Something Coming Through

6. The Hotel California

Petra | 24 July

Back in the day, the Hotel California had been a camp for scientists employed by the UN. The original building, a chain of modules perched on A-frame stilts, now housed the hotel’s reception and administration offices; guests were accommodated in cabins scattered across a landscaped park of terrestrial trees and plants cupped beneath a geodesic dome.

It was dusk inside the dome — a scattering of window lights amongst clumps of trees and bushes, fairy lights twinkling along the paths — as the manager led Vic Gayle and Skip Williams to the cabin rented by the late John Redway and his colleague, David Parsons. A clapboard cabin with a corrugated-iron roof, perched above a mossy pool fed by a little waterfall and approached by a humpback wooden bridge. No lights showing at the windows.

The manager had printed out scans of the passports of the two men, and made a copy of CCTV footage of them leaving the hotel at around four p.m. Parsons was older than Redway: a forty-two-year-old white male according to his passport, brown eyes, cropped black hair, one metre ninety. Clearly the boss, the manager said.

Both men were British. Parsons had paid for their cabin with a card drawing on credit deposited with the Petra City Bank in an account apparently opened by Cybermat Technologies.

The manager, a brisk young Spanish woman, stood back as Skip took out his gun and gave a good police knock, three hard raps with the side of his fist, and announced that the police were outside. No reply. Frogs peeped everywhere. They’d been introduced to control an infestation of flies, and had multiplied enormously. Vic sweated inside his suit. The warm air was heavy with the scent of the honeysuckle that curtained one end of the porch. A line from the old song which had given the hotel its name ran through his head. The one about checking out but never leaving.

Skip knocked again, exchanged a look with Vic, and ran the key card through the slot. The pinlight changed from red to green and Skip turned the handle and shouldered through the door, leading with his gun. Vic followed, into a living space under a slanting ceiling, lights coming on when Skip found a switch by the door. A leather sofa and leather armchairs, a big stone fireplace, a flat-screen TV on a sideboard. One wall was covered by a blow-up of the famous photograph taken by Marianne Hækkerup as the first shuttle flight had approached Mangala. A half-globe banded like an Easter egg: ice cap, desert, the bitter equatorial sea, desert, ice cap.

The manager stood in the doorway while Vic and Skip pulled on gloves and checked the two bedrooms and the bathroom. There was nothing to identify the men or the nature of their work. No papers or tablets, no data sticks. Anonymous clothing from Matalan and Marks and Spencer. White shirts, grey and black slacks, grey jackets, black sweaters, black socks. New toiletries. One of them had used an electric razor, the other disposable Bics.

Vic and Skip stripped the beds, moved furniture, checked under drawers, lifted rugs. Nothing.

‘I’ll call in the CI techs, get them to take DNA from the razors and toothbrushes,’ Skip said. ‘I guess I should post uniforms, too. Although I reckon Mr Parsons won’t be coming back.’

‘No doubt. But the people who killed his friend might stop by,’ Vic said.

They came out of the dome’s soft warm dusk into harsh sunlight and a cold wind. The fat orange sun hung above the roofs of the city. It was a hair past eleven in the evening, and it was the long afternoon of the day-year. Thirty-one days of light; then thirty-one days of night. After thirteen years Vic still hadn’t accommodated to it. Most people hadn’t. Across the street, a strip of bars and restaurants was buzzing with Landing Day revellers.

Skip said, ‘I should check with the British consulate, see if they know anything about these two. Maybe this is some kind of corporate espionage caper.’

‘I’ll tell you exactly what it is,’ Vic said. ‘It’s the worst kind of case. The kind of case that’ll keep you awake at night, keep Sergeant Madsen breathing down your neck. I pity you, man, I really do. First time you answer the phone, you get a full-blown twenty-four-carat whodunnit.’