Chapter 27

Klempner

Damn phone…

What’s wrong with the fucking thing?

I tap in again. Nothing happens.

I’m several floors up, heading back for my hotel room. The signal should be strong up here.

I inspect the screen…

Yes… plenty of signal…

Better contact Dakho… Get him to supply a new one…

A more reliable model this time…

Arriving at my room door…

… A brief shufti along the corridor…

… I’m alone. A quick inspection that my slicked-on hair is still in place…

… It is… a faint dark line against the white paint, which peels away, then drops to the floor as I slide the
card into the lock and push the door open…

I toss the useless phone onto my bed then start to shrug off my jacket…

… and in mid-movement, I stall.



My spine prickles and without meaning to, I’m standing stock-still, Glock in hand, staring around the
apartment.

What’s wrong?

Working on automatic, my hand follows my eye, weapon aimed, but…

I don’t see anything.

Nothing has moved.

Nothing has changed.

Air-con whispers above me, riffling the petals on a vase of lilies and wafting honeyed air at me.

The carpet still lies in vacuumed stripes, with only my own footprints lightly in the pile.

Really?

Experimentally, I press my foot down by one of the existing footprints: a perfect match.

My newspaper lies where I left it, outside on the balcony, folded up on the table, alongside my
breakfast tray. And the balcony is small, with nowhere for an intruder to hide.

Placing my feet silently, I cross the floor, turn the handle of the bedroom door. With a subdued click, it
swings open.

Inside… the carpet in perfect dark-light stripes… the bed made, and beside the pillows, a pair of bath-
towels folded, for some inexplicable reason, into the shape of swans.

Why do they do that?



On a side-table, the usual tea and coffee kit, biscuits, a small box of foil-wrapped chocolates, a
comments book…

Gun in one hand, with the other, at arm’s length, I flick open first one wardrobe door, then the other.

There’s nothing but my own clothes. And while shirts garishly printed with pineapples and palm trees
might be an offence to good taste, I don’t feel threatened by them.

Only one place left…

Inexorably, I’m drawn to the door of the en-suite.

Freezing statue-still for a long second… ear cocked… gun at the ready… I listen…

… to no more than the mixed warbles and screeches of birds, the hiss of cicadas, splashing pools and
chattering children…

Standing back, thrusting out, I kick the door and it bangs open, bouncing on its hinges…

But inside, there’s nothing more alarming than a tidemark around the bath where I’ve washed away the
sweat of the day and the maid has been lax in her cleaning.

Still, my alarms are blaring…

What triggered it?

My mouth tastes metallic and my heart plays percussion against my ribs…

Calm down…

Breathe…



Think…

What happened?

I was barely in the room…

Outside then…

Something in the corridor…

Elbow crooked to aim the gun-barrel at the ceiling, I dart a look outside. The corridor is still empty;
nothing to indicate anyone has been watching.

At the end of the passage: double French doors, closed, to a Juliet balcony: curtains to either side, long
and full, draped to the floor.

Marching briskly down, I tug first one curtain to the side, then the other. Still nothing. The balcony
beyond is tiny, but just on the off chance someone might be hanging over the edge…

Letting your imagination run away…?

… I try the door handle.

It’s locked.

The corridor is long and all but featureless: four doors to the left, four to the right… but… I looked. If
anyone had been at the doors, I would have seen them.

Baffled at my own reactions, I pace back to my room door… Look right… Look left… Up to the ceiling…

Hidden camera?



But if it’s so well hidden, even my subconscious wouldn’t have responded…

I look down…

… and my pulse pounds…

There, on the thick corridor carpet, a single hair, my guard-hair, fallen to the floor, close by the edge of
the door frame.

From my eye-level six feet up, I wouldn’t even notice it except that I’m looking and, catching the light, it
glistens.

It glistens red.

Sweat streams cold down my spine.

Stooping, I pick up the tiny thing. Then, plucking a hair from my own head, I hold the two side by side.

In one hand, I hold a single copper strand. In the other, a thread of brown.

Juliana…

Playing your games again?

*****


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