Bloodline

We were in a darkened video viewing studio at Charing Cross police station and we’d spent over an hour looking through the CCTV footage from the hotel lobby for the night Clare had died.

‘While I was driving down here,’ I said, ‘I wondered if someone had been trying to kill me in order to stop me seeing these films.’

‘Kill you?’ he said, surprised.

‘Yes. There have been two attempts on my life this last week and I’ve been trying to work out why.’

I described the two incidents to him, including the murder of Emily, and he suddenly became more interested.

‘Have you spoken to Cambridgeshire Police about the CCTV?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nor to the Surrey lot. I only thought that it might be the reason on the way here from Newmarket this afternoon.’

‘So?’ he said eagerly. ‘Is there anything on the films that was worth killing to prevent you seeing?’

‘Nothing that’s very obvious,’ I said.

It had been very strange, and somewhat emotional, to see the silent images of Clare walking into the hotel lobby and up to the reception desk. I’d seen it from about four different angles but none of them had shown a close-up of her face or given any indication of her state of mind.

The hotel lobby had been relatively empty as she had checked in but later, as the Injured Jockeys dinner had evidently finished in the ballroom upstairs, large groups of dinner-jacketed guests could be seen making their way through to the hotel exit, and it was many of these that I recognized.

Mitchell and Sarah Stacey had been in one of the groups, obviously saying their goodbyes to their owners as they all collected coats from the cloakroom.

One of the cameras even covered the area outside the hotel’s front door and it had clearly shown people queuing for taxis in a rather strange, silent, green-tinged world.

‘That camera works on infrared after dark,’ DS Sharp had said, ‘hence the greeny pictures and the rather zombie-like eyes.’

I sat looking once more at the moving images and thought about what had been going on exactly fifteen floors above them.

‘Did it capture Clare?’ I asked.

We both knew what I meant. Did it capture the impact of Clare’s body on the pavement?

‘Yes, it did,’ he said. ‘But that has been cropped from this copy.’

I was relieved. I didn’t have to take the decision to stop watching, or not.

I looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘I thought you were leaving at six.’

‘I was,’ he said. ‘But I’ve nothing to go home to except an empty, cold flat so I’m quite happy to stay here as long as you want.’

I, too, had nothing to go home to but an empty, cold flat.

An empty, cold life.

A wave of pain and grief washed over me. Hold on, I told myself sharply, this was not the time or the place. I needed to make the most of this opportunity.

‘How about the cameras in the lifts?’ I asked.

‘They’re not very good,’ he said.

‘In what way?’

‘They don’t really show people’s faces. It’s all rather top down.’

He pushed some buttons on the machines and, in turn, we watched the recordings from each of the four cameras.

As he’d said, the results weren’t great. The images were a bit like those filmed for a ‘spot the mystery guest’ slot on television quiz shows, giving only tantalizingly brief glimpses of people’s faces, and from unusual angles.

At least we could tell which way the lift was going as the cameras just captured the lit-up ‘down’ arrows in the top corner of the image whenever the lifts were going down.

‘I think this one is your sister,’ said DS Sharp. ‘The timing is right.’

I watched as a young woman in jeans, pink shirt, and blue baseball cap entered the lift and turned round, leaning up against the back wall. After a while she was seen to leave the lift. She was alone throughout.

‘I timed the lifts,’ DS Sharp said. ‘It takes precisely that long to get from the lobby to the fifteenth floor.’

‘It certainly looked like Clare,’ I said, ‘but it’s not easy to be absolutely sure with that cap.’

‘It’s also not helped by the poor resolution of the cameras,’ he said. ‘They have such small lenses and that tends to distort the images.’

So, assuming it had been Clare in the film, she had gone up to the room on her own.

‘According to Carlos Luis Sanchez, one of the hotel porters, she was followed up to her room by two men, one after the other, and the first one was wearing a bow tie.’

DS Sharp raised his eyebrows in my direction.

‘Been busy, have we?’ he said.

‘I went there primarily to see where Clare died,’ I said. ‘But, while I was there, I asked some questions.’

‘Is this Carlos Sanchez the one who says there was someone in your sister’s room when she fell?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That was his friend Mario.’

‘Mario?’ I could tell from his tone that he was somewhat sceptical.

‘Yes, Mario,’ I said, ignoring him. ‘Apparently Mario is one of the night porters. According to Carlos, Mario saw the man leave the hotel after Clare had died.’

While we had been talking the CCTV footage from the lifts had continued to play on the screens, and I suddenly saw a face that I recognized.