Guess Who

by Chris McGeorge

  “Thanks,” Sheppard settled on. He really couldn’t trust anyone. But one thing he did trust was Mandy’s scream when she first saw the body. It sounded so incredibly scared. That would be hard to pull off if it wasn’t genuine.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Sheppard sighed again, and turned to the rest of the room. “Looks like I’m going to have to talk to Ms. Ahearn next.”

  19

  Mandy moved away from Sheppard, awkwardly moving around the bed, passing Alan and Ryan to sit down next to Constance. Constance shuffled closer to her and Mandy put her arm around her and whispered something in her ear. Alan and Ryan were both watching him now. He wondered how much they had heard. Everyone being in such close proximity was terrible. He could feel the fear seeping out of everyone else.

  “You understand we can hear everything you say,” Alan said.

  “I know this isn’t ideal...” Sheppard started.

  Alan scoffed. “Ideal? That’s the word you’re going with? This is a waking nightmare.”

  Alan started toward Sheppard.

  “I need to talk to Ms. Ahearn next.”

  “No,” Alan said, “you’ll talk to me.”

  “No, I will talk to Ms. Ahearn.”

  “No, Mr. Sheppard. I personally think I am more equipped to deal with this investigation. You are a floozy, a human-sized bag of hot air. And you can only blow into bags so much before they pop.”

  “Sit down, Alan.”

  “You will talk to me next.”

  “Yes. After Ms. Ahearn.”

  “You have no authority here,” Alan said, spitting vowels at him. “The mask says this is all on you, so why even give you the time of day? Who’s to say that you didn’t kill that man in there? In fact, that makes perfect sense.” Alan’s eyes sparkled with something Sheppard couldn’t quite place. Had he heard Mandy talking? Or did he recognize the body?

  Sheppard opened his mouth to say something to this effect, but...

  “Stop it.” They both looked around. Ryan had stood up, the folder still in his hands. “I’m going next.”

  “And why’s that?” Alan said.

  “Because I’ve got something I need to tell Mr. Sheppard. Something I should have said before.”

  “Well speak up, son. There’s no secrets here,” Alan said.

  “I heard you talking to Mandy. I need to tell you some things. Can we go into the bathroom?”

  “Now wait a second...” Alan said.

  Sheppard couldn’t think. He didn’t want to go back in there.

  “You better think fast about what you’re saying, son, because it’s starting to sound like you’re a murderer.”

  “Shut up, Alan. I need to...”

  “I didn’t lie. I didn’t,” Ryan said quickly.

  Ryan held up the last page of the rule binder. THE BOY LIED.

  “Someone tell me what is going on,” Alan said.

  “Shut up, Alan.”

  “No, you shut up. Son, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Why don’t you butt out and let me do my job?” Sheppard rounded on Alan again.

  “Your job?” Alan laughed. “Your job?”

  He needed drink. Needed pills. Needed to not have a stupid old man telling him what to do. “I am listening to you, okay. I am taking all your concerns on board. But right now, if you hadn’t noticed, we’re almost half an hour down and so far I’m coming up empty on the ideas front. So I’m going to do things my way.”

  Alan stepped forward. “You’re only a detective because people like to label things. What you did however many years ago doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

  “Guys,” Ryan tried.

  “You know what I’m detecting right now? I’m thinking that the only person who would actually want to delay me in this investigation is the murderer. Did you murder the man in the bathtub?”

  “Guys.”

  “No, I didn’t. Did you?”

  Ryan stepped between them, pushing them apart as they continued to fight, and shouted over them, “I work here.”

  This did the trick. Silence.

  “Now please,” Ryan said, “can we go into the bathroom?”

  20

  Sheppard went in first, and drew the shower curtain over the bathtub. He tried not to look, he really tried. But Winter was still there. Dead. With that look of sadness upon his face. It made him feel sick. He turned to the sink and splashed his face again.

  Ryan took a tentative look toward the bathtub as he came in. Then focused his eyes on Sheppard.

  “Start talking,” Sheppard said. The dull ache behind his eyes. That feeling at the back of his throat. That rumble in his chest. His hands were starting to shake. Why hadn’t he checked the minibar yet?

  “I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner,” Ryan said. “I tried to tell you at the start.”

  Sheppard vaguely remembered. “Who are you?”

  “Ryan Quinn. Like I said. I’m not lying.”

  “You work here?”

  “Yes. As a cleaner. That’s why I’m wearing this.” Ryan gestured down to his white jumpsuit. Sheppard took a closer look at the young man. Black hair, short. Clean-shaven, didn’t look like he could even grow a beard. Midtwenties, probably. The young man towered though. Was almost taller than Sheppard. “It’s not my ideal job. But I do it. I come into the rooms, clean them, make the beds, give fresh towels, do that triangle thing on the toilet paper.”

  Sheppard was thinking. “That’s how you knew where we were so fast. Between Bank and Leicester Square.”

  Ryan nodded, sadly.

  “Seems like a big thing to keep back from us,” Sheppard said. “Where were you when we were trying to escape?”

  “I told you, didn’t I? There is no way out.”

  Ryan and Alan talking at the window. Ryan convincing him that there was no way to escape.

  “So you’re a cleaner for The Great Hotel?”

  “Yes. I have been for about a year now. Things are hard for my family. My mother and father moved here from Hong Kong just before I was born. They run a dry-cleaning business in Soho, but it’s not enough to support them. I have to help them with their bills. I hate this job. But it’s the only way I can keep our heads above water.

  “I’m in the fourth quadrant with two other guys. That’s three floors, this floor and the two below. There are thirty-five rooms on each floor.”

  “That’s a lot of cleaning.”

  “Hotel this big has a lot of manpower. We start at nine in the morning and end by three. Then I have to go and clean the communal areas.”

  “So you were cleaning this morning?”

  Ryan seemed to visibly back away—his gaze slipped from Sheppard’s.

  “Ryan.”

  “Don’t freak out.”

  “Ryan, where were you?”

  “I...” Ryan said, trying to find the words. “I think I was here.”

  And that was that—why Ryan hadn’t come forward.

  Simple. “Christ, Ryan.”

  The young man put his hands up in defense. “It’s not what you think. Nothing was wrong with this room, when I was in here before. The window was open. The door wasn’t deadlocked. There sure as hell wasn’t a body...” He looked toward the bath. “Everything was fine. You have to believe me.”

  Sheppard didn’t know what to think—except now Ryan was the prime suspect, like it or not. “You were in here?”

  “Yes,” Ryan said. “I came into the bathroom to change the towels and clean the toilet. I looked in the bath...and there was no one. There was nothing in it. You have to understand, I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Tell me exactly what you did in here.” Trying to slip him up or rooting for him, he wasn’t totally sure.

  “Towels. T
oilet. Bath. I even wiped it down and replaced the shower gel in the holder. Then I wiped down the mirror. And mopped the floor. And put a new toilet paper in the holder. That was all, I swear.”

  “Does that mean someone was staying here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t usually see many people when I’m cleaning. They’re usually out for the day by the time I come around. Sometimes I see people at the start. But this room is toward the end of my quadrant, so there’s even less chance of them still being around.”

  “Was there anything lying around? Anything that gave you a clue to who this person was?”

  Ryan thought for a moment. “No, it was all very clean. In fact, the bed didn’t look like it had been slept in. There was no mess anywhere. But there was a suitcase next to the wardrobe. So I knew someone was staying here.”

  “There’s no way you could’ve heard this guest’s name in passing or anything? Any way you could have seen him in the corridor?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess it’s possible,” Ryan said.

  “Okay.” Knowing what needed to be done. But Ryan knew too. That’s why they were in here, wasn’t it? With the smell of blood and the thing looming behind the curtain. “I need to show you the body now.” He could just show Winter’s driving license, but he needed to see how the young man reacted to the body.

  That’s mean. Maybe so, but necessary. Ryan steeled himself and nodded.

  Sheppard gripped the shower curtain. He didn’t want to see again. He didn’t want to have to look at Winter’s face. But it had to be done. He drew back the curtain fast, before his brain could stop him.

  Winter lay there. The blood grew stronger in the air.

  Don’t look down. Not at all the blood and the...

  Sheppard looked at Ryan instead.

  He was clenching and unclenching his fists. In a calming technique that wasn’t working. Ryan looked shocked, pale. But he didn’t look away from the body. He stared at it, taking shallow breaths.

  “His name is Simon Winter,” said Sheppard, his voice quieter than before. The stench. God, the stench.

  Ryan looked at Sheppard, then back to the body. “Out there. Out there, it is hard to believe. It is easy to think that this is all some kind of joke. But this...this is real. This poor man.”

  “Do you recognize him—or his name? Was he staying here?” Sheppard said, a little too pushily. The image of Simon Winter was making him uncomfortable.

  “I don’t...” Ryan trailed off. He was thinking hard.

  Looking at Winter’s face.

  The young man was a wreck. There was no way he could have killed someone. Was there? If this was the reaction...

  “I saw him,” Ryan said, in a whisper hard to catch. “What?” Sheppard said.

  “I saw this man.”

  “This morning?”

  Ryan shook his head slowly. “No, not today. I... I suppose it was about a month ago.”

  “What?”

  “Here, in the hotel. It has been a long time. I can’t say for sure where, but every room is the same. The same furniture, the same dimensions, the same contents. I think it might have even been this floor.” Ryan looked like he was about to break out in cold sweats.

  “A month ago?” It seemed very strange that Winter would be in this very hotel a month ago and then turn up dead in one of their rooms—hijacked by a maniac.

  Unless it’s a big coincidence. Or you’ve all been in cold storage a hell of a long time.

  There was something almost comic about that. The situation overwhelmed him and he didn’t know if he was going to laugh or cry.

  Ryan peered further into the bath, as if for answers. “Yes. I remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “This man... Winter, you said? Winter was here. And he was acting...strange.”

  “Strange?”

  Ryan tore his eyes from the body, back to Sheppard. “I didn’t remember before. It’s a hotel. People act weirdly all the time. Especially the small amount of people who are still in their rooms when you come around to clean. They act like you’re invading their space, when it was never theirs to begin with.”

  “How was Winter acting?”

  “It was toward the end of my shift. That’s how I know it was this floor, even if it wasn’t this room. Everything had gone fine with the other rooms, I was ahead of time. I thought I might even be able to get off early. I knocked on the door of the room as I always do. But there was no reply. So I just went in.

  “That’s when I saw this man. He was pacing around the room. He had a notebook in his hand and he was writing stuff down. He had something as well, some sort of bright yellow thing. It looked like he was... It sounds stupid, but it looked like he was...”

  “Like he was what?”

  “Like he was measuring.”

  Sheppard was caught off guard. What—measuring?

  Why would he be...? Too many thoughts at once.

  “I think that thing was a tape measure. And he was properly pacing, one foot in front of the other. And every step, he stopped to write something down. Maybe he was doing something else. Rehearsing for a speech, or mapping something out...but from the door, that’s what it looked like.”

  “Why would he be measuring a hotel room?” Sheppard said. More to himself.

  “The moment he saw me, he quickly threw down the notebook and the yellow thing, and tried to step in front of it all. He was acting like he’d been caught doing something bad. For about five seconds. But it seemed longer. We were just staring at each other. I didn’t know what to do. Then he came to his senses and apologized and just let me clean the room.”

  “What did he do while you were cleaning?”

  “He gathered up his things and left. I didn’t see him again. It was definitely this man.”

  Sheppard couldn’t not look down at Winter. The man now seemed to be hiding something behind his expression. What was going on? “Did you report it?”

  “Report what? I didn’t even know what I saw and it wasn’t as if it was particularly suspicious. I forgot about it the moment I finished my shift. Until now.” Ryan’s voice hitched. He put his hand up to his mouth. Took a few moments. Lowered it again. “Sorry, the smell. And the blood.”

  Sheppard nodded. “I... You can go if you want.”

  “You don’t need anything else?”

  Too much already. What was Winter doing in this hotel...maybe even this room, a month ago? What could he have possibly been doing? “No. Just anything else you can think of, let me know.” Now, he couldn’t take his eyes away. What was Winter hiding? The bathroom door opened and shut. He was alone with Winter again.

  Sheppard took out Winter’s notebook, and flipped through it again—not sure what he was looking for. He looked down at the old man. Measuring the hotel room? Why would he be measuring a hotel room. Unless... Did it mean that Winter was in on whatever plan this was? Was Winter in on the whole thing? But what led to him ending up dead in the bathtub? Surely that had not been part of the plan...

  “What were you up to?”

  Winter didn’t answer.

  21

  Nausea washed over Sheppard as he returned to the room—he had to put his hand out to the wall to steady himself. Dizziness—the cold, hard crash was getting closer. How long had it been without pills? His hand shook violently, the dull throb of his head, the smell lingering in his nostrils and the itch—everywhere. A cocktail of awful—the usual symptoms.

  “What’s wrong with you now?”

  He looked up. Alan had been waiting for him to come out. Great. The man was standing right in front of him, arms still crossed. His voice didn’t sound caring—more irritated.

  “Nothing, I’m fine,” Sheppard said.

  Alan looked him up and down. “
Whatever, I’ll keep this short and sweet. Not to mention loud,” he turned to the room and back, “as I have nothing to hide.”

  Sheppard looked over his shoulder to see the rest of the room, much as it was. Mandy and Constance were sitting with their backs to everyone. Ryan was pacing back and forth. And Headphones was watching them, with her ears still covered.

  “I’ve heard all the questions you were asking Mandy—hard not to—and I assume you asked the same of Ryan. So I’ll give you the complete rundown of what happened to me. I was in my office when I was drugged by the same gas as everyone else. We all talked while you were in the bathroom—even Crazy Irish and Generic Teen. We were all gassed. I didn’t only smell it, but I saw it pouring through the vents. It was some kind of colorless smoky gas, dissipating around the room very quickly. I tried to cover the vent, but it seemed like I’d already inhaled too much. I didn’t even have time to call for help. I collapsed and then I woke up here.

  “I was preparing, as I said, for the MacArthur case. A biggie. The kind of case to make or break a career. Of course, my career was ‘made’ a long time ago, but it’s always nice to have another notch in your belt.”

  Sheppard was trying to keep up. “Must be interesting for you to...”

  Alan got him instantly. Could read him so easily. How did he do that? “You’re alluding to the fact I am black. Yes, Mr. Sheppard, I am a black man. I worked damn hard to get where I am, and yes, I fought some opposition along the way. You know how many black lawyers are in London? We make up one point two percent of them. So yes, to answer your question, it is ‘interesting.’”

  Sheppard nodded. Alan didn’t seem like the type of person to let anything get to him. Sheppard wondered how old he was. Wrinkles under his eyes—tracing around to his cheeks. The wrinkles on his forehead seemed to be chiseled into a permanent scowl, making the man look more sinister. Fifties? Late fifties, maybe?

  “Of course, none of this makes any difference. Because I’m here now. And that means the MacArthur case is ruined. Thank you for that, by the way.”

  Sheppard frowned. “Right.” Couldn’t even be bothered to retort.