Fifteen minutes later, the front door opens and David strides in with a man and a woman around my age, both wearing rucksacks. The man’s tall, with a long hipster beard and dark hair, shaved around the sides and long and swept back on the top. The woman’s about five foot five with blonde wavy hair, a sturdy physique and a scowl on her face. Her expression couldn’t be more different from the man’s. He positively beams at me as he crosses the lobby, his heavy boots reverberating on the polished wooden floor.
‘Joe Armstrong.’ He holds out a hand. ‘You must be Anna. David told us all about you.’
I shake his hand and return his smile. ‘Has he now?’
‘All good!’ David calls, as he hangs his coat on a hook. ‘Well … mostly.’
‘Fiona Gardiner.’ The blonde woman squeezes herself between Joe and the wall.
‘Nice to meet you.’ I offer her my hand and she shakes it firmly.
‘Okay … um …’ I tap at the keyboard. The system is showing that they’ve been allocated separate rooms. ‘Mr Armstrong, it says here that you’re in Room 6, which has a view of the mountains. Ms Gardiner you’re in Room 3, with a view of the sea.’ I look back up at the guests. ‘You’re welcome to choose which of those rooms you’d like. I can cancel the second room. You won’t be charged twice, there’s obviously been some kind of mistake in the booking.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Joe Armstrong looks at me blankly. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’
Fiona gives me an equally confused look and I feel the colour rise in my cheeks. David, heading into the dining room, chuckles as he opens the door. He knows exactly what I’ve done.
‘I thought you were a couple,’ I explain. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just when you walked in together I assumed—’
‘Oh, God no!’ Joe laughs heartily then catches the hurt look on Fiona’s face and quickly corrects himself. ‘Not that … Fiona’s lovely. I’m sure you’d make a wonderful girlfriend but …’ He runs a hand over his hair. ‘We’re not a couple. We don’t know each other. We only got chatting on the dock.’
‘It’s my fault, sorry.’ I shoot Fiona an apologetic look. ‘I’m new. I haven’t worked on reception before.’
‘Right.’ The edges of her lips rise but it’s more of a grimace than a smile. She holds out her hand. ‘If I could just have my key?’
‘Of course.’ I hand her the key to Room 3 and Joe the key to Room 6.
‘Can I take that for you?’ Joe says as Fiona adjusts her rucksack.
‘No, thank you,’ she says tightly. ‘I’m quite capable of carrying it myself.’
I turn back to the laptop as they plod their way up the stairs, Fiona leading and Joe following behind. As their footsteps reverberate on the guest corridor above my head, David pops his head out of the dining room door.
‘Sorry,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I could have corrected you but where would the fun be in that?’ His eyes flick towards the top of the staircase. ‘We’ve got a few interesting personalities this week. I think they’re going to keep us on our toes.’
Steve turns up the collar of his coat, mentally cursing his lack of umbrella and phone as he passes yet another South London street that doesn’t contain a pub called the White Hart. Still, no Google Maps and no GPS is infinitely preferable to the alternative, a stretch inside for murder. So far, other than the burner phone in his desk drawer and one very short phone call, there’s no evidence linking him to Jim Thompson, and he intends to keep it that way.
‘Where the fuck is – ah!’ He stops at the entrance to a small, characterless back street, hurries down it and pushes at the door of the White Hart.
He raises his eyebrows as he walks in. Yet another old boozer that’s been transformed into a gastropub with colonial-style ceiling fans, stripped floors, an oak bar and a selection of craft ales. Fucking hipsters, he thinks as he walks up to the bar and orders a pint of Heineken. They like to pretend they’re knitting their own houses, serving food on dustbin lids and turning their backs on technology but they’re capitalist bastards at heart, just like the rest of us.
He takes a sip of his pint and casually glances around, looking for Jim. It’s been a while since he last saw him but he immediately recognises the balding bloke in the thick glasses sitting on his own in the corner, a newspaper spread on the table in front of him. They were unlikely cell mates, back in the day (a long way back in the day), Steve in for fraud and Jim in for GBH, but they shared the same scathing sense of humour, a similar background and the same moral code.
‘All right?’ He sets his beer down on Jim’s table and pulls out a chair.
Jim doesn’t immediately answer. Instead he carefully folds his newspaper, tucks it into his bag, then sits back and gives Steve a long look.
To his immense irritation Steve’s pulse quickens and his heart thuds in his chest. He’s got no reason to be scared of Jim. Well, he does, Jim’s track record more than speaks for itself, but they’re … acquaintances, if not exactly friends. And Jim did offer to help.
‘All right, dickhead!’ Jim says suddenly. Steve ducks, but not quickly enough to avoid Jim’s outstretched arm and his temple throbs from where Jim slaps it.
He shakes his head and smiles convivially, his pulse slowing. ‘I think we both know who the dickhead is.’
‘Anyway,’ Jim reaches for his pint, ‘I would ask how you are but I don’t think we need to go there, do we?’
Steve shakes his head.
‘For what it’s worth I’m sorry. Sounds like Freddy was a good kid. God knows you couldn’t shut up about him.’
‘Yeah.’ Steve keeps his eyes fixed on the other man’s face, his small, brown eyes like marbles behind his thick-rimmed glasses. He doesn’t want to think about being in prison and getting pictures and letters from six-year-old Freddy asking when he was coming home. Biggest regret of his life that was, missing so much of his son’s childhood.
‘So.’ Jim runs his thumbnail down the side of his nose and scratches it vigorously. ‘Nice as it is to see you, Steve, this can’t happen again. Us going for a beer I mean.’ His eyes flit from Steve’s to the barman, wiping down the optics.
Calm on the outside, nervy on the inside, Steve thinks as he takes a sip of his beer. I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to go back inside again.
He sets his beer back down, rests his elbows on the table and leans towards his ex-cell mate. ‘It’s been a while,’ he says, ‘since we spoke and I just want to check everything’s in place. That it’s actually going to happen.’
It’s the silence he can’t stand. The trial was less than six weeks ago and, after the initial furore from the press and the calls and visits from friends and relatives, it’s as though it never happened. Like Freddy never died. Everyone’s just getting on with their lives like nothing’s amiss. But something is very much amiss, and Steve seems to be the only one who’s noticed it.
‘Like I told you,’ Jim says, lowering his voice, ‘I’ve got someone in place up north.’
‘And …’ Steve feels a knot form in his stomach. He just wants it over with, quickly, so justice is done, so he can tell his boy he did him right. So he can sleep.
‘They’re biding their time, building up trust. No point