was usually a most tidy guest.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No. I put it in with the rest of the rubbish.”
“I don’t suppose you can remember what the card said, can you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mohammed. “It was the name, you see.”
“What about it?”
“ ‘Tom Savage.’ Wouldn’t you remember that?”
“I suppose I probably would,” said Banks.
“And,” Mohammed went on, beaming, “you would certainly remember it if it said, ‘Tom Savage Detective Investigations.’ Like
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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“Could it have been dropped there before Mr. Wyman came to stay?”
“No,” said Mohammed. “I’m most thorough. I clean every nook and cranny between guests.”
“Thank you,” said Banks. “I’m very glad of that. Was there anything else about it?”
“The top left corner was indented, as if it had been attached to something by a paper clip.”
“I don’t suppose you remember an address or telephone number?”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” said Banks. “It should be easy enough to find out.”
“Do you still want to look at the room?”
“Yes, please.”
“Very well. Follow me.”
Mohammed took a key from a hook on the wall and came out from behind the reception desk. He led Banks up three f lights of carpeted stairs and opened a door off the landing. Banks’s first impression was of how small the room was, but everything else about it was clean and in order, the striped cream wallpaper giving it a cheerful air. He spotted the radiator. A hard-back chair stood right next to it. It was close to the bed and seemed a natural place to lay out one’s clothes for the morning, or to hang trousers and a casual jacket over the back. Easy for a card to slip out of a pocket and f lutter behind the radiator.
There was no television set and only a single bed, but there was a small armchair by the window, which overlooked the street. Banks could hear the traffic and imagined it could be noisy, even at night—
there was no double-glazing here to dampen the sound—but Wyman must be a good sleeper. All in all, if Banks found a room so snug and comfortable in London at that price, he would probably stay there himself. Most of the places he had ever stayed in around Victoria had been dives.
“It’s charming,” he said to Mohammed. “I can see why he liked it.”
“It’s very small, but clean and cozy.”
“Is there a telephone?”
“There’s a pay phone in the hall.”
“Mind if I have a look around?”
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P E T E R R O B I N S O N
“Please. There’s nothing here.”
Banks could see what he meant. A quick glance under the bed revealed nothing, not even the dust balls one might usually expect to find there. Mohammed was not lying when he said he was thorough.
The wardrobe, too, was bare apart from the coat hangers that rattled when he opened it. On the small desk, there was a note about breakfast times, along with a writing tablet and a ballpoint pen. The ubiqui-tous Gideon’s Bible lay all alone in the top drawer of the bedside table.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you,” Banks said.
“It’s all right. Have you finished now?”
“Yes, I think so. Thanks a lot for answering my questions and for letting me see the room.”
Banks followed Mohammed down the stairs and stopped at the public telephone on the lower landing. There were no phone numbers scribbled on the wall and no directory. “Do you know if he made or received any phone calls while he was here?” Banks asked.
“I don’t think so. He could have done. I wouldn’t necessarily have known. I do hope Mr. Wyman isn’t in any trouble.”
“So do I,” said Banks, taking Mohammed’s card, smiling and shaking hands as he left. “So do I.”
T H E D E T E C T I V E agency looked like a one-man operation housed in a nondescript sixties office tower on Great Marlborough Street, between Regent Street and Soho. Banks had got the address easily from the yellow pages. A group of casually dressed young men and women stood around outside the building smoking, chatting to bicycle couri-ers. It was about the only place they could smoke now outside of their own homes.
Banks took the jerky lift up to the fifth f loor and found the door marked tom savage detective investigations, followed by “Please Press Bell and Enter,” which he ignored. When he walked into the room, he was almost
