Ratcatcher - By Tim Stevens Page 0,66

and a cleaner pushed a desultory mop across the tiled floor. Purkiss went up to the reception desk and waited for the woman seated there to come off the phone.

He said, trying English and his best smile, ‘Good evening. I know it’s late but I wonder if you might have a room.’

She glanced at the mark on his neck, at his unshaven cheeks, but only briefly. There was blood on his cuffs from where he’d worked on Rossiter, but he’d rolled them up. In any case she wouldn’t be able to see them from where she was sitting. With a tight smile she peered at her computer screen.

‘Yes, sir, we do.’

He cut in: ‘Something on the first floor?’

Her eyebrows twitched. It was an odd request. Pursing her lips slightly, she considered. ‘One three one’s available –’

‘And overlooking the courtyard, if possible.’

He could see she was fighting the urge to roll her eyes. ‘One one seven?’

‘Perfect.’ It was the one next door to Abby’s.

He took the registration card and filled it in below the level of the desk so she couldn’t see the blood on his sleeves. He handed it across with his Martin Hughes credit card, and waited while she entered the details, hoping she wouldn’t ask about luggage. After she handed across two key cards he thanked her and turned, expecting either the hotel’s security or someone worse to be bearing down on him. There was nobody.

Purkiss ignored the lift and walked across to the stairs. He climbed them to the first floor. Stepping into the carpeted gloom of the landing he waited, listening. Voices somewhere, the low murmur of a television set through one of the walls. He walked to a bend in the landing and risked a look round. A defective lighting panel in the ceiling gave an occasional flicker, but otherwise the corridor was empty.

Abby’s room was 119. He resisted the temptation to listen at the door and instead approached 117. As softly as he could he slipped in the key card, wincing at the electronic click. He pushed open the door, controlling it as it closed behind him. He took a glass from the bathroom and put its open end against the wall adjoining room 119, pressing his ear to the base. Within a minute he had become acclimatised to the creaks and hollow noises being conducted from far-off parts of the hotel, and was able to distinguish them from the nearer sounds on the other side of the wall: the rustling of cloth, the shift of bedsprings, a footfall.

Purkiss went back into the bathroom. He saw a round shaving mirror affixed to the wall with an extendable arm. He fished a handful of change from his pocket and sorted through it till he found a coin of the right size, then used it to unscrew the arm of the mirror from the wall. Quietly he eased open the sliding door at the far end of the room, the noise muffled by the gathering rain, and stepped out on to the tiny balcony. Below was a courtyard with a scrap of garden. To his right was the identical balcony to room 119. The sliding doors were closed, the heavy curtains drawn.

He pulled the arm of the mirror so that it was maximally extended, and reached across with it as far as he could over the other balcony, tilting it until he had the view he wanted. The curtains were separated a crack at chest height. As he watched the mirror, a man’s torso appeared fleetingly inside the room. Purkiss adjusted the angle some more and saw the side of a man’s face, his mouth moving as he addressed somebody to the side of and below him.

At least two, then.

Back in the room he squatted down at the minibar. He found a bottle of wine and eight miniature bottles of spirits. Among the coffee things on the dresser were six sachets of sugar. He took everything to the bathroom and poured the wine down the sink, then poured the contents of the miniatures into the wine bottle, half filling it. Using his teeth he ripped the edge of a hand towel and tore it lengthways. He rolled it and pushed it deep into the neck of the bottle, dousing in the mixture, before removing it and emptying the sugar over the soaked cloth. He reinserted one end into the bottle’s neck so that it dipped below the surface of the alcohol. It wasn’t much, certainly nowhere