Chapter 20 - Reunited

Image is by Jarmoluk from Pixabay

"I found her," Ike said, shuddering at the memory of the bundle on the floor, once a living, breathing human being, one she had known and talked to only yesterday. "In the ladies."

What a sorry launchpad from life.

Gary, having installed himself in the wing chair, glanced at her with Husky eyes framed by dark locks curling into his pale forehead. Handsome in a Celtic way, he was no match for Ben.

Good job too!

"You mean that place in the ministry?" he asked.

"Oh no, here in the hotel. I had a lie in, walked the dog, wanted to nip into the loo before breakfast—and found Shalon."

Gary shuttered his eyes and massaged his temples. "I don't know how you do it. All these corpses."

Annoyance surged inside Ike in a bilious wave. Two sentences into the conversation and his lordship had done it again. Made her feel guilty. As if the deaths were her fault.

Well, if her hunch about Shalon was right, at least in one case, he might be right.

Brigitte, seated in the wiry chair next to the sideboard stopped fondling Boris's ears. "Me, I think, she doesn't do it on purpose."

The cold, grey eyes flew open. "I never said that. For the records, I happen to be a trifle staggered by the body count." He rubbed his forehead again. "Sorry, that came out the wrong way." His gaze mellowed. "That must have been one heck of a shock."

Ike, who had been about to open her mouth and give him hell, swallowed her response.

"Yes."

The image of that scene in the toilet flooded her brain, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Tiles the colour and texture of eggshells covering the walls to the ceiling. Three stalls in the same colour, one door standing open. A tiled surface to the right of the entrance, set in an alcove. Two sinks and a gilded rectangular mirror above, covering almost the whole length and width of the recessed space. A pale straw basket with fluffy hand towels, neatly folded. Soap dispensers, made of glass, filled with an apple-green liquid. Gilded faucets above the sinks. She remembered admiring the minimalist tastefulness of it all. Then catching herself wondering about the stink that fouled the green freshness in the air.

Then, her gaze had dipped.

To the bundle. Underneath the tiled surface with the sinks. Discarded, crumpled and soiled it lay next to another basket that contained the used towels. A woman lying on her side, legs pulled up, arms flung outwards from her body with claw-like fingers. She had fallen, never to rise again.

It was her face Ike would see in her dreams. She had knelt down to bend over the body, looking for a pulse and finding a mask of death.

The face was red, swollen, almost unrecognisable.

The neat curls of honey-blond hair, however, were familiar. So was the windbreaker.

Ike had wanted to turn away. Found it impossible. Shalon's eyes stood wide open, blood-shot, bulging from their sockets. The tongue, darker than even the face had crept between the lips like a monstrous purple slug and died there. Bruises encircled the slender neck like nefarious flowers.

Strangled, the Commissario had said.

Grazie Mille! She didn't need a cop to know what had happened.

And yet, there was something. Something the police didn't seem to spot. Nor did she. Not until now. Why the thought chose this moment to slam open the mental doors, she would never know. Only that it did.

"The mirror." Ringing shrilled in her ears and the vision of that toilet wobbled and folded. Then it bounced back again.

"Ike?"

An arm wrapped itself around her shoulder, spicy and warm. It guided her across the hotel room, pressed her onto a slick surface of what she decided had to be the wing chair. She struggled to focus on the present, on Gary and Brigitte, but the scene playing in front of her inner eye dug in its heels.

The mirror.

If Shalon had been standing at the sinks, washing her hands, why had she not seen the door opening behind her? She might not have heard it, like almost every door in this place the one in the toilet was soundproof, equipped with door closers that did their job without so much as a snick.

Ike had shot up from the corpse, bent over the sink and dry-heaved. When nothing came, she opened the faucet and greedily palmed water into her parched mouth. Light years later she had looked up at the stranger in the mirror. Saw a milk-white blur with freckles like blemishes bridging its nose, the eyes large greenish marbles.

Behind her, the door. Shut now, of course. Had it opened, it would have reflected in the mirror.

Why didn't Shalon run away?

"Ike?" Gary's voice. More insistent this time. It did the trick, ripped the cobwebs of her memories. "Have some brandy."

Something pungent and alcoholic drifted into her nose. She gagged and pushed at the strong hands that held the bottle close to her face.

Hands. Warm and alive. Not stiff like those claws. Ike shuddered again.

Breath brushed past her ears. "Take a sip, it'll help. I figure you have had little to eat?"

"Eat?" A good point. Ike's breakfast got aborted when she found the corpse. At the Questura, food seemed in short supply. The same beefy policewoman she had met yesterday lugged in bottled spring water, a halfway decent espresso accompanied by a handful of dry biscuits. But all throughout the session with Commissario Guidetti she kept seeing those empty eyes, the swollen face and that gruesome picture sucked away any hunger pangs she might otherwise have harboured.

Ike's lips found the bottle, and she swallowed the brandy. It rolled down her throat in a wave of fire. As warmth spread in her stomach, her eyes stung with sudden tears. They didn't bother before, so why now?

"Urgh!" Blindly, she pushed the bottle away.

"Sorry, old bean," Gary said, his words tinged with amusement. "It's not a bad brand. Take another sip. Think of it as medicine."

He was somewhere on her left, casting a solid shadow.

"Surely tastes like it," she gasped. But she did as told, and this time the warmth reached out into her limbs, all the way to her fingertips. She must have been freezing before and without ever noticing.

The heat bounced back up, making her burp. Funnily enough, that cleared her head.

"Sorry. The stuff never agrees with me."

"Well, the plonk seems to have done its job." Gary turned the flask around in his hand and squinted at the label.

Another acid burp, followed by a stomach growl. It appeared, her appetite was back. With a vengeance. "To be honest, I'm short on fuel. Wasn't hungry."

The grin on Gary's face made him appear younger, almost impish. "Well, I gather if I want answers I better feed you."

Brigitte raised both her eyes and the palms of her hands towards the ceiling as if seeking divine inspiration. Not that she needed it. "Great suggestion, Gary. Let's go to the trattoria next door. The way to a woman's heart is through her stomach."

"That is physically impossible. Quite frankly, I could do with a bite myself. Our morning was rather rushed, and a man can't survive forever on a soggy sandwich. And a boy even less, I suppose." Gary swished away a message on his phone. "Jon's been Netflixing it, but I bet he's itching to move."

Boris had apparently understood they were discussing food and barked at the leash once more dangling from the doorknob.

"The boy? You brought Jon?" Brigitte asked.

Gary looked up, instant mistrust crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Yes. Got any issues with that? It's the half-term vacation. Nothing illegal this time. Whereby, we're talking one day I took him out. Not a criminal offence."

This time, Ike was unable to stop the words. They rushed out like the water from the faucet. "Don't you need to be more careful? I mean, there's this custody issue . . ."

Her words petered out, frozen by the arctic blast coming from his eyes. "How would you know?"

Cripes. His lordship thawed, acted human and what did she do? Run a tanker across his path. She took a deep breath. "I wasn't accusing you of anything. Ben visited me earlier this morning. He mentioned there seems to be some dispute. No details. Now, he wants money. Otherwise, he'll go public."

Gary raised an eyebrow, the movement unfreezing his glacial visage. "I'll be interested to know where that guy gets his intel from."

Ike stepped towards the sideboard and poured herself a glass of water, just to give her hands something to do. It helped with thinking. "Told you before. Ben's a manic net-worker. He loves digging up the dirt and storing it for future reference. If my ex had ever bothered to hold down a job, he would have done well at investigative journalism. He's as tenacious as a hungry leech, he's got no staying power."

Gary raised the other eyebrow, two dimples appeared in his cheeks, and the imp was back. He and Sands junior looked very much alike. "I gather, your marriage must have been—rather unsatisfactory."

"You're hilarious," Ike said.

"If you two are finished with the mutual insults, can we eat something? Me, I'm ravenous."

Gary's mouth twitched. "We can't have that. Let's go and worry about Ike's ex later."

"There's now been a murder. That will have Ben hopping around with glee," Ike pointed out.

"I just told you. First, we eat, then we deal with this moron and the rest of this moronic affair."

Do let me know if you have questions or comments on my novel. Constructive suggestions and feedback are always welcome! And thank you for reading. In doing so, you give my writing a purpose.