“No and I try my best to avoid it.”
“Mm, I think you need to try harder.” The sarcasm was so thick you could have spread it on a slice of toast.
“I’ll remember that next time I’m looking danger in the eye.”
“You really don’t know where Alex is?”
“No. And nor do the law, the last I heard.”
The look of amused concern left Angela’s face, replaced by something more serious. She fiddled for a moment with one of the small hooped earrings she was wearing, then tilted her head a little to one side.
“I know I’ve not seen much of her, but I don’t think that client of yours is as sweet and innocent as she likes people to believe.”
“Really?” This was unexpected. “What makes you say that?”
“One of my staff told me earlier today that Alex had a go at her when she phoned room service and asked for someone to collect fish and chips for her from one of the nearby restaurants. We don’t do that sort of thing, not for anyone, and that’s what she was told. Apparently, she was really very rude. Quite obnoxious.”
“It’s probably the stress. Think I’d get a bit grumpy if I’d been through everything she has.”
Angela picked up a lit cigarette from the ashtray on the coffee table, took a drag, then blew a funnel of smoke towards the ceiling before looking me square in the eyes.
“Some women are very good at getting their way, especially when it comes to dealing with men. They can slip a lead around their neck without them even realising what’s happened and then they have them running round all over the place on their behalf.”
Despite my feeble state, I could tell from the look on Angela’s face that she wasn’t messing me around.
“What are you trying to say? That she’s got me on a lead?”
“Just that if I was you, I’d be a little more careful where she’s concerned. What’s she’s done in the last few days; that’s quite some achievement, even for someone who’s worried about their safety.”
Angela had a point, I was sure, but trying to think about it made my poor head ache even more.
“Yeah, I’d been thinking about that, especially the body count. Have to admit that, after what I saw at the petrol station, there’s no doubt she can look after herself. Feeble, defenceless, little girl, she’s not.”
Angela looked up, towards the door. Something or someone had caught her eye and she gave a little nod in their direction. I would have turned my head to look, but the effort wasn’t worth the pain it would entail.
“Sorry, looks like something’s cropped up. Stay here until the ambulance arrives, or else you’ll have me to answer to.” She stroked the side of my face. “If they give you a clean bill of health then come and see me later. I’ll help take your mind off the hard day you’ve had.”
I tried to smile, but gave up because it hurt too much.
“I know it makes me sound like an old git, but I think I’d like to get an early night and some proper kip. I’ve been in the wars today. Feeling a bit battered and bruised. How about tomorrow night?”
“Don’t worry, I was only pulling your leg. Let’s see if you can get through the rest of the day in one piece first.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Stay here and rest. It won’t do you any good getting up and active now. In fact, it will probably make things worse.”
“Yes, matron.”
“I’ll come back up as soon as I can, to see how you’re getting along.”
She bent down and tapped me on the end of the nose, before swivelling on her heels and leaving to attend to business.
I lay there, cogitating on what Angela had said about Alex. I’m not one to be shy when it comes to making a judgement about someone involved in a case of mine, but I’m also not so stupid as to think I always get these things right. If someone I trust has got an opinion, then I’m all ears. I might decide I don’t agree with them, but I’ll happily listen.
Where Alex Rudd was concerned, I suppose I could have decided that Angela was just being jealous, concerned I was starting to take more than a professional interest in my client. But I didn’t think that was her style and, anyway, we weren’t exactly an item, me and Angela. No, that wasn’t behind what she’d said. She was genuine; trying to help me.
The truth was, I’d started having similar thoughts myself. Two bodies. Escaping from Hoskins and company. Walking out on her former boyfriend and into a cop shop looking to do a deal to sell him out and get some proper protection for herself. She certainly wasn’t wet behind the ears, nor the shy and retiring type. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I could have done what she’d done if I’d been in her position. Mind you, whether or not that made much of a difference was a moot point.
Anyway, it didn’t matter at all, as things stood, because she was still missing, despite the best efforts of Durham and Hoskins, and I had a strong feeling she wasn’t going to be hiding out on a park bench or in a disused railway carriage. No, something told me, she’d have found somewhere warm and cosy to rest her pretty little head. But my doing anything to find out where she was would have to wait. I had a nasty headache and an appointment with an ambulance crew first.
Chapter Thirteen
It was thinking thoughts about Alex being somewhere warm and cosy that nearly had me choking on my cornflakes at breakfast the next morning. I was sitting, alone, in the restaurant, sipping a piping hot cup of tea and finishing off the remains of my cereal before the milk made them too soggy for my taste. Disgusting, is soggy cereal. I was still feeling a bit on the sore side, especially my left-side ribs, which meant I had to be careful how I sat. Lean a bit too far this way or that and the pain would flare up in a second. On the other hand, at least the ashing in my jaw had cleared up enough for me to be able to eat and drink.
As often happens with one of them there light-bulb moments, I wondered why the hell I hadn’t thought of something so bloody obvious a whole lot sooner. It’s like you’ve been trying to finish the crossword for ages, stuck on one sodding question, and all the while making things so much more complicated than they need to be, when, wham, the ridiculously simple answer hits you right between the eyes.
You see, it was so obvious, when you gave it a bit of thought, just where Alex was likely to turn for help. Like all of us, a friend in need is a friend in deed. We all turn to our friends when we’re in a tight spot, especially if there’s no family around. And how many friends did Alex have in Brighton? Well, I reckoned I knew the answer to that; one. Andrew, what was his name? Andrew Longmeadow, the bloke I’d found her having breakfast with at the Italian cafe.
I didn’t know for sure when he was going to head back to London and it was always possible Alex had found herself out of luck, with the bloke already gone, but if he was still in town and she knew where he was staying then he had to be her first port of call. Going by what I’d seen at the cafe, she was very likely to get a warm welcome. Wouldn’t be much of a friend, would he, if he turned her away.
Funny thing was though, my very next thought didn’t have anything to do with how best to go about tracking down Longmeadow. Instead, it was Angela’s comment from the previous evening. Would Alex, I wondered, tell him the truth, all of it, or would she spin him a yarn in the same way she’d first done with me? Maybe she’d already told him over breakfast, at that cafe, something about what had really been going on, but I wasn’t as confident about her doing that as I would have been a day or two before. Things had moved on and the world didn’t seem quite such a certain place.
*
My plan on leaving the restaurant was originally to pick up a local telephone directory and start calling hotels in an attempt to track down Longmeadow. But as I wiped the last traces of grub and tea off my lips and dropped the dirty napkin on the table, another thought came to me; one that offered up a decent chance of short cutting the process.
Having picked up my jacket from my room, I left the hotel and made my way back to the cafe where I
’d found Alex with Longmeadow. If it was somewhere he’d taken a shine to and made his regular stop while he was in town, it was possible the staff would know him. If they did, I might get lucky and pick up a hotel name. Even if that didn’t happen, it was still possible they would know when to expect him back, if he hadn’t already returned to London.
It was quiet at the cafe when I got there, only two of the tables inside were occupied; one by a middle-aged woman sitting on her own with just a cup of coffee and a copy of the Radio Times for company, the other by a bored-looking young guy who couldn’t seem to stop yawning. The staff weren’t exactly rushed off their feet and that suited me right down to the ground, as it made it easy to accost one of them, a tall, thin bloke with a bald head and John Lennon glasses, who looked delighted to see me, until it became obvious I wasn’t going to be spending any money.
Sadly, they couldn’t help me. It wasn’t that they were unwilling, just that they didn’t have a clue where he was staying, or when and if he might be back. They did recognise Longmeadow alright, despite my terrible attempt at describing him, but he’d only been in there twice, as it turned out; both times for breakfast. Still, even that little bit of information meant my visit hadn’t been a complete washout, because it made sense that if he’d been in twice for breakfast, he was most likely staying somewhere in the vicinity. I decided to look at things from a positive point of view and left to go back to the hotel reasonably happy with what I’d found out.
I started ringing hotels twenty minutes later, using a Yellow Pages I’d borrowed from reception, with a cast iron promise to return it just as soon as I’d finished. There were a lot of them, hotels that is, listed in Brighton. And when I say a lot, I mean a shed load. Things got even worse if you included bed and breakfasts. There were hundreds of those, literally hundreds. I had every part of my body crossed that could be, twice over in some cases, hoping I’d track the bloke down before it got to the point where I had to start phoning bed and breakfasts.
Some of my friends can’t believe it’s so easy to get hotel receptionists to tell you whether or not they’ve got your mark staying there as a guest, when they’re supposed to treat that sort of information as confidential. In truth, a lot of places at the cheaper end of the market don’t bother much with that sort of thing and when you do get ones that don’t want to say, then there’s a few little tricks that almost always work.
You can trying claiming you’re a copper calling to inform the target their mum or dad has been involved in a serious car crash and you think they need to get off to the hospital pronto. That gets its fair share of receptionists all worried and eager to please. But I often don’t have to go as far as acting a part like that. Usually all I need to do is ask the receptionist to take my name and number so they can ask the target to call me back. Nine times out of ten, if the mark isn’t staying there the receptionist says there’s no point taking my number because there’s not going to be anyone calling me back. Easy.
After forty-five minutes spent wearing my fingers out dialling number after number, I scored a bulls eye. The woman who answered the phone at the Anthony Hueman Hotel sounded rushed off her feet and it took only a little polite prompting to establish she’d been left to run reception on her own after her colleague had phoned in sick. Apparently that was the third time in three weeks that had happened and was likely to mean a job vacancy would soon be posted in the local papers. I sympathised from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. I was so sincere in my sympathy that I was practically dripping slime.
But there’s nothing wrong with buttering someone up when you’re after a favour. We’re all a sucker for it. So, by the time I made my apologetic enquiry, desperately regretting adding a little to her workload, she coughed up a reply without a second’s hesitation. He was staying there. Had been for the last four days. I was so chuffed I almost forgot to thank my overworked new friend for her wonderful assistance. What I didn’t mention was that, in half an hour or so, she’d be able to cast her gaze on my handsome features in person.
*
The Anthony Hueman Hotel wasn’t anywhere nearly as big or posh as the Churchill. Mind you, not many hotels in Brighton were. It advertised itself as the kind of modern, affordable place any upwardly mobile self-respecting businessman, who wanted to convince himself he was getting on in the world, would want to stay. Unlike many of the hotels across the town, the Hueman was in a five-year-old purpose-built building, with a respectable amount of parking and a small landscaped garden out front. It offered thirty en-suite rooms, a bar and a restaurant, with a menu that reflected modern day tastes, which meant it didn’t suit mine.
How did I know all this, I hear you ask? Simple, I sat in the large, clean lobby with its framed prints of pristine landscapes where no one lived, and flipped through a copy of the hotel brochure, which, from its perfectly flawless state, looked like it was a novel experience.
Of course, I didn’t just read the brochure. I had several good looks at the young bird on reception, whose natural charms weren’t altogether ruined by the bloody stupid outfit she’d been made to wear for the job. It reminded me of the sort of thing you see air hostesses sporting, only worse. I also ran an eye over the half dozen guests who passed through while I was sat there. Of course, I could have got lucky and seen Longmeadow come ambling into the hotel with Alex on his arm, but that wasn’t what I was expecting. No, I wanted to get a feel for the sort of people who were staying there, just in case things got messy later on, when it would be good to know whether or not I could expect some passing wally to turn into a have-a-go-hero. It’s always best to be prepared, as experience has shown me more often than I can remember.
My plan, if it came to it, was to approach Stacey on reception and make out I was a drug dealer waiting to collect my latest supplies from my contact, Longmeadow, who seemed to be running late, so could she phone through and give him the hurry up before I had to kick his door in. Well, I had to have some reason for being there. Didn’t want her to think I was some sort of weirdo who liked hanging out in hotel receptions, eyeing up the female members of staff, before approaching them with an offer of dinner for two at the local Little Chef.
Of course, if I had told Stacey the truth it wouldn’t have seemed a whole lot more far-fetched than either of those stories and the chances were she’d have believed it less. Anyway, when I finally got bored sitting and watching, I toddled across to the reception desk and engaged said Stacey in some friendly conversation. She was a chatty young thing, if not exactly the brightest button in the box. In fact, when I asked her which room Longmeadow was staying in, she actually asked me if she was supposed to give people that sort of information. Of course, it might have been her being sarcastic, but I prefer to think she was simply a bit dim-witted. It doesn’t do your ego any good to think someone sees you as the dim one; the sort they can take the mickey out of.
Either way, a smile and a bit of the old Good charm, plus telling her I’d be happy to wait in reception if she preferred to call Longmeadow and let him know I was there, soon had her coughing up that he was staying in room number seventeen. She even pointed me in the right direction and added that she would be finished for the day at five-thirty, if I was looking for someone to take out to dinner. Under other circumstances, I would have jumped at the chance, but what with Angela already making unreasonable demands on my body, I decided to pretend I was married and the wife was already expecting me to take her out that evening.
“Shame,” murmured Stacey, running her eyes over me. “It’s been such a long time since I spent an evening with such a ruggedly handsome fella.”
I smiled feebly and wandered off, cursing my bad luck. You go months without anyone to share a cup of Horlicks with, then two come along at the same time. What can you say?
Room seventeen was on my right, at the end of a short corridor on the ground floor. The whole place seemed to be deserted as I walked along the wide, dark-green carpet, not a sound coming from any of the rooms,
nor so much as an abandoned newspaper lying on the floor outside any of the doors.
The funny thing is, it was only as I made that walk that I started to wonder what I was going to say. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to be relieved, annoyed or concerned if, as I expected, I found Alex shacked up with Longmeadow. The thing was, I wasn’t even sure that she was still my client. Hadn’t the law taken her off my hands? I supposed they had, but that hadn’t gone too well and Alex was still stuck in Brighton, rather than safely hidden away somewhere in London. Aside from my natural curiosity, it just didn’t seem right to leave her to it, not when Groves was hell bent on taking her back to his loving bosom and never letting her go again.
And then there was Angela’s little intervention. Her warning that Alex wasn’t half as helpless as she made out. Was there really anything to that? What was Alex supposed to have done when Groves’s hoods tried to snatch her? Go quietly, without a fight, and just hope for the best? Didn’t seem like a good plan to me, not where someone like Groves was concerned. I reckoned, if I’d been in her situation, I’d have done the same thing; gone all out to look after myself.
But then the sight of Tosh lying on the floor at the petrol station shop with that a knife sticking out of his neck and blood everywhere came back to me. That was… What was it, exactly? Sickening? Surprising? Impressive? I supposed it was all those things and then some. Not many would have had the balls to do something like that, not even if they were worried what might happen to them if they didn’t get away.
The truth of the matter was, I was confused. And I began to realise that it was that confusion that was really behind my not wanting to let go; I needed to find out which version of Alex was the real one and, on top of that, I needed to see things through to some sort of proper ending. I guess that’s all part of being a private dick; you need to tie up those loose ends. Otherwise, it has a habit of interfering with your sleep.
As Good as Dead Page 16