by Helen Smith
Nik walked purposefully on his way to his office from the Captain Thomas Coram room, straightening things that didn’t need straightening, nodding to staff, enjoying being in charge. He tried not to eavesdrop when he went into meeting rooms. But four words repeated by the occupants of the last one he’d visited had reached his consciousness and now tangled themselves around his other thoughts: the One Star Club. What was that?
Chapter Nine
CITIZEN JOURNALIST
The door of the Captain Thomas Coram room slammed open and Teena burst in, her jaw pushed slightly forward in belligerent triumph. Emily saw the ripple of mild panic go round the room. The members of the committee were trying to assess how it might look to an outsider that they were sitting there gulping expensive white wine, and eating an assortment of fancy nuts, in the aftermath of a woman’s death. Not good, from the guilty-schoolgirl looks on their faces.
“I know what’s happened!” Teena said.
“Yes,” said Morgana soothingly. “Yes, of course.” Clearly she had no idea what Teena was on about.
“I’ve worked it out.”
Teena wanted the committee members to ask her what she had worked out, and because they found her rather annoying, everyone politely resisted.
Cerys folded first, perhaps because she was a grandmother and used to this sort of thing. “You want to come in and tell us what’s going on, love?”
Teena came in and sat down. “I’ll have some of that wine, if you don’t mind. See, in my line of work—”
“Local council?” asked Polly, sweetly, pouring her a glass.
“Citizen journalist. I’m used to digging about, finding facts.”
“Of course you are. How wonderful!” Morgana was at her most soothing again.
“I’ve been up there. I’ve worked it out. She was pushed, wasn’t she?”
“Winnie? Was she?” The silver bangles jingled around Morgana’s weak-looking wrists. If Winnie had been pushed by someone in this room, it was unlikely to have been Morgana.
“Yes.”
“Been up where?” Polly’s patient sweetness would have worked much better without the scary face paint.
“Teena, darling, have you told the police?” Morgana asked warily.
“I spoke to that young one. He was very rude.”
Everyone cheered up at this. Zena spoke for the group. “What’d he say, babes?”
“He said he was thinking of opening an outreach service for amateur sleuths.”
Dr. Muriel treated them to a longish, staccato version of her laugh. Emily didn’t even smile.
“Nuts?” said Polly, offering the bowl to Teena. Emily smiled at that.
“No thanks, Polly. I’m going up there again to have a look.” Teena drained her glass.
“Up where?” Polly persisted.
“The roof garden.”
“Darling, have you talked to anyone else about this?” Morgana was worried, as always, about how to contain the information and stop it reaching the press.
“No.”
Polly said, “How did you know about the roof terrace?”
“Well, I asked the hotel manager.”
“So you’ve told the policeman and the hotel manager?”
“And Maggie.”
Polly stood up. “You need to be careful. You might be in danger. I’ll come with you if you like.”
“I got the idea when we did that writing exercise, Polly. I wrote about Winnie’s death from the point of view of the murderer. I could see my hands closing round her throat, and then pushing her off so she landed several stories below and broke all her bones. It was really vivid.”
“I’ve missed a bit,” said Cerys. “Who’s the murderer? Is it Teena?”
“Darling, it’s fiction. Teena’s so clever she’s imagined it all.” Morgana only hesitated for a moment. “Haven’t you?”
“Yeah. I don’t know who killed Winnie. But I know how they did it. If I go up to the roof garden, can you go and stand underneath, Polly? There’s some bins round by the kitchen. I need to see if there’s room for you to lie in one of them.”
“Polly’s going to go and lie in a bin?” Zena looked as though she’d just been told it was Christmas and she was allowed to open her presents early. “Praps we should all come and look?”
“Darlings, no. We’re out of time. We really need to go next door. Polly will look after Teena.”
“Polly, love, if you’re playing nursemaid, you might want to pop to the loo first.” Cerys made a wiping motion in front of her face. “Tidy yourself up a bit.”
The group began to rise. Nothing useful had been decided. Emily had made lots of notes and yet there was nothing that seemed interesting or relevant. She thought she really ought to explain that she’d already worked out some of what had happened to Winnie. “Listen, Teena—”
“That’s all right, Emily. Me and Polly’ve got this.”
Emily let it go. She didn’t want to look as if she was trying to compete; as if she was jealous that Polly and Teena were going off together to investigate.
Cerys spoke kindly to Teena. “She wasn’t found in the bins, love. You do realize that?”
Before Teena could get a word in, Zena spoke for her: “She could have been moved, Cee. Couple of blokes working together. They wrap her up in a carpet, bundle her body onto the estate.”
“Ah! Like Cleopatra being delivered to the feet of the great Antony.” Morgana knew that Zena liked to keep no more than two steps away from the Cleopatra myth. “Was there a carpet found by the body?”
There was a tiny pause while Zena thought about this. “Couple of blokes and no carpet, then.”
Teena looked pointedly at Cerys and Zena, standing side by side. Next to fragile Morgana and frail Polly, they looked beefy. “Could have been a couple of big women.”
Cerys was good-humored about it. “Or one big woman. Fair play, there’s many a wife has to haul her husband out of the pub single-handed round my neck of the woods.” Not that Cerys herself had ever had to do it. “But who would have wanted to push Winnie to her death in the first place? Beats me.”
Archie spoke softly. “There are dark thoughts in the minds of many men.”
“And women,” said Teena. In a room of people used to getting the last word, she had done well to win this one. And, by the expression on her face, she knew it. She couldn’t have looked any more smug if someone had taken Zena’s purple lipstick and written SMUG right across her forehead. It was too bad she wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy it.
Chapter Ten
NIK AND HENRI
Nik slipped into the chair behind his desk and undid his suit jacket—a few minutes’ comfort while he was out of the public eye, so long as he remembered to do it up again—then pressed a button on his computer to take it out of sleep mode.
There was a scribbled message on the pad on his desk by Jurgen, the head of security, and he read it as his computer sparked into life.
Need to speak to you URGENTLY, Nik. Scruffy-looking members of the public wandering about the hotel, saying they’re here for VIGIL. They’re alarming the paying guests. THE CORAM HOTEL IS NOT A HOSTEL. J.
Jurgen’s job was to be suspicious of everyone, and slightly intimidating in a subtle and superficially courteous way. He certainly intimidated Nik, though Nik tried not to show it. He put the message to one side as Henri the porter came to the door.
Nik didn’t ask Henri to sit down. He said, “Cyril’s been spotted here. Do you know anything about it?”
“Cyril?” Henri tried to look mystified; he frowned and looked upward, as though searching his memory for clues. His standard of acting wouldn’t have got him selected for the part of a tree in a school nativity play. But Henri wasn’t auditioning. He was playing for time. He knew who Cyril was. He and Cyril hailed from the same country of origin and they were friends.
“Cyril Loman. He mustn’t come here. Understand, Henri? There’s police here, investigating that other matter. L
oyalty’s important, yes. Friends help each other. I know that. You know it. But if Cyril attracts their attention…”
“Cyril visit the ladies of the conference.”
“You have seen him, then?”
Henri stared at Nik. This was one of those interviews where one person holds all the power and already knows the answers to the questions—and Nik was that person. Nik didn’t want information, he wanted to make a point. Henri stood still and waited to discover what point Nik wanted to make. Henri had no authority or influence. He did a job that earned him minimum wage, and he lived quietly, using the money he earned to support his wife and two small children. He was a long, long way from his country of origin. But every morning, as he left for work dressed in his striped waistcoat and smart black trousers, he gave thanks for the mildness of the British weather and the tolerance of British people, and every now and then he offered up a little prayer on behalf of the British justice system, whose close attention he hoped to avoid.
Nik turned the screen of his computer so that Henri could see it. He tapped a button on his keyboard a couple of times, quickly, so that it made a satisfying knitting needle clickety-click. Henri watched a replay of CCTV images of his friend Cyril Loman heaving a black bin bag over the wall between the hotel and the estate.
“You realize this is stealing?” said Nik. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms, and did his serious face.
Henri gawped and then, he couldn’t help it, he could feel a smile lick his expression, and then it burned up his face from cheeks to eyes as rapidly as if someone had put a match to a photograph. He tried to get a grip on himself—he literally put his arms around himself and hugged his ribs—but it was no good. He was struck with mirth, a naughty boy in the headmaster’s office at school. The memory this prompted, of relatively carefree days as a schoolboy back home, only made him feel more joyful. He shook with silent laughter. Stealing? From a rubbish bin? Really? It was the kind of wild story a grandmother would tell children to illustrate the folly of a rich man. That thought sobered him—he’d heard his grandmother had died a few years ago, but he’d never had the chance to say goodbye—and the reminder of his lost relatives made him feel sad…and he was then happy again. He couldn’t help it. Stealing! He giggled unmanfully, unable to stop himself.
“Henri, pull yourself together, mate. You’re a giggling buffoon.”
But it would be three or four minutes before Henri managed to regain control and explain to Nik Kovacevic how those conference ladies had insulted his friend Cyril Loman and besmirched his honor, and how the furious M. Loman had decided to respond.
“No more of this nonsense, you understand? If the police get wind of any of it…”
Henri’s face snapped back to its default expression. Fear smothered his mirth. “I help for loyalty. Is OK, Nik? I cannot danger. I cannot.”
“Yeah, mate. It’s OK. I won’t let anything happen to you. No danger. If anyone comes sniffing about—police or Home Office or whatever—I should get wind of it. I’ll be able to warn you. Until then, keep your nose out of trouble. Cyril can help with the papers. He’s all well and good with the shortcuts and circumventing bureaucracy. But he can’t help at the other end of it. You can’t just bribe your way out of trouble if you tangle with the police in this country.”
Henri couldn’t follow all this. Sniffing, wind, nose, what? But he followed the important parts: police, Home Office, trouble, Cyril, papers.
Outside the office, Emily Castles lurked. She knew that Nik would be going to the press conference, and she had hoped she might be able to go through his office looking for clues—incriminating CCTV footage, something like that (she only had his word for it that it was being rebooted earlier that day). But when she arrived, she saw that he was still in the office and he wasn’t alone. She stood and listened. Her behavior would have got her a warning if she’d been a member of Nik Kovacevic’s staff and he’d caught her at it. But she wasn’t and he didn’t. She heard the tail end of the conversation:
“The upshot, Henri, is that I have CCTV showing you and Cyril putting something heavy over the wall.”
“CCTV not filming!”
“It wasn’t filming, and now it is. That’s the nature of CCTV. It’s there to film things. You can’t have it turned off for too long, or it triggers an alarm. And what do I see when I review this afternoon’s footage? Just about the most incriminating footage possible, given what happened earlier today, of two men manhandling what might well be a woman’s body in a bin bag.”
“Cyril honor. Reputation. He ask me.”
“Well, I gathered that. I don’t intend showing it to anyone. All I’m saying is, you need to keep quiet about the other matter. Keep it zipped. Understand?”
Henri didn’t really understand. The only things he generally kept zipped were his trousers and his tracksuit tops. “Is dangerous?”
“Not if you keep your head. I’m going to press delete on this. See?” There was a pause in the conversation, suggesting that Nik and Henri were watching the image disappear from the screen. “Don’t do anything else silly. Go on, off with you.”
Hearing those words, Emily scarpered and hid behind a tall, wing-backed chair in a corner of the lobby. She watched as Henri left the office and went back to work. Even if Emily could have listened inside his head, she wouldn’t have understood. He was thinking in French, his mother tongue. He was wondering how he was going to explain to his wife that it didn’t matter where you went, you always got asked to help someone do something in order to make their life easier, and sometimes it just made your life much worse. And how, though he’d repaid a debt to Nik Kovacevic a few hours ago, suddenly he was in his debt all over again.
Nik Kovacevic picked up the phone and called Jurgen. And then he made his way to the press conference.
Seeing Nik walk by from where she stood admiring a stopped clock on a mantelpiece, half-hidden by the chair, Emily doubled back into his office. She had a few minutes, that was all, and then she’d have to get to the press conference herself. How should she spend the time? She pulled at the drawers on the filing cabinets in the office, but they were all locked. She puzzled briefly over the chart on the wall labeled Rubbish Champion, with a blank square under each month of the year, where a passport-size photo was supposed to go. What was she looking for? A signed confession? A bottle of poison?
The computer was still on. Perhaps it would yield his secrets. Emily opened the CCTV window and looked at nothing much happening outside. She opened the latest website Nik had looked at: a hotel review site. She had a fairly good idea what he’d been up to on there. It might prove he was sneaky, but it didn’t make him a murderer. What should she be looking for? What should she be doing? A computer is no different from any other oracle. The answers it gives are only as good as the questions asked.
Emily pulled out her notebook, hoping that something she had written would prompt her to ask the right question. What did she want to know? She realized there was something that was bothering her, though perhaps Nik didn’t know the answer. But for a few minutes she had the world’s finest minds at her fingertips, if she cared to summon them. It seemed daft to waste the opportunity. She opened the search box on the computer’s Internet browser and typed: What is the antidote to cyanide poisoning?
Chapter Eleven
THE PRESS CONFERENCE
Emily arrived in the T. S. Eliot suite just as the press conference was about to start. As she took her place next to Dr. Muriel, she leaned over and whispered, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”
Dr. Muriel folded her arms and looked amused. She thrived on argument.
“There’s no such thing as the One Star Club, is there?”
“Ha! I suppose there could be such a thing.”
“But if there were, it would be a wild coincidence, wouldn’t it? Because you’ve just made it up.”
Dr. Muriel grinned. “Ah, Emily. It’s impossible to hoodwink you.”
“But why s
ay it, if it’s not true?” Dr. Muriel’s methods ran counter to what Emily understood about how science worked.
“I find it instructive to see how people react to such stories. One has so little control over ‘real’ information. Who can say what is the truth? Who ‘owns’ the truth? So it can be useful to look at how a person reacts to a hypothetical, i.e. a ‘truth’ that the storyteller owns. I call it evaluating by theorizing.”
Whereas Emily might have called it making things up.
“You see, by looking at a person’s reaction to the hypothetical, about which one knows a great deal (having created it), one hopes to understand that person’s likely reaction to a real situation, about which one knows next to nothing.”
Dr. Muriel seemed very pleased with the way things had gone in the Captain Thomas Coram room. But Emily wasn’t so sure. “I hope it doesn’t provoke anyone into doing something rash.”
“That would be most unfortunate.”
“I don’t see how anyone in that room could be responsible for Winnie’s death, do you? There was no motive.”
“No, indeed. I should think the temporary boost for book sales and the press attention for the conference was entirely unintentional.”
