Darren Shan - Hell's Horizon

“How should I proceed?” I asked.

“Why ask me? I’m no detective.”

“But you’ve had dealings with them. You know more about it than me. Do I need cameras, recorders, bugs? Approaching people — do I pretend I’m a real detective? What about the cops? And how do I recognize a clue from a lump of dog shit?”

Frank laughed and pointed at the space above the door behind my head. I turned and looked up. A sign hung there. when in doubt, decide!

“Ford Tasso said that to me the day I started. When life got me down, I had one of the girls print it up. I glance at it twenty times a day, more if I have to.”

“If I’d wanted dry old proverbs I’d have bought a fortune cookie.”

Frank shrugged. “You asked for my advice — that’s it. There’s a thousand ways you could investigate. Sitting around thinking won’t get you anywhere. Nor will doing things the ordinary way — The Cardinal doesn’t want that. When I started, I made some lousy calls, but they were my decisions. The Cardinal respected that and left me to work things out. You’ve gotta do the same. Go out on a limb and hope you don’t fail.”

“I was looking for more practical advice,” I grumbled.

“Then look elsewhere,” Frank told me, and that was the end of our discussion.

I met Bill next, in a bar close to Party Central. We ordered sandwiches and sat in a quiet corner, away from the crowd, discussing Nic and what had happened.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Pretty well, considering.”

“I damn near fainted when Kett told me. We were joking about her Friday, on the way up, remember?”

“You said if the fish didn’t bite, we should invite her up and tell her to bring a friend.”

“I’m sorry, Al.”

“Don’t be. You didn’t know her. I barely knew her myself.” I took a bite out of the sandwich — the bread was stale — and chewed mechanically. “Who told Kett about her?”

“He won’t say. All I know is, he got a call at home, Thursday. Somebody told him there’d been a murder at the Skylight and the body had been removed. Gave him the room number, date and time, a description of the victim.”

“Her name too?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea who the caller might have been?”

“If it had been any other hotel, I’d have said a maid or bellboy. But employees are more tight-lipped at the Skylight. My guess is it was another guest, somebody with a conscience. Or it could have been the killer.”

“You reckon?”

“The symbol gouged into her back — he didn’t do that for fun. When someone goes to that much trouble, he’s looking to be noticed. He might have wanted the case dragged through the media. Maybe he’s planning to strike again and wants to be recognized when he does.”

“A serial killer?”

“Possibly. But from what I’ve gathered it was a clumsy kill. Slow and messy. So we’ve either got a beginner on our hands or somebody who wants us to think he’s a beginner.”

“Any clues?” I asked. “Any leads?”

“Not by the time we arrived, but the better part of a week had passed before we were called onto the scene. Whoever brought her back might as well have dropped her off at the station.”

I hadn’t told Bill that I’d collected Nic’s body from the Fridge. Didn’t intend to. Those were the kinds of details you learned to withhold from friends. Nor did I plan to tell him about my meeting with The Cardinal.

“What are your chances of catching him?” I asked.

“Slim to none. If we’d been informed as soon as she was discovered…” He sighed. “The pathologist will do his best, but I doubt he’ll discover anything useful. We’ve questioned the staff — nothing. There’s a few to go but we won’t get anything out of them. Unless he strikes again or Kett receives another phone call… nada .”

I nodded slowly. I’d figured as much.

“What about a private investigation? Any point?”

“You could hire someone,” Bill said. “Costly. Probably wouldn’t achieve anything. But it couldn’t do any harm.”

“What if I was to investigate?”

He frowned. “Don’t be crazy. What do you know about detective work? It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies.”

“I know. But how would I go about it?”

He studied me silently for all of a minute.

“You’re not asking my opinion, are you, Al? You’re committed to this already. Right?”

“Right.”

“Jesus.” He pushed the remains of his sandwich away. “How far are you into this?”

“I’ve got some names. Background information.”

“Any angles?”

“I was hoping you’d provide me with a few. Old enemies, a family feud — something like that.”

He smiled wryly. “I told you, it’s not like in the movies. Motives and deaths of this nature rarely go together. Nic checked in under a transparent pseudonym — Jane Dowe. Why do people normally give false names in hotels?”

“Because they’re there to fuck?”

“Crude but precise. Chances are she picked up a guy, took him back to the Skylight, he turned psycho, end of story.”

“Did anybody see the two of them together?”

“The receptionist remembers Nic but insists there was no one with her in the lobby. The room to the right of hers was unoccupied. The old couple in the room to the left went to bed early and slept the night through.”

“If I investigate,” I said slowly, “where should I start?”

He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked old and tired in the dim light. Bill had been talking about taking early retirement for a couple of years — looking at him now, I began to think maybe he should pack it in, before the job made a premature end of him.

“You might glean something from the staff at the Skylight,” he said reluctantly. “They weren’t anxious to talk to us. Given your connections, there’s a chance they’d be more open, assuming they know anything. But leave it for a couple of days. You don’t want to run into Kett. Let us complete our investigation and move on before you poke your nose in.”

The previous detectives had already interviewed the staff and come up blank, but I’d have a crack myself, as Bill suggested, though I wasn’t sure I could wait until the dust settled.

“What about friends and family?” I asked. “Anybody suspicious?”

“None that we know of, though we’ve only been on the case twenty-four hours and those are the kind of details you don’t unearth immediately. Her closest friend was Priscilla Perdue. Know her?” I nodded. The name was in the file and Nic had spoken of her a few times. “And there’s her brother. We couldn’t get anything out of him. He didn’t bat an eyelid when we called him in to tell him about the death and ask him to identify the body.”

“That’s peculiar, isn’t it?”

“Not really. People react to death in all sorts of ways. Very few weep openly in front of the police.

“Apart from those two, I can’t help you. I might know more in a day or two but right now we’re struggling to get inside her head. Nic kept her personal life to herself. In fact, if you haven’t any objections, I’d like to hear what you have to say about her.”

We ordered another round of orange juices and I ran Bill through my time with Nic. Toward the end of our talk he returned to the topic of detective work and honored me with some much-needed advice.

I shouldn’t bother with bugs — such technology was for the professionals. He told me to be honest when interviewing people, tell them who I was and why I was interested in Nicola. “That way they’ll have sympathy for you and may be more inclined to talk. If you pretend to be a real detective, they’ll see through you and close up shop.”