‘Then why work here?’ Wendy asked.
‘Schizophrenic, if you must know. If I sit at home, I’d be smoking more than twenty Marlboro Gold a day. This keeps me sane.’
Wendy could see that the unpleasant man had some redeeming features, not many though, although he had reasoned that sanity was preferable to the alternatives. ‘Thanks for the help,’ she said, even managing a weak smile.
***
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ the neatly-turned-out man said at the Fitzroy Hotel’s reception said. ‘The woman could have been a guest.’
‘She may still be. The first phone call in this area was six days ago, the last thirty-six hours,’ Larry said.
‘As I said, we don’t have a Christine Hislop here.’
‘Do any of the staff live on the premises?’
‘A few, but I don’t recognise the name.’
‘Can you check?’ Wendy asked. She had looked around the hotel as she had entered, seen that it cost over five hundred pounds a night for a small double, more than she spent in a month on her half share of the house she shared with Bridget.
‘Sure, no trouble.’
Wendy compared the man behind the hotel reception to Brent Anderson. The latter would have had more money but didn’t deserve it. The receptionist was probably paid a pittance, worked long hours, yet remained civil and friendly. Life wasn’t fair, Wendy knew, but sometimes the injustices of the world got to her – the reason that the television at home was switched off when the news was on, which appeared to be most of the time. She no longer wanted to hear about corrupt right-wing politicians and their agendas, the starving in Africa, those fleeing war zones. Not that she couldn’t sympathise with the downtrodden and the neglected; it was just that there was too much closer to home, too much in the area to deal with. A man, not missed by anyone yet, lay dead; that was enough for her to deal with for the present.
‘We’ve got a Christine Mason on the books.’
‘Where is she?’ Wendy asked.
‘She handles the accounts. I’ll give her a call.’
‘Don’t bother. Just point us in the right direction,’ Larry said.
‘Behind me, second door on the left down the corridor. Is she in trouble?’
‘Routine enquiry, that’s all.’
‘But you’re from Homicide.’
‘We’ve not come here to arrest anyone, just to ask a few questions. How long are you on duty for?’
‘Another three hours. Why?’
‘We may have some more questions for you.’
‘She’s a good person, is Christine.’
No doubt the dead man was, Wendy thought, but he’s still dead.
Larry and Wendy walked through the door at the back of reception. The impressive décor out front soon degenerated into drab white-painted walls. The first office along the corridor had a sign on the door stating it belonged to the assistant manager. Across from there, on the other side, two printers occupied an alcove. The corridor did not stretch far, only six offices from what they could see. On the second door on the left, the sign said accounts manager. It wasn’t an impressive brass plaque; this was plastic and cheap, held on by a couple of screws.
Wendy knocked; a voice came from the other side. ‘Come in.’
Wendy showed her warrant card first, Larry second.
‘You’ve come about the body upstairs? I’m not the person to see. You’ll need housekeeping. They deal with the occasional guest that dies on the premises, two in the last three months.’
‘We’re from Homicide,’ Larry said. He took a seat, as did Wendy. ‘Are you Christine Hislop?’
‘I was a Hislop once,’ the woman said, no longer sitting comfortably, no longer working on her accounts.
‘You purchased a SIM card from a vendor at Paddington Station nine days ago. A scruffy-looking individual.’
‘I may have. Sometimes for the guests, a special favour.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘Some of them struggle with English. It’s easy enough for me to do, gets me out of the office for a while.’
‘We need to be blunt, Miss Mason,’ Wendy said.
‘Mrs.’
‘Very well, Mrs Mason. The phone that was activated with the SIM you purchased had sent some messages, as well as a number of phone calls, to one phone number in particular. The English on the messages was perfect.’
Larry held his phone out of sight of Christine Mason. He dialled one number, the number they were now discussing. A delay of five seconds, and then the ringing of a mobile.
‘Mrs Mason, who were you phoning? Who did you call “lover”? Please think carefully before answering.’
‘We were friends, nothing more.’
‘We’re not here to discuss whether you were friends or lovers. We’re from Homicide, investigating a murder,’ Larry said. ‘We need a name.’
‘My husband, the children. I can’t.’
‘It’s more serious than that,’ Wendy said. ‘We need his name.’
‘He was a guest here once or twice. We got to talking, and then, well, it wasn’t too good at home. My husband’s a good man, but he leaves me cold.’
‘I’m sorry, but we must insist on a name. Afterwards, we can discuss the right and wrong of it, how you met, and so on.’
‘Is he…?’
‘Did you suspect that something had happened?’
‘Not really. I phoned him one day ago, maybe two. We had arranged to meet, but when he didn’t turn up, I didn’t think too much about it. Sometimes we don’t see each other for months, and then three times in a week. My husband travels, so did Colin, overseas a lot of the time.’
‘Colin who?’
‘Colin Young.’
‘An address?’
‘We decided when we became involved not to talk about our home life or where we lived. I didn’t love him, not that much, but he was kind. Two lonely souls, to use a cliché.’
‘We need to find his next of
