by Paul Adam
“What’s going on?” Max asked. “What’s this ‘incident’ you mentioned?”
“It’s complicated,” the policewoman said vaguely. “We’re still not sure exactly what’s happened.”
“But my mum and dad are okay, aren’t they?”
She didn’t reply. She asked him about his friends instead. Was there someone whose family could look after him for the weekend? Max suggested his best mate, Andy Sewell, and went there for a couple of days. He was distraught, sick with worry. What had happened in Santo Domingo? Why hadn’t his mum and dad come home? He tried to phone them, tried to contact them, but couldn’t get through and no one would tell him anything.
Then, on Monday afternoon, Consuela turned up at school, having flown back from Santo Domingo alone, and took Max home.
Consuela Navarra had been Alexander Cassidy’s assistant since Max was a baby. Max regarded her as part of the family, as the aunt he didn’t have. She worked with his father, but she was more than just his assistant. She came for meals with Max and his parents, babysat when Helen and Alexander went out together, helped at Max’s birthday parties, and bought him presents. There was a real affection between Max and her, and Consuela wasn’t afraid to show it.
The moment they were alone, she put her arms around him and hugged him tight. When she pulled away, Max saw tears glistening in her eyes.
“What is it?” he asked. “It’s Mum and Dad, isn’t it? What’s happened to them?”
Consuela told him everything. About his father disappearing, about his jacket and wallet being found on the beach, a blood-stained knife dropped nearby. At first, that’s all it was—a mysterious disappearance. It was only several days later, after blood and fingerprint tests had been carried out and the locals questioned, that Max received the shocking news from Santo Domingo. His mother had been arrested and charged with her husband’s murder. Three months later, she was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
With Helen locked away, Consuela had moved in to look after Max—to do the cooking and shopping as well as assisting him in his new stage act. The family court, with Helen’s full approval, had made Consuela Max’s legal guardian until his mother was released.
The months and years since then had been an extended nightmare for Max. He hoped daily that it would end—that his father would suddenly reappear, or evidence would be found to prove conclusively that his mother was innocent—but it didn’t. It kept going, a torment that Max had learned to live with.
One thing he knew for sure from the very start: His mother did not kill his father. Such a thing was impossible, unthinkable. That knowledge, that certainty of his mother’s innocence, was a comfort to him. At the beginning, he’d also felt sure that his father wasn’t really dead. And although there hadn’t been any sightings of Alexander or any other indications that he was still alive, his body had never been found, and Max hadn’t given up hope. He had a powerful gut feeling that his father was out there somewhere, he didn’t know where, and that one day he would find him.
Now this Luis Lopez-Vega had appeared out of nowhere, telling Max that his father was alive. Could Max believe him? After seeing his taxi driving away from the theater, Max wanted to hail another cab and go straight to the Rutland Hotel. But he stopped himself. It was late, Consuela would worry if he went off impulsively like that, and anyway, he needed time to think. He needed to mull over what Lopez-Vega had told him, try to make sense of it.
Max couldn’t sleep that night. He lay awake, staring into the darkness, recalling everything the man had said. Max wanted desperately to believe that he had been telling the truth, but he also wanted to be cautious. If Lopez-Vega turned out to be lying, the disappointment would be unbearable.
At school the next day, Max struggled to focus on his lessons. His mind was preoccupied with the visitor from Santo Domingo, looking ahead to that evening’s meeting. At the end of the afternoon, he walked home with Andy and a group of other friends.
His family circumstances were unusual, to say the least, and he had a blossoming career as an escapologist, but in most other ways Max was still an ordinary fourteen-year-old schoolboy. He enjoyed what lots of other teenagers enjoyed—playing soccer and computer games, listening to music, and hanging out with his mates. When he had the time, that is. Escapology was a demanding occupation that ate into his evenings and weekends. He only did two performances a week for three months of the year, but practicing was a daily routine that couldn’t be avoided.
When he got home from school, he sat in the kitchen with Consuela for ten minutes, eating a snack and chatting to her about his day, before going upstairs to do his homework. But he couldn’t concentrate on math and French, so he changed into his tracksuit and sneakers and went out for a jog, hoping that the physical activity would take his mind off his father and Luis Lopez-Vega.
Back at the house after his mile and a half around the local park, he went down into the basement, where his dad had set up a small gymnasium and practice area. There were exercise machines and weight-training equipment at one end of the room, and at the other were various trunks and cabinets identical to the ones Max used onstage. Suspended from hooks on the walls was an array of chains, manacles, locks, and handcuffs that made the place look like a medieval torture chamber.
Max took down a selection of the more complicated locks and practiced picking them with various tools—a screwdriver, a nail file, a piece of wire. It was all about technique and dexterity. And practice. You could have all the skill in the world, but if you didn’t work at it regularly, that skill would disappear. Next, he took the key to a set of handcuffs and swallowed it. He was determined not to let the failure of the previous evening shake his confidence. Regurgitation was an important part of his act. He’d never had any trouble with it before, and he wasn’t going to start now. He closed his eyes, imagining the muscles of his stomach and alimentary canal, tensing each set in turn to bring the key back up. And there it was in his mouth. First time, no problem. So why hadn’t he managed it first time yesterday? Nerves, it had to be nerves. That was the only possible explanation. Max swallowed the key again, and brought it back up again without difficulty. He did it a third time successfully and felt any remaining anxiety about the water-tank trick vanish. He knew he could do it without a hitch next time.
To finish off the training session, he did more work on his physical fitness—a vital element in any escapologist’s act. You had to be strong, you had to be supple, to be able to control your muscles, your breathing. The strain on the body was so great that if you weren’t in absolutely peak condition, you could do yourself a serious injury, or worse.
He did a few stretching exercises on the gym mat, then ten minutes on the rowing machine, ten minutes on the step machine, and a further ten minutes lifting weights. By now, he was tired and sweating freely. He went upstairs, took a shower, and came back down to the kitchen for dinner.
Consuela was a good cook, with a fondness for the cuisine of her homeland—paella, fish, and lots of garlic and olive oil. This evening, she’d made chicken and rice, the chicken hot and spicy, smothered in a tomato and pepper sauce. Max ate greedily, one eye on the clock. He didn’t have time to linger if he was going to get to the Rutland Hotel by eight o’clock. He hadn’t told Consuela about his appointment. Max usually told her everything, but he respected Lopez-Vega’s instruction to keep it secret. Max could feel the tension in his stomach, a mixture of nerves and excitement. “I’m just going round to Andy’s for a game of snooker,” Max said casually. “I shouldn’t be back too late.”
“Okay,” Consuela said. “I won’t lock up. See you later.”
Max grabbed his jacket from a hook in the hall and went out. He didn’t like lying to Consuela, but he didn’t want her worrying about him. He was old enough now to take care of himself.
He took the Underground to King’s Cross and then walked the last half mile to the Rutland Hotel. This wasn’t an area of London he knew well, and it had a see
dy, rundown feel to it. There were blocks of ugly flats in between the rows of terraced houses, trash dumped by the curb, litter blowing across the pavements. The Rutland Hotel was a high, narrow building squeezed in between a chip shop and a launderette. It looked cheap and not very inviting.
Max went inside. There was a small foyer with a reception desk at one end and keys hanging from a rack on the wall. An unpleasant smell, a mixture of disinfectant and boiled cabbage, wafted in through an open door at the back of the foyer. There didn’t appear to be anyone about. Max went to the desk and waited for a moment. “Hello?” he called.
There was no response. He could see that the key to room twelve was missing from the rack. Lopez-Vega was here, and expecting him. Max climbed the stairs. There was an elevator, but he always avoided them. Being locked up in a trunk as part of his act didn’t bother him, but strangely, elevators made him nervous. He had no control over them, he was at the mercy of a motor that might go wrong, and he found that worrying.
Room twelve was on the fourth floor, down a dark, narrow corridor at the rear of the building. Max approached the door and was lifting his hand to knock when he noticed that the door was slightly ajar. Then he spotted the lock. The wood around it was splintered, as if the door had been broken open. Max felt a shiver run down his spine. His common sense told him to walk away now, but he had to know what Lopez-Vega knew about his father. He pushed open the door with his toe.
“Mr. Lopez-Vega? It’s me, Max.” Max stepped into the room.
Max looked around the room, taking in the grubby wallpaper, the tatty furniture, the open suitcase and piles of clothes on the bed. It was only when he dropped his eyes a fraction that he saw the figure on the carpet, half hidden behind the bed.
“Mr. Lopez-Vega?”
Max edged closer. Lopez-Vega was sprawled on his back, one arm flung out to the side, his eyes and mouth gaping open. In the center of his forehead was a bullet hole; around him was a pool of blood.
Max turned away quickly, almost gagging. He hurried into the bathroom and leaned over the basin for a time, breathing in and out deeply until the nausea passed. He was in a state of shock. He’d never seen a dead body before, let alone one with a gunshot wound to the head. He tried to obliterate the image from his mind, but he kept seeing the blood and Lopez-Vega’s blank eyes staring up at him, his mouth contorted into a silent scream.
He had to do something. He couldn’t stay in the bathroom all night. Max cupped his hands under the tap and drank some water, then steeled himself and went back out into the bedroom, glancing briefly at the body on the floor again. How long had Lopez-Vega been dead? The blood around his head hadn’t congealed yet. It still looked shiny and wet. Max knew that meant the killing had been recent, maybe only a few minutes before he’d come upstairs. And he suddenly realized—the killer might even still be in the hotel.
Max spun round. But there was no one there. Come on, Max, calm down. Think, he said to himself. What are you going to do? Well, that was obvious. Go back down to the reception desk and ask someone to phone the police. But he hesitated. Those clothes strewn across the bed—it looked as if Lopez-Vega had unpacked in a hurry. Or as if someone had been searching for something. Lopez-Vega had said he had something to give Max. But what? Had the killer also been looking for it? Had he found it and taken it away with him?
Max fingered the clothes—shirts, trousers, underwear—to see if anything was concealed beneath them. Then he rummaged carefully through the suitcase. He checked the drawers of the bedside table, too, but there was nothing inside except a Gideon Bible and a thick coating of dust. The wardrobe contained wire hangers and a spare blanket for the bed, but that was all. The bathroom was equally unrewarding. Just a couple of towels and Lopez-Vega’s wash things on a shelf over the basin—toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, disposable razor, and canister of shaving foam.
Max was on edge, scared. He wanted to get this over with and leave. He returned to the body by the bed. Averting his eyes from Lopez-Vega’s face, he concentrated on the rest of him. He was wearing the same light-gray suit and white shirt he’d worn at the theater the night before. It was a cheap-looking suit, with shiny patches on the trouser knees and frayed edges along the lapels of the jacket. The clothes confirmed what Max had already worked out from the choice of hotel. Lopez-Vega was not a rich man. Max couldn’t bring himself to touch Lopez-Vega’s hands, but he could see how rough and calloused the skin was. They were the hands of a man accustomed to manual labor, to working outdoors on the land.
Max took a deep breath and knelt down beside the body. He didn’t want to do this—the very thought turned his stomach—but he had to know. Lopez-Vega had invited him there to give him something. Max had to find out if that something was still here. Carefully but quickly, not wanting to linger any longer than necessary, he went through the pockets of the dead man’s suit. They were all empty. No wallet, no passport or money, not even a few coins or a handkerchief. The killer must have cleaned them out.
Max straightened up, bitterly disappointed. He’d never know now what Lopez-Vega had intended to give him or what information he had about his father. A sadness came over him. He’d met the man only once, knew nothing about him, yet his death touched him nonetheless. Who had done it? Why would anyone have wanted to kill this man?
Another icy tingle shot down Max’s spine. His stomach fluttered. He suddenly sensed that he’d been in the room long enough. It was time to get out.
He turned toward the door—and out of the corner of his eye saw something he hadn’t noticed before. There was something strange about Lopez-Vega’s hair. Max made himself look more closely. The line of bangs across the top of the forehead had an odd, unnatural appearance—as if the hair had been torn out of the scalp. Max crouched down and touched the bangs. They were indeed raised clear of the skin, but it wasn’t real hair. Lopez-Vega was wearing a wig.
Gingerly, Max peeled back the wig to reveal the scalp underneath. It seemed a horrible thing to do—taking the hair off a corpse. The skin of Lopez-Vega’s head was smooth and shiny, devoid of even a single hair. Then Max saw it.
Taped to the underside of the wig was a small piece of paper about an inch square. Max unstuck the tape and lifted the paper off. Written on one side was a sequence of numbers:
11138352
That was all. No words, just eight numbers. Max knew the piece of paper was important. Why else was it concealed in such a strange place? He studied the numbers. What did they mean? Could this fragment of paper be what Lopez-Vega had wanted to give him?
Max slipped the paper into his pocket and went to the door, thinking again about what he should do next. Going downstairs and asking someone to phone the police no longer seemed such a good idea. He’d have to answer questions, explain what he was doing there. After what had happened to his mother, Max was suspicious of homicide investigations. It was a gut feeling, but he knew instinctively that it would be wise not to get involved, that in some way it would be dangerous to get mixed up in this.
He took out his handkerchief and wiped all the surfaces he’d touched to remove any fingerprints, then went out into the corridor. He couldn’t expect the reception desk to still be unattended. If he went down the main stairs, he would almost certainly be seen and challenged. But there had to be a back way out. Hotels always had more than one exit.
There was another, smaller staircase at the far end of the corridor and an illuminated sign on the wall that read FIRE EXIT. Max headed toward it and went carefully down the stairs, pausing occasionally to listen for footsteps. He didn’t want to bump into anyone coming up. He passed the third floor, then the second. As he neared the ground floor, he heard voices below him and stopped. He peered cautiously over the banister but couldn’t see anyone. The voices came again, then the sound of metal scraping on metal, like a spoon in a pan. Max realized what it was—the noise of the hotel kitchen.
He kept going. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped again and poked his head around th
e corner. The kitchen was to the right. Through the open door Max could see a couple of sweaty-looking men in white aprons and caps cooking over a long range of gas burners. Next to the kitchen was an exit that led out into the backyard, a small, enclosed space with overflowing dustbins lined up along a wall and an open gateway to the street at the far side.
Max waited until the cooks had their backs toward him, then darted past the kitchen and out into the yard. He ran across it and through the gate onto the street, turning left and sprinting away from the hotel.
It was almost dark now. The streetlamps were on and the pavements were bathed in an eerie yellow light. Max slowed to a walk. This back street was quiet, no pedestrians about, no cars coming past. He took a turn and was glad to get onto the main road. He felt safer with the traffic streaming by and other people around him.
He walked rapidly back to King’s Cross, his stomach churning with anxiety. Once or twice, he felt a prickle on the back of his neck and turned around, sure that someone was following him. But there was no one there.
He remained jittery all the way home, studying his fellow passengers on the Underground to see if they were taking an unusual interest in him, then looking over his shoulder continually as he half walked, half jogged the final few hundred yards to his house. Only when he was inside, the door locked and bolted behind him, did he relax a bit.
Consuela came out into the hall.
“Good game?” she asked
“Uh? Oh, the snooker. Yeah, good.”
“Would you like something to drink?”