Page 5 of Too Busy for Love

‘Madame, obviously. Maria and Jock.’

‘Jock?’

‘The hotel chef.’

She consults her notes. ‘You mean Andrew McLaughlin.’

‘Yes, but everyone calls him Jock because he’s Scottish. It’s a nickname, like calling him Paddy if he was Irish.’

‘It seems like everybody in this place is hiding under a false name.’ DS Hollis sighs. ‘Why would a chef need to live onsite?’

‘Because Madame likes him to be available at all times, in case a guest wants a sandwich or something in the middle of the night.’

‘Does that happen a lot? Your clientele waking at two in the morning with the munchies?’ he asks, and I spot him writing the word ‘drugs’ in large letters on his pad, with a question mark afterwards.

‘Not to my knowledge,’ I tell him firmly, anxious to shut down that line of enquiry. If Madame finds out the police think she’s been dealing drugs on top of whatever misinformation they’re already working with, it could give her a coronary.

‘Why offer it then?’

‘Because it’s what all the good hotels do. If you have guests that have come from abroad, for example, they may be jetlagged and want to eat at strange times of the day.’

‘But you’ve just told me that international guests aren’t your target market.’ DS Hollis is obviously determined not to let this go.

‘They aren’t, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cater for them. It’s also something we charge a premium for, because it’s out-of-hours service, same as shoe shine and overnight laundry.’

‘What kind of premium?’ DI Winter asks. ‘If I wanted a bacon sandwich at two in the morning, what would I be looking at?’

‘Twenty-five pounds, plus twelve and a half per cent service charge.’

‘Bloody hell, I’m in the wrong job.’

‘It’s not unusual for hotels to upsell to their guests,’ I tell her.

‘Certainly not in your case,’ DS Hollis retorts.

I’ve had enough of his smart remarks. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is about?’ I ask him, trying and failing not to sound tetchy.

DS Hollis looks at DI Winter, who gives him an almost imperceptible nod.

‘With pleasure,’ he says. ‘Your precious Madame Dufour is, as we previously mentioned, better known as Eileen Strickland, to the police at least. She has a string of criminal convictions as long as my arm, dating back to the 1960s, and has done several stints in prison.’

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘You must have her mixed up with someone else. Madame would never?—’

‘There’s no mix up, I can assure you.’ He taps the screen a few times and a grainy mugshot of a young woman appears. Although it must have been taken many years ago, it’s clearly Madame. I’m gobsmacked and just stare at it in silence.

‘This is from her first arrest, for prostitution,’ he continues after I’ve studied the picture for a little while. ‘She was arrested a number of times between 1968 and 1974 for the same offence, but obviously started to lose her allure as time went by and had to seek out new income streams.’ He swipes the screen and another picture of Madame appears, looking slightly older.

‘This is the first time she received a custodial sentence, in 1975,’ DS Hollis informs me. ‘Funnily enough, it was for running a brothel. After her release, she turned her hand to pornography, and was arrested again in 1981 under the Obscene Publications Act.’ He swipes the screen to reveal yet another picture.

‘Just because someone has a shady past doesn’t mean everything they do is against the law,’ I protest.

‘Indeed not, but you can understand why we might have been interested. We placed an undercover officer in the hotel, posing as a guest. What do you think happened?’

‘I would hope he or she had an enjoyable stay and gave us a positive review on TripAdvisor.’

‘Lose the attitude. You’re not funny,’ DS Hollis snarls. ‘You know as well as I do that no sooner had he called to ask for an extra pillow than a member of your so-called housekeeping team knocked on his door to offer him a smorgasbord of sexual services. Are you seriously trying to tell me that all this was going on under your nose and you didn’t have a clue?’

‘Of course I didn’t!’ I exclaim, my heart now thudding uncomfortably in my chest.

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