“Six fifty-one. I’ll tell them to give you a key.”
* * *
Laura called Drisson immediately afterward. “It’s arranged,” she said. “He’s having dinner in the room. I’ll be arriving there at seven.”
“Don’t forget to call me as soon as it’s done,” Drisson said.
* * *
She entered the main door of the Grantham Hotel shortly before seven, walked to the desk, and collected a magnetically coded key to room 651. Then she paused, looking in her purse, until there was a knot of people waiting at the elevators before crossing the lobby to join them. As she did so, she had the strange, prickly sensation of being certain that unseen eyes were watching her. A car arrived. She got in with several others, made sure that the sixth floor button was pressed, but went all the way up to the penthouse bar and found a booth far from the door, where she ordered a coffee. She stayed there almost an hour. Ten minutes before eight, she took the elevator back down to the mezzanine terrace, from where she was able to observe the lobby floor below from behind a screen of ornamental ferns and a rubber-tree plant. She had stopped by earlier, after leaving the Fairway lounge, to check over the hotel layout. Laura believed in getting the details right too.
She called Drisson’s number from there, making her voice shaky and a little breathless. “Okay . . . it’s done. I’m on my way out.”
Drisson appeared from a corner of the lobby below, talking into his phone. “No, don’t. We’ve got an unexpected problem. Ibsan is around in the building. Stay where you are. I’m coming there to get you out a safe way.”
“How long will you be?”
“On my way now. Just a couple of minutes.”
Laura watched him cross to the elevators and push the call button. One of the sets of doors opened. He disappeared inside. She nodded faintly to herself. It was the way she had guessed. She raised the phone again and called Toddrel’s private number. He answered almost at once. “I’m on my way up now,” she told him. “There was a crowd around the desk. I’ll get the key later.” Unzipping the top of her purse, she made her way back across the terrace to the mezzanine-level elevator doors and pressed the “up” button.
Drisson would arrive at the room any moment now. He would knock, thinking Laura was there, waiting. Toddrel would open the door, expecting Laura; or even if he checked through the spyglass first, seeing it was Drisson, he would let him in. Finding Toddrel alone and unharmed, Drisson, being Drisson, would immediately conclude a double cross and have seconds to decide his move. Laura thought she knew what the outcome would be.
She came out of the elevator and followed the corridor to 651, holding the key in one gloved hand, the other resting lightly inside the top of her purse. She looked quickly left, then right. The corridor was empty. Producing the gun, she slid the key softly into the slot until she heard the lock disengage, then pushed the door open and stepped quickly inside. Toddrel’s body was crumpled on the floor, crimson spreading across his shirt and oozing onto the carpet. Drisson was between it and the door, already turning at the sound of its opening, the gun still in his hand. Laura shot him before his mouth had framed the first word. Then she eased the door shut and stood motionless with her back pressed against it, feeling her chest pounding while she listened for any reaction to the shot. Everything outside seemed quiet. She looked apprehensively at Drisson, dreading that he might make some sound or move, and if so, wondering if she would be able to bring herself to finish the thing. But he remained inert. Laura could detect no sign of breathing. She forced herself to be calm.
The line about making it look like a hooker had been for Laura’s benefit. She was supposed to have been next. Drisson’s real intent had been to set up a scene that would look like a fatal quarrel between Toddrel and his high-class mistress. Being the only other person who would have known about Drisson’s insurance to protect himself hadn’t seemed like the surest way of getting to see much sunshine or many beaches.