‘I just don’t believe it,’ said Jodie. ‘Look at him. He’s smiling. I’ve never seen him do that before.’
Dixon was sure he saw Tammy wiping away a tear. He pointed at Jodie discreetly. ‘Two no trumps.’
‘Two no trumps,’ she said.
‘Four spades.’
George scowled at Dixon. ‘You should’ve passed.’
Dixon knew that bridge partners occasionally kicked each other under the table, and no doubt George would have kicked him then, if he could have reached.
‘Pass, Tammy,’ Dixon whispered.
‘Pass.’ She managed to get the word out, despite struggling to keep her composure.
George passed immediately.
Tammy leaned across and placed her left hand softly on George’s forearm. ‘George, who is this?’ she asked, pointing at Dixon with her right.
‘That’s Tom, my bridge partner,’ he replied, without looking up from his cards. ‘Thomas Fowler. He’s hopeless at bidding. Never knows when to pass.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ Tammy had said, as Dixon was leaving Lucerne House. ‘I’ll get some of the ladies from the WI to come in and play bridge with him. He’ll love that, and it’ll do him the power of good.’
‘He’s helped me more than I’ve helped him,’ Dixon had said.
Now he was waiting on the ramp at Express Park, the electric gates to the staff car park taking longer than usual to open, or so it seemed.
Several figures had appeared in the floor to ceiling windows, gone when he took a sly glance in his wing mirror. A welcoming committee, no doubt.
The building manager was first, waiting behind the security door when Dixon opened it.
‘You can’t bring that in here.’
‘That?’
‘That dog.’
Back to the car, old chap, thought Dixon, knowing full well the jobsworth twerp would be gone by five-thirty.
‘And there’s a bag of food in the incident room.’
‘I was just going to mention that, Sir,’ said Louise, who was next in line. ‘They brought all three bags up from Sidmouth, but I’m guessing it’s the recycling you want?’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll get it sent down to the foodbank in that case.’
Jane was next in line, and mercifully the only one who followed him back out to the Land Rover on the top floor of the car park. ‘We’ve got a full house,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s back for a briefing at five, just like you said. Charlesworth and Deborah Potter are here too, so I expect they’ll be loitering at the back.’
Dixon opened the back door of the Land Rover, allowing Monty to jump up into his bed. Then he looked at Jane and winked.
‘I know that look,’ she said.
‘Where are those bin bags?’
There were two left, sitting on a table at the back of the incident room. All eyes followed Dixon as he weaved his way between the workstations.
Someone had opened both bags and had a look, although he or she would have had no idea what they were looking for. Dixon did, reaching in and producing a handful of old newspapers, The Times, all of them folded open at the Mind Games section.
He spread them out across the adjacent table. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.
‘Not a lot,’ replied Jane. ‘He’s had a go at the Killer Sudoku, and the Polygon, that word thing, but that’s it as far as I can see.’
‘Me too.’ Sarah was standing behind Jane, peering over her shoulder.
‘That’s what I thought when I first looked at it,’ replied Dixon. ‘But what he’s actually done is the bridge game. He’s just used the blank paper of the sudoku to write his answers.’
‘Michael Allam played bridge.’ Jane frowned. ‘So what?’
Charlesworth and Potter appeared at the top of the stairs at five o’clock on the dot, both of them leaning back against the banister at the top of the atrium, arms folded, the incident room falling silent.
‘Thomas Fowler and George Sampson were bridge partners,’ said Dixon. ‘The card game, that is.’
‘How d’you know, Sir?’ asked Sarah.