Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

Ward wanted to believe the cool, anonymous voice. It could be a vital lead, but his inner skeptic made him pull back. “We appreciate your coming forward, but of course we’ll need to verify—”

She cut him off. “I haven’t come forward. I won’t give a formal statement, and I’ll certainly never testify in court. I have far too much to lose. I’m sure you understand, Detective Ward. And you needn’t bother tracing this call; I’m ringing from a telephone box. I just had a notion that you ought to know the truth.”

She rang off abruptly, leaving a loud, flat buzzing in his right ear. He looked up at Maureen, who was setting her receiver in its cradle. She made a face. “Worthless. Could be anyone, a crank, someone trying to take the pressure off Maguire.”

“But it is something new. We can ask the Bureau to follow up with Fitzhugh. Maguire can wait another few minutes downstairs; let’s head over to Coughlan’s, will we, and see if anyone can tell us exactly where Desmond Quill was at the time Rachel Briscoe was murdered.”

Coughlan’s Hotel was a small but very formal inn—directly across the square from the Garda station, but not the sort of place that would be happy to welcome police officers on duty, even if they were neighbors. Ward showed his identification at the front desk, careful to keep his voice low as he asked to speak to the manager on duty. A neat, middle-aged man in an expensive suit came out of a side office almost before the receptionist had set down the phone. He introduced himself as Noel Lavin, the general manager, and ushered them discreetly into his office. “Now, then, if you could tell me what the problem is, exactly…? And if there’s any way my staff can assist you, they certainly will.”

“We’re inquiring after one of your guests, Mr. Desmond Quill. We’d like to speak to the staff members who may have had some dealings with him.”

Lavin seemed to waver for a moment between his civic and moral duty to assist the Guards and his professional duty to maintain a screen of privacy and discretion for his paying guests. He smiled insincerely. “Is Mr. Quill in some sort of trouble? I assure you he’s done nothing here—”

“We’re just making some routine inquiries,” Ward said. “Which members of your staff would have had the most to do with him during his stay here?”

“The restaurant and bar staff, certainly. He took quite a few meals in his room, obviously. We were all shocked to hear about the murder. A dreadful thing, just dreadful and terribly, terribly sad.”

Ward proposed that Lavin should fetch the people they needed to see, and Lavin liked the idea. “Much more discreet that way, yes. Saves you from chasing all over the hotel…” Ward finished the thought in his own mind:…and letting the guests see you question the staff.

From the barman, Ward learned that Quill had gotten desperately drunk on Friday, the first day he was there, and that it had taken the barman and the night manager and two others to get him into his bed. The following day, Saturday, he’d spent more quietly. He’d stirred out for lunch in the hotel restaurant, but otherwise stayed in his room, ordering in drink—plenty of it.

The night manager backed up the barman’s story, saying Quill had spent most of the time in his room, drowning his sorrows. “At least I assume that’s what he was doing, from the amount of whiskey he ordered up. I check all the rooms before I turn in, and you could hear him in there, drunk as a lord and snoring his head off. You’d feel sorry for him, the poor sod.”

“What about the cleaners?” Ward asked Lavin. “I’m particularly interested in talking to the person who cleaned the room today.”

“You’ll be wanting Cara Daly, then. Only works at weekends, but she should still be here. I’ll see if I can find her for you.”

While he was gone, Ward sat and pondered the anonymous phone call. What did the woman on the other end of the phone have to lose if she came forward? It might have been just an elaborate decoy maneuver, an attempt to deflect attention from Maguire—and if that was the case, he was wasting time here. He was on the brink of packing it in when the door opened and Lavin returned with a slight, frightened-looking young woman with a puffy face and circles dark as bruises under her eyes. As she sat down in the leather armchair beside him, she crossed her thin legs and twisted them together, as if half afraid they would start moving of their own volition. Ward felt a twinge of guilt, knowing he didn’t have time to find out her story. Lavin, clearly nervous about leaving the girl in Ward’s care, started straightening the items on his desk and wouldn’t leave the room until Ward asked him to. What was he afraid the girl might say?

“I asked to speak to you, Cara, because according to Mr. Lavin, you cleaned Room Thirty-eight yesterday and this morning—the room where a guest named Desmond Quill is staying. Is that right?”

“I always clean Number Thirty-eight. It’s on my list. I meant to tell him, Mr. Lavin, about the room right away, but I forgot.”

“Tell him what, Cara?”

“There’s nobody in it today. Mr. Quill’s stuff is gone, all his clothes and shaving things.”

Ward felt a prick of apprehension, but he needed to know more, much more.

“Was Mr. Quill in the room when you were cleaning yesterday?”

“No, he was out.” The girl’s muscles went rigid and her hands clenched into fists. Her anxiety was contagious; Ward felt a tightening at the base of his throat.

“When you were cleaning the room, Cara, did you notice anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary?”

Her eyes flicked toward him suspiciously, and she licked her lips. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“You’re not in trouble. Just tell me what was unusual about Mr. Quill’s room.”

“I shouldn’t have touched anything. They could fire me for that.”

“No one is going to fire you, Cara. What did you see in Number Thirty-eight?”

“Didn’t see. Heard. I was tidying up the bedside table, and there was a tape recorder on it. I was just curious. I wanted to hear what kind of music he liked, the man in that room. He was nice; he left me a whole tenner the day before.”

“And what kind of music was it?”

“It wasn’t music at all.” She hesitated again, her hands and fingers twisting into elaborate knots in her lap. “It was just a whole lot of noise. Sounded like me dad, snoring.” Ward had been prepared for almost any answer but that. Snoring? Suddenly he heard the voice of the night manager, sitting in the same chair only a few minutes earlier: You could hear him in there, drunk as a lord and snoring his head off.

A few minutes later, Lavin was letting him into Number 38, which as Cara Daly had reported, had been completely vacated. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” Lavin said, unable to imagine his venerable establishment tarnished by scandal. “He left a credit card number with us. I’m sure he’s going to come by the desk later to settle things up.”

Ward stood at the door and let his eyes sweep up and down the hallway, noting the glowing red EXIT sign at one end. He turned back to the hotel manager. “Supposing someone wanted to leave the hotel without going by the reception desk, without being seen. Is that the only other way out?”

“Well, yes,” Lavin said. “Although the door at ground level does lock so no one can get in from the street.”

“May I have a look?”

Lavin led the way to the fire exit at the end of the hall, and down the concrete stairwell that must have been added to the old hotel in the past few years. He pushed open the door at ground level, showing how the exit led into a narrow alleyway. There were no windows above, which meant there would be no one to witness comings and goings.