Revenger

72

Alix had gone over to the window to check what was happening outside. She saw the flashing blue light behind the radiator grille of an unmarked police car screaming down Sloane Street, coming straight towards the hotel. She looked from the car to the front of the building and saw a faceless black figure slip like a wraith beneath the portico over the front entrance.

They were here already.

Alix didn’t panic. She slung her bag over her shoulder, left the room and hurried down the corridor. As she passed the bank of lifts she saw that one of them was on the way up. It was passing the third floor: five more to go. There would be police officers on it and more coming up the stairs. But there was an external fire escape, too: the old-fashioned metal kind running up the side of the building. The way out to it was at the far end of the corridor, a good thirty metres away. She broke into a sprint.

There was a chambermaid’s trolley up ahead, parked by the right-hand wall of the corridor, just beyond an open bedroom door. Alix heard a familiar sound, an echo of her childhood. It was a hotel maid, about her height, humming the old Russian folk song ‘Semyonovna’ as she walked out of the door in her hotel uniform, with a small cotton headscarf tied over her hair. The maid was lost in the cheerful tune as she approached the trolley and turned her back to put something in the trash bag at the rear of it.

Forget the fire escape. Alix had a better way out of here.

She did not break stride. She picked up her bag in both arms, holding it in front of her as she lowered her shoulder and barged into the maid, catching her completely by surprise and sending her sprawling back through the door into the room. Then she grabbed the handle at the back of the trolley and pulled it with her as she followed the maid, who was now sitting on her backside in the middle of the bedroom floor, winded and gasping for breath as she tried to get back to her feet. Alix shut the door.

Across the room, by the window looking out on to Knightsbridge, a room-service trolley had been set up for a guest’s breakfast. Someone had ordered steak and eggs and a steak-knife, crusted in dried yolk, was lying on a dirty plate. Alix walked towards the trolley. The maid was in her way, now upright, but hunched over, desperately trying to gather enough breath to scream for help. Alix slapped her hard on the side of the face as she went by, stunning her. She grabbed the knife, came back to the maid and grabbed her from behind, putting one hand over her mouth, pulling her head back to expose her throat to the touch of the sharp serrated blade.

Outside in the corridor came the sound of heavy, running footsteps and a man’s voice, several rooms away, shouting, ‘Open up! Police!’

The girl was crying. She was badly hurt and extremely frightened. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty, if that, and she had a soft, placid passivity to her. The capacity to fight back against a sudden physical assault just wasn’t in her nature. It shamed Alix to bully her like this, but she had no other choice.

‘Listen to me very carefully,’ she said, in Russian, as the policeman shouted again. ‘If you do exactly what I say, you will come to no harm. If you do not, then the edge of this knife is the last thing you will ever feel. Nod if you understand.’

The girl gave a series of frantic little nods that made her whole upper body quiver.

‘Good,’ said Alix. ‘I need your uniform. Take it off. Now. Your shoes, too.’

She let go of the maid who did as she was told, stripping down to her underwear and tights.

There were three loud hammering noises from down the corridor as the police battered at the door to Alix and Carver’s suite, followed by the crash as it finally gave way.

‘And your scarf, please,’ Alix told her.

The maid pulled it from her head and handed it over. ‘That was a Christmas present… from my mother,’ she said, looking utterly miserable.

Alix took off her earrings. She could hardly pretend to be a chambermaid with diamond studs in her ears.

‘These are a present from me,’ she said. The girl’s eyes widened in amazement at this unexpected bounty, and she hurried to obey as Alix said, ‘Get in the wardrobe. Keep quiet. And stay there.’

Alix heard more shouts — the sound of angry, frustrated, disappointed men — as she shoved one of the two heavy, silk-upholstered armchairs in the room up tight against the wardrobe door. It had taken all her strength to shift it. She didn’t see the maid being able to open the doors too quickly.

She put on the uniform, which was a little large for her, and the shoes, which were at least a size too small; close enough. She put her own clothes, shoes and bag in the trash bag at the back of the trolley. She checked herself in the mirror, saw that her make-up was much too good for her newly reduced status, and spent twenty seconds in the bathroom splashing soapy water on her face, rinsing it off and towelling herself down.

When she got back to the room she saw that the maid was pushing hard against the wardrobe doors and had even managed to open them a fraction.

Alix put all her weight against the chair and slammed the door shut again.

‘Don’t move,’ she snarled. ‘Or I’ll use the knife… and I’ll take back the earrings.’

The latter threat was the one that did the trick. Alix heard a thud as the maid sat down on the floor of the wardrobe.

‘Sensible girl,’ she said. Then she took the trolley and pushed it out of the room and into the corridor, going back the way she’d originally come, towards the service elevator, whistling ‘Semyonovna’ as she went.

A police officer wearing black battle-dress and a bullet-proof vest and clutching a sub-machine gun emerged from her suite. ‘Stop!’ he commanded her. ‘Have you seen anyone come out of this room?’ he asked.

Alix screwed up her face in incomprehension. ‘Don’t understand,’ she said. ‘English not good.’

The policeman rolled his eyes and muttered, ‘Fucking immigrants,’ under his breath. Then he repeated, with exaggerated slowness and clarity, ‘Have you seen a man… or a woman… coming from this room?’

Alix thought hard and then said, ‘No. Have not seen nothing.’

The policeman stood there, glowering at her.

‘Must go now… for work,’ she said.

‘Piss off then,’ he snarled at her, and disappeared back into the suite.