Star Trap

by Simon Brett

  The cleaners had left a key with its heavy metal label in the door of room 42. He opened the door and sidled in.

  He had expected an immediate confrontation with a suspicious cleaner but miraculously the suite was empty. He moved to the wall which was shared with room 41 and put his ear to it. They were still talking, but, though the speech was clearer, it was again impossible to hear individual words. The effect was of badly tuned radio.

  Remembering another movie, Charles fetched a tooth-glass from the bathroom. Pressed against the wall it improved the sound quality, but still not enough to make it intelligible. People who paid for their privacy at the Villiers Hotel did not waste their money.

  He was almost despairing when he thought of the balcony. A sea view was another of the perks for those who were prepared to pay the astronomical rates charged for a fourth-floor suite at the Villiers.

  He slid the galvanised steel door back. The cold slap of air made him realise how grotesquely over-heated the hotel was.

  The balcony of room 42 adjoined that of 41. Only a bar separated them. By sliding along the wall of the building, Charles could get very close to Christopher Milton’s window and still remain out of sight from the room. The window was slightly open in reaction to the central heating. Charles could hear what was being said inside quite clearly.

  He stood high above the sea-shore on a cold November morning in Brighton and listened.

  Christopher Milton’s voice came first, strangled with passion. ‘. . . and I can’t stand the way they are always looking at me, always assessing me. I hate them all.’

  ‘What do you mean, you hate them?’ The other voice was toneless, without any emotion.

  ‘I mean I want something to happen to them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want them out of my way. The others went out of my way.’

  ‘Yes.’ The dry voice gave nothing. ‘What do you want to happen to them?’

  ‘I want them to die. I want them all to die.’ He could hardly get the words out.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘All of them.’

  ‘Not all. We can’t just kill them all, can we? Who do you really want dead?’

  ‘Charles Paris.’ The name was hissed out. ‘I want Charles Paris dead.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AT THAT MOMENT someone came into the room behind Charles and let out an incomprehensible shriek. It was one of the cleaners, a slender Filipino girl in a blue nylon overall. She looked at him with widening black eyes. He had to think quickly. ‘Room 32?’ he offered. And then, to cover himself in case she knew the occupant of Room 32, ‘Toilet? Toilet?’ Unaccountably the words came out in a comedy sketch Spanish accent.

  ‘Toilet,’ the girl echoed, as if it were a word she had heard before, but did not understand.

  ‘Si, si,’ Charles continued insanely, ‘dondo este el toilet?’

  ‘Toilet,’ the girl repeated, now uncertain whether she had actually heard the word before.

  ‘Si, toiletto.’ He thought adding the final ‘o’ might help, but it didn’t appear to. The girl looked blank. Charles pointed to his fly as a visual aid to the word ‘toilet’.

  This time the girl understood. Or rather she misunderstood. Throwing her hands in the air, she cried ‘Rape!’ and rushed out into the corridor.

  Charles followed at equal speed. He too wanted to get away in a hurry. Unfortunately the Filipino girl took his movement for pursuit and redoubled her screams. They rushed along the corridor in convoy, because she had chosen to run in the direction of the lifts. Doors opened behind them and bewildered faces stared. Charles decided he couldn’t wait for the lift and took to the stairs. He managed to get out of the building without being stopped.

  He sat in the shelter opposite the Villiers Hotel and tried to control the breath which was rasping in his throat. It wasn’t only the physical effects of the chase that made him feel so shaky. It was also the unpleasant feeling which comes to people who have just heard a contract being taken out on their lives. He gasped and trembled and, although a diluted sun was now washing the sea-front, the morning seemed colder.

  The two old men were still sitting in the shelter, overtly ignoring him, but with sly side-glances. They didn’t depress him now. They were part of a humanity he did not want to leave. Dr Johnson’s adage about the proximity of death concentrating the mind wonderfully was proving true. The depression he had felt so recently seemed a wicked affront to life, to all the things he still wanted to do. And yet within fifty yards of him a lunatic was giving a paid killer instructions to murder him.

  It was ridiculous. He had that feeling he could recall from prep school of getting into a fight and suddenly realising that it was becoming more vicious than he’d expected and suddenly wanting to be out of it. Like a recurrent nightmare in which, after a long chase, he always capitulated and apologised and pretended it had all been a joke. But this was not a joke.

  The question of what to do about the whole case had now taken on more than a dilettante interest. It had become an issue of red-hot urgency. But the answer didn’t come any more readily.

  Though the sequence of Christopher Milton’s (or his hit-man’s) crimes and their motives were now clear as daylight, Charles still had no real evidence. Just the gin bottle, the airgun pellets and the liquid paraffin, but none of those could be pinned on the criminals and none related to the most serious crimes.

  He still needed positive proof of wrong-doing, Or, since he was apparently the next person to be done wrong to, positive proof of the intention to do wrong might be preferable. He decided to follow the bald man in the hope of catching him red-handed. (The details of how he would himself catch red-handed someone whose criminal mission was to eliminate him he left for the time being. They would supply themselves when the occasion arose.)

  He counted his advantages and there weren’t many. First, he knew they were after him, so he was on his guard. Secondly, he was in disguise and so could spy on them without automatic discovery. Not much, but better than nothing.

  At about five past ten the bald man came out of the hotel. He walked without suspicion, no furtive glances to left and right. Charles had the advantage of hunting the hunter.

  The bald man was an ideal candidate for tailing. He walked straight ahead at a brisk pace, not stopping to look in shop windows or dawdling aimlessly. All Charles had to do was to adjust his own pace to match and follow along about fifty yards behind. Brighton was full of shoppers and the pursuit was not conspicuous.

  It soon became clear that the man was going to the railway station. He walked briskly and easily up the hill, fitter than his appearance suggested. Charles thought uncomfortably of the strength he had seen in middle-aged wrestlers on the television. If it came to direct physical confrontation, he didn’t reckon much for his chances.

  The man didn’t stop to buy a ticket. He must have a return, because he showed something at the barrier. He went on to Platform 4, for trains to London. At first Charles was going to buy a single, but that showed a depressing lack of faith in the outcome of his mission, so he got a return.

  He also bought a Times for burying his face in. Tabloid newspapers, he decided, must be unpopular with the criminal fraternity; they hide less.

  The train came soon, which implied that the bald man knew the times and was hurrying for this specific one. Charles began an irrelevant conjecture about the idea of the commuting assassin, always catching the same train. ‘Had a good day at work, dear?’ ‘Oh, not too bad. Had a bit of trouble with one chap. Had to use two bullets. Still, always the same on a Friday, isn’t it?’ But the situation was too tense for that sort of fantasy.

  The assassin got into an open-plan carriage, which was ideal. Charles went into the same one by another door and positioned himself in a seat from which he could see the man’s leg and so would not miss any movement. He opened The Times, but his eyes slipped over the words without engaging or taking them in. He turned to the crossword on
the principle that mental games might take his mind off the icy trickling in his stomach.

  ‘I know that death has ten – several doors / For men to take their exits – Webster (8).’ The fact that he recognised the quotation from The Duchess of Malfi and could fill in the word ‘thousand’ gave him small comfort.

  He felt ill, on the verge of violent diarrhoea. He could still see the man’s leg round the edges of the seats. It didn’t move, but it mesmerised him. He tried to imagine the mind that owned the leg and the thoughts that were going through it. Was the man coolly comparing methods of killing, trying to come up with another crime that could look like an accident? Had his paymaster given him a deadline by which to get Charles Paris? The word ‘deadline’ was not a happy choice.

  Come to that, if his quarry was supposed to be in Brighton, why was he going to London anyway? Charles’ fevered mind provided all kinds of unpleasant reasons. There was some particularly vicious piece of killing equipment that had to be bought in London. Or the job was going to be subcontracted and the bald man was on his way to brief another hit-man with the details. Even less attractive solutions also presented themselves.

  The pressure on his bowels was becoming unbearable. He’d have to go along to the toilet at the end of the carriage.

  That meant going past the bald man. Still, it might be useful to get a closer look. Charles walked past. The man did not look up.

  His reading matter was unlikely for a hired killer. The Listener was open on his lap and a New Scientist lay on the seat beside him. Obviously a new class of person was turning to crime. Presumably in times of rising unemployment, with a glut of graduates and a large number of middle-aged redundancies, the criminal social pattern was changing.

  Charles felt a bit better after he had used the lavatory, but the face that stared at him from the stained mirror as he washed his hands was not a happy one.

  The Alfred Bostock disguise made him look seedier than ever. The pebble glasses perched incongruously on the end of his nose (the only position in which they enabled him to see anything). The make-up on his jowl looked streaked and dirty. The bright tie mocked him. What was he doing? He was forty-eight, too old for this sort of masquerade. What was he going to do when he got to London? He couldn’t spend the rest of his life following the bald-headed man. The confidence that he would know what to do when the, occasion arose was beginning to dissipate.

  The journey to Victoria took just over an hour and during that time the assassin sat quietly reading The Listener. Charles supposed that one would have to relax and behave normally in that line of work or go mad. ‘His own Times lay unread on his knee and no subsequent crossword clues were filled in.

  At Victoria the man got out and gave in his ticket at the barrier. Charles tried a little detective logic. If the man had a return ticket and yet was carrying no luggage except his newspapers, it was possible that he had started from London that morning, gone down to Brighton just to get his instructions and was now returning to base. This deduction was immediately followed by the question, ‘So what?’

  The bald man walked purposefully to the Underground with Charles in tow. He bought a 15p ticket from the machine and Charles did likewise. The man went on to the platform for the Victoria Line northbound. Charles followed.

  They travelled in the same compartment to Oxford Circus. The bald man was now deep into his New Scientist, apparently unsuspicious.

  He climbed out of the Underground station and walked along Upper Regent Street into Portland Place. He walked on the left, the British Council side rather than the Broadcasting House one. His pace was still even. Nothing in his behaviour betrayed any suspicion. And equally nothing in his behaviour would make any passer-by think of him as anything but a professional businessman on his way to work.

  He turned left at New Cavendish Street, then right up Wimpole Street and left on to Devonshire Street. After two hours of tailing, Charles was becoming mesmerised and he almost overshot the man when he stopped.

  Though they were only feet apart, the bald man still did not notice his pursuer. He walked in through the yellow-painted front door of a white Georgian house.

  Charles, in a panic over nearly bumping into his quarry, walked on a little so as not to make his behaviour too obvious, then turned back and walked slowly past the house. It was expensive. Net curtains prevented snooping inside. A worn brass plate on the door – ‘D. M. Martin’. No initials after the name, no indication of professional qualifications.

  Charles paused, undecided. It was an expensive area of London. Contract killing must be a lucrative business, if the man lived there. All around were expensive private doctors and architects. He looked up and down the road. A policeman about fifty yards away was watching him curiously.

  That decided him. The Law was there to back him up if need be, and the thing had to be done. He couldn’t stand the strain of being under sentence of death any longer. It was time to take the bull by the horns.

  The door gave easily when he turned the handle and he found himself in a carpeted hall. The smartly suited girl behind the desk looked up at him, surprised. ‘Can I help you?’

  It was all too ridiculous. He had seen films about organised crime where the whole operation was run like big business with secretaries and receptionists, but he never expected to see it with his own eyes.

  He was no longer afraid. Somehow here in the centre of London he felt safe. There was a policeman just outside. He could manage. ‘Did a bald man just come in here?’ he asked brusquely.

  ‘Mr Martin just arrived, but –’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s in his room, but do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No. I just want to see him.’

  The girl treated him warily, as if he might be important.

  ‘Look, if you like to take a seat in the waiting-room, I’ll speak to Mr Martin and see what we can do. He’s got someone coming to see him at twelve, but I’ll –’

  ‘Waiting-room!’ It was farcical. Charles started to laugh in a tight, hysterical way. ‘No, I’m not going to sit in any waiting-room. I haven’t come along with a list of names of people I want killed. I –’

  The noise he was making must have been audible from the next room, because the door opened and Charles found himself face to face with the assassin. ‘What’s going on, Miss Pelham?’

  ‘I’m not sure. This gentleman –’

  ‘I’ve come to tell you I know all about what you’ve been doing, Mr Martin. There’s a policeman outside and I have proof of what’s been going on, so I think you’d better come clean.’ Somehow the denunciation lacked the punch it should have had. The bald-headed man looked at him gravely. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh really. Well, I’m talking about Christopher Milton and the instructions he gave you.’

  The name had an instantaneous effect. Mr Martin’s face clouded and he said coldly, ‘You’d better come in. Ask the twelve o’clock appointment to wait if necessary, Miss Pelham.’

  When they were inside, he closed the door, but Charles had now gone too far to feel fear. He was going to expose the whole shabby business, whatever it cost him.

  ‘Now what is all this?’

  ‘I know all about what you and Christopher Milton have been doing.’

  ‘I see.’ The bald man looked very displeased. ‘And I suppose you intend to make it all public?’

  ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘And I suppose you have come here to name a price for keeping your mouth shut?’

  ‘Huh?’ That was typical, the feeling that money can solve anything. ‘No, I intend to let everyone know what’s been going on. You won’t buy me off.’

  ‘I see. You realise what this could do to Christopher Milton?’

  ‘Nothing that he doesn’t fully deserve. He may think he’s a god, but he’s not above the law. He is a public danger and should be put away.’

  ‘It’s that sort of small-minded thinki
ng that delays progress. If you –

  ‘Small-minded thinking! I don’t regard disapproving of murder as small-minded. What, do you subscribe to the theory that the artist is above the law, the artist must be cosseted, the artist –?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? Who are you?’

  ‘Charles Paris.’ This was no time for pretence.

  The name certainly registered with Mr Martin.

  ‘Yes, I’m Charles Paris. I’m in the company with Christopher Milton. You know all about me.’

  ‘Oh yes. I know about you. So it was you all the time. And now, blackmail.’

  It was Charles’ turn to be flabbergasted. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Christopher Milton mentioned that a lot of sabotage had been going on in the show, that someone was trying to get at him. It was you. And now you want to expose what he does with me.’

  The voice was sad, almost pitying. It checked the impetus of Charles’ attack. “What do you mean? It’s Christopher Milton who’s been responsible for the sabotage and you’re the one who’s done the dirty work for him. And this morning he gave you orders to kill me. Don’t try to pretend otherwise, Mr Martin.’

  The bald man gazed at him in blank amazement. ‘What?’

  ‘I know. I saw you in Leeds, and in Bristol, and in Brighton. I know you did it. All those early morning meetings when he gave you instructions. You are Christopher Milton’s hit-man.’

  ‘Mr Paris,’ the words came out tonelessly, as if through heavy sedation, ‘I am not Christopher Milton’s hit-man. I am his psychotherapist.’

  Charles felt the ground slowly crumbling away beneath his feet. ‘What?’

  ‘As you may or may not know, Christopher Milton has been prone in the past to a form of mental illness. He has had three or four major breakdowns, and has been undergoing treatment by me for about seven years. His is a particularly stressful career and at the moment the only way he can support the pressures it places on him is by having an hour of psychotherapy every day of his life.’