Something Missing - ONC 2024 (EDITING)

Chapter 2 - Murder

Rita ignored the scream.

She sank back into the pillow, shut her eyes. 'Kids. Probably.'

'Hazel! Stop screaming! You'll wake up everyone. This is a crime convention. People are gonna think I'm murdering you.' Laughter from a group of young students echoed down the corridor.

'I'm so pissed, how many vodka and cokes did I have,' one of the other girls laughed, hardly able to speak. Rita guessed that was Hazel.

'What the fuck are we even doing here? This is shit.'

'You tell me, Lydia. You're the psychology student.' There was more raucous laughter. Then the sound of someone falling over and high pitched drunk giggling.

'Shut up, Hazel,' another of the crew laughed. Rita turned onto her side.

'Damn,' Alfonso whispered, as Rita sat up, propping herself against the pillows. 'I guess it's gonna be like this all night. Or as long as the disco is going on. I bet that's where Matteo is. Wonder why he told us he was going to bed.'

'He probably wanted to sneak away for a bit. He's 18. He's an adult. Let him make his own mistakes,' Rita said. Outside the door, the students' voices faded and silence settled. Rita reached over, turned the bedside lamp on and took her police phone from the bedside table, hearing it vibrate with a tell tale alert. There was not really any such thing as being off duty, not for her. At least neither of us want kids, she thought. In that case it really wouldn't have been fair.

Reading the message sent a chill down her spine. The alarm was tinged with relief that she didn't have to get back to Spain immediately.

'What is it?' Alfonso said.

'Interpol have sent out an alert. Eloise Skerrett has escaped from a maximum security women's prison in London, where she was serving a life sentence for murder. It is suspected that she was helped by two accomplices. The prison isn't far from here.' Rita's face twisted in a grimace.

'A bit unsettling,' she said.

'I overheard a woman in the dining room earlier, telling everyone who would listen that she thought Eloise was innocent and the victim of a miscarriage of justice.' Alfonso said quietly. Rita sat up, pulled the duvet over herself. The bed was comfortable. The grey, soft sheets were both better looking and more comfortable than her bed at home but the effect was ruined by the lack of soundproofing in the room.

'It's lucky I wasn't around,' she scoffed, amused. There was something comical about that woman, let alone anyone who'd believe she was innocent. But inevitably, thoughts of Eloise brought back thoughts of Castella and his crimes. The two were indelibly linked.

The horror at the farm. Silvio, the farmer who'd taken on Pepelito, lying dead on the road, surrounded by dead and dying geese. His old cow lying by his body, crying in pain ...

She still blamed herself for Silvio's murder. Once the adrenaline had died down, once she was out and safe, the memory had affected her more than almost anything else in her life. She forced herself to stop thinking about it, knowing if she carried on down the rabbit hole of guilt she might never get out.

Her young colleague Laurentia Ciobanu who'd had to arrest the woman when she had turned up at an ice cream store, dripping with blood after murdering her ex lover. Eloise had threatened and attacked Laurentia while being held in custody. This news was bound to have frightened her - Laurentia was already fragile after her mum's stroke last month.

'I heard the news and thought I'd check in. I'm here if you want to talk,' Rita wrote to the young woman, who was hopefully asleep. 'I'm back next week.'

She turned the light off and hugged Alfonso, trying to go to sleep. Outside the door, a man and a woman were talking. Rita tried to understand the conversation but it was in English and her tired state was catching up with her.

'...don't you think all this has gone a bit far now?' the man whispered in a posh British accent that almost reminded her of - but that was stupid and she was tired and stressed and not as over it as she wanted to think.

'Well, if it has, that's not our responsibility, is it?' the woman hissed. Rita shut her eyes and laid her head against the pillow, past caring. 

*

Then came the sound of a door banging and a person running down the corridor, like the excited kids she'd heard running up and down in the hotel passages when she arrived, except there was no childish joy in the person's steps.

'Someone get the police,' a woman yelled. 'Or an ambulance. Something!'

'Shit,' Rita muttered. Someone else could have ignored it and gone back to sleep, but not her. Maybe she'd had half an hour's sleep so far. She didn't know. Her thoughts were full of Eloise - and Castella.

Eloise had escaped from a maximum security prison - a prison not far from the hotel and convention centre and the 1500 attendees of the Crime Convention. Rita imagined Eloise walking past on the road, sitting near her on a train, driving past her in a taxi.

'Someone help!' the woman sobbed from the other side of the hotel door. 'Please!'

'I better see what's going on,' Rita whispered to Alfonso, her heart lurching in her chest. She finally felt secure; she knew he wouldn't judge her. He'd know she wouldn't be able to leave it alone.

She put on her shoes and her Crime Convention lanyard that identified her as a ticket holder, and headed out of the door. Matteo's door was still open and he was still not in his room. She supposed he was in the disco.

'Thank God, someone's awake,' a young woman sobbed. She had dark hair and pale skin, dressed in black jeans and a pink t-shirt saying Los Angeles on it. Rita followed her down the maze of passages in the hotel, trudging along a thick yellow-brown carpet with geometric diamonds on it. Rita thought the carpet looked awful. A few people had opened their doors as they walked past, rubbing their eyes and yawning.

'Just now,' the woman sobbed. 'I found her just now. She's not breathing.'

As she drew closer to the lifts the woman's footsteps slowed. She opened the heavy fire door, walked through and turned around back to Rita, looking as though she was going to throw up.

'There's no staff around,' the woman sobbed as Rita stared past her to the floor behind her. 'I can't see anyone. I can't find my phone, haven't seen it since yesterday - I think it's been stolen. So I can't call the cops. Could you do it?'

Beyond her, a blonde woman lay sprawled on the carpet in front of a set of lifts. Her face was blue and unmoving. There was no blood except for a small bead by her forehead, but there was bruising on her head. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was slightly open. There was a small splash of blood on the carpet near where she was lying.

Rita recognised her as the woman who had given Matteo a dirty look in the bar downstairs. Except Erica Scott looked like some sort of grotesque doll, the expression had left her eyes and cheeks. Clearly dead. The contrast between the two scenes, seeing Erica downstairs and then like this - chilled her.

Then, footsteps, firm and confident, padded down the corridor like a big cat, getting louder as Rita dialled 999. That was the emergency number for the UK, right?

'Police, fire or ambulance?' said the operator's voice.

'Police. There's a dead body at the Westgate Metropolis Hotel and Conference Centre. Come as soon as possible,' Rita said. As she spoke, a door creaked and someone strolled out in front of her from an identical-looking corridor leading from the opposite direction. 

She saw who it was and her gut lurched.