The Smiling Man

by Joseph Knox

  He understood that this was a decision.

  He made up his mind and moved before he could change it. He went back to the door under the stairs and felt for the key. He turned it all the way, as far as it would go, until he heard the unmistakable click of a lock opening. Then he went back to the front door, opened it and ran.

  * * *

  VI

  Wolf Like Me

  1

  It was five in the morning and we were watching a house on a quiet terraced street in Rusholme. The phone number found in the smiling man’s possession had brought us here. There was no answer at the door and, until we knew whose home it was, the only thing to do was wait. Sutty and I had each slept briefly, in shifts, with some unfortunate overlap in the middle where we’d made conversation. He’d expanded on his theory that the world was ending. The heat was an early warning sign, he said. The steam escaping from grates was the city short-circuiting, behind the scenes. Now, in the cramped confines of the car, I watched his morning regime. Dowsing himself in hand sanitizer, his skin cracking, red raw from the alcohol. He dabbed some on to the tip of his index finger and ran it back and forth across his gums.

  I wound down the window as his phone started to ring.

  ‘Yeurgh,’ he said, picking up. He listened intently for a minute. ‘Fuck.’ He recited our location to the person at the other end and hung up.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Uniform have been showing Stromer’s still of Smiley Face to staff at the Midland. Blank looks until the cleaners arrived this morning …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And one of them recognized him. She walked into his room to clean it on Friday night and he rushed to push her back out. We know it was Friday because afterwards he called the front desk to lodge a complaint. Wanted assurances that no one would be walking in on him while the Do Not Disturb sign was up …’

  ‘Probably soaking his towels in paraffin,’ I said. ‘Do they know who he spoke to from the front desk?’

  ‘They’re looking into it. But best of all, he still has two days left before checkout …’

  ‘The Do Not Disturb sign’s still up?’

  ‘Still up,’ said Sutty, looking at me. ‘He’s staying in room 413, by the way.’

  The same room we’d found his body in at the Palace.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice but I was desperate to know.

  ‘The room’s booked under the name Robert Sole,’ said Sutty.

  I thought for a second. ‘R. Sole. Funny.’

  A squad car pulled up while we were still talking and Sutty climbed out. ‘Hilarious,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna be there when they break the lock. If anyone turns up here, talk to them. Find out what the fuck’s going on.’ He slammed the door behind him. I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d find at the Midland, what the relevance of the room number was.

  I passed another slow hour watching the street.

  The humidity, which had eased during the night, was coming back with a vengeance, and I was sitting with one leg out of the door when I heard the voice of a child. I looked into the rear-view mirror and saw a little boy coming along the pavement with a woman, his mother I assumed. They were holding hands, speaking quietly to each other, and when they stopped beside the house I’d been watching, I was almost too excited to react.

  The woman was a little older than me, with tanned skin and dirty-blond hair. At first glance there was something new-age about her appearance and as she moved I heard the click and rattle of the thick, coloured bracelets on her wrists. The bo-ho image was somewhat undone by her sucking the absolute last drag out of a cigarette, closing her eyes as the tip glowed red. She took it from her mouth, slowly exhaled and looked down at her little boy. She smiled tiredly.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, as gently as I could. The woman took a step back and her expression hardened in a way that surprised me. Like I’d walked in on her naked. The boy disappeared behind her, as though he’d been taught to do so.

  I held my hands open.

  Tried to look like I hadn’t spent a night sleeping in a car.

  ‘I’m sorry to surprise you, I’m Detective Constable Aidan Waits.’ I showed her my badge. The boy peered around his mother to look at it, and I was struck by the dark rings circling his eyes. His mother must have noticed this, because she dropped her cigarette and tucked him back behind her. ‘Can I ask if you live at this house?’ The woman frowned, nodded. I was starting to think she looked familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t place her. ‘I’m wondering if you can help with my enquiries …’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said impatiently. ‘We’ve been out all night …’ Her voice sounded strange, like she wasn’t quite used to it. I wondered if English was her second language.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with your home, Ms …’

  ‘Mrs,’ she said. ‘Amy Burroughs.’

  A.

  The initial that the book in the smiling man’s case had been signed with.

  I tried not to react but I needed more time with them. ‘I have a slightly complicated story to tell you, Mrs Burroughs.’ I smiled at the little boy, who was peering back around her. ‘We might all be more comfortable inside.’

  I followed her into a small, brightly coloured hallway, made narrow by the bookcases jammed in either side. Nothing matched, and the furnishings looked like the kind you might find left on a street. The shelves were painted different colours, the ceiling was sky-blue and the walls, what I could see of them, were bright yellow. They were covered with framed pictures, all at different, haphazard heights. These pictures were either of the boy, or childish cartoons which I assumed he’d drawn.

  I felt like I was intruding on their private universe.

  We turned into a small kitchen-cum-living room which smelt dimly of incense and was decorated in much the same way. The pictures on the wall were larger than those in the hallway, with each one prominently featuring the little boy. It looked like a shrine to him, and it reminded me, uncomfortably, of the homes of bereaved parents. In the dead centre, above the mantelpiece, was a large picture of Amy Burroughs, her boy and a man who dwarfed them both. Where they smiled brightly, he winced into the camera.

  Mrs Burroughs and her boy sat on the sofa and I took a seat opposite them. The boy was staring at me, wide-eyed, so I took out my badge and held it out to him. He looked at his mother to see if he was allowed to take it, accepting it with awe when she nodded.

  ‘As I said, my name’s Aidan.’

  ‘Amy,’ she said, snapping the word off before it was quite out of her mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude on you like this so early, Amy. Can I ask what you do for a living?’

  She frowned. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’ She went on, answering the question in my face. ‘I’m a nurse practitioner. I think we met a few days ago …’

  The woman I’d supposed to be a doctor when I was visiting Ali in hospital. She’d noticed one of the nurses barking at a patient and gone to have a word with him.

  She looked like a different person in her own clothes.

  ‘St Mary’s,’ I said, belatedly. ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a very long week.’

  ‘Can I get you a coffee or anything?’

  I shook my head. I was wide awake.

  ‘May I ask if you were working on Saturday night?’

  ‘Saturday …’ she said, absent-mindedly playing with her boy’s hair. ‘I think I was on the late …’ She searched inside her bag for a diary, found the date and handed it to me. ‘Yeah, late.’

  ‘What hours does the late shift cover?’ I said, glancing at the diary before handing it back to her.

  She gave a cynical smile. ‘It covers about as many hours as you can stand. I would have started at eight p.m., got home probably about the same time as today, gone six in the morning, when I collected him.’ She rubbed her boy’s head again. He was drawing his fingers back and forth across my badge.

  ‘And people
can confirm your movements?’

  ‘Patients, nurses, doctors.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course, if they have to. You’re starting to make me feel like a criminal …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Professional hazard.’ I felt wired. Excited. ‘You’re not in any trouble, I just need to establish some facts. May I ask if you’ve ever been to the Palace Hotel?’

  ‘The Palace …’

  ‘On Oxford Road.’

  ‘The one with the old clock tower?’ I nodded and she strained to remember. ‘Maybe. But years ago, there’s a bar there …’

  ‘There was. The hotel’s actually closed at the moment but at around midnight on Saturday night a body was discovered.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Someone I know?’

  ‘We’re struggling to identify the man,’ I admitted. ‘He had no ID on his person but we have recovered his suitcase. There was a book inside it that I’m hoping you can tell me about …’

  ‘A book?’

  ‘There was an inscription in what looks to me like your handwriting.’ I nodded at the diary I’d just examined. ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.’

  I watched the colour drain out of Amy’s face. She took my badge out of her boy’s hands and gave it back to me. I thought she might ask me to leave but she recovered. ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘Am I to understand that you gave a copy of this book to a man?’

  Her eyes drifted towards the pictures of her family on the wall, then she closed them and nodded.

  ‘Can you give me the name of that man, Amy?’

  She glanced at her boy. ‘I’m not really comfortable talking about this.’

  ‘Can I ask why?’

  A shadow went across her face and she looked at her watch, mainly to buy herself a few seconds, I thought. To look at something besides me, her boy, the man on the wall. ‘Mark’s due home any minute,’ she said.

  ‘Your husband?’ She nodded. ‘Mrs Burroughs, if you’ve got nothing to hide then I’m sure we can be discreet, but this is very important. A man’s dead.’

  ‘Ross,’ she said. ‘His name’s Ross Browne.’

  A name. The smiling man had a name. It sounded more realistic to me than Robert Sole. ‘Can I enquire as to the nature of your relationship with Mr Browne?’ I said. I was trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.

  ‘I don’t really know.’ She was twisting her hands around each other. ‘We went out a bit, just dating.’ She frowned at the look on my face. ‘Before I met my husband. I haven’t seen him in years. We were a flash in the pan but he was a nice guy.’ Her eyes softened on the past tense. ‘I’m sorry to hear he’s dead.’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  She looked at me for a moment, then took her boy’s hand and led him to a play box in the corner of the room. She kicked it over, scattering toys across the floor and he immediately fell to them, bored of our conversation. She returned to the sofa and lowered her voice.

  I still couldn’t quite get a grip on her accent.

  ‘It was all very English Patient. Ross was in the army, the King’s Division. He was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.’ She gave another small shrug. ‘We went out a few times.’

  ‘Was this here in the city?’ I asked. She nodded. ‘And do you know if he stayed in the area?’

  ‘He couldn’t take the noise. He went down south, to the coast. He thought it might be good for him.’ She said the words with some feeling, as though it hadn’t been so good for her. ‘He said the sea could surprise you. It was always changing …’

  ‘And when was the last time you spoke?’

  ‘It’s years,’ she said. ‘I think the last time I saw him we went for a drink in town. That was when he broke it off. He said I shouldn’t waste myself on a long-distance relationship.’ As she spoke both her hands closed into fists, and they looked tiny against her oversized hippy bracelets. ‘It must be five years ago now, because it was before he came along.’ She nodded at her boy. ‘Ross isn’t the father, by the way.’ She said this casually, and I believed her. She went quiet for a moment, thinking about her former lover, until questions began to occur to her. ‘So … what would Ross be doing in the Palace? It’s closed, you said? How did he die?’

  ‘We suspect foul play.’ I let it sink in for a second. ‘I know this must come as a shock but I have to ask. During the time you knew Mr Browne, was he involved in any illegal activity?’

  ‘Of course not. He was a young man, shaken up from the war. He was …’ She searched for the right words. ‘Damaged. Sensitive.’

  ‘I’m afraid as well as a formal statement, we may need you to identify Mr Browne’s body.’ I was talking too quickly now, eager to progress the case, and this caught her off guard. She started to speak then looked at the pictures on the mantle, her boy, like I’d suggested taking it all away from her.

  ‘I’ve got to get him to school, I’ve got to …’

  ‘This wouldn’t be until tomorrow anyway, at the earliest.’

  She looked about. Swallowed. ‘Fine. I’m off work tomorrow. Look, my husband said he’d be right behind me …’

  ‘You work together at St Mary’s?’

  She nodded, getting up, looking out the window.

  ‘OK,’ I said, standing. We exchanged details and I made to leave. ‘One quick thing,’ I said in the doorway. ‘Can I ask what the relevance of the book was?’

  She rubbed newly tired eyes and leaned on the bright yellow wall. ‘I first read it at a very special time. It’s about escape. Celebrating life. I thought Ross deserved some of that after what he’d been through.’ I nodded and left. As I crossed the road to the car I saw that Sutty was back, sitting on the passenger side. I was tired but buoyed by the news that had upset Amy Burroughs so much. We’d finally put a name, a past, to our unidentified man.

  2

  As we drove I filled Sutty in on what Amy Burroughs had told me. He nodded along, not really listening. He popped his joints for the entire journey, thinking of something else, and I wondered what they’d found at the Midland Hotel that made the smiling man’s full name a footnote.

  The manager crossed the lobby to meet us when we arrived.

  ‘Detectives, I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time?’

  ‘What’s up?’ said Sutty.

  ‘Please, follow me.’

  The manager took us to a side room and closed the door. It was a security office, and sitting at the desk were a uniformed guard and a small middle-aged woman. I assumed she was the maid who’d walked in on the smiling man’s room and had a complaint made against her.

  ‘You said there were no cameras on the floors …’ said Sutty, looking at the TV screen.

  ‘Correct, but we do have two cameras on the ground floor, one of which is positioned above the front desk. When Mrs Nowak recognized the man from your picture, I thought I should ask her to look through the front-desk footage from the day he checked in …’ The security guard cued up the footage and played it.

  It felt incredible to see Ross Browne, the smiling man, move.

  He had an awkward, limping gait which reduced his height considerably, and he kept his head angled down, away from the camera, like he already knew it was there. He was wearing the smart brown suit we’d found him in, and he was carrying the case which had been left with the concierge. From the way he held it, the case looked much heavier than when Sutty and I handled it the previous day. I wondered what was in there. He spoke briefly to the young woman at the desk, checked in, signed and then walked out of view.

  ‘Well, thanks,’ said Sutty, thoughtfully. ‘If we could get a copy of that tape—’

  ‘That wasn’t what I wanted to show you,’ said the manager. ‘Saul …’ The security guard cued up another video file. ‘The second camera covers the rest of the floor. You can only see the back of people when they go for the lifts so it wasn’t worth looking at until we knew exactly what time the man entered.’

  Our man, Ross Browne, wal
ked towards the elevators with the same awkward gait, staying close to the wall. When a door began opening in front of him his posture changed. He stepped back and melted smoothly out of view into an alcove, and the edge of something became visible in his left fist.

  The improvised knife we’d found inside his case.

  It had been in his palm the entire time. The people who’d walked through the door passed him. He re-palmed the blade and resumed his shuffle towards the elevator. Sutty and I looked at each other. It was like watching two different people inhabit one body.

  There was already activity around room 413 when we reached it. A uniformed officer was stationed at the door and Sutty and I climbed into plastic anti-contamination suits before entering.

  There was something he wanted me to see.

  I didn’t know what to expect but was surprised by the room’s mundanity. It was neat, seemingly untouched, and the bed was made. Two Scene of Crime Officers acknowledged us with nods. Both they and Sutty watched me as I craned my neck to take in the room. I stayed standing on the spot, not wanting to move until I’d been given permission, but from there, nothing seemed unusual or out of place.

  ‘He was definitely in here?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Sutty. ‘Even put a credit card down at the front desk.’ I’d been too preoccupied watching his movements on the check-in video to notice. It was surprising. A card was so traceable that I assumed he would have talked his way around it. We had a former lover, video evidence and now a bank account. Perhaps he was human, after all. Sutty must have seen the disappointment in my face.

  ‘Show him,’ he said. The SOCO officers both stood at the foot of the bed and lifted that end away from the floor. Beneath it was an enormous bloodstain, soaked deep into the carpet.

  ‘No corpse,’ said Sutty. ‘But pints and pints of the stuff …’

  I took a step closer. ‘Human?’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough, but unless he was into animal sacrifice, someone died badly in this room.’