“Oh my God,” said the receptionist. “He hasn’t been answering his phone all morning.” She called someone in from the back room to take over from her, then asked Winsome to follow her. They made their way in silence on the lift to the second f loor and along the corridor where trays of empty plates and cups sat outside doors.
Outside number 212 was a tray with an empty champagne bottle in a cooler—Veuve Clicquot, Winsome noticed, the ice long melted to water—and a couple of plates bearing the discarded translucent pink shells of several prawns. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung on the door handle.
Winsome was immediately transported back to the time when she worked at the Holiday Inn outside Montego Bay, cleaning up after the American and European tourists. She had hardly been able to believe the state of some of the rooms, the things people left there, shamelessly, for a young impressionable girl, who went to church in her best frock and hat every Sunday, to clean up or throw away. Winsome remembered how Beryl had laughed the first time she held up a used condom and asked what it was. Winsome was only twelve. How could she be expected to know? And sometimes people had been in the rooms, doing things, though they hadn’t posted a sign. Two men once, one black and one white. Winsome shuddered at the memory. She had nothing against gays, but back then she had been young and ignorant and hadn’t even known that such things happened.
Winsome looked at the receptionist, who held the pass card, and nodded. Reluctantly, the receptionist stuck the card in the door, and when the light turned green, she pushed it open.
At first Winsome found it hard to make out what was what. The curtains were drawn, even though it was past midday; the air was stale and filled with the kind of smells only a long night’s intimacy imparts 5 4 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
to an enclosed space. The receptionist took a step back in the doorway and Winsome turned on the light.
A man lay spread-eagled on the bed, tied to the frame by his ankles and hands with black silk scarves, wearing a thick gold chain around his neck, and nothing else. A woman in the throes of ecstasy squatted on his midparts, wearing a garter belt and black stockings, and when the light came on, she screamed and wrapped a blanket around herself.
“What the fuck’s going on?” the man yelled. “Who the fuck are you?”
The receptionist headed off down the corridor muttering, “I’ll leave this to you, then, shall I?”
“Police.” Winsome showed her warrant card. She didn’t think of herself as a prude, but the scene shocked her so much that she didn’t even want to look at Daniels lying there with his drooping manhood exposed. It also made her angry. Maybe Geoff Daniels couldn’t have known that his daughter was going to die a terrible death while he was playing sex games with his mistress, but she was damn well going to make him feel the guilt of it. She asked the woman her name.
“Martina,” she said. “Martina Redfern.” She was a thin pouty redhead, who looked about the same age as Hayley Daniels, but was probably closer to Donna McCarthy.
“Okay, Martina,” Winsome said. “Sit down. Let’s have a little chat.”
“What about me?” said Daniels from the bed. “Will someone fucking untie me and let me go?”
Martina looked toward him anxiously, but Winsome ignored him and took her aside. She knew she should break the bad news to Daniels, but how do you tell a naked man tied to a bed by his mistress that his daughter has been murdered? She needed time to take in the situation, and it wouldn’t do any harm to put a few dents in his dignity along the way. “Care to tell me about your eve ning?” she said to Martina.
“Why?” Martina asked. “What is it?”
“Tell me about your eve ning first.”
Martina sat in the armchair by the window. “We had dinner at The Swan, near Settle, then we went to a club in Keighley. After that we came back to the hotel, and we’ve been here ever since.”
“What club?”
F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
5 5
“The Governor’s.”
“Would they remember you? We can check, you know.”
“Probably the barman would,” she said. “Then there’s the taxi driver who brought us back here. And they’d remember us at The Swan, too.
They weren’t very busy. But what are we supposed to have done?”
Winsome was more interested in the time after midnight, but any sort of an alibi for last night would be a help for Martina and Daniels.
It would take at least an hour to drive from Skipton to Eastvale. “What time did you get back here?” she asked.
“About three o’clock.”
“No wonder you needed a lie-in,” said Winsome. “Long past bed-time. And you were together all that time?”
Daniels cursed and thrashed around on the bed. “That was the whole point of the exercise,” he said. “And this is police brutality. Untie me right now, you fucking black bitch.”
Winsome felt herself f lush with anger and shame as she always did when someone insulted her that way. Then she calmed herself down, the way her mother had taught her.
“Can I get dressed now?” Martina asked, gesturing toward the bathroom.
Winsome nodded and looked at the naked man on the bed, the man who had just called her a black bitch. His daughter had been raped and murdered last night, and she had to tell him now. She couldn’t just leave him there and keep putting it off, much as she would like to.
