Mark Mills - House of the Hanged

‘An Italian, eh?’ said Tom. ‘I think I might have seen him around. Does he drive a fancy roadster?’

‘Must be someone else. Signore Minguzzi arrived by train. I know because he insisted on being picked up from the station, even though it’s a short stroll.’

Minguzzi. And no car to search, just the room, which meant filching a spare key from the reception desk. Or maybe not. With any luck, Frau Wissmann would have left the original back in her own room. She had obviously returned there to get changed for the beach after her visit to Minguzzi’s room.

Tom tried to imagine what she was thinking. Undoubtedly confused by the Italian’s sudden disappearance, and probably a little insulted, she was unlikely to do anything that would draw attention to their illicit tryst.

He knew he didn’t have long before the maids went into action, and he needed a convincing reason to return back upstairs. The best he could come up with on the spur of the moment meant spinning yet another yarn to poor Olivier.

‘I’ve got a full house in a week or two, which means boarding a couple of guests here. Is there any chance of viewing one of the rooms on the top floor?’

One of them happened to be free, and Olivier was all for showing it to him. Tom told him not to worry; he was quite happy to check it over on his own.

‘I’m sure the consummate professional has better things to do.’

‘I’m sure the wife of the consummate professional would agree with you.’

Nadine had tossed a couple of disapproving glances the way of her husband while scampering around the terrace, attending to the breakfast requirements of the hotel’s residents.

Armed with the key from Olivier, Tom made his way back up to the third floor, ignoring the vacant room and making straight for 312. He estimated that he had five minutes, give or take, before he’d be expected back downstairs. It wasn’t long, and he’d used up most of it by the time he finally figured that Frau Wissmann must have taken the Italian’s room key with her to the beach. Minguzzi’s jacket was still hanging in the wardrobe, but the key wasn’t back in the pocket, or on any of the surfaces, or in any of the drawers. This left him with little choice.

Fortunately, the reception area was deserted. Unfortunately, Olivier came hurrying into view just as Tom was about to help himself to the spare key to Minguzzi’s room from the bank of cubbyholes on the wall behind the desk. Had Olivier seen exactly what he was doing? Probably not, Tom judged, and he made a show of returning the room key Olivier had given him to its hook.

‘Well? What did you make of it?’

‘Perfect. How much does it cost?’

‘More than most, but a trifle for a man of your means,’ grinned Olivier.

‘Can we check availability for the week of the fifteenth?’

‘Give me a few minutes, I have to a put an urgent trunk call through to Paris for one of the guests.’

While Olivier was unlocking the door to the office, Tom surreptitiously pocketed the key to Room 104 from the rack.

‘Take as long as you need, I’m not in any hurry,’ he said, strolling casually off, back towards the main staircase.

Minguzzi’s room turned out to be half the size of the Wissmanns’, if that: a dark, north-facing little box without a balcony. The curtains were closed, the bed made, unslept-in. Minguzzi had obviously been a fastidious type. His socks were grouped according to their colour in the chest of drawers, and in the bathroom his bottles of hair pomade (and various other ointments and unguents) were carefully arranged in ascending order of size on the marble-topped washstand.

Tom had been expecting to find the suitcase packed, ready for a swift departure, but the Italian had evidently decided to stay on, which suggested a certain self-assurance.

Pulling out his pen and pocket book, he noted down the name of the tailor in Rome who had cut the lightweight summer suit and the linen jacket hanging in the wardrobe. The shoes were ready-to-wear, but the Homburg-style Panama hat on the high shelf in the wardrobe offered up something intriguing. There was a name embossed in gold on the leather sweatband: Cesare Pozzi.

The name of the hat maker, or Minguzzi’s real name?

Tom suspected the latter. He couldn’t say why exactly. Somehow it fitted with the man he’d brushed with, briefly and violently.

Minguzzi was surely an assumed name, adopted for the job. It’s what any professional would have done, and the Italian’s professionalism, though not beyond reproach, was palpable. That much became clear when Tom made his way to the desk between the windows.

He had saved the best till last, but soon found himself disappointed. There was no pocket book, no address book, no cheque book, no incriminating names or telephone numbers scribbled on scraps of paper. In fact, there was nothing of any note in the desk drawer besides a brochure for a hotel in Biarritz – another job? – and a bundle of French francs. Tom thought about pocketing the money, but decided against it. Ideally, he would have searched the room more thoroughly. As it was, he did the best he could within the given time.

Pulling the door shut behind him, he removed his gloves, slipped them into his jacket pocket and made his way back downstairs.

Olivier was loitering in the reception area while a silver-haired woman, seated at the desk in the office, gabbled away on the telephone.

‘It turns out all she wanted was to check on her cat,’ he announced irritably. ‘I think she’s even trying to talk to it.’

He was all smiles and kind words, though, the moment the woman had finished her call. While Olivier fussed around her, Tom took the opportunity to restore Minguzzi’s key to its cubbyhole. As soon as the woman had wandered off, wet-eyed with emotion after her feline communication, the charade was followed through. The register was checked; a third-floor room with a sea view was reserved for the week commencing the fifteenth.

Strolling home along the narrow coast path, Tom struggled to draw any satisfaction from the success of his mission. Yes, he’d managed to gain access to the assassin’s room undetected, but what exactly had he learned? Very little; almost nothing other than that one of Minguzzi’s last living acts had possibly been to have sex with a Swiss German woman almost twice his age.

He could envisage Leonard’s barely disguised look of disappointment when he got to hear Tom’s account of the past hour. For all his skills as a back-room spymaster, Leonard had never been a convincing dissimulator in person; he wore his feelings far too readily on his face. His true talent had always lain in selecting operatives who didn’t.

It had been there all along, but Tom became intensely aware once more of the Beretta tucked into the back of his waistband, hidden beneath his jacket. He knew that it would be on his person, or within easy reach, until this thing was over. He found himself wondering if he was being observed, even now, and he tried to estimate his reaction time based on a man stepping suddenly from the undergrowth up ahead and pointing a gun at him. He calculated that he wouldn’t stand a chance. He would be dead, his blood leaking into the sandy soil before he could even draw his weapon.

He moved the Beretta to the hip pocket of his jacket, closing his fingers around it, narrowing the odds on the imaginary assailant.

It seemed like a deeply symbolic act.

It had taken him a good couple of years to shake off the paranoia which had ruled his life for so long, to learn to walk down a city street without checking to see if he was being followed, to not glance up every time a new customer entered a restaurant where he was dining, to accept the innocent attentions of a stranger for what they really were.