabrielle met him in the doorway, white-faced. ‘It’s one of the Russian girls. He raped her. Or tried to.’

‘Who did?’

‘The fat one. The boy.’

Anthony went into the sitting room, where shouting and swearing was going on in various languages. Klaus and Edward were trying to pin Hakim to the sofa, but he was violently drunk, and they were having trouble holding him. Hakim’s trousers were undone, roughly hoisted to his waist, his silk shirt loose. Gabir was standing over him, shouting furiously at him in Arabic. Katia was screeching and spitting abuse at him in Russian. Farid Al-Rahman stalked out to the hallway, pushing roughly past Anthony, barking orders into the mobile clamped to his ear. Agitated voices were coming from the room beyond, and Anthony went through the bathroom and into the bedroom. The Russian girl, Dina, was lying on the bed, being tended to by Valeriya and Galina. She was crying and talking woozily, as though she had only recently regained consciousness. Her nose was bloody. Caspar Egan stood at the edge of the room, talking on the house phone.

‘How is she?’ Anthony asked Valeriya, who was crying as she dabbed at the blood on Dina’s face with a tissue. Every woman in the room seemed to be crying.

‘That fat Arab pig raped her! He hit her and he raped her!’

Anthony fetched a glass of water from the bathroom and gave it to Valeriya, then went back to find Gabrielle. There was no sign of her in the sitting room, where Hakim was slumped on the sofa, sweating, sullen and drunk, his struggle abandoned, Klaus and Edward holding his arms firmly on either side. Caspar Egan stalked in.

‘Right. I shall be calling the police in a moment, so I want all this’ – he gestured to the cocaine paraphernalia – ‘cleared up. I don’t want there to be a single trace of any illegal substance when they get here. Not one.’

At the word ‘police’, Farid began shouting at Caspar in Arabic. Gabir spoke to him sharply, calmed him, then indicated to Caspar that he wanted to speak to him away from everyone else. They left the room together.

‘Have you seen Gabrielle?’ Anthony asked Edward.

‘She was here a moment ago.’

Anthony went to the empty room and the abandoned poker game. His unlucky cards still lay on the table, and it hit him forcefully that he had lost everything, and that he was now in hock to the Egans for twenty thousand. Twenty thousand he could ill afford. He stared at Gabir’s cards and remembered his own conviction that he had a hand that couldn’t be beaten. There on the table lay stark proof of the folly of the past few months. It was madness, the idea that if he just hung in there, things would get better. He suddenly recognised the futility that lay ahead if he went on, the endless games of poker, evenings at the roulette wheel, making wins, trying to make bigger wins, then failing, and trying to recoup his losses. A never-ending cycle of stupidity and loss. He’d come this far and had done nothing but lose tens of thousands. There was, he realised, no such thing as winning. He felt sickened.

He felt a hand on his arm, and turned, expecting to see Gabrielle. But it was Julia.

‘You really don’t want to carry on like this,’ she said gently. He could tell she was trying to be kind.

He closed his eyes momentarily, and sighed. ‘You’re right. I don’t.’

Piers sauntered in. He glanced at the table, then said to Anthony, ‘Shame for you that the little fracas next door didn’t kick off five minutes earlier. Things turned out rather badly, didn’t they?’

Julia suddenly reached across the table and gathered the cards up. She squared them, shuffled them neatly and set the deck on the baize. ‘I’m not sure things turned out any particular way. Not that anyone can prove.’

‘Try telling that to Mr Al-Wadhi. Or the Egans.’

‘I think they’re too preoccupied right now to care much,’ said Julia. ‘The thing is, I don’t particularly want to see twenty thousand of our money go into the pockets of some rich Arab to whom it’s merely so much loose change.’

‘Oh, please – we all know who your noble little gesture was intended for. Reminds me of the way things were years ago, Julia coming to the rescue of poor old Anthony. Still …’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘This way no one goes home a loser. Thank you, darling.’ He kissed Julia lightly. ‘Enough excitement for one evening. Shall we call a taxi?’