Fire Hawk (24 page)

Sam continued his slow perambulation of the lobby, deciding his eventual destination would be the still-empty cocktail bar tucked round a corner beyond the reception desk. Suddenly his eye was caught by a pin-board set up on an easel to one side of the main entrance. Photographs. He crossed over to look. Pictures taken at some gathering earlier in the week, each with a number. A notice said prints could be ordered at the reception desk.

Then he saw the date. Tuesday – the night Chrissie had disappeared. His pulse quickened.

The prints were standard six by fours, about twenty-five in number. A mix of faces in the shots. Some dark and heavy with Cypriot features, others quintessentially English. And a few that looked more Middle Eastern.

He pulled from his jacket pocket the small photo of Salah Khalil that Waddell had given him and began to scan the prints for any sign of him, or of Chrissie. He began at the top left corner of the board and worked systematically. Jolly faces with smiles like open zips, snapped in the bar and the lounge. Some revellers faced away from the camera, some were obscured by others. He became distracted by the varying states of inebriation displayed. A few weren't drunk at all – prim faces, hands clutching glasses of juice. Others seemed bent on flushing away inhibitions with heavy doses of spirits.

He reached the bottom right corner. There'd been no sign of Chrissie and no face that looked like Khalil's. Then he remembered it was on Tuesday that the Iraqis had checked out – Khalil
couldn't
have been here. He was about to look through the set again in case Chrissie was
somewhere in the background of the shots, when a woman's voice cut in from behind him.

‘Looks fun.'

Sam spun round. It was the blonde girl with the receding chin and the compact body. She stood a foot away, smirking at him.

‘Were you there? That party,' she elaborated, lifting her mildly embarrassed face towards the photos. ‘I wondered if you were in one of the pictures.' She laughed a little nervously, covering her jaw with a hand as if to conceal its inadequacies.

‘No,' he replied. ‘Not me. Just looking to see if I could spot any friends. You?'

‘No. Only arrived yesterday.'

She beamed a smile, then waited as if to say
This is the second time I've made a move on you mister. Now it's your turn
.

Sam stared back like a dummy. He didn't want this distraction.

Confronted with his blank response, she decided to plunge in again anyway.

‘Look, I was wondering . . . You see, some of us from the company are making our escape from the do over there.' She flicked a glance back towards the bar she'd just left, and her pony tail swished and bounced. ‘Bit of a yawn really and the chief exec's about to make a speech which is really,
really
going to kill it stone dead. So we're taking off for a bite to eat somewhere, then a club. And we're short of one bloke.'

Sam looked past her and saw a couple standing a safe distance away trying to conceal their embarrassment at her forwardness by staring through the glass doors into the hotel drive.

‘And, um, since you seemed to be on your own,' she concluded, in so deep now that she couldn't turn back, ‘and you looked friendly . . .'

She coloured even further and laughed again, the hand darting to her mouth once more.

Sam beamed. ‘Now, normally that's the sort of invitation I wouldn't dream of refusing. Unfortunately, there's somebody I have to meet this evening.'

‘Oh. Pity.' She flattened her lips to conceal her disappointment. Her eyes showed she thought he was giving her the brush off. ‘Ah well . . . just thought I'd give you a try.'

‘Thanks. Normally, as I say . . .'

She began to move back to her friends.

‘Maybe I can make it later,' he called after her.

Daft. There wouldn't be any
later.
Not for that sort of thing anyway.

‘Club's called the Paradiso,' she called back over her shoulder, pushing at the swing door. ‘And I'm Sophie.'

Then she was gone.

He turned back towards the board of prints. There was one in particular that had intrigued him at the first look. Two men and one woman at a table, she with her back to the lens, one man beside her, the other opposite, facing the camera. The man was leaning in towards the woman, one hand resting on hers, the other clutching a highball of ice and some dark spirit. A face built round a wide, leathery mouth in which the top front teeth sparkled with silver. He had close-cropped, wiry hair and wore a black roll-neck shirt and white jacket. The pebble-hard eyes weren't quite in line. One of them might have been glass. The tense set of the woman's shoulders suggested the man's advances weren't entirely welcome.

Metal teeth. There was only one place in the world where Sam had seen dentistry like that – the former Soviet Union.

The man had the looks of a Mafiya hood from central casting. Here to launder money, no doubt, some of which he was spending on a hooker by the look of it. Quite
classy for a tart, the woman was. He couldn't see her face, but she had shiny, chestnut-brown hair. Gold earrings. Wearing a cream jacket that could have been linen.

Suddenly he felt the ground open.

‘Oh my God,' he croaked.

Cream – linen – jacket.
Jacket and matching skirt. The outfit Chrissie had been wearing in Amman. The suit from Prada she'd been so damned proud of. The shining hair, the shoulders tightly hunched – yes, she
did
that when she was tense.

‘Shit!'

It
was
Chrissie.

Photographed on the night she was murdered.

HIS MOISTENING EYES
bored into the photo, unconsciously trying to draw her essence from the picture as if sucking moisture from a grain of wheat. He flicked a fingernail under the pin holding it to the board. He needed to have this picture like he'd needed
her
on Sunday in Amman. But more than that, it was the key to her death. He secreted it in the inside pocket of his jacket, turned to check no one had seen him do so, then, stifling his emotions, crossed the lobby to a corner seat where he could study it.

Did the police have a copy of this? he wondered. Had they identified the high roller who had his hand on hers? And the second male in the group, sitting on Chrissie's right also back to camera – also Russian? Why?
Why
had she been with these characters?

Sam studied the body language. The second man wore a green jacket and sat all square and straight, as if keeping his face from the camera had been his intention. Not a freckle showing. Same with Chrissie. Both of them squaring their shoulders to the lens to ensure their features weren't captured on film. Interesting.

He tried to work out where they'd been sitting. Beyond the group was a darker area where the camera's flash had hardly reached. About half a dozen bodies there, some seated, some standing by the bar counter. One man on his own looking towards the table where Chrissie sat, his face no more than a shadow.

Sam stood up again and moved towards the cocktail bar, easily locating the table in question, now occupied by a couple who weren't speaking to one another. He approached the counter and perched on a stool.

‘A beer,' Sam ordered from the slim, crinkly-haired barman.

‘Tuborg Export?'

‘Keo, if you have it.'

The barman ducked down to the refrigerated cabinet, then plonked the bottle and a glass on the varnished mahogany bar top.

‘Nice bar,' Sam commented chattily. ‘Worked here a long time?'

‘Me? Too long, sir.'

The man laughed and wiped the counter with a cloth. Then he nudged a bowl of crisps so that it slid along the varnish under its own momentum, stopping precisely in front of Sam.

‘Neat,' Sam mouthed.

‘But next month – finish,' the barman continued, ignoring his compliment.

‘Really? Where are you going?'

‘London, sir. Piccadilly.'

‘Same hotel group?'

‘Yessir. Better pay and more tips.' He flashed his straight, white teeth.

‘But your regulars here – they'll miss you, I expect.'

‘Of course.' He took it as a statement of the obvious rather than a tribute.

‘Or perhaps you don't have regulars. Being a hotel.'

‘Oh yes. Many regulars. This very smart place. Smartest in Limassol. Many rich people who live here, they come for drinks in the evening.'

‘But I don't suppose you ever get to know them. I mean, their names.'

‘Sometimes. Depends. They give me good tip, I take an interest in their name.'

‘I see.' Sam took the photo from his pocket. ‘Maybe you can help me then. There's a man I'm trying to contact.' He pointed to the face in the photo.

‘You police?' the barman asked, not looking at the picture.

‘Good heavens no. I did some business with him once but can't remember his name, that's all.'

‘Because police, you see they already been here ask questions.'

‘About
him
?'

‘Sure. Because of Mrs Taylor. You know? She the Englishwoman who was killed. She stay here, in this hotel. Sat just over there.' He pointed to the table where the silent couple sat. ‘I remember her, because she beautiful woman.'

‘Haven't heard much about it,' Sam said, trying to sound just mildly curious. ‘What happened?'

‘Yesterday they find the body. Dressed in skirt but no pants, you know?' The barman leaned forward meaningfully, dark eyes concentrating on Sam. ‘Police they look for the men she was with here, but me, I think maybe British soldiers do it. Often they drink too much at night-club, then become like animals. And take drugs.' He flicked a hand in the air to show that such people were beneath his contempt.

Sam swallowed hard. ‘Why? Why d'you think it was soldiers?'

‘Because I don't like them,' the barman answered, moving away to deal with another customer. Two Greek-speaking women also arrived at the bar and quickly monopolised his attention.

Sam looked down at the photo. It wasn't soldiers who'd killed her. He sensed that in his hand he held a picture of the men who had.

Eventually the barman finished serving and began polishing glasses.

‘My friend,' Sam called to him.

‘Yes, sir.' He checked to see if Sam's glass was empty.

‘Do you know this man's name?'

He held out the print, but the barman ignored it and picked up the towel again.

‘I don't know. Maybe. I don't know if I can help . . .'

Sam took a Cyprus ten-pound note from his pocket and laid it flat on the counter next to the print.

‘Okay. I have another look.'

The barman covered the money with his hand and slipped it into his pocket. He took the photo to the cash register so he could look at it under a better light.

‘He been here many times,' he announced.

‘Yes?'

‘Yeah. He's the one the police want to find. But they
never,'
he added contemptuously.

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Our police not very clever. They ask his name, but we don't know it. Nobody know it.'

Thanks for taking my money anyway, thought Sam.

‘He's Russian, I think, so anyway, name is impossible to pronounce.' The barman screwed up his face. ‘He always like that.' He tapped the photo with a finger. ‘Drink very much and always with different girl. Prostitute, you know? Romania, Bulgaria – pffh. Normally we don't serve such women. But when they with
him
. . .' He raised his shoulders in despair. ‘Manager say I must serve. Because he spend lot of money in bar and restaurant. Always cash – so they don't even get his name from credit card slip,' he confided.

‘He wasn't a guest in the hotel?'

‘No. He just come here for drink and restaurant. Many Russians have apartment in Limassol. They come here
for few days then go back to Russia, you understand why?'

‘Money.'

‘Of course. Sometime one Russian he live with three or four dirty girls, you know? Live off them like pimp. But this man I think is different. I think he very rich. Maybe he have big villa here. You see them – many, many big, big houses. On the roads to Troodos.'

‘Has he been here again, since Tuesday?'

‘No. Maybe we don't see him ever again here because he know the police look for him now. In Limassol there are other place, many restaurant, many club where Russians go.'

‘Any in particular? If I wanted to try to find him tonight, where should I look?'

The barman scowled as if it would be a waste of an evening. ‘If I was him I go back to Russia by now. But you can try Paradiso Club,' he said. ‘But later on. Ten, eleven o'clock maybe. They have girls there who dance in your face, you know?' He cupped hands in front of his chest to denote the dancers were topless. ‘What you call it what they wear? I work in south France one time. They call it cache-sex. You know what I mean?'

‘I know,' Sam nodded.

‘You put fifty pounds in – in wherever you find some place to put it,' he smirked, ‘then after the show maybe she go with you. S'long you don't mind get sick after,' he warned. ‘Many these girls have HIV. And make sure you don't bring back here to Mondiale. Because night manager he not let her in.'

‘Don't worry. Thanks.'

‘But I don't tell you any of this. Understand me? Because I don't trust that man. He could do anything, you know?'

The barman snapped to attention as another customer
arrived. Sam pocketed the photograph, finished his beer and headed for the elevators.

Back in his room he placed the photograph under a desk lamp. He stood staring at it for a full half minute. Then he backed off, crossing to the window. He looked down into the car park wondering if he was deluding himself. It was all assumptions. Two and two make five. There was no proof this was Chrissie's killer.