Love You Dead

38 Sunday 1 March

It had been after three in the afternoon by the time Tooth had finally got to his hotel, yesterday. He’d chosen this place because it was large and central, the kind of hotel he liked, where no one would take too much notice of him.

When he’d checked in, the lobby had been filled with men and women in business attire, each wearing a name badge sporting a company logo, all milling around, as if taking a break from whatever conference they were attending.

He was tired when he finally reached his room, and he knew it was dangerous to do too much when you were tired. That’s when you made mistakes. So he just unpacked his few items, showered and changed into fresh clothes, went outside and smoked a cigarette, then returned to his room and crashed out.

He woke at 2 a.m., hungry, ate some chocolate from the minibar, then sat at the desk, flipped open the lid of his laptop, logged on to the hotel Wi-Fi and checked for emails. There weren’t any. He wasn’t expecting any. The email address he used, routed via five different Eastern European countries, was impossible for anyone to trace. And he changed the address every week. The only emails he got were replies to ones he sent.

He closed the lid and looked at the two photographs of the woman from the lobby of the Park Royale West Hotel. A good-looking woman, with some style.

Jodie Bentley or Judith Forshaw. Where was she?

This city wasn’t on the scale of New York. If she was here, he would find her. All he had to do was recover the memory stick and teach her a lesson. Then he could head home.

It wasn’t that long since he had last been here, and he could remember the geography of the city pretty well. And there was something that bothered him. The address he had for the woman, which she had given when registering in New York, was Western Road. From memory, it was a mix of shops and residential flats.

He googled the road and that confirmed it. A curious place for a woman like this to live — he imagined her, from her lifestyle, residing in a more ostentatious part of town. Perhaps this was a false address?

He wondered whether to put on his tracksuit and go out jogging and find it. His brain was wired, but his body felt leaden. He went back to bed and tried to sleep. A siren wailed outside. He heard drunken laughter in the corridor. He gave up after a while, got up and went for a run, in howling, salty wind and pelting rain, then returned to the hotel.

Eight hours later, wrapped in the padded anorak he’d bought in New York, and wearing a baseball cap, Tooth paid the Streamline taxi driver with a ten-pound note, telling him to keep the change.

Light rain was falling. It was freezing. He was tired. Jet lag. His body clock was all messed up. The route on his early-morning run had included where he was right now, 23A Western Road. The Brighton Barista.

Was there any shop in this goddam rain-sodden city that wasn’t a coffee house?

He entered. Admittedly the place had an enticing smell. It was furnished with a number of tables, each with computer terminals. A single saddo sat at one, and a couple of men in bad jeans, bomber jackets and baseball caps sat at another, by the front window. Could they be plain-clothes cops, surveying the passers-by? He looked at them again and decided not.

He walked to the rear of the shop. There was a drinks menu on the wall and beneath it a display of cupcakes, a carrot cake and assorted panini under a glass counter. Behind the counter stood a bored-looking woman in her twenties, with a face that might have been prettier if it wasn’t caked in make-up and her blonde hair hadn’t been styled by Medusa, he thought.

‘I’m looking for 23A Western Road,’ he said.

‘Uh-huh. You’ve found it.’ She sounded like she’d rather be defrosting a fridge or watching paint dry than having to talk to him, or anyone. She had two black sticks in her hair. Tooth wondered for a moment how she would feel having them stabbed through each of her eyes.

‘I’ve come to pick up mail for my girlfriend, Jodie Bentley. She also uses the name Judith Forshaw.’

‘Uh-huh.’ She tapped a keyboard beneath his line of sight. Then after a moment looked back at him with nobody-home eyes. ‘Do you have her passport and password?’

Tooth gave her a smile. His best smile. ‘I guess she forgot to tell me I needed them.’

‘What’s your accent?’ she asked.

‘American. Midwest. Wisconsin.’

She startled him by smiling. ‘It’s cute.’

‘You think so?’

She nodded.

‘Know what I think?’

She shook her head.

‘You need someone to fuck your brains out.’

She smiled again. ‘That’s so cute. Know what I think?’

Tooth leaned forward, with the smile of a piranha. ‘Tell me?’

‘You’re a nasty little perv and a lech. Go fuck yourself.’

She pointed up at the ceiling. He followed her finger and saw the CCTV camera that was right on his face.

He cursed. Shit, shit, shit. Fucking jet lag. How the hell had he not looked for cameras when he’d come in? Instantly he turned and walked away, in confused fury. As he reached the door he heard her call out, in a big, loud, phoney Southern accent.

‘Y’all have a nice day now!’

Without turning round, he raised a hand and gave her the bird with his middle finger.

‘That the size of your dick?’ she called after him.

Tooth stepped out into the drizzle. He was fuming. Tiredness had made him screw up and potentially be noticed.

He turned and stood for a moment, fighting his urge to storm back in. But that wasn’t why he was here. It wasn’t why he was paid to be here.

He strode angrily away.