I stood up. ‘Thanks, Lottie. Let me know if you hear anything.’

  ‘Will do. And thanks for the drink.’

  I strode down Queen’s Road, past the clock tower and on to West Street. The fine weather made it obvious that June would soon be upon us. The streets were busy now; it was lunchtime and office workers were coming out to find something to eat. In an hour or two it would be quiet again. In a week’s time things would be different; it would be the bank holiday. Nobody would be at work in the offices, but the population of the town would just about double.

  I reached the seafront pretty much halfway between the two piers and turned to the west. Soon I was outside the Grand Hotel. Motor cars pulled in and out of the crescent-shaped driveway that separated its entrance from the main road, doormen in extravagant uniforms helping customers in and out of them. Beyond the Grand stood the Metropole, even grander than the Grand, at least in its physical presence. Management and residents of the two could debate which had the more prestigious reputation. Neither hotel would be proud of the sort of business that I was hoping to discuss, but both gladly took it.

  I turned up the side street between the two of them. Out on the Kings Road, the white-painted façade of the Grand made a distinct contrast with the red brick of the Metropole but, as I walked inland, both buildings metamorphosed into unkempt griminess. It wasn’t far to one of the Metropole’s numerous side entrances. Outside, a couple of bootboys were sharing a fag. I went over.

  ‘Coates working today?’ I asked.

  One of them nodded. The other drew deeply on the cigarette, using the distraction to get a little more than his fair share.

  ‘There’s a tanner in it for you if you’ll fetch him.’ I held out the coin towards the boy who’d responded. The other one scowled. ‘Tell him it’s Charlie Woolf.’

  The kid ran inside and I waited with his pal, who was still trying to judge whether the sixpence or the smoke was worth more, though it didn’t take much calculation for him to know he’d lost out. We stood without exchanging a word, but after a minute or so he broke the silence.

  ‘You want a drag?’ he asked, holding out the cigarette. It took me by surprise, but he seemed quite natural in the offer. I looked at the thin tube of paper and tobacco, half burnt down. It was dirty, flattened from the perfect cylinder it should have formed. There was even a small tear in the side. Evidently one of the hotel’s clients had dropped it as he took another from the case. This one had been kicked around the lobby, but not for very long. Such a trophy would have been quickly spotted and seized upon.

  ‘I’m all right, thanks,’ I said. I lit one of my own Player’s, watching his eyes enviously follow the packet as it was returned to my pocket. The cigarette hadn’t burnt down very far before the first boy returned along with Coates, who was dressed the only way I’d ever seen him, in his hotel uniform.

  ‘Afternoon, Big-Bad,’ he said. ‘Terrible news.’

  The use of the nickname and his expression of regret were not unrelated. He was more O’Connor’s contact than mine.

  ‘You heard, then?’ I said.

  ‘It was in the Argus. Funeral’s tomorrow, they say, but I won’t be able to make it. Come on in.’

  I gave the half shilling I’d promised to the boy and dropped my fag on the ground. Normally I’d have screwed it flat with the sole of my shoe, but that would just have been mean. As I went inside, I heard them scrabbling for it.

  The door took us into a grubby corridor. The sound and the smell of kitchens came from nearby. Coates turned to look at me.

  ‘Was he here much?’ I asked.

  ‘Plenty. Business was good for him.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  He looked warily from side to side, though there was no one to overhear us. ‘Mr O’Connor prized my discretion very highly,’ he said.

  ‘I’m trying to find out who killed him.’

  He shrugged. He hadn’t been making an ethical point. I took out my wallet and gave him a ten-bob note. It was a lot, but I’d worked with him before often enough to know his price. He’d have landed more for the favours he’d done O’Connor.

  ‘It was last week,’ he explained. ‘Wednesday. Usual arrangement.’

  That fitted with O’Connor giving me the photographs on Saturday. He’d have had plenty of time to develop and print them. I showed Coates one of my drawings. ‘This the girl?’

  He nodded. ‘Pretty thing. You do that yourself?’

  I ignored the question and showed him the next picture. ‘And this the man?’

  ‘Could be. Looks familiar, so he might have been in the lobby, but I never saw who went up to the room.’

  I considered telling him that he was looking at the face of O’Connor’s murderer, but it wouldn’t help matters. ‘Who arrived first?’ I asked.

  ‘O’Connor had sorted things out a couple of days before. He’d asked me to look up a reservation for ‘Blenkinsop’ – phoney name if ever I heard one. There was a booking for Wednesday, just the one night. I made sure that they were allocated a suitable room.’

  ‘Suitable?’

  ‘He had his favourites. A room with a view, he used to say, and he didn’t mean of the sea. He showed up about seven o’clock and got a spare key off me.’

  ‘But you didn’t see the man – only the girl.’

  Coates nodded. ‘I wasn’t around when they checked in. I did see her waiting in the lounge, though. I always keep my eye open for whoever O’Connor’s doing the dirt on. No harm in looking, is there?’

  ‘So it was obvious who she was – why she was here?’

  ‘Not at all. I took her for a lonely heart.’

  ‘A lonely heart?’

  ‘She had a book on the table in front of her, with a red carnation in it – like she wanted someone who didn’t know her to recognize her.’

  ‘What was the book?’ I asked. I couldn’t see that it mattered, but it was the sort of question that suggested an air of professionalism.

  ‘God knows.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t realize she was anything to do with it until you showed me that picture just now.’

  I felt a pang of regret whose cause I couldn’t quite place. Then I understood: it was jealousy. I’d shared her, the girl in my drawings. I’d shared her with another man when I could have kept her to myself.

  ‘Did you see them leave?’ I asked.

  ‘O’Connor came back down at around 11.30. Handed me the key.’

  ‘Can I see the room?’

  ‘It may be occupied.’

  ‘We could give it a try.’

  He offered no further objections and I followed him along one dingy corridor and into another. It was busier here, with staff moving in every direction, some taking food and drinks out to serve to the customers, others bringing back the remains of what they had already consumed. There was nothing here that remotely resembled Mrs Croft’s pie and mash.

  We went through a double door and were suddenly in a different world: the hotel bar. It was lunchtime and busy – the clientele of the Metropole didn’t have to wait for a bank holiday to visit Brighton. I had to blink as my eyes adjusted to the brighter light. I was reminded of what Tremaine had said about The Time Machine. We were Morlocks emerging into the world of the Eloi.

  Coates led me out into the lobby, then raised a hand to tell me to wait. He went over to the desk and spoke to a colleague, then picked a key from the rack behind.

  ‘It’s taken,’ he said as he returned to me, ‘but they’ve left the key so they must be out.’

  We went up two flights of stairs and then along a passageway to the door of room 235. He put his ear close to it and knocked softly, then louder. He looked at me. ‘Seems all right,’ he said.

  ‘Is this the room O’Connor always used?’ I asked.

  ‘He had a few he liked; depended what was available.’

  He turned the key and opened the door an inch, before again raising his hand, warning me to stay. Then he swung the door open and stepped boldly through.

  ‘Housekeeping!’ His voice was loud and confident. There was no response. I heard him walking about, and a few moments later his head poked out through the door. ‘All clear,’ he whispered.

  It looked just as it had done in the photographs, with the exception of the bed in the middle of the room, which today was empty and neatly made up. The décor in the photos had been enough for me to recognize which hotel it was, but that stirred a hint of doubt. All the rooms here had the same wallpaper and a similar style of furniture and fittings. What I’d seen in the pictures could have been 235, or just as easily the room above or below. Why should Coates make it up, though, and what did it matter anyway? I doubted I’d find much evidence here.

  There was a wardrobe opposite the foot of the bed – Chinese in style if not in origin. I stood with my back pressed against the its doors, looking directly at the bed.

  ‘Think that’s where he hid?’ asked Coates.

  I shook my head. ‘No, angle’s all wrong.’ Beyond that, I couldn’t see a wardrobe as a very good hiding place. There was too much risk that someone would want to hang their clothes in there. Or perhaps I was being naïve to imagine the man in the photos neatly placing his trousers on a hanger before leaping on to the bed to do what he had come to do. On the other hand, he was German.

  I paced the room, my eyes always fixed on the bed, watching it shift in perspective as I moved. I might have done the same if I’d been preparing to work on a painting, judging where the best viewpoint would be. But in this case I was trying to determine what had already been done; from what angle the photograph had been taken. And for that the criterion would not so much have been the best view as the best hiding place.

  I stopped. I was in roughly the right position. I reached into my pocket and took out one of the larger drawings, unfolding it, hiding the contents from Coates. In this picture at least she was mine, not to be shared. But that wasn’t the reason I was studying it. It was the perspective that interested me now: the position of the bed relative to the door and to the window. It all helped to reveal where the original photograph had been taken from. I was still a bit too close to the bed and too low down. I put the sketch away and took a few paces back, until I felt the wall behind me. It still wasn’t quite right. I looked up: inches below the ceiling, set into the wall, was a grille.

  ‘Pass me that chair,’ I said, indicating one of two wooden seats by the table near the door. Coates brought it to me. I put it against the wall and stood on it. The grille was still a little above my eye level. I turned to face the bed, standing on tiptoe. It still wasn’t quite the same point of view as in the photographs, but it left no doubt as to where the camera had been concealed. I turned back to the wall. The grille was too fine to have taken the photos through, but it would have been easy enough to remove. I looked at the screws and saw there were scratch marks on them. I imagined O’Connor in the room beyond, standing on a chair just as I was, or something a little higher. He’d have to be able to see through to judge the best time to take a shot.

  ‘What’s through there?’ I asked.

  ‘Linen cupboard,’ Coates replied, without further elaboration.

  ‘Is it the same for the other rooms O’Connor liked to use?’

  He thought for a few moments, then nodded with increasing confidence. ‘Yeah, I think so. Yeah.’

  He was playing dumb. He must have known exactly how O’Connor worked things. He’d have made it his job to find out – otherwise how would he be able to work out a fair price for the blind eye he so regularly turned?

  I stepped back down to the floor. ‘We’ll take a look there once we’re done in here.’

  ‘That’s a different key.’ Again it was a matter of pricing, not a real objection.

  ‘It’ll be worth your while.’

  ‘I’ll go get it. Wait here.’

  I doubted I’d learn very much from searching in the linen cupboard, but it would be foolish not to be thorough, both here and next door. I opened the Chinese wardrobe and took a peek inside. It looked as though a single man was currently occupying the room. There was a dinner suit and a raincoat; nothing else.

  ‘Shit!’ Coates’s voice was only a whisper.

  I looked round in time to see the door closing behind him as he left. I could only guess that he had seen someone. I decided to follow his lead and strode over to the door. But before I was halfway across the room, I heard a key in the lock. I glanced over at the dressing table. The key that Coates had brought with him lay there, just where he had left it. This was someone else. They fumbled for a moment, not realizing that the door was already unlocked. There was only one place to hide. I went back to the wardrobe and got inside, pulling the doors closed behind me and trying to squat down, hoping that would make it easier for me to stay quiet.

  Outside I heard the door open and close. The footsteps were not loud, but sounded heavy enough to be a man’s. Evidently the room’s occupant had returned from lunch. I could only pray that he didn’t need anything from the wardrobe. It was too early for dinner and it was a fine day, so perhaps I’d be lucky. I heard the footsteps pause for a few seconds and then begin again, this time coming towards me. I realized he might have other reasons to open the wardrobe – not to take something out but to deposit whatever he’d been wearing. He stopped again, just inches away from me. Then light flooded in on me, and a face peered close to mine.

  CHAPTER 9

  I recognized him at once. It was beyond the reaches of coincidence that he was the guest who was booked into this particular room.

  ‘You following me, Tremaine?’ I asked.

  ‘Just following the same train of thought, I suspect,’ he replied, offering me a hand to help me out of the wardrobe and on to my feet. At the door to the corridor stood a concerned-looking figure clutching a bunch of keys. I took this to be the hotel manager. Tremaine turned to him.

  ‘I can deal with things now, thanks all the same.’

  ‘I need to lock up.’

  ‘The room key’s there,’ I said, pointing to the dressing table.

  The manager glanced at it, but seemed to accept he had no power to make us – or, more specifically, Tremaine – leave. He closed the door gently behind him. Tremaine gestured me towards the chair I’d used to stand on, before himself sitting on the bed.

  ‘So,’ he said with an exaggerated grin and a raising of the eyebrows, ‘this is where it all came to pass.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ I replied. Already I was considering what he’d said: that he’d followed the same line of reasoning I had. It didn’t seem quite right – he didn’t have the local knowledge. ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘My dear boy, do you really suppose I’d let a chap like Mr O’Connor have a totally free rein? I insisted he keep me abreast of everything.’

  ‘Even down to the room number?’

  Tremaine emitted a deliberate sigh to suggest his disappointment in me. ‘Even down to the hotel bill, on which was written the room number.’

  ‘So what did you expect to find here?’

  He frowned. ‘An interesting question, but I suspect you only ask it to distract from a rather more important issue.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘You asked me how I found the place, but perhaps I should be asking the same of you.’

  ‘I saw the pictures, remember? It was obviously the Metropole.’

  It was an insufficient answer, but I hoped he wouldn’t notice. I was disappointed.

  ‘Obviously room 235?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I do hope you’re not going to be troublesome. I can easily have you arrested again – and not by the local constabulary. I’m not asking you to incriminate whichever housemaid it was you slipped a few shillings to. I’m just puzzled how they knew to bring you to this precise room.’

  I considered for a moment. If he thought that my dealings with the staff here were as casual as that, then I wasn’t going to disabuse him. I might need Coates’s help again before long. On the other hand, what else could I tell him? The drawings I’d made having seen the photos were the ultimate proof that this was the place where it had happened, but they were also my ace in the hole. And it wasn’t the copies themselves that were most dangerous to me; it was the fact that I’d been able to reproduce them from memory. Paper could easily enough be crumpled and thrown on the fire. I didn’t want to discover how the Security Service went about similarly eliminating any information in a man’s mind.

  ‘He was a regular here … O’Connor,’ I said. ‘Not necessarily this room, but ones like it. It was only last week he was here, so she didn’t have any trouble remembering.’

  I hoped the ‘she’ would confirm Tremaine’s assumption and put him off Coates’s scent. He thought for a few moments, analysing what I’d said, his eyes on me, not fixed, but flickering across my face and momentarily down to my body. I almost felt he could see the folded drawings in my jacket pocket. I wondered how much O’Connor had told him about me – whether he guessed what I’d been able to do.

  ‘And what precisely have you discovered about what he did here last week – beyond that for which we already have such unequivocal visual evidence?’ It seemed like an innocent question, but still he brought things back to the photographs.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Not much, but something? You said, for example: “not necessarily this room, but ones like it.” Like it in what way?’

  I wasn’t surprised he’d cottoned on to that, but it was better if he thought he was teasing it out of me. ‘One with some kind of space next door where he could position himself. I reckon he was hiding in the linen cupboard, took the shots through that ventilator.’ I pointed.

  Tremaine looked around the room. ‘Shame there are no mirrors,’ he said.

  There was one on the dressing table, but I knew what he meant. ‘O’Connor wasn’t stupid enough to catch his own reflection.’