Judas Country

'That's right. And they want a word and if you don't come to them they'll come to. you.'

'Yes. All right.' His voice was calmer, quieter. 'I'll be down.'

The lights were on only at the bar end of the long room, a small patch of orange brightness that looked warmer than it felt and faded quickly into the dark cavern of the dining area. A few wisps of blue smoke from Sergeant Papa's cigar hung in the thick stale air. He was sitting with Kapotas at one table, Nina and the monkey-faced chambermaid at another. They waved the coffee-pot at me but I shook my head and went across to the bar.

Thunder rumbled distantly and made me realise how quiet it was. I poured myself a glass of soda water and sipped. After a time, Nina got up and came across and sat on the customers' side of the bar.

I said: 'Sorry about all this. Makes me wonder if I should ever have gone into the hotel business.'

She smiled sideways and little crowsf oot lines crinkled around her eyes; it was the first time I'd seen – or had time to see – her in a good light. She looked older, as all women do, but not that much. And she looked clean and smelled good. Maybe I was beginning to regret something.

She shrugged and her breasts bounced gently on the counter. 'It makes a change. And I dare say I got up later than most here.'

'Like a drink?' But she shook her head. 'I expect they'll just ask you to establish where I was and then you can go.'

'They did that already.'

'What about Suzie?'

'Ah yes. Well, I suppóse they'll have to ask her the same about Ken.' And right then, Ken came in.

He'd shoved on the same trousers and shirt and was looking a little smeared and puffy around the eyes but moved smooth and steady enough. 'Christ, this is the time I wish I hadn't given up smoking.'

'Drink? There's coffee or anything.'

'Coffee and brandy. Did the old boyreally kill himself?'

I said carefully: 'A pistol went off inside his mouth. It looked all right to me.'

Nina's eyes were suddenly wide. 'It lookedwhat T 'Genuine.' I beckoned the chambermaid with the coffee. 'It was a Walther PP in 9-mil.Luger.I saw the cartridge case.'

Ken shook his head slowly. 'He didn't have any reason to kill himself. He had a big thing going.'

I poured him a two-to-one mixture of coffee and local brandy. There's some angles, some loose ends, perhaps.' Nina was still watching and listening.

Ken gulped at the mixture in his cup and shuddered. 'Has anybody told Mitzi?'

'Yes. She's talking to Inspector Lazarosnow. He seems quite a sharp boy.' I hoped Ken was getting the hint and Nina didn't know I was giving it; he could be called up at any moment. Anyway, he just nodded and hunched his elbows on the bar, brooding. After a while more, Nina gave me a cool look and walked back to the table, her little bottom twitching left and right under the short black skirt, in real professional style. I tapped my glass against my teeth and sighed.

'When you last saw the Prof,' I said, 'what was he wearing?'

Ken didn't look up. 'Dressing-gown, same as when you were there.'

'Would he normally sit around all evening in one?'

This time he did look up – with a rather clogged contempt. 'Sure, he did all the time, in Beit Oren. Except dining-in nights, of course, when we wore white tie and tails.'

All right, so it hadn't been the brightest question of the evening. But then Ken put his face back down into his cup and muttered: 'If you mean was he the sort who liked comfort and class when he could get it? – then yes. I could see him wearing that until he changed for dinner, anyhow.'

'He didn't have dinner. He'd arranged to eat in his room anyway, to stay secret.' I thought about it for a moment. 'He took it off – the dressing-gown, I mean – to shoot himself. I can understand that, in a weird way; it was a nice gown. But then he put a shirt on instead; that, I don't quite get.'

He looked up again. 'Are you looking for rational behaviour in a suicide? They do the wildest things. Women put on their old wedding dresses; men build fancy machines to hang themselves with. I heard of an armourer sergeant once who spentmonths altering a dummy Vickers to shoot himself with and all the time he had a dozen real ones sitting around. Or are you getting the idea that perhaps it wasn't suicide after all? '

'Why should anybody make him change into a shirt before they shot him? But now listen, bright-eyes: when you get upstairsdon't go stuffing that copper up with murder theories. He's doubtful enough already; if he gets convinced it's murder, we'll be stuck on this bloody island until the clock strikes thirteen.'

He cocked his head, then nodded. 'What I'll tell him, you could write on a flea's jockstrap.'

'And don't get him niggled, either, or he may stick his nose into the Queen Air just looking for some technicality to catch us on.'

'Christ, yes.' He'd obviously forgotten about my cargo problems. 'Okay, Roy, I'll treat him like a police officer and a gentleman. And I suppose we'll have a nice cosy chat about my last two years. Bastards. Oh well…' He looked at his watch. 'And twenty-four hours ago I was still safely tucked in the coop. Now…'

'You'll go on dreaming you're still there for a few days yet.'

'Yes, I did already. Your subconscious is a bit like a bloody met office, isn't it? – Just won't look outside to see what's really going on.'

'More coffee?' But just then a uniformed cop escorted Mitzi back in and looked blankly around the rest of us. 'Mister… mister Caviti?'

Ken got up. 'Ready and willing.'

'Please to come…'

Mitzi had sat down at Nina's table. I went over, didn't sit. 'Just want to say how very sorry I am, Miss Spohr. If there's anything I can do…'

She looked pale but dry-eyed; enclosed and introspective rather than openly sorrowing. She didn't look at me. 'Yes, please. If you can move my room.'

I nodded. 'Yes, of course.' The cops would be trampling around up there for probably hours yet. I went across to Kapotas and the Sergeant to arrange it, and after a bit of discussion we shifted her one down and a bit forward to 227, so she wouldn't be under the old rooms.

Then Kapotas asked: 'And what shall I tell Harborne, Gough, in London?'

'Whatever the police decide. What else can you say? People die in hotels all the time; it's nothing new.'

'But I must tell them what he was.'

'A Professor – whatever that means in Austria – and a mediaeval archaeologist.'

'But you knew him.' Slightly accusing.

'Only met him this afternoon. It was Ken who knew him; they met in jail in…' From Sergeant Papa's expression I realised my mistake; I'd never mentioned that angle to Kapotas before, and he hadn't the Sergeant's eye for spotting these things.

'In jail?' he hissed. 'Both of them?' He stared around wildly. 'My God, now I'm running a brotheland a prisoner's aid society! Why don't we set up roulette wheels in the kitchen and sell marijuana at the desk? Or is that something else you forgot to tell me about?' And he glared at the Sergeant.

Papa stiffened and said with dignity: 'There are no drugs in this hotel while I am hall porter.'

That's a small consolation, then,' Kapotas said bitterly, then looked at me. 'And I supposeyou wouldn't be…' Then he stopped because he'd remembered just what we'd discovered Ihad been doing. 'Oh God, I need a drink. And I don't care if it's after dinner or before breakfast! ' And he headed for the bar.

Papa said calmly: 'He has not got the nerves to be a hotel manager.'

'He never expected to be one. And there must be hotels where it's easier.'

'Not much. Even the best hotels cannot really pick their guests; they can only keep out some who they know to cause trouble.'

'I suppose so…' After that, we just sat in weary silence until a uniformed cop brought Ken back in and beckoned me up. Ken's expression was just on the contemptuous side of blank-ness, but I wasn't allowed to have a word with him.

9

After anhour and a half of Lazaros's interrogations, the atmosphere in 105 would have stopped flying at any airport in the world. The Inspector himself was still sitting on the same place on the bed, only now with two ashtrays crammed full of butts, some still smouldering. If he lost his job with CID, with his sense of smell he'd no chance of remustering as a police dog.