I waited a second, replaced the receiver and went to the window. It was the same Northern Quarter room I’d lived in for a year but it still felt borrowed, unfamiliar. My last job had required my moving here, severing ties with old friends that I’d yet to rebind. In the months since then I’d remained on pause, sleeping through the days and working through the nights. I’d got in from my shift after 6 a.m. It was after 9 now. The morning traffic that roared daily by my window had been and gone, and the street below was quiet. I could hear the buzz of talk radio coming from a car, the tick of a girl’s heels down on the pavement.
I went to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. The night shift had done its work. Drained my skin of all colour, except for the immovable black shadows beneath my eyes. Sometimes my face seemed to change, drastically, in the night, and the next day I’d barely recognize it. I knew in reality it was just me, my idea of myself, that was so moveable, but now these shifts in perception, these changes, came so fast that they were frightening. Sometimes I thought I could even see my face warping, altering in the glass. I couldn’t tell if it was the drugs, finally leaving my system after all these years, or some kind of psychological trauma. It felt like finding out something terrible and undeniable about myself every day, and had become one more reason to hide out on the night shift. I could disappear into it and never be the same person twice.
Identity, I thought.
The smiling man.
I usually experienced the presence of a dead body as an absence, but in this case it felt like a black hole opening up in front of me. Stromer said there had been no ID on his person, no labels in his clothes. As though the man had intended to disappear, to strip himself of all meaning. But the room we’d found him in sent mixed signals. I’d given a lot of thought to the anonymous death. Aokigahara, the suicide forest at the base of Mount Fuji, where the trees are so dense that the world can’t get in. Varanasi, India, where the blasting heat of the funeral pyre incinerates hundreds of bodies a day, or the Ganges, where you can fill your veins with cheap smack and walk up to your waist through the grotesque waters, keep on going, and vanish into the slipstream. Dying in the Palace Hotel was different. A flaw in what I saw as an otherwise perfect design. Where everything else about the man felt anonymous, there was something personal about the choice of room, the choice of view. Whether he’d made that choice himself or not was a different matter.
The phone rang again and I went back into the living room to answer it.
‘Rise and shine, gorgeous.’
‘Morning, Sutts.’ I could almost smell his breath through the phone. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Turn that Aidan Waits frown upside down and get over to St Mary’s.’
‘Is the guard awake?’
‘He’d better not be. I want those sulky blue eyes to be the first thing he sees. Hold his hand and squeeze out a tear or two, he’ll spill his guts.’
‘Shouldn’t we be handing this over to the day shift?’ I wanted to know how involved we’d be before getting invested.
‘Officially it’s on DS Lattimer’s desk.’
‘So it’s a paperweight.’
‘Which is why I said you’d help him with the legwork.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘It’s going in my clearance stats, Aid. Not his.’
Between Sutty and Lattimer that meant doing all the legwork. Somehow I didn’t mind. ‘What do you think our guard knows?’ I said.
‘Maybe he flat-lined for a few seconds and saw the other side? You tell me. I’m mainly interested in what happened before someone bounced a fire extinguisher off his head. Get a sense of what kinda guy he is, dirty or clean.’
‘I’ll head over there now.’
‘And ask him about this other guard, the day guy. Name’s Marcus Collier.’
‘Have we got anything on him yet?’
‘An address but you know what it’s like. Uniform couldn’t raise a hard-on in a high school. They’re looking now.’
‘Do you think he’s involved?’
‘Well, one point of interest. The key card found on the floor of room 413 belonged to him.’ Marcus Collier. The day-shift security guard. I wondered if it could be that simple. He could have let someone into the hotel before Ali’s shift started. He could have had his key card stolen. He could even be our dead man. ‘Anyway,’ said Sutty, derailing my train of thought. ‘Everyone’s involved until I say otherwise. That includes your boyfriend in a coma. If the nice-guy act doesn’t wake him up, he might need a dose of your real personality, but please, only as a last resort.’
‘Is this a murder investigation?’
‘Only if it’s over my dead body. Think of this as a pleasant diversion from the investigation of dustbin fires. A thorough analysis of the facts designed to get the file off our desk and into my clearance stats.’
Sutty’s investigative approach was usually the path of least resistance.
‘So you’re going to say it’s suicide? The attack on Ali implies—’
‘Implies shit,’ said Sutty. ‘For all we know, Smiley Face knocked him out then topped himself. You haven’t worked a case like this before, Aidan. We’re looking for a result, not a resolution. Our job’s to find out what top brass want to hear and belt it out from the rooftops.’
‘And have we got anything on him?’ I tried to ask naturally but I couldn’t keep the interest out of my voice. I could hear Sutty breathing down the phone. ‘Sutts?’
‘We’ll have the post-mortem results tomorrow. All I’ve heard from that direction is Stromer wants you off it.’
‘Why?’
‘Why does a fly eat shit? She’s a dyke, hates men.’ He snorted. ‘She must have you confused with one.’ A call with Sutty could feel like pouring poison into your head, and my ears were already ringing. I gripped the phone tightly.
‘I don’t think that’s it, Sutts …’
‘Listen, she’s been muff-diving so long she’s finally got the bends. Don’t worry about it.’
I changed the subject. ‘Where will you be?’
‘It’s Sunday. Shift doesn’t start for another ten hours, I’ll be in bed. Let me know how you get on.’
I started to hang up and then thought of something. ‘Did you call me earlier? About five minutes ago?’ He whistled in response. ‘What?’
‘Two callers in one day, an Aidan Waits record. Maybe it was Stromer,’ he laughed. ‘Maybe you’ve brought her back from the other side?’ Sutty hung up and I took a shower, mainly to wash him off me. I drank a coffee, dressed and left for the hospital. As I closed the door I wondered idly who else had been calling.
2
The sunlight was brilliant, beating down from a powder-blue sky. The people were all gleaming smiles and glowing skin, and their shadows danced out in all directions at once. After so long spent out of the day, it felt like a brand-new sensation to walk, unnoticed, through a beautiful one. I passed through streets of dirty redbrick buildings, through the morning bustle, feeling somehow new, somehow awake.
My shirt was damp against my body when I reached St Mary’s. I approached the reception and was directed up to the first floor. I arrived on to the ward to see the uniformed officer Sutty had sent to keep watch. He was pacing back and forth, yawning into the crook of his arm. He started when he saw me, unconsciously tucking his shirt in as I closed the distance between us.
‘Morning,’ I said.
He looked at me strangely. ‘Detective Constable.’ As he spoke there was a scream from behind a closed door. ‘Just some bloke with night terrors,’ he said wearily.
‘It’s the morning.’
‘Go and tell him that, he’s been at it for hours.’
‘How’s our patient?’
‘Slept through the lot. Wish they’d given me whatever they gave him.’
‘A blow to the head? Don’t give Sutty any ideas.’
‘That was my fault …’
I changed the subject. ‘Our man hasn’t said anything?’
‘Hasn’t opened his eyes, but they don’t think there’s any permanent damage.’
‘When are you being relieved?’
‘Two hours from now.’ He said it like a wish.
‘Well, I need to be here when he wakes up, anyway. You may as well get off home. I can hang around until your replacement arrives.’
He paused. Glanced down the corridor over my shoulder, then looked at me again.