‘What can you tell me about this guest?’ Mann showed the receptionist his badge and the ID card he’d found in the wallet he’d taken from Michelle.
She tapped away on the PC. ‘Mr Max Kosmos. American engineer. He has been with us for three nights and is due to check out tomorrow. He is a regular customer of ours.’
‘Do you know where he is right now?’
‘I rang his room an hour ago but got no reply. He missed a reservation he made for dinner in the restaurant here.’
‘What’s the room number?’
‘One sixteen, on the sixteenth floor.’
‘Is this key going to work?’ Mann took out the key from Max Kosmos’s wallet and handed it to her. She fed it into the key holder.
‘Yes, sir. That’s the one he has been using. He has two keys issued to him.’
Mann took the elevator to the sixteenth floor. He looked down the corridor: turquoise carpet, dried flowers in brass bowls on three-legged tables. He looked back to the door. The ‘Do not disturb’ sign was still hanging from the doorknob. A newspaper was propped up against the wall. The trolley of fresh linen was halted where it had been waiting to change the sheets in the nearby rooms.
Mann knocked. ‘Mr Kosmos. Security. I need a word.’
No reply.
Mann knocked harder. He waited. Still no reply. He slipped the card key in and out and the lock light turned from red to green. He turned the handle and pushed the heavy door open just enough to see that another room key was already in the power slot just inside the door. Someone was home. He slid Delilah from his boot and pushed the door open further. The room was lit by a sidelight. To the left of the door the bathroom light was on. The room was silent except for the air con. It was cold.
Mann held the door open with his foot whilst he stood for a few minutes in the doorway. Even though Mann couldn’t see it, he smelt it. The first rule of a crime scene: take in everything, let your senses register it all. Now he smelt it the way connoisseurs smell wine, the overtones of blood, the undertones of butchery and death. This was a big room – plush. He couldn’t see the bed. The television was on low in the background, it was an English channel, BBC World News. Mann stepped further inside the room. The door sprang closed with a click behind him. To his right was a wardrobe, desk and minibar. There were a couple of used glasses, whisky miniatures and small can of Coke. A half-drunk bottle of champagne was further along the desk. Just where Ruby had left it.
‘Oooh, champagne.’ Ruby picked up the bottle in the top of the fridge. ‘For me?’ she pouted.
‘You must be joking. It cost more than you. Put it back.’ Max Kosmos laughed hard at his own joke.
Ruby pretended to laugh with him. She squeezed his arm. ‘You got great physique. What you weigh, two hundred twenty pounds?’
‘Two hundred and twenty-five pounds of pure beef, baby.’ He laughed.
Ruby smiled as she turned her back to him. She stuck her bottom in the air and hitched up her dress a little to distract him as she reached inside the small fridge to get his drink out. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, made sure his eyes were glued to her rising skirt whilst she stirred the sedative into his drink. She would start with a small amount; she only wanted to make him tired enough so that she could tie him up. She didn’t want to knock him out so that he wouldn’t feel the pain. She poured herself a small shot of gin and a lot of orange.
‘Here, big man.’ She handed him the drink and clanked her glass against his. ‘Down in one, yes?’ She needed to make him drink it fast. She watched him drink it down and she swallowed hers in one gulp and then she poured him another.
‘Cheers.’
She clashed her glass against his. She could see his lips were wet, she smelt his sweat beneath his aftershave. She knew what he’d be thinking: he could handle his drink, and that it wouldn’t be him who was drunk. He would think he was being clever and that he knew these Asian women. They took some loosening up. A few drinks and she’d be legless with her arse in the air. He could be in for a good night. Cheap too: he could probably get away without paying her. After all, who was she going to complain to? She was nobody and he was Mr International Businessman.
Mann pushed the bathroom door open just enough. This was a plush room, marble finish. Toiletries lined up on the back of the basin, once neatly rolled facecloths now soaked with blood. Someone had cleaned up in there and not cared about the mess. Blood ran down the sides of the sink. Bloody pools washed over the marble top. Blood stained the fluffy white towels. He looked at the mirror. In the centre were smudges: kisses in pink.
Ruby breathed onto the mirror and drew a heart in the mist and put an arrow through it. On one side she wrote Ruby and on the other she wrote a man’s name, then she leant forward and kissed the cold mirror. She drew back sharply as her lip caught on a minute crack in the glass. A round drop of blood quickly bulged on her top lip and then dribbled down, she tasted it with her tongue, she touched it and watched it spread across her fingertips, a pretty colour: ruby red. She told herself that was why she had called herself Ruby. Rubies were precious, rare, the colour of a fresh cut just made, fresh blood spilt. But, someone else had named her it, the man who never came back, the man who left her to carry her baby alone and it had all been too much for her to bear. He had named her Ruby but it wasn’t because she was precious.
She stopped to listen to him calling her from the bedroom. He sounded different, tired. She checked her watch. It had been ten minutes. The drug would be working by now. ‘Clever girl, Ruby,’ she said to herself in perfect English. ‘You’re a clever girl, Ruby. Now you get your reward.’ She opened her handbag and gently slid her hand inside. She felt the cold metal of the scalpel and of the saw’s handle. She felt the handcuffs. She patted them. ‘Soon…very soon…’
Mann left the bathroom and took two steps further into the room. Mann’s feet trod silently on the hotel carpet: browns, golds, mottled blood, soft and sticky underfoot. The room was cold and still, and had the smell of a morgue. The air con hummed like a waterfall. From the television came a newsreader’s droning voice. The colours from the screen seeped into the room’s atmosphere. Mann listened hard. There was no sound of breathing or sleep. To his right the wardrobe door was open. The safe door was locked. The bed was just around to his left now, past the bathroom wall. The corner was coming into view.
Ruby emerged from the bathroom and walked around the corner. He was sat in the chair by the bed.
‘Why aren’t you naked?’ She went over to him and he tried to pull her onto his lap. His speech was slurred, his eyes rolling. She giggled and wriggled away. He tried to stand but he lurched and stumbled down again. He fell against the chair and tried to pull himself upright. He shook his head to try to clear it. His body swayed as he tried to stay standing. Ruby steered him towards the bed. His hands were grabbing her. She pushed him down on the bed. She stood over him and waited. She heard his breathing deepen and felt his body slump.
‘Cheers.’ She saluted his unconscious frame and poured champagne over his face to see if he would stir. His chest rose and fell. She placed the ball gag into his mouth and dragged him a little further up the bed. She lifted his arms above his head, handcuffed them and then tied them around the headboard; she took off his trousers, slowly, carefully, then his boxers. She opened his legs wide, took her tape and secured each leg to the bed. She took out her scalpel and cut around the shoulder joint, watching him all the time to make sure she had got the dosage right. His brow wrinkled and he groaned in pain. Ruby cut deeper. Yes, she was a clever girl. She knew how much to give him so that he could not move but he would still feel every cut she made.
Mann stepped over clothes scattered on the floor: a man’s shoes, a pair of men’s jeans: one leg inside out. He looked up. There were arcs of blood across the ceiling. The edge of the bed came into view. He saw a man’s feet. He came around the corner. The bed was turned dark brown with blood.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he uttered aloud as he looked at the headless, pulped body of a man lying on the bed.. He walked around to the side of the bed. On the bedside table lay a family photo covered in blood.