by John Barlow
“She got violent. I didn’t want to say anything, because they’re good customers. In the end even they must have got sick of her. They left her in the room and went to celebrate somewhere else.”
“Freddy?”
“Him as well. It was then that she trashed the room. I had to call them. Back they come, take her out through the fire exit, and that’s the end of it. Poor girl.”
“And Freddy left with her, you say?”
“As I remember, he brought his car round the side, by the fire exit. Couldn’t be sure, though.” He taps the blank quarter of the TV monitor. “Camera outside’s not working. Some yobs smashed it the other day.”
“Those Ukrainians still around, are they?”
“I guess. I gave them another room temporarily. Haven’t seen them this morning, though.”
John is out of his chair, extending a hand, thanking Fuller.
“I expect I’ll be getting a visit from the police before long,” Fuller says as he too rises. “I’ll give them a ring, make their job a bit easier.”
Like hell you will.
The fire exit is across from the office, set back out of sight at the end of the corridor immediately after the room being cleaned.
“I’ll go this way,” John says, striding over to the doors and pushing them open before Fuller can stop him.
“They took her out through here?” he asks as both men step out into a sharp breeze. The side street, running down the side of the hotel, is empty apart from a silver BMW, nice and clean, not a mark on it.
“Yours?” John says.
Fuller nods. “I keep it here because of the security camera.”
“Which isn’t working…”
They look up at the little black cylinder bolted high on the wall at the corner of the building.
“Got to get that fixed,” says Fuller, before disappearing back inside the hotel and closing the fire doors behind him.
John gets his cigarettes out and casts a professional eye over the beemer in front of him.
Ten
He wanders up the side of the hotel. Stops. There’s no one about. He can hear the distant rumble of traffic from the York Road, but all he can see is rough, disused land, on it the brickwork stumps of demolished buildings overgrown with sun-yellowed grass. He remembers the adverts when the Eurolodge opened. It was cheaper than the budget chains. Now he knows why. Perfect for tractor sellers. But Freddy? What the hell is he doing up here at midnight with the Mondeo?
He calls the showroom.
“Connie? The security tapes? Did you get chance to…”
“He took the car Thursday as well,” she says. “Eight o’clock, back at eleven.”
“Just Thursday?”
“Yes.”
“Listen, things are not looking too good. I gotta find Freddy before the police do. Can you cope on your own? Close up and go home whenever you want.”
Next he rings Freddy, several times. Nothing.
If anything arises, DC Steele said. If anything arises, I’ll be your point of call. Well, Freddy was in here at midnight with the girl and he was driving the car she was found dead in the next morning. That’s arisen. He fishes in his jacket for Steele’s card. Then he lets it drop back into his pocket.
None of this feels right.
Fuck it.
Walking fast now. Round to the front of the hotel. In through the revolving doors again. No one on reception. The corridor behind, first room: PRIVATE.
He knocks. Pushes the door open. The skinny young guy in the heavy metal T-shirt is sitting in a battered swivel chair, still huddled over his mug of coffee. He doesn’t move a muscle when the door opens.
He’s sitting at a long desk, like a work bench, clean and ordered, not a trace of dust. It runs the length of the small narrow room, and serves as the control centre for the hotel’s decrepit security system. Two video monitors every bit as old as the one in Fuller’s office sit atop video recorders of similar vintage. One of them shows live images from the hotel’s three functioning cameras. Craig isn’t asleep, then. He’s just watched as John came back into the hotel. He was expecting him.
“Jeeze,” John says, looking at the video equipment, “this stuff’s older than mine. In the case of my gaff, I don’t give a shit. What’s Fuller’s excuse?”
“He’s talking about going digital.”
John looks around in vain for any sign of a computer.
“You’re trying to find Freddy, right?” says Craig, and takes a sip of coffee.
“Yes. Got any suggestions?”
“Still not heard from him?”
“Nope. Were you here last night, Craig, late on?”
He finally puts his coffee down.
“Me? Yeah, I was here til midnight.”
“Working?”
“I do evenings. I’m a student. IT.”
“Special area, or wouldn’t I understand?”
“Network management.”
John nods. “The guy to suck up to, in case everything suddenly stops working.”
Craig tries to laugh, but it sounds more like a sudden stab of pain that’s hit him in the throat.
“You do all the techie stuff here, do you?” John says, glancing at the blank panel on the video monitor, where images from the camera on the side street should be playing.
Craig scratches the crown of his head fiercely, then runs a hand down his neck where the scars of teenage acne have left the skin pitted and uneven.
“There’s no one else to do it.”
“Did you see Freddy last night?”
“Yep.” He reaches across to the second monitor and turns it on. “I can show you.”
The monitor flickers into life, the same quartered screen, one blank, the others showing the entrance, the ground floor corridor, and what John assumes to be the first floor corridor. The video is paused.
“You’ve been watching this, have you?”
“Yeah, I was having a look,” Craig says as he fiddles with the contrast, the image going impossibly dark then stabilising. “Y’know, after I heard.”
“Heard what?”
Craig pauses.
“That someone was looking for Freddy.”
He presses play.
Two tall men in suits appear at the far end of the corridor, coming out of Room Twelve and walking down towards the camera. The younger of them is grinning, shaking his head with amusement. The older is heavy-set, with thick dark eyebrows that push out, extending over his eyes.
“Ukrainians?” John asks.
“Yeah.”
The men disappear from shot, then reappear in the adjacent image, walking across the reception and out through the revolving doors. A minute passes. More.
“Wait,” says Craig, staring at the screen.
Freddy comes out of the same room. He looks petrified, his face misshapen with anguish so that you’d hardly recognise him. He hesitates, then makes his way slowly down the corridor, an overwhelming sadness in the movement of his body. He glances behind him then makes his way slowly out of the hotel.
“That’s it. End of the tape.”
The time on the video shows 11:48 p.m.
“And at this point Donna is still in the room?” John asks.
Craig nods, eyes glued to the empty screen.
“You wanna see what happens next?” he says.
“If I can.”
“We normally change the tape when I finish my shift,” says Craig. “This one,” he points to the other machine, the one currently recording, “was put in next.”
He stops the tape and rewinds it to the beginning.
Play. The familiar screen division, same images.
“Hold on,” he says, confused, jabbing a finger onto the rewind button, as if the machine has disobeyed him. The time reads 12:06 a.m.
The machine goes through its clunking rewind drill a second time.
Craig is now looking at the monitor, transfixed.
“Something wrong?” John asks.
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“No. Watch.”
The tape plays, but John sees nothing new. A full minute and no one appears on the screen.
“Guests all in bed?”
“Ha!”
“Not many in last night?”
“Just the two of ’em.”
“Ukrainians?”
Craig nods.
“You? Where were you?”
Craig eyes are glued to the screen now.
“I closed up the bar, then I was in here for a while before, before… Just watch.”
The footage plays, and still no sign of life anywhere in the hotel.
“Do you know her?” John asks quietly.
“Who, Donna? I guess. Not that well. Some.”
“Surname?”
“Macken. Donna Macken. I know her, I mean, I do know her, yes.”
Since the video started, his expression has turned to something between confusion and disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” says John.
“Mike. The night porter, Mike Pearce. He should be doing his rounds. Should be on the tape. Mike was here. I saw him.”
“What time does he start work?”
“Midnight. Takes over from me.”
The door behind them suddenly flies open. Fuller is standing there.
“What are you doing in here?” he says.
“Looking for Freddy,” says John, seeing a slight tremble in Fuller’s hands. “You called the police yet?”
“I told you what I know,” Fuller says, raising his voice. “And now I am asking you to leave.”
Their attention is taken by a sudden blur of movement on the screen. A car pulls up right outside the hotel, the camera in the reception just catching enough of it through the glass doors.
Oh, great. The Mondeo.
Three men get out, the Ukrainians and Freddy. They come into the hotel.
“Mike did his rounds,” Fuller says, “then a few minutes later all this started.”
Fuller now moves into the security room, which is not large, and doubles as a cleaners’ cupboard. John leans against the metal shelves bolted to the wall behind him.
“I’ve already told Mr Ray what happened, Craig,” Fuller adds, leaning over and attempting to press the stop button.
“No, it’s…” Craig says, his voice ragged as he brushes Fuller’s arm away. “Look, it’s… Look.”
They have no choice but to watch as Fuller is seen coming out of his office. He knocks on the door of Room Twelve, bangs his fist on it, shouting right into the door itself. Then the younger of the Ukrainians is seen coming quickly down the corridor. He pushes Fuller out of the way and kicks the door open. In they go.
John senses the tension in both men’s bodies as they watch the grainy black and white image of the door, open but affording no view of what’s going on inside.
Nothing happens, and still they watch in silence. Then she appears. Dark hair, short black dress and a bulky fur and leather jacket. Donna Macken, the girl in the car. She’s even more beautiful than John remembers from the police photo, despite some swelling on the side of her face. She’s supported on one side by the Ukrainian and on the other by Fuller. With difficulty they walk her out of the room, turn left, their backs to the camera, then left again, towards the fire doors. At that point they lean her up against the wall. The Ukrainian, who has a large hold-all slung over his shoulder, shouts at her, wagging his finger close to her nose. When she doesn’t respond he slaps her hard across the face. He loses his temper, punching her square in the face several times before grabbing her by the collar of her jacket and pushing her out of sight towards the exit doors.
“We didn’t want her going out the front,” Fuller says, breaking the cold silence.
“Where was Freddy when all this happened?” he asks, the appalling scene they have just watched already playing on a loop in his head, and with it the thought that a few hours later she would be dead in the boot of his car.
“Freddy left. You missed it. Here.”
Fuller leans forward and rewinds the tape. Just as the door gets kicked open, Freddy leaves the hotel and drives the Mondeo slowly out of the picture.
“He must have parked down the side,” Fuller says.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Craig whispers.
Fuller tries to ignore him.
“But what was Freddy doing?” John asks.
“He must have picked Donna up outside,” Fuller says.
“No, I mean, why was Freddy hanging round with the two Ukrainian guys in the first place? At midnight?”
Craig exhales, his breath unsteady. The screen is replaying Donna being walked out of the hotel again, getting beaten, then disappearing with the Ukrainian, whilst Fuller stands at the end of the corridor alone, before returning to his office.
“Did you actually see Freddy pick her up outside?” John asks Fuller.
He shakes his head. “You saw as much as I did.”
“And you?” he asks Craig.
“He must have, I suppose. I went home. Didn’t see anything.”
A tall woman in a cleaner’s gown appears. She edges into the room and gets a bottle of bleach from one of the low shelves.
John immediately recognises her, and also the sweetness of her perfume. It triggers in him a deluge of teenage emotions, hitting him hard, like a kick to the guts.
“Hi, I’m John,” he says, as if to introduce himself.
“Sandy,” she says, looking at him with an air of sadness as he attempts to stifle his surprise.
What are you doing here? he wants to ask her. She’s a lot older now, late fifties, but it’s Sandy all right. She hasn’t changed much.
With that she turns and leaves. For a second time her pungent floral aroma hits him, and sends him into a reverie of sticky teenage desire.
Fuller’s hands are now resting on the back of Craig’s chair.
“And that, unfortunately, is that,” he says, his tone clipped, efficient. “Obviously we didn’t want any fuss. We took her out the back way. But now, well, this is serious. You’re absolutely sure it’s her, the girl who was found dead?”
But John doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the monitor.
“Him,” he says, pointing at the screen. On the video there’s a man sitting in the lounge, the one with the heavy eyebrows. “What’s he doing there in the dark?”
“Bilyk,” Craig says with distaste. “The other Ukrainian.”
John leans over Craig’s shoulder, gently edging Fuller out of the way.
“May I?” he says, his finger already on the fast forward button.
The seconds and minutes run quickly by. Bilyk does not move from his seat. Half an hour, an hour he sits there, peering down at his laptop, making sure he’s in full view of a security camera.
“What happened to Mr Bilyk?” John says.
“Like I told you, about three in the morning I offered him a different room. His was too badly damaged.”
“You said both of them.”
Fuller sighs. “Well, I don’t know where the other one is.”
“And Bilyk went out this morning?”
“I believe so.”
“Okay,” John says. “Thanks very much for your help.”
As if by mutual agreement he and Fuller resume cordial relations, and the two of them make their way into the reception area.
“Coffee?” Fuller says, slipping behind the bar.
“No thanks, gotta go. Horrible business, this. And we still don’t know where Freddy is. But thanks for your time. Ah…” He pats his pockets. “Glasses. Must have left them in there…”
He nips back through the double doors and walks as fast as he dare down the corridor, straight into Room Twelve.
“Hi, Sandy!” he says with a grin as he slips into the room.
She looks up, a hotel telephone in one hand, sponge cloth in the other.
“Hello, love! I thought you were pretending you didn’t know me back there!”
“I thought you hadn�
��t recognised me!”
“You? Well, I wouldn’t have done from the picture in today’s Post. Could hardly make you out!”
“You saw the article?”
“I did that! Bet your dad’s proud. Anyway, how’s things, John?”
“Can’t complain, y’know.”
Sandy Greg ran a pub down in Armley when he was growing up there, the kind of pub where you could get some fancy perfume or a leather jacket at stupid prices, most of it procured by Tony Ray and his merry men. And it was also where he had known his first infatuation.
Her smile disappears. “You’re here about the girl, aren’t you?”
“Did you know her?”
“Aye, she’d been up here a lot. Gave this place a pretty good going-over last night an’all. Look!” She holds up the telephone, which is cracked right along one side.
“Seen a big bloke called Freddy, have you? It’s him I’m looking for.”
“Blond lad? He’s been sniffing round her like a randy dog. Gone missing, has he?”
“Something like that.”
“Then you’ll not be the only one looking for him.”
“How’s that? Anything to do with these gentlemen from the Ukraine?” he says, looking around the room, two neatly made single beds and the smell of pine cleaner heavy on the air. “Still here, are they?”
“One of ’em’s cleared off, by the look of things.”
Opposite the beds is a narrow wall desk, covered with ring binders, piles of pamphlets and business cards, plus a large hard-backed order book. He takes a selection of leaflets.
“Funny set up, don’t you think? Using a hotel room as an office?” He opens a leaflet. “Galey Tractors. Been cleaning a lot of the mud off the carpet, have you?”
“Eh?”
“Farmers, y’know?”
She says nothing. Then, tentatively: “If I were you, love, I wouldn’t go poking around.”
“Just trying to find Freddy, that’s all.”
“Like I said.”
“I’ll be extra careful!”
“Take the advice, John. None of my business, but…”
He nods, flicking through several more leaflets for tractor attachments, then putting them in his pocket.
“Mike Pearce. What do we know about him?”
“Mike? Don’t you know Mike?”
“Why should I?”
She seems embarrassed, as if she’s offended him.