‘Just some notes sent to his wife. I couldn’t have predicted the rest.’
‘You must have, because the real Freddie Coyle ended up dead, didn’t he? The divorce already in progress, a lot of cash at stake, no one in his life to miss him once he split from Natasha.’
‘Ding, ding, ding. Now can we stop this? I’ve told you I don’t want to see her.’
He was almost crying now.
‘You were the one who showed me the first picture of yourself. A red-faced, overweight man surrounded by young women. You had to lose a lot of weight, maybe even get some work done, but that only put more distance between you and your old life.’
‘What the fuck’s going on here?’
Sutty was standing one flight down, staring up at us.
‘You were right,’ I said. ‘The smiling man did die here as a way of pointing the finger at Anthony Blick.’
‘Have you lost the fucking plot, Aid? That’s Freddie Coyle. Blick bled to death in the Midland Hotel.’
‘Right,’ I said, looking at the man beside me. ‘Then he was cut up in the bathtub and flushed down the toilet. Funny we never found any human remains, though …’
‘Probably went up in the dustbin fires,’ said Sutty.
‘But they didn’t. The smiling man was a vanisher. He helped people assume new identities. He was helping Anthony Blick become Freddie Coyle.’
Sutty looked between us, frowned. ‘The blood …’
‘I don’t know what their original idea was, but half the battle was making it look as though Anthony Blick had died without providing a body. I think he and the smiling man took blood at regular intervals. More than a man could live without if was all spilt in one go, so anyone who found it would naturally assume the person it came from, Anthony Blick, was dead.’ I looked at the man standing beside me. ‘Something must have gone wrong, though …’
Blick sat down on the stairs. ‘It was really quite mundane. He found out the money I gave him was fake. He said unless I paid up he’d expose me. I had almost everything in place by then anyway, so I spiked a bottle of whisky and gave it to him. After a few drinks he must have realized. He sabotaged everything, poured my blood out in his hotel room and came here to die. Left himself in 413 so you’d find your way back to the Midland. To me.’
‘Aneesa,’ I said. ‘I take it you were together?’
He nodded, looking at the floor. ‘That wasn’t really her down there …’
‘I’m afraid it was.’
‘I don’t want to see her.’
‘You’re under arrest for the murders of Freddie Coyle, the unidentified man from room 413 and Christopher Jordan, who went by the name Cherry.’ My voice shook as I spoke. ‘Also for the attempted murder of Natasha Reeve.’
Sutty stared at me for a moment then nodded.
He turned and walked back down the stairs.
XI
Something to Remember Me By
1
‘So Blick lures Natasha Reeve to the Palace posing as Freddie Coyle,’ said Parrs. I was sitting in his office, explaining the case as I understood it. He was at his desk, his red eyes lit with attention. Stromer was standing in the corner of the room watching me shrewdly.
She didn’t believe a word I said.
‘That’s correct, sir. According to the emails we’ve seen, he hinted at a reconciliation.’
‘So she goes expecting her husband back,’ said Parrs. ‘She finds a man impersonating him who tries to kill her.’
‘I don’t know what his plan was for afterwards. If he even had one. He attacked her but Aneesa Khan interrupted it. Then Blick went up to search room 413 for the evidence I’d implied would bring the smiling man’s killer to justice. It was a mess. He’d torn the place apart. Aneesa went as far as the room with him, probably trying to calm him down. But by the time I saw her I think she’d already made her mind up to leave.’
Parrs glared at me. ‘She probably hadn’t decided on the express route to the ground floor, though. What did you say to her?’
‘I asked her about Cherry.’
‘This trans hooker who saw everything?’
‘Cherry heard the smiling man in room 413. He was ranting to Ali, about his relationship with Blick, about making his new life impossible.’
‘How?’
‘Blick was supposed to be on the other side of the world. The smiling man left his blood all over a hotel room he should never have been inside. Then he left himself, an unidentifiable dead body, in a hotel that Blick was financially involved with. At the very least Blick would be sweating for the rest of his life.’
It was only part of the truth.
‘You’re telling me Smiley Face lives his entire life in secret. Anonymity to the extent that even Interpol can’t pin a name on him. But he suddenly draws attention to himself over an argument with a client …’
It seemed that the real answer for so many of the smiling man’s actions lay with Amy Burroughs. In coming to the city perhaps he’d been hoping to make contact with her, with the son he’d never met, and been robbed of the chance. When he was poisoned he’d thought fast. Going to the Palace led us to Blick. The note sewn into his trousers led us to Amy. He knew she could deny knowing him, that she could protect herself if necessary. But that his presence in the city, and his final reference to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám would tell her that he’d tried.
Parrs leaned forward. ‘… And why did Blick feel the need to kill him?’
‘He says it was an argument over money, but that doesn’t stack up to me …’
‘Why not?’
‘The smiling man was terminally ill, weeks away from death …’
‘You think they had a philosophical disagreement …’ said Stromer, speaking for the first time since I’d entered the room.
‘This began as identity fraud but turned into something more sinister. I think Blick was realizing that Natasha Reeve was a danger, that she could identify him. I think he wanted to solve that problem ahead of time.’
Parrs smiled. ‘You think our dead man objected to her murder?’ He turned to Stromer. ‘Aidan can get very sentimental around death.’ His eyes flicked back to me. ‘This is a career criminal we’re talking about. Don’t go looking for redeeming features. That said …’
‘Sir?’
His red eyes were locked on to mine. ‘The slip of paper, sewn into his trousers. Almost feels like a message to someone …’
‘Maybe so, but we don’t know who to. We probably never will.’
‘Hm,’ said Parrs. ‘And Blick maintains that the real Freddie Coyle died of natural causes?’
I nodded. ‘But he’s not saying what he did with the body. Without that, who knows if that’s true? Either way, he took Coyle’s death as an opportunity to gain control of his assets. While the hotel was a going concern he could only take his monthly allowance from the trust. But if the trust was dissolved he’d get half of the proceeds from the hotel’s sale. Coyle was a shut-in and Blick was his solicitor. Knew his affairs inside out.’
‘Literally,’ said Parrs.
‘He faked a health scare, dropped off the radar, lost almost a hundred pounds and began to become Freddie Coyle. The real Coyle’s estrangement from his wife made it easy.’
‘With the help of our smiling man.’
I nodded. ‘Apparently an expert in identity fraud.’
‘So Blick tells us,’ said Parrs. ‘What I don’t get is how you made the leap, though, Aidan? For this trap of yours at the Palace, you had to know that old Smiley Face was, what? A vanisher? You had to know his killer would be nervous about him sending us a message …’ I saw where he was going but I’d agreed with Amy Burroughs to keep her name out of it. I knew that she wouldn’t go on record with her story about the smiling man saving her life, and I knew that if she were forced or coerced into doing so, that it could put her in danger. Back on the radar of the people she’d spent years running from.