The Tooth Tattoo(108)

‘I don’t play at all.’

Difficult to believe. ‘Why? Did you take against it, or something?’

‘Long story,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t know how much the others told you.’

‘They don’t know anything. They thought you were dead.’

‘I might as well be.’

Mel didn’t comment. How can you follow a remark like that?

‘I’m constantly on the run,’ Harry said. ‘I sleep in the back of my car, never in the same place twice. That’s okay. I’ve lived on the streets and survived, but I can’t feel safe anywhere.’

This was all so alien to Mel’s idea of the life of a top musician that the best he could do was try to appear sympathetic.

‘Do they ever talk about me?’ Harry asked.

‘The quartet? Occasionally.’

‘What do they say?’

‘They have good memories of you.’

‘All of them?’

‘In their different ways, yes. They still have huge respect for your playing – and your company.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘After you went missing, they were devastated. Cat roamed the streets of Budapest looking for you. Anthony went all to pieces. They had to find work for him with the Hallé.’

‘And Ivan?’

‘He’s more philosophical, as you’d expect. He seems to think women were your problem. He saw me eyeing up some students in short skirts the other day and gave me quite a lecture about it.’

‘Using me as an example?’

‘Actually, yes.’

It was difficult to tell whether the twitch of Harry’s lips was a smile or a grimace. ‘But they think I’m dead?’

Mel avoided the direct answer. ‘As time went on …’

‘The other day,’ Harry said, fixing Mel with a steady, questing look, ‘out at the Michael Tippett Centre, I wasn’t sure, but I thought Ivan looked at the car and recognised me.’

This was a minefield. ‘I wouldn’t know. We’re all a bit jumpy now. Was that you in Sydney Gardens running away along the canal?’

A nod.

The conversation seemed to have ground to a halt. Mel felt more comfortable when Harry was talking. ‘What is the story?’

‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ Harry said after a pause. ‘Some of this you’ll have heard already. I used to play poker. Fancied I was a red-hot player. Whichever city we fetched up in, I’d seek out the casino, or, better still, a private game without the house edge. But most serious players these days use casinos. We earned good money on tour so I could play big games. It turned out I wasn’t the wiz I thought I was. I was too much of a bloody optimist. Wouldn’t fold when I should have. I won a few times and then lost big. Started stacking up debts. In the end, it got silly. You must have heard some of this from Cat or Ivan.’

‘Hardly anything.’

‘I never borrowed from the others. Sometimes I’d ask Doug for a bit on spec.’

‘They weren’t sure if it was poker or women taking up your time.’

He smiled. ‘There were a few one-night stands, I admit. You know how they come onto you after a concert? Sometimes you’re in the right mood. But no, I wouldn’t say women are my weakness. Anthony is the one for that. Even before we’d check in at the hotel he’d ask the bellman where the red light district was. How’s the old goat doing these days?’

‘All right, I think.’

‘I like Anthony. Terrific fiddler. Better than Ivan, which is saying a lot. I was telling you about my poker debts. They got worse than serious. I was blacklisted in several of the major casinos. They’re syndicated, you see. They wouldn’t let me play, but they still chased me for what I owed, and some of the debts are collected by gentlemen who call themselves family.’

‘The mafia?’

‘You don’t mess with those guys. I needed another source of income – and fast. You may not know this, but Ivan, the crafty old bugger, has a nice little earner in hand-carved chess sets.’

‘That’s news to me.’

‘He wouldn’t tell you unless you asked. It’s all cash in hand, no tax. I only found out accidentally when the hotel in Paris sent one of his customers to my room by mistake. This French guy didn’t have much English, but he had a stack of Euros with him. He was waving them at me and talking about les échecs. I thought he was telling me cash is better than a cheque. Finally he produced a card with Ivan’s name on it and I sent him to the right room. In my cash-strapped situation, I was more than a little curious what all this was about, I can tell you. I asked the concierge the meaning of échecs. When I put it to Ivan he was tight-lipped, as you’d expect, but I wormed out the truth. He has an arrangement with some craftsman in Archangel, that Russian port right up near the Arctic Circle.’