A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (10 page)

There are many kinds of hotels, and there are many reasons
for staying in them. And as hotels go, this one was pleasant enough. It was clean. It was spacious. It was well furnished, had a big bed and a big bathroom with a big bath. Big enough for two friends to share. It had two chairs and a table between them. You can infer many things about a hotel user by the items he brought with him and what he did with them.

Some folk carry a suitcase at all times, and it is often the same suitcase. The contents vary depending upon the length of stay. Other folk carry a small bag containing almost nothing, relying upon their hotel to provide for them. Some folk live from their luggage, leaving it open from their moment of arrival until they close it again and depart. Other folk establish a home-from-home, hanging up their changes of clothes, positioning familiar items in a familiar arrangement; taking their known world with them wherever they go. There are as many types of hotel and hotel guest as there are hotels and hotel guests. Stoner had no views on hotels nor on those who stay in them. Unless those guests got killed, and only then if grim misfortune or the Hard Man involved him in their deaths somehow.

Luckless victim had carried a suitcase and a computer with him on his last journey. He had unpacked the suitcase; a travel clock sat on the bedside table along with a novel, the reader’s up-to point marked, the spine undamaged. No book-bender, then; a tidy person. In the bathroom would be the victim’s preferred soaps, toothpaste and maybe medications in case of headache or hangover. No patent guaranteed cure for death though. The body would be in the bathroom. This was Stoner’s theory, based around simple observation revealing that there was no other room and that the dead head was the only visible body part.

At first gaze, there was no sign of any other person’s presence in the room. However, it would have been difficult for the victim to arrange his death in such a plainly non-suicidal manner
without that other party, so Stoner, on a quest for knowledge tinged with only mild distaste for the fact of the death and a suitable depression at the plainly statemental approach to murder displayed by the killer, cast about him for more clues.

The computer, a laptop of unfashionably generous dimensions, sat open, switched on but blank-screened next to its case. The severed head sat between it and the edge of the desk, leaking a little and looking exactly as surprised and as accusing as it had ten minutes earlier. Stoner headed for the bathroom, body-hunting.

No body in the bathroom. The bathroom was a paragon of hotel efficiency and cleanliness. Branded cosmetics had been arranged neatly, and the victim’s washbag stood watch over them. No body. Not even the smell of a body in here.

The bath stood clean and empty, ready for the next soak. The shower curtains hung neatly from their rail and even the towels were stacked tidily, with only one of them moved and hung over the side of the bath itself. Either the murderer or the victim had washed their hands before or after the murder, depending on who was doing the washing. There were no obvious bloodstains in the bath or the sink, so Stoner left all that complicated forensic stuff to complicated forensic types and returned to the bedroom. A little bemusement was permissible, but not too much, because time was pressing.

Thirty minutes.

Stoner walked around the bed and back to the severed head. Its silence told him nothing new, and either the smell of death was fading by courtesy of the air conditioning or he was becoming accustomed to it.

The laptop ticked a soft and gentle tick, the way computers do when they’re performing some subtle duty in that smug and impenetrable way that computers favour. Stoner stared at it. The power light was lit and the hard drive’s light flicked at him.
Presumably it had been performing some self-inflicted task; hence the tick. Stoner tapped the space-bar, using the forefinger-nail of his right hand; guitarists tend to have longer nails on their right hands and fingernails leave no forensic distress.

The screen lit, obligingly, revealing a full-screen image of the severed head. A rear three-quarter view, in fact. Unusual. There was no doubt that this was the actual head. Stoner smiled at the screen. Picked up an instruction sheet advertising and offering the hotel’s internet services and dropped it between the head and the computer. The sheet fell unconcerned to the desk, its short flight watched by the computer’s webcam and displayed in only slightly twitchy colour on the screen. Stoner smiled again and felt a tiny delight that he had avoided being filmed. He wondered who was on the receiving end of the webcam’s static movie. If indeed anyone was. And if they were, then why?

Was it the same fansite to which the last scene’s laptop had streamed video footage? Seemed likely.

The computer’s case was unzipped. Stoner retrieved the hotel’s internet instruction card, holding it by its edges, and used it to open the case. Inside which lay a single word, laid out in an usually attention-grabbing way. The word was simple; the word was ‘SIN’. The ‘S’ was formed from two detached fingers. The ‘N’ was formed by three more. The ‘I’ was a severed dick. An unattached cock. A penis.

Stoner’s attention was indeed grabbed. He studied the presentation with all of the attention it deserved, which was a lot of attention.

The sinful word was resting on another hotel internet instruction card. But not a card from this hotel. There was very little blood. Presumably the letter ‘I’ had been unaroused, uninspired at the point of its detachment and display. Stoner could see how that might be. Few experiences in the life of any dick would be
more shrivelling than amputation. He wondered whether an aroused member would retain its engorged dimensions after severance. Or not. But he didn’t wonder for very long.

He stepped back gently, keeping away from the webcam’s limited gaze and texted the Hard Man.

‘Nobody here’, he sent. ‘No body at all. Only bits.’

‘Leave now.’

An instant and unequivocal instruction. So he did.

The clerk looked up as Stoner passed him.

‘See anyone? Did you catch him?’

He looked as baffled as Stoner felt.

‘The thief? The guy who broke in?’

There were headlights in the street outside, approaching in no particular hurry. Stoner didn’t pause in his passage to the revolving door.

‘No sign,’ he said, ‘Mostly. Don’t let anyone in, OK? The police techs will need to do tests. Y’know. Prints, things like that.’

‘They on their way or what?’ The clerk attempted impatience. ‘It’s been ages since I called. We’re busy. I may need that floor. I can’t turn customers away. This is a business.’

Stoner looked at the clerk, The empty silent lobby.

‘Keep calm,’ he said. ‘And carry on . . .’

Charity sat on a bench under a streetlight reading a magazine. A pose which would have been nicely inconspicuous were it adopted in broad daylight in a busy street in a crowded city. Hiding in plain view is a common technique. Well-proven. Popular.

From her position of considerable conspicuity she watched the not-quite stranger appear through the hotel’s revolving door, turn away from her and walk away. No hurry in his stride, no tension in his posture. A man unconcerned. Which was unexpected. As he departed so a police car arrived from the opposite
direction, from behind her. It passed her and parked. No flashing lights, no sirens, bells nor whistles. All was calm enough.

A single uniform clambered from the car, straightened his attire, placed hat upon head and headed through the revolving doors. Charity wondered how the door felt about all this nocturnal coming and going. Doors could always tell tales, she reckoned. If doors could talk. Sadly, doors are dumb. This door was not only dumb, but sightless as well. No security cameras framed its frame. It was a discreet door, then. Charity mused upon this while wondering why she was there.

The faintly familiar man had visited the hotel. He was a man of the dark; she had identified that and had no problems with it. He had visited and left, conspicuously unconcerned. This was not often the case when an investigating person visited a site soon after her sister had left it. More usually in that particular circumstance there was running, and shouting, and bright lights and considerable action. Here, tonight, at this unremarkable if decent hotel, there was only quiet. It was as uncanny as it was baffling. Maybe the almost-stranger had been there on another matter entirely? Maybe she had received erroneous instruction? Maybe she should collect her unused cleaning kit and head for home, services unnecessary, not needed until another day. Today had been a day of firsts for her, a very unplanned day, a very worrying day. She decided to wait until the police officer left the building and then she would go home. Plainly there was nothing for her here.

Off away in the city the bright night sky flashed in blues and in reds. Off away in the city a siren shrieked. It was late. There was little obstructing traffic. Sirens and strobe lights travel faster at night. Sirens and strobes arrived in a wave. Men ran for the hotel. The revolving doors revolved, as revolving doors do. Every light in the hotel was lit. More lights lit in more buildings. There was calm no more.

Charity stood, and sighed. Her sister had been here, then. There was no mistake. All the signs said so. She picked up her case and walked away. There was nothing for her here.

11

GO YOUR OWN WAY

‘Good game, good game.’

Stoner eased himself into the seat opposite the Hard Man. ‘It would be a much better game if you’d give me some idea of what’s going on. Of what you want. Of what I’m supposed to be doing.’

The Hard Man gazed at the menu. ‘I have no idea what any of this means.’ He sounded vaguely baffled. He appeared to be concentrating completely upon the mysteries of the menu.

‘You hungry?’

‘You buying?’

There is always comfort in a familiar routine. Stoner could play the game as well as any and better than most.

‘What does this mean?’

The Hard Man was staring sadly at the menu before him. Stoner was pretending interest. He had wasted a day. Most of a day. Part of a day. After escaping The Baffling Business Of The Severed Head he had walked, walked for miles with determination and frustration, pursuing the possibility of sleep through the wasted dim end of the night, but finding no relief. Then a daylight day without purpose. If he was working a job, then working a job
was what he preferred to be doing, nothing else. He was a man of focus. Not a man who found interest in the fine print of a menu.

But he was also a man of method, and if the Hard Man was sufficiently distracted to discover interest in the menu, then Stoner could dip into his reserves of patience and indulge him. For a while.

‘Corn-fed chicken grand-mère.’

The accent was hopelessly bad. An act of course. The Hard Man was fluent in French. Occasional in other languages, like Russian, German maybe.

‘Grand mer?’

He raised an eye to Stoner, who returned a deliberately bland gaze. A familiar game, this one. And like all games it served its purpose well.

The Hard Man warmed to his theme. ‘Grand mer? Deep big sea? The fabled long-lost well-fed chicken of the deep? There’s a movie in that alone. James Cameron should make it. Aged adventurers diving on the wreck of the sunken ship
Moronic
take a bite from the fat chicken of the deep and are transported to an alien world. Can’t fail.’

Despite himself, Stoner smiled.

‘Grandmother. It means Grandmother’s chicken recipe. You know that.’

The Hard Man raised his other eye to level with the first, a disconcerting trick even if it was familiar, which it was. If rarely observed. Like the deep-sea chicken.

‘Is that supposed to be a selling point? All your grandmother could cook was tripe. She always burned it, too.’

Stoner knew the routine. There was comfort in a routine, although why the Hard Man should find himself in need of any form of solace he had no idea. Unless his day had been as wasted, as frustrating, as Stoner’s own.

‘You’d remember that from when you were lovers, you and my gran? Is that it?’

‘Cheeky. Your sisters told me about her while your gran was stewing tea for me and your mum.’

‘Makes no sense. It’s roast chicken. Why not call it roast chicken? Why film a dead head and send a streaming video of it to a fansite for those strange sad fuckers who enjoy detective stories?’

Stoner looked up as the Hard Man’s discourse drew to its close. The impassive waiter maintained his professional air of interest only in their eventual order. He pretended to hear nothing else, as waiters should.

‘Chicken and chips twice.’

At least one conclusion had appeared, puffing into existence after a long long flight of fantasy stairs.

‘Add anything you like, any sauces, salads and strange breads. Choose a bottle of some decent drink to wash it all down and bring two powerfully pricey whiskies; my young friend has had a trying day. This is the only way to make him happy.

‘The hotel called in a break-in. The fire escape door had been opened and left banging. Alarms sounded.’

Down to business at last. ‘Alarms do that. They sound. Your wives all told me that.’ Stoner was pleased that a moment of shared intelligence, understanding was approaching. They were rare enough, and if they needed a touch of nurturing and if time was not tight, then he was easy with that.

The Hard Man continued with his tale of mystery. ‘The local officers advised the clerk, who refers to himself as the manager for no reason I can see, that they would be there as soon as they could, which could have been before some distant year when the clerk will retire to a life of culinary bliss with his grandmother, although I doubt it, and told him that as he had no guests booked into any rooms at all on that floor to keep it that way,
empty, while they got there. They suggested that there could be some risk to his person. They lied a little.

‘I do believe that one day an officer may well have dropped by and made a note in a notebook, but I doubt that it would have been any time soon. The officer gave the clerk an incident number, which I imagine runs to a line or two by now, and added it to the great and glorious piece of technical wonder which is the national criminal database, where it would have sat ignored until the hotel was redeveloped into a theme park inviting cruise ship passengers to relive the great heritage of sleazy fleapits or the approach of the next ice age, whichever was the sooner. But it didn’t. And we are unbothered by burglaries, you and I.’

The Hard Man looked up at the wine waiter, who stood at his elbow with every appearance of reluctant fascination and with a tray of glasses and a bottle in his hands. Two glasses filled with whisky; two waiting for their wine. A frozen moment. The Hard Man spread his hands, not entirely in supplication. The waiter poured. Twice. And departed, discouraged. Life as a wine waiter must be one endless stream of potential moments of entertainment, ruined by thoughtless customers who want them only to serve drinks.

‘So. The next thing is that a nerdy geek deep within the even greater technical wonder which is something to do with but not quite GCHQ presses a big bright red button of great alert. It might have been a bell, and it may have featured a whistle. Whatever, it was a decently loud button and its call reached my esteemed ministerial colleague’s ears PFQ. Because the text message which accompanied the head movie was a long-running repeat of its postal code. Which was identical to that of the busted hotel.

‘Technology is always better than humans when it comes to making sense of things and even before you could recite the whole of the
Iliad
in its native Greek our distant but worried guardians of the national interest added twenty-two and twenty-two,
came up with an answer greater than zero and called me. And no, I shall not reveal what they called me, nor what I called them, for the hour it was late and I was about the serious business of recreation. Or procreation, if you prefer descriptive accuracy to good taste.

‘Of course I instructed that they do nothing, a task they find easy, and that they slap a silence upon the whole thing until I had been round to take a look. By “I” I meant “you”, as you will have worked out. I had more important things to waste my time on than some batty hoax from an online fansite for sad souls who believe that they understand murder. As you would hope.’

The whisky was a good one; easy on the palate and an aid to concentration. Stoner always enjoyed a good whisky, although he preferred a vodka, given the option. During the Hard Man’s near-monologue a whole bottle of whisky had somehow vanished between them. He observed this, being a noted detective, and flagged down the wine waiter. Stoner asked for a jug of tap water to accompany the next and subsequent bottles. It looked likely to be a lengthy evening, and he wanted to take more from it than a hangover. The waiter stared pointedly at the untouched bottle of wine.

Stoner ignored him.

‘Where’s the rest of the dead guy?’

‘It is a curious thing. And that is a good question. The constables have a body. They do now, at any rate. The rest of a body was sitting on the fire escape at the end of the corridor where you found the head. Cool as you like, almost completely intact and living a life of sociable health and purity apart from being dead and missing a few bits. You did well in getting out of there as fast as you did. This is likely to be a long haul.’

‘Any moment now, you’re going to tell me that there’s more to this than meets the eye.’ Stoner smiled a smile which he trusted was more encouraging and companionable than simply grim.

‘I was going to leave this until later, but as you’ve seen right through me and brought up the eyes, I shall choose this moment to reveal that your head had none. Or rather it did have eyes but they were glass. Fakes. Artificial. Prosthetics. Certainly sightless. Even among the blind this head would not have been king.’

‘Aha! Moriarty!’ Stoner beamed. The decreasing level of whisky in the second bottle assisted his apparent, if largely assumed, levity. ‘This fiendish eyelessness prevented the ace detective in me from reading therein the image of the victim’s last vision, so identifying the killer. Case solved. It was the Black Queen who done it. Or maybe a wicked witch. Always hard to tell at times like these. Can we eat something soon? This tale of yours is so unlikely that it plainly is a work of fiction.’

The Hard Man unleashed an expression which may have majored on delighted sympathy and charitable kindness. Or it may not. Either way, he poured yet more scotch and waved for a third bottle. The untouched wine continued to breathe, or whatever it is that wine does when left to its own devices.

‘Have you done? Then I’ll continue. There are some bad folk out there, JJ.’

Stoner stared at him.

‘Descending into melodrama so soon in the evening? You’ll burst into song before the soup.’

‘Burst into flame more like. Shut up, drink up and listen. Any day now they will catch their chicken. It better be a big one if it’s going to soak up all this scotch. Thought you didn’t like scotch?

‘I know pretty well all the proper hitters in this fair land of ours. That is indeed the sound of the obvious being stated. I’ve employed most of them, trained some of them, and buried and shed sad tears over the less successful. So it’s always a delight when my masters decide that there’s a new topper come striding among us. Some new murderous bastard out there murdering, bastardly. Should that be dastardly?’

‘This is to do with the guy in bits a couple of days ago, then?’

Stoner sought some sense from his companion’s increasing obliquity. One of the Hard Man’s many peculiarities was his tendency to address a problem only when he needed to. He was not a great planner unless he needed to be. He was also not a great communicator unless he needed to be. He tended to work things out in his head as he talked them out loud. If left to drink and think he could simply lapse into silence. He would then become convinced that his audience was stupid for forgetting the wisdom he had imparted, when in fact he had imparted said wisdom only by telepathy and said nothing while lost in his own arcane reasoning processes. This fooled many people.

‘Yes. You get a prize. The guy in bits was not the first guy similarly in bits. Nor was he the first guy who my ministerial masters had told me about, but I’d ignored the others.’

Stoner wondered why.

‘Swallows, spring, that kind of thing. They watch far too much television, read far too many books. I don’t know where they find the time. They see a serial killer every time some sod dies in the same way as some other sad sod. You have no idea. They should all give up the service and become crime writers. They have far more imagination than most of those. And they pick up expressions like “MO” to make their reports read more interestingly. They’re a hazard. And overpaid.’

Stoner tried hard to ask something likely to extract a fact. At this rate they’d both be comatose and thrown into a taxi before the Hard Man got around to selling the job, to making his pitch. Not that Stoner needed persuasion; he did what he did, but it made things smoother somehow. Transactions are always transactions. Always and forever.

‘MO?’

The Hard Man drifted back to the point.

‘Someday my bird will come. I am truly starving, my friend.
Has the waiter died? Hideous revenge of the deep-sea chicken? Have we been stood up? Have you worked your usual attraction upon the staff?

‘Messy. Obscured. Manic Murder Most ’Orrible. Mainly Obliterated. Not neat crimes, JJ. Not neat at all. Not a jape. Not nice. I can’t think of a pleasant way to depart this teary vale, but I would prefer that it was quick rather than protracted.

‘About five years back, then. That’s when I think this started. Our lords and masters think it’s all new, but I beg to differ. I have not advised them of this. An approximation is all you’re getting, because it’s all I’ve got to offer. And you’re now sitting there picturing where was where, what was what, five years ago, right? Can’t see it was a crossover with either of us, although I would indeed be amused to be proved wrong. Crimes of passion, perhaps, certainly crimes of anger; increasingly grimy crimes. Always in hotels, always involving cutting. Couple of bludgeonings, batterings, bullets, but always sliced as well. Scenes messed with post mortem.’ The Hard Man paused. Stoner pointed an interrupting eyebrow at the approaching laden waiter.

‘It is amazing how criminal some people can become if they’re compelled to sit around for hours waiting to be given the bird. I hear there’s a theory of etiquette which suggests that valued customers should expect to sit drinking complimentary liquor for the same length of time they waited for their food, thus making the waiter wait a similar length of time for the reckoning-up. Sounds like a good idea. Although simply refusing to pay is always a smart trick. By hell, JJ, I’d almost forgotten that time you waited outside for that tardy lardy waiter and bounced him about a bit. You were a cruel man back then.’

The waiter did appear concerned about this. His body language suggested that it wished it were elsewhere.

‘He was, y’know. Cruel. Mean, too. Unpredictable.’

The Hard Man beamed at the waiter.

‘Do you carry a gun? A big one? In case of irritable customer syndrome? I think I would.’

The waiter chose to grin at the Hard Man. A bold tactic. He served the meal with a flourish and risked a question. With only slight nervousness.