Tuesday May 8th
Gary was woken at six. Sybil had registered his
home number on her phone. They had found it.
No, she had not signed in at the hotel. She was
probably someone’s guest. Emergency services and the police had already been
informed.
***
The first person Gary thought of was not Sybil but
himself. All his colleagues would know that the woman he had claimed was his girlfriend
was plying the horizontal trade again and in fact leading a double life. He
would be the laughing stock of HQ. He could feel the shrinkage of humiliation
coming over him even before he had finished taking a scorching hot shower and
knocked back a double whisky for his nerves. Chewing a mouthful of strong
mints, Gary left his flat and got into his car. It was a bit early for drink
and drive patrols, he hoped.
***
Gary arrived at the hotel without misadventure.
Ambulance, doctor’s car and a police patrol car were lined up in the drive to
the entrance. The patrol cops had taken it upon themselves to call in forensics.
They could not wait. It was part of their routine, they said.
Chris Marlow, who had been working on tests all
night, had not been able to reach Gary at home or on his mobile, so he was
already on his way with a forensic team. There was another corpse to deal with,
but at least he didn’t have to get to Upper Grumpsfield. What a woman to have
to deal with! What would Gary have to say? Had he known what Sybil was up to?
***
There was hushed bustle in the hotel foyer. The other
guests would be sure to find out what had happened, but they would still need
breakfast. The hotel must carry on functioning as if nothing had happened.
The hotel manager greeted Gary at the entrance.
“I take it you are Chief Inspector Hurley,” he
said.
“That’s right. Where is she?” Other cops from the
homicide squad were just reporting for their morning turn of duty when they
were told of the murder by the patrol cops. Gary would have liked to stay
incognito, ostensibly to make questioning easy, but everyone knew about Sybil.
He fooled no one.
The dead woman in the cupboard had been more or
less living with Gary and she was a hooker. No doubt about that. She
transported a lipstick, cash and a dozen condoms in her small clutch bag covered
in glittering stones and sequins. She was clearly out for a night pursuing her
trade.
Sybil was retrieved from the stock cupboard, which
contained all the usual cleaning materials. If there were no finger prints, it
had been thanks to a clever move by the murderer. That remained to be seen.
Gary hoped Chris could find out from which room she had been dragged to the cupboard.
The dead woman now lay on the long red velour
carpet that stretched from one end of the corridor to the other. She was still
wearing the clothes Gary had described to the barkeeper. The black wig had
fallen backwards so that the bandage holding her fair hair together that had
been meant to keep the wig in place with the help of a few hairpins was visible.
Dragging the corpse out of that cupboard - a tall hiding-place otherwise used for mops
and brushes - had probably led to the wig being caught on something and getting
dislodged. Unnecessary force had been used to get her out. She had been pushed into the cupboard in a standing
position, probably already dead, but forensics would have to decide that. The
person who put her there was strong – or
had two individuals been involved? A nasty bruise on the woman’s chin suggested
that she had been rendered unconscious and then throttled.
Was it an improvised killing? Moira could have
known her assassin. He had probably knocked her about before that final, hefty
blow. Forensics could say if it had been rape. Someone had wanted excitement
but not wanted anyone to know about his adventure.
“Who found her?” Gary asked.
“A cleaner.”
“Where is the cleaner now?”
“In one of the kitchens. She helps out.”
There was a kitchen on every floor, connected to
the main kitchen by a dumb waiter. Guests could order food in their rooms and
it would be provided, freshly cooked in the basement kitchen, by whoever was on
duty. The hotel wasn’t quite butler standard, but it was nice there.
Gary felt disgusted. It wasn’t fair. Sybil’s greed
for sexual thrills and total lack of judgment had superimposed itself on a
second personality, indicating that she must have longed for the life of a
hooker and her mind had tried to equate it with her decent life of working mother
which she achieved by slipping into an identity about which she did not herself
know.
Her murderer might still be in his room. Finding
her on the third floor did not mean she was killed there. At dead of night it
would be possible to transport the corpse in one of the lifts or via the stairs
and dump it in the cupboard to be found by an unwitting cleaner next morning.
The murderer had kept a cool head. Chris would examine
the lifts, stairs and corridors before guests started emerging from their rooms
and going down for breakfast. The blow to the woman’s chin had caused a thin
trickle of blood to flow that was now dry. That blood might help to trace her
journey to that cupboard. If they knew which room she had been in, it might
help to find out who was with her. The rooms would have to be examined. For the
time being, notices were put outside the lift doors on every floor.
The doctor said she had been dead for several hours.
Chris checked her body temperature and said that she was probably killed around
midnight on the basis of a corpse cooling off fairly slowly.
Gary conferred with his colleagues. They were
decent enough not to mention that they knew about his association with the
woman they only knew as the fair-haired pretty Sybil.
Gary was showing no sign of emotion, but looked
tired. It was as if he had been expecting her to be murdered. What had Cleo
said? Some crimes were just waiting to happen? Gary could feel only relief that
it was over, and that was an emotion he could not express in words, even to
himself.
***
Eventually Gary left the hotel. His presence had
become superfluous. He was haunted by the ugly vision of the beautiful Sybil with
awful strangulation marks on her neck, a vividly painted face, the dried blood
from the wound on her chin, and the wig half torn off. Chris would take
detailed photos and they would be stored in the archive. Gary could then
download them. He would have to show Cleo what Sybil had looked like in death?
What would she say? Would she realise that Gary was now relying on her support?
Sybil’s body would be taken to the pathology lab at
HQ. Gary could say goodbye to her there if he had a mind to. He hoped that Cleo
would accompany him. He gave up hovering at the hotel entrance, got in his car
and drove to his office. There he parked on his designated parking lot and went
into the canteen. He was shocked and appalled at what had happened.
***
At about 9 o’clock Dorothy arrived at Cleo’s
office. As usual, she had brought a selection of breakfast goodies to eat with
the wonderful espresso Cleo always had on offer.
“Any news about anything, Cleo?”
“Not yet. Let’s have some breakfast, and then I’ll
phone Gary and see what he’s been up to.”
“If anything.”
“And then we’ll pay a visit to the school. I expect
Jessie will be there this morning. I wonder how she’s getting on with Ali.”
***
Gary hadn’t considered the possibility of Chris
phoning Cleo before he did, but that’s what happened. Chris phoned from the
hotel.
“Has Gary phoned?”
“Not yet. What’s up?”
“I think you should know that Sybil alias Moira has
been found strangled at the Majestic Hotel, Cleo.”
“That’s terrible.”
Cleo switched the phone on loud so that Dorothy
could listen in.
“The problem is that she was probably there with a
man and she was dressed like a hooker, so she was on a roll in her multiple identity.”
“That doesn’t really surprise me.”
“We’ve been collecting evidence for over two hours
and haven’t finished yet. By now, the corpse should be in the lab.”
Dorothy looked at Cleo in horror.
“Poor woman,” she said.
“People talk, Cleo,” Chris continued. “The patrol
cops who were called out talked to me after Gary had left.”
“Did they talk about the relationship between Gary
and Sybil?”
“There had been a bet going round that she would
ditch him within six months.”
“But you don’t think that happened, do you, Chris?”
“Judging from Gary’s ill-disguised distress, I
shouldn’t think so. She must have been leading a double life.”
“He suspected that, Chris, but he could not get his
mind round the idea. Dorothy suggested something like that once. She prophesied
that the match was grotesque and wouldn’t last.”
“And she was right. I don’t get involved with
gossip, but it’s turned out the way people said it would.”
“But they didn’t forecast murder, surely?”
“Not exactly, but Sybil was playing for high stakes
calling herself Moira. She thought the pseudonym was keeping her activities
hidden. Who knows if she didn’t get involved with someone Gary had once
imprisoned?”
“I have to correct you on that Chris. Sybil and
Moira did not know of each other. Moira emerged as an individual personality.
She was secretive. She thought she was hiding her hooker garb from Gary, but in
fact she was hiding it from Sybil.”
“One thing in this whole weird story is that whoever
killed Moira, killed Sybil as well.”
“That’s what happened. The killer was not with
Sybil. He did not know about her, only about Moira, who had made herself
available.”
“The problem is that we can’t trace anyone unless
she made notes about her clients, but would she have done that if she was being
secretive?”
“We could search Sybil’s flat.”
“She was at Gary’s quite a lot of the time. Her
flat was rented to have somewhere the kid could call her own. A room with
pretty furnishings and toys. That sort of thing. She would not have left the
child there while she indulged in her sorties or brought anyone home for erotic
interludes.”
“But wasn’t the flat was used for that purpose when
the little girl wasn’t there? I’ll get a search warrant, Cleo. We need to
compare fingerprints and anything else that could help us.”
“Will Gary support the idea?”
“He won’t have to. I’ll go to the drugs squad and
say I suspect the woman named Moira of dealing.”
“Good luck, Chris. Thanks for phoning and please
keep me posted.”
“Of course. Ciao!”
***
“Let’s get some fresh coffee going, Dorothy. We
need fortifying before Gary phones, He must be out of his mind.”
“We’ll have to wait here until he does,” said
Dorothy. “Do you think he will? He hasn’t so far.”
“Maybe he couldn’t”
“Or he’s dreading talking to you about it.”
“I just hope he doesn’t fall apart, Dorothy.”
“Burnout?” said Dorothy. “Or desperate for you to
leave Robert?”
“I’ve told him often enough that I can’t
contemplate a permanent relationship. I think he sees it as a challenge.”
“But you are in love with him, aren’t you?”
“I don’t even admit that to myself, Dorothy.”
“Does Robert know how you feel?”
“I’m sure he does, but he’s so scared of losing me,
it’s almost pathological.”
Dorothy wondered if it was the right moment to tell
Cleo about the talk she had had with Robert, but before she had time to do so,
the phone rang again and this time it was Gary.
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