“Same accident,” I said, putting my hand up to my face. “I’m his son.”
“Oh,” she said.“Right. Back ’ere, then.” She disappeared through a curtain hanging behind her. I placed the photocopy carefully back in my pocket, went around behind the reception desk and followed her through the curtain.
To call it an office was more than a slight exaggeration. It was a windowless alcove, about eight foot square, with a narrow table on one side, piled high with papers, and a cheap yellow secretary’s chair that had seen better days, the white stuffing of its seat appearing in clumps through the yellow vinyl covering. Most of the remaining floor space was occupied by mountains of megasized packs of white toilet paper.
“Got ’em on offer,” the woman said by way of explanation.
Must have been a good one, I thought. There were enough rolls here for an army on maneuvers.
“There,” she said, pointing. “That’s ’is stuff. I ’ad to pack up some of ’is things. Wash kit and so on, ’cause, as I said, ’e only paid for two nights.”
There were two bags. One was a black-and-red rucksack, the other a small black roll-along suitcase with an extendable handle like those favored by airline stewardesses. I found it strange to think of my father with a rucksack on his back, but things were different in Australia.
“Thank you,” I said to the woman with a smile. “I’ll let you have your floor back.” I picked up the rucksack by its straps and slung it over my shoulder.
“Shouldn’t I get a signature or something?” she said.
“On what?” I asked.
She dug around on the desk for a clean piece of paper and ended up with the back of a used envelope.
“Could you just put your name and signature?” she asked, holding out a pen. “You know, just so I’m covered. And a phone number as well.”
“Sure,” I said. I took her pen and the envelope. Van-something, she had said my father was called. I printed my name as Dick Van Dyke and signed the same with a flourish. The number I wrote down could have been anywhere. I made it up. I didn’t really want Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn on my telephone asking questions that would have been difficult for me to answer.
“Thanks,” she said, tucking the envelope back under a pile of stuff on her desk. “ ’E only paid for two nights,” she repeated yet again. “ ’ Is stuff’s been ’ere for nearly three now.”
At last, I worked out her meaning.
“Here,” I said, holding out a twenty-pound note. “This is for your trouble.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking the money rapidly and thrusting it into a pocket in her skirt.
“I’ll be off, then,” I said, and backed out of the claustrophobic space with the two bags. “Thanks again.”
“I ’ope ’e gets better soon,” she said. “Give ’im my best.”
I promised her I would, and then rapidly took my leave. If she had known her erstwhile guest was now dead, she may well not have given me his things. If she’d been aware that he’d been murdered, I was sure she wouldn’t have. But she wasn’t to know that the Royal Sovereign Hotel had been about the twentieth such place I had been into that evening asking the same question. For all she knew, my father had directed me straight there to collect his belongings.
I turned out of the hotel and moved quickly down Sussex Gardens towards my car, which I had parked near Lancaster Gate tube station. I didn’t want to give the woman time to change her mind and come after me.
I looked down at my watch. It was five past nine. I would have to get a move on if I was to be at the hospital in time for the television news at ten o’clock.
I was still looking down at my watch when a man came out of the building to my right and bumped straight into the roll-along suitcase I was pulling. “Sorry,” I said almost automatically. The man didn’t reply but hurried on, paying me no attention whatsoever. I had glanced up at his eyes, and I suddenly felt an icy chill down my spine. I realized I had seen those eyes before. They were the shifty, close-set eyes that I had seen in parking lot number two at Ascot on Tuesday afternoon when the man who owned them had twice punched a knife through my father’s abdomen and into his lungs.
I didn’t stop walking. In fact, I speeded up, and forced myself not to look back. I prayed he hadn’t seen me, or at least he hadn’t recognized me with my swollen and blackened eye.
Only after another twenty or so rapid strides did I step into another of the pillared entranceways and chance a glance back. There was no sign of him. I must have stopped breathing when I first saw him and I now gasped for air, my heart pounding in my chest like a jackhammer.
I peeped around the pillar and saw him come out of one of the hotels and then disappear into the one next door. It looked as if he might be on the same errand that had also brought me to Sussex Gardens.
I noticed with dismay that if he continued to work his way along the road, the very next place he would go into was the Royal Sovereign Hotel. High time, I decided, to leave the area.
Checking that he was still inside and out of sight, I nipped back out onto the pavement and hurried away, turning right at the next street. It wasn’t the most direct route to my car, but I was keen to get out of sight of the Royal Sovereign. I could imagine the plump, middle-aged woman standing behind her reception desk. Oh yes, she’d say to the man, ’is son’s just been ’ere. ’E took the bags. Only a moment ago. ’E’s got a nasty black eye. I’m sure you’ll catch ’im if you ’urry.
Not if I could ’elp it, ’e wouldn’t.
Surprisingly, I made it back to my Volvo without actually walking into any lampposts, so preoccupied had I been with looking behind me. I flung my father’s bags onto the backseat and quickly climbed into the front. My hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t get the key into the ignition. I held tightly to the steering wheel and took several deep breaths and told myself to calm down. This plan seemed to be working well until I saw the man again. He was jogging down the road, and he was coming straight towards me. My heart rate shot up off the scale.
I tried again to get the key in the hole, but the damn thing wouldn’t go in. I leaned to my right to see better and was still looking down, trying to match the key to the lock, when I heard the man walk calmly past me and climb into the car parked right behind mine. I slid down farther so that he wouldn’t see that there was anyone there. From my lowly position I could just about see the top of his car in my wing mirror.
He sat there for what seemed like an age before he finally started his engine and drove away. I began to breathe again. I seriously thought about following him, but I was worried that in my present state I would quite likely run straight into the back of him when he stopped at traffic lights.
I should be grateful to Luca, I thought, that I hadn’t waited until the following day to do my private-detective act. My father’s bags would, by then, have been long gone. But it would have been much less stressful on my body.
I sat in my car for a good five to ten minutes wondering if I should go report the encounter directly to Chief Inspector Llewellyn. I had been so eager that the man shouldn’t see me as he drove past that I had slipped down to a nearly horizontal position on the seat. Consequently, I hadn’t even seen the make or color of the car he drove, let alone the license plate number. I wasn’t much of a private detective after all, and I would have had little to tell. And I particularly didn’t relish having to explain to the chief inspector why I had said nothing to him earlier about any hotel or guesthouse in Sussex Gardens. In the end, I decided to have a look at the luggage first. I could always call the police then if I wanted to.