“Morning,” I ventured.
“Good day to you, sir,” replied the bloke.
As I suspected, they were American. She said nothing; didn’t even acknowledge me and carried on staring at the mirrored wall opposite.
The lift pinged again. We got out and left the unhappy couple to struggle with their luggage.
“She was in a cheery mood,” quipped Alex, glancing back over her shoulder.
“Wouldn’t fancy being in his shoes. Bet he’s going to have a lovely day,” I suggested.
We took a table to one side of the restaurant and ordered tea and scrambled eggs for two. The place was busy, most of the hotel’s guests having decided to do what we’d done and left it to nine o’clock, just half-an-hour before breakfast service stopped. Must be one of the busiest times of the day for the staff, who were running around all over the shop, trying to keep up with the flurry of orders from bleary-eyed customers who’d not long been out of bed and would probably have preferred to still be there.
“I’ll have to go to the bank before we head off to Seaford,” I said, as we waited for the tea to arrive. “I’ve almost run out of cash.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that. I’ve got more than enough for both of us,” replied Alex, re-positioning her knife and fork.
“Not tidy enough for you?”
“Mm,” she smiled sheepishly. “You’ve noticed.”
“That you’re obsessively neat and tidy, you mean? Stands out a mile. Your clothes are always flawless, your hair too. Even your room hasn’t got a thing out of place. Yep, I’d say you’ve got a problem.”
“A problem? That’s going a little far,” she said, sounding a bit irritated. “I’m just very neat and tidy. I’d much rather be like that than a messy slob.”
“I’m not that bad,” I quipped, trying to make out I was offended.
“Says who?”
The tea arrived and we set about it as soon as the waiter had cleared off.
“This could be our last day,” I suggested. “If what Scoular’s been saying is right, then everything could be wrapped up by the time we get back from Seaford. I know you’ll miss me, but I don’t want any tears at the railway station when I wave you off. I don’t cope with that sort of thing any too well.”
“I’ll save my sobbing until the train has left the station, in that case.”
She stifled yet another yawn and, in the bright light of the restaurant, her eyes looked to have dark bags under them. At this rate, she wasn’t going to make it through to lunchtime; although, with a bit of luck, she’d nod off once we were on the bus.
The scrambled eggs were cooked to perfection and mine disappeared in little more than five minutes. Alex, on the other hand, soon resorted to pushing hers around the plate and, when she eventually gave up interest altogether, I decided to help her out and polished off most of her breakfast too.
“You sure you’re alright going out for the day?” I asked, as I finished my cup of tea.
“I’ll be better once we’re outside. I just need a little more time to get going.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” She managed a feeble smile, the poor little thing.
I did wonder if letting her go back to her room was a good idea, since there seemed to be a serious risk she might fall asleep if she so much as sat down, but Alex was adamant she needed to pick up her coat and some bits and pieces before we headed for the bus.
“Right,” I said, as we reached her room. “It’s nine-thirty-five now. I’ll be back knocking on your door in ten minutes. That should leave us plenty of time to get to the bus stop. Alright with you?”
She nodded and fished her key out of her purse.
“I might fall asleep for a little while on the bus. You won’t mind will you?”
“Just so long as you don’t snore,” I laughed, before heading off to my own room.
All I needed to do was pick up my jacket. If I hadn’t guessed that Alex would want to touch up her make-up, change her shoes and clothes, as well as adjust her hair, I would have suggested we took our coats down to the restaurant with us in the first place. But I didn’t mind the delay, just so long as she didn’t put us in any danger of missing our bus.
I picked up my jacket and wandered over to one of the windows to check out the weather, realising I’d not bothered to take much notice until then. A few clouds were hanging around high up over the sea, but apart from that it looked like it was going to be a decent start to the day.
I had just turned my attention to a sexy, long-legged brunette walking along the pavement on the other side of the road when the phone rang. That was odd. I wasn’t expecting any calls. I wondered if it might Scoular with news. Either we’d be heading back to London right away or we’d be staying put for the rest of the week, was my guess.
“David Good,” I answered, only half paying attention as I picked up the phone and made for a chair.
There was no answer at first, though I could just about make out someone breathing. Angela picking her moment to make a dirty call, I wondered.
“Anyone there?” I asked. “I don’t bite.”
“David.” It was Alex and her voice was wobbly. Something was wrong.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, slapping the phone back on the hook.
I was out the door, down the hallway and standing in the doorway to Alex’s room so quick I’d hardly had time to take another breath. The sight in front of me was not a happy one, to put it mildly. Things had just taken a seriously bad turn and all those warnings from Scoular about keeping my eyes peeled for danger suddenly came flooding back to me.
Alex was standing stock still, the phone in one hand, while her other hand was covering her mouth. Those eyes of hers that only minutes before had been struggling to stay open were now wide with shock and fear, fixed on the floor. You couldn’t miss what she was looking at. He was tall, well-built and wearing an expensive burgundy leather jacket. He was also laid out cold, his thick brown hair heavily clotted with blood running from one side of his head. On the carpet by Alex’s feet was a glass ashtray, the sort that takes some right heaving to lift up. It too was coated a nasty red colour. Even a simpleton like me could see that Alex had clobbered him with that ashtray.
Chapter Seven
The first question that popped into my head was why? Why had Alex whacked this bloke over the head? But no matter how much I wanted to know the answer to that one, it wasn’t the place I ought to start. No, the first thing I needed to do wasn’t to ask why she’d whacked him, or even who he was, it was to find out whether or not he was still breathing.
I had enough wits about me to take a look at the floor between me and the bloke, so as to make sure I wasn’t about to trample all over some vital evidence. There being no sign of anything of the sort, I walked across the room and dropped down on my haunches alongside the figure I hoped was doing nothing more than taking an unexpected rest.
There was a lot of blood and, even without pulling more of the hair out of the way, I could see the damage was bad. The bloke’s eyes were closed and when I peeled open a lid there wasn’t any clear sign of there being anyone home. I placed the back of a hand in front of his nostrils and waited a few seconds. Nothing. Not even a hint of breath against my skin. More out of desperation than hope, I tried finding a pulse, something I’m not much cop at. First I had a go on the neck, then on his left wrist. Nothing. I stood up and rubbed the back of my neck, before looking at Alex, not sure what to say. She stood there like a statue, shock having got its claws right into her.
I levered her fingers off the phone, one at a time, and placed it back on the hook.
“Take a deep breath,” I said. “Suck the air right in, then let it out slowly.”
She blinked, once, twice, then made a feeble effort at doing what I’d suggested.
“Try again,” I said, gently squeezing her hand. “A deep breath, then slowly let it out.”
She did as I said, a better attempt th
is time, then did it again and again, before bursting into tears and falling against me, shaking. I wrapped an arm around her.
“Come on, let’s sit you down.”
I helped her to the nearest chair and eased her down into it. She was still sobbing, her make-up already heavily smeared. I looked around and spotted a box of tissues on a little table next to the settee. I reached across, grabbed the box and pulled out a handful of tissues for her. She used half to blow her nose then the rest to start dabbing at her eyes, which wasn’t easy given how much she was shaking.
While she cleaned up some of the mess on her face, I nipped into the bathroom and came back with a glass of water, which she sipped then gave back to me. Tears still trickled down her cheeks and, as the sobbing started again, she buried her head in her hands.
“What happened?” I asked, after a moment or two.
She half-looked up, tried hard to control the sobbing, without a lot of luck, then took another couple of deep breaths, before dabbing some more at her eyes. There were splodges of make-up everywhere now and her eyes were red-rimmed, filled with tears.
“He was here,” she mumbled through the sobs, so quietly I could hardly hear what she was saying.
“He was here, in your room?”
She nodded, then blew her nose again.
“Waiting for you? Already in the room when you came in?”
“Yes.”
I dragged the nearest chair across the room so I could sit down next to Alex. She was in a right old state and normally I’d have given her more time to get over the worst of it before asking more questions, but this was too serious to wait. I’d need to take things carefully, of course; ease her along the way. But I needed to get some idea of what the hell was going on before I raised the alarm. Most of all, I wanted to know why the bloke was there, waiting for her and what, if anything, he’d said to her before she clobbered him.
I leaned forward with my forearms on my knees, so I could get close enough to hear her more clearly and, when I spoke again, I was as calm and reassuring as I knew how to be.
“When you say he was waiting for you, do you mean he was going through your stuff, looking for something, maybe?”
She shook her head.
“He was waiting.”
“Waiting where?”
She pointed to an area of the room to one side of the door, where someone could stand so as not to be seen right away when you came in, because the door would open towards them. It was the best place to wait if you wanted to jump your victim. That wasn’t good. It smacked of a plan, not plain bad timing on the part of an opportunistic burglar, such as the one who’d been causing Angela so much trouble recently. A plan suggested to me that Alex herself was the reason this bloke had been waiting in her room.
“I take it you didn’t see him when you opened the door?”
She shook her head again and started to fiddle with her hands, now cupped in her lap.
“What did he do, jump you?”
“Yes.”
“But you managed to avoid him or you got away?”
Another nod and this time she lifted her head so her chin was away from her chest. It made it easier to hear her speak.
“I fell over and he went down with me. I kicked him in the face,” she added, her voice still quiet and wobbly, though the sobbing wasn’t so bad now.
“That’s good. But he came for you again, I’m guessing?”
“Yes. I got up first. I was so scared...”
The words trailed away and she closed her eyes. I gave her a moment before encouraging her to go on.
“What happened then?”
“I saw the ashtray on the table.” She paused again, then looked into my eyes, almost pleading. “I was scared, David, so scared. I hit him with it when he tried to grab me.”
“Self-defence. OK, that’s good. Right,” I said placing a hand on her trembling forearm. “I’m going to have to phone the law now and get an ambulance here too, alright?”
It crossed my mind that I should tell her to go and have a lie down on the bed or maybe steer her into the bathroom so she could use the large mirror there to help tidy herself up, but I wanted the police to find her like she was, a frightened, confused mess. Tidying things up might cause complications; give the law the wrong impression. As far as I was concerned, things were already confusing enough and I wasn’t in any hurry to make matters worse.
My mind was racing, turning over a hundred different possibilities. In an ideal world, I would have been able to get right on with investigating this bloke, trying to work out why he was there and who, if anyone, had put him up to it. I did a quick search of his pockets, but all he had on him was cash; nothing that put a name to the face. It was easy to assume the git who was busy extracting money from Alex’s uncle was behind things, but experience has shown me often enough that assumptions are a bad thing to make because as often as not they turn out to be wrong.
Well, there was no point in delaying the inevitable; the cops had to be called. There’d be a lot of hassle to deal with initially, but once that was all out of the way, I’d be able to start making my own enquiries and I was already itching to get going.
*
After I’d dialled three nines, I made a second call, this time to Angela, to let her know what had happened and to warn her that all hell was about to break loose. She appreciated the heads up and seemed to take things very well considering some bloke had broken into one of her rooms and then had his brains smashed in. I thought she might at least have been concerned about the damage to the carpet.
We had three lots of visitors, all of them shown up to the room by Angela, who glanced only once at the body, the first time she entered the room. On that first visit, I stopped her for a moment, as she was about to leave, to ask if she was OK and to promise I’d tell her more later. I could see in her eyes that she was concerned, which was hardly surprising, but, apart from that, you’d have been hard pushed not to think it was the sort of thing she was used to dealing with every day of the week. A proper professional.
Two uniformed coppers showed up first, barely five minutes after I put in the call. They happened to be on patrol nearby. They didn’t say much, just checked out the body on the floor, nosed around the room briefly and told us to remain where we were, while we all waited for more senior officers to show up. A couple of minutes later an ambulance crew arrived, inspected the bloke with the big dent in his head and agreed he was a corpse. They too then waited for further orders. It was getting to look something like a doctor’s waiting room, as we all stood or sat around, feeling awkward and disinclined to start up a conversation.
It was another ten minutes or so until the big wigs arrived, a pair of plain clothes detectives, one a tall fella, mid-forties, with thick brown hair and a big bulbous nose, the other maybe ten years younger, dressed more smartly than his mate and wearing a pair of white trainers that looked out of place on a copper, even one in plain clothes.
After exchanging basic pleasantries with the two uniforms, the older of the two new arrivals, his left hand buried so deep in a trouser pocket I thought he might never be able to pull it back out, took a cursory look at the corpse, then turned towards the ambulance crew. “Dead is he?” They both nodded.
The copper had another glance at the corpse, then looked briefly at Alex before settling his gaze on me. Either someone had already told him what I did for a living or else his copper’s nose had sniffed out a potential source of aggravation, which is how most officers of the law view hard-working, professional private investigators like me.
“Detective Inspector Durham,” he said, jabbing a thumb against his chest. “Sergeant Wills.” He nodded in the direction of his mate.
Alex hardly seemed to notice. I opened my mouth to ask them what took them so long, but Durham cut me off before I got a single word out, “You put in the call?”
“That’s me.”
“So, is this your room?”
“Nope, it’s Miss
Rudd’s room,” I replied, tilting my head towards Alex.
The copper thought about that for a moment.
“So why are you here? Just passing were you?”
I still had the feeling he knew what I did for a living and suspected he was testing me, trying to work out whether he could trust me at all.
“She phoned me. I’m in the room next door.”
He looked a bit quizzical this time and sniffed.
“You a friend then?”
“Not exactly. I’m supposed to be looking after her, keeping her out of trouble.”
“Well, you screwed that right up, didn’t you?” Although his voice was filled with sarcasm, his face remained blank. “What are you looking after her for?”
“She’s got some personal problems a family member is sorting out for her. Relationship type problems. While that’s being tidied up, she’s been shipped down here from London and I’ve been hired to babysit.”
“Oh, yeah? Do that sort of thing often?”
He was looking at me with an unbroken stare now. I’d got his interest, good and proper. Maybe he didn’t know that I was a PI.
“No, first time.” I stuck in a pause, for dramatic effect. “I’m a private investigator, London based. A law firm hired me. It was supposed to be a nice simple little earner,” I added, holding my hands out, palms up.
His face changed in a flash, taking on a distinctly sour look, and he glanced across at his mate, who shook his head as if to say ‘here we go’.
“Private investigator.” It sounded more like an accusation than anything else. “I hope you’ve not messed up our crime scene.”
“Not touched a thing. Just calmed Alex down, then called you lot, straight away.”
He looked me up and down, very obviously, then turned to face Alex.
“And you are Miss Rudd?”
“Alexandra Rudd.” Her voice was still shot through with tears.
“Is it right, what he says?” He jabbed a thumb in my direction.
She nodded. “Yes, my uncle hired him.”
As Good as Dead Page 8