Philip Brennan 03-Cage of Bones (18 page)

51

C
ompletely different, thought Phil. Different shape, size, age, everything. Completely different to the house at the bottom of East Hill. The cage. Completely.

But he still couldn’t shake the feeling.

Giving himself a mental talking-to for being so stupid, he walked towards the hotel.

It was a beautiful building, he admitted that much. He stepped through the front door, found himself in a wood-panelled reception area, stone-flagged floor. The wood was aged but well-preserved, the stone floor worn by centuries of feet. Clearly authentic, he decided. He flashed his card.

‘DI Brennan,’ he said to the girl behind the desk. ‘Is Jane Gosling here?’

The girl was very attractive, dressed in a smart dark uniform suit, white blouse beneath, cut to emphasise her cleavage. Dark hair pulled back, large earrings. Well made up. She creased her brow. Even her frown was pretty.

‘Is she … a guest … here?’ Voice heavily inflected.

East European, thought Phil, but he couldn’t place her more specifically than that.

‘No,’ he said, ‘she’s the police officer in charge of this murder investigation.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ She looked round for another member of staff, beckoned over a young man with spiked hair and an eager face, told him to take her place behind the desk.

‘Come with me, please.’ She walked round to Phil’s side of the desk, went through another doorway that led to the main section of the hotel.

Phil knew from the night before where the room was, but didn’t want to appear as the kind of arrogant policeman he hated, so he followed her. Tried hard to take his eyes from her pencil-skirted legs and spike heels. She walked like he imagined Marilyn Monroe must have walked. If she had been on sand, the dots of her heels would have been in a straight line.

He picked his eyes up, looked round. The wood panelling and worn flags persisted. They reached a central area with a huge old fireplace, the fire unlit. Then up a wide, high staircase. The panelling gave way to plastered walls, stained-glass windows. Even a suit of armour.

Phil looked through a set of double doors to an old wooden doorway that seemed even more aged than the rest of the hotel.

‘What’s in there?’

‘The chapel,’ said the girl.

‘Chapel?’

‘Yes. It was Knights Templar chapel. Very old.’ She looked round. ‘You would like to look in?’

‘Yeah. Please.’

They crossed the floor. She opened the door. They stepped inside.

The first thing Phil noticed was the cold. The walls were heavy old stone. The windows stained glass, the floor flagged. It was like stepping even further back in time. He could feel the history in the place.

‘Nice,’ he said to the girl. ‘How old is it?’

‘Oh, it is … very old,’ she said, turning her head quickly, favouring him with a quick smile. ‘I do not know … ’

‘Right,’ he said. He looked over at the far wall. A huge wooden door stood there, so old and heavy it looked like the chapel had been built round it. ‘Where does that lead?’

‘Nowhere. Is … blocked off.’

‘Right.’

‘Would you …?’ She pointed back the way they had entered.

Phil followed her out and up the stairs.

They kept walking. ‘Can I ask, where are you from? That accent isn’t from round here.’

Another smile. ‘Lithuania,’ she said. ‘I come here to work.’

‘Right. Enjoying it?’

She didn’t turn round this time. ‘Is OK.’ Then perhaps thinking she should have said more, ‘Is fun.’

‘Good.’

They walked in silence until they reached the room. ‘In here … ’ Her expression darkened as she showed him the doorway. He would have worked out which one it was. The only one with crime-scene tape across it.

Phil thanked her, and she turned, walked away down the hall. Her heels perfect dots in the carpet once more. Phil turned to the doorway.

‘OK to come in?’ he called.

‘Get yourself suited first,’ came the reply.

A plastic-wrapped bundle was thrown into the hallway. Phil undid it, put it on, zipped up. Entered.

DS Jane Gosling was already in there, looking round. ‘See anything you like?’ she said.

Phil noticed how different it looked from the previous night. The body was gone, for one thing. Down to the mortuary to be rendered down to its component parts, weighed and examined, quantified and analysed. Adam Weaver no longer a person, just a dead organism. A human watch, broken beyond repair, lacking a set of instructions as to why it had stopped ticking.

Phil hated the aftermath of a murder scene. He often found it worse than when the body was still there. The absence of life more disturbing than the loss of it. A murder presented an end, but also a beginning. Because that was where his job started. But the aftermath showed that life went on. And in a way that was worse. Because one day that would be him.

He shook his head. He had been having increasingly morbid thoughts since the birth of Josephina. Because her existence reminded him that one day there would be a world without him in it. But she would go on. He knew that was right, the way things were meant to be. But that didn’t make it any easier.

‘Catch me up, then,’ he said, focusing on the job in hand. ‘Any progress?’

‘Not a lot,’ said Jane. ‘We’ve canvassed the other rooms, asked the guests if they saw or heard anything suspicious. Nothing. Not until the girl started screaming.’

‘Staff?’

She shook her head. ‘Same thing. No one saw or heard anything. Until the screaming.’

Phil nodded, looked round once more. Saw the emptiness. Felt the absence. Tried to think in absolutes, not abstracts. Weaver’s suit jacket was still on the bed, his other clothes in the wardrobe. The woman’s underwear was discarded on the bed next to a selection of sex toys. The wrapping and packaging beside them showing they had just been bought for her.

Phil frowned. Something …

‘Jane,’ he said. ‘Where was the girl from? The one in the room here?’

Jane Gosling shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

‘What was her name?’

She checked her notebook. ‘Maria. And then … Oh God, I can’t read it. Here, have a look.’

Phil looked.

‘Luko … sevic … ius … ichius?’ Jane read. ‘Something like that. Eastern European, it looks like.’

‘D’you know where, exactly? What country?’

Another check of her notes. ‘Lithuania, she said.’ Jane looked at him, frowned. ‘Hey, why does that ring a bell?’

‘Because Weaver lived in Lithuania. And the staff here, the woman who let me up was Lithuanian. And the builder Mickey spoke to … ’

‘A pattern,’ said Jane. ‘Or a coincidence?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Phil. ‘Don’t know what it is yet.’ His eyes travelled round the room once more. He had to get out. ‘I’m just going to have a look round the grounds. See if anything comes to me.’

He left the room.

Outside, the air felt colder than the previous day. Summer losing the fight against autumn. The leaves starting to brown and redden. He walked round the corner of the hotel, by the kitchens. Past the bins and skips. Some outbuildings were dotted around. Old, but lacking the preserved charm of the rest of the place. Where the staff live, he thought. Behind them was the river.

He walked down to it, stood on the bank, staring at it.

Something else was hitting him. Hard. Not just a feeling, an emotion, but something more solid. More tangible. A memory.

His heart skipped a beat at the realisation of what it was. He looked up and down the river again, back to the hotel. Looked at the roof, the chimneys against the trees, the skyline.

And he knew what the memory was telling him.

He had been here before.

52

S
amuel Lister walked down the hospital corridor. Enjoyed the looks he received. Smiles. All smiles. And the best thing was, even if they didn’t like him, they smiled.

He enjoyed everything about his job. Well, most things. Dealing with the staff under him, endless meetings, that kind of thing bored him. But the rest more than compensated for it. The lavish dinners and parties. The golf. The car he drove at the hospital’s expense. The money. Oh yes, the money.

And the perks. Those lovely little perks.

There was a lot to be said for being the hospital’s staff director and workforce manager.

Walking down the corridor, enjoying the sound of his heels echoing behind him, he planned his day. Meeting for the rest of the morning. Could he get out of it? What was it again? Budget strategy planning. Best not. Although anything that needed implementing could be done at a lower level. Middle management. That was what they were there for.

Then what? Lunch in town, discussing expansion plans with a friend on the council. All on expenses. Then perhaps a quick round of golf over at Colne Valley Golf Club. Yes. That sounded like not a bad day after all.

Lister nodded to a nurse. Smiled. She returned it, that kind of up from under thing with her eyes. He liked that. Made them look demure but knowing. Clean on the outside, dirty on the inside. Lovely.

He checked her out as she went past. Young, pretty. Not too curvy. Just his type. Budding. That was the word he used to describe them, budding.

He slowed down, watched her walk away, the slow, languorous swing of her narrow hips, her pert bottom. Budding. Lovely.

He waited until she had turned a corner, was out of view, then continued on.

Thinking of the nurse who had just passed, his mind hopped on, made connections. He wished it could be like the old days, he thought. When nurses’ uniforms were more like something out of Ann Summers, something that a young man could get quite worked up about, fetishise, even. Not like they were now. All functional and plain. Nothing to get worked up about. He should try and bring that up at a meeting. Claim it was for the good of the patients, the morale in the hospital.

He remembered a dentist friend he knew. Only employed fit, slim young dental nurses. Made them wear uniforms that were this side of a tribunal away from see-through. Made sure they co-ordinated their underwear too. White. Lacy. He had marvelled at his friend, asked how he got away with it. Got away with it? He had a list longer than the war dead on the Cenotaph in Whitehall of people wanting to be his patients. He had pointed to the Merc parked outside the restaurant they were in. That was paid for, he had said, entirely by middle-aged men’s fantasies.

Lister smiled at the memory. He should definitely try something similar here.

His phone sounded, jolting him out of his reverie.

Probably Jerry, he thought, confirming this afternoon’s golf session.

He took the iPhone from his jacket pocket, opened it.

‘Hello.’

Nothing. Just crackling.

‘Hello?’ He sighed. Probably one of those automated things. Telling him not to hang up, press this button to be put through to a premium-rate line in Sri Lanka or something. He was about to switch off when a voice spoke.

‘Hello, Samuel.’

At first he couldn’t place it. Then he did. And it was like reality crumbled around him.

‘What … what d’you want?’ He stopped walking, cupped the phone in his hand so anyone passing couldn’t see him, hear him speak. ‘Why are you calling me?’

‘I need a favour, Samuel.’

‘You can’t have one.’ His throat was suddenly dry. His voice sounded uneven and cracked. An arid desert floor.

‘I can and I will.’

Lister sighed, looked round. Expected the rest of the world to have stopped just because his had. But it went on around him as usual.

‘No. You can’t. I’m … I’m going to hang up now.’

‘No you’re not, Samuel. People who say they’re going to hang up never do. They just … stay there. Waiting. Is that what you’re doing, Samuel?’

‘I’m … I’m hanging up. Now.’ Weakly, as he made no effort to end the call.

‘Oh. You’re still there, Samuel. Why would that be?’

Another look round. Surely everyone was staring. Pointing and laughing, wondering why the staff director and workforce manager was sweating and stammering in the corridor. But no one was pointing or laughing. In fact everyone was ignoring him, just getting on with their own lives.

‘I’m … I’m … ’

‘You’re going to do what I tell you, Samuel. You know you are. What you did came with a price. You know that. You were told that at the time. You agreed to it. Happily, if I remember. Well now it’s time to pay.’

‘I … I … What if I won’t?’

A chuckle. ‘Does that really need answering?’

Lister sighed. ‘I’m … I’m going to my office now. Call me back there.’

Without waiting for a reply, he broke the connection, pocketed the phone. Looked around once more.

His first thought was to run. Hard. Fast. As far away as quickly as possible. But he knew that couldn’t happen. He knew they would catch up with him wherever he went. Not even bother to catch up with him. Just say a few words to the right people, let things take their course.

Another sigh. Heart fluttering, he walked quickly to his office. People nodded, smiled at him on the way. He managed to return their greetings. How? he thought. How could he do that? Pretend everything was fine on the surface while inside he was consumed by turmoil? He knew how. The thought was sudden. It arrived with the heavy, final clunk of a key in a cell-door lock.

Because he had done already. Quite a few times. Kept his normal, everyday world going smoothly while under the surface he did … other things. And now they had caught up with him. When worlds collide.

He reached his office, went straight in, told his secretary to hold his calls. Closed the door behind him. Sat at his desk. Waited.

The call wasn’t long in coming.

‘What … what d’you want?’ He knew who it was without checking.

‘Just what I said, Samuel. You owe. Time to pay.’

‘I … I can’t … ’ Close to tears now. Ready to just give up.

‘You can. And you will.’

He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of an answer to give. There was no answer to give.

Silence.

Eventually, a sigh. ‘All right. What … what d’you want me to do?’

The voice on the phone told him.

And Samuel Lister knew that whatever happened next didn’t matter.

This was the end for him.