‘This is going to seem a little irregular...’ I said.
The word cut him like I’d said something dirty. To Gerald, “irregular” was something that stayed outside the revolving doors, like a dog turd on the pavement. He threw me a frown but restrained himself with the realisation that whatever I was after, he was going to get the opportunity to trash me.
‘I’m here in confidence,’ I explained, ‘on behalf of a lady.’
I looked into Gerald’s eyes. His face remained polite but the expression was one of someone expecting me to vomit over his desk as he let the rope play out.
‘The lady believes that her husband has visited the Royal Trafalgar under circumstances that were...’ I searched for the word: ‘…unsalubrious.’
I had a feeling it should have been “insalubrious”. So did Gerald, but he wasn’t sure. And grammar wasn’t the point. He was going to dish me whether I could speak English or not. I paused, worked the word in again for effect. ‘The lady believes that her husband may have visited this hotel for entirely unsalubrious purposes. She believes, in short, that he may have been unfaithful to her.’
Gerald’s face gave nothing. He was calculating the best moment to come in. He knew I was bowling him a spinner and he knew he was going to smack the ball for six. The main thing was not to swing early. His face was a mask of patience.
‘I’m looking for some help,’ I told him. ‘My client assumes that the Royal Trafalgar will have records of past reservations...’ I let the thought hang between us.
Gerald let it dangle right there. The only sign he was listening was the glitter of the foyer spots in his spectacles.
‘The lady,’ I whispered, ‘would be deeply obliged to the Royal Trafalgar if it was possible to make a discreet enquiry about certain reservations in the last few months.’
I gave Gerald my deeply obliged look. He gave me deeply patient. He still wanted more.
‘If necessary,’ I said, ‘my client would be happy to come to an arrangement to secure the information.’
Finally we had it. The spinner was angling towards Gerald’s raised bat. Now that I’d soiled myself with straight bribery he was ready. Gerald leaned forward so I wouldn’t miss anything.
‘Sir,’ he whispered, ‘I don’t know what kind of establishment you take us for, but the Royal Trafalgar is not in the habit of divulging client information. If you’d like to leave your name and details,’ – he was in agony, trying to keep his face straight – ‘I’ll pass your enquiry to the manager. Together,’ he said, ‘with your offer of a financial arrangement.’
I held up my hand. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘that won’t be necessary. My client was thinking more about a private agreement.’
Gerald looked blank.
‘She’s willing to pay you,’ I clarified.
Gerald smiled in the way of the devout when someone farts in the front pew.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘if you tried the Metropole. The lady’s husband may have stayed there. It sounds more his kind of establishment. They’ll be pleased to help, I’m sure. The Royal Trafalgar is not that kind of establishment however, Mr…?’
‘Marble,’ I told him. ‘Private investigator.’
Gerald’s smile reverted to smug.
‘Mr Marble,’ he said, ‘may I ask you to step away from the desk?’
He looked for the concierge and raised his hand to bring the guy over. I shifted myself quick to block the view.
‘Wait,’ I said.
He looked at me. I pulled an envelope from my jacket and opened it on the desk. Made a fan of the notes inside.
‘Five hundred,’ I whispered. ‘This is yours for absolutely nothing.’ I turned and nodded towards the bistro. ‘I’ll be waiting over there. Give me just two minutes of your time when you take a break, and you walk away with this envelope, no strings attached. You can throw me out on my backside and the cash is still yours. With my client’s compliments.’
If I was expecting a shout of joy I was disappointed. The expression on Gerald’s face had more pucker than a chimp chewing lemons. His contempt had racked up to the sublime at the sight of the dirties themselves. But I recognised something behind the look. The surprise of a fish caught on the hook. For a moment Gerald was lost for words. I slipped the envelope back into my jacket and went to order another coffee. I took a table in the back this time, well under the stairs.
I was sipping the dregs when Gerald slipped into the seat across from me. He tried to combine businesslike with stealth, the act of a schoolboy with his hand in the treacle tin. He gave me a spiteful look as down payment for when this thing blew up in his face. To his credit, he remained cool when I slipped the envelope across the table.
‘My client’s compliments,’ I said. He didn’t pick it up. He knew something was off. I nodded encouragement. ‘Five hundred,’ I said. ‘It’s all there.’
He worked a sneer onto his face while he waited for the flipside. Now it was my turn to stay poker-faced. Gerald broke first.
‘What’s the catch?’ he said.
‘None,’ I said. ‘The money’s yours.’
That’s when he realised what the catch was: more money. I saw the cogs turn. Switched back to Sly Uncle.
‘If you help me, there’s plenty more of those,’ I promised.
‘What kind of help?’
I held my grin. Somewhere between the reception desk and our cosy table we’d lost the Royal Trafalgar’s high ideals. Gerald knew exactly what kind of help I wanted.
I slid a piece of notepaper across the table with Slater’s name on it. ‘I’ve listed the dates this guy stayed here. I want them confirmed plus any other dates in the last year when he registered. There’s another five hundred if you get me that information.’
‘That’s not so easy,’ Gerald said. ‘Searching the invoices takes time.’ But I knew he was just playing for more.
‘I’ll give you thirty minutes,’ I said. ‘I’ll come to the desk. I want a paper copy. It’s worth five hundred quid.’
I watched him doing the sums. My guess was that five hundred was a couple of week’s net take-home. He gave the matter five seconds’ sour consideration for the sake of self-respect then snatched up the envelope and the notepaper and headed back to the desk with as much dignity as he could muster whilst trying not to sprint.
I picked up a copy of the Observer and killed time until the waiter came and fingered my second saucer in a subtle hint to hand over more dosh. Places like this they don’t do refills. At this rate it was going to be a contest between Gerald and the bistro to get my money.
Spending Gina’s money like small change was a gamble. There was a risk that Larry Slater’s trip here was innocent. Or at least unrelated to the missing girl. But I was going with the odds. Slater’s Amex statement seemed to have put him here with Tina in March. Her friend Sammy remembered Tina being here the previous October also. The odds were that Slater and the girl were here a few times. If my hunch panned out I’d have not only a clearer picture of what was going on between them but also some interesting evidence to wave under Slater’s nose next time I visited him. Time was running on. I needed Slater to let me in on what was happening with his step-daughter, and I figured that nothing would lubricate Larry’s vocal chords like a little blackmail.
Gerald was in the back office for twenty minutes. When he came out I wandered across to the desk.
This time we didn’t need words. Just a fake smile and three sheets of paper pushed across the desk. It could have been any old guest checking his bill. I scanned the sheets. Standard database prints of three invoices showing the guest’s charge details. Something was off though: the two March dates from Slater’s Amex were there, plus another one in January, but nothing for the previous October when Tina’s friend remembered her staying here. I raised my eyebrows.
‘That’s it,’ Gerald said
. ‘The last twelve months.’
So what happened to October?
I slid Gerald’s extra five hundred across the desk.
The missing October date puzzled me. That one should have been a cert. Was Tina Brown here with another client? Maybe she’d been so impressed with the place that she’d talked Slater into bringing her back. But without a record of Slater at the hotel in October I had no concrete evidence that he was ever here with Tina. All I had were his calls to her number in March. An interesting coincidence but still circumstantial. I’d needed the October date to tie the two positively. Without that, turning up the heat on Slater might be tricky.
Then something caught my eye. Gerald’s paperwork said that Slater’s first visit – the January one – was charged to someone called Alpha Security. The room was prepaid, with follow-up bar charges of two hundred and eighty-seven pounds, also settled by Alpha Security. More interestingly, the January booking was for three nights but Slater’s name was registered for only the second. I pushed the paper back across the desk.
‘What do you make of this?’
Gerald took a discreet glance. Discretion was the thing of the moment. His voice stayed low.
‘Mr Slater appears to have stayed a single night,’ he told me. ‘The suite was reserved for three.’
Slater throwing money away? Or Alpha Security?
I scribbled the Alpha Security name on another piece of notepaper and pushed it across the desk.
‘I need all reservations or payments under this name,’ I said.
Gerald was about to give me the no-no but my words stopped him.
‘Two hundred for each date you find.’
I promised to return in thirty minutes and wandered back to read my Observer. This time I resisted the coffee: the two-hundred-per-booking deal with Gerald might be affordable but more coffees were not. And if Alpha Security had a regular thing going at the Royal Trafalgar I’d be bankrupted when I went back to the desk. I wouldn’t actually be bankrupt, of course. My remaining cash only ran to five hundred, which limited my exposure. If Gerald turned up more than two bookings he was going to get shafted. But what’s corruption without occasional setbacks? What could Gerald do? Call the Fraud Squad?
After ten minutes he reappeared at his place, trying not to be obvious as he scanned the lobby for me. I dropped the newspaper and ambled back over. More discretion and paper pushing. He had two Alpha Security bookings for me. I folded four hundred into another envelope. A professional conjurer couldn’t have slid the envelope out of my fingers with greater skill than Gerald.
I took a quick look at what he’d given me. Two more Alpha Security bookings. Each for three nights in the Royal Trafalgar’s outrageously expensive Millennium Suite.
One booking was in June. The other was October, the date Tina’s friend Sammy had given me. Bingo! Alpha Security, whoever they were, were linked to Tina.
On both occasions Alpha had a guest checking in for the middle night. Neither was Slater. The October guest was someone named John McCabe with an address in Wimbledon. The June man was a David Hanlon. Address in Chevening, Surrey.
I wondered how far back this pattern went. I scribbled again. Pushed a note over the desk saying Alpha Security. Last five years???? £200 each. Gerald’s expression was a combination of fear and boggle-eyed greed. There might be dozens of these bookings. He looked to see if I was serious. Were my pockets stuffed with cash? They weren’t, but Gerald didn’t know it. I left him hurdling towards the admin office and went back to my bistro. Adrenaline fired me to order one more coffee, and Gerald’s last hundred took another hit.
Gerald came out fifteen minutes later but he was interrupted by the necessity of dealing with an arriving guest. I stayed seated and watched the fastest checking-in since Anne Boleyn arrived at the Tower. Gerald had the guy through in sixty seconds flat.
Then I wandered across, leaned on the desk. Gerald looked up at me with the expression of a rottweiler whose sausages have been snatched. A single shake of the head. Alpha Security had nothing prior to the reservation last June. It was lucky, in a way. The sausage string wasn’t as long as the rottweiler had thought.
I touched my forelock in a manner I judged way out of line with Royal Trafalgar behaviour and headed for the door.
The coffee had been expensive but I’d got something that was going to jump-start this case.
I just had to figure what it meant.
CHAPTER twenty-four
‘About time!’
Mitch watched the guy come down the steps. He’d been sitting in the Warrior for two hours and his arse was aching. They had a real fast mover here.
As the guy reached his Tonka, Roker came out of the hotel behind him. Mitch had the engine running before he was halfway over.
‘Go.’
They got out onto Kingsway fifty yards behind the Tonka and followed it back to the pier. Mitch concentrated on keeping it in sight as it crossed the roundabout. ‘Thought you’d checked in for the night,’ he said. ‘How much longer are we tailing this joker?’
Roker kept his eyes on the quarry. ‘As long as it takes,’ he said.
Mitch said nothing but his belly was talking. They’d been on the guy since eight thirty this morning and they might still have all afternoon to run. Apart from the Pringles Mitch had gone without. The guy had probably eaten in the hotel. Roker too. Mitch was almost minded to ask. Snarled at the road instead as the quarry headed north, back out of town.
‘Did he meet someone?’ Mitch asked.
‘He talked to a receptionist,’ Roker confirmed. ‘Greasy little guy. Had him running errands.’
‘He get anything?’
Roker watched the tail showing intermittently up ahead. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Two hours tête-à-tête with Grease Jockey tells me he got something.’
‘Did he spot you?’ Mitch said.
‘Jesus,’ Roker said. ‘Watch the road. Don’t let the bastard lose us.’
The moves the guy was making had sandpapered Roker’s nerves. They were looking at a leak. And leaks tended to grow. First a little drip. Next thing you’re swimming. This they didn’t need. Whatever the guy was up to, his digging around at the Royal Trafalgar did not smell good. Roker’s instinct said that they were going to have to do some plumbing.
Eddie Flynn. Private Investigator. Ex-cop. That was all Roker had but it was enough. The “ex-cop” in particular he didn’t like. It meant the guy was no amateur. Flynn had been putting something together back there at the Trafalgar.
The thing Roker couldn’t figure out was whom Flynn was working for. Roker held it all ways to the light but nothing came through. There was no one could have sent Flynn to Brighton. Unknowns scraped Roker’s nerves.
They stayed with the Tonka as it picked up the A23 north, then the M23. Heading back to town, Roker decided. The car held the inside lane, skipping between trucks from time to time. They passed Gatwick and it was beginning to look good until the Tonka turned east instead of west at the Orbital.
Mitch cursed noisily. The frigging mystery tour was still on.
They followed east on the M25 until the Tonka took the Sevenoaks slip road. Mitch kicked in the turbo and closed the distance with a brief sprint to a hundred and ten, braking late enough on the slip to have Roker hissing between his teeth. But they needed the speed. Mitch was barely in time to spot the quarry disappearing onto the A21 amongst the afternoon traffic. Mitch cut across a car and got out onto the road. Half a mile further on, the Tonka overtook an artic and was out of sight in front of it. Mitch changed down and pulled out to pass the truck just as Roker spotted the quarry swinging off onto the A25. He yelled out. Mitch killed the manoeuvre and swerved back behind the truck to get the Warrior onto the turnoff. Roker gripped the door handle and gritted his teeth again. The Warrior leaned on its springs and skidded round the curve. They picked the Tonka up, hea
ding west. Then the road narrowed and they hit traffic lights and the quarry turned just as the amber came on, four cars ahead of them. Mitch floored the pedal and passed the line of cars in time to skid through on red. The turn took them north, back over the M25 and on towards Chevening. In the middle of the village the Tonka pulled over and Mitch saw the guy ask directions. He held back then followed the car out into the country. A couple of minutes later the quarry slowed alongside an estate wall and turned into a driveway between brick gateposts. Mitch pulled up on the verge fifty yards back.
‘What’s the bastard doing now?’ he said.
Roker jabbed his thumb towards a track that ran off from the road behind them.
‘Pull us in,’ he said. ‘He may come back this way.’
Mitch backed the SUV twenty yards down the track and stopped against a five-bar gate. Roker jumped out and walked up the road to get a view. He found cover behind bushes thirty yards from the entrance. He was curious about where Flynn had gone, but if he walked right up to the gates there was a risk he’d not reach the Warrior in time when Flynn came back out.
Roker wondered what this place was. Had to be somewhere significant, judging by Flynn’s bee line from Brighton. The more Roker saw the less he liked. He sensed the leak expanding minute by minute.
The way things were shaping up, they were going to have to take action.
Soon.
CHAPTER twenty-five
I passed a stone gatehouse and followed the driveway as it curved between twelve-foot rhododendrons. An old guy was digging in the gatehouse garden but he didn’t glance up.
The Royal Trafalgar records gave David Hanlon’s address as Sedgeworth Rise. I’d anticipated a detached house with a pretentious nameplate back in the village but I doubted if this driveway was leading me to anywhere that depended on nameplates. Hanlon, whoever he was, was another wealthy party. He’d probably drunk all the coffees he wanted in Brighton. I followed the rhododendrons, knowing I wasn’t going to find a two-up-two-down.
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