by Steve Reeder
I stood up to the bar counter in the so called ladies bar, as if ladies weren’t welcome in the other bar. I called the barmaid over and ordering a bottle of Becks I settled down to see who was coming and going. I was paying particular attention to anyone of the Middle Eastern persuasion or anyone wearing a police uniform. Silly, you may think. After all, just because you don’t see some one, it doesn’t mean they are not there. However, I’m not an every day break-and-entry type, so any excuse to delay what I was planning to do was welcome. There was a slight tremble in my beer hand telling me to stop this foolishness and go home. I bravely ignored the suggestion.
From where I stood I could see the front desk. It was manned, or in this case womanned, by a middle-aged woman in dire need of an introduction to weight watchers. She had a mass of unruly bright carrot-red hair and an unhealthy obsession with East Enders. She twice handed out or received keys without turning her gaze from the telly, which was out of my line of sight. Like most Britons I had learnt to recognize the popular soapie theme tune.
I studied the key rack behind her and could make out which keys were hanging there, and so presumably the occupants who were not in, but as yet had no idea in which rooms the Arab lads were staying. I decided to take my drink out to the beer garden, which fortunately meant strolling past the front desk.
Soapie fan never even looked in my direction. All the better, I thought. There was a checkin register on the counter closest to the garden exit, and therefore not directly in her line of sight. On impulse, and with my heart in my mouth, I reached over and drew the register closer. She never moved. Her total concentration was on the telly. Looking down I scanned the list of rooms and the names listed alongside. Several German names, one obviously French couple and a couple of Polish names: probably Americans. Three men with very Arab sounding names, however, occupied rooms twenty-one and twenty two. Two in room twenty-two and one in the other. Reasoning that if one of them were in charge he would likely have a room to himself, I lent over the counter and helped myself to the keys hanging behind carrot-top. She didn’t seem to notice. I hurried up stairs and looked for room twenty-one while an outraged inner voice tried to tell me what being arrested would mean.
The passage was not long, with only five rooms on this level, but was softly lit and the carpets were a light blue colour and seemed expensive. All the rooms were on the left as I faced down the passage and number twenty-one was the third door. I stood still for a moment, my breathing harder than I would have liked. I could hear my heart beating in the quiet. Deep breaths now Simon. Last chance to turn around and head back down stairs to the pub. Ignoring my better judgement, which was now screaming in my inner ear, I slid the key into the lock and turned it. I heard the lock click open. No sound came from within the room, or anywhere else for that matter. I had a momentary vision of the people downstairs standing quietly listening to me committing acts certain to cause an international outrage.
Sod it. I stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind me. No turning back now.
The rooms looked exactly as I remembered them. Except no racing groupie was spread seductively across the double bed. I quickly banished her from my thoughts. No time for fond memories.
As I stood with my back to the closed door, there was a wall immediately on my right from which another door led off into a large bathroom. I poked my head into the bathroom just to be sure none of the Arab fellows was lurking with mischievous intent. None were, thankfully.
Just past the bathroom entrance stood an elaborate oak dressing table with drawers down both sides with a brass and wood lamp resting on top with a mirror to study your hangover in first thing in the morning. Directly opposite me was a large window. The cream coloured drapes were drawn closed.
Directly opposite the dresser against the other wall was a double bed with low tables on either side of the headboard. The bed was covered with an orange and purple bedspread that the seductive groupie had declared to be a horrible clash of colours. I took her word for it. My fashion sense didn’t extend to interior decorating. It didn’t extend beyond being a concept I had heard of actually. I once lived in a flat for nine months without remembering what colour the carpet was. Various girl friends had despaired of me.
The bed was made up, which was a relief as it meant the maid wasn’t likely to interrupt my illegal search. ‘Famous motor racer apprehended by hotel maid.’ Screamed the tabloids. Or even not so famous racer I thought bitterly.
What was I looking for? That was a good question. I wasn’t really sure, so I just started opening and closing drawers to see if there was anything odd in them.
There was of course. To start with, what was a devout Muslim doing with a half jack of vodka and a pack of condoms, size small I noted with a smirk?
After ten fruitless minutes spent finding nothing incriminating, I sat on the bed to think for a moment. If I was in a foreign country doing something illegal and had been forced to carry with me something I shouldn’t have, where would I store it? In the Inn safe seemed to be the obvious answer. But no good Muslim lad was going to trust the infidels with something he was trying to hide, so I did what I should have done to begin with. I looked under the bed. And there it was.
The large briefcase was locked but a penknife, which I just happened to be carrying officer, opened it without much effort.
Inside were papers written in Arabic that I had no chance of understanding and a Mercer laptop computer. I dumped these on the bed and had a closer look in the case. One small bag of white powder was packed in a compartment. I may have been doing the fellow a disservice here, because I don’t actually know what cocaine looks like, but I couldn’t think of any other white powder you would want to keep hidden under a false bottom of your briefcase.
Oh and there were also three magazines with young ladies posing in revealing positions without clothes on? What would the Imam say?
I opened the laptop and hit the start-up button. The screen slowly came to life. In English thankfully.
There was a list of four users of which only one required a password. I ignored the other three and moved the cursor to the fourth user, and began racking my brain for a logical password. At least six characters long so the possibilities were what? Fifteen times ten to the power of a telephone number. Or something like that.
After staring at the damn thing for far too long, I started typing. First I tried the guy’s name, providing he’d given reception his correct name, and moved onto his mates’ names, his big boss’s name, the sultan or prince or whatever, his country, even ‘Mohamed’ and ‘Allah’ but finally out of desperation I typed in ‘Rodber’. Password accepted. I hoped for the Sultan’s sake that these weren’t three of his brightest agents.
While the files were opening or downloading or whatever they do, I scratched around in the rest of the case and found myself holding an East European automatic pistol with silencer attached. I bet that wasn’t declared through customs. I checked the chamber but it was empty. Releasing the magazine I held it thoughtfully in my hand. By weight I guessed it to be very nearly full, say twelve rounds. Where did that get me? Pretty much nowhere really, since no one would smuggle a gun into the country past the very efficient British customs without having bullets for the thing.
I pushed the magazine home and made sure the safety was on. Then on second thoughts I stripped the gun and broke the end off of the firing pin, just in case I ever found myself in a situation where someone was pointing the thing at me. I had no reason to believe these guys would ever have a need to point it at me, but there was a certain malicious satisfaction involved in disabling it anyway.
I put the pistol back where I had found it and noticed the laptop had finished opening the files and was waiting dumbly for me to do something with it. I scanned the list of documents available. There seemed to be dozens, and some of them seemed to be very large. There was no way I could possibly go through them and possible remember anything significant. I looked for a disk to copy the fi
les to, but couldn’t find any. I scanned the file names quickly, but there did not seem to be any titled ‘disputed patent theft plan’.
Checking to see if there was an Internet connection program on the computer, I found that there was. I scrolled through the programs hoping to find that there was an internal modem. Once again I was fortunate. I unplugged the bedside phone, and then reconnected it to check if I needed to ask for an outside line. As I picked the receiver there was an immediate dial tone. Satisfied, I plugged the laptop into the phone line and called up the network dial-up program. There was already an English phone number programmed in so I touched the cursor to the dial icon and waited while the machine connected itself to its internet service provider.
I have a free-to-use internet based e-mail address, like many non-computer-geek people who travel extensively. There are many, such as Hotmail.com and Yahoo. However, I had no intention of leaving my calling card for everyone and their brother to trace me on, so I spent a precious two minutes creating a new one using fake names and addresses, then Emailed myself from the Arab’s e-mail address and attached the entire Rodber files.
Smirking at my own cleverness, I sat back to watch the data transferring through cyberspace to my new and untraceable electronic mail site. It didn’t appear to be happening very quickly. I checked the indicated estimated time of transfer. Thirty-five minutes. Bloody hell. I glanced down at my wristwatch. I’d been in the room for close on thirty minutes already. I couldn’t risk staying in the room for another half an hour. I decided to leave the laptop running and wait downstairs. If anyone came up before the mail was finished, that would be my bad luck. At least I was not going to be here if they did return.
Quickly, I wiped my fingerprints off any surfaces I could remember touching using the bathroom face cloth. Once that was done I checked the mail running time again. Twenty-five minutes more. I noted the time and let myself out the door. The passage was still empty. I wiped down the door handle and placed the cloth on the window ledge where I could find it later if need be and hurried downstairs as casually as I could. Would James Bond have thought of it, I asked myself?
Strolling back into the bar as if I’d just popped outside for a breath of fresh air, I ordered another pint and wondered what all the beer I was drinking lately was doing to my weight. I promised myself that I’d start running again every morning and settled in to wait.
I waited out the twenty-five minutes, and then added another five for good measure. The room key was still in my pocket and carrot top was still engrossed in the telly, although East Enders had been replaced by an equally dull American soap opera.
The first floor hall way was as empty as it had been over an hour ago, and I offered a silent prayer that it would stay that way for another ten to fifteen minutes.
Inside the room the laptop computer had finished sending the e-mail and had automatically disconnected from the internet service provider. I unplugged the phone line and reconnected the phone handset. The computer I shut down after erasing the ‘message send’ confirmation and locked it away in the briefcase.
I had scratched the left-hand lock when opening it, but not too badly. Besides, it wasn’t a new briefcase and there was nothing I could do about it anyway other than hope the owner didn’t look too closely.
Hurriedly, I straightened the bed where I had sat and wiped any surfaces I might have touched this time around. Everything looked untouched to my untrained eye.
Any expert in the art of room searches would likely have spotted my passing in no time flat, but I didn’t think the three stooges could be classified in that class.
I shoved the case back under the bed and turned my attention to the room next door, which was identical except for an extra bed. I checked under the beds first off, but the chaps had no hidden briefcase with guns in.
It can take not just hours, but days to search a room properly, but there was no way I was going to start tearing up carpets and stripping wall paper. I could hardly imagine either of these gents having anything they needed to hide that badly. If it came to that, they had no real need to hide anything at all apart from the briefcase, and I hadn’t really been expecting to find anything else. The gun had been a bonus though.
As I stood surveying the room one last time before leaving, something struck me as strange. I had noticed the camera on the dressing table before, but had not given it a lot of thought. People in foreign countries have cameras all the time, but these two weren’t on holiday. And Arabs had never struck me as being the photo album types. I picked up the camera and peered at the back, where the display indicated how many shots have been taken. This one showed twenty-three. I had no idea whether it was a twenty-four or thirty-six shot film, but it mattered not anyway. Question was, did the exposed film have anything on it that would be of interest to me?
Taking a chance on ending up with photos of Arabs on holiday, I triggered the film till it came to the end - it turned out to be a thirty-six-exposure film - and removed it from the camera. Slipping the film into my pocket, I put the camera back where I had found it and made for the door, only to stop with my hand on the door handle. When the occupants of the room next looked at the camera, they would realise that someone had pinched the film, and likely make an accurate guess at my other activities. That left me with a bit of a dilemma. I had found no spare films lying around the room when searching it, so I couldn’t replace the one I’d stolen. Reception, I thought. Most hotels sold films for your cameras, usually at vastly inflated prices, but this was no time to be consumer watchdogging.
I nipped back down the passage to the front desk, stopping and peeking around the corner first, just in case there was someone in reception I didn’t want to meet. Silly really, but when you are up to no good, guilt makes you worry about things like that. All clear. I jogged over to where the soapie fan was changing channels on her telly. Dallas appeared on screen, Bobby Ewing looking ridiculous in tight swimming trunks. She reluctantly left the cast of the world’s longest running soap opera to their own bidding and found me a film for the camera. She had no interest in me, or what I was doing in two of her rooms. Which suited me just fine; perhaps she wouldn’t even be telling the local gossip group.
Upstairs again, I inserted the film into the camera, and then took twenty-three photos with lens cap still on. With luck he would assume he had cocked it up himself.
Back down stairs I waited until carrot top was again distracted, it was a short wait, and slipped the room keys back behind the counter. Heading back to the bar I stopped to make a quick phone call on one of the bar’s pay phones and ordered yet another beer. Perhaps I should look at running twenty miles a day.
Seated as I was, I could see anyone coming in the main entrance. I had been hoping they would not turn up first, but one of them did. Very Arabic-looking he was too. I would certainly have guessed at the Middle East as a point of origin if I had been Bud. Even without knowing any Arabic.
I watched helplessly as he crowded the reception, collected his room key - I could not make out which one - and disappeared upstairs. No sooner had he vanished than Hammil strode in looking somehow unsurprised to see me. He nodded at me and said something I could not hear to the men who followed him in. They ambled past the unconcerned receptionist after the Arab. Hammil positioned himself on the stool next to me.
“Mr Roberts. I take it this is not a coincidence?” he asked somewhat rhetorically since I had phoned him not twenty minutes ago. I didn’t answer but waved the barmaid over and indicated that I would like a refill.
“Want one?” I asked the inspector. He nodded.
“Tangle Foot Bitter please, Miss, make it a half-pint,” he instructed the barmaid. She nodded to show she had heard and returned with my drink and a smaller glass of strong ale for the detective.
“Will my chaps be finding a pistol then?” he asked of me.
I nodded again then said to him: “You knew there was something to be found didn’t you? I can’t think of any other re
ason why you would bother telling me where these foreign types were staying.” He sipped the ale and kept quiet. “What I don’t quite understand is what made you think I would be likely to come snooping around for you? Or for that matter why you didn’t just search the room yourself?”
Hammil considered his response for a long thirty seconds. “Let’s just say that I have been finding out things about you, Mr Roberts. Things that intrigued me.” I must have looked surprised because he chuckled and leaning closer whispered, “Don’t tell anyone but I’m a detective. And when people cause me to be curious about them, I investigate them.”
I wondered how much he knew about me, but he did not elaborate.
One of his men arrived at his elbow, looked with envy at Hammil’s glass and reported quietly.
“We’ve found one of ‘em in the room sir. We found the pistol,” he shot me a glance, “but I think we may have been too late on another matter.” Hammil raised his eyed enquiringly. “The bugger was deleting info on a laptop computer sir. DC Denny has taken possession of the laptop, but it’s been wiped clean.”
“All right, Sergeant. Take the laptop in. Perhaps the boffins can find something, and take the suspect down town too. Book him on a weapons charge and anything else you can think of.”
The sergeant nodded and left to follow orders. Hammil looked at his beer with irritation.
“Do you have an e-mail address, inspector?” I asked.
“Yes.” He gave it to me on a business card, both of us forgetting that he’d already given me one when we had first met. “Why? Am I expecting mail?”
I shrugged. “I have a feeling you may be receiving some interesting information tomorrow.”
