Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid (5 page)

Still, no point worrying about that now. He had a job to do. The moment they closed the door behind them, he ignored the burst of laughter and snatched up his holdall. He knew he might not have much time. The real occupant could already be on his – or more probably,
her
– way back from breakfast. Not only that, but Milly might wake up any second and start howling the place down.

Oh shit. The thought suddenly struck him that he’d forgotten to hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign outside his room. This had been an integral part of his plan to make sure no-one went in and discovered Milly, and now the chambermaids were only minutes away from doing that very thing. Even more reason to work quickly.

He dived into the bathroom and was relieved to see the toilet was exactly the same as his own. Carefully – very carefully – he lifted the lid from the cistern. As he turned and placed it gently on the floor, his mind did a doubletake. What was that?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sandra sat eyeing the last piece of toast in the silver rack in front of her.

Hell, it’s only half a slice. It’s not as if I’d be shoving down half a loaf. I mean,
half a bloody slice
. Get a grip, woman. You don’t even need to put much butter on it.

Maybe you could just do the marmalade and forget the butter altogether. Yeah, that’s it. Marmalade. No butter. Well you’ll have to have marmalade at least ‘cos it’s been sitting there for a while now, and it’s going to be as dry as the driest thing in Dryville on Saint Dry’s Day without something or other spread on it.

‘Would madam care for more coffee?’

‘Jesus,’ she said, snatching back the hand that was already reaching for the toast.

‘I’m sorry, madam. Did I startle you?’

She turned to see a waistcoated and bow-tied waiter with a dome of a forehead and an absurdly pointed chin hovering above her with a china coffee pot.

‘Er… No. Er, no, not at all. I was only…’

‘Would madam like some fresh toast?’ said the waiter with a slight inclination of his head towards the lonely piece in the rack.

He reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t quite place him. In any case, he was obviously on to her with the toast thing. She could read it in his wide-set eyes, and what he really meant by all the madam this and madam that was: Okay, fatty, I can see you’re gonna scoff down every last scrap of food on this table, so why don’t I get you some more and you can have yourself a frigging party?

‘Excuse me?’ Her tone was indignant.

‘Would madam like more
toast
?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I was miles away. Er, no. No thanks.’

‘Coffee?’ He tilted the pot towards her empty cup.

Was it the chin or the heavy, dark eyebrows that made him seem so familiar? Or perhaps it was the mouth, which looked like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to pout or sneer. But where had she seen him bef—

‘Of course,’ she said with a click of her fingers. ‘Quentin Tarantino.’

‘What?’ said the waiter, losing the ever-so-slightly-French accent in that one solitary word.

‘You know.
Reservoir Dogs
and all that.
Kill Bill
?
Inglourious Basterds
?’ Sandra beamed at him, delighted she had cracked the mystery.

“Quentin” now stood erect and bristling. ‘No coffee or toast then,’ he said in a seriously Birmingham accent as he began to turn away.

‘No, no. Both. Bring it on.’ She sat back, flamboyantly folding her arms and staring at the lonely piece of toast, a beatific grin still spread across her face.

Quentin leaned forward and poured coffee into her cup. ‘As madam wishes.’ The words came through teeth that appeared to be intent on grinding each other to dust.

Sandra watched the flow of dark liquid and inhaled the bittersweet aroma. When the waiter had gone, she added a dash of cream and a teaspoon of sugar, hesitating for the briefest of moments before adding a second. She raised the cup level with her eyes. ‘Here’s to me,’ she said. ‘Sandra Gray. Private detective.’

Taking a sip, she thought how good life could be sometimes, and her tongue tingled with the anticipation of the crisp, fresh toast that would belong to her, and her alone, in a few short minutes. A touch on the underdone side of overdone and cut triangularly. It always tasted so much better like that, so why was it she always cut it straight across on a right-angle when she made it at home? It wasn’t as if it involved any more effort.

Hang on though. Yes it did. She vaguely remembered her geometry from school and something about Pythagoras’s hypotenuse – or was it isosceles? Or even Isosceles’s pythagoras. Whatever. Anyway, it was definitely true that the slopey bit was much longer than the straight bit, and to confirm it she traced a right-angled triangle with a fork on the tablecloth.

To hell with it. I’m having extra butter
and
marmalade when it comes, and bugger the consequences. I should be celebrating, not fiddle-fannying around about a few calories here and there.

She took a generous slug of coffee and leaned back in her chair. Two grand and all expenses paid. Not bad for a couple of days’ work, and she’d only been in business less than six months. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. All she had to do now was—

‘Your toast, madam.’

Sandra looked up into the face of a scrawny, raven-haired girl with multiple piercings and skin the colour of anaemic alabaster. She had never fully understood the allure of the Goth look.

‘What happened to Quentin?’

‘Quentin, madam?’ said the Goth in a monotone and without any attempt at eye contact as she placed the silver rack of toast within easy reach.

‘The guy with the pointy chin and the eyebrows who was here before.’

The girl finally met Sandra’s gaze. ‘Don’t know, madam. I expect he’s doing other guests.’

‘What makes you think he isn’t on a plane halfway to Costa Rica?’

The Goth clearly didn’t recognise Mr Pink’s line from
Reservoir Dogs
, and she gawped for a moment before reciting, ‘Would madam like more coffee?’

‘Yes please. Oh, and could you bring a little more butter while you’re at it?’

CHAPTER NINE

Taped to the underside of the cistern lid
was a transparent plastic wallet, and inside this Trevor could see a brown paper envelope. Perhaps all it contained were the instructions for… For what? How to flush the toilet? Okay, so maybe it was the guarantee or—

Curiosity got the better of him, and he peeled the wallet from the porcelain. He took out the envelope and, turning it over in his hand, saw that it was unmarked and seemed to have been opened and then resealed again. He prised open the flap and removed the contents. A ticket and two white index cards, one of which had a small yellow Post-it note attached and a bronze coloured key stuck to the back.

Both cards had been printed with some kind of stick-on letters. The one with the Post-it note said:

FLAT 12

CABOT TOWER

MILTON STREET

BRISTOL

On the Post-it, someone had written in block capitals:

LEAVE THIS CARD IN LOCKER.

DESTROY POST-IT NOTE.

Trevor read the second card:

LOCKER NUMBER C9.

COMBINATION 357716.

MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME = HURST.

MEMORABLE DATE = 30/07/66.

Then he examined the ticket:

LEEDS FESTIVAL

BRAMHAM PARK

24th – 26th AUGUST

DAY TICKET ONLY

SATURDAY 25th AUGUST

He frowned and scratched his head as he scanned each of the items again. The address of a flat in Bristol – and presumably a key for it. Something about a locker and a festival ticket for 25th August… Today in fact.

But what’s it all doing inside a toilet cistern? And what’s with destroying the Post-it note? Weird or what? Still, it’s nothing to do with me. Need to get on.

Trevor replaced the cards and the ticket in the envelope and slipped it back into the plastic wallet, but no sooner had he sealed it than he heard the cacophony of Milly launching into one of her famous barking frenzies, unmistakable even at this distance.

‘Shit,’ he said aloud and dropped to his haunches. He re-taped the wallet back inside the cistern lid while a voice in his head told him this was not a very sensible idea, but he had no time to listen. Milly’s barking had reached a crescendo, and Trevor thought he could hear the sound of a woman screaming – or was that two women?

He wrenched open the canvas holdall and emptied the broken pieces of porcelain onto the floor, making a vague attempt to arrange them so it looked as if this was where the cistern lid had fallen. Then he laid the intact lid in the holdall and zipped it shut.

Grabbing the bag by the handle, he fled from the bathroom, through the bedroom, and out into the corridor. As he had feared, the wire cage with the towels and linens was parked immediately outside his room, but how had the chambermaids got there so quickly? He scuttled along the hallway and soon had his answer. The two intervening rooms on his side of the corridor had “Do Not Disturb” notices hanging from their door handles, and on the floor outside the second on the right was a large silver tray laid with breakfast.

He was almost level with this particular door when it opened, and an overweight man in a white towelling dressing gown appeared and stooped down to pick up the tray.

‘What an idiot,’ said Trevor.

The man in the dressing gown paused mid-stoop and stared up at him, a baffled expression on his bloated face. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Oh sorry. Not you. Me. I’m the idiot,’ Trevor said without breaking his stride and continued to chide himself for having forgotten to put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on his own door.

So intent was he on getting there, he scarcely registered the words, ‘You know, I think you’re probably right’.

The barking had reached a ridiculous level of decibels by the time he burst into the room, and he was not in the least surprised by the awful scene which greeted him. Milly stood in the middle of the bed, baying wildly in the direction of the two chambermaids, who were pinned against the far wall with a look of abject terror on their tear-stained faces. One of them – the younger of the two – was just completing an excruciatingly ear-piercing scream when Trevor came through the doorway.

‘Milly!’ he yelled.

Milly, who was quite clearly having a whale of a time, stopped barking long enough to look round at her master and then, after giving him what could only be described as a conspiratorial wink, turned back towards her cornered prey and resumed her deafening assault.

Trevor rapidly approached the bed. ‘Milly, I’m warning you…’

Apparently realising he was serious this time, she gradually reduced her barking to a barely audible level and contented herself with an occasional growl, supplemented here and there with a teeth-baring snarl. If it hadn’t been for the seriousness of the situation, Trevor would have found Milly’s display of aggression highly amusing. He knew as well as she did that it was all show, and if the chambermaids had stood up to her, she would have run a mile.

‘That your dog?’ said Peroxide.

‘Er…’ Trevor glanced round at Milly as if noticing her for the first time.

‘It’s a bloody menace, that’s what it is.’

‘Ought to be… put down… if you… ask me.’ The younger woman could barely get the words out through her tears.

‘You may well have a point there,’ Trevor muttered, and he gave Milly a withering glare, which she completely ignored and directed a particularly threatening growl towards the two women.

‘I’ll ‘ave you reported, I will,’ Peroxide said, seeming to regain her composure a little. ‘And what was yer doing in t’other room?’

‘Long story I’m afraid, and I’m a bit pushed for time at the moment.’

With that, Trevor disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door. But as he removed the cistern lid from his holdall, he spotted the plastic wallet taped to the underside, and straight away he understood the reason for his sense of unease a few minutes earlier.

Oh bloody Nora. How could you have been so stupid?

He stared at the wallet and tried to think what to do with the damn thing. There was no point leaving it here… Perhaps he could sneak back into the other room and— No, that wouldn’t work. The door had locked as soon as he’d closed it behind him… Maybe he could hand it in at reception when—

He suddenly became aware that Milly had cranked up her vicious-killing-machine act with some blood-curdling growling and snarling, and the two women had started screaming again. The reception plan would have to do. Ripping the wallet from the lid, he tossed it into his holdall and then carefully positioned the lid on top of the cistern.

Back in the bedroom, he saw that the chambermaids had pressed themselves against the wall once again, and the younger one was about to let out another scream. He stuffed his few belongings into the holdall and turned to the two cowering women. ‘Er… Sorry.’