Room 15: a gripping psychological mystery thriller

by Charles Harris

  Memories are more slippery than I thought. Becks’ life story has had a strange effect on my own, but not in a good way. I find myself doubting memories I’m sure I had and I wonder about others I’m sure I didn’t have. It’s frightening, like they’re slipping out of my grasp. I try to fight back against what I’ve started to call my Forgetting. To remember. Anything. The place I was walking to last night. The house I used to live in. Laura. The hotel. Other hotels. Soon memories of hotels grow in my mind like weeds.

  The first hotel I can remember: Minorca. Why that hotel of all hotels? I was, what, seven? Bright buildings around two blue swimming pools above a cliff. Far below lay a tiny crescent of a beach which could only be reached down a long path of dangerous steps. I walked fearfully down that path, holding my mother’s hand, trying not to look down, afraid that if I looked at the sea it might pull me off the cliff. My father strode ahead, of course, like a Spartan general, every pace an unspoken comment on my timidity. I wanted so much to stride down like he did. To earn his respect.

  But it was in that hotel that, somehow, I learned to fight: I fought older kids and younger kids, German kids and Spanish kids and Brits. I was paid in bloody noses and bruised ears, all good lessons. My mother tended my wounds with plasters and my ego with soft words. My father whacked me hard for fighting and thumped me twice as hard if I lost. I carried those scabs proudly, my campaign medals.

  But of the fights themselves I don’t remember a thing.

  But now a new memory comes: Paul was at my promotion party. How did that happen? I’m sure I hadn’t invited him. We were crowded into the garden at three o’clock, drinking my health, about two dozen of us. It had been raining, but the clouds had briefly parted and damp sunshine glimmered feebly on our small patch of grass. I’d lined up the glasses on the garden table and ensured there was a wide choice of red, white or juice. I believe the best parties are well organised and we give good parties, Laura and me. Everything planned. Loads of food ordered from M&S, with labels on everything, so the guests know what they’re getting. By three, everyone was drinking and eating well. It was then that I looked round and saw my father, of all people, pushing through the glass doors to the patio, just arrived, wheezing, sweating, putting on a smile, holding up a wrapped bottle.

  My first thought, I remember, was about Gerry. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen my father and we’d not ended up fighting about something, but I didn’t want to have a stand-up row in front of the man who was both my new boss and my father’s best friend. I took the bottle, said as little as possible and left him to wander about, making his bad jokes, greeting Gerry, boasting about more achievement for the Blackleigh name, like I knew he would. Taking a deep breath, I tried to relax, pour wine and smile.

  I did my best to forget he was there at the party, occupy myself with the barbecue and not let it affect my mood, but the air was heavy and the more I tried to ignore him, the more I heard his voice braying across our garden.

  ‘No disrespect to my son’s promotion,’ he said at one point, with a heavy wheeze, ‘but I never advised it. It’s a lot to live up to, the Blackleigh name.’

  My name. The one thing about me that was Paul’s doing, not mine.

  I kept quiet, looked past the smoking charcoal to where Gerry was sitting with Isobel, to see his reaction, but he was unreadable.

  Then Gerry patted Isobel on the knee, stood up and walked across the patio to pour himself another glass of Prosecco. ‘The Blackleigh name,’ he said, raising his glass with a thin smile.

  I must have knocked one of the glasses next to the barbecue with my hand. I remember hearing it smash and smelling the wine and seeing everyone turn to look.

  Shortly after five, we park forty metres from a boarded-up garage, two miles north of the Aviva Hotel where Matthews died. To the left of the old garage entrance, an unpainted wooden door opens briefly to let out three women in thin tops and skinny jeans, shivering in the pre-dawn. Then again for two men in chains and designer leather jackets. This is Lonely’s.

  When it comes to illegals, secrecy is the brand, and being in the know is part of the kick. A mysterious text message – a time and a place – and a hundred twenty-somethings turn up at a disused shop or warehouse – trustafarians from Hampstead and Highgate who get a thrill out of banging elbows at the bar with the criminal classes and breaking the law on smoking indoors. The kids think the clubs are run by anti-capitalists sticking it to the Man, but in fact illegals are the creation of pure unregulated laissez-faire capitalists, who believe in high profits and breaking the legs of people who interfere.

  So have I been here before? Is it connected to a case I was on? I feel dimly that I remember this wooden door and this rundown street – but have they just slid into my mind a moment ago and stuck in there like the smell of blood clinging to my clothes?

  ‘I don’t know about this,’ says Becks, scratching his thick neck. He’s a man who likes scratching.

  ‘This is what I know. There’s a second nurse. She was also in danger, but she might still be alive.’

  ‘A second woman?’

  ‘If she’s alive, we probably don’t have long. And I think there’s a connection to this place in some way.’

  Becks scratches his arm. He may be a man of action, but he’s also a worrier. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do we know what she looks like?’

  I shake my head painfully and gaze across the road at the plain wooden entrance. I have no idea how to get inside, or what might be waiting for me if I do. My faulty memory frightens me, but I don’t see I have any choice.

  ‘We should phone it in,’ Becks says. ‘It’s not our case, boss. We should tell the MIT team.’

  He doesn’t like this at all and I don’t blame him. Neither do I. But if the Murder Investigation Team get involved, I’ll be questioned in detail. My memory lapses will be found out and whoever is behind this will find out about them too. It occurs to me that one of the few advantages I might have is if the murderer doesn’t know about my Forgetting. He probably still thinks I know more than I do. If he finds out I can’t remember, then he has all the more incentive to have me killed before I get my memory back. I’ll be on sick leave, off the case and a sitting target.

  But before I can answer, a black BMW slips round the corner and stops. Three men climb out and look up and down the street. Blond and smartly dressed. Two are young and cocky, the third is older but seems more edgy and dangerous. Instinctively, I slide into the shadows inside the car and see Becks has done the same. The three men are close enough for us to hear them, but they’re not speaking in English. It’s some kind of guttural East European language, like the man who attacked me. Should I know them? After a few sentences, they knock on the wooden door and are let in.

  ‘I’m not waiting,’ I say. ‘If this woman’s not dead already, she probably will be soon. Stay here and watch who comes in.’

  ‘With respect, boss, if you insist on going in that place, I’m not stopping outside again.’

  He’s resolute. I consider pulling rank but then wonder if it might not be better to have him inside, where I can see him. In any case he’s already getting out of the car. So I concentrate on following him across the road, pulling my fleece tight against the vicious late night wind. I catch up with him beside the garage entrance, which I can see is little more than two pieces of plywood tacked over a frame. I release my breath in a cloud, put my hand up to knock.

  But at that moment the makeshift door opens and a woman comes out with two men, each wearing more jewellery than she is. She’s laughing anxiously and complaining about the snow. I step forward, as if I’m at home here, and hold it open for them. To my relief, they blank me, turning back to argue about something one of them has said, and I walk in fast, not looking to see if Becks is following.

  It’s dark inside and damp. In front of me is an undecorated lobby with a bare plastic stool where the doorman should sit but wh
ich to my surprise is unoccupied.

  The concrete floor slopes down sharply. Judging by the oil stains, this must have been the old garage ramp but lower down there’s a second door, made of metal this time and heavily reinforced. Through it I can hear the angry throb of drum ’n’ bass and smell the sweet and bitter mix of weed and nicotine. Then it bangs open and a doorman steps out, a short man but twice my width. He looks me up and down and I get ready to bluff.

  But unexpectedly he nods. ‘Mr Blackleigh. Nice to see you again.’

  He gazes at Becks and I smile at him to give myself time to think.

  ‘This is my friend and colleague Behzad Parvin,’ I say, as if it’s the most natural thing, and the bouncer ducks his head again in respect, like this is a city club and I’ve just brought the lord chief justice as my guest.

  ‘Welcome to Lonely’s, Mr Parvin,’ he says. There’s something oddly watchful about the man’s manner towards us. I can see Becks is as nervous as I am, but he merely shrugs while the doorman holds open the reinforced inner door for us to go through and it’s too late to back out now.

  Inside, the floor continues to curve down out of sight. I lead Becks down and the lower level starts to appear, first alcoves and tables, then a bar that runs along one entire side wall. The drum ’n’ bass is viciously loud, the lighting low. Layers of smoke lie thick and the place stinks of the dregs of a long night.

  ‘So, we’re VIPs, are we?’ Becks shouts over the music.

  I don’t know what to say. I keep on walking, controlling my fear, and try to imagine what it would be like to recognise that doorman, this garage, this ramp. For a few seconds I convince myself that I do. But then the certainty slips away.

  Four or five dedicated drinkers sit at the bar and ignore us. Younger kids huddle together around the tables, their faces pale from addictive substances. Older males in smart-casual sit in the alcoves flashing jewelled hands and taking care over younger females. I recognise no one and I have no plan – I hadn’t ever expected to get this far.

  Behind the bar, below a long drink-splashed mirror, hangs the price list. It’s not complicated: £7 Hard, £6 Beer, £5 Wine, £3 Soft, and they’ve run out of Soft. As we approach, the barman looks up from pouring a line of beers.

  ‘He’s in but busy,’ he shouts over the thump from the speakers.

  I play along. ‘I thought as much.’

  The barman’s medium height, muscular, with what could be a German accent, and he’s as wary of me as I am of him. Becks shifts uneasily from one foot to the other until I tell him to sit on one of the bar stools. I buy two glasses of Hard – it’s whisky, cheap and bitter – and scan the room. Hell is probably like this. Full of people who think they should be having a good time and can’t work out why they’re not.

  ‘Where do we start?’ Becks yells in my ear.

  I say nothing. Although I only had a few gulps of whisky, my legs are starting to feel heavy. I ignore them.

  ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been clubbing.’ Becks leans towards me with a slight smile. ‘I used to be good at it. On the pull. I think they do it mostly on the internet now.’

  ‘We’re too old,’ I say. I estimate him at around half a dozen years younger than me, in his mid-twenties, and guess he has a partner. If he does, I must have known. Another thing lost in the Forgetting.

  In the mirror over Becks’ shoulder I spot the three East Europeans. They’re sitting at a small round table in the middle, drinking shorts and looking around coolly, in the way people do when they’re watching for someone but don’t want it to be too obvious.

  Near them sits a redhead, alone. Spiky. Alert. With a low-cut dress and too much bling. A man crosses the floor to speak to her. He’s mid-thirties and wears a cheap suit. He walks off again. Okay, what’s the problem? The price?

  I look away from the mirror before the redhead has a chance to catch me in the reflection, and mull over Becks’ question. Where do we start? I had hoped, naively, that being here would spark some thought, rekindle a memory.

  ‘Coming over,’ Becks says.

  And so she is. She stands and walks to the bar, signs to the barman, but he’s busy at the far end. She’s slim, with the determined strut of someone who’s shorter than she’d like to be. Glancing at me anxiously, she sits with a flounce on a nearby bar stool, taps her cigarette on the counter before lighting it. And it’s only when she’s close that I see the slight heaviness of the chin under the make-up.

  I get the feeling she recognises me, but I don’t want to make the first move, so I check out the paintings on the walls. I don’t need an expert to tell me that they’re by some seriously famous names. Illegals often get in with the top contemporary artists, who think it helps their street cred to loan their work.

  The red-haired trannie gives me another sideways look and starts up like she’s going to speak then glances around and changes her mind. Instead, flopping off the stool, she tip-taps past the end of the bar. There she pauses, looks back at me pointedly and goes through a pair of double doors.

  Becks nudges me with a heavy elbow. The three East Europeans are staring in the same direction. One of the younger ones stands up and follows.

  I get off my stool and wish I hadn’t had that drink. The alcohol is making me muzzy in the head. Becks joins me and we follow in turn through the double doors, to find ourselves in a corridor with men’s and women’s toilets. But she’s no longer to be seen.

  Urgently I push open the door of the women’s, a grimy square room – there’s a teenager in a tight short skirt and high boots kneeling in front of a man. We bang open the cubicle doors, while the couple ignore us, too busy for interruption, but there’s no one else. The men’s is even less pleasant and even more empty.

  ‘Fuck,’ I say.

  ‘Boss?’ Becks says. ‘The stairs.’

  Beyond the toilets, he’s spotted a concrete staircase leading up to ground level and down to a deeper sub-basement. I point upwards and he sprints off. Before I go down, I open a gap in the double doors. As I feared, the other two East Europeans have also left their table. I’m getting a very sick feeling about this.

  I’m still peering through when a door beside the stairs bangs open behind me. I flinch and turn painfully to deal with the attack I’m sure is coming. But it’s the bouncer. He nods towards the doorway and says, ‘Mr Rahman’s ready to see you now.’

  15

  Have I ever been down this corridor before? Should I remember the smell of damp, the boxes of blue crystal rat poison in the corners? The bouncer knocks softly on a door and waves me into what must have been the original garage office. Dusty car posters and calendars with naked women still hang on the bare breeze-block walls. I count four Asians in the room – one with a beard, leaning against a dark-green filing cabinet, blocking off my exit, and two lounging against the walls on either side. I’m surrounded and I don’t like it. A tall shaven-headed man bends over a battered wooden desk reading letters. He glances up at me and says, ‘They told me you were back in.’

  So I take a chance. ‘Happy to be back, Rahman.’

  Rahman has that easy charisma that large men often have. I put him as Pakistani or Bengali – in his late twenties – and there’s a dangerous stillness to him. No movement is unnecessary or overdone. He gives a partial smile and crosses his arms. The beard by the filing cabinet grunts. The two foot-soldiers simply raise their chins.

  Rahman tells the bouncer he can leave. ‘Is there a problem, Ross?’ Rahman says to me, once the door has shut. His eyes are chemical bleary and I notice a rat tattoo poking up from under the neck of his T-shirt.

  ‘I don’t know, Rahman. You tell me.’

  Before he can answer, another door-picker sticks his head into the room. A clone of the first, same shoulders, same wariness, but this one has a moustache. The bearded one speaks from by the filing cabinet. ‘It’s okay, John, Ivor found him, innit.’

  The second bouncer begins to make some kind of apology, but Rahman cuts hi
m off. ‘I’ve got it. Go back to the door.’

  John gives me a quick vicious glance before he retreats. I’ve no time to wonder what past we share before Rahman waves me to an old sofa, collapses into it next to me, then leans in suddenly for a closer inspection of the plasters on my neck and hands. ‘You hurt yourself?’ He takes my hands and looks briefly like he cares. But a second later his eyes snap back up, hard. He’s one of those dangerous men whose emotions can change in a second. ‘What happened to the third BK?’

  ‘The third BK?’

  ‘The third fucking BK,’ says the bearded one heatedly. ‘We went looking for you to ask you. W’appen to it?’

  I wish I had some idea of what they were talking about, but I’m fed up with everyone knowing more than me. ‘The third BK?’ I say, jabbing a finger at him with the passion that comes easily when you’re ignorant. ‘You fucking tell me. That’s what I want to know. What happened to it? That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.’

  Rahman starts to speak but this is my show. I cut across him angrily. ‘A woman was found dead last night.’

  I reach into my pocket and the other three gangsters tense but Rahman holds up a large hand to restrain them. Slowly I pull out my work mobile and show him the picture of Amy Matthews’ body.

  ‘Shit.’ He stands, pours two whiskies and offers me one. Against my better judgement, I take it. ‘You didn’t find her in time?’

  So Paul was right, I’d been here trying to save her. I drink deeply despite my ongoing medication, despite my tiredness. It’s a good single malt, much better than in the main bar, and the hit goes straight to my legs.

  ‘Shit,’ Rahman says again. ‘She was okay. I liked her.’

  ‘She came in often?’

  He gives me a peculiar look. ‘Like I told you before, she went to a lot of places, but she always came back here. She could chill and get away from her work. You want to catch some criminals, innit? Look at the people who run the hospitals, the clinics, and pay next to no fucking money for thirty-six-hour shifts.’