Bloodline

But it had also been the hotel policy not to give me the name of the person who had checked Clare into the hotel, and I’d found a way round that. Clare was infinitely more pushy than I was, and I didn’t doubt that the ‘double-occupancy’ rule would have been as easy for her to circumvent.

Or had there, in fact, been two people in the room?

‘Do you know who my sister was talking to on the telephone while she was checking in?’ I asked Mrs Dalal.

My question made her blush, her olive-brown skin distinctly flushing round her neck. And she looked down as if embarrassed.

‘Sorry, I do not know,’ she replied while still studying the floor.

‘Then why are you unsettled by the question?’ I asked.

‘It is nothing,’ she said, but she still wouldn’t look up at me.

‘It must be something,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

She looked up at Colin Dilly. ‘Tell him,’ he said.

‘I am so sorry,’ she said to me. ‘We thought your sister was a prostitute. Irena was absolutely sure of it. Irena told me that she must be talking to her next client on her telephone. That is why she had no luggage. Irena said she would only have condoms and they’d be in her pockets.’

‘But she paid for the room with her credit card,’ I said with some degree of anger. ‘A prostitute wouldn’t do that.’

She looked up again at Colin Dilly. ‘Sometimes they do,’ she said. ‘At least we are pretty sure they do. And Carlos then checks.’

‘Carlos?’ I asked.

‘He is one of the bellmen,’ she said. ‘If Irena gives him the nod then he likes to check.’

‘How does he check?’ I asked.

‘When Irena gives Carlos the nod, he goes up ahead of the girl onto the same floor as her room, and then he waits and watches to see if a man comes.’

‘And did she give him the nod on that Friday night?’ It was Colin Dilly who asked the question that I was itching to ask.

‘Of course,’ said Rieta Dalal. ‘Especially after she’d been so rude at reception.’

‘And what did Carlos discover?’ I asked.

‘I do not know that,’ Rieta said. ‘I went home soon after your sister arrived.’ She again glanced at Colin Dilly. ‘I always worked right through my break times so that I could leave early. I don’t like to travel home by myself on the tube after ten o’clock at night. But that was my last late shift and now I’ve been switched to the early one.’ She smiled, clearly much happier with the new arrangement. ‘I have not seen Carlos since that night.’

‘Did you tell any of this to the police?’ I asked.

‘Police?’ she said. ‘No one from the police has asked me anything.’

‘Do you know if the police spoke to Carlos, or to Irena?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I know nothing more than I’ve told you. Can I go now, please, Mr Dilly?’

‘Yes,’ Colin Dilly said while looking at me with raised eyebrows for confirmation, which I gave by nodding. ‘Thank you, Rieta. You can get back to work now.’

She went out of the office and Colin Dilly closed the door behind her.

‘Surely the police must have interviewed the people who saw or spoke to my sister that night.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was off last weekend.’

Why was I not surprised?

‘I’d now like to talk to Carlos,’ I said. ‘And also to the security man who unlocked her balcony door.’

‘What difference will it make?’ Colin Dilly asked, his tone clearly indicating that he thought I was wasting my time, only making things harder for myself.

I looked at him. ‘At nine o’clock that Friday evening my sister told me she was driving straight home to Newmarket from Edenbridge in Kent. Instead, an hour and twenty minutes later, she checked into this hotel without any luggage and without having a reservation. And just over an hour after that she was dead.’ I paused and looked at him.

‘I cannot believe she would have suddenly decided, after leaving me, to drive all the way into central London on the off chance that this hotel might have a free room, and that the room would just happen to have a convenient balcony on a sufficiently high floor, so that she could jump off it to her death.’ I paused again to let what I was saying sink in.

‘I think she had to be coming here to meet someone, someone she must have spoken to after she left me. I also think that committing suicide, if indeed it was suicide, must have been a last-moment decision. If she had been planning to kill herself, she would, at the very least, have made a reservation for a high balcony room.’ I paused once more.

‘So I’d like to talk to Carlos to find out if she did, in fact, meet someone in her room here that night. And, if Carlos didn’t see anything, the security man might have done.’

Colin Dilly sat down once more at his computer and tapped away again on the keyboard.

‘Carlos Luis Sanchez,’ he said. ‘The bellman. He’s working today from three o’clock until eleven.’ I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to midday. He tapped some more. ‘I can’t find the details of the security men who were working that night.’

‘I’ll come back at three o’clock to see Carlos. Can you find me the details by then?’