She nodded, and they both stood and she walked back into her room. Dan took the lamp into the bathroom, wiped it, making sure there was no obvious damage. He checked the floor around the body then, but they’d once more touched lucky—the wound hadn’t bled as much as it might have done, as if the surface of the skin hadn’t fully broken. There was no blood on the carpet.
He finished getting dressed, got everything together, then waited for Inger. She came through a couple of minutes later, fully dressed. She offered a strained smile—she was dealing with it pretty well, though he knew from his own experience that she would never quite shake this off, that it was part of her now.
He tested the guy’s weight, but he was too big to do anything other than drag him.
“Okay, take a walk in the corridor, check that there’s no noise from any of the other rooms, no one about, no cleaners. Once you’re confident it’s clear, tap on this door as you walk past and then keep an eye on the main stairwell.”
She nodded and left.
Dan turned the guy onto his front and waited. Inger tapped on the door as she walked past, so he opened it, held it with his foot and hoisted the guy up by his arms, dragging him out into the corridor and in one swift movement to the end and the fire exit.
He was moving through the door even before Inger had reached the main stairs. He hesitated then, making sure there was no one about, that the lower floors of this stairwell weren’t being used for service. It was silent though, and noticeably colder than the rest of the hotel, which he guessed was a promising sign in itself.
It was an open stairwell, with a gap in the middle over which he could see all the way to a dark concrete floor at the bottom. He turned the body and lifted it up now, so the middle of his back was resting on the metal rail, a position that would have been painful if he’d still been alive.
And then he tipped him and looked over himself to watch the descent. The body didn’t fall straight and the head hit the rail on a lower floor with a glancing but visceral blow, before finally landing in an oddly shaped heap at the bottom. That would do, enough to sow confusion for a while, and perhaps indefinitely.
Dan walked back along the corridor, past his room until he was able to catch Inger’s eye. She came back with him and once inside they both got their bags together in silence.
Only as they were about to leave the room did he stop her and say, “I’m sorry, I should have said earlier, but thank you.” She looked confused, and he said, “You probably saved my life, and you definitely covered my back.”
“I didn’t see it quite like that.”
“Well, you should, because this’ll stay with you, but you can at least be certain that you did the right thing, for the right reason. That’s a luxury most of us don’t have.”
She smiled a little, grateful, for his intentions if nothing else. He wanted to kiss her, but thought she’d consider it inappropriate in some way, so he held back. Maybe it was for the best anyway. She had just killed a man and Dan wanted to kiss her, and in those two facts, ironically, lay the difference that would probably always remain between them.
Chapter Twenty-four
They both slept on and off during the journey to Paris, making up for how little sleep they’d had the night before. Inger was in low spirits too, understandably given what she’d been through. She looked as if she wanted to talk about what had happened that morning but, rightly or wrongly, Dan got the feeling she didn’t want to talk about it with him. With some small amount of guilt, he was grateful for that.
As they traveled from Gare Montparnasse in the cab he said, “We’ll book into the Hotel Vergoncey if they’ve got rooms. It’s a nice place—I’ve used it before.”
She agreed blankly, but a moment later she said, “Why did you need a hotel in Paris before now—you have an apartment, don’t you?”
“I’ve only owned the apartment for eighteen months. Actually, I lived in the Vergoncey for about six weeks when I was searching for the right place.”
She made no obvious response to that, but turned to him as if preoccupied and said, “We’ll need two rooms.”
“Of course,” he said and, ridiculously, felt stung all the same.
“I really enjoyed last night. I like . . . I like you, Dan. But it’s too quick to . . . and it’s not because of what happened this morning.”
He shook his head, and put a reassuring hand on her thigh, immediately feeling queasy with the memory of Sebastien Merel comforting his wife in the same way.
“I understand, and you’re right. Don’t try to explain.” He waited a beat and added, “Connecting rooms?”
“If they have them. After all, you need my protection.”
He smiled, because she was joking about it, which was a first step.
They checked in—there were no connecting rooms available, so they were placed directly across the corridor from each other—and then Dan made a call to the cell phone of Sabine’s old college friend Sylvie. She was working at home and gave them the address of her apartment in the 17th arrondissement.
They hadn’t really talked about the plan from here on in, but as they rode in the cab to Sylvie’s place, Inger said, “Who else do we see today?”
“After Sylvie, we visit Yousef.”