The entrance to the roof was up half-a-dozen flights of groaning, threadbare carpeted stairs. I peered into the corridors as I passed each level; it seemed there were about eight rooms per floor. I had a few reasons for doing this. One: I wanted to estimate the number of guests. I figured there were about forty rooms, with a couple of empties, so maybe sixty to eighty people. Two: I wanted to see if Officer Crawford was door-knocking. He had seemed a bit squeamish around the body, and I doubted he’d ever run a murder investigation before, but I still thought he’d be able to conjure up a rudimentary line of questioning. A corpse required at least a smidgen of urgency, I thought, but he seemed determined not to give it. Considering the breakfast hall had been energetically gossip-filled instead of morose, I was still wondering if anyone here knew who the dead man was, and if anyone even cared. Three: it’s always been a habit of mine to try to sneak a peek into hotel rooms that are being made up, just because I like seeing what’s inside. I used to come back to a hotel room and tell Erin that the room across the hall had the beds on different sides of the room, the TV mounted on the wall, or different coloured curtains to ours. It sounds like such dull insight (go on, editor, take this bit out, I dare you), but ask yourself if you’ve ever walked past an open hotel door and not looked inside? It’s impossible.

Now that I think about it, that was what was bugging me so much about the mood over breakfast. It felt like everyone was walking past a door without looking inside.

Maybe I’m saying something about humanity’s innate curiosity. I’m the guy who sat in his brother’s car with a body in the back just to see what he’d do. I’m the guy who’s walking to the roof for mobile reception just to google ‘the Black Tongue’. I’m the guy who’s about to look through way too many doors. Maybe it’s important after all.