Room 15: a gripping psychological mystery thriller

by Charles Harris

  But you never get rid of the feeling – that this person was alive not long ago – maybe only a few minutes – maybe a few hours or days. But they had a life. They had keys to doors that they would never open again. They knew people they’d never see again.

  Anyway, I tell myself, this smell is different. I smelled it downstairs – something to do with the hotel. At first it seems sweet and perfumed, but underneath there’s something less pleasant, sickly, something that can’t be covered up by fresh paint.

  I step in to take a closer photo of the dead woman. But those eyes… I tell myself to concentrate. What do I see? This was no professional hit but a frenetic killing. The killer emptied the gun into her. I hear Ryan return.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ he says from the doorway. ‘Doesn’t look like the room above was being used.’

  ‘Thank you, Ryan.’ I bend down to touch her. The skin’s growing cold and there’s no pulse of course. I look to the floor. Too quick – I almost lose my balance and can feel the rushing of my blood inside my head. Just in time, I steady myself. Pain runs up the side of my neck.

  ‘Sir?’ Ryan sounds anxious again. I’ve been in here too long, I know. I should leave it to Forensics.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I say but stay where I am. I reach out and gently lift up the top rim of the shoulder bag. Inside, there’s more make-up and a wallet. I tease it out, using my gloved fingers. Delicately, like I’m defusing a bomb, frowning to keep my eyes focused, making sure I don’t disturb anything else, I open it and find three five-pound notes and a credit card in the name of Amy Matthews. There’s a hospital ID card from Camden General on the other side of the borough, the lanyard tidily wrapped around. It says she’s a nurse and the name is the same. ‘Amy Matthews,’ I say out loud. Who was Nurse Matthews and what was she doing here in this King’s Cross hotel?

  I look around. ‘Mobile?’ I ask. The PC doesn’t answer. ‘Did you find a mobile?’

  He mutters vaguely. He’s canny and has noticed more than your average copper, but there are limits. God forbid anyone should think he’s angling for CID.

  ‘Ever heard of a young woman who didn’t have a mobile?’ There are a hundred places a phone could be and I shouldn’t search in any of them.

  ‘Sir?’ I hear Ryan call again – more urgently.

  I was trying to stand, but my balance went completely this time. I reached out for a flimsy bedside table to stop myself falling, but it seems to have collapsed. I find myself on my knees by the body of Nurse Matthews, embarrassingly close to her legs. I can smell her blood and her perfume, along with the odour of the hotel.

  ‘Sir?’ Norris now. He’s returned and is pushing past Ryan to get to me.

  ‘Keep away!’ I shout, but my voice is unclear, no longer under my control. I feel desperately ashamed. ‘I’m fine. Keep out of the crime scene. Everything’s okay.’ Norris is bending over me. I wave him away. ‘Get out. You’re contaminating the evidence…’

  ‘It’s okay, sir,’ he says. ‘It’s all right.’ And I feel him pulling me up.

  There’s a confused bustle of people outside the hotel. More blues flash in the swirling snow. The Homicide Assessment Team has arrived and wants everyone to know it. Norris has led me carefully downstairs. But he allows me to limp down the front steps on my own, letting me maintain a little dignity. I’m grateful to him for that but also furious at myself for falling over.

  It’s my stupid sense of duty, I tell myself. And Norris. If he hadn’t gone on about me being the only DI still standing, I wouldn’t even have come here, I’d have signed off sick and left the whole job to someone else. This will play badly. Now he’ll have to report it, report my fall, report that he had to contaminate the scene to help me. The only way out is to beg him to say nothing, to collude with Ryan, who of course also saw the whole sorry mess.

  Police officers stand around waiting for instructions. Other faces hardly visible behind them in the darkness, the usual crowd. Blue lights attract the public like it’s a TV show made just for them. This gives me a new thought, but before I can hold on to it I’m called over to brief the HAT car. Squinting into the lights, trying to hold on to some semblance of professional calm, I say the minimum, then wave the new team thankfully into the hotel.

  Finally, of the police, only Norris is left. He leads me to one side with a solid certainty of purpose that’s impossible to resist. No, I’m not going to plead with him, I decide, and then I remember what I wanted to tell him before. I grab him by the arm, but that feels too desperate so I let go.

  ‘Photos,’ I say. ‘Pictures of the rubberneckers.’ It’s standard procedure. You never know who might come back to the scene to gloat, but Norris isn’t listening. He seems more concerned about me.

  ‘Okay, now I’m taking you to a hospital,’ he says.

  ‘Remember the pictures,’ I repeat.

  ‘Certainly, sir. Once you’ve taken your seat, sir.’ And he opens the patrol car door.

  7

  A memory: sitting in Accident and Emergency, my father filling the grey plastic chair next to me, the waiting room almost empty. That unpleasant, sharp, medical smell together with something earthy and less easy to define. I’ve got a broken arm – left arm – and he’s running through what happened with me.

  ‘Get it right,’ he says. ‘Get it clear. So you can tell the doctor the relevant facts.’ He’s like he’s still at work, and he’s good at it. Eliminating the uncertainties. I admire him. I’m seven? Eight? Left arm hurting like hell. I feel guilty about something. Shit happens.

  I remember him bringing me a fizzy drink from a machine. Handing me the can, which I held carefully with my good hand.

  I’m not afraid of hospitals today, as far as I remember. Not normally. But tonight I am terrified of what I might find out. The hole in my memory is like a big hole in the floor and I walk around it most of the time and sometimes I even forget it’s there then suddenly I see the hole again, right before I fall into it. And part of me thinks if only I can find a way to leave without telling anyone then it will go away.

  For an hour, I’ve been watching as A&E filled up with the walking wounded of the night, clutching damaged parts of themselves. Meanwhile, Norris has been passing the time making bad jokes, shaking his head and extracting high-calorie bars from the snack dispenser at the far side of the waiting area.

  I call home. I tried earlier and, as before, it rings a long time and then our voicemail cuts in and my own voice tells me we’re out. If I say I’m in hospital, Laura will rush over as soon as she hears, but I persuade myself I don’t want to make her anxious. The truth is that a part of me believes that while I don’t tell her, it’s not real. So this time I leave a rambling message about being caught up with something, finishing with how I miss her. I keep my voice low in the subdued buzz of the waiting area.

  Could she be working at almost midnight? Like me, Laura lost her mother when she was young and I don’t think her father brought her up to take time off. Even sleep, for him, was something you had to endure, not enjoy. Nor was he massively impressed with me when I first met him the week before our wedding, which we’d arranged ourselves in our quiet local church. He was one of the first black circuit judges and I’m sure he’d hoped his daughter would do better for herself than a young white policeman, not long out of training. He watched me warily as Laura brought me in, like I was planning to steal one of the antique satirical etchings of French lawyers that hung on his walls, but shook hands heartily and launched into a lengthy anecdote about a recent case of his involving a detective sergeant who’d persuaded his wife to say she was driving when a speed camera caught him, off duty at four am, doing ninety up the M6.

  I promised never to ask Lolo to take a speeding ticket for me and he laughed for the first time, insisting that wasn’t the purpose of the story. He started to thaw as we ate a small but elegant roast dinner (cooked by him) round his expensive dining room table in Walton-on-Thames. I had the sense to praise his braising technique an
d by the time he served his home-made tiramisu we were on the way to becoming friends.

  In truth, I’ve always been easy to please. As I told him, I loved my wife-to-be and was loved by her, and as long as criminals stole, killed and sold drugs, I’d never be short of work – like a cat who never doubted there would be mice to catch. Promotion wasn’t something I thought a lot about. You need to network hard in the Met if you want to rise high – I suspect it’s the same with judges and I know it’s the case for solicitors like Laura – but that’s never been my strength. No, I just get on with my job. Of course that means being away from home more than I like. I’d really like to be back at home right now.

  Next, I try again to phone Gerry, my boss. I urgently need to get to him before he hears about what happened at the crime scene from anyone else. But after nine rings, this call goes to voicemail again too, so I give up and dial his home and now the phone’s answered in three. Isobel… At last, to my relief, I’m speaking to someone I remember.

  ‘Hey, Izzie,’ I say. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Ross?’ she answers. I’ve known and loved Gerry’s wife almost as long as he has. I must have been ten when he first brought her round to our house – his latest girlfriend, to be approved by my father, his own boss. Isobel was five years younger than him at twenty-one, which itself seemed very old, but she had a salty wit and joked with me like I was one of the adults. I was won over immediately and we’ve been friends ever since.

  Now she tells me Gerry’s at work. She sounds a little short-tempered, which throws me momentarily.

  ‘How are the girls?’ I ask, more to prolong the contact with a world I recognise than anything else. But it seems there’s a programme Izzie’s trying to watch. I imagine her on their living room sofa, in the warmth of their large comfortable house, curled up, legs folded under, a glass of wine on the coffee table. I envy her.

  ‘You go ahead,’ I say. ‘You watch your programme. There’s mostly crap on TV nowadays. You catch the good ones while you can.’ She gives a grunt – again that unusual sharpness – but before she can ring off, I add, ‘I hope you enjoyed the party – not too much job talk.’

  There’s a silence. Of course, I know what she’s going to say before she says it.

  ‘What party?’

  I want to say: the party we held at our home this afternoon, Laura and me, the last thing I remember. Where Gerry was waving his Prosecco and arguing passionately about underfunding. Where Isobel was sitting on the patio right next to him, working her way merrily through her sixth daiquiri, and someone dropped a glass of wine and I can still hear the sound and smell it. But I get a dread feeling, so I don’t. I cover, saying I must be confused about a recent get-together that Gerry mentioned. She doesn’t sound convinced. ‘Did Laura tell you where she was going tonight?’ I ask finally. ‘I’ve been trying to reach her.’

  ‘She’s at home, Ross,’ she says. ‘I just spoke to her.’

  I call our home number again – and once more it goes to answerphone. But before I can try a third time, the male triage nurse calls my name. This is it.

  While I was waiting, I noticed some patients returned from the triage room but others didn’t and now, when I enter, I see why – it’s not a room at all but a corridor with an exit to the ward at the far end. Clever trick. The nurse shows me to a bucket seat, sits at his desk and inspects the wound on my neck. He’s a sturdy Jamaican Rasta with a pale blue tunic and an air of unlikely enthusiasm. ‘So, how did you do that?’

  Trying to appear calm, I consider my response.

  ‘Mr Blackleigh,’ he goes, checking his screen with a friendly smile. ‘Mr Detective Inspector, you interview people. You know how interviews go, sir. I ask a question, you answer. It’s the way the world works.’

  ‘I need time to think things out,’ I say.

  ‘Think out what? You need to think out how you got hurt?’

  ‘I can’t remember how I got hurt.’

  He gives me a sideways look. ‘You lost consciousness?’

  ‘I don’t remember that either.’

  He taps a note on his keyboard, no expression. Nevertheless I feel a release now I’ve told him. Like a band was wound tight round my chest and has now been cut away. He asks if I know the date. I say ‘February 2010’ and wait for him to tell me I’m mad, but he just makes another note and asks when I was last in hospital. I say honestly that I rarely get ill. I can scarcely recall a day in hospital since I was a kid.

  He inspects the cuts, wipes them with cotton wool, and I feel a sting of surgical spirit. ‘I heard it was snowing,’ he says. ‘It’s still falling, is it?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘There you go. I never get to see outside once I’m in. Shit, I haven’t seen snow in three years and now I’m down here missing it. Is it thick?’ He types a secret message. Tap, tap, rattle, rattle on his keyboard in Morse. Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash. What’s he writing about me?

  He gently prods my ribs and asks what hurts. My ribs? Who cares about my ribs? He turns over my hands and sees the blood I couldn’t fully clean off.

  ‘Who am I?’ he asks.

  ‘You’re a triage nurse.’ I feel triumphant that I can get one right.

  ‘And where are we? You remember the name of the hospital?’

  I did. I remembered it a few minutes ago as clearly as anything, but to my horror it’s slipped. Slipped into the mud in my brain. I take a guess and name one of the large teaching hospitals in the borough. Am I correct? He doesn’t comment. Instead, he takes a wad of lint from a drawer and tapes it over the wound below my left ear. It’s a relief to be taken care of at last. Reaching up to a filing tray attached to the wall, he pulls out a multi-part form.

  ‘Who else knows you’re here? Family? Work colleagues?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Hey, stay cool, sir. You need support. People to help you.’

  ‘I’m totally cool. I just don’t want anyone involved. Tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘You’ll need to wait and see a doctor. Maybe they’ll take a peek inside, do a CT scan, or maybe not.’ He scrawls notes on the form, his head bent over the desk like a mendicant monk.

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘There’s a procedure, sir.’

  ‘Whatever the problem is, tell me now. Give me a pill or something. Get it over with.’

  The nurse shrugs. ‘Everybody waits.’ He’s tearing apart the copies, white, pink and blue, and filing them in different trays.

  ‘And I’ve got a murder case to solve.’ This is not exactly true but I’m tired and can’t face another hour and a half in the waiting room.

  ‘You’ve got a murder case and you’ve got memory loss?’

  ‘A dead nurse. One of yours.’

  The triage nurse looks at me a moment. ‘Stay here,’ he says and goes out.

  I remain where I am.

  After a while he returns. He leads me through to a cubicle, tells me to wait and tugs at a green floral plastic curtain, leaving it half closed. There’s a chair and a trolley with a mattress. I sit on the trolley and wait, telling myself to keep calm.

  8

  The truth is I’m starting to feel better. I’m sure I am. I gave myself a scare, didn’t I? But that’s all it was. I can remember many things – and I’ll remember the rest in time. Even the headache is easing slightly.

  As I sit there, through a gap in the curtain I can see rows of identical cubicles, like shower stalls or confessionals. I’m Church of England, but I’ve always warmed to the idea of Catholic confession. Someone to take away your sins and turn you back into a good person for a few simple penances.

  After a few minutes, I try phoning Laura again, and again it goes to voicemail. I’m about to leave yet another message for her when my work phone buzzes. It’s Gerry.

  ‘You’ve been busy, mate,’ he says. It’s good to hear him, even if he sounds worn out, his voice thick with tobacco. ‘Norris reported you looked like shit.
Half the station thinks you’d been drinking or smashed up your car. Or both.’

  Gerry Gardner may be my boss, but he’s also my mentor. He was Paul’s protégé when he was just out of police college and my father was a detective sergeant. For almost as far back as I remember, Gerry would come round to the house to watch football or just talk. He’d ask my opinion on anything from women to politics to the law, questions that I’d answer with great seriousness based on no knowledge whatsoever. Later, he was the one who told Paul to piss off when he tried to stop me joining the force. This is a man who will always watch my back.

  ‘I’m fine. No problem,’ I reply, brushing dirt from my sleeve. I might trust him with my life, but I’m not going to make the mistake of telling my boss I can’t remember things. Hearing laughter in the background, I change the subject. ‘You in the pub?’

  ‘I’m working. You didn’t answer the question.’

  It hadn’t actually been a question so much as a statement about station gossip, but I answer anyway. ‘No, not driving and not drinking. Dry as a vicar’s sermon,’ I say and am relieved when he chuckles. ‘By the way, Gerry, is everything okay with Izzie? I rang her earlier when I couldn’t get you. She sounded ticked off.’

  ‘Izzie’s good.’ It feels like he’s about to say more but instead he goes, ‘Falling over in a crime scene. It’s not a good career move, Ross.’

  ‘Nothing got touched. Nothing important, just a small table. I’ll write up a full report.’

  ‘You won’t write a fucking word about it and nor will anyone else. I’ve spoken to Norris and Ryan. It didn’t happen… Anyway,’ he says warmly, ‘you don’t need help with your future. People are telling me you had a love-in with the deputy assistant commissioner on Friday.’