Hope Road (7 page)

“What the fuck, Freddy?” he says, hoisting himself out of his dark blue Saab.

The hotel’s windows have been painted maroon, and a modern revolving door, flanked by smoked glass on both sides, looks ridiculously out of place. Above it is the single word
Eurolodge
in white neon. You’re supposed to know it’s a hotel.

The door is stiff, its hiss low and pronounced as it moves slowly round. Inside, no muzak plays, and there’s no pinging elevators or sales reps talking loudly into their phones. Nothing. He’s in a small reception, and he’s on his own. The only sound comes from two strip lights overhead, which emit the faintest of hums; that, and the rumble from traffic outside.

“Good morning.”

He appears from double doors behind the reception. Mid-thirties. Jeans and a black pullover (the hotel is not particularly warm, John notices). The skin around the man’s eyes is grey, his sickly complexion made worse by the lights.

“Yes, good morning,” says John.

The man behind the counter says nothing more, tries to hold his smile.

John waits. Then:

“It’s
your
turn now, isn’t it?”

The other one blinks, confused.

“Sorry!” he says. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you the manager?”

A frown. He catches it quickly, but that smile is turning into a silent wince.

“Manager and owner.”

John doesn’t know whether to congratulate him or offer commiserations.

“My name’s John Ray. I’ve got a car showroom down on Hope Road.
Tony Ray’s Motors
? I don’t know, you might have heard of it?”

The manager loosens up, relief spreading across his face.

“Tony Ray’s place!” he says, nodding too much, extending an arm and shaking John’s hand with vigour. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. Adrian Fuller, by the way. Hope Street, that’s right, yes. Been there years!”

“You saw today’s
Yorkshire Post
, then?”

“No…” he says, making a show of looking around, “we don’t seem to have got the papers this morning.”

John also looks. The reception is in fact one corner of a far larger room, most of which is in semi-darkness. The reception counter extends right across the back wall, mutating part way along into a bar. In front of it is a spacious lounge, low-slung sofas in perfect order, plus a small breakfast station which appears not to be in use.

“Well, I’m sure you’re busy,” John says, surveying the emptiness, “so I’ll get straight to it. I’m looking for Owen Metcalfe. Big lad, blond, early twenties. Looks a bit like that cricketer, the one who was always getting drunk. Not Botham, the other one.”

Fuller is noncommittal, a slight shake of the head.

“I dunno. We get a lot of people in here…”

“Really?”

No reply this time.

“Owen Metcalfe. Everybody calls him Freddy. Always laughing, joking around. If you’ve met him, you’ll know. Tall as me, almost as wide.”

The man shrugs with vague apology.

“Look, I’ve just been dragged down to Millgarth about this. Freddy works for me, and he’s in trouble. So if you know where he is, that’d be grand. Heard the news this morning, have you?”

What little colour was in Fuller’s cheeks has now disappeared. But still he doesn’t speak.

“I assume that means something to you,” John continues. “And if it turns out Freddy was even near this place, there’s gonna be a fuck load of coppers spinning through that door the minute they find out. You’ll be doing yourself a favour if we can get to him first.”

“What news?”

The voice comes from behind Fuller.

A young man stands in the double doors, dull ginger hair, bad skin, a faded Iron Maiden T-shirt small on his wiry frame.

“Craig, what are you doing here?” Fuller asks.

Whatever Craig is doing, he looks badly in need of sleep.

“I got my shift times wrong,” Craig says, staring at the floor, his voice low, as if it pains him to say anything at all. “Thought I was on mornings.”

An awkward pause follows. Above them the strip lights emit their gentle hum.

“Mr Ray is looking for Freddy,” Fuller says in the end.

But he speaks without looking at Craig, who for his part continues to look down at the floor.

“A girl’s dead,” John says. “And Freddy’s disappeared.”

With my car.

“What did the police say?” Craig asks, screwing up his face in confusion.

“They said a lot of things. Bottom line, from me to you: has Freddy been here, or has he fucking not?”

The question is for Fuller, not Craig.

“I think,” the manager replies, “I’ll take my chances with the local constabulary, Mr Ray.”

His voice carries just the right amount of defiance. For a moment he looks proud of himself, surprised even. But it doesn’t last. He’s evidently in no state for a confrontation. John Ray, meanwhile, looks like the kind of man for whom confrontation is a singular pleasure.

A moment’s eye contact is all it takes.

“He was here yesterday,” Fuller says, his shoulders dropping as he gestures towards the end of the counter. “Come through to the office. Craig, can you watch the counter?”

They head down a carpeted corridor with numbered doors on each side. The last one on the left is ajar. A trolley loaded high with buckets and plastic containers waits outside, and the throaty drone of a vacuum comes from within.

Fuller’s office is opposite.

“Take a seat,” he says, pulling an orange plastic chair from the side of the room for John then sitting behind the desk in an identical chair.

He rests his elbows on the desk, presses his fingers together, then speaks.

“Freddy was here last night. The girl he was with is called Donna. The dead girl? Is it her?”

As he speaks he watches a black and white security monitor on his desk. The screen is split into four, but only three of the squares show images.

“What makes you say that?”

“She comes here to see two men. They’re staying here and she’s, well, she’s a prostitute.”

John notices the monitor. One image is a wide-angle shot of the reception and lounge. The boy in the T-shirt is making himself a coffee, moving so ponderously it looks as if he’s in slow-motion.

“Not a great thing for a hotel manager to admit,” Fuller adds, “but that’s the truth.” He looks at John, as if in apology. “A prostitute. What can I say?”

“Donna?” John says slowly. “So what happened yesterday?”

“Late evening, she came. In a bad way, drink, drugs… And angry. Pretty much trashed the room.”

“The one being cleaned now?”

“Yeah, number twelve. We had to ask her to leave.” He swallows. “In that state, I was, y’know, afraid something might have happened to her.”

“What’s Freddy’s role in all this?”

“He was with her when she left.”

Fuller sinks a little in the chair, as if the thought saddens him.

There’s a security camera pointing down the corridor. John watches the monitor as the door of room twelve opens and someone comes out, obscured by the trolley, then disappears back inside. Meanwhile, Craig sits in the reception, cradling a mug of coffee in both hands and hardly moving.

“So, Friday night and Freddy’s in a hotel room with a prostitute and a couple of other guys?”

“That’s right. I don’t know Freddy. I mean, I’ve no idea why he was here.”

“From what the police said, I think we can assume the dead girl is Donna.”

Fuller sighs, nods his head.

“Tell me about the two men.”

Fuller considers the question for a moment.

“Ukrainians. Agricultural machinery. They’ve been here six weeks. I give them a good rate. They use the hotel as their UK base. Yesterday they were celebrating a big contract, cigars, Champagne, the works. Whenever they celebrate, they call the girl.”

“But this time it turned out bad?”

“She got violent. I didn’t want to say anything, because they’re good customers. In the end even they must have got sick of her. They left her in the room and went to celebrate somewhere else.”

“Freddy?”

“Him as well. It was then that she trashed the room. I had to call them. Back they come, take her out through the fire exit, and that’s the end of it. Poor girl.”

“And Freddy left with her, you say?”

“As I remember, he brought his car round the side, by the fire exit. Couldn’t be sure, though.” He taps the blank quarter of the TV monitor. “Camera outside’s not working. Some yobs smashed it the other day.”

“Those Ukrainians still around, are they?”

“I guess. I gave them another room temporarily. Haven’t seen them this morning, though.”

John is out of his chair, extending a hand, thanking Fuller.

“I expect I’ll be getting a visit from the police before long,” Fuller says as he too rises. “I’ll give them a ring, make their job a bit easier.”

Like hell you will.

The fire exit is across from the office, set back out of sight at the end of the corridor immediately after the room being cleaned.

“I’ll go this way,” John says, striding over to the doors and pushing them open before Fuller can stop him.

“They took her out through here?” he asks as both men step out into a sharp breeze. The side street, running down the side of the hotel, is empty apart from a silver BMW, nice and clean, not a mark on it.

“Yours?” John says.

Fuller nods. “I keep it here because of the security camera.”

“Which isn’t working…”

They look up at the little black cylinder bolted high on the wall at the corner of the building.

“Got to get that fixed,” says Fuller, before disappearing back inside the hotel and closing the fire doors behind him.

John gets his cigarettes out and casts a professional eye over the beemer in front of him.

H
e wanders up the side of the hotel. Stops. There’s no one about. He can hear the distant rumble of traffic from the York Road, but all he can see is rough, disused land, on it the brickwork stumps of demolished buildings overgrown with sun-yellowed grass. He remembers the adverts when the
Eurolodge
opened. It was cheaper than the budget chains. Now he knows why. Perfect for tractor sellers. But Freddy? What the hell is he doing up here at midnight with the Mondeo?

He calls the showroom.

“Connie? The security tapes? Did you get chance to…”

“He took the car Thursday as well,” she says. “Eight o’clock, back at eleven.”

“Just Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, things are not looking too good. I gotta find Freddy before the police do. Can you cope on your own? Close up and go home whenever you want.”

Next he rings Freddy, several times. Nothing.

If anything arises
, DC Steele said.
If anything arises, I’ll be your point of call
. Well, Freddy was in here at midnight with the girl and he was driving the car she was found dead in the next morning.
That’s
arisen. He fishes in his jacket for Steele’s card. Then he lets it drop back into his pocket.

None of this feels right.

Fuck it.

Walking fast now. Round to the front of the hotel. In through the revolving doors again. No one on reception. The corridor behind, first room:
PRIVATE
.

He knocks. Pushes the door open. The skinny young guy in the heavy metal T-shirt is sitting in a battered swivel chair, still huddled over his mug of coffee. He doesn’t move a muscle when the door opens.

He’s sitting at a long desk, like a work bench, clean and ordered, not a trace of dust. It runs the length of the small narrow room, and serves as the control centre for the hotel’s decrepit security system. Two video monitors every bit as old as the one in Fuller’s office sit atop video recorders of similar vintage. One of them shows live images from the hotel’s three functioning cameras. Craig isn’t asleep, then. He’s just watched as John came back into the hotel. He was expecting him.

“Jeeze,” John says, looking at the video equipment, “this stuff’s older than mine. In the case of my gaff, I don’t give a shit. What’s Fuller’s excuse?”

“He’s talking about going digital.”

John looks around in vain for any sign of a computer.

“You’re trying to find Freddy, right?” says Craig, and takes a sip of coffee.

“Yes. Got any suggestions?”

“Still not heard from him?”

“Nope. Were you here last night, Craig, late on?”

He finally puts his coffee down.

“Me? Yeah, I was here til midnight.”

“Working?”

“I do evenings. I’m a student. IT.”

“Special area, or wouldn’t I understand?”

“Network management.”

John nods. “The guy to suck up to, in case everything suddenly stops working.”

Craig tries to laugh, but it sounds more like a sudden stab of pain that’s hit him in the throat.

“You do all the techie stuff here, do you?” John says, glancing at the blank panel on the video monitor, where images from the camera on the side street should be playing.

Craig scratches the crown of his head fiercely, then runs a hand down his neck where the scars of teenage acne have left the skin pitted and uneven.

“There’s no one else to do it.”

“Did you see Freddy last night?”

“Yep.” He reaches across to the second monitor and turns it on. “I can show you.”

The monitor flickers into life, the same quartered screen, one blank, the others showing the entrance, the ground floor corridor, and what John assumes to be the first floor corridor. The video is paused.

“You’ve been watching this, have you?”

“Yeah, I was having a look,” Craig says as he fiddles with the contrast, the image going impossibly dark then stabilising. “Y’know, after I heard.”

“Heard what?”

Craig pauses.

“That someone was looking for Freddy.”

He presses
play
.

Two tall men in suits appear at the far end of the corridor, coming out of Room Twelve and walking down towards the camera. The younger of them is grinning, shaking his head with amusement. The older is heavy-set, with thick dark eyebrows that push out, extending over his eyes.