anyone?’
‘The police asked that too. But we see hundreds of people in a day here. No one remembers him.’
Anonymous and invisible.
‘He checked in and the time was recorded, yes? So someone spoke to him then, face to face,’ Annie persisted. ‘Who? Claire? Pippa? The other one, Gareth?’
‘I’ll find out,’ said Ray.
Annie sat back, waiting.
‘You want me to do it now?’ asked Ray.
Annie gave him the look. ‘You got anything else pressing?’
Ray got up and left the lounge. Through the half-open door Annie saw him in a huddle with Pippa at the reception desk. Watched him come back into the lounge, sit down again.
‘Yeah, that would have been Gareth,’ he said. ‘Mr Smith checked in at eight thirty-three in the morning three days ago. He booked in—with Gareth—for the one day and overnight, but no one saw him leave the next morning.’
‘Hold on,’ Annie told him. ‘No one saw him leave? He paid his bill, yes? Spoke to whoever was on reception? But no one saw him?’
‘No one remembers seeing him. As I say, we—’
‘—see hundreds of people in a day. What about the doorman?’
Ray shook his head. ‘People come in and out all day. Whoever’s on the door don’t know their names and barely even notices their faces unless they give a good tip, and you don’t get too many of those. And if this guy wanted to remain incognito, he wouldn’t be doing that, for sure.’
Annie stood up. ‘Gareth Fuller, wasn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s here when?’
‘Actually he’s not,’ said Ray. ‘He left yesterday.’
‘Left?’
‘Manager fired him. Bit of a slacker.’
‘His address then?’
Ray went to get Gareth’s address.
Annie looked around the lounge and wondered what had really been going down between Redmond Delaney and Constantine that they had to meet here. Constantine slipped the Carters three grand a month to keep troublesome elements out of his clubs up West, save him the bother of importing his own muscle from across the pond. Maybe Redmond was undercutting the Carters, and Constantine’s true intention was to work out a better deal with him, or start a lucrative bidding war between the two rival gangs.
Damn, she had thought he was on her side. It hurt to discover that he might not be. And now this. She had to help Chris. She couldn’t just let him take the rap: she knew he was innocent. She wandered back out into reception.
Trouble, every way she looked. Nothing new there, though. She was used to digging deep, standing alone. If truth be told, she was getting tired of it, but it was what she usually had to do.
Ray came over and handed her a piece of paper with Gareth Fuller’s address on it. She thanked him and slipped him a fiver.
‘If anything else occurs to you, anything at all, you call me, okay?’ she told him.
‘Sure,’ he said, and smiled.
He wouldn’t call. She knew it. But she was more interested right now in Gareth Fuller, who had checked Mr Smith in, and checked him out—and who probably wouldn’t even remember what he looked like.
Next morning at eight there was a knock at the Palermo’s main door. Annie was up and dressed. She went down the stairs and opened up. The club was quiet for once, peaceful. Too early for the builders.
The bald, portly man standing there peered at her with watery blue eyes, squinting past a curl of cigarette smoke. He threw the stub on the pavement and ground it out with his heel.
‘Detective Sergeant Lane,’ said Annie, looking up and down the street. There was nobody about, but still…
‘We’ve charged him,’ said Lane.
Shit, thought Annie.
‘Can I have a few words?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ said Annie, and ushered him in, up the stairs, into the flat. She closed the door, indicated that he should take a seat. He did. He looked an utter bloody mess, corpulent and red in the face, his stubby fingers stained with nicotine, his white nylon shirt yellowish and sweat-stained and straining over his belly. He didn’t smell exactly fresh. Annie sat as far away as she could get and thought about Chris, charged now. Poor bastard.
‘I thought the rule was that we were never seen together,’ she said irritably.
He shrugged. ‘You’re helping the police with their inquiries,’ he said.
‘Fair enough. What’s the new DI like?’
‘Like a bear with a sore arse. Just got divorced and transferred in and now I’m stuck with the picky bastard. I’m telling you, that sod’s suspicious by nature.’
‘But he’s got no reason to be suspicious of you, has he?’
‘None at all. I’m squeaky clean.’
Which was ironic, since DS Lane always smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a month. If we have to have bent coppers on the firm, can’t we at least have clean ones? she thought. But the boys had assured her that Lane was a very useful contact. She’d have to open a window the minute he’d gone. Either that or fumigate the fucking place.
‘What have you got?’ she asked.
‘She was at the Vista Hotel visiting a Mr Smith in room two-oh-six,’ said Lane.
‘I know that.’
‘But it fits the MO of the other two that got done.’
‘Not the same hotel?’
‘No, different hotels every time. This is the poshest one yet; our boy’s stepped up a notch on the social ladder. The other two got done outside three-star places in the East End. But same meat, different gravy. Prostitutes calling and getting killed for their trouble. Same pattern, same method. You really think Chris Brown didn’t do these?’
Annie swallowed a sharp stab of revulsion at his casual tone, his relaxed manner. He didn’t care that Aretha was dead. Or the other two. He didn’t care that Chris was innocent. He just had a curiosity about the case, an interest in the puzzle it represented. And he thought they’d already solved it.
‘Did you find any
