Charles Cumming - A Foreign Country

‘Take your time, Monsieur Uniacke, take your time. There’s no hurry. If you need anything more, just let me know.’

Moments later, the bell rang at the entrance to the hotel. Pierre walked across the lobby, skipped down the stairs and briefly disappeared from view. Kell could hear a woman talking in flustered and apologetic English about the ‘blasted weather’ and how sorry she was for ‘disturbing the hotel so late at night’.

Barbara.

‘This way, madame.’

Pierre shouldered the sausage bag and led her up into the lobby with practised charm, passing behind the reception desk in order to process her details.

She checked in like a pro.

‘Oh the flight was terrible . I’m not sure that the captain quite knew what he was doing. One moment we were in the air, the next he was bumping us down on the tarmac like a tractor. Do excuse me for not speaking French. I lived in the Loire as a young woman and used to be able to get by quite well, but at my age these things seem to disappear from one’s brain, don’t you find?’

‘Is it just yourself staying with us, madame?’

‘Just myself, yes. My husband, poor lamb, died three years ago.’ Kell almost spat out his Badoit. ‘Cancer got him in the end. You’re so kind to have found me a room at such short notice. I am a nuisance, aren’t I? There were several people at the airport with no idea at all where they were going to stay. I ought to have shared a taxi with them, but it was all so confusing. I must say this hotel seems awfully nice. My passport? Of course. And I suspect a credit card is required as well? They always are these days. So many PIN numbers. How is one supposed to remember them all?’

Kell grinned behind the laptop, screened from Barbara’s gaze by a wall on which the management had hung a monochrome portrait of Nina Simone. Every now and again he would tap random letters on the keyboard to give an impression of honest endeavour. In due course, Pierre handed Barbara the card key for room 232, explained the timetable for breakfast and sent her on her way.

‘Please push the button for the second floor, madame,’ he said, as she walked towards the lifts. ‘I wish you to pass a good night.’

Kell checked his watch. 1.35 a.m. He gave Barbara another ten minutes to settle in and to familiarize herself with the hotel, then sent a text message initiating the final part of their plan.

Time check 1.45. Lobby green. You?

Barbara responded immediately.

Yes. Will be in position from 2. Good luck.

Kell was putting the phone back in his pocket when Pierre emerged from reception and asked if Monsieur Uniacke needed anything further from the bar.

‘Thank you, no,’ Kell replied. ‘I’m fine.’

‘And how is the wi-fi? Still working to your satisfaction?’

‘Completely.’

He waited until Pierre had returned to the office before texting Bill Knight.

Clear?

Nothing came back. Kell watched the clock on the laptop tick through to 1.57 and knew that Barbara would already be in position. He tried again.

Clear outside?

Still no reply. There was nothing for it but to proceed as planned and to hope that Knight had the situation under control. Kell disconnected the laptop from the socket in the wall, tucked it under his arm, took his now empty glass of mineral water to the reception desk and placed it on the right-hand side of the counter beside a plastic box filled with tourist brochures. Pierre was back in his chair in the office, drinking Coke, wallowing in astro-physics.

‘Could I check something?’ Kell asked him.

‘Of course, sir.’

‘What rate am I paying on my room? There’s a confirmation email from my office that seems lower than I remember.’

Pierre frowned, approached the desk, logged into Opera and clicked into the Uniacke account. As he did so, Kell lifted the laptop on to the counter and placed it approximately two inches from the bowl of potpourri.

‘Let me see.’ Pierre was muttering, squinting at the screen. ‘We have you on …’

Kell put an elbow on to the laptop, let it slide along the counter, and sent the bowl of potpourri plummeting towards the floor.

‘Fuck!’ he exclaimed in English as it exploded in a cluster bomb of petals and glass. Pierre reared back from the counter with a matching ‘ Merde! ’ of his own as Kell surveyed the delightful chaos of his creation.

‘I am so, so sorry,’ he said, first in English and then, repeating the apology, in French.

‘It doesn’t matter, sir, really it doesn’t matter. These things happen. It can easily be cleaned up.’

Kell, bending to the floor in pursuit of the larger chunks of glass, searched for the French phrase for ‘dustpan and brush’, but found that he could only say: ‘Do you have a vacuum cleaner?’

Pierre had now made his way out into the lobby and was standing over him, hands on hips, trying to calculate the best course of action.

‘Yes, I think that’s probably a good idea. We have a Hoover. I will clean everything up. Please do not worry, Monsieur Uniacke.’

‘But you must let me help you.’

Pierre dropped to the floor beside him. To Kell’s surprise, he even placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. ‘No, no. Please, you are a guest. Relax. I will fetch something.’

‘I think I saw one on the stairs on the way up to my room. Is that where you keep them? I can get it for you. Please, I’d like to help …’

It was the only risk in his strategy; that the night porter would be so concerned about the security of the front desk that he would accept a paying guest’s offer of help. But Kell had read his personality correctly.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I can fetch it. I know the cupboard. It’s not far. If you wait here …’

The phone pulsed in Kell’s pocket. He took it out as Pierre walked away. Knight had finally deigned to reply.

All clear out here Commander. Over and out.

‘Prat,’ Kell muttered, checked that Pierre had gone upstairs, and slipped behind the reception desk.

Barbara Knight had closed the door of her room, put the sausage bag on the floor outside the bathroom, poured a cognac from the mini-bar and telephoned her husband.

The conversation had gone better than she had expected. It transpired that Bill had begged a cigarette from a passer-by, found himself a seat at a bus stop thirty feet from the entrance to the hotel, and was busy killing time trying to remember the details of a love affair between the French Consul in Lagos and the daughter of an Angolan oil speculator which had been the talk of their three-year residency in Nigeria more than twenty years earlier.

‘Didn’t he eventually have a hand cut off or something?’ Knight asked.

‘Darling, I don’t have time for this now.’ Barbara closed the curtains and switched on one of the bedside lights. ‘I think it was a finger. And I think it was an accident . Look, I’ll have to call you later.’

She had then replied to a Kell text message – Yes. Will be in position from 2. Good luck – removed her blouse and skirt and, wearing only a pair of tights and a white Hotel Gillespie dressing-gown, walked out into the corridor. Less than a minute later, Barbara Knight was standing on a step halfway between the first- and second-floor landings, holding her shoes and listening out for the footsteps of the blond-haired porter with wretched acne who had only recently checked her in.

Pierre duly appeared at 2.04 a.m., jerking back in fright at the white apparition bearing down on him with a mop of wild hair, clutching a pair of shoes.

‘Madame? Are you all right?’

‘Oh, thank goodness you’re here.’ Barbara was shuddering in mock-frustration and had to remind herself not to overcook the act. ‘I’m afraid I’m rather lost. I was on my way downstairs to see you. I was trying to leave my shoes outside to be polished, you see, but I’ve only gone and locked myself out of my room …’