Pike asked him how the police had found the body.
‘A phone call from the woman staying next door,’ said Schmidt. ‘She had heard a, a commotion.
‘This crime was done quick,’ the policeman informed him evenly. ‘A killer from the bar where you were, sir, would not have to be away for long. You drank all that beer for two hours and no visit to the, ah, facilities?’
‘Well, no,’ Pike conceded warily. ‘I did go for a piss. In the toilet near the…’ Shit. ‘Near the mail box.’
‘And nearer the elevators, Mr. Pike,’ Schmidt declared, glancing at Gelber.
Pike remembered the toilet and brightened. ‘Look, when I went to the lavatory one of the waiters who’d been bringing me drinks followed me in there. We washed hands at the same time. He’s a little bloke with black hair, slicked back. And a silver stud is in his left ear. He speaks good English and he asked me what I thought of Czech beer.
‘I told him Czech beer is as good as Australian. A real compliment, that is. That waiter’s a bit poofy, I think.’ He found a smile. ‘We left the lavatory together. He’ll remember that.’
‘Poofy?’ asked Schmidt.
‘Sorry, I meant gay. Homosexual.’
‘Kindly wait as we inquire,’ Schmidt directed. The junior cop left the suite. Surely not to ask the waiter if he was queer, Pike thought.
He sat tensely in a lounge chair, trying not to look at Jack’s body through the open door. A fly had got in. It settled on the bloodied eye socket. Pike ran to the body and waved it away as Schmidt hurtled towards him, thinking an escape was on.
A forensic team in green coats arrived. A photographer took a couple of shots of their grim suspect. Gelber and Schmidt were absorbed in searching the premises.
Pike remembered Jack’s weapon. ‘Did you find a gun in here?’ he called.
Gelber trotted into the bedroom. ‘A gun, you say?’
Ah, so the big cop talks English. ‘Jack had a 32 mill revolver. He told me about it only tonight. He kept it by this bed. Under a newspaper, he said. On the table.’
Gelber nearly leaped at the table and lifted a copy of USA Today. ‘No gun,’ he reported. ‘We’d have found it before. Are you sure of this?’
‘That’s what he told me, Inspector.’
‘Why did he have a gun?’
‘For his own protection, the poor bloke.’
‘Protection from what, Mr Pike?’
‘The Argo heavies he was accusing.’
‘Do you know the brand of revolver?’
‘No. If it’s gone, you’ve got an armed killer somewhere.’
‘Where did Mr Sussoms get this gun?’ Gelber demanded.
‘Search me. Ah, sorry. He said he bought it in Prague.’
‘We require a mouth swab, Mr Pike, and your fingerprints.’
‘Sure.’
The inspector left the bedroom and made a phone call, sounding as if he was giving instructions. Pike checked his watch. Ten after midnight.
‘Excuse me,’ he called to Gelber. ‘Can I use the phone to ring my wife? We’re guests in the hotel. She might be worried.’
‘Kindly wait, sir. If your alibi is right, you may leave.’
Fuckoff returned, not looking pleased. He conferred with his seniors. Schmidt found a thin smile. ‘Your story is confirmed, Mr Pike. You may go but do not leave the hotel without us knowing. An officer is stationed near the exit.’
Pike grabbed his possessions and handed Schmidt one of his Argo cards: Czech on one side, English on the other. It contained the address and phone number of their apartment in Palmovka. He had not told them about that.
He returned to the bar, which seemed never to close. He drank a neat brandy in one toss. He hurried to the toilet where, remembering the corpse, he vomited.
Alex was asleep in bed when he arrived in their room at one in the morning. He sat at the writing desk and noted in his book of contacts and Argo affairs the names of the three detectives. He stared out at the wakening city, gazed lovingly at his green-eyed beauty, her honey-blonde hair spread over a blue pillow. She woke soon after dawn and held up her arms to cuddle and kiss him.
He waited until after breakfast in the hotel dining room before telling Alex about the murder and gruesome injuries. The news jolted her into shocked anguish for Jack Sussoms; indignation about her husband being suspected of murder.
Inspector Gelber visited the couple’s room soon after with instructions not to tell anyone about what Pike had seen in Jack’s suite or about Jack’s claims of criminality in Argo.
When the news spread during the day, the networkers at the Norvoski were agog. Three fellow Argo agents badgered Pike for details, which he declined to give them.
The Pikes were summoned to the hotel’s top-floor penthouse, a plush sanctum, for their first-ever private audience with Argo’s owner, Abraham Harbek. The short and slender man was in a dark suit, a tie of orange silk over a white shirt. Greying and closely cropped brown hair, darting eyes of blue.
To Harbek’s first question, the couple said they were sorry. They could not tell him much, they said, as directed by the police. They did not mention the gun; the missing pad of Jack’s notes. Regardless, Blarney did not want to talk any more about last night’s horror. Evidently suspecting that the Pikes were playing dumb, genial but grave Harbek did not press them.
Three men sat in Harbek’s suite’s lounge chairs by the windows. As if part of the furnishings, they did not speak and were not introduced. All were in suits. The two younger men looked northern European, the Pikes later agreed. They would be minders. Both had short brown hair, like their boss.
An older man, about fifty-five and stout, had longer, black hair, perhaps dyed. Eyes of pale brown. Harbek and the minders had looked to this man several times, as if in silent consultation.
‘A tragic loss of a dear friend and a network legend,’ Harbek mourned in a Texan accent. ‘A pity, however, about old Jack’s silly obsession with gangsters.’
Yes, Pike agreed, intrigued that Harbek knew, and knew the Pikes knew. The newlyweds left the suite feeling uneasy about the man they had been conditioned to edify. The police had put it about that the killer was probably a casual mugger, long gone from the building. It was a story to put the killers off guard, Pike figured.
No random mugger was going to take Jack’s pad of notes and any other evidence against the alleged Argo racketeers and leave the travellers cheques. Or torture him so.
Without those notes in Jack’s green ink, nearly devoid of punctuation, there was nothing remaining other than memories of the dear old bloke’s claims to the Pikes and a few other colleagues. As the killer or killers probably knew.
Accomplished combatant Blarney craved for a personal reckoning with the sadistic thugs who had killed genial Jack. If they came to get him, too, Pike was confident and ready. But he feared that Alex, too, was a target.
A tragic loss, Harbek intoned at a hurriedly convened meeting, high-ranking networkers only, in the hotel conference room. The Prague newspapers briefly reported on inner pages that an un-named American tourist had been found dead in his hotel room. No suggestion of murder. It read like a suicide. Well done, Abraham Harbek, you brute.
Three