by Simon Clark
He’d almost reached the top of the stairs when he heard a flurry of sounds.
It was the sound of feet going down the stairs at a run; an eager run like hungry kids hearing the dinner gong, and now they couldn’t wait for their hamburger and chips.
David found himself running, half hoping to catch sight of whoever it was…
(to give a description to the police, supplied the rational side of his brain)
…and half of him hoped not to see what was running down the stairs. Again that vestigial sixth sense told him the last thing he wanted to do was confront whatever was running down the stairs. It was unpleasant; it was dangerous…
Whatever — whoever, he corrected himself — was running down the softly-lit stairs was just a few steps ahead. Every dozen or so steps the stairs turned sharply round a corner then descended again. The person was always just out of sight.
David reached the ground floor panting. The main door to the street was shut — and no doubt firmly bolted; as was the revolving door. The other doors leading from the lobby were shut, too.
So where had they gone? They can’t have just evaporated into —’
He froze.
The door to the basement stood open.
If they’d gone into the basement there was — he guessed — no way out. The muggers had effectively trapped themselves.
Mouth dry, he walked cautiously towards the open doorway. Beyond the door lay an inky darkness; thick, almost solid-looking.
Across the lobby came a clunking sound followed by a whispery hiss.
He turned to see the lift doors slide open.
Only two people stepped out: Jack Black and Bernice Mochardi.
He shook his head, puzzled. ‘Where’s Fiona?’
Black strode past him without a reply. Bernice walked out of the lift as if she was sleepwalking. She moved to one of the velvet upholstered chairs and sat down heavily in it. She stared straight in front of her, locked up in pure shock.
‘Bernice,’ he demanded more loudly. ‘What happened?’
Not blinking, she slowly shook her head.
He heard Jack Black’s voice behind him. ‘Leppington. Did you open this door?’
David turned to see Jack Black standing by the basement door as if he expected armed terrorists to come bursting from it.
David shook his head. ‘It was open when I got down here. Now, what happened to —’
Jack quickly reached out, grabbed the door handle like he was grasping a poisonous snake, slammed the door shut.
He held it there. As if expecting someone to try and tug it open from the inside. Someone obscenely nasty.
‘Get the keys from the cupboard,’ Black ordered.
David hurried to the reception desk. ‘There’s someone down there?’
‘Hurry.’
‘The keys. Whereabouts are they?’
‘In the cupboard. There, under the desk.’
‘OK…got them. Which one?’
‘Just keep trying them until you can lock the door.’
Jack Black wasn’t letting go of the handle — he gripped it with both hands and leaned back with a foot jammed against the door frame. ‘Hurry it up,’ he grunted.
David quickly worked his way through the keys, ignoring the Yale keys and going straight for the mortise key.
It seemed to take forever.
Any moment he expected to hear a clatter of blows coming from the other side of the door — someone furiously clamouring to be let out. David fumbled through the keys, trying one, discarding it.
‘Where’s Fiona?’
‘Just get the door locked.’
David shook his head. Sooner the police got here the better.
‘Got it.’ David turned the key; it gave a satisfying clunk as the mechanism drove the lock into the doorjamb.
‘Locked?’ Black asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘You better be.’
As David turned round he noticed a figure at the top of the stairs. It was pale-faced; the eyes looked dark and doom-laden.
‘Electra,’ he said with a mixture of relief and surprise at her expression.
She looked down for a moment before asking, ‘Has it happened again?’
3
David watched Electra come down the stairs. She was dressed in a black kimono that touched the ground; her feet were bare; her blue-black hair was mussed around her shoulders; without make-up her face was a startling white.
‘Electra, I’d like you to phone for an ambulance,’ David said quickly, yet calmly. ‘The police, too.’
‘Why?’
‘A girl came up to the fourth floor; she’d been attacked.’
Electra looked round. ‘Bernice?’
‘No, some other girl…Fiona. One of your guests.’
Electra nodded, stone-faced. ‘Fiona Hill, Room 101. Where is she?’
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. She went down in the lift with Bernice and Jack over there. When I reached the ground floor via the stairs the lift doors opened but only Jack and Bernice got out.’
Electra looked at Bernice, saw she still stared in front of her in shock. She turned to Black. ‘Where did she go?’ she asked him bluntly.
‘The lift went down to the basement,’ he said in a flat, emotionless voice. ‘She got out.’
‘She got out?’ David echoed. ‘She got out in the basement? Why?’ Jack Black shrugged, his face expressionless.
‘Liar.’ Bernice snapped out of the trance. ‘Liar. You threw her out of the lift!’
David shook his head, bewilderment flooding through him. ‘Threw her out? What on earth for?’
Bernice stood up, a fierce look returning to her eyes. ‘Ask him. Go on, ask him.’
‘She got out,’ Jack Black said evenly.
‘Did she hell,’ Bernice snapped. ‘You threw her out.’ She stood up and advanced across the carpet towards Black, her eyes glittering. ‘Your friends were down there. You threw her out to them like she was a piece of meat being thrown to a pack of dogs. That’s what happened, isn’t it?’
‘Whoa.’ Electra held up her hands. ‘Stop just there. Look, there’s got to be a rational explanation for all this.’
David said, ‘And I think Bernice has just supplied it. Black knew there was someone in the basement; he just locked them down there.’ Electra looked at the door to the basement, then looked back at the lift with the table pushed halfway in to hold the door open. ‘Did Jack do that?’
David nodded.
‘Electra,’ Bernice said urgently. ‘For crying out loud, call the police.’
‘No.’
‘No?’ David echoed, shaking his head. ‘Electra, for heaven’s sake, there might have been a murder here. We might even know the culprit.’ He glanced at Black who stood motionless by the basement door, face still expressionless but eyes fixed on David.
‘Jack’s not responsible,’ Electra spoke firmly. ‘In fact, you might be thanking him before too long.’
‘Electra. You’ve lost me. What’s happening here?’
‘We can talk about that later. First, I think we should take a look in Room 101. A man should have been staying there with Miss Hill.’ She glanced at each of them in turn. ‘I think we all should go up there together. Don’t you agree?’
After a little pause David and Bernice nodded. Black simply walked across to the foot of the stairs and waited for them.
David added, ‘Perhaps we should check on the other guests, too?’
‘No need. With the exception of Miss Hill and friend, you and Bernice are the only guests.’ She climbed a couple of steps, then turned to look down on them. ‘I’ll go first. Jack, you follow behind David and Bernice, OK?’
He nodded, his tattooed face an unsmiling mask.
David felt Bernice touch him on the arm. It was a gesture made to reassure both of them. He gave her a grim little smile.
‘OK, foll
ow me.’ Electra walked slowly up the steps. They could have been a family going to pay their last respects to a dead grandparent in a chapel of rest. There was something darkly funereal about all this.
The rain pattered against the glass. In the distance thunder was a dismal grumbling sound, so deep it was felt rather than heard.
Inside, David felt cold, subdued. The prospect of going to Room 101 was forbidding. He realized it was a fear of the unknown. He didn’t know what he would find there.
CHAPTER 22
The four of them sat round the table in the kitchen. Coffee steamed from mugs on the table. Milk spilt from a clumsily torn-open carton formed little puddles of white on the wood. Jack Black rocked back on two legs of his chair while he looked up at the ceiling, a cigarette clamped between his thick lips.
Electra must have noticed that Bernice was wearing her clothes — the long black skirt, the silk blouse, and black lace gloves that snugly enveloped her hands and forearms — but she made no comment or even gave an indication she had noticed.
‘Electra.’ David spoke in a low, even voice. ‘Let me get this straight. You won’t phone the police?’
‘No. I will not.’
Bernice leaned forward, elbows on the table, earnestly looking Electra in the face. ‘Electra, for heaven’s sake, why not?’
‘OK, Bernice, David. I call the police. What do I tell Sergeant Morrow when he steps through that door?’
‘Tell him what happened. That’s easy enough, isn’t it?’
‘But what did happen, Bernice? You tell me.’
Bernice sighed, going over the story for the third time. ‘The woman stumbled from the lift. I grabbed her as she fell —’
‘No, no, Bernice. Later. What happened to this woman — this Fiona Hill — when she got out of the lift?’
‘In the basement?’
‘Yes. Where did she go?’
‘She didn’t get out. Not of her own accord. He —’ She stabbed a finger at Black. ‘— he pushed her out.’
‘She ran out of the lift,’ Jack said sullenly.
‘What?’
‘She ran out.’
‘But there was a struggle!’
‘Yeah…she struggled away from me. I tried to stop her running away. Like Doc here says, she needed to go to hospital.’
‘Electra. Look.’ Keep this calm, David, he told himself. Talk this through nice and easy. ‘Look. The woman appeared to have been attacked. She was bruised, she was bleeding. Here, at the elbow; she was in shock. We’ve just been up to the room she occupied.’
Electra said, ‘And who did we find there?’
‘No one, granted. But the place was a mess. There was blood on the bed sheet and blood on the bathroom door.’
‘But no Mr Smith?’
‘No, but what did you expect? A disembowelled body?’
‘Maybe I did,’ Electra agreed with a little shrug. ‘But we found nothing.’
‘You call the room in chaos and the blood nothing? And where are your guests?’
Electra sighed. It was a weary sound; worldly, too, as if she had at last to explain the facts of life to a curious nephew. ‘David. I run a hotel. And sometimes bizarre things happen. Sometimes two men check in wanting separate single rooms. In the morning, chambermaids find only one room has been slept in, and the sheets are…well, in a bit of a mess. Bernice, David, this is the real world. Hotels aren’t just for families requiring accommodation on the way to Disneyland. Don’t look at me like that, Bernice: yes, I am sounding patronizing. But the fact of the matter is some people do check into hotels for adulterous liaisons; sometimes they can be pretty kinky. Sometimes people enjoy getting rough when they have sex; then blood gets onto sheets and furniture, and yes, Dr Leppington, Vaseline might be found smeared on a chair leg or we may even find safety pins covered in blood. You know as well as I do there are sadists and masochists as well as God-fearing folk who religiously uphold the missionary position and kiss with their mouths closed. We find tab ends of reefers in waste bins or scraps of burnt foil, so we know drugs get used in hotels — ask any motel or hotel manager anywhere in the world. Sometimes a lover gets carried away -
the other lover freaks and runs from the hotel room. They might be high on drugs, or get cold feet at having their nipples stapled or —’
‘You’re saying,’ David interrupted, ‘that this couple might just have been indulging in some kind of S&M sex play that got out of hand?’
Electra nodded. ‘Possibly.’
‘But that girl was terrified,’ Bernice said, gripping her coffee mug as though, if she held it tightly enough, it would squeeze some common sense into Electra. ‘She fainted in my arms, she was rambling…’
‘Doctor. Might not a drug have that effect?’
David conceded with a slow nod. ‘LSD. It might have that effect, depending on the person’s state of mind.’
‘But that still doesn’t explain where this Fiona Hill and Mr Smith vanished to.’
Electra gave a little shrug. ‘Bernice, you know guests sometimes do a runner from hotels.’
‘In the middle of the night? And the girl was only wearing my dressing gown!’
‘They were embarrassed: she might be a schoolteacher; he could be an archbishop for all I know. After all, I doubt very much if Mr Smith was his real name. In those circumstances wouldn’t you want to get out of the hotel fast before the newspapers had a field day with you?’
‘They left their clothes,’ Bernice insisted.
‘So. You’ve seen the Dead Box?’
‘The Dead what?’ David asked, mystified.
‘The Dead Box. Tell him, Bernice.’
Bernice’s expression looked more glum now than shocked: Electra had an answer for everything.
‘The Dead Box,’ Bernice said, ‘is the name of the room off the lobby. That’s where suitcases and other belongings are stored when people leave without paying.’
David raised his eyebrows. ‘This happens often?’
Electra replied, ‘You should see how full the room is. It’s packed from ceiling to floor. Believe me, Doctor, it’s been happening ever since this hotel was built. People decide they don’t want to pay their bill…or they suddenly realize Mr Right is Mr Wrong and ffftt…away they go: leave everything behind.’
‘But this Mr Smith and Fiona Hill arrived by car. So the car will be parked out back?’
‘They said they arrived by train, but seeing as there was no train due around the time they reached the hotel I suspect they came by car and hid it in a side street somewhere. They were very discreet.’
David realized that Electra was neatly explaining everything away. She didn’t want any trouble with the police. If that was the case. And she wasn’t hiding something. He glanced at Black. He didn’t take any part in the discussion. His expression, as wooden as ever, was partly hidden by a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.
‘Anyone like more coffee before we turn in?’ Electra was all sweetness and reason. Probably inwardly gloating that we’ll never find where the bodies are hidden, thought David. But he knew he wasn’t allowing his flippant humour to run away with him. He suspected Electra did indeed know something. There was a secret hidden here in this hotel. David wanted it outed. ‘Half a cup,’ he said and pushed the mug across the table. Electra smiled and topped it up from the jug.
‘I can make you a sandwich if you like?’
David shook his head, smiling too. But determined not to let Electra sweep the whole thing under the carpet. He didn’t believe for a moment that embarrassed lovers had simply quit the hotel.
‘I suppose they left a fake address on the registration card?’
Electra gave that characteristic little shrug. ‘I guess.’
‘And they paid cash?’
‘Mmm, a deposit anyway…in advance.’
‘So no credit-card receipt. Handy.’
‘Run of the mill, I’m afraid,’ Electra said soberly. ‘Adulterers are a devious breed.’
> Bernice shook her head with a long sigh. ‘They might never have been here at all?’
‘No wallet. No papers. Nothing,’ was Black’s contribution.
David looked at the man for a moment as he sat wreathed there in cigarette smoke. ‘That’s all the questions answered but one,’ he said. ‘Oh?’ Electra sipped her coffee. ‘Which one’s that?’
‘When I saw Mr Black here just after I’d reached the ground floor, he wedged the door of the lift so it couldn’t be used. Or couldn’t be called from another floor. Also, he went straight to the basement door, shut it, then held it shut until I locked it. Who did he think was in the basement?’
‘His friends,’ Bernice said with a dark bitterness. ‘Accomplices might be a better word.’
‘The door needed shutting,’ Black stated woodenly as if that was an eloquent enough answer.
‘Is there another way into the basement?’ David asked.
‘Through the service lift in the yard. That’s padlocked from the inside. No one can get in.’
‘Or out?’
‘Or out,’ Electra agreed.
‘And there’s no other entrance to the basement?’
‘No, none at all.’
David thought Bernice had shot Electra a surprised look, as if the woman had not told the whole truth.
But that didn’t really matter. He’d made up his mind what he was going to ask next.
‘Electra.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you mind if I check in the basement?’
‘No, but you’d best leave it until morning.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s really not safe down there. Some of the lights aren’t working.’
‘But you will be able to lend me a torch?’
She said nothing but he sensed her resistance to him searching the basement himself.
‘Look,’ he told her, ‘the girl ran out of the lift into the basement. She might have hurt herself, passed out, whatever — she was really in a bad state when we first found her.’
‘She’s not there.’ This time it was Electra’s turn to sound wooden. David persisted. ‘Nevertheless, I think I should check.’
There was a pregnant pause while Electra considered. He knew she would try and talk him out of it. The cigarette smoke hung heavily in the air. The clock on the kitchen wall tocked steadily on, showing the minute hand edging up to the two. Thunder still rumbled through the night air.