‘Well, one thing is for certain,’ Adam said, while unlocking the bedroom. ‘If Danny was sober enough to, you know…’
He made a crude hand gesture which caused Colin shake his head.
‘…for a bit of how’s your mother,’ he continued, noting his friend’s displeasure. ‘It meant he definitely couldn’t have been drunk enough to choke on his vomit.’
It was an interesting idea, Colin thought as he followed Adam into the room. He threw himself onto the bed; the traipsing around the long corridors mingling with the stupefying heat caused a sudden wave of exhaustion.
‘Do we have time for a rest?’ Colin asked, stifling a yawn.
Adam checked the time and shook his head.
‘I’ve got a theory. I think someone did this to stop the wedding.’
Colin was unconvinced, but waved his hand at Adam for elaboration.
‘If whoever killed Danny did it for that reason, it didn’t work. The wedding is happening tomorrow, which means whoever did the killing may do more. We’re working under a time constraint here.’
He sat down on the bed too and threw his eyes towards the ceiling.
‘What I’ve realised is just how amateur we’ve been so far,’ he said. ‘We looked a bit at Danny’s face, which didn’t help us work out how he’d been killed. I think what we need to do is search his room. We know he had an envelope, but we don’t know what was in it. Perhaps, whoever killed him was after whatever was inside.’
He thought for a few more minutes.
‘We’re going to split up. You go and search the room while I do a bit of work elsewhere.’
‘Why do I have to search the room?’ Colin asked, the colour rising in his cheeks. The thought of spending another second in the room with Danny’s corpse caused a shiver to run through his spine.
‘Well, you’re used to bodies, in your line of work and…’
‘You’re a wimp,’ interrupted Colin.
Adam was in no position to argue. Colin accepted his mission with a small nod of the head.
‘What am I looking for?’ he asked, rising from the bed.
‘The envelope and anything that seems out of the ordinary,’ Adam said, unhelpfully. ‘Check anywhere you think something might be hidden. Desk drawers or in the suitcase, that kind of thing.’
Colin left the room with a sense of unease. How were they supposed to solve a crime, if they didn’t even know what they were looking for?
He trudged down the corridor, hoping that some sort of Spidey-sense would awaken within him, though he didn’t hold out much hope. He made his way down the grand staircase and passed a few people sitting in groups around tables in the foyer, catching snippets of conversation, all about the stricken best man.
He made his way down the corridor towards Danny’s room, turning back every few steps to make sure no one was following him. The last thing he needed was company, or even worse, someone mistaking his meddling as guilt. Visiting the room once was a risk, let alone venturing in again with no suitable explanation as to why if he were to be questioned.
Casting one last clandestine look around, he slipped in the door, a sense of déjà vu enveloping him. Everything was as they’d left it.
The lifeless body was still on the bed; the bruises unmoved, though slightly darker, and the vomit uncleaned. Perhaps the police had instructed the hotel staff to leave the room untouched until after the body was collected.
Colin scanned around. He ignored the light switch for fear of alerting someone to the room, instead letting his eyes adjust to the dusky hues. He made his way to the middle and turned a full circle, hoping for some little detail to leap out at him.
Nothing did.
Instead, he moved over to the body and rooted through the pockets of his jacket and trousers. Inside, there were a few card receipts from the bar last night, but nothing of great importance.
Something else caught his attention.
The smell.
At first, as on the previous times, the overriding smell was that left behind from the vomit. But underneath it was something else, something smoky, medicinal almost.
Whiskey.
A small grain of doubt fell into the cogs of Colin’s thinking, causing them to shudder to a stop.
The whiskey, coupled with the vomit, was a very obvious sign that pointed to an accidental death. If it weren’t for Adam’s persistence that something was amiss in all of this, Colin would’ve downed tools there and then.
Instead, he pressed on.
For a while, he searched in drawers, pushing the contents this way and that, coming away empty each time. He moved from desk to bedside cabinet to wardrobe, but there was no sign of anything suspicious.
Frustration rose like a beast inside him.
Why had Adam sent him on a fool’s errand?
The silence in the room was interrupted by voices in the hallway outside. Voices that were growing louder by the second. Panicking, Colin crossed the bedroom in three giant strides, rushing into the bathroom and closing the door as quietly as he could behind him.
He stepped into the bath and pulled the shower curtain, wincing as the metallic rings scraped against the curtail rail. Visions of Psycho plagued him as he waited with his breath held.
Outside the bathroom door, two men were talking. From what he could make out, they were here to collect the body. They quickly discussed how they were going to move it, before putting the plan into action. Colin heard grunting, the rustle of fabric and a quiet bang as something fell over.
‘You’ve knocked the bin over,’ said one of the voices.
‘Ah, the cleaners will get it later,’ replied the other.
The voices were muffled as the sound of the bedroom door slamming filled the room. After that, Colin heard no more, though he didn’t move from his spot for a few minutes, just in case. When he was sure the coast was clear, he scurried out of the bath and splashed water over his sweating face at the sink.
He grabbed a handful of paper towels and dabbed them on his brow before looking around, dismayed to find nowhere to put the sopping material. He walked into the bedroom and saw the upturned bin, stopping short when he registered the contents strewn across the floor.
Next to the desk was a tattered brown envelope and the empty silver packaging of painkillers.
He lifted the envelope first, smoothing the creases and returning it to as near its original state as possible. There was nothing on the outside to mark it as different to the millions of other massed produced envelopes currently in circulation.
He turned it in his fingers before reaching inside. Whatever was in there to make it heavy was now gone. In its place was a single piece of paper, its thin blue lines scrawled over in black biro. The hand that wrote it appeared both rushed and angry to Colin’s mind.
He took in the message, turning it around in his head in order to try to make some sense of it, before shoving the missive back inside the envelope and the envelope inside the pocket of his shorts.
Next, he lifted the silver packaging. It belonged to regular paracetamol, though all eight blisters were empty. There was also no sign of the box from which they’d been procured.
Which made sense.
Danny would have no reason to own a box of paracetamol, since he was allergic to them.
Colin rose from the floor, eager to get back to Adam to discuss the things he’d found. As he moved towards the door, a quiet beep emitted from somewhere nearby.
Colin tried to zone in on where it had come from.
Getting down on his knees, he groped around under the bed, his hand settling on only cobwebs and lumps of dust. He moved around to the other side of the bed and repeated the task.
This time, his fingers touched something small and rectangular. He pulled it out from under the bed and held it in the shaft of light coming through the curtains.
It was a phone.
But not the up-to-date iPhone Danny made sure to get on release day.
It was a thin Nokia, as nondescript as they come. A small black-and-white screen told him that the battery was low. He dismissed the message with the click of a button, pocketed it and left the room, aware more than ever that time may be slipping away from them.