Quintin Jardine - Alarm Call

‘We’d like to see Johnny Nichols,’ I told him. ‘He’s an old acquaintance of mine. He called on me earlier today at the Bellagio, but I wasn’t able to talk to him. I’d like to catch up with him now, before he goes on.’

Ricci shrugged his shoulders. If he wondered why Daze and Liam had come along with me, he didn’t ask. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said, with an expansive grin. He checked a book behind the desk. ‘Yes, he’s in six ten, North Tower. I’ll call him and let him know you’re here.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I told him. ‘I’d like to surprise him.’

The manager chuckled. ‘Okay, you do that.’ He winked at me. ‘I am going to have an eleven thirty show, yes?’

I chuckled back. ‘Don’t you worry about it; he’ll be singing his fucking heart out after I’ve talked to him.’

The lift to the North Tower was a fair distance away, tucked in behind a twenty-four-hour bar with gaming consoles set in its counter, but we found it. We rode the lift up to the sixth. . it was tight with Everett in it. . and followed the signs to room ten. The place looked older, somehow, than the rest of the complex and there were ice machines and Coke dispensers every thirty yards or so, making an incredible racket. I was pleased by that: it would lessen the chances of anyone hearing the boy Johnny squeal.

We found his room and I thumped on the door. Liam put his thumb over the spyhole as we waited, to make it a real surprise for him when he opened the door. Only he didn’t. I banged again, but that didn’t produce a response either.

‘Excuse me,’ said Daze, quietly. We stood back, and he kicked the heavy-duty door open, with just one shot. Liam led the way into the room.

There was no sign of Johnson, but the bathroom door was closed. Everett kicked that in too … it wasn’t locked so he didn’t need to, but he had switched to full action-man mode by that time. Our man wasn’t there either, nor would he be back. The wardrobe doors were open, and there was nothing hanging inside. All he had left behind were some empties and a pile of tangled bedclothes … at least, that was what we thought, until they stirred slightly.

I grabbed a corner of the sheet and yanked it off: there was a red-head lying beneath. Her hair was a mess, she had a butterfly tattooed round her navel and she wasn’t a real red-head; those were the first three things I noticed about her. The fourth was that she was out of it. The new A Team had just battered its way in on her and she hadn’t flickered an eyelid.

Everett put the covers back on her, while I took a look at the room’s coffee table. There were two highball glasses on it, one of them still almost full, but the other drained. Beside them there stood a three-parts-empty bottle of bourbon and a few ginger-ale mixer discards. I looked around on the floor under the table; I almost stood on the small clear phial before I spotted it.

I turned round to see Liam sitting on the side of the bed, shaking the girl gently. I watched as she came to; I saw the look of dazed panic spread across her face, and I saw her mouth open as if to scream. Everett put a hand on her shoulder; when he wants to, he can be one of the gentlest people in the world. ‘It’s okay, honey,’ he said, quietly. ‘We’re the good guys.’

I pointed at the bottle on the floor. ‘She’s been on the same trip I took,’ I told the two of them. I picked up the phone, identified myself and asked the operator to connect me with Mr Ricci.

‘Yes, Mr Blackstone,’ he murmured. ‘Did you find Johnny?’

‘No. I’m sorry, I was wrong earlier; your eleven thirty show’s off. I think you should tell your general manager to come to six ten, and send a doctor and a couple of cops up here too. You’d better make sure that at least one of them’s a woman.’

Eventually a lieutenant and a sergeant from the Metro Police Department domestic crimes unit turned up, both of them women. By that time we were in the corridor, waiting as a police medical examiner took blood and other samples from the girl.

Her name was Lola, and she was a dancer in one of the shows in La Cage, another Riviera theatre. She was still too stunned to give any detailed account of what had happened, but by the time we’d told the detectives what we’d found when we burst into the room, they were in no more doubt than we were. It didn’t occur to either of them to ask us why we’d kicked our way in, but none of us was about to jog their elbow on that.

Within ten minutes of their arrival there was an all-state alert out for John Nichols, on suspicion of date rape.

I took the lieutenant aside; her name was Oakley, and I wondered if she’d ever been a cowgirl. ‘If you catch this guy,’ I said to her, ‘he’ll have something on him that’s important to me. It’ll be a digital camera, and I expect you’ll also find a laptop computer in his possession. There will be material stored on them that relates to me, and that was obtained without my knowledge or consent. However, it does not relate to this crime, so I want it to be seen only by officers who need to see it, and then destroyed immediately they have.’

She looked at me shrewdly. ‘Mr Blackstone, do you want to make a complaint against this man?’

‘Lieutenant Oakley, I want you to lock this man up for this crime alone. I just want to make sure that what I ask you to do is done.’

She was sharp, this woman. ‘Sir, would I be correct if I guessed that Nichols is trying to extort money from you with this material?’

‘At this stage, I’m not prepared to make such a complaint. Is that a good enough answer for you?’

‘It’ll do.’

‘In that case, you should know that if necessary I’m prepared to take legal action to protect myself.’

She smiled at me and made a decision. ‘That won’t be necessary. When Nichols is apprehended he’ll be brought to me. I and I alone will view any material he may have. Unless you’re wrong and I decide that it does relate to this case, or unless it shows you committing a crime, I’ll erase it.’

‘Thanks, Lieutenant Oakley,’ I told her, sincerely. ‘This is not a financial inducement, you understand, but I’d be grateful if you’d let me know the address of your department’s benevolent fund.’

She grinned. ‘The Sheriff’s Office will do just fine, Mr Blackstone.’

They didn’t find Johnson, of course. . I still couldn’t get used to calling him Nichols. . not that night or next morning. Eventually the police worked out that he’d had an hour and a half start on them, time enough to get well clear of Vegas, across the state border and west into California, or east into either Arizona or Utah. But they’d tried, so I made a note in my pocket PC to send them a cheque as soon as I could.

I had Prim brought back to my suite for breakfast, and told her what he’d done, but she didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘You don’t surprise me,’ she replied. ‘Nicky sourced the GHB. It’s just like him to keep some for himself and use it. He can be such a sleaze-bag.’

‘You didn’t think that when you were screwing him.’

She gave me the most withering look I’ve ever experienced, even worse than the one I got from an English teacher when I asked if I could use a comic-book version of Treasure Island for exam revision.

‘You are such a self-obsessed idiot, Oz,’ she said. ‘I never was screwing Nicky Johnson. I went to Mexico with him to provoke you into coming after me. I brought him to Scotland for exactly the same reason. Obviously it didn’t work either time. You were so obsessed by Susie and your kid that you jumped at the chance to get rid of me.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘What would you have done if I’d come back to you?’