Inevitably, I asked myself, What would Oz have done? It didn’t take me long to come up with the answer. He’d have kept well out of it. He’d either have commissioned Mark, or he’d have sent Conrad Kent, his aide-cum-bodyguard, to resolve the situation. I was pretty sure that if I asked Mark to do the same for me, he’d take the job on. But I was on the ground, I had my meeting with Bromberg in my diary, and I saw no harm in going through with it, especially as it was to be in such a public place.
Still, as I slipped under a single sheet that was all the bedcover I needed, I hadn’t decided whether I was going to be Ms Gauche, or Ms Blunt. The final choice could probably wait until I saw the woman and could size her up.
I was still wide awake as I returned to Death’s Door, but I hadn’t read two short chapters before my eyes grew heavy and I found myself reading the same paragraph twice. I laid the novel on the bedside table, switched off the light and let myself sink.
Although I find it easy to nod off, that doesn’t mean I’d sleep through an earthquake or, in this case, a rush of feet so loud that, in the seconds after I awoke, I thought it was happening right there in my room. I sat upright, eyes wide open, disoriented until I remembered where I was. Heavy boots were slamming on the walkway outside my window, or rather outside the french windows that opened on to a minuscule patio, and which I had left slightly ajar for extra ventilation. As I listened it dawned on me that the noisemakers were heading along Calle Alvarez Quintero in the direction of. .
It was then that I made a big mistake. As I jumped out of bed, in the dark, heading for the curtained window, I forgot all about the special design feature that was part of my room, the painted metal pole running from floor to ceiling. (Why it was there, I still have no clue.) I remembered its existence as soon as my right big toe slammed into it, followed almost instantaneously by my shoulder.
When Tom’s around I try not to swear, but even if he’d been in the room’s other bed, I reckon I’d have let go with the same mouthful I did then. I bounced off the wall, then hirpled across to the window. As I did so, I heard a loud, splintering bang from outside. I parted the drapes, opened the twin doors, and was about to lean forward into the street, when I remembered I was buck naked.
By the time I had found the courtesy bathrobe and put it on, the post-midnight runners had gone (I checked my watch; it was just after three a. m.), but I could still hear noise. There was just enough light in the narrow street for me to guess that some of it might be coming from the newly opened door of number forty-seven. ‘Bloody hell,’ I murmured, ‘what did Mark say about getting someone to kick it in?’
I stood there watching for at least ten minutes. For a while I wasn’t the only onlooker: there was a guy in an apartment opposite my room, leaning out of a window. He asked me if I knew what had happened, but I didn’t want to be involved in a conversation, so I lied and told him in English I didn’t understand him.
A couple of minutes after he had drawn himself back in and closed up for the rest of the night, three uniformed cops emerged from the house. Two of them stood at the door, as if on guard, while the other walked back towards me, heading for the entrance to Calle Alvarez Quintero.
‘What’s the noise about?’ I asked him as he passed beneath me. He couldn’t have seen me for he almost jumped out of his steel-capped boots, before recovering himself and donning the superior expression that some young police officers adopt before the world teaches them that life isn’t Hollywood or vice versa.
‘Police business,’ he said.
‘Son,’ I told him, feeling a momentary chill as I used the word and realised that I was indeed old enough to be his madre, ‘when you waken me up in the middle of the night, it becomes my business.’
He looked at me and decided to take me seriously. ‘There’s a dead man in there,’ he said. ‘In that building along there.’
‘Was he dead when you smashed the door down, or did that happen afterwards?’
He didn’t get the irony. ‘No, he was dead already,’ he replied, straight faced.
‘So what made you go there?’
He shrugged. ‘All they tell me is we had a call that there was a deal going on there, and that we should get in. But it’s a con.’
‘What do you mean, a deal?’
‘Drugs. That’s what my team does.’
‘You’re telling me that my hotel is next to a drug den?’
‘No; that’s why I say it’s a con. There’s no drugs there that we can see, only whisky bottles and maybe some pills. . and the dead guy.’
‘So why’s he dead? Was he old? Heart-attack?’ I was doing my best to sound casual.
‘Heart-attack maybe, but he’s not that old. Maybe my father’s age.’ He smiled up at me, without any idea of the relief I felt. I realised that the bathrobe had loosened, and jerked it tight. ‘You should go back to bed, lady,’ he advised. ‘I have to go, to show the medics where to find us.’
I watched him as he walked away. As he took up position at the junction, fifty yards away, I glanced back towards the raided house. The two guards were still at the door; both were smoking, and I could hear the faint sound of their conversation, but not its detail. They did not give the impression of men on high alert.
I stepped back inside my room but left the wood-framed doors ajar. As I did so I realised that my right big toe was hurting like hell from its vicious assault on the base of the defenceless pillar. I went into the bathroom, filled the bidet with cold water and bathed my foot for a while, then limped back through and lay on my bed, waiting for the pain to subside. It didn’t. It occurred to me that I might have broken the damn digit. If that was the case there was nothing to be done, other than taping it to my second toe as a splint and taking painkillers as necessary. My nursing training has led me always to travel with a basic first-aid kit, so I patched myself up there and then.
I had just finished when I heard two vehicles pull up outside, one after the other. I rolled off the bed, limped carefully past the pole, and peered down into the street. Below, I saw a woman in plain clothes with a great frizzy ponytail that looked in the streetlight as if it might have been red, and two paramedics, one male, one female, pushing a trolley, with an empty stretcher on top. Ponytail carried a bag; it made me think, Medic. The young cop was ambling along behind them. He glanced up at my window, but didn’t appear to see me.
As they reached the door I saw that the two officers had become three. The new arrival was older than they were and wore what looked like significant braid on his shoulders. The door guards had stubbed out their cigarettes and were standing to something that might have been attention, so I assumed that he was the brass.
He greeted Ponytail with a handshake and a smile. I heard her call him something that might have been Pablo, but as she had her back to me I couldn’t be sure. He led her inside. As soon as they had gone, the male paramedic produced a pack of cigarettes and offered them to the three remaining cops. I watched, unobserved, as all four guys smoked; they chatted quietly among themselves. Suddenly the youngest, my informant, glanced round in my direction, grinning. The phrase ‘her right tittie falling out’ floated up to me. I must have been leaning further over than I’d thought. Happily, he added, ‘It looked like a pretty nice tittie, too.’ The night was getting better.
But not for long. After less time than it took to finish the fags, the doctor’s head reappeared in the doorway, together with a hand, beckoning. Her team took the stretcher from the trolley and followed her inside.