I hurried back upstairs to the reception desk and asked nonchalantly if my old mate Reg Post had checked in yet. The young guy on the desk tapped away at his computer, frowning for a few moments.
“I’m sorry, Miss, but we don’t have anyone of that name registered,” he said, looking crestfallen at having to disappoint me. “Let me just check for you if he has a reservation . . . no, it doesn’t look like it. I’m really sorry about that, Miss.”
“No problem,” I said quickly. “He must be booked in somewhere else.”
The guy raised his eyebrows as though, in his opinion, there wasn’t anywhere else to stay in the area, but he was much too polite to actually say so.
I walked back across the foyer and hit the stairs to the basement again. Just as I pushed the heavy door open at the bottom, I heard the echoing roar of a bike engine bouncing off the bare concrete walls as it was revved up through a gear.
Instinctively, I broke into a run. As I did so I caught the flash of coloured fairing and the Lucky Strike bike shot past me, heading for the exit. I increased my stride, sprinting diagonally now to try and get ahead of him but by the time he was halfway to the redline in second I knew I was already beaten.
All I managed to see was a set of black leathers and helmet on a big figure who was hunched over the tank as he sped away. The brake lights flared briefly just before the sharp upward sweep of the exit ramp, then he was gone.
I slowed, cursing under my breath, knowing it was pointless to pursue him any further. Who the hell was he? And what had he been doing here if he wasn’t checked in?
Just in case, I made a quick detour to check over our bikes which we’d shifted underground after we’d checked in ourselves. They were still chained together in a line and nothing seemed to have been disturbed.
I stood, catching my breath and, in that moment of stillness, heard one of the doors out of the car park slam shut on its self-closing mechanism. My head snapped up and I silently berated myself for being stupidly slow. If I couldn’t get hold of the mysterious Mr Post, the next best thing was to find out exactly who he’d been here to see.
I belted back for the door and eased it open but the stairwell inside was empty. I went up as fast and as softly as I could, keeping to the outside of the walls. I didn’t hear footsteps on the tiled steps but suddenly the noise from the bar grew louder and quieter again, as someone passed through the door into the foyer.
Abandoning any pretence at stealth, I pounded up the last half flight and yanked the door open. The foyer area was empty. There wasn’t even any sign of the young man on the reception desk who’d been so helpful before. Damn.
Admitting defeat, I walked straight back to the bar. The majority of the Devil’s Bridge Club were still where I’d left them – only Tess was missing. Sean was lounging on one of the vast leather sofas facing the entrance. He had his arm resting along the back and a bottle of beer swinging lazily from his other hand.
But the relaxed attitude was a blind, as I was well aware. So was the beer. He’d barely drunk half of it over the course of the entire evening. He kept taking the bottle with him to the bar whenever he bought a round and coming back with the same one, still barely touched.
The result was that he was a lot sharper than the others. He looked up, took in my face and got to his feet immediately, steering me out of earshot round the far side of a pillar.
A waiter hurried past, heading for a small group who’d been celebrating a birthday on the far side of the bar. He was carrying a dessert with two lit sparklers stuck in the top of it and Sean waited until he was gone before leaning in close.
“What’s happened?” he demanded.
I filled him in briefly. “I didn’t see who it was,” I finished. “Have any of this lot moved?”
Before Sean could answer there came the click of heels and Tess appeared from the direction of the ladies’ room, still rearranging her short skirt. She smiled slyly at the pair of us as she went past and I had to control the urge to distance myself a little from Sean. Come on, Fox, you don’t have to hide this any more.
“Well, that answers that one, I suppose,” I said, wry, watching Tess totter back to her seat. “But whoever was in the car park then went up the stairs like a rat up a drainpipe. No way could she have done that in those shoes. Anyone else?”
“Just one,” Sean said, and his face told me I wasn’t going to like it.
“Who?”
“Jamie.”
***
Getting Jamie on his own to ask him about his involvement with Reginald Post was no easy task. Tess seemed to have latched herself onto him and every time he went to get the drinks in she was with him. She certainly didn’t want to leave him on his own with me, that was for sure. Eventually, Sean took over distracting her long enough for me to slide in alongside him at the bar.
“So, what’s with you and Reg Post?” I asked quietly while the barman had gone off to fetch more bottled beer.
“What?” Jamie had been watching the bike racing on the TV and only pulled his gaze back to me with an effort. Again the resemblance to his father hit me square in the chest. “Who the hell is Reg Post?”
“Remember the Lucky Strike Suzuki that’s been tailing us?” I said. “That’s him.”
“What about him?” Jamie said, making a good job of sounding casually disinterested now. “We haven’t seen any sign of him since Bushmills.”
I shook my head. “He’s here,” I said. “I saw him in the car park less than half an hour ago.”
“Car park . . .?” Jamie repeated slowly, then gave me a slow smile. “Are you checking up on us?”
“Of course,” I said, allowing mild surprise to coat my voice. “I promised Clare and your dad I’d look out for you, and that’s what I’m doing.”
He shook his head, still wearing a look of bemused amusement at my actions. “I don’t know anyone called Reg Post and I don’t need you looking over my shoulder all the time.” He flipped a couple of euro notes at the barman and picked up the drinks. “You want to mollycoddle anyone, try Daz,” he said over his shoulder. “He seems to be the one who’s losing his bottle with this.”
***
We didn’t learn anything more during the evening, despite the fact that the boys should have drunk more than enough to loosen their tongues. In fact, I began to wonder how they were going to be sober enough by morning to find their way to a racetrack, never mind ride around it.
I was very surprised that everyone made it down to breakfast on Sunday looking more or less fit. Even so, there was a lot of strong coffee being drunk and not many fry-ups being eaten.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked when the serving staff had cleared away the plates and brought another pot of coffee for the table.
“We have to have a plan now?” Paxo asked with a groan, clutching his head with one hand and reaching for the coffee pot with the other.