There could be literally dozens of victims.
She thought about Eva Balodis again. Had she complained, maybe threatened him with the police? Or blackmail? Had she been drugged and thrown off a boat into the whirlpool?
So many questions.
She looked at the green digital numbers of the bedside clock. Whoever it was – she couldn’t rule out Kai, he could have been inside for sexual offences, or even, unlikely though it was, Harriet – would wait for the hotel to settle itself before making their move.
Well, she was ready. They were going to get a surprise, a hell of a surprise. Of that they could be sure.
She rolled up a ten-pound note and helped herself to another line of Nose-stud’s coke. She didn’t want to fall asleep while she waited. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. She was more than ready. Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly, thought Hanlon, balling her capable hands into hard fists.
8
An hour and a half later, nothing had happened. No one had tried to slip unnoticed into her bedroom. Hanlon walked around her room in frustration like a caged animal. What was happening and why?
She thought, Well, if I wasn’t drugged so I was easy meat, there has to be another reason. Various hypotheses drifted through her mind. The most compelling one – maybe so I don’t notice something. Rohypnol affects memory so you’re not necessarily aware if you pass out that you’ve been drugged. If she’d gone to bed normally, if she hadn’t had the encounter with Nose-stud, she would never have been any the wiser. She’d have ascribed that odd feeling she’d had in the bar and the sudden fatigue down to sea air, the journey, maybe even depression.
She’d have just climbed into bed and slept through whatever.
Now she stood up and walked over to the window. She looked down below at the front car park of the hotel. It seemed strangely full; she counted fifteen cars. The boar on the hotel sign stared down at them, swaying slightly in the sea breeze, its red tongue curled around the bone in its mouth. Who did they all belong to? Hardly anyone was staying at the hotel. She frowned to herself, puzzled.
With Hanlon, to think was to act. She was wide awake and curious. She slipped on a pair of training shoes and a dark fleece and left her room.
She walked along the short corridor and came to the glass fire door that led to the landing. The corridor was in darkness, but enough light was filtering through a window at the end to see. The fire door was locked. At first, she couldn’t believe it. She rattled it experimentally. No, no mistake. She frowned. As far as she knew she was the only one who was staying on this floor. It had to be a measure to keep her locked in, in case she had woken up and wanted to come down to the main part of the hotel. She returned to her bedroom.
She closed the door behind her and looked out of the window. It was a quiet night, lit by a half-moon. In the distance she could hear the boom of the Atlantic from the shore. It made her think of the lifeless pale body of Eva Balodis floating like a piece of driftwood on the waves, her hair drifting in the water like seaweed, her arms and legs moving gently by the current in a parody of swimming. It seemed even sadder that this should have happened so far from home, in an alien sea. Did you do that, Big Jim? She felt a surge of hatred towards the sleazy old drunk. I’m going to bring you down if it kills me, she thought.
She was on the first floor and the drop wasn’t too extreme, maybe three or four metres. Below her was one of the raised flower beds that she had noticed when she first arrived at the hotel. The huge old wooden barrel cut in half, about waist height, choked with dying flowers and weeds. It would be easy enough to hang from her fingers and drop down into it. One benefit of the hotel’s dilapidated state.
She put her phone on silent and into the thigh pocket of the combat trousers she was wearing. She then raised the sash of the window. It didn’t go up very far before the aged wood jammed, but it was enough for Hanlon. She slipped her head out and then her body. For a heartbeat, she hung from the windowsill by her powerful fingers and then pushed herself away from the wall, landing with a soft thud into the loose soil of the flower bed, her supple knees absorbing the impact of the landing.
She prowled around the cars in the car park, examining them. They were local, she guessed. Some of them had the Argyll SB number plates, others simply looked as if they belonged in the country, 4 x 4s in need of a wash, and others with stickers advertising garages or a showroom in Oban, this on a big BMW 4 x 4, or Campbeltown. One mud-spattered Mitsubishi Barbarian bore the legend SWOA Give Good Wood! She looked back at the hotel, a dark, geometric mass against the lighter sky. The sea was very loud as the surf crashed rhythmically on the rocky beach. Here on the islands the Atlantic was omnipresent. She could feel it on her skin and hair, smell it in her nose, taste it on her lips. Far away on the water she could see the red port light of a fishing boat. The noise of its engine drifted across the water to where she was standing. The yacht moored by the jetty was in darkness apart from its riding lights.
There was a line of light showing at one of the downstairs windows between the curtains and Hanlon slid
