Parfit walked on, through the study and into the bedroom. The bed was narrow, the room small and airless. There were no ornaments, nothing to brighten it or make it more than just a place for resting.
Resting and waiting. Hepton could imagine Villiers lying here at night, nothing distracting him from his thoughts, and his thoughts filled with death, glory, deceit.
There was a piece of card on the bed’s one pillow. Hepton lifted it and turned it over: SORRY YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT TO THE BURIAL. The message was printed. Parfit read it, then took the card from Hepton and slipped it into his pocket.
Hepton started opening drawers, flicking through books in the study. He didn’t doubt that some team specialised in such things had been through the apartment before him. But perhaps he knew what he was looking for better than they did. There were few clues, however. He switched on Villiers’ word processor, only to find that what disks there were had been wiped clean, or had been empty to begin with.
Coffin... burial. The words rang in his head, growing loud, dissonant. He was wasting his time here. Why had they come?
They were leaving the apartment when it dawned on him. He remembered the book well. It had been one of the first he had ever read... well, the first without pictures in it. A bear was terrorising an isolated village. The backwoodsman hunted it. He tracked it to its lair, but found the lair empty. The man was fascinated by the cave, examined every inch of it. Then found the bear and killed it. Yes, Hepton remembered. He remembered, too, the way Harry had come to his flat in Louth and waited for him there.
The hunter gains strength and insight from the lair of his victim. Parfit was a hunter. And he had brought Hepton here because he wanted him to be a hunter too.
Satisfied, both men headed to Park Lane.
30
If Dreyfuss took the news of Jilly’s abduction better than they had expected, it could probably be put down to a mixture of painkilling drugs and jet lag. His right hand was heavily bandaged up to and past the wrist, and he lay on the hotel bed with his good arm falling across his face, shielding his eyes from the light.
He mumbled something.
‘What’s that, Mike?’ Parfit asked. Dreyfuss took his arm away from his eyes and angled his head up so as to look right into Parfit’s face.
‘I said,’ he spat, ‘we’ve got to kill them. It’s the only way. They’re killing us; we’ve got to kill them.’ Then he flung his arm across his eyes again and let his head fall back onto the bed.
Parfit stared at Hepton worriedly. Dreyfuss was exhausted, doped and shocked. It was a lethal cocktail. Hepton understood and gave a reassuring nod.
But in his heart, he agreed with Dreyfuss. The scent of Villiers was still in his nose.
Dreyfuss turned onto his side, letting his damaged hand fall onto the bedcovers, where it lay. He was drifting back to sleep again, looking much older than Hepton remembered him: older, sad and angry at the same time. Well, if half of what Parfit had related on the drive over here was true, Dreyfuss had been to hell and back. Hepton had the feeling that he too might have to visit hell before this was all over. A little part of him was looking forward to it.
‘Get some sleep, Mike,’ Parfit said. ‘We’ll see you later.’
Hepton was to share with Parfit.
‘My room’s got twin beds anyway,’ Parfit explained, ‘and it saves paying for another single. God knows, my expenses on this are big enough already. The accounting department is going to want my head on a block.’
‘How do you explain away a four-star hotel?’ Hepton asked.
Parfit shrugged. ‘Well, there don’t seem to be any safe houses any more, and the first place they’d think of looking after that is seedy anonymous hotels. This place isn’t exactly seedy.’
‘But anonymous?’
‘Well, let’s just say it’s discreet.’
‘One thing worries me,’ Hepton said, watching Parfit opening the door to their room. ‘How is it they keep being able to find us?’
‘Search me,’ said Parfit, pushing the door wide. The room was large, and Hepton didn’t mind sharing. It was seven o’clock, and outside, the morning’s traffic jams were building up nicely. Work was beginning for the day, and Parfit suggested they rest till noon.
‘Suits me,’ said Hepton. ‘But listen, did I tell you about the clever little transmitter Harry planted on me?’
‘No,’ said Parfit, sounding uninterested.
‘Maybe they’re using something similar to keep tabs on us.’ Hepton was becoming excited.
‘Maybe,’ Parfit said, his voice dull with drowsiness.
Hepton saw that he was making no impression on the man, absolutely none. He went to the door and peered out into the empty hallway.
‘No guards?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Parfit, slipping off his shoes. ‘No guards. Now that they’ve got Miss Watson, I shouldn’t think you’re in much danger. They’ll try using her as a lever first. Sleep tight.’ In trousers, bare feet and shirt open at the neck, he fell onto the furthest bed and turned his face away.
Hepton sat on the edge of his own bed. He lay back, resting his hands behind his head. His mind still surged with energy. The heavy curtains were only half closed, giving enough light to see by. He examined the ceiling, its ornate mouldings. He tried to empty his mind of thoughts, but they swam around like fish in a tank, this way and that, passing each other, almost touching, then darting away. He closed his eyes, but that just made his whole head swim. What was he doing? They had Jilly: how was he supposed to sleep?
He thought of Cam Devereux, only two streets away. Those scared, haunted eyes, the hollow voice. The man had been hiding something. But what? Hepton replayed the scene: the hotel bar, the pianist playing to a table of women, Devereux’s hard American inflections as he told his story. Of how the stranger had come to the Argos control room, set himself up at a console and...
Why do that? Why put him at a console in the main control room, with the full knowledge of the controllers? Drawing attention to the very man who was to be Argos’s executioner. It didn’t make sense. Surely if he’d needed to be on base at all, they would have placed him somewhere away from curious eyes, in a room of his own, with his own terminal.
Yes!
Hepton swivelled his legs off the bed and stood up. Parfit was breathing heavily, already deep in slumber. Hepton went to the door and eased it open, slipping out into the corridor. He closed the door again, making sure not to dislodge the Do Not Disturb sign swinging from the brass knob. Then he walked silently, purposefully along the corridor and down the stairs into the main lobby. The Bellevue was no smaller than the Achilles, but made a show of being inherently more intimate. The reception clerk recognised him and made an obsequious bow from behind his desk. Hepton gave a casual wave and went to the revolving door, entering it and pushing softly. The door tumbled round until it discharged him onto the pavement and into the smells of the city: exhaust fumes and damp trees.
The same doorman as before was standing in front of the Achilles, and opened the door for Hepton as he climbed the steps. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said.
‘Good morning,’ Hepton returned, entering the hotel.
He walked purposefully to the stairs before remembering that Devereux was on the second floor. So he crossed to the lifts instead. One was already waiting, and he stepped in. What was Devereux’s room number again? He had forgotten, but remembered the room itself, along towards the end of the corridor, past the ice dispenser and the shoeshine machine. The lift cranked its way upwards, jolted to a stop and opened. Hepton stepped into the dimly lit corridor and turned right. Past the ice machine... the drinks dispenser... the polisher...