Jigsaw Man Read Free Page B

share of celebs here, but luckily
there’s a camera at reception, so we should be able to get a visual of Herring.’
    ‘Where’s Security?’ Minderedes asked.
    ‘In the basement, next to the gym,’ Johnson replied.
    ‘Start with that,’ Tartaglia said to Minderedes. ‘I’ll come and find you when I’m
done with the crime scene.’
    ‘The CSM was looking for you,’ Johnson said to Tartaglia, as Minderedes disappeared
out of the door. ‘She’s still up in the room. I can take you there now, if you’re
ready. This place is like a rabbit warren.’
    ‘Carry on with what you were doing. I’ll find it myself.’ He wanted to be on his
own for a minute. Try and clear his thoughts. The room where he had been with Jannicke
had been on the first floor at the front of the building, not that he’d paid much
attention to the location at the time. He remembered using the main stairs by reception
and that was about it. He wondered whether she was already up and getting dressed,
and if he would bump into her at some point. It would be a little awkward, but he
felt no real embarrassment.
    ‘It’s number 212, at the back of the building,’ Johnson said, following him out of
the snug. ‘There’s a lift that gets you out right by the room. Go through the bar,
and you’ll come to it.’
    Tartaglia glanced at the map. The hotel was a rectangle, with four wings built around
a long central courtyard. He remembered reading in some blurb the previous night
that the rear wing had once been a small theatre or cinema. The bar was empty and
silent, apart from the distant sound of a hoover, and the strong smell of cleaning
products hung in the air. Grey early-morning light filtered in through the row of
tall windows and the room looked more austere and less welcoming than he remembered
it. As he passed the table where he and Gianni had been sitting only a few hours
before, he wondered what time Gianni had left and whether he had gone home on his
own.
    The lift was outside the entrance to the restaurant. He heard the clatter of plates
and cutlery and saw staff through the glass panel of the door preparing for breakfast.
He showed his ID to the uniformed PC guarding the lift, then took it up to the second
floor. Breakfast TV blasted from one of the rooms nearby. It wouldn’t be long before
people would be up and about and the usual complaints would start about being delayed
and having to account for themselves, along with the inevitable, probing, ghoulish
curiosity.
    The section of corridor between the lift and room 212 had been taped off and a pathway
marked out on the carpet leading to the door. Tartaglia helped himself to protective
clothing from a box on the floor and was about to head towards the room when he saw
Tracy Jamieson, the crime scene manager, emerging from the lift behind him.
    ‘There you are,’ she said cheerily. ‘I was wondering when you’d get here.’
    ‘Why are you so perky this morning?’
    ‘No reason. I tried calling you but some funny bloke answered your phone.’ Tall and
athletic, she was fully suited and masked, but he could tell from her brown eyes
that she was smiling.
    ‘I left it in a taxi last night.’
    ‘Ah . . . These things happen. I’m afraid I had to make a start without you.’
    ‘So where are we?’ he asked, grateful that she wasn’t going to make a song and dance
about it.
    ‘As you can see, we’ve cleared a path so you can go into the room. It looked sexual,
so I asked for a pathologist.’
    ‘Who’s on call?’
    ‘Arabella. She’s already been and gone. She’s pretty certain, from a quick visual,
that cause of death is manual strangulation. There’s clear bruising to the neck
and very obvious petechial haemorrhaging. She took some intimate swabs so we don’t
lose anything, but said the rest could wait until later.’
    ‘Was the woman killed in the room?’
    ‘We think so. On the bed. Someone’s pummelled the right side of her face. She was
still alive, judging by