The Smiling Man

by Joseph Knox

  Ali was awake an hour or so later. The doctor saw him first and, satisfied that he was OK to talk, asked a passing nurse to take me through. The nurse was a sick-looking man with grey, translucent teeth. He sucked them, audibly, as we walked. I wondered if he’d begun working here as a healthy person and then slowly absorbed the aura of madness and death surrounding him. I wondered what I was absorbing in my line of work. The patient I’d heard howling from the other side of the door fell silent when he saw us. He was rose-cheeked and sweating. He looked exhausted.

  ‘Is he all right?’ I asked the nurse.

  ‘Ignore him, he’s due for the deep six any day now.’

  I stopped walking. ‘I think I’ll be all right on my own from here.’

  ‘Great,’ he said. He gave me a smile I could see through, turned on his heel and headed out of the ward. He paused by the door to exchange a few vicious words with the terrified patient and then left. I took a seat next to Ali, whose eyes were closed. He was a large man. His forearms, which rested on top of the bed sheet, were the size of my calves. It must have taken some blow to the head to put him under. He heard me sitting down and opened his eyes.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Nasser. How are you feeling?’

  He held out his hands as if to say, take a look.

  ‘Did the doctor explain what happened?’ His dark eyes moved on mine. ‘You’re in hospital. You were assaulted last night …’ He put a hand to his head and nodded. ‘I’m Detective Constable Aidan Waits. I was called to the Palace Hotel because something triggered the alarm.’

  He spoke with a clean, considered Middle Eastern accent. ‘You are the man who found me?’

  I nodded. ‘In the third-floor corridor. Do you know how you came to be up there?’

  He frowned, concentrating on the memory. ‘I heard voices.’

  ‘What kinds of voices?’

  ‘Men.’ He hesitated. ‘Shouting.’ He thought for a second more and then corrected himself. ‘Screaming.’

  ‘Do you know how many voices?’

  ‘I think two?’ He shook his head. ‘It sounded like an argument, a fight.’

  ‘And what were they saying?’

  He strained. ‘I … could not tell …’

  ‘Do you have any idea what time this was?’

  ‘Before midnight, certainly. Or I would have already been on patrol.’

  ‘So you heard the voices from the lobby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that led you through to the stairwell?’

  ‘Yes, I followed the voices.’ He smiled, self-deprecatingly. ‘Old fool.’

  ‘You were only doing your job.’

  ‘Was anything taken?’ he said, trying to sit up.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a little more serious than that. We found a body on the fourth floor.’

  ‘I don’t understand …’

  ‘We’re treating the death as suspicious.’ I watched the news sink in, like a drop of ink in water.

  ‘Who …?’

  ‘We haven’t identified the body yet, but I have to ask, have you ever let any other people into the building?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘No one at all?’

  He thought about it. ‘Workmen, months ago for repairs. Mr Blick occasionally for inspections …’

  ‘Mr Blick’s an owner?’

  ‘Solicitor,’ he said. ‘Mr Blick is the man who hired me.’ He was proud of the fact.

  ‘I see, does he work with Ms Khan?’

  ‘I believe he’s her employer.’

  ‘When was Mr Blick last around?’

  ‘Months ago. He’s been unwell, I believe.’

  ‘OK. Did you see or hear anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary last night?’

  ‘Not until the voices.’

  ‘When I arrived I found a fire exit open on the fourth floor …’

  He frowned. ‘I didn’t open any fire exits.’

  The statement felt like a dead end so I changed direction. ‘Can I ask how you came to be working at the Palace?’

  He gave a cynical snort. ‘How I came to be in this country?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I am here one year, from Syria.’

  ‘You sought asylum?’

  ‘The devil is real there.’ He looked down at the bed, his face clouded by thoughts I couldn’t guess at. ‘Yes, I sought asylum.’

  ‘How did you find it?’ He looked up at me. ‘The process, I mean.’

  ‘It’s difficult. Like …’ He searched for the word. ‘Humiliation. Life in the detention centre is very bad. That’s why I found this security work. I can do the same job but with kindness. With a good heart.’ He shrugged. ‘But so far, I’m only a guard.’

  ‘What kind of work did you do in Syria?’

  He looked, almost wistfully, at our surroundings. ‘I was a doctor,’ he said. ‘Fifteen years.’

  ‘We’ve had some trouble locating your colleague, the day guard, Marcus. The description I have of him is neat, dark hair, tanned skin and blue eyes …’ I was actually describing the dead body. There seemed no point in alerting Ali to his colleague’s possible murder unless I had to, but he shook his head at the description.

  ‘Marcus is white, pale, no hair.’

  ‘Can you think where we might find him if he’s not at home?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not close friends.’

  ‘How do you get on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, before amending the statement. ‘I don’t know him well.’

  ‘Is he good at his job?’

  ‘When you meet Marcus, will you ask about me?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Very good at his job.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Marcus has a business mind, entrepreneurial spirit.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  He snorted. ‘You might find my meaning in the third-floor dustbins of the Palace.’ I waited for more but he didn’t expand on the statement. ‘I’m telling you more than I know, sir,’ he clarified. ‘I’m telling you a guess.’

  ‘OK. What about Marcus’s key card?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Can you think of any reason why we might find it in room 413, with the dead man?’

  He struggled. ‘None.’

  I looked at him for a moment. ‘Well, an officer will be along to take a full statement from you this morning. Until then, we’d like to leave someone on the door as well.’

  ‘Watched?’

  ‘It’s for your own protection,’ I said, standing to leave.

  ‘Why?’ he said, suddenly animated. ‘Why protect me now?’

  ‘You’re a witness to what looks like a serious crime.’

  ‘In Aleppo I saw everything. Then, when I sought asylum, no one asked. No one cared.’ He laughed, joylessly. ‘Here I see nothing, I am protected.’

  ‘Sometimes we know things that we think we don’t.’

  He snorted again. ‘And sometimes we don’t know things that we think we do. Old saying,’ he said. ‘Shit in, shit out.’

  ‘I think I’ve heard that one.’

  As I left the ward the agitated patient started screaming again. I saw the grey-toothed nurse pacing down the corridor towards him, relishing the thought of an argument. I half-turned to intervene.

  ‘Is he fighting with the patients again?’ said a woman who I took to be a doctor.

  I nodded. ‘I think a guy in there might have given him a long night …’

  ‘Well, that’s the job,’ she said, recognizing a fellow night owl in me. This happened more often than you’d think. We marked out the pale skin, the tired eyes in each other. ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  When I stepped outside, the heat was like a wall. I was thinking about Ali’s experience, our talent for dehumanizing each other, when a large black BMW pulled up in front of me. I tried to walk around it, but the driver nudged forwards, blocking my path. The glass was tinted and I saw my own, troubled refl
ection before the rear window buzzed down. It revealed a familiar face, staring out at me.

  ‘Aidan Waits,’ said the man, in a low, Scottish growl. ‘As I live and breathe …’

  He looked like a grey-haired Lucifer, and I wasn’t convinced he did either of those things.

  ‘Parrs.’

  ‘Put some respect on my name, son.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Superintendent.’

  He looked at me. His raw, exit-wound eyes. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ I said.

  ‘Correct answer. Get in.’

  3

  Climbing out of the daylight and into the cool darkness of the BMW, I felt like I was stepping out of life itself. Being enveloped by something larger than me. I sat beside Parrs on the enormous back seat, leaving just enough space between us for a man to lie down and die. In my peripheral vision I could see his grey hair, grey clothes. The driver started up and I stared straight ahead, waiting.

  With Superintendent Parrs you were always waiting.

  He was a wiry, fatalistic spider of a man who played chess with the people around him. He was a strategist and a people user, as likely to ruin your life as to save it. He’d done both of those things with mine, before dispatching me, permanently, to the night shift. To what he must have assumed was my death or resignation. I knew that in living, in refusing to leave, I must have surprised him. And that surprising Parrs was the worst thing you could do. By not going one way or the other, I’d denied him an outcome that must have seemed inevitable. I knew that to Parrs, a man who operated several months, several moves ahead, my survival could only be interpreted as a betrayal.

  The driver pulled out of the car park and smoothly into traffic.

  The engine was so quiet that I could hear myself breathing, thinking. Waiting.

  Parrs still didn’t speak, and I was grateful not to be looking at him. Those unreadable red eyes, embedded in grey skin. All I could see were his hands. Long, thin fingers and knotted, blue-grey veins. He clenched and unclenched them, then he leaned forward and sighed.

  ‘Seat belt,’ he said. I risked a sideways glance. He was staring out the window, his face doing the approximation of a smile. ‘We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.’ I pulled the seat belt around me and he went on. ‘There’s a lot hanging over your head, Aidan. Not many men in your position would have made it through the last few months.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘It wasn’t a compliment, and try not to speak again unless I ask you a question.’ I swallowed, lowered my head. ‘You seem to have been learning to keep your mouth shut, though. Reports have even reached my ears that you’re making a go of things with Detective Inspector Sutcliffe …’ He paused. ‘How are you getting along with the Elephant Man’s ball-sack?’

  ‘Famously.’

  He exhaled through his nose. ‘Don’t be glib with me. I asked you a question.’

  ‘We weren’t put together to get along, sir.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I accused him of planting evidence and he offered to testify against me when I was suspended.’

  ‘And you’ve decided to hold a grudge …’

  ‘I’ve decided to remember it.’

  We drove on for a minute before Parrs spoke again. ‘It’s water under the bridge, son.’ With some dead bodies under the water, I thought. He looked at me suddenly, like he could hear what I was thinking.

  I looked back.

  He had a hard, gaunt guillotine for a jaw, which he clenched and flexed before he spoke. ‘Don’t sit there mean-mugging me. When I wipe the look off your face I’ll take the fucking skin with it. Remember that every day you draw breath and a salary is borrowed time, donated directly out of the goodness of my heart.’

  I turned, stared straight ahead again and nodded. ‘Can I ask why you wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘Quite the opposite. I thought it might be beneficial for you to see me. You’ve been testing your eyesight again, Aidan. Trying to see around corners.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘You had an interesting night. Tell me about it.’

  I swallowed. ‘At 1 a.m., Detective Inspector Sutcliffe and I were called out to the Palace Hotel. The intruder alarm had been tripped and the security guard was missing. When we searched the premises we found the guard unconscious. He’d been assaulted. A blow to the head from a fire extinguisher. As I was tending to him I saw an intruder fleeing the scene. I pursued the intruder to the fourth floor but they were able to escape through a fire exit. When I retraced my steps along the corridor I found that one of the rooms was open. Making a search of that room I found the dead man.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He had no identification on his person. No labels in his clothes.’

  ‘And the Palace is shut down …’ he mused. ‘Vagrant?’

  ‘No, sir. Smartly dressed.’

  ‘What do you think?’ said Parrs, sounding vaguely interested.

  ‘The guard regained consciousness this morning. He says he heard an argument, two voices. I think there were two intruders and, for whatever reason, one of them killed the other.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Too early to say.’

  ‘Could be natural. Could be suicide …’ He said it like the lesser of two evils.

  ‘It’s possible, but even so, his presence is unexplained. And then there’s the second intruder. I definitely saw someone else.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Parrs.

  ‘We’re currently trying to locate the other security guard as well, the day man, Marcus Collier.’

  ‘He could well be your second intruder,’ said Parrs. I nodded. ‘So what about the owners?’

  ‘They’re trying to get rid of the place. Last night we dealt with a solicitor handling the sale.’

  Parrs thought for a moment. ‘Talk to them anyway. If our dead man has some connection with the Palace he might be on their radar. And let’s leave Detective Inspector Sutcliffe out of that line of enquiry for the moment.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, sir.’

  ‘I’m not sure I care. Sutty has a certain talent for taking a room’s temperature, but only by sticking a thermometer up its arse. Might not go down so well with old money. Speaking of rectal temperature, do we have the time of death?’

  ‘Around midnight.’

  ‘I take it you’re liaising with the day shift?’

  ‘I’m assisting DS Lattimer with his enquiries, sir.’

  He snorted at that. ‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself a case. It’s fascinating stuff, but when I asked about your interesting night I was referring to your altercation with a Mr Oliver Cartwright.’

  I looked at him, confused. Those unreadable red eyes.

  ‘I’d hardly call it an altercation …’

  ‘What would you call it?’

  ‘A conversation.’

  ‘A conversation taking place after midnight. Some flight of fancy from a teenage girl …’

  ‘Cartwright had spent a night with her—’

  ‘Consensually, go on.’

  ‘He filmed the encounter. He suggested it might leak out on to the internet unless she went back for more.’

  ‘And you don’t think she’s being dramatic?’ I started to speak but he cut in. ‘A re-run of your little problem from last year?’

  ‘What are you asking me, sir?’

  ‘I’m wondering if there’s a more innocent explanation for all of this …’

  I paused for a moment. Thought about it. When the silence became excruciating I said: ‘No, there isn’t. I saw the message myself.’

  ‘Has the girl made an official complaint?’

  ‘It’s sensitive. She doesn’t want to make trouble. I thought I’d give Cartwright the same courtesy. A word in his ear rather than his name in the papers.’

  ‘Unless the girl makes an official complaint, it’s none of our concern.’

  ‘You know she won’t do that.’

&n
bsp; ‘Case fucking closed, then.’

  ‘I take it that Oliver Cartwright’s someone important.’

  Parrs turned. ‘I don’t think I like what I’m hearing, son.’

  ‘I don’t like saying it, sir.’

  He exhaled through his nose. ‘Mr Cartwright is a media figure who deserves better than my worst man dragging him out of bed at gone midnight. Candidly, though, you’ll find his name in the address book of every ambitious riser in town, including Chief Superintendent Chase. So I repeat, unless the girl makes an official complaint, it’s none of our concern.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Still,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Sounds like you’ll have your work cut out for you anyway. Have you got anyone for those dustbin fires yet?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, I’ve every faith. And of course you’ll be galloping sideways trying to crack open this smiling man case.’

  ‘How did you know he was smiling, sir?’

  ‘Well spotted,’ he said. ‘I knew you weren’t totally useless. Unfortunately, the pathologist disagrees.’

  ‘Karen Stromer.’

  ‘Aye, had her talking me off on the phone this morning. What a drugs risk and liability you are.’ He grinned. ‘Pushing all my buttons.’

  ‘She wants me taken off the case.’

  ‘She wants you taken off the planet, son.’

  ‘Can I ask what you told her, sir?’

  ‘I said I sympathized. Really, I did, but that you and Sutty are like one of those fancy dress donkey costumes that two people need to wear. If I get rid of you I’ll just have a big, fat arse running round the stage.’ It was almost a compliment. ‘So no fuck-ups this time. And if you could close it without swallowing the city’s entire speed supply, we’d all be grateful.’ He grinned again. ‘Leave some for the rest of us, eh?’

  4

  Parrs had me dropped back at the hospital, exactly where I’d been picked up. The sun still hadn’t moved in the sky and this, combined with my having nowhere pressing to be, made it seem as though I’d imagined the whole thing. It was one of the Superintendent’s great talents. He was a man who casually snuffed out dreams and made nightmares come true, often without seeming interested one way or the other. Our conversation this morning had felt like life or death. Now, a few minutes later, it was as though it had never happened.