The Lazarus Hotel (10 page)

His first impression was of something short and thickset, dwarfish, bent over the drawer whose contents it was examining with absorption. Larry got no immediate sense of age or sex; at that point he still half-believed it was an animal, an ape or a small bear, something covered in a dense mat of dark shaggy fur.

He wasn't sure what he did to draw its attention. But suddenly it whirled towards him, eyes wild in a moon-white face, and he saw what it was: a boy, an adolescent human male, wrapped in so many layers of old clothes that the ragged edges had frayed into a coarse pelt.

Larry closed the door behind him and turned the key. ‘So what are you, sonny – a pervert or a thief?'

He advanced deliberately and the boy backed toward the window. But they were six hundred feet up. The windows didn't open and wouldn't break: he hadn't come in that way and he couldn't get out. The corner of the room stopped his retreat and Larry reached for him.

Despite having none of his own, Larry reckoned to know something about children. In particular, he had spent enough time with teenage boys to know they were stubborn, sullen, devious, deceitful and capable when provoked of real and sustained viciousness. He didn't expect this one to come quietly. He expected him to struggle, to punch and kick if he got the chance, and to use words not heard since McEnroe's last visit to Centre Court.

He didn't expect the boy to yell like an animal in a trap. Another man might have leapt back, spilling furniture in his surprise. But Larry fastened both hands in the boy's disreputable clothing and shook him. ‘Stop that.'

The cry ended abruptly. The boy twisted like an eel inside his amorphous clothes and sank his teeth deep in the man's hand. Larry let out a few choice words of his own and lurched back, and the tangled knot of man and boy crashed to the floor.

The teeth, the fall or sheer surprise loosened Larry's grip. In a second the boy had thrown him off, bounded over the top of him, wrenched open the door and was gone.

‘Didn't you see him? In the corridor?' Miriam shook her head. ‘You must have! He was barely through the door before you arrived. Whichever way he turned you couldn't have missed seeing him.'

‘Larry,' she said patiently, ‘I'm telling you what we saw. Nothing. We heard the yell. We thought it was you – that you'd had an accident. It took us a second to react, then we rushed for the corridor. There was no sign of any boy then.'

Larry pushed through them, peered both ways. The corridor ran straight for thirty yards in each direction. ‘He must have ducked into one of the rooms. Come on, before he gets away.'

But either they'd wasted too much time or the boy had moved faster than Larry thought possible. A search of the bedrooms, their own and the unfurnished ones beyond, was fruitless; nor had he sneaked past them into the conference room or the kitchen. The corridor ended in a blank wall to the east, in a locked door to the west.

Larry scowled. ‘There's nowhere else he could have gone. Unless the lift arrived?'

Mrs Venables was apologetic. ‘I couldn't raise the builders. The phone was ringing but no one answered. You see the time? I think they've forgotten we're here. I think they've finished for the weekend and we'll not see them again until Monday morning.'

It was enough to evict the strange boy from their minds. Typically for people learning of a disaster secondhand, they couldn't quite believe the housekeeper had got it right. One by one they slipped away to the kitchen to try the phone for themselves. One by one they returned, looking chastened.

Joe spoke for them all. ‘That's what they've done – gone home and forgotten us.' He looked disgustedly at his watch. ‘Half past four on a Friday afternoon and there's nobody left on the bloody site. No wonder it takes them months to build a brick privy.'

‘Can we phone for help?' suggested Tessa.

He shook his head. ‘I tried that. It's not connected to the exchange. It's just an internal line.'

They regarded one another levelly, nine intelligent mature people trying not to panic in a situation that was the adult equivalent of getting locked in the cupboard under the stairs. They were trying to think if it mattered.

They'd come for the weekend. If the workmen returned at eight o'clock on Monday they'd be released twelve or fourteen hours late. Richard's wife would be puzzled but not alarmed: she was used to him misjudging when he'd be home. Tessa's husband, who worked in a hospital, was on nights and wouldn't expect to see her until Monday evening. No one else had anyone to go home to.

There was food to take them up to teatime on Sunday – it would stretch to an extra supper and breakfast. They had power, heat and light. It was an inconvenience, not a disaster.

They could have accepted the situation philosophically but for a growing sense of unease. Even before these new complications, they had made a disturbing discovery: that they'd been tricked into coming here by someone who knew private things about them, who had old and personal photographs of them. They couldn't imagine who he was or what his motive except that clearly it concerned Cathy Beacham. The puzzlement of a few minutes ago turned to anxiety with the discovery that they were no longer free to leave.

Nor was there much comfort in one another's company. They were not the random cross-section of humanity they were supposed to be. They traded suspicious glances as it occurred to them, one by one, that if someone had set them up the best place to observe the results was from their midst. They had been learning to trust each other; now they backed off fast. Someone was jerking their strings and, since they couldn't know who, everyone mistrusted everyone else. It was going to feel a very long weekend.

Even without some idiot boy poking through their belongings and howling like a banshee. Larry looked up as an idea struck him. ‘He really isn't here, is he?'

‘The boy?' Miriam shook her head. ‘We've looked everywhere.'

The coach's lip curled. ‘Don't you understand? If the lift's off and he's not here there must be some other way down.'

There was the locked door: the boy might have a key. But Larry didn't think so. ‘There wasn't time for him to reach it without being seen. It was just seconds between him haring off and you people getting here. Linford Christie couldn't have got offside that quickly.'

Sheelagh hadn't seen any boy. Her tone was sceptical. ‘Linford Christie was here too?'

Larry rounded on her, intimidating in his proximate strength. ‘You don't believe me? You don't think there was a boy? You think I bit my own hand, screamed, then sat down in a corner? Have you got as far as thinking why?'

But Sheelagh was the last person he should have got ratty with. She thrived on discord. ‘If that was the oddest thing that had happened it'd still make more sense than something that might be a boy and might be a dog stalking the penthouse of a forty-storey building and vanishing into thin air contrary to the laws of physics and common sense.'

Tariq distracted them with practicalities. ‘Larry's right, there must be another way down. A fire-escape.'

Tessa looked at him as if he were mad. ‘I am
not
climbing forty storeys down a ladder!'

‘It'll be more substantial than that – a fireproof stairwell probably. The first thing they do in a fire is cut the power so the lifts go off. There has to be some way to evacuate the building.'

They'd all seen
Towering Inferno.
They liked him less for reminding them that they were trapped in a zone where the only passing traffic was weather balloons.

But they searched the corridor anyway, from the blank wall to the locked door, and there were bedrooms and domestic offices but no staircase. ‘It must be beyond the locked door.'

Kneeling, Sheelagh put an eye to the keyhole. ‘Then I hope we never need it. The corridor's full of stuff – piles of bricks, stacks of timber, plumbing. Even if we could open the door we couldn't get through.'

Miriam tried to inject a positive note. ‘We could get on with what we came here for. At worst we're here till Monday morning; at best someone will remember the lift and come back.' She returned to the conference room, and after a moment an unenthusiastic trickle followed her. They had nothing else to do.

But they didn't pick up where they'd left off when the shade of Cathy Beacham joined them. They'd been led by the nose long enough: now they were going to set their own agenda.

‘So this is about Cathy Beacham,' said Larry. ‘Hands up those who knew her.'

Four hands went up immediately; after a moment he added his own. ‘You're right about one thing,' he said coldly, looking at Will. ‘I was her coach. Tessa?'

The doctor shrugged helplessly. ‘Possibly. I'm not sure. I see a lot of patients in the course of a year. I don't remember the name. Where did she live?'

‘The family lived in the Midlands,' said Sheelagh. ‘I don't know where she lived in London – I had her number, that's all. Will, where was she when you knew her?'

The fury that had goaded him to pick a fight with a man he couldn't hope to beat had dissipated, leaving him subdued and a little sullen. ‘She used to have a flat in Colliers Wood but she could have moved.'

‘Then yes, it's possible I treated her at some point. I've never specialized in sports medicine but I could have seen her as a GP. I'm sorry I can't be more specific but I have a list of about two thousand patients at any given time and if I don't see somebody regularly…' Her voice tailed off apologetically.

Larry said, ‘Five yesses and a maybe. Joe?'

He took time to answer. ‘Yes, I met her too. My daughter played some tennis – most of her friends were other players. We met quite a few of them over the years.'

‘She visited your home?'

‘Yes.'

Larry spread his hand. ‘That's it?'

Joe bristled. ‘What were you expecting? It's normal enough for kids to bring their friends home, isn't it?'

‘Joe, there's nothing normal about
any
of this,' Sheelagh exclaimed impatiently. ‘Tell us again how you heard about this course.'

He looked faintly embarrassed: ‘There was a postcard tucked into a business magazine I still get. Offering stressed-out executives a psychological MOT. I thought, Why not – what harm can it do?'

There was a lengthy pause while the others pondered that. Then Tariq said, ‘So probably all of us have known Cathy to some extent at some time. But so what? What does anyone hope to gain by bringing us together like this?'

It had taken Will almost till now to start thinking clearly again. To learn, this long after, new shocking facts about the death of a girl he'd loved had swept the feet from under him. It had also been a shock to find himself among people he'd previously known only by ill repute. And losing control had shocked him to his foundations: Will Furney
never
lost his temper, whatever the provocation. So it had taken a little time for him to get his head together again; but now the answer to Tariq's question seemed obvious to him. ‘Doesn't it rather smack of grudge?'

‘Revenge? For what?'

Will stared at him. ‘For the fact that Cathy's dead. She was twenty-six years old. She was beautiful and talented. She had everything to look forward to. But she drove her car—' His voice cracked on it; he had to swallow and try again. ‘She committed suicide. Someone blames us for that. We don't know one another but someone knows us all. I think he blames us for her death. He wants—' He fell silent.

‘What?' asked Tariq.

Blinking, Will returned from a moment's reverie. ‘I don't know. But there's something he, or she, wants very much. And it occurs to me to wonder if the lift going off when it did was only a bit

of forgetfulness after all.'

‘You don't think this is getting a shade imaginative?' ventured Miriam. ‘Isn't the obvious answer also the most likely – that the silly sods downstairs forgot? They're not used to having people up here.'

Will frowned. ‘This is the first time you've held a course in the hotel?'

She didn't react as if she'd blundered. ‘In this building, yes.'

‘Who was the friend who fixed it up?'

‘I told you, he's on the Lazaire's board.'

‘His name?'

She smiled composedly. ‘You wouldn't know him.'

‘He went to a lot of trouble. They're still working down below, but up here we've got glass in the windows and doors that lock. We've got carpets, furniture, electricity and plumbing. Isn't that a rather odd way to build a hotel – from the top down?'

Miriam said nothing.

‘And all for one weekend. Because you won't be back, will you?' The psychologist still didn't answer. ‘This friend – was it his idea? He arranged it, got us here. All you had to do was turn up and put us through hoops. Not just any old hoops, though: friendship and betrayal. I think, if you told us his name, we might recognize it.'

For a moment she seemed to consider it. Then she shook her head. ‘It would be a betrayal of trust.'

A smile bent Will's lips. He was still pale but this was a job he knew: extracting information from someone who didn't want to give it. ‘Dr Graves, this whole thing is a betrayal of trust. We came to you for professional help with problems that have damn near torn some of us apart.'

A faint flush touched the psychologist's cheek and she nodded thoughtfully. ‘I bet Wormwood Scrubs is full of people who underestimated you.'

Will shook his head. ‘I don't do prosecutions. I defend.'

The others had followed with more or less facility depending on their intellectual equipment. Sapphire eyes snapping between the protagonists, Sheelagh demanded, ‘Does she know what this is about?'

Will kept his gaze on Miriam. ‘Yes.'