The Stone Gallows (40 page)

I swore (no surprise there, then), and wrenched the wheel. There was a bump as the left-side wheels mounted the pavement. Horns honked and fists waved as I barrelled up the inside of traffic, hooking into a side street. One way. Naturally, I was facing the wrong direction.

A man in a Toyota furiously waved his mobile phone at me. There were no parked cars or lampposts on the edge of the road. I kept my left-side wheels on the pavement and crawled for about fifty yards, eventually finding a road running parallel to my original starting point. With a sigh of relief, I turned onto it. Traffic was still heavy, but at least it was moving.

It took me twenty minutes to reach the airport, which was actually bloody good time when you consider just how congested the streets were. I used the time to ponder strategy. It would do no good at all for me to go barrelling in like a maniac. Nearly eighteen months ago, terrorists had tried a similar stunt with a jeep filled with explosives.

They missed their destination by about two feet, but the incident served as a wake-up call to everybody in Scotland. We all stopped saying that it couldn't happen here.

In the aftermath of the attack, security had been beefed up in the streets surrounding the airport. Unmarked cars, close circuit television cameras, and concrete blockades. If I spotted Sophie Sloan, I wouldn't bother telling security that I thought she might have abducted my child; I would just start pointing at her while shouting the words ‘Suicide bomber!' over and over again.

I wasn't the only person heading to the airport. Taxis, land-rovers and BMW's all seemed to have a plane to catch. We behaved ourselves as much as possible, keeping to the correct lane and using our indicators.

Eventually I saw the Holiday Inn. It was a typical hotel: shaped like a high-rise block of flats only with a better paint job. I pulled into the car park and motored around slowly. There were plenty of spaces available, but I was looking for something in particular. I found what I was looking for parked next to a green Land Rover.

It was a blue BMW soft-top, parked at an angle to the white lines, as if whoever had been behind the wheel had been in a hurry. I pulled into the space opposite and got out of my car, bending down to peer into the rear window. There was a small ruck-sack in the well behind the seats. After a few seconds squinting, I was able to discern the WWE motif.

A schoolbag.

Mark's.

12.3.

Walking quickly, I made my way into the hotel. The lobby was small and the ceiling was low, the colour scheme a non-descript shade of oatmeal. Behind the desk was a woman in a white blouse. She sneezed heavily, wiping her nose on a minuscule scrap of tissue paper.

Her nostrils looked red and raw. As I watched, she refolded the tissue and used it to wipe the screen of her computer monitor. Lovely. She started when I cleared my throat, before recovering well enough to give me a lop-sided smile. Her voice was thick and phlegmy. ‘Cand I hep you?'

I reached into my wallet and took out my photograph of Mark.

‘I'm looking for this little boy. He might be with a woman, possibly checked in at some point yesterday afternoon.'

She was shaking her head. ‘I've beed off for a couple of days. With the cold. I have bno idea.'

‘Is there anybody who was on duty yesterday that I could speak with?'

‘I'm bnot really sure. Baybe you could tell be what it was regarding?'

I resisted the urge to climb over the reception desk and grab her by the throat. ‘Have you seen the news today?'

‘Bno.'

‘There was a little boy abducted yesterday on his way home from school. The woman who abducted him is possibly staying in this hotel, which means that the little boy is possibly staying here as well.'

She sneezed again, sealing both nostrils with her index fingers to prevent a tidal flow of snot from deluging her upper lip. ‘Ard yuh a poweece offither?'

‘I'm a detective. Can you check your register and see if the name Sophie Sloan is on it?'

She scrubbed away with the already saturated handkerchief. Her nose was wet and shiny and clogged, like a Golden Retriever with hay fever. ‘I'm subbosed to ask for identification.'

‘I know that,' I told her. ‘But we're desperately short on time here.'

She picked up the phone. ‘Juthd let bme thpeak to the hotel manager.'

‘Look, don't give me any of that client confidentiality bullshit. If the child comes to harm because you were too frightened to co-operate with a police investigation, I'll make sure that you get charged with obstruction of justice.'

She stood there, opening and closing her mouth.

‘Now, all I want you to do is check your little computer and see if there is a room booked to a woman called Sophie Sloan. You don't even need to say anything. Just nod your head if there is.'

The keyboard clattered underneath her fingers. ‘Bot to Sophie Sloabn.'

My heart sank. ‘Anybody Sloan? Ian Sloan, perhaps?'

More clattering, then another shake of the head. I felt my hope slipping away. Desperately, I said, ‘What about Jane? Jane Sloan?'

After a few more seconds pecking at the keyboard, she nodded. I reached forward, grabbed the monitor, turning it to face me, holding it with both hands. She squawked and flapped at my arms, trying to make me give it back. I looked at a screen full of jumbled numbers, trying to decipher them. After five seconds, I found what I wanted and released the monitor. The receptionist grabbed the monitor and turned it to face the correct way, hissing, ‘I could lothe bmy job for that.'

I decided not to show how little I cared. Instead, I reached into my wallet and gave her a business card. ‘Call this number. Speak to Detective Joe Banks. Tell him where you're calling from. Do it now.'

She took a deep breath. ‘I want your badge number and your name. I'm going to complain about your attitude.'

‘Do it!'

‘I will if you give me your name.'

I was already moving. ‘Detective John Coombes. Now fucking well do as I ask.'

12.4.

Too impatient to wait for the lifts, I galloped up the stairs, taking them three at a time. Thick carpeting muffled my footsteps. On the second floor I met a man in a suit. We both did an absurd little side-step that managed to keep us on a collision course, and I crashed into him, shouldering him into the wall without stopping. A few steps later, his companion tried to grab me in a bear hug. I brought my knee up smartly into his groin. The air rushed out of him and he collapsed, falling to his knees and rolling down the staircase. I might have yelled some apologies, but I doubt it. Nothing was going to stop me from reaching the fifth floor. Nothing.

I crashed through a set of double doors and into a corridor. More oatmeal. I was getting tired of brown. Quickly, I started checking room numbers. The computer monitor had said that Sophie was in room 5/H. I followed the signs, my heart in my mouth, roaring,

‘Mark? Mark, where are you? It's Daddy!'

Nobody answered. I blew past a chambermaid pushing a pile of laundry on a trolley, through another set of double doors. 5/H was just on the inside. I was moving so fast I nearly missed it, screeching to a halt outside the room. I pounded on the door.

‘Mark? Sophie? Come on, open up.'

There was no response. I raised my foot and kicked the door as hard as I could. There was a crash, but it held firm. A sharp pain stabbed my ankle, reminding me that this wasn't the first door I had attempted to kick down in the past few hours. This was different, however. The door to Lee's flat had been a shitty little piece of wood that had been riddled with dry rot and woodworm, while this was a hotel door in a state of reasonable repair.

Fuckit. Let's see what lies behind door number two. I lashed out with my foot again. This time, the crash was even greater, as was the pain in my ankle. The fire doors swung open and there was the chambermaid, her mouth open in surprise. She started yammering away in pidgin English; I paid no attention to her, this time doing the scissor kick that had broken the glass in my bedroom window. My foot sailed right through the door, catching in the wood. Upon landing, my left ankle turned beneath me and I fell heavily on my side, hung up on my right ankle that was hooked in the splinters of the door. The pain was excruciating. Slivers of wood dug into my skin.

With a mighty heave, I wrenched my foot free, dragging it out from the hole I had created. Splinters lined the flesh of my ankle like the quills of a porcupine, blood beading where the skin had been penetrated. The chambermaid was still yapping away. I yelled at her to shut the fuck up and she did, clapping her hands over her mouth, her eyes as big as saucers. No doubt she thought I was mad; high on drugs and alcohol, the kind of person she had fled her native country just to escape from. I lumbered to my feet, ignoring the pain, ignoring the blood squelching into my shoe, waving my arms in what I thought might be a conciliatory fashion; it was alright, I wasn't going to hurt her, I was just looking for my son. She retreated, shaking her head, an expression of fear on her face. The room across the hallway opened and an elderly lady poked her head out. ‘What's going on out there?'

‘Remodelling,' I said shortly, reaching through the hole my foot had created and fumbling with the chain. I felt for the latch with my thumb and forefinger; twisted it to one side. The door swung open. I charged into the room like a stormtrooper, hands clenched into fists and ready to swing.

There was nobody there.

I found myself standing in a very empty, very standard hotel room.

The double bed was in front of me, the covers pulled up to the pillows but wrinkled, as if whoever had done it had been a paying guest rather than a paid employee. A dirty mug sat on the small dressing table next to the bed. Lipstick on the rim. I searched the room as quickly as I could – under the bed, in the closets, even ducking into the bathroom in case they were hiding behind the shower curtain. The bath was empty.

The basin wasn't.

It was filled with water, dark, purple splotches floating on the surface. Hair clung damply to the fixtures. A couple of towels were abandoned on the toilet seat. I picked them up and noticed that they were stained with the same inky spots as the water. Caught in a fold in the towels were a pair of scissors; they tumbled to the ground, narrowly missing my foot. Sitting on the edge of the basin was an empty box of something called Coppertone Sunset.

She had cut and dyed her hair. Which meant that she could have done the same thing to Mark, as well. He could look very different.

This woman was crazy.

I dipped the tips of my fingers into the water. Still warm. I wasn't far behind.

12.5.

Two minutes later, I hit the dining room, where I found a waitress who was a hell of a lot more helpful than the receptionist had been.

‘Aye, they were here. Her and her wee boy. They were sitting at that table.'

Her badge gave her name as Dawn. She was about twenty, looked nice in a white blouse and dark skirt, a red tabard over her shoulders.

‘They had their breakfast and left.'

‘How long ago?'

She shrugged. ‘Five minutes, maybe? Not long, anyhow.'

If only I had taken a few seconds to look in the dining room before I had headed off upstairs. I wanted to run for the car park, but decided to take an extra few seconds.

‘How was the little boy?'

‘He looked tired. Kept asking when he was going to get home.'

‘What did she say?'

‘Just stroked his hair. Told him it wouldn't be long.'

‘What did he eat?'

‘Not much. He wanted peanut butter, but we didn't have any. He settled for a couple of rounds of toast. Made his mum take the crusts off, though.'

Mark. I felt a savage cheer burst in my heart, although Dawn's unconscious use of the word ‘mum' left a bad taste in my mouth.

I thanked her and sprinted for the exit, stopping on the steps at the main entrance of the hotel to survey the car park. It was still half-empty. The BMW was a hundred yards away, still parked in the same space. I was facing the driver's side, but there was something on the opposite side, something moving, something like a person bending down and fiddling inside the car, almost like. . .

It was her.

Sophie Sloan was helping Mark to buckle his seatbelt.

‘Mark!'

She bounced up, her face frightened. Her hair – now a weird, orangy shade – looked like it had been cut by a pair of garden shears.

She slammed the door and ran round to the driver's side. I leapt down the stairs (more pain for the ankle) and took off, haring through the car park like a lunatic. I pushed myself as hard as I ever had, ignoring the pain in my hip, my heart pounding, my chest expanding, the blood roaring in my ears as I sucked in oxygen to feed my burning lungs. The BMW started, the transmission grinding as she slammed it into reverse with the clutch only half depressed. Tyres squealed as she rocketed backwards out of her parking space, twisting the wheel too quickly and dragging the front left wing of her car down the side of the Land Rover. I was closing – fifty yards, thirty – but she finally got in gear and pulled away, heading down to the end of her row so that she could double back and make for the exit. I switched direction, trying to head her off, squeezing my way down the tiny gaps between parked cars. A wing-mirror smacked off the front of my jeans, numb-ing my crotch. The BMW revved as she swung left on a direct course for the exit. It was close. I lunged for the car as she passed, managing to get my fingers in the door handle. My wrist was wrenched an opposite direction to the one nature had intended and the door swung open. I reeled, spinning a full three-sixty before hitting the deck. The BMW lurched to the right, the driver's side door yawing open, and for a second I thought she was going to lose it. Then she corrected, missing another parked car by about a foot, the door slamming shut as it crunched into somebody else's fender. She straightened up just in time to bullet through the extendable wooden arm that comprised the exit. The arm was down, but the BMW was low enough for it to just clip the roof. The arm shivered, then was still.