The Nameless Ones by John Connolly
Chapter LIX
When there was still no word from Hendricksen after 9 a.m., Angel decided to check his room. A DO NOT DISTURB sign hung from the doorknob, but Angel placed no store by it. Whenever he stayed in a hotel. Angel left a similar sign on his door for the duration of his stay. If he needed extra towels, he asked for them, and he was capable of making his own bed. Only a sucker gave strangers more access to his life than was necessary.
He knocked on the door, but received no reply. He took a look at the key card lock, but it was a new model. This particular company’s old locks had been vulnerable to hacking through the insertion of a microcontroller into the DC socket at the lock’s base, which enabled the 32-bit key to be read and played back, opening the door. The company had been forced to tackle the flaw, at considerable expense. So far the fix was working, but Angel knew from experience that the ingenuity of lockmakers was exceeded only by that of lockbreakers.
He found a maid, told her his name was Hendricksen, and said that his key card wasn’t working. He demonstrated this for her with the key card to his own room. She seemed reluctant to oblige him by opening the door, but the sight of a twenty-euro note assuaged her concerns.
The room was dark and the bed unmade. Angel called Hendricksen’s name once the door had closed behind him, but again was met only with silence. A suitcase stood on a metal stand, but most of its contents were strewn across the floor. The bathroom door was closed, and as Angel drew nearer to it he heard a tap dripping. He sniffed the air. It smelled bad, like an unflushed toilet, but with a meatiness underpinning it. Angel was familiar with that odor from personal experience: it was the smell of suffering.
A room service tray lay on the table by the window. It held a coffeepot and the remains of a sandwich. Angel took the cloth napkin from the tray and used it to grip the knob on the bathroom door. As he did so, he thought he picked up the softest of sounds from within, the slightest swish of skin against ceramic.
Angel suddenly wished he had a gun.
He paused, took a breath, and turned the knob, using the wall to provide some protection for his body. The door opened, and the smell grew stronger, but no one rushed him. He risked a glance.
Hendricksen lay naked in the bathtub, his lower body mired in a shallow pool of his own congealed blood. His eyes were closed and tape was wound around his head, covering his mouth. His hands and feet had been bound so tightly with cable ties that the plastic had dug deep into the flesh, turning the extremities purple. The interior of the tub was almost entirely red, with spots of blood extending up the wall to pattern the ceiling with dark stars. Angel saw wounds in Hendricksen’s chest, belly, legs, and arms. They appeared to have been made by a boxcutter or a very slim, sharp knife, but they were all wider at the center, where the incisions had been explored. He could not have said why, exactly, but he thought a finger might have been used, perhaps even two or three fingers.
Angel touched a hand to Hendricksen’s neck. The body was cold, and he could find no pulse at first. But then, incredibly, he felt the faintest of beats. Hendricksen’s eyelids fluttered.
‘Jesus,’ said Angel. ‘Hold on, you hear me? You hold on.’
Hendricksen was trying to speak. Angel noticed a pair of scissors in a toiletry bag, and used them to cut the tape over Hendricksen’s mouth. Angel needed to summon help, but removing the tape would help Hendricksen breathe, and it was clear that the wounded man had something to say.
The adhesive was strong and the blood around Hendricksen’s mouth had dried. Angel gradually worked the tape free, his left arm supporting Hendricksen’s head. His tormentors had probably been forced to keep Hendricksen gagged while they worked on him, only loosening the tape for long enough to get answers to their questions. If he couldn’t talk, he was of no use to them. But judging by the extent of his wounds, Angel thought that whoever was responsible for this had kept hurting Hendricksen even after he had told them all he knew. They had continued because they liked it.
‘Dead … girl,’ said Hendricksen. ‘Dead girl did … this.’
Angel thought he’d misheard.
‘We’ll find her, but you need to stay alive to describe her.’
Hendricksen shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Dead.’
‘Not yet,’ said Angel.
He found the phone by the toilet, and hit the button for reception. The call was answered instantly.
‘I need an ambulance,’ said Angel. ‘Now.’
Hendricksen was dying in the hotel room.
He was still dying in the ambulance.
But he died at the hospital.