GAVIN LLOYD AND his driver signed in at their hotel. The receptionist, an attractive young Hungarian woman, smiled warmly and brushed a stray wisp of hair away from her cheek.
‘Thank you, sir. Mr Lloyd, you are in Room 342, and Mr Collier, it is Room 356, both on third floor.’
They took their plastic keys and Lloyd said, ‘We’ll just put our bags upstairs and then perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us where the restaurant is.’
‘For breakfast?’
Lloyd looked as if she had asked him to clean the kitchens. ‘No, I don’t mean for breakfast. I mean for now! For dinner!’
‘I am sorry. The restaurant is shut. The last dinner was at nine o’clock.’
‘Well, I’m sure they can rustle us up something. Just show us where it is.’
She began to look concerned, knowing she had an awkward customer standing in front of her desk.
‘Sorry. It is shut.’
‘Look, am I talking gibberish or what? All I asked you for was directions to the restaurant. My driver and I have driven all the way from Cardiff, and it’s taken us over six hours. So the least we expect from a four-star hotel is a meal on our arrival.’
‘There is room service for snacks and sandwiches, or you can enjoy them in the bar.’
Lloyd stared at his driver and raised his voice. ‘Obviously I’m not making myself clear.’
‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’
The man suddenly appeared from behind them. He was dark-haired and spoke with a trace of an Italian accent. ‘I’m the manager here,’ he added.
As if speaking to an imbecile, Lloyd slowed and emphasized his words. ‘We have driven from Cardiff – more than six hours. My driver and I are very tired and hungry. Is it too much to ask you to get a hot meal?’
The manager shrugged. ‘There is only one person in the kitchen, doing sandwiches and room service. The chefs have gone home.’
‘I don’t believe this! A sodding four-star hotel!’
‘If you don’t mind my saying, sir, this is Edinburgh. Just step outside the door and you have many restaurants of all kinds. Whatever you like to eat—’
With a dismissive wave of the hand, Lloyd interrupted him. ‘Oh, forget it! We’re too tired to go walkabout. We’ll have one of your bloody sandwiches.’
Lloyd stormed off to the bar, with Collier following a few paces behind. The manager watched them go, fantasizing about this being his last day at work and how he had told that objectionable customer exactly what he thought of him.
While SOCO were busy gathering evidence at the immediate crime scene and the rest of the house, Lambert and Jones, both wearing latex gloves, sifted through the scattered contents of the bureau in the living room.
‘Can you translate Welsh into English?’ Jones asked as she picked up a slim, burgundy-coloured book.
‘Not a chance,’ Lambert replied, looking over her shoulder at the book. ‘On the other hand, the numerals should give us a clue. To hazard a guess, I would think dyddlyfr is Welsh for diary.’
She opened the diary and flicked through to January. ‘It can’t be his diary; it must be hers because the entries are written in Welsh.’
‘Translation won’t be a problem: Dave and several of the SOCO team speak Welsh.’
She turned the diary pages until she came to October. ‘She has an appointment to see someone in Abertawe tomorrow.’
‘That’s Welsh for Swansea.’
‘Yes, thank you, I do know that much. I can read the road signs, you know.’
‘Does it say who she was supposed to meet?’
‘Someone called Morgan Jones.’
‘Any relation of yours?’
‘We’re quite a big family, but not that big. There’s a phone number by his name.’
Lambert produced his mobile and said, ‘Call out the numbers for me.’
He dialled the numbers as she read them out. After it made the connection it switched to voicemail. He listened to the message and hung up. Jones looked at him expectantly.
‘They’ll be there from 9 a.m. tomorrow.’
‘They?’
‘Someone called Francis, Jones and Prosser.’
‘Sounds like a firm of solicitors.’
‘I’ll call them first thing in the morning. Is there an address section in the back of the diary?’
‘There is, but it’s empty. Most people keep their phone numbers in their mobiles now.’
Lambert snapped his fingers. ‘That’s a point: I haven’t seen her mobile phone anywhere, have you?’
She shook her head. ‘Now you come to mention it …’
‘This what you’re looking for?’
They turned towards the door as Jason, one of the younger members of the SOCO team, entered, holding a mobile.
‘Where d’you find it?’
‘It was just under the bed, near to where she was shot in the head. She managed to dial the emergency number but it hadn’t been sent. Presumably the fatal shot got her before she could press “send”. Hughie asked me to let you have it post haste. He said he thought you might want to access her address book right away.’
He handed the phone to Lambert.
‘That’s very useful. Thanks, Jason.’
‘Dim problem,’ Jason said as he exited.
Lambert smiled at Jones. ‘Strange sort of language that uses both Welsh and English in a two-word sentence.’
He found Rhiannon Lloyd’s address book on the mobile and scrolled down to the letter G. ‘Here we are. There’s two numbers for her husband: his office and mobile.’
‘I don’t envy you this call.’
‘Giving a relative the bad news is something I would normally loathe and detest. But in this instance …’
‘You don’t like him, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I’ve only met him once. And he seemed like he could be really charming. But if I shook hands with the man, I’d count my fingers afterwards.’
Gavin Lloyd and Jack Collier sat at a table in the centre of the bar, Collier drinking lime and soda and his boss with a half of bitter and a large whisky chaser. They had both just finished eating roast beef sandwiches, with a small salad garnish, and had barely spoken two words to one another since entering the bar. Their small-wheeled suitcases stood beside the table, and Lloyd’s mobile sat on the table next to his sandwich plate. He stifled a yawn and cast his eyes around the bar. It seemed to be fairly quiet, but that was understandable, it being a Monday night. A married couple sat in an alcove, their eyes focused on some distant longing, each separated by years of habitual silence. They didn’t appear to be hotel residents, because the man had an anorak draped across the seat next to him, and his wife was wearing a long woollen coat and chiffon scarf. At the bar a company of businessmen stood laughing and talking loudly about banking and poor investments, and were clearly residents because all their drinks went on their room tabs.
The barman, seeing the empty plates on Lloyd and Collier’s table, hurried over to collect them. Lloyd nodded to him and spoke to Collier.
‘I know you’re the driver, Jack, but after six hours in the car I feel really knackered.’
He knocked back his whisky, and was about to chase this down with a draught of beer when his mobile rang.
Collier stared at his boss, observing the theatrical way he took the call, leaning back in his chair, smiling confidently, his head tilted upwards slightly and projecting his voice.
‘Gavin Lloyd! Inspector Lambert! What can I do for you? I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. It was only this morning you came to see me in Cardiff. I’m up in Edinburgh right now.’
Collier watched Lloyd intently and their eyes met briefly. And then his boss’s face suddenly crumpled and his eyes filled with tears.
‘No! No! This can’t be happening. Please tell me it’s not true. Oh, Jesus Christ! Please! Not Rhiannon!’
The businessmen at the bar stopped speaking as they witnessed this tragic scene unfolding a few feet away.
Lloyd bent over the table, weeping and holding his head in his free hand. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. Oh God, no! Not my Rhiannon. Yes, yes. Please! Just give me a minute. Of course, I’ll come home right away. No, I don’t think there’ll be a direct flight from here to Cardiff at this time of night. Oh Jesus Christ! This can’t be happening. Yes, yes. We’ll come straight back. Hang on a second, Inspector, I need to talk to Jack.’
He held the phone away from his ear and stared tearfully at Collier. ‘It’s Rhiannon. She’s been killed.’
Collier’s normally inscrutable face contorted into an expression of empathic grief. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘How did it happen?’
Ignoring the question, Lloyd said, ‘We have to go back right away. D’you think you’ll be all right to drive?’
Collier nodded.
Lloyd sniffed and wiped his eyes. ‘Jack thinks he’s OK to drive. It’s another six-hour journey. If we have to, I’ll book into a motel halfway and he can get his head down for a couple of hours. We should be back early morning. Oh God! This is a nightmare.’
Lloyd hung up and leant over the table, holding his head in his hands.
Collier stood, reached out awkwardly and touched Lloyd’s arm. ‘It’s a long drive,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better leave.’