Bloodline

‘Stop!’ I said loudly. ‘Can you play that again?’

He pushed some buttons on the desk in front of him and the images went slowly backwards.

‘There,’ I said. ‘Stop.’

There were three people in the lift. A young man and a woman who were too intent on fondling each other to notice anything going on around them, and a second, older man wearing a dinner jacket and a black bow tie. This second man glanced ever so briefly up at the camera fixed above the kissing heads, allowing it to catch an image of him, full face.

‘Do you know that man?’ DS Sharp asked.

‘Yes, I do,’ I said, continuing to stare straight into the man’s eyes on the screen. ‘It’s a racehorse trainer called Austin Reynolds.’

‘Can you tell which floor he got out on?’ I asked.

There was a time code superimposed across the top of all the video footage and DS Sharp inched forward the images frame by frame, measuring the time between Austin entering the lift and him leaving.

‘Assuming the lift is going up, it is about right for the fifteenth floor but it’s impossible to say exactly. The camera position doesn’t allow us to see the doors so we can’t be sure how long the lift was actually moving.’

‘What time did he get into the lift?’

He wound the video back to the exact moment.

‘Twenty-two thirty-one and seventeen seconds.’

Just after half past ten. Ten minutes after Clare had checked in.

Was that a coincidence? As Lisa, the Morning Line producer, had said, coincidences did happen. But was this really one of them?

‘Do you have a list of those staying at the hotel that night?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not. But we could find out from the hotel.’

‘Let’s check first to see if he leaves.’

We went on watching the video recordings.

‘Is that him?’ I suddenly asked, seeing someone that resembled Austin enter the lift. I shouted at the image. ‘Dammit man, look up at the camera!’

He didn’t, of course, and I wasn’t very certain it had been him.

‘Can you check the lobby films for that precise time?’

DS Sharp again pressed his buttons and the wide view of the lobby reappeared on one of the screens. He wound the recording on until the time code was the same as for the shot in the lift. He then let it run.

Austin Reynolds was clearly visible walking from the direction of the lifts to the main exit.

Without being asked, DS Sharp pulled up the shot from outside with its zombie-like eyes. Austin Reynolds had to wait about four minutes in a queue before he climbed into a taxi and was driven away.

‘Twenty-two fifty-eight,’ DS Sharp said, reading the time code off the screen. ‘Mr Reynolds left the hotel more than half an hour before your sister died.’

Surely no one would kill to prevent me seeing that.

‘Unless he came back,’ I said. But, even I knew that was unlikely. ‘Carlos said there was a second man, so let’s keep looking.’

We spent another twenty minutes looking at the videos from the lifts but there was no one who I even remotely recognized getting into any of them.

‘According to Mario, the second man left the hotel during the commotion that followed Clare’s fall.’

DS Sharp moved the recordings forward to twenty-three thirty on the time code.

I never realized how busy hotel lifts could be. Hardly a second went past without each of the four having people in it moving in one direction or the other as the hotel guests came back from the theatre, or diners from the high-level restaurant and bar descended to their rooms, or to the street-level exits.

But still there was no one I recognized.

At precisely twenty-three thirty-two and fifteen seconds on the clock, a man wearing a dark overcoat and a blue baseball cap entered a lift already half-full with other people, going down. He didn’t look up at the camera, in fact he seemed to be purposefully looking away from it, and also from the other people.

‘Is that the same baseball cap that Clare had on when she checked in?’ I asked.

DS Sharp stopped and re-ran the film.

‘It might be.’

‘Did you find the cap in Clare’s room?’ I asked. ‘Or was she wearing it when she fell?’

The detective sergeant didn’t answer.

‘Where are her things?’ I asked him. ‘Even if she didn’t have a handbag, she must have had her car keys.’

‘There was nothing left in the room except the note.’

‘How about her car? Where’s that?’

No answer.

‘And her phone?’ I asked. ‘Where did that go? And did she call anyone before she died?’

Anyone other than me.

‘I’ll have to investigate,’ DS Sharp said, clearly uncomfortable.

Past time for that, I thought. Well past. He had obviously been so convinced by the note that it was straightforward suicide that he really hadn’t bothered looking for anything else.

I watched on the screen as the lift emptied, presumably at ground level.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Can you find that man in the lobby?’

He fiddled with the equipment and a wide shot of the lobby appeared on a screen.

‘There,’ I said, pointing.

We watched as the man walked briskly across the lobby.