One silent step across the carpet took him close to the connecting door. He cocked his head, projecting his senses through the crack around the frame into the next room. He thought he detected someone breathing.
He reached out to touch the door. This had to be hard and fast. There was no time for hesitation. In, do it and out again.
Harry needed a cold drink. Or movement. Either would do. He was tired of waiting in this dark, airless cell, wondering what was going on outside. Waiting had always been a problem for him, but he wasn’t usually the target. Far better to be up and moving.
He picked up the Ruger and went to the door. The peephole revealed an empty corridor. Other than the person next door, and some distant voices that could have been a television, there had been few signs of movement for over thirty minutes.
With the lightest of touches he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. The carpet was springy, silent. The overhead lights were dimmed, and at the far end, a green fire escape sign glowed in the dark. He waited for the ice machine to begin its throaty rattle, then pulled the door closed behind him with a soft click.
First he checked the fire door leading to the car park. It was closed and could only be opened from the inside by depressing the bar. Satisfied his back wasn’t exposed, he turned towards reception.
He had barely taken two steps when there was movement at the end of the corridor leading from reception. A tall figure was moving towards him. Harry waited, trying to get a sense of what the man was like. A suit. . he was wearing a suit. A flash of white at the chest showed a shirt but no tie. But there was a silvery glimmer of reflected light down by his side.
Harry’s throat went dry. He forced himself to continue walking. It might not be the killer. It could be anyone. . a late-night reveller, perhaps. Harry held the Ruger down behind his leg, ready to bring it up, and wondered if the man had seen it. He’d soon find out; any innocent person would scream the place down.
Harry was halfway along the corridor when the man veered abruptly to one side, and for a second he thought it was to let him pass. Then he moved back, this time with a small shake of his head like a dog emerging from water. His arm moved, again showing a glimmer of light in his hand.
Harry dropped into a crouch, bringing up the gun and focussing on the man’s mid-section. His training switched in and coordinated his movements. His finger began to take up the slack on the trigger as he watched the man’s hand, waiting for the last possible moment before opening fire. In this narrow corridor, the sound of the shot would be like a field-gun.
He stopped, requiring a Herculean effort not to squeeze the trigger, and stood up. Moved to one side as the man lurched by, his room passkey in one hand and a shiny aluminium ice bucket in the other. A wave of alcohol followed him like a flag. He was in his fifties, his skin mottled and flushed, a businessman fixing himself a nightcap.
Harry breathed out, his head pounding with tension. He continued along the corridor to the ice machine, turning once to glance behind him. The drunk had stopped by a door and was attempting to slide his passkey into the lock.
Harry plunged his hand into the chute and wiped two or three ice blocks across his face, grateful for the icy coldness on his skin. From back up the corridor he heard a thump, then silence. The drunk had only just made it home in time.
He glanced round the corner into the reception area. It was empty, the front doors closed. As he paced back along the corridor towards his room, something began tugging at his brain, insistent and disturbing. Something was odd, out of place. The reception area? The front entrance? The corridor?
The drunk. He’d gone into the room next to Harry’s.
Harry looked up and saw that the overhead corridor light nearest to his door was dead, leaving that part of the corridor in a pool of shadow.
It had been working earlier.
He felt horribly exposed but continued the last few paces until he reached the room next to his. As he drew level with the door, a groan sounded close by. With the Ruger held high in front of him, he reached out with his free hand to touch the door.
Then the door of his own room opened with a crash and a large, bulky figure stumbled out on unsteady legs.
‘What the-!’
Harry tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Then the picture disentangled itself. It was the drunk, head slumped forward over a slash of red on his white shirt front. The man seemed suddenly to have developed two heads. . and two more legs.
Two heads. . two people.
The killer had been in the next room.
‘Stand still.’ Harry centred his gun on the head behind the drunk. But as he did so, the two figures lurched away towards the fire door. Now he could see from the light further along the corridor that the man behind was supporting the drunk with one arm wrapped around his torso, dragging him along as a shield. In his hand he was holding a piece of blue material. His other forearm was curled tight across the drunk’s throat, holding a large hunting knife digging into his chest.
‘I said, stand still!’ he repeated, but the man ignored him, intent only on reaching the outer door.
Then the drunk was standing by himself, half-propped against the wall, and the door had clanked open behind him, letting in a gust of cool night air. In the background the other figure seemed to flit away with barely a sound, and disappeared into the darkness.
TWENTY-FOUR
As the drunk’s body finally lost its grip on the wall and toppled forward, Harry heard a shout of surprise from outside. He caught the falling man and lowered him gently to the floor, then ducked low to the ground and slid out of the door into the night.
Immediately to his right was a flower bed with shrubs at shoulder height cutting off his view of the car park. If the killer was anywhere, he could be in the bushes, waiting for Harry to show himself. But what had the shout been? Perhaps he’d run into Pendry.
He slid sideways into a patch of deep shadow created by the security lights spaced around the hotel, and breathed softly, tuning in to the night sounds. The traffic hum from the expressway intruded, and he knew if the killer was anywhere close and saw Harry first, he would get minimal warning before the man was upon him. Better to be out in the open.
The grass was soft and springy, already cool to the touch. He squatted down and edged out to where he could see a line of parked cars. If the killer was among them, the shadows were too dense to reveal him. He stood up and walked along the line, confident that if the man did show himself, he could react in time.
Two minutes later he found a man in a waiter’s uniform lying by the open door of a Bronco. There were no keys in the ignition.
He left the man where he was and continued to search the area, heart hammering in his chest. Then a whistle drew his attention and he saw Pendry appear from between two panel vans that bore the logo of a catering company. The Ranger was signalling towards the other side of the hotel complex. In his fist was the sheen of a handgun.
‘He came out the door and ran into the guy with the Bronco,’ said Pendry in a whisper, ‘but I guess he couldn’t find the keys. Then he went to the front of the building. He’ll be looking for a free ride out of here.’
‘Not this one,’ said Harry. ‘He’ll have a vehicle. He was trying to distract us by leaving a body lying around. Let’s split up. You go to the back — I’ll take the front.’
Before they could move, however, the roar of an engine sounded from the other side of the hotel, and headlights flared across the bushes near the entrance. The next moment red tail lights disappeared along the approach road with a squeal of tyres. Damn. . the man was seconds from the expressway.