No Place to Hide by J.S. Monroe

Author:J.S. Monroe [Monroe, J.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781801109345
Publisher: Head of Zeus

39

May 1998

The first thing I noticed was that the drawer beneath the sideboard was hanging open. I also saw that the window on the far side was closed, the curtain becalmed, hanging still. Unlike my mind, which was in turmoil. Had I thrown Lecter a pill? Done anything at all that might have encouraged him to jump? I shut down the repetitive thoughts as fast as they arrived. I was sure I had done nothing to hasten his death. Learnt my lesson from what happened on the quayside in Newlyn. I had checked myself, stopped manhandling him around the bathroom. I’m not a violent man. I can’t let myself think otherwise. My only ‘crime’ was to have locked Lecter in the bathroom, denied him a safe escape from whatever drug-induced demons were chasing him. Left him with only one, fatal way out.

I looked at the Indian cupboard, tried to imagine the naked bodies of Aldous and his lover. If the rotten.com footage had been filmed in there, where exactly were they having sex? On the floor? By the sink? And where was the camera? I turned to the back wall and felt around the fittings of a towel rail like a plumber. What exactly was I searching for – a hidden camera? The idea seemed increasingly absurd, like something out of the James Bond movie that Ji had ripped last week. I glanced up at the central light. This was a dowdy bathroom in rundown student digs, not the set of Tomorrow Never Dies.

I began to relax, happier now that it seemed unlikely I had been covertly filmed. And then I looked across at the shower cubicle in the corner. The sides were opaque with limescale, but the door was open. I walked over and peered up at the chrome showerhead. Rather than pointing downwards, it had been angled into the centre of the room – at the area in front of the Indian cupboard. I put one foot inside the shower and stepped up to take a closer look. There were six black rubber water outlets in a circle and a smaller outlet in the middle. It was this one that interested me. The outlet was covered in a thin layer of glass. Like a lens.

‘Careful, it can come on unexpectedly,’ a familiar voice said behind me.

I spun around. Louis was standing in the middle of the bathroom, rolling a cigarette. His eyes weren’t orange any more. They were coal-black and no less disconcerting.

‘I didn’t know you were here. I was looking for my bag,’ I said, adrenaline surging through me.

‘In the shower?’ he asked, a wry smile on his lips.

Which way was this heading? I hoped his smile would linger and that we’d be affable with each other, as we had been before; that he’d somehow make light of me snooping around his house. But that was too much to ask. His smile fell away, broke into a sneer.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said, closing the bathroom door behind him.

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