Read Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid for Free Online Page A

a small yellow Post-it note attached and a bronze coloured key stuck to the back.
    Both cards had been printed with some kind of stick-on letters. The one with the Post-it note said:
    FLAT 12
    CABOT TOWER
    MILTON STREET
    BRISTOL
    On the Post-it, someone had written in block capitals:
    LEAVE THIS CARD IN LOCKER.
    DESTROY POST-IT NOTE.
    Trevor read the second card:
    LOCKER NUMBER C9.
    COMBINATION 357716.
    MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME = HURST.
    MEMORABLE DATE = 30/07/66.
    Then he examined the ticket:
    LEEDS FESTIVAL
    BRAMHAM PARK
    24th – 26th AUGUST
    DAY TICKET ONLY
    SATURDAY 25th AUGUST
    He frowned and scratched his head as he scanned each of the items again. The address of a flat in Bristol – and presumably a key for it. Something about a locker and a festival ticket for 25th August… Today in fact.
    But what’s it all doing inside a toilet cistern? And what’s with destroying the Post-it note? Weird or what? Still, it’s nothing to do with me. Need to get on.
    Trevor replaced the cards and the ticket in the envelope and slipped it back into the plastic wallet, but no sooner had he sealed it than he heard the cacophony of Milly launching into one of her famous barking frenzies, unmistakable even at this distance.
    ‘Shit,’ he said aloud and dropped to his haunches. He re-taped the wallet back inside the cistern lid while a voice in his head told him this was not a very sensible idea, but he had no time to listen. Milly’s barking had reached a crescendo, and Trevor thought he could hear the sound of a woman screaming – or was that two women?
    He wrenched open the canvas holdall and emptied the broken pieces of porcelain onto the floor, making a vague attempt to arrange them so it looked as if this was where the cistern lid had fallen. Then he laid the intact lid in the holdall and zipped it shut.
    Grabbing the bag by the handle, he fled from the bathroom, through the bedroom, and out into the corridor. As he had feared, the wire cage with the towels and linens was parked immediately outside his room, but how had the chambermaids got there so quickly? He scuttled along the hallway and soon had his answer. The two intervening rooms on his side of the corridor had “Do Not Disturb” notices hanging from their door handles, and on the floor outside the second on the right was a large silver tray laid with breakfast.
    He was almost level with this particular door when it opened, and an overweight man in a white towelling dressing gown appeared and stooped down to pick up the tray.
    ‘What an idiot,’ said Trevor.
    The man in the dressing gown paused mid-stoop and stared up at him, a baffled expression on his bloated face. ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘Oh sorry. Not you. Me. I’m the idiot,’ Trevor said without breaking his stride and continued to chide himself for having forgotten to put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on his own door.
    So intent was he on getting there, he scarcely registered the words, ‘You know, I think you’re probably right’.
    The barking had reached a ridiculous level of decibels by the time he burst into the room, and he was not in the least surprised by the awful scene which greeted him. Milly stood in the middle of the bed, baying wildly in the direction of the two chambermaids, who were pinned against the far wall with a look of abject terror on their tear-stained faces. One of them – the younger of the two – was just completing an excruciatingly ear-piercing scream when Trevor came through the doorway.
    ‘Milly!’ he yelled.
    Milly, who was quite clearly having a whale of a time, stopped barking long enough to look round at her master and then, after giving him what could only be described as a conspiratorial wink, turned back towards her cornered prey and resumed her deafening assault.
    Trevor rapidly approached the bed. ‘Milly, I’m warning you…’
    Apparently realising he was serious this time, she gradually reduced her barking to a barely audible level and contented herself with an