Death's Privilege (7 page)

‘Yes. I did.’ Sarah hadn't seen this side of him before. They hadn't known each other very long, but he seemed to have her pegged.

‘Some things can’t wait. But when they can, put them off and give yourself a breather. You can’t solve the world’s problems in a day. Part of this job, this way of life, is figuring out your priorities. Manage that, and it’ll give you everything you want; don’t, and it’ll take it all away.’

Semples scurried from behind the reception desk carrying a folder under his arm. ‘Did I interrupt something?’ Mr Semples exchanged looks between them and when neither officer replied, he just continued talking. ‘I have everything you asked for: staff lists and contact details, phone calls in and out of the office, passport photocopy from her check-in, names of the night turn staff and I hear you asked for the security guard too, his details are also enclosed.’

‘Thanks for your help, we’ll be back around eight in the morning,’ said Dales.

‘Victor should be on his way back in for his night shift. If you hang around for a short while, you'll be able to see him this evening?

Dales looked at Sarah. ‘Your call?’

‘I’ll ask the night-turn DC to take it.’

By the time she arrived home, they’d all gone to bed. Dales’ words flew around her head as she tried to sleep. She’d never heard him speak like that before. Everything was usually followed by a quip or some sarcastic remark. He’d been serious back in the foyer and she wondered about the life he’d had, the things he’d given up for his career, for his sanity. He’d lived through interesting times and, with the job changing so much, it was clear he’d struggled to change along with it. She respected Dales; he’d saved her job back in Sunbury.

Father Michael’s murder would stay with her forever. In part for its sheer brutality—officers had retired without seeing such savage injuries—and in part, mostly if she were honest, for the sense of being overwhelmed and alone. She’d done her best in less than ideal circumstances and made mistakes along the way. Mistakes she thought would cost her job, and she was convinced would have, had Dales not stood up for her.

He’d traded his role at the Major Crime Team to tutor her, and having only four years left until retirement, the chances of him getting back into MCT were pretty slim. Once an officer left a job like that, they went right to the back of the queue, and the queue was likely to be far longer than he had left in service. She didn’t want to let him down; he’d put his faith in her for a reason, a reason she may never know or understand.

He’d been right about the effects of making the wrong choice. She saw it when she looked at him; the situations he’d faced, the positions he’d been in and the people he’d been surrounded with had taken a toll that showed on his face. Couple that with a lifelong smoking habit, terrible diet, long hours and a high-stress role, and Dales wasn’t a well man. His speech had come from the heart. She’d wanted to ask him about it, to find out what lay behind it all, but they had different ways of surviving. Her preference for confronting emotional problems clashed with his tendency to push them down, down to the core, down so far they never resurfaced. She’d had a glimpse of that core tonight. Listening to the old-timers talk, she wondered if anyone who stuck at this game ever ended up happy. They’d talk of friends deep in depression, those they’d lost to alcohol abuse, drug addiction, suicide. The ones that survived had more broken marriages than they could count on one hand, neglected families refusing to speak to them and child support bills only slightly longer than their prescription lists. She knew they didn’t all end up like that; she knew she wouldn’t, at least.

Eight

The next morning, Semples greeted them at the entrance to the Oxlaine and took them to conference room six on the fourth floor. He gave the grand room a suitably grand introduction.

‘This is the Stratus. It’s our largest and most regularly requested meeting room, including a sixty-inch, crystal-clear conference screen, with inputs for PC, Mac and all the major brands of tablets, high-speed Wi-Fi, twenty-two microphones under the table and, of course, free tea and coffee thrown in and served by a personal server.’

As pleasant as it was to see how the other half live, the only things Sarah needed were a pen, a notebook, some peace and some quiet. ‘There won’t be any need for that, Mr Semples.’ Sarah sat down at the top corner of the table and Dales took the seat next to her. ‘Can we have Margaret in first, please?’

‘Yes, of course, she’s just outside.’ Semples left the room and a tall blonde woman of Slavic appearance entered the room as if it was a catwalk.

‘Margaret Levskchin? I’m DC Sarah Gladstone and this is DS Steve Dales. Just call me Sarah. As I’m sure you’ve been told, we’re investigating the death yesterday of Sheila Hargreaves, a guest at this hotel. At this time, we don’t believe anyone else was involved in her death. We viewed the CCTV and it shows you checked Sheila Hargreaves in at around 16:35. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘What hours did you work that day?’

‘I worked four p.m. to midnight.’

‘And who do you normally work with?’

‘We’re normally alone, unless it’s busy, then I can call someone to help. That day was quiet all day, so I was mostly alone.’ Sarah listened closely to her accent. The short answers were clear, but the longer responses were harder to follow.

‘Did anything unusual happen during your shift?’

‘It was a slow shift. We don’t get any trouble here. Most of the guests are regular visitors; they come here as a break from the city or to use the conference rooms or the meeting rooms like this one for business. We host a certain type of person here. I take the key cards when they leave and return them when they come back in. Very little tends to happen.’

‘So, if there was something out of the ordinary, or someone out of the ordinary hanging around, that is definitely something you’d notice?’

‘Definitely. Why? Have I missed something?’ Margaret jolted forward and put her hands on the edge of the table.

‘Oh, no, nothing. I’m just trying to get an idea of your average shift at the desk.’

‘I’ve never been spoken to by the police before. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.’

‘There are no wrong things, only what you can remember. Take me through the check-in process.’

Margaret relaxed, about to talk about something familiar. ‘The guest comes in and gives their name. I check it against the reservation and photocopy their ID and debit card for the file and anything they want charged to their room. There’s an information leaflet I give them and I give them the key card for their room. That’s it. Oh, I tell them the times dinner and breakfast are served. That’s it.’

‘Is that what happened when Sheila arrived?’

‘Exactly that. It’s the same every time. Guests are normally so tired, they just want to take their keys and offload their luggage. Sometimes they’ll come back later and ask some questions.’

‘Did Sheila come back at all?

‘After checking her in, I didn’t speak to her again. She came, dropped her key card on the way out, but we didn’t speak.’

‘Did she call downstairs?’

‘No.’

‘Not to book a cab?’

‘No, a car came for her and, although it hadn’t waited long, she seemed in a rush to get into it. In the rooms there is an information leaflet asking the guests to arrange cabs through the hotel for security reasons. They have to buzz through the gate via the intercom and we’re not supposed to buzz through unknown vehicles.’

‘But on this occasion you did?’

‘Yes. A lot of our clients pay little attention to our rules and requests. The management policy on it tends to be, if it’s not an obvious risk, just let it through to avoid complaints.’

‘You mentioned most of your guests fit a certain type. Did Sheila fit that type?’ Sarah knew from the reaction of the couple on the CCTV that Sheila looked out of place at the Oxlaine. She wanted to find out exactly why.

‘No, no she did not. Well, not at first. A first impression is important. Look at this building. From the second you see the gate, you know you’re coming somewhere special, somewhere beautiful and opulent. The marble fountain is an original piece carved in Greece. There isn’t another like it in the world and most people walk past it as if it was nothing more than a fancy urinal.’ Dales coughed on his tea as Margaret spoke with genuine pride about her place of work. ‘The people who stay here are people who appreciate the finer details in life; they work hard and they look a certain way, because they are a certain way.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Sarah was bemused by such a strong opinion based on someone’s dress sense, someone who may well have just finished a long journey or simply didn’t feel the need to dress up. Margaret’s blue eyes narrowed and she retracted her head, as if preparing to spit out her next sentence.

‘She looked common.’

‘Common?’

‘You know what I mean. That’s probably not the right word to use, but it’s that certain look. You can tell when you see them.’

‘Let’s get rid of the label. Never mind your perception of her social class, what was your first impression?’ Margaret thought for a bit and just smiled back. ‘Okay. What did the couple behind her say?’

‘The old couple? They said that she looked like a dyke.’

The night-turn girl was next. She’d started work at eleven that night and worked until seven the next morning. Before Sarah had even asked about what had happened during her shift, she volunteered that, at around 04:40, someone was outside pressing the buzzer incessantly. She’d requested a name and room number via the intercom, but nobody replied. She saw a thin figure on the camera, but due to the angle couldn’t get a clear idea of her height. She didn’t see the person in the flesh, only through the real-time CCTV feed, and she called security when she realised whomever it was wasn’t going to stop buzzing. It was an out of the ordinary event; her shifts were normally trouble free. There had been a spate of break-ins in the car park a couple of months back that lasted around a week. She’d been on night turn then too and saw a couple of hooded figures running in between the vehicles, but that was it. They’d wanted to evade detection; this person wanted to get inside. She’d considered it was someone who may have lost their key card, or just wanted shelter from the rain, but given how persistent they were with the bell, she thought it best to call security. Oxlaine clientele are far too polite to press bells in that manner, she said.

The small swivel chairs were designed with smaller frames in mind. The night-turn security guard adjusted his seating position three times in the time it took Sarah to finish the introductions. She apologised and thanked him for staying on after his shift. His eyes were puffy, and his head drooped and lifted as if a weight hung from his chin that lightened whenever Sarah ended a sentence.

‘What happened when you went outside?’ She got straight to the point, not wanting to keep him up any longer than she had to. Questioning people that hadn’t had enough sleep soon became a roundabout of constant clarification and confusion, leaving both parties frustrated and no further on than when they started. It was illegal to interview suspects without a suitable rest period; witnesses were a different matter. The ability of a witness to provide accurate information was a judgement call for the officer, and each needed to be assessed on an individual basis. An elderly man woken in the night by a prowler or someone reporting a theft getting off a red-eye flight from Miami, those kinds of things may need to wait, but a young, six-foot-four security guard could probably push through the wall.

The door opened and before he had a chance to answer, in walked Valerie Goddard. ‘Stop. What are you doing interviewing my staff without my say-so?’

‘Ms Goddard, we arranged these interviews through Mr Semples,’ said Sarah, hoping to cut off the impending confrontation early.

‘Eric doesn’t own this hotel, I do. What are you asking?’

‘We're asking about their actions on the night Sheila died. We need to establish Sheila's final movements for the coroner's inquest.’

Valerie’s lips curled with disdain. ‘They didn’t do anything to that woman.’

‘They’re not under suspicion of anything.’

Mr Semples followed behind her. ‘Valerie, please.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and walked her out. She turned her head and glared at Sarah and Dales. ‘Sorry, she’s not taken all this too well.’

Sarah looked at Dales and thought it best to just continue. ‘Where were we? What happened when you went outside?’

‘I walked out and said, “Hey, what are you doing?” She started screaming at me, “I need to come in, I need to come in,” like this. I told her she couldn’t come in unless she had a room. She didn’t have one and just kept shouting, “You don’t understand, let me in let me in,” like this. I told her to leave, I said, “You have to leave now, this is private property, I will call the police.”

‘She kept shouting and jumping up and down, pointing to the hotel. I said, “Be quiet, people are sleeping,” like this and she started to cry. I told her to go away; it was raining and she was getting soaked. She was a pain, but I didn’t want her to come to harm, you know. The hotel is safe, but outside of the gates, a woman alone, you don’t know what could happen. I wanted to let her in, get her dry and call a cab, but my bosses, my bosses wouldn’t allow that. The guests here would not like strays coming into the hotel.

‘She sat on the fountain saying she needed to see Roxy. She spoke through her teeth, with real venom, you know, like this, “I need to see Roxy.” I didn’t hear her at first, the rain was heavy and I was on the steps, trying not to get wet. She looked down with her arms folded; telling me she wasn’t going to move. I didn’t recognise the name; none of the staff are called Roxy and I called through to my colleague who checked the guest list. I told her there was no one here by that name and she had to go. She went nuts, shouting, “I need to see Roxy now. She’s up there,” and pointing to the hotel. I managed to calm her down; she was still crying, but wasn’t being aggressive and I offered to call her a cab if she went to the gates. That’s when she left.’