South by South East

ROOM SERVICE

“I don’t think Snape believed my story,” Tim said.

“Whatever makes you think that, Tim?” I asked.

We’d just been thrown into prison for wasting police time. We were sitting on two bunk beds in a small square cell lit by a single bulb.

Snape hadn’t believed a word we’d said — but for once I couldn’t blame him. I mean, how often do secret agents drop in on you, swap coats, get shot and then vanish in a puff of smoke, taking the nearest telephone box with them? Even Tim was having trouble working it out.

“Maybe somebody stole the telephone box,” he muttered.

“What about the body?” I asked.

“No. It couldn’t have been the body, Nick. The body was dead.”

Something hard was jabbing into my pocket. At first I thought it was the mattress but as I shifted my weight I realized it was the hotel key. In the excitement I’d forgotten all about it. I suppose I could have shown it to Snape, but I don’t think it would have helped. By the time he got to the London International Hotel the whole place would probably have vanished too.

I took the key out and held it up. It took Tim a moment or two to remember what it was. Then he groaned.

“We’ve got to go there,” I said. “Room 605-”

“Why?” Tim cut in.

“You heard what McGuffin said. If this Russian of his gets killed, he was talking about nuclear war… the end of the world!”

“Maybe he was exaggerating.”

“Well, somebody believed him, Tim.”

“How do you know?”

“They shot him.”

Snape let us out the next morning with another warning about wasting police time. I noticed that he hadn’t wasted a police breakfast on us, and the first thing we did was get a McBreakfast at the nearest McDonald’s. We left the place feeling slightly McSick and hopped on a bus that took us across town to the London International Hotel.

The hotel was one of those great piles on twenty-seven storeys with hot and cold running tourists in every room. This was the middle of the summer season, and the building was packed with Japanese and Germans and Scandinavians all milling round searching for someone who could speak their language and knew where Harrods was.

Nobody stopped us as we made our way across to the lift and took it up to the sixth floor, and there was nobody around in the corridor either. We walked on and arrived at room 605. It was a door just like all the others. So why did it seem so solid, so threatening? I handed Tim the key.

“You want me to open it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“But we don’t know what’s on the other side.”

“That’s why we’ve got to open it.”

I knocked on the door first, just to be sure.

Then I stood back while Tim opened it with the key. We slipped in quickly and shut the door behind us. And there we were, inside Jake McGuffin’s room. I wondered how long it would be before the hotel realized he’d checked out. Permanently.

There was nobody there. I don’t know what I’d been expecting but it was just an ordinary hotel room: twin beds, bathroom and colour TV. It had a nice view of Hyde Park and windows that didn’t open so you couldn’t throw yourself out when the bill arrived. The beds hadn’t been slept in, of course, but there was still some of McGuffin’s stuff spread about — a couple of ties on the back of a chair, a pen on the table, a suitcase on the stand by the door.

“There’s no one here,” Tim said.

“OK. Let’s move.”

I started with the suitcase but there was nothing interesting inside it, just some shirts and socks and a couple of handkerchiefs. Meanwhile Tim had thrown open the bedside cupboard and was rummaging about inside.

“Nick?” he demanded suddenly.

“Yes?”

“What are we searching for?”

It was a good question, only maybe he should have asked it five minutes before. I shut the suitcase. “We’ve got to find out who McGuffin was working for and where he’d been,” I said. “Anything that can lead us to Charon. Names, addresses, telephone numbers…”

“Sure.” Tim snatched up a book of matches lying in an ashtray beside the bed.

“London International,” he muttered. “I’ve heard that name somewhere before.”

“Yes, Tim,” I said. “It’s the name of this hotel.”

“Right.” He put the matches down and looked underneath the pillows. I didn’t know what he hoped to find there. I thought it better not to ask.

In the meantime, I’d crossed over to the low table that ran underneath a mirror along the far wall — and that was where I found it. It was a ticket: seat number 86 to something called the Amstel Ijsbaan. Whatever the something was, it had to be foreign. The only word in the English language that I know with a double “a” in it is “Aagh”. The ticket had a little illustration in one corner: a pair of skating boots.

“Come and look at this!” I called Tim over and handed him the ticket.

He examined it. “Do you think he was an ice-skater?” he asked.

“McGuffin?” I shook my head. “He didn’t look like one.”

“You’re right,” Tim agreed. “He wasn’t wearing shiny tights.”

I took the ticket back. “Maybe he was going to meet somebody there,” I said.

“Amstel Ix-barn.” Tim turned the words over in his mouth. “Do you think it’s a play?”

“Not a very catchy title,” I muttered.

There was a sudden rattle at the door. Both of us froze. Somebody was trying a key in the lock and somehow I got the feeling it wasn’t room service. “Quick!” I whispered. I gestured at the bathroom. As the main door opened we disappeared inside. I took the ticket with me.

Two men came into the bedroom. I had swung the bathroom door shut behind me but left a crack so I could see them. The first man was thin and pale, about thirty-five years old, dressed in a dark suit with hair cut so close that when he spoke you could see the skin move on his skull. The second man was exactly the same. Maybe they hadn’t been born twins but whatever work they did had turned them into mirror reflections of each other. They even wore the same sunglasses. You couldn’t see their eyes.

“OK, Ed,” the first one said. “This is the room.”

“Right, Ted.”

The second one — Ed — moved forward and grabbed McGuffin’s suitcase. Then he started throwing things into it… the ties, the pen, everything McGuffin had left behind. Meanwhile Ted had pulled a mobile phone out of his jacket pocket and was talking quietly to someone somewhere outside.

“Red? This is Ted. I’m here with Ed. You wait with Ned. We’ll be five minutes.” He switched it off. “Come on! Let’s move it,” he muttered. His accent was faintly American but I got the feeling he was English.

“I’ll clear the bathroom,” Ed announced.

Ed was already moving towards the door. I just had time to grab hold of Tim and jerk him backwards into the bath. As Ed opened the bathroom door, I swept the shower curtain across but it was still a close thing. As he busied himself at the sink, scooping up McGuffin’s toothbrush and razor, he was only separated from us by a thin sheet of plastic. Next to me, Tim seemed to be crying. I wondered what had upset him. Then I looked up and realized that the shower was dripping on his nose.

Ed moved out. We got out of the bath and went to the door. Tim had snatched up a lavatory brush in self-defence.

The two men had cleared the room. All McGuffin’s things were in his suitcase and the suitcase was in Ted’s hand. And that might have been it. They might have walked out of there and been none the wiser. But it had been Tim who had opened the door to McGuffin’s room. He had had the key in his hand. And he had left it on the bed. I saw it about half a second before Ted. Then Ted saw it.

“Ed!” he said.

“Ted?”

“The bed!”

Ed looked at the bed and saw the key lying on top of the duvet. As one, the two men’s heads turned towards the bathroom. Ted reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun. Then he started moving towards the bathroom. Things looked bad. I was trapped in the bathroom with a quivering brother and a lavatory brush. There was no other way out.

And then, suddenly, the bedroom door opened. Ted spun round. The gun vanished so fast that if he’d missed the holster he’d have stabbed himself with it. A housemaid had chosen that moment to walk into the room. She stood there now with a pile of fresh towels in her hands. She seemed a little surprised to see the two men.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I have new towels.”

I realized it was time to move. Grabbing a towel off the handrail I walked straight out of the bathroom with Tim close behind. I didn’t even look at Ed and Ted. I knew I had to move quickly. The way Ted had concealed the gun told me that he didn’t want to start any shooting with witnesses about. Before he had time to change his mind I had walked up to Ed and Ted as if I worked for the hotel too.

“Hi,” I said. “These are the old towels.”

“Yes,” Tim added. “They’re very old.”

I threw the towels at the two men and ran.

We sprinted out of the room and back down the corridor. I knew that Ed and Ted were close behind us. I’d heard them curse and now their feet were thudding down on the soft-pile carpet. The corridor seemed to stretch on for ever and I couldn’t remember the way to the lift. I thought of turning and somehow fighting it out but I knew it was a bad idea. Find people. Instinct told me. You’ll be safe in a crowd.

Luck must have been on my side because we found the lift just as it reached the sixth floor and the door slid open. I dived in and stabbed at a button. I didn’t even notice which one. I just wanted the door to close before Ed and Ted arrived. The door seemed to be taking for ever. Then I realized Tim was leaning on it. I yanked him out of the way. The door slid shut and there was a soft hum as we began to go down. It wasn’t the lift that was humming, by the way. It was Tim. I think it must have been the relief.

The lift carried us all the way down to the ground floor and the moment the doors opened we were out. We crossed the lobby and went through the revolving doors. No sooner were we in the sunlight than a taxi drew up in front of us. Even then I thought it was a little odd. There was a taxi rank to one side with several cabs waiting. But this one had come from nowhere, jumping the queue.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

I threw open the door and got in. “Camden Town,” Tim said. I looked through the back window. There was no sign of Ed or Ted.

But as we set off, there was a nasty feeling in my stomach and I knew it wasn’t car sickness. The driver took a left turn, then a right. Which was funny, because if I’d been going to Camden Town, I’d have taken a right turn, then a left.

“We’re going the wrong way,” I said.

“What…?” Tim began.

The driver pressed a button and there was a loud click as the cab doors locked themselves automatically. Then he put his foot down on the accelerator and Tim and I were thrown back into our seats as the cab rocketed round a corner.

The driver wasn’t going anywhere near Camden Town. We were prisoners on a one-way journey to who-could-say where. Well, one thing was certain. We wouldn’t be leaving a tip.