by Tim Adler
The man on reception asked if he could help. Kate told him she needed to see the manager. The receptionist leaned forward: "Might I ask what this is about?" She fingered the iPhone in her pocket. "Just tell him it's personal," she said. He nodded and told her to wait.
Whoever had styled the interior had done a good job. Painfully modern furniture had replaced the sagging chintz and horse prints of the previous hotel. Watching guests check in, Kate wondered why Paul had chosen this place. It wasn't like him at all. An image of him sprawled on the pavement, his arms and legs at right angles, was seared in her memory, and it was going to stay with her forever. She looked up at the approaching sound of heels. It was the desk receptionist. Would she come this way? The manager was ready to see her now.
They went upstairs in a lift that didn't seem to be moving.
A menu signed by the Duke of Windsor was framed on the hotel manager's wall. Kate was thinking about how bland the prewar menu sounded when the manager himself came in. "Christian De Schutter," he said, offering her a chair. She sat down opposite him.
"How may I help you?"
"I know this sounds strange, but somebody texted my husband this photo. I believe it was taken in your hotel."
She handed her phone across and De Schutter studied it. He became serious. "How did you get hold of this?"
"I told you. Somebody texted it to my husband. I don't know who."
"You don't know who sent you this photograph?"
Kate shook her head.
"How do you know the photo was taken in this hotel? Do you know the people in the photograph?"
"I design hotel interiors for a living. I recognised the carpet." Kate leaned forward. "Look, I don't want to cause you any trouble, but I need to find this woman. Do you have any idea who she is?"
De Schutter smiled unhappily. "Would you excuse me for a moment?" He picked up his telephone and pressed a number on speed dial. "Hello? Myra, there's somebody I need you to meet. Could you come to my office, please?"
They sat in silence, waiting for whoever this Myra was to arrive. Eventually, for the sake of saying something, Kate remarked: "The man in the photograph is my husband."
De Schutter did a double-take, something she'd only seen people do on television. "Did the police send you here?"
"The police? Why, what have the police got to do with it?"
"Your husband is the man in the photograph?"
A large, tough-looking woman came into the room holding a walkie-talkie. She was wearing a black trouser suit and her blonde hair was swept back behind her ears, where Kate noticed a fine, almost transparent loop. The hotel's head of security, she supposed.
The hotel manager seemed flustered. "Myra, this woman–"
"Mrs Julia. Kate Julia."
"–has identified the man on the CCTV footage. She says it's her husband." The police were looking for Paul? The manager passed Kate's phone to his security chief. The woman studied her phone and looked up at Kate with no emotion whatsoever. Her lack of expression was unnerving.
"Please, could you tell me what's going on?"
"Mrs Julia, you really have no idea who sent you this?"
Kate shook her head.
"Where is your husband now?"
The widow looked down at her hands in her lap. "My husband killed himself four days ago. He received this text message and then he committed suicide."
The hotel manager and his head of security exchanged a look. "Mrs Julia, I am sorry for your loss."
That bloody expression again. "You haven't answered my question."
He cleared his throat. "Like any big hotel, we have a lot of international visitors. We can't control what they do. Sometimes they use, um, services–"
Her husband was seeing a prostitute?
"To be honest, it's very unusual. You go to Russia or some of these places and it's everywhere," the security chief interrupted.
De Schutter looked as if beads of perspiration were about to pop out on his forehead. "There's nothing we can do to stop them. I don't quite know how to tell you this, but your husband visited this hotel with one of these women. This time last week."
The security chief looked at Kate shrewdly. "What was unusual was that this escort booked the room in her own name. Tran An Na. Usually her customers were guests here."
Kate gripped the floor with her toes, determined to hang on. First his betrayal, and now this. Inside, she was reeling. "How do you know my husband was with this–" She couldn't bring herself to say the word. "–woman?"
"We have CCTV throughout the hotel."
Kate blinked hard to stop herself from crying. She felt as if she had been punched in the face. "You're telling me that my husband visited this hotel with a prostitute? You must have video footage. The video this frame was taken from. Please. I need to see it."
The security chief said, "I'm sorry. We have data-protection rules–"
"I'm sure we can make an exception in this case," the manager interrupted. The security chief nodded. "In that case, would you come this way, please?"
The hotel manager tried to do his best to look gracious, extending his arm to indicate the way out.
The security centre was a couple of doors down from the manager's office, at the back of the hotel. Fifteen or so colour monitors showed the hotel from different angles, switching between empty stairwells and reception to bedroom corridors. They grouped around a security guard's chair as they watched the recordings.
"We've got around two hundred cameras in the hotel," the Myra woman said. "What's unusual is that this man keeps his hood up and his head down. He knows he's being watched." Her voice softened. "If this man is your husband, of course–"
Kate turned to her. "There's no doubt about it. It is my husband." They watched Paul and the Asian woman walking towards and then away from the camera. "I don't understand why he was so careful about being spotted in a hotel corridor yet allowed himself to be seen in the lobby."
You're a cool customer, you could see the security chief thinking. "He probably didn't realise he was being filmed. Security cameras are hidden inside wall sconces in the lobby. One of the waitresses remembers them arguing. Then they went upstairs."
"You need to tell all this to the police," the manager said. "Tell them everything you know."
"You said this kind of thing, people using the hotel, happens all the time."
"To be honest, I've rarely encountered it," said the security chief. "It only becomes an issue when it becomes an issue, if you know what I mean. A guest complains that a woman accosted him in the bar. Or a man refuses to pay when he's done."
"Who had access to this footage?" Kate asked.
"Just my security department. Nobody else is allowed in here usually. The police, of course. They have a copy of what we've just shown you."
The manager placed his hand gently on Kate's shoulder. "Mrs Julia. There's something else you should know. This prostitute was found dead. She had overdosed on pills. Your husband had left the room an hour earlier."
Kate felt herself going into shock.
First, her husband was having an affair, and then it turned out he was seeing prostitutes. And now he was wanted for questioning over somebody else's suicide.
"I need to sit down," Kate said.
"Would you like a glass of water?" the manager asked.
"We did an audit of the lock," the security chief continued. "Nobody else entered the room between the two of them going in and your husband coming out."
Kate could picture the scene. First, the hesitant knocking becoming more insistent. Then the chambermaid getting her pass card out and opening the door. Dust motes hanging in the air in-between a gap in the curtains. A body still in bed with an arm dangling towards the floor. The chambermaid approaching, asking if everything was all right, noticing a cairn of pills beside a tipped-over bottle on the bedside table.
"Do the police have any idea why she killed herself?" Kate asked numbly.
"The problem is timin
g," the security chief began, before the manager cut her off with a little shake of his head.
The hotel manager telephoned the police from his office, handing the phone over to Kate.
"DI Sumner. How can I help you?"
"My name is Kate Julia. You don't know me. I need to come and see you. I have information about the man you're looking for – the man in the Savile Hotel."
"Which man are you referring to?"
"I'm standing in the manager's office. He told me to ring you. The man's name is Paul Julia. He's my husband," she said, before correcting herself. "I mean, he was."
"You mean, he's your ex-husband?" The man's voice was warmly northern.
"No. He's dead. He died four days ago."
There was rustling as the detective covered the phone and said something. "Can you come to Belgravia police station? We need to speak to you. I can send a car."
"Yes. I'll be here."
The manager made a gesture asking if they could send a car to the back of the hotel. Kate put the phone down. A police car would be there in ten minutes, she told them.
Another police station. The same plastic bucket seats. So her husband had not just betrayed her, he'd committed adultery with a prostitute as well. Kate's skin crawled. It was almost as if he was enjoying humiliating her from beyond the grave; all she had ever shown him was love, and this was how he had repaid her.
A perky-looking policewoman showed Kate into the interview room and asked if she wanted a cup of tea. Kate shook her head. Walking around the bare room, she touched the chunky black recorder on the table. The interview room was something she'd seen so often on television, and it felt strange actually being in here. A plastic strip ran along all four walls: an alarm, probably. When she tried moving a chair it wouldn't budge. To stop suspects throwing them around, she supposed.
Detective Inspector Sumner came into the room. He was a thickset man with an owlish face and staring, rather protuberant eyes. She also noticed how tired he looked. The DI pulled out a chair and placed a manila folder on the table. When he spoke, his tone was concerned.
"Thank you for coming to see me, Mrs Julia. I appreciate it. My name is DI Sumner, and I am leading this investigation."
Every time you came into contact with somebody official, you had to start all over again, Kate thought. She went through her story one more time.
"How do you know your husband even visited the Savile Hotel?" Sumner sounded mildly sceptical.
"Somebody texted my husband a photo showing him and this woman together. Before you ask, I don't know who sent it."
"Why would somebody do that?"
Kate shook her head. "At first, I thought it might be the woman's husband or boyfriend."
"Do you have the phone? May I see it?"
The widow handed the phone across, and the detective inspector studied it. "Who else has seen this photo?"
"Nobody apart from you and the hotel manager. Oh, and the police in Albania."
"Albania? What's Albania got to do with it?" Sumner looked surprised.
"We were in Albania when the message was sent. My husband killed himself within moments of receiving this photo. He jumped off our hotel balcony."
"He did what?"
Even as she said this, she realised how absurd it sounded. "My husband committed suicide last Friday. I think he knew he was about to be found out."
"Your husband killed himself because he was having an affair? People have affairs all the time."
"It's the only explanation I can think of."
"Are you willing to put all this in a statement?"
Kate nodded.
"There's something else you need to know. My downstairs neighbour saw Paul jump. But he says Paul jumped from the balcony below ours, not the top floor."
"Pardon?" Kate could sense she was losing him. Sumner tapped his pen on the table.
"You have to believe me. That's what happened."
"So you're saying that although you saw your husband jump from your hotel balcony, an eyewitness says he fell from the floor below? What do the Albanian police say?"
"The investigation is over as far as they are concerned."
Sumner looked surprised. "So soon? How can they be so certain?"
"I did something stupid and had Paul cremated. I was too hasty. His family wanted him buried in Tirana. It's a Muslim country, so they want you in the ground as quickly as possible."
"…And once that happened they lost interest," Sumner said, finishing her sentence for her.
Kate looked boldly up at the inspector. "There are so many things about his death that don't make sense. Will you help me?"
"Help you how? We can't do a post-mortem. In any case, it would only tell you what you already know. I'm sorry to be so blunt."
Kate folded her arms. "I see. So you won't do anything."
"It's not that I don't want to help you, but how?"
Kate was about to reply when the fire alarm went off. They both sat there, waiting for the noise to stop, and the DI mouthed that it was just a practice. After a moment, they both realised that this was no fire drill. Sumner stood up and said he would find out what was going on.
He had left his closed folder on the table.
Kate sat there with the alarm fibrillating her eardrums until curiosity got the better of her. If she was quick, the detective would never know. She pulled the file towards her with one finger, opened it and started reading. The first part of the report consisted of an officer's notes, describing how he had found the prostitute's body. There was lots of detail about how it was positioned and that sleeping pills were found on the carpet. Her eyes drank in as much as she could. A section at the end of the report gave more background detail. Kate slowed down. The alarm shut off but still she couldn't stop reading. Her heart was racing: the detective could return at any minute.
"…Tran An Na, 18, was a known prostitute working the West End hotels mostly through escort services. Her online profile was widely available through a variety of aliases. During the day she worked as a beautician at E-Z American Nails, 147 Streatham High Road, in south London. E-Z American Nails has been under surveillance as a front for a brothel on its upper floors. Vietnamese sex workers are smuggled–"
She pushed the folder away quickly as the detective inspector re-entered. Kate must have looked guilty as hell.
"False alarm after all," the DI said, glancing down at the table.
"I'm ready to give you my statement."
"Before we get started, there's something I need to know. There's no easy way to ask you this. Did your husband often, um, see other women?"
Kate felt affronted – how dare he ask me that? – and then realised that the man was only doing his job. "You have to understand, this is all new to me. Until last week I thought we had the perfect marriage. Friends told me they used to measure their happiness against ours. Now I find out that I never really knew the man I was married to. Do any of us really know anybody else anyway?" She felt herself disintegrating again. "So the answer is no, to the best of my knowledge my husband didn't regularly visit prostitutes."
Sumner turned down the corners of his mouth. "There's something else you should know. We are treating this woman's death as suspicious."
"But the hotel said she took an overdose."
"That was before we got the results back from her post-mortem. In our experience, pregnant women don't kill themselves."
Chapter Seventeen
People were crushed up against each other in a fug of humanity. There was a nasty scraping sound in the Underground carriage as the lights stuttered. Looking at the people around her going to work, how Kate longed to be one of them – tapping away on her office keyboard and then popping out to Tesco for a sandwich at lunchtime. Instead, her life was unravelling before her. The police had asked for a strand of Paul's hair so they could test for DNA and confirm the baby was his. She felt sick to her stomach. This felt like a nightmare she wanted to wake up from but couldn't.
Their marriage had been so happy, and what had happened was so unexpected. Had their union really been so perfect, though? She replayed arguments they'd had in her head, searching for that tiny crack in the glass that would eventually spread and shatter everything.
Kate got off at Putney Bridge and trudged back to the flat she and Paul had once shared, thinking how everything in her life had changed. There was a Chinese saying that once everything was perfect in the garden, the wind would come and knock it down.
The moment she inserted her door key, she knew something was wrong.
Hello, she called as her front door swung open. There had been a disturbance. Bills were swept from the hall table onto the carpet. Bending down to pick them up, she glimpsed the chaos in the sitting room. Books had been pulled down from bookshelves and family photographs overturned, while the carpet was a sea of downy feathers. Someone had even slashed the curtains and sofa cushions. Fear pooled in her stomach. She had been burgled. Hello, Kate called out for a second time. What if somebody was still inside the flat, waiting for her to come home, about to attack? She froze, unable to move.
Panicking now, she crept into the bedroom and saw her clothes heaped on the floor, all her blouses and dresses screwed up. She felt utterly violated. Had they been watching her when she left this afternoon? Her mind strayed back to that creepy black van with the mirrored windows. She knew she had to leave in case anyone was still in the flat, yet she had to see the rest of the damage.
The kitchen was the worst. Jars and bottles had been pulled from the shelves, slicking the floor with oily glop. Broken glass was everywhere, and the whole place reeked. Tiptoeing around the mess, she could see how they had got in: the back-door window was smashed, enabling them to reach round and open the door from the inside. The kitchen door led onto the back stairs, originally used by servants and tradesmen, and she had been telling Paul for weeks that they needed better security. Only now did it occur to Kate what was missing. Her laptop. Sure enough, when she went back into the sitting room, there were a couple of cables on the desk where her computer had been. Shit. Everything had been on it, all her work and personal stuff, photos, hundreds of pictures of Paul and her together. Her entire digital memory. No, wait, everything had been saved on the external hard drive. Going round the side of the desk, she saw that it had been stolen as well.