No Help For The Dying

Chapter 7

It took Riley a massive effort of will not to run. The voice wasn’t Henry’s and the owner wasn’t standing inside the house. She turned and saw a face watching her from over the top of a larch fence adjoining the next property. It belonged to a woman in her late sixties, and from the look she threw Riley, interlopers were watched very carefully around here.

‘Mr or Mrs Pearcy,’ Riley called across to her, just to let the woman know she wasn’t spooked. ‘Are they in, do you know?’

The old woman looked panic-stricken for a moment, as if Riley had spoken in Swahili. Then she drew herself up so her chin was on a level with the fence. ‘There is no Mrs Pearcy,’ she said politely. ‘May I help?’

Riley stepped over to the fence, moving slowly so as not to alarm the woman. Up close, she saw she had been generous with the years; the woman must have been eighty if she was a day, thin and brittle as an old stick. She was dressed in a faded but once stylish cardigan pulled close around her thin shoulders, and pinned with the sort of silhouette cameo brooch you rarely saw outside antique shops. Behind her, as a complete contrast to Henry’s immaculate garden, lay a profusion of colour and disorder, with a jungle of browned, withered plants and very little grass, mown or otherwise.

‘Henry called me,’ Riley explained. ‘We used to be colleagues at the paper. When I tried to call him back there was no reply.’ She waited, but when the old woman said nothing, continued: ‘I was told he might be going abroad. I hope it’s not in that old car of his.’

The mention of the car seemed to act like a password, and the old lady relaxed visibly, although she didn’t move any closer. ‘I’m sorry, young lady,’ she said. ‘I can’t help you. Henry took the Rover out the other day and I haven’t seen him since. I’m keeping an eye on his cat for him, though. First thing in the morning, last thing at night — and I check during the day.’ The last was delivered with a faint hint of warning, as if Riley should take note and pass it on to every cat thief in London and the Home Counties so they would know somebody was on the job.

It was clear the old lady hadn’t noticed that a pane of glass had been removed from the kitchen door. She was either blind or the break-in had occurred since she last fed the cat.

Riley thanked her and walked round to the front and back down the drive. There was little point in going inside, even if she could sneak past the neighbourhood watch unit. Whoever had removed the glass must have taken a chance on daylight entry, which meant they’d probably watched the old lady leave before going in. Still, she wondered what they’d been looking for.

She headed south towards Ruislip and Hayes and dropped down to the A4 Bath Road. Traffic was busy, the usual stop-start build-up to what would be gridlock in a couple of hours. A pass along the front of the Scandair Hotel revealed no obvious police presence, so she doubled back and turned in off the main road, tucking the Golf into a space in the rear car park. She studied the other cars. Most of them were fleet-type vehicles, shiny and uniform, and the sight of a man unloading a flip chart and a couple of briefcases from a Nissan confirmed it was a landing-pad for company meetings and conferences. Riley waited until the man was struggling across the tarmac towards a single swing door in the main building, and caught up with him in time to hold it for him.

‘Give you a hand?’ she said with a smile, and offered to take one of the briefcases. If there were any kind of police presence inside, it would help if she could merge into the scenery.

‘Oh. Cheers.’ The man looked grateful and surprised, and gave her a quick once-over. His eyes seemed to waver a little at the jeans, but he still managed to pigeonhole her as one of his own kind. ‘You must be from the south-west team. I’m Mike Hutton.’ He stuck out his free hand. It had the sweaty, over-strong grip of the professional hand-shaker. ‘I hear we’ve pretty much got the whole place this afternoon. Should be noisy in the bar tonight.’ He grinned at the prospect and gave her the kind of sideways look which was clearly a come-on for later.

Riley gave a meaningless smile and nodded, and followed him along the ground-floor corridor to a conference room. Outside stood a pile of boxes containing glossy sales catalogues and scratchpads. There were two men in the room, both in shirtsleeves. They were laughing at something in a newspaper. Hutton breezed straight in, evidently on familiar territory and keen to join in. His bulk conveniently blocked her from view, so she set the briefcase down inside the door and ducked away before he could make introductions. On the way, she snatched up one of the catalogues.

Up on the second floor she peered through the landing door towards room 210. There was no sign of activity, so she gently eased the door open and padded along the carpet, ready to flap the brochure and play lost if a uniform appeared.

The door to 210 was slightly open, with a strip of crime-scene tape stretched across the gap. Riley checked over her shoulder, then pushed the door back until it bumped against the wall. No lights, no movement, no sign of a forensics team. But perched on the bed was a policeman’s peaked cap. No doubt belonging to a uniformed plod left here to watch the place. He’d probably sneaked off for a fag break. Thank God for easygoing cops. It was decision time.

She knew there was a risk that the policeman might come back at any time, but she figured she had to take the opportunity while it was still off-limits to the cleaners. The place would have been searched carefully by the forensics team — if one had been called — but without a body, the procedure might not have got as far as a full scene of crime unit investigation.

She ducked beneath the tape and stepped into the room, clicking the door shut behind her. If anybody asked, she’d play dumb or tired. Failing that, she’d have to run again.

The room was standard — a double bed, twin bedside cabinets, a table and two chairs, television, a dresser with a hospitality tray and kettle, and wall-hanging space for clothes. With its Royal blue carpet, curtains, bedspread and seat covers, it looked like a thousand other hotel rooms from Bangkok to Bolton. Only the smears of blood on the wall and doorframe were non-standard.

Riley checked the bathroom first. It had been emptied but not cleaned, and one glance was enough to see it held no clues. Back in the bedroom, the nearest bedside cabinet revealed a soft leather bible and a paperclip, but nothing else. The other cabinet held a hotel notepad and another bible. This one had a simpler, paperback cover bearing a logo of an oil lamp with a flame. She recognised the logo of The Gideons.

The dresser held a copy of the Yellow Pages, a guest information book and a plain, polythene laundry bag, and a glance at the wall-hanging space showed nothing but a bunch of the hangers nobody considers worth stealing because they can’t be used at home.

She stood and mused for a while, conscious that the longer she stayed, the greater the risk of discovery. Plainly there was no obvious clue here as to why Henry had called her, or where he had gone. And if he had brought any clothes or papers with him, they had already been taken away for examination. Only the blood on the wall and the fact that his mobile phone had been picked up by a policeman showed something disturbing had happened.

A metallic clatter echoed along the corridor outside, and she went to the door and listened. If the cleaners had been given the ok to come in and do their thing, now was the time to move. She opened the door just a crack and peered through as the rear view of a service trolley, pulled by a woman in a green overall, disappeared down the corridor.

Riley ducked out beneath the tape again and walked the other way. She was nearing the door at the end when a movement behind the glass pane revealed a dark sleeve and a flash of a metal shoulder tag. At the same time, she heard a man’s voice and a woman’s answering laugh echo up the stairwell. Fag break over, then.

She began to turn back, then noticed one of the doors nearby was unlocked. She nudged it open and slid inside, praying she didn’t bump into a male guest in his chuddies. To play safe, she called: ‘Room service’. But all she got was a strong smell of air-freshener and the clinical feel of a room recently tidied and ready for occupation.

Heart pounding, she closed the door and sat on the nearest bed, waiting while the policeman walked slowly past the door and went into room 210. Then she heard the blare of a television and a burst of canned laughter. Great. She’d chosen to coincide her visit with one of London’s finest bunking off work and watching an afternoon game show. She peered through the spy-hole in the door, but couldn’t see if he’d left the door open behind him.

She flicked through the brochure and waited. The general sales pitch was something to do with seating systems for conference venues and about as interesting as having her teeth filed. She dropped it on the bed and checked through the nearest cabinet for something else to read.

There was nothing other than another Gideon. This one was another plain paperback, and other than a pencilled smiley face on the flyleaf, showed few signs of having been used. Must be a budget room for low-cost heathens. Riley rolled across the bed and checked the other cabinet in case anyone had left a magazine, but it was empty.

She picked up the sales brochure again and was halfway to the door when a thought struck her: why was there a leather-bound bible in one room and a cheap paperback in another? Would The Gideons really use leather-bound bibles when the others were just as good? With at least three hundred rooms in this place alone, to repeat that in every hotel in the country would be hugely expensive. But why was this suddenly an issue? After all, a bible was a bible was a bible.

Suddenly, the television went quiet and heavy footsteps passed the door. She waited until she heard the door close at the end of the corridor, then slipped out and headed back to 210.

The bible query had taken root, and was suddenly too insistent to be denied. As she drew level with 210, she cursed herself for extending the risk level and flipped a mental coin. It came down heads.

The door was still open, although the tape had now gone. The police must have finished with it. Riley was inside and back out again in seconds, this time with the leather bible concealed inside the sales brochure. She wasn’t sure what the laws were on removing evidence the police had overlooked, but she was pretty sure the courts had a ruling for it somewhere. Apart from that, if she was stopped now, she was going to have to do some quick thinking to explain the relationship between seating systems and food for the soul.

Back in the car, she stared at the bible, turning it over and riffling the pages. Unlike the paperback versions she’d seen, this one was heavier, the leather covering soft and pliable, like an expensive calfskin. The only decoration was an indented scroll in each corner; no title, no picture of an oil lamp and flame. She flipped it open. The paper was thin, and held the sort of text you would expect to see, with one exception: there was no mention of The Gideons. Instead, stamped across the flyleaf in rich, blue ink were the words:

THE CHURCH OF FLOWING LIGHT. WELCOME ALL WHO ARE UNLOVED, AND ENTER HERE.

In one corner were the initials HP.

Henry Pearcy.