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slipped the hotel nametag introducing him as ‘Mr Cotelli, Manager’ into his breast pocket and headed for the front door of the rental flat.
    A woman’s scream from somewhere down the hall outside stopped him as he turned the handle.
    More memories tore across his vision. Recent ones. The converted farmhouse at the end of the track. The naked girl tied to the bed, bleeding. The boyfriend with his long, tangled hair and sunken, cokehead cheeks. On his knees, narrow eyes focused on the barrel of the pistol. The interrogation. The answers. The pleading.
    Then the thunderous blast of the gun around the filthy room and the bullet blowing the boy’s brains all over the bare wall. And the girl’s desperate screams starting all over again, because she was convinced that Scope was going to kill her next.
    He shivered, waiting for the memory to pass, surprised by the strength of the guilt he felt.
    ‘Pull yourself together,’ he said aloud to himself. ‘It’s nearly over.’
    He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. A man’s drunken shouting had replaced the scream. It was coming from the flat at the end. In the time he’d been here, the guy and his old lady had been constantly yelling and shrieking at each other, and more than once he’d considered going round there and telling – or getting – them to shut the hell up. But he’d always resisted. There was no point drawing attention to himself, which was why he’d chosen a dump like this in the first place, and thankfully he wasn’t going to have to put up with it for much longer.
    Holding this particular thought at the front of his mind, he made his way down to the street and, conscious of the wail of sirens starting up from pretty much every direction, hailed the first passing cab and asked the driver to take him to the Stanhope Hotel.

Nine
    EVEN MORE THAN half an hour later Elena still couldn’t believe what she’d done. She’d assaulted one of the hotel’s best customers. What on earth did you do about that?
    Her response had been to get on with her job, and, as always, there was plenty to be getting on with. Already she’d had to deal with a regular business guest who was kicking up a fuss at reception because the room he’d specifically ordered wasn’t available; a couple whose room wasn’t ready because the previous guests had only just been (at last) evicted, and who were trying to wangle a partial refund (they didn’t get one); and three separate complaints about missing room service meals. And all the while she’d been waiting for the inevitable call from Siobhan, the general manager, or a representative of the Stanhope’s owners, the GreenSky Group, telling her that she was dismissed. Or worse still, someone from GreenSky actually showing up and escorting her from the building in front of all the other staff – a humiliation she didn’t think she’d be able to handle.
    But so far Elena had heard nothing, not even from Mr Al-Jahabi, who she’d half-expected to come storming into the lobby demanding an immediate apology. So she just carried on.
    Right now she was hunting down one of the room service waiters, a new addition to the team called Armin, who’d gone AWOL, and who, according to the kitchen, was the one responsible for at least two of the missing meals. He wasn’t in the usual hiding place in the mezzanine floor’s satellite kitchen – Clinton was still fast asleep in there. She’d asked the catering manager, Rav, to check the male toilets on each floor, but so far he hadn’t shown up there either. As she headed for the fire exit staircase, wondering what could have happened to him, she finally put in a call to Rod.
    ‘Hi babe, you OK?’ he said, sounding pleased to hear from her.
    ‘Not really,’ she answered, her voice beginning to shake as she told him about the incident with Mr Al-Jahabi.
    When she’d finished, he surprised her by letting out a burst of raucous laughter. ‘Good on ya, babe. It sounds like