Love You Dead

112 Saturday 14 March

Jodie, wide awake, sat up in bed staring at her laptop, her room lit only by the dimmed headboard spots and the glow from her screen. For the past hour she’d been saving the few photographs of Cornel that she could find on Google and on other search engines onto her computer, as well as all the photographs she could find of Detective Sergeant Norman Potting.

When she had finished, she double-clicked on one image of Cornel. A window appeared, with a request for her to enter his name. She did so and instantly all seven newspaper and online photographs of Norman Potting showed up as a potential match, each with a blue tick against them, giving her the opportunity to confirm or reject any.

She stared at the faces. The computer confirmed her increasing suspicions that they were a match. That J. Paul Cornel and Detective Sergeant Norman Potting were the same person. But how the hell could they be? Cornel had a long history on the internet, a trail of stuff going back twenty years or more. Were there just uncanny facial similarities between the two men?

I lost my soulmate in a house fire.

Was Cornel perhaps talking about a girlfriend way back in the past who had died?

She heard the click of a door opening. Stealthily, she switched off the lights altogether, closed the lid of her laptop, tiptoed across the thick carpet to her door, in the darkness, and listened. She heard the creak of a floorboard. Then another. Cornel trying to walk along the landing quietly? She saw a streak of light, just for an instant. Then again.

Holding her breath, she opened the door and peered out. And saw him at the end of the corridor, crouched down, examining the scratches.

She watched him for as long as she dared, then slowly drew her head back into her room.

Her heart was thudding.

You want to know what’s behind that wall, do you? Strange behaviour for a billionaire who professed a short while ago to be so tired. Maybe I should show you what’s really behind that wall, Detective Sergeant Norman Potting, you bastard?

After a few minutes she heard his footsteps creeping back, another creak of a floorboard, then the click of his door once more.

She closed her own, silently, and switched her headboard spots back on. Then she checked and rechecked the faces of Cornel and Potting.

She gave it a while, then removed her clothes and put on her dressing gown. Holding her phone, she slipped out of her room. She crossed the landing and stood still outside the guest-bedroom door. He was snoring loudly. She opened the door, as quietly as she could, just a few inches. If he woke, her plan was to slip sexily into bed beside him, whispering that she couldn’t sleep.

She switched on the phone torch and played the beam across the room.

There was no change in the snoring.

His jacket was hanging on the back of the dressing-table chair. Holding her breath, Jodie inched towards it, slipped her hand into the inside right pocket and felt the bulge of his wallet. She eased it out and turned back towards the door. As she did so she saw that his watch, on his bedside table, was lying on its side and there appeared to be an inscription on the back plate. She picked it up, not wanting to risk waking him up by shining the light too near his face.

Two minutes later she was back in her room, with the door shut. She switched on the overhead light, opened the wallet and began to rummage through it. There was an electronic room key for the Grand Hotel. American Express and Visa credit cards in the name of J. Paul Cornel, along with a Californian registered US driver’s licence. There was nothing in it to confirm her suspicions.

She then examined the back of the watch and saw, in tiny engraved Gothic script, R, love B XX.

She stared at it, her hands shaking with anger. ‘You bastard,’ she whispered.

Her first reaction was to go storming into his room, confront him with the watch and kick him straight out. She had to calm down, she knew. Calm down and think this through.

You bastard.

She thought back on today, and to the previous evening. Had she told him anything incriminating? Almost certainly he was wearing some kind of wire or transmitter. The police would know her address now. What else did they know that they could pin on her?

She carefully replaced the contents in the wallet, in the order in which she had found them. Then, turning the lights off again, holding her phone, she tiptoed back out into the corridor and stood, listening, outside his door.

He continued snoring loudly.

Gently, she pushed it open. As she did so she heard a purring sound and Tyson brushed up against her right leg. She pushed the cat away and slid into the room, one step at a time. There was sufficient ambient green light from the glow of the clock radio for her to make out his jacket again.

As she reached it she heard the rustle of bedding, and froze.

‘Eh?’ he grunted. ‘EH?!’ he shouted out.

She didn’t move a muscle.

There was another rustle, a loud snort, and then he began snoring again.

Shivering from the icy blast of air coming in through his open window, she waited several seconds, then slipped the wallet back inside his jacket. His snoring continued.

She placed the watch on the bedside table, edged towards the door, backed out and closed it. Down the end of the landing, Tyson was once again scratching noisily on the wall. She switched on the torch again and shone it at him. ‘Tyson!’ she whispered.

He gave her a sulky look and stopped.

She continued staring at the wall, thinking about what lay on the other side of it. Tempted. Oh, so tempted to teach this copper a lesson he would never forget. Because if she did what she was sorely tempted to do, he wouldn’t live long enough to forget.