Quiz Night

Every Tuesday at eight, the Ship and Anchor, a pub on a narrow street near Liverpool's old docks, holds a quiz. There are six rounds of ten questions, a prize of fifty pounds and a bottle of something nobody wants to drink. For two years, Lucia's team had finished second every single week, always behind a group of retired teachers who called themselves The Usual Suspects.

The team was an odd mix. Lucia, from Seville, was doing a PhD in marine biology. Pablo, from Bilbao, worked as a nurse and hardly ever spoke during the quiz. Dave, a taxi driver born three streets away, was convinced he knew everything, and his sister Becky was the only one who could read his handwriting. "We're winning tonight, aren't we?" Dave said as he sat down. "We say that every week, don't we?" Becky replied.

The first round was general knowledge. "Which planet has the most moons?" read the quizmaster, a large man called Frank whose microphone whistled whenever he got excited. Dave wrote Jupiter immediately. Lucia frowned. "Isn't it Saturn now? They found a lot of new ones." "Who told you that?" Dave asked. "Scientists did," she said. They crossed out Jupiter, wrote Saturn, and got the point.

Round two was music, and Dave was in his element. He answered every question before Frank had finished reading it, and for once he was right every time. "Not bad for a taxi driver, is it?" he said, leaning back in his chair. "Nobody said it was," said Becky.

The trouble started in round four, which was geography. "What is the longest river in Spain?" Frank asked. Dave turned to Lucia. "That's yours, isn't it? It's the Ebro, isn't it?" Lucia hesitated. "The Ebro is the longest one that's only in Spain," she said, "but the Tagus is longer, isn't it? It goes on into Portugal." They argued for so long that Frank read out three more questions. In the end Pablo, who had said nothing all evening, quietly took the pen and wrote Tagus. Nobody asked him why.

At half time, the scores went up on the board. The Usual Suspects had forty-one. Lucia's team had forty. "So who's been getting the hard ones right?" asked Becky, looking at the answer sheet. Dave pointed at himself. Lucia pointed at herself. Pablo said nothing and went to the bar to buy crisps.

Round five was science, and it went badly. Dave insisted that a tomato was a vegetable, Becky insisted that all bats were blind, and Lucia was too tired to argue with either of them. They lost three points they should have won. "What happened to us?" Dave groaned. "You happened," said Becky.

Before the last round, Frank reminded everyone that there would be a tie-break question if two teams finished level. Then he read the final ten questions, which were on sport. Dave knew the football ones, Becky knew the tennis, and Lucia surprised everyone by knowing which Spanish cyclist had won the Tour de France five times in a row. When the scores were added up, both teams had fifty-two.

"Tie-break," said Frank, and the pub went silent. "Closest answer wins. How many bones are there in the adult human body?" Dave whispered, "It's about three hundred, isn't it?" Lucia guessed two hundred and fifty. But Pablo had already taken the pen. He wrote 206, folded the paper and handed it to Frank without a word.

The Usual Suspects had written 212. When Frank read out the correct answer, the team screamed so loudly that the barman dropped a glass. Dave stared at Pablo. "How on earth did you know that?" he asked. Pablo shrugged. "I'm a nurse, aren't I? You never asked what I do all day." Then he picked up the old answer sheet, pointed at the question about the river and smiled. "And I'm Spanish too, you know. Nobody asked me that one either."