The Lazarus Hotel (19 page)

Will had been present more in body than in spirit, so his mind was uncluttered by recollections. ‘Which side of the door were you standing?'

‘On the right. They climbed down on the left so I stood on the right to shine the torch past them.'

‘And the grease was on the left?' Richard nodded. ‘How much was there?'

‘Enough. It wasn't plastered on but it was well spread about.'

‘It could have been done without Larry knowing. Say it was me. I put some on my left hand, then I go and ask Larry what's happening. He looks down the shaft and says, Nothing much. He isn't going to notice that I'm resting my hand on the side of the door. I could have run it up and down a dozen times and he still wouldn't have seen.' It was a modest enough demonstration of logic, but they were impressed enough to embarrass him. He lifted narrow shoulders self-deprecatingly. ‘Just because it could have been done that way doesn't mean it was.'

‘No,' Larry said slowly. ‘It could still have been me. But I know it wasn't.'

‘Before we go any further,' Tariq said, ‘has anyone got an innocent explanation? I mean, we all do daft things. If somebody dropped the butter and got it on their hands, now's the time to say so.' He waited but no one said anything. ‘Then who was standing by the lift while all this was going on? We know about Larry. Who else?'

After a moment the hands started going up. Only the housekeeper's remained in her lap. Larry nodded ruefully. ‘That's my recollection – just about everybody had a look at some point.'

‘I don't know how relevant this is,' said Tariq. ‘But when Richard slipped and I was holding him, Larry and Sheelagh were right there to help. If either of them wanted him dead they could have got themselves offside.'

‘If we're trading alibis,' offered Tessa, ‘I can vouch for Mrs Venables. She never left Miriam's side while all this was going on.'

Some at once and some more slowly, some with a tactful hesitancy and others quite frankly, the gaze of all present swivelled round to Joe. He'd put his tray on the dining table and sat down heavily behind it. The lines of his face were set, his expression hard to read. It could have been hurt at what they were thinking, or the soul-clenching anger of a man with enough hatred to want people dead, or a kind of defensive carapace against their accusations because he couldn't disprove them.

Sheelagh said softly, ‘Joe?'

He looked at her then. ‘What? Did I try to kill Miriam and Will and Richard? No, I didn't.'

‘But you did ask someone to check the lift,' she remembered.

‘Check it,' he agreed shortly. ‘Not force it open and dive through.'

Richard was remembering too. ‘Yesterday evening I was talking to Miriam and she went to have a word with Joe. Then we heard Midge yell and we all made for the corridor.'

‘So?'

‘If she caught up with him later, Joe could have been the last person she saw before she was attacked.'

Tariq was watching the older man. ‘Did she talk to you, Joe?'

For a moment it seemed he would refuse to answer, hunch down behind the redoubt of his craggy impervious face and take the tentative artillery of their questions. Then he softened. ‘Yes, she did. She came to my room after supper. She thought it was time I explained. I argued. She said she wasn't going to stand by and let me perform emotional vivisection on you.' He looked at Richard. ‘She said you, for one, had had just about as much as you could take.' Richard flushed but didn't deny it. ‘She said if I wouldn't make a clean breast of it she would.'

‘And you were angry,' Tariq suggested. ‘You'd gone to all this trouble and she was going to let you down. You followed her to her room and…' He tailed off.

‘And picking up a handy rolling-pin I hit her over the head?' offered Joe, heavily ironic. ‘That wasn't snatched up in the heat of an argument. The rolling-pin equals premeditation. Is that what you're saying – that I meant to murder her? She's my friend. If she wasn't none of this would have been possible. Maybe I do hate you, and him, and him' – his eyes stabbed round the circle – ‘and all of you. Maybe I've hated you so long I want to see you dead. So I could have tried to kill any or all of you. I didn't, but it's possible. But do you really think I argued with Miriam, went to the kitchen for a rolling-pin, went to her room and beat her head in?'

There was a long silence. No one ventured an opinion. Probability wasn't the issue: everything that had happened since Friday morning had surprised them. Joe Lockhead could have attacked the psychologist and tried to kill the climbers; so, on the basis of strict possibility, could others. Actions that seemed to clear them of suspicion might have been performed for that purpose.

Tariq sighed. ‘Tell you one thing. We'll have to move the beds again.'

‘What?!!'

He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘One of us is dangerous. If we sleep two to a room someone's going to be alone with that person. I suggest Tessa and I stay with Miriam and the rest of you move in here. All right with you, Tessa?' He smiled gently. ‘I can't prove I'm not the mad axeman, but if I'd meant Richard to fall I wouldn't have sweated blood hanging on to him.'

She smiled back. ‘I'll take your word for it. Hell, I feel safer already.'

No one used the words Prime Suspect but the feeling was unmistakable, hanging in the air. When they carried the mattresses into the conference room, Joe's ended up nearest to the door; without a word of comment Richard's was moved from the corner and put in its place.

Joe lowered both brows in a scowl. ‘You want me to carry a bell as well?' But no one smiled. It was only funny if he were innocent.

To make room for the mattresses and personal effects the dining table was pushed into the middle of the long room, the sofas were pushed against the walls and the ring of chairs Miriam had set out were stacked roughly out of the way. As if there'd been a party, thought Richard, the drunks had ended up dossing on the floor, but now it was time to start tidying up.

Mrs Venables, who had hardly left Miriam's side, returned to the sickroom. The others sat at the table. It was noticeable how everyone checked that everyone else was accounted for: anxious for one another's safety or else concerned that no one had sneaked away to lay more traps. They sat at the table rather than on the couches so as to have something between themselves and people of whom they were no longer sure. They took their seats, spacing them out warily, and watched Tariq with expectant eyes.

The big man didn't know quite how he'd found himself chairman. He didn't remember an election, wouldn't have stood if there'd been one. But somewhere along the line he'd had that dubious piece of greatness thrust upon him and it was easier to fill the role than pass it on.

He took a deep breath. ‘The situation is, we're stuck here till Monday morning unless we can raise the alarm. Will's got an idea about that but it means waiting for dark, Even then it's not foolproof. We could be here another two days, which wouldn't be a problem if one of us wasn't trying to kill the rest.'

There were outraged mutterings at that but he wouldn't withdraw it. ‘I'm sorry, there's no other way to read it. Everything we do now has to take account of that. Since we don't know who's responsible we can best protect ourselves by staying together. All the time.

‘Whoever it is doesn't seem to be armed, thank God. So far the attacks have been opportunistic – there's no reason to suppose he or she will suddenly produce a Kalashnikov.' A couple of bleak chuckles rewarded his attempt at humour. ‘So if we stick together maybe we can prevent any more incidents.'

‘There's one other thing we should do,' said Will, ‘but nobody's going to like it. We ought to check each other's things. Probably there's nothing to find, but we'd feel so silly if someone really did have a gun.'

He'd misjudged them. The brief humiliation of turning out their bags was easily outweighed by the reassurance that everyone else had done the same. But the search revealed nothing.

‘Good, fine,' said Tariq. ‘Er – anybody any idea what we do next?'

‘As a matter of fact, I have.' Sheelagh produced a pair of long-bladed kitchen scissors.

It spoke volumes for their state of mind that half of them thought she was about to continue with the scissors a task she'd begun with the rolling-pin and butter. Chairs scraped as a couple of them recoiled physically.

At the shock on their faces Sheelagh gave a cackle of derisive laughter. ‘Don't panic, I'm not planning to cut throats, only a sheet.' She spread it on the table, cut out a pair of enormous letters H. ‘Will gave me the idea with his SOS. Only this way we don't have to wait for dark. We hang one in the window in here and one in the window of the sickroom which faces the other way. It might not be seen but you never know. There are other high buildings, and helicopters. If anyone spots it they'll know what it means.'

But as morning turned to afternoon and wore on towards evening it became clear that the giant Hs which so dominated the rooms where they were hung were invisible in the real world where ordinary people were doing ordinary things and anyone facing unexpected danger had only to shout loud enough for a man in a pointed hat to come along and help. Up here they were in mortal peril and a day after being cut off they still hadn't found a way of telling anyone.

‘We might as well be on a spaceship,' Richard said, gazing out across the city in wonder and despair. ‘Even then we'd have a radio – we could tell
someone.
‘

‘The Starship
Lazarus
,' mulled Larry. ‘It has a ring to it.'

They chuckled darkly, deriving some crumbs of ease from a companionship neither would have chosen. Then reality supervened. Richard thought. It could be
him
– I could be standing here joking with a man who tried to kill me, who'll try again.

Or was it not Richard but Will who was the target? Or not Larry but one of the others who was the attacker? His head rang with the permutations. Whoever it was, he was shut in here with someone with murder in their heart. Even fifteen months ago, before half an hour in an icy river introduced him to the concept of mortal fear, he'd have worried about that.

Long legs crossed in an attitude of professional calm betrayed by the tapping of one foot on the floor, Tessa had a cup of tea on the table beside her and her bag under her chair. She never ventured far from it now, nor did she have to explain why. It contained sharp things and poisonous things, and the fact that they were designed to save lives would not stop someone bent on mayhem from turning them to other ends. She said to Tariq, ‘When do we try out Will's idea?'

‘Once it's dark. It won't be seen before then and I don't want to risk fusing the lights for nothing.'

The sparkle was gone from Tessa's hazel eyes, making room for a deep unease. ‘The last thing we want is to be left in the dark. Are you sure it's worth the risk?'

Tariq shrugged. ‘The lights didn't stop someone beating Miriam's skull in or greasing the lift. Our best chance is getting the hell out of here as soon as we can.'

‘What about the boy?'

‘Midge? I don't know where he went. Up into the roof-space, I guess.'

‘I meant, why are you so sure it isn't him? Many mentally handicapped people have no impulse to violence but those who have can be triggered by very little. God knows how long he's been living like this – he may have had minimal contact with other people for years, be so emotionally isolated that he panics if he's approached. When Larry cornered him he bit him. Why are you so sure Miriam didn't startle him into attacking her?'

‘I can't be sure he didn't hit Miriam. But someone else greased the lift, and it seems more likely there'd be one homicidal maniac in the building than two.'

‘At least we can imagine how the boy might feel moved to violence. I can't think why any of us should.'

‘Me neither,' Tariq said apologetically, ‘but that doesn't mean there isn't a reason. Until last night we didn't know we had anything in common. Maybe there's still something we don't know.'

‘Or maybe it's something we do know,' murmured Tessa, glancing significantly across the room.

‘Joe? It's hard to forget he brought us here, isn't it? We only have his word that he meant no harm. If Miriam found out different and threatened to tell us he'd have had to shut her up. Then he could start on the rest of us.'

She was watching him closely. ‘Is that what you believe?'

‘Tessa, I don't know what to believe. But if it happened that way, at least we'd know why.'

She made a determined effort to rise above it. ‘Well, the sun's down now. Let's hope there are people in this city with nothing better to do of a Saturday night than watch the lights come on. If any of them can also read Morse code we'll be out of here in an hour.'

‘If the electrics hold,' said Tariq, crossing every finger he owned.

When the last oyster gleam had faded from the sky, leaving a dark screen on which the city projected the glow of its activities, they turned off every light and power point in the penthouse and – excepting Mrs Venables – gathered in the conference room. Since it had been Will's idea, Tariq asked him to do the honours and Will made a little curtsey like a lady mayoress turning on the Christmas illuminations. It was a mistake, as his ribs quickly reminded him. Still half-bent, he groped for the switch in the dark. ‘Three short, three long, three short?'

He could have keyed it faster, deliberately went slow enough for the flashes to separate into distinct pulses. He didn't want to transmit the notion that someone had left a light flickering in the half-finished building. So he keyed the letters slowly and rhythmically, and the twin chandeliers each mounting a cluster of six bulbs blasted solid chunks of light out into the darkness:… – – – .… . . – – – .… . . – – –