Scrublands(62)

It occurs to Martin he’s distracting himself, wasting time, delaying the walk to the police station and the inevitable confrontation with Herb Walker. Nevertheless, he continues. There’s a service lane running along the back of the pub, extending the whole block between Somerset Street and Thames Street, where Herb Walker had parked momentarily the day before. Martin walks down the lane to where the fence ends in a pair of five-bar steel gates, chained shut. The gates prevent vehicle entry to a small gravel car park behind the pub, enough for three or four cars. There’s a low porch devoid of handrail: a delivery platform designed for reversing trucks. There’s a stack of wooden pallets, blue paint faded and peeling. And a car, one rear tyre flat, the other on its way down. He wonders if the closure of the pub might have been a sudden thing, its owner taken ill, leaving his car behind, the hotel left largely untouched.

Martin can see the swing doors to the old cellar, and a wooden stairway leading up to the accommodation on the top floor. He climbs over the waist-high gates, moving as quickly as possible to keep contact with the scalding metal to a minimum. He mounts the concrete stairs onto the delivery platform, finding the door locked. He doesn’t bother trying the cellar doors; the padlock looks resolute enough. He climbs down from the platform and walks over to the stairs and starts ascending, past a sign: STRICTLY HOTEL GUESTS ONLY. The green paint on the handrails has wrinkled and bubbled under the solar assault, and Martin keeps his hands to himself.

At the top there is a short landing and a door, its upper half a window. There’s a hole punched in the bottom left-hand corner of the window near the handle. Martin tries the door. It’s unlocked, opening outwards. Inside, his feet crunch on broken glass as he pauses to allow his eyes to adjust. He’s in a short passage, running into another corridor about five metres in front of him. At a guess, the passage between the door and corridor separates two hotel rooms. The air smells stale and musty. Martin moves to the junction with the other passageway. The main corridor is lined by the doors of the hotel rooms, left open with sunlight spilling through them. To the left the corridor goes only a few metres before ending in a closed door with the word PRIVATE in old-fashioned gold paint. The door boasts three serious-looking locks: private indeed. Martin surmises it’s the owner’s apartment. He walks along, tries the door. It’s locked.

Back the other way the doors on the left open onto hotel rooms. At the end of the corridor, where it turns ninety degrees to the right, there is another open door, leading into the best room in the hotel, the corner room. There’s a double bed, a washbasin and a small desk, and the room has its own set of French doors opening onto the verandah. Someone has been sleeping on the bare mattress of the bed; there are blankets bundled at its end and an ashtray full of butts on the bedside table. On the floor, next to an empty bourbon bottle, there’s a scattering of pornographic magazines. Martin picks one up; he didn’t think they still existed in this digital age. There’s nothing subtle about the imagery. It’s brutal, mechanical, emotionless, the flat lighting leaving nothing to the imagination. He wonders if they belong to the person in the checked shirt.

Exiting the room, Martin follows the corridor around its right-angle corner. It opens out a little where thickly carpeted stairs with brass runners head down on the right to a landing, from where they must continue back towards the front of the hotel. Opposite the stairs a wide passage leads to the verandah. There’s an ornate dresser on one side of the passage and a bucolic print depicting an English fox hunt on the other. Martin continues along the main corridor, more open doors to the left. To his right, a door opens onto a guest lounge. An old sofa and lopsided armchairs face a new flat-screen television. Someone has been here as well. Another overflowing ashtray, empty beer cans, dirty coffee cups.

The smell is worse down this end of the hotel, no longer merely musty. There are communal bathrooms at the end of the corridor, one for men, one for women. Martin gives them a miss. There is a final hotel room, this time with the door closed. Martin approaches it, and the smell is coming at him in waves: the smell of death. His stomach turns, from the stench and from the trepidation at what he might find inside the room. He holds his breath, pushes the door open, braces himself.

The place reeks. He pinches his nose shut between finger and thumb and enters, almost afraid to look at the bed. But it’s empty. What, then? He walks around the bed and there, lying spread on the floor, is the body of a cat, crawling with maggots and flies. Martin gags. Mr Puss, he guesses; locked in the hotel room with no way out. Poor thing. Martin retreats backwards towards the door, but then stops. He creeps forward again. There. The cat’s tail has been nailed to the floor.



Martin sits slumped on a bench in the Riversend police station, wondering if Walker will give him the time of day. The pretty young constable behind the counter has taken Martin’s name through to the office and returned with the message that if ‘sir’ would like to wait, Sergeant Walker will talk to him when he has an opportunity. So Martin sits and waits, suspecting Walker will simply leave him stewing all afternoon. There’s a wooden rack filled with brochures: Neighbourhood Watch, fire permits, how to get your driver’s licence.

Forty minutes later, Jason the army vet emerges from the back rooms and walks out of the station, deep in thought and apparently oblivious to Martin’s presence. A minute or two later Herb Walker appears. Martin leaps to his feet. Walker regards him with contempt. ‘This better be good, fuckface.’