No Help For The Dying

Chapter 38

There was no reply from Friedman’s room. The receptionist shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen him, sorry.’

‘Thanks,’ said Riley. ‘I’ll wait for a while.’

With the receptionist engaged, Frank Palmer slipped away and found room eighteen on the first floor. The hum of a vacuum cleaner sounded from the level above, but there was no sign of movement anywhere close. As he knocked on the door he also checked for security cameras, but there were none in evidence. He counted to ten and knocked again, then tried the door handle. Locked.

The fabric of the hotel was old and worn, and had probably remained pretty well unchanged for decades, other than perhaps reducing room sizes by adding internal partitions, if the way in which a moulding in the ceiling suddenly disappeared into one wall was any indication. The doors were solid but old-fashioned, and had been painted over enough times for the panels to have almost merged with the frames. The Yale locks were yellowed and scratched from years of careless guests stabbing with their keys. He checked both ways again, then leaned against the door. There was a lot of give, especially at the top and bottom of the door, and the lock rattled when he pulled back, showing that wear and tear had reduced the effectiveness of the mechanism to near zero.

Palmer had passed a twin-drummed shoe-polishing machine at the top of the stairs. He walked back to it and prodded the START button. After a second or two it began to revolve, building to a clanking whine like a small but very sick jet engine. Then he returned to room eighteen where he set his weight against the lock and pushed hard.

The lock snapped out of its slot with barely a sound. Palmer quickly stepped inside and closed the door again, listening for sounds of alarm from the rooms on either side. Nothing. Maybe they were accustomed to people breaking the place up in the middle of the day.

When he turned towards the bed, he saw the man Riley had described as Eric Friedman lying across the mattress. He looked asleep, with his face on the pillow and his arms outstretched. But there was something too still about his body. Palmer knew he was dead, but he checked all the same, touching his fingers to the man’s throat. Cold skin, beginning to harden.

He pulled out his mobile and dialled Riley’s number. When she answered, he told her what he had discovered. ‘I’ll go through the room but I wouldn’t bet on finding anything.’

‘Why?’ Riley was obviously trying to sound casual for the receptionist’s benefit, but finding it hard. ‘I’ll give it another five minutes, then I’ll come back to the office. I’m sure Mr Friedman will be in touch — he’s probably just gone sight-seeing.’

It took barely a minute to find that, other than Friedman’s body on the bed, the room had been sanitised; no clothes, no paper and no luggage. Palmer had seen it all before. When professionals knew the authorities were going to come calling, they removed anything which could leave a trail.

He left Friedman where he was. It wouldn’t be pleasant for them, but the safest thing to do would be to let the hotel staff find him. That was unlikely to be before morning, which meant there would be nothing to connect Riley’s visit to the dead man in eighteen the day before. He stepped out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him and wiping the handle. Then he turned and followed the signs for the fire escape stairs. Thirty seconds later he was back on the street waiting for Riley to emerge.

‘What happened?’ she asked, as they returned to the car. She looked pale beneath her make-up and Palmer guessed she had taken a liking to Eric Friedman and sympathised with his plight. Whether dying of cancer or not, it was a miserable end for a man who had already suffered so much.

‘At a guess,’ he replied grimly, ‘I’d say he was smothered. It didn’t look as if he put up much of a fight, either. There was no disturbance in the room.’

‘He was ill — he wouldn’t have been able to, poor man.’ She turned to him in shock as an awful thought occurred to her. ‘They must have followed me here.’

But Palmer shook his head with absolute certainty. ‘Don’t even consider it. You don’t know that. They could have been watching him for days. He was on borrowed time, even without the illness.’

‘But why kill him now?’

‘There’s only one reason; they’re cleaning up behind them.’