‘That might work for you, but it wouldn’t explain this,’ Knox replied, gesturing at the bruise across his face that was still an intense, deep purple. ‘I’ve also got an idea, though.’

Chapter 61

Chapter 61

They got out of the car and crossed the junction to the Richmond, pausing just before the turn-in.

‘Give me a minute, then follow me in,’ Knox said.

Then he ran round the corner, through the hotel’s front doors, and straight up to the reception desk.

‘Sorry, excuse me. Hello,’ he said to the young man at the desk between panting breaths. ‘Oh God,’ he continued, his eyes darting across the foyer and back to the receptionist again. ‘He’s going to kill me.’

‘Can I help, sir?’ the receptionist asked, covering his confusion with professional courtesy.

‘My boss, is he already here?’ Knox spun round, facing away from the desk. ‘A man, about ten years older than me, grey suit?’ He turned back to the receptionist. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t get here first. This is it. I’m done.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the receptionist replied, ‘but I can’t give out any information about our guests. Or possible guests.’

‘Just tell me,’ Knox said, a pleading edge in his voice, ‘did he look angry?’

The receptionist looked at Knox’s desperate eyes, and the bruise across his cheek, and very slightly shook his head.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Knox said. ‘Maybe I can still fix this.’ He started to move away from the desk to the bank of lifts. ‘Fifth floor, right?’ he called back to the receptionist.

‘Sixth,’ he replied, instinctively.

Of course,’ Knox said, pantomiming smacking the side of his head and wincing at the pain it caused in his cheek.

As the lift doors closed behind Knox, a woman walked through the hotel doors, drawing the receptionist’s gaze away from the lifts. Halfway across the foyer she turned towards the receptionist, raised up a folded A-to-Z of the city, and said, ‘Lovely morning out there,’ in a broad American accent.

‘Yes, madam,’ he replied, immediately forgetting her as he went back to reviewing the morning’s depressingly short list of departures and arrivals.

Bennett reached the bank of lifts in time to see the display above the one Knox had taken stop at the sixth floor. She called the next lift, rode it up to the fourth floor, then took the stairs the rest of the way.

By the time she reached the sixth floor Knox had already made it most of the way down the corridor, moving silently from door to door listening for any movement inside.

There was only one room left, at the very end of the corridor.

Bennett tiptoed over to Knox and they both pressed their ears against the last door. At first they heard nothing, then what sounded like another door somewhere inside the room being opened.