Daz tried it several more times, then Paxo snatched it out of his hands and tried too, also with no success.
Daz swore at some length. “I’ll have to go back down to reception and get another,” he said, trembling with nerves now. “What was wrong with a good old-fucking-fashioned key, for Christ’s sake?”
“OK,” Sean said. “Charlie – go with him.”
“What’s the matter?” William said sharply. “Don’t you trust us?”
“No,” Sean said, not bothering either to glance at him or pull his punches. “The rest of us will wait up here. Which are your rooms?” he asked the others. William nodded towards the door opposite. When he dug out his own card, it operated the lock without a glitch.
Daz and I headed back to the foyer. Going down the stairs was easier than coming up but Daz was still gasping for breath by the time we reached the ground floor. As we reached the door at the bottom I grabbed his arm.
“Hang on,” I said. “Take a moment, calm down and think about what you’re going to say. If you go up to them in a panic they’re going to be suspicious. And, right now, we can’t afford too many awkward questions, hmm?”
He looked set to argue but then he nodded, fighting to regain some self-possession. He didn’t make a bad job of it considering his whole world must have seemed like it was coming down around him.
“You almost sound,” he said with a shaky smile, “like you’ve done this before.”
“Yeah well, I suppose that’s because I have.”
We managed to approach the front desk with something like a saunter in our stride. I feigned an interest in the spa treatments on special offer while Daz waited for the bloke on the desk to finish on the phone. They must have had an infinite number of staff members at that hotel, because I don’t think I’d ever seen the same one twice. Certainly, the man who put down the receiver and smiled politely at us now was a stranger.
“I wonder if you can help me, mate. I seem to be having a bit of trouble getting back into my room,” Daz said, managing to produce a smile of his own as he held up the offending key card.
“Oh, and I’m very sorry about that, sir,” the man said, sounding for all the world as though he meant it. “What room would you be in?”
He tapped away at his computer terminal as he spoke, but when Daz gave his name and room number, the man’s smile became a puzzled frown. There was a betraying stiffening of his neck and he flicked his eyes covertly back up to Daz.
“Erm, would you mind if I was to be asking you for some identification, sir?” he said, adding hurriedly. “Just for security purposes, you understand.”
“Erm, no. Not at all,” Daz said, digging his wallet out of an inside pocket and folding it open to show his driver’s licence. His voice was commendably calm, but when he leaned on the desk the fingertips of his left hand tapped a jittery rhythm against the polished granite surface. I moved in close and put my hand over his, giving him my best simpering smile even as I crushed his fingers into immobility under mine.
“Is there a problem?” I said innocently.
“No, no! Erm . . . but I think I’d better be calling security,” the man mumbled, looking mortified as he reached for the phone again.
I saw the alarm flare in Daz’s eyes and nipped the knuckles of his middle two fingers together hard enough to keep him quiet.
“Don’t you think it might be a good idea to tell us what the trouble is first,” I said, taking a flyer and putting the ominous note of the disgruntled guest into my voice, “and we’ll be the judge of whether it can be sorted out here and now, without all the hassle of going any higher up the chain?”
The man hesitated a moment, then put the phone down again. “Well, I had another guy come to me, less than an hour ago, and didn’t he say just the same thing – gave me the same name and the same room number and told me that his key card wouldn’t work. It happens sometimes – people put them next to something in a pocket and it wipes them. So I programmed him another card up, quick as you like, without asking him to prove who he was and I think I’d better get security to come up to your room with you now, just so you can check there’s nothing missing or—”
“No!” Daz yelped. I gripped his fingers again and he took the hint to modify his voice before he went on, sounding less panicked, “I know who that was and there won’t be anything wrong. Honestly! There’s no need for security.”
The man looked unconvinced. I leaned over the counter and lowered my voice confidentially. “It was almost undoubtedly one of our lot – he fancies himself as a bit of a practical joker,” I said, rolling my eyes to invite him in on the secret. I jerked my head towards Daz. “It’s Daz’s birthday, you see. Now if I know good old Jamie, he’ll have been in there and decked the place out with balloons, ready for us getting back.”
The relief on the man’s face was almost comical. “Oh well, that’s all right then,” he said, his hand fluttering at his chest. “And here was I, imagining the worst . . .”
***
The corridor was deserted when we got back up to the fifth floor but, as soon as Daz ran the new key card through the lock, the door across the hallway opened and the others piled out.
The room was the same layout as the one Sean and I were sharing on the next floor up. The in-room safe where Daz had stowed the rest of the money for the diamonds was tucked away in the bottom of the little wardrobe area just as you went in, opposite the bathroom. It didn’t need a close inspection to spot that the door was standing open and the safe was empty.
Daz stuck his hand in anyway, just in case, like that amount of cash in used fifties could somehow still be lurking out of sight at the back. When he’d finished his fruitless search he sat back on his heels with a groan.
Paxo and William stood around watching him with slightly dumbstruck expressions on their faces. Sean, meanwhile, did a circuit of the room, giving it a fast check over, moving with intent economy. On the far side of the bed he bent down and lifted a helmet off the floor.
Right away, I recognised it as Jamie’s.
Sean nodded shortly to me. I was still standing by the entrance, and as I was nearest, I ducked my head into the bathroom.
And froze.
“Sean,” I said, my voice strangely flat. “I think you need to see this.”
The others knew from my tone that something was very wrong but they seemed unable to react more than to stare blindly at me. Sean pushed them aside and stepped past me, opening the bathroom door wide.
Tess was lying in the bath, fully clothed, with one leg folded back underneath her and both arms draped over the sides. She looked small and fragile and rather childlike. Her head was turned at an unlikely angle and her eyes were open. It didn’t take a genius to work out that her neck had been broken.
“Ah . . . shit,” Sean murmured under his breath.
“This wasn’t Jamie,” I said quickly, like I was abruptly short of breath. “It can’t have been. He would not have done something like this. Not to Tess.”
Sean moved in and bent closer, eyes inspecting the body with cold precision. The others seemed to come out of their trance at that point. Daz took one step over the threshold and stopped with something approaching a whimper.