TURKISH DELIGHT by Barry Faulkner (learn to read activity book .txt) 📕

would be able to find a way in. She stood and buttoned her coat. ‘I’ll see you on the third floor.’

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CHAPTER 20

Major hotels are always busy – always people arriving and leaving, always a queue at reception, always a lack of porters – and with over four hundred and fifty rooms the Hilton foyer is always a mini traffic jam.

Gold gave a cursory glance at the pigeon holes behind the reception desk – 324’s keycard was still there. She walked around the outside of the crowd to the main doors and stood to one side of them, pretending to look at the display of tourist places to visit leaflets; she knew what she was looking for and it wasn’t a tourist leaflet, it was a tourist. She and waited and watched. Pretty soon the mark arrived: a family in a taxi overloaded with cases who declined the offer of help from the doorman to call a porter to carry anything. Gold waited until the family had dumped their first cases inside the doors and had gone out for more. She moved through the jostling crowd, seized the biggest, heaviest looking case and struggled with it away through the crush to the side. She tapped a doorman on the arm.

‘Could I have some help with this please? I’m just getting over a knee replacement and have to be a bit careful. It’s not very heavy.’

The doorman leapt into action, chastising himself for not noticing this young lady struggling with her case and beckoned a porter over. ‘Take this for the lady.’

The porter picked up the case. ‘Room number, madam?’

‘324, third floor suite.’ Gold made a limping move towards the desk. ‘I’ll get my key.’

The doorman halted her.

‘You go to the lift, madam – I’ll get your key or you’ll be queuing for ages.’ And he did just that, dodging through the crowd to the head of the reception queue, asking for and getting suite 324’s key card and hurrying back to the lift where Gold and the porter were waiting.

‘There we are, madam. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

‘No, no, thank you so much.’ Gold smiled as she pressed a five pound note into his hand and took the keycard, ‘Thank you so much, so helpful.’

The lift doors closed and it ascended, disgorging residents on the first and second floors and Gold and the porter on the third. The porter walked along to 324 and waited at the door as Gold ‘limped’ to join him.

‘I can manage from here.’ Another five pound note was gratefully received. ‘Thank you so much.’

The porter bowed. ‘You’re welcome, madam.’ Then he made his way to the staff stairs at the end of the corridor, pocketing the fiver.

I arrived, having watched Gold’s subterfuge and then taken the public stairs. Gold had the door open and I lifted in the suitcase and joined her inside, closing the door behind me. It was a luxurious suite; the furniture was modern and looked brand new, a ninety-inch plasma TV screen was on the wall, fresh flowers in an array of vases on all the side tables, and a quick scout round showed housekeeping had replenished the bathroom toiletries and bed coverings. No kitchen, all food was ordered from a menu on the main table and delivered from the hotel’s kitchens. I could settle into this life quite nicely.

Gold broke into my dreams of luxurious living. ‘I’m going down to keep a watch on the reception desk. I’ll give them back the key card so as not to cause a panic if Rambart comes asking for it. If they do, I’ll text your mobile.’

‘Right.’

She left and I slipped the security chain on the door, just in case. I took out my mobile and put it on the table; I didn’t want to miss the text if it came – Nicholas Rambart wouldn’t take too kindly to finding me in his suite. I slipped on a pair of thin latex gloves and began looking.

I started at the desk, pulling out the papers from its drawers one by one and skipping through them, looking for anything that might refer to arms. The third drawer down was the one: business papers filed in coloured manila envelopes similar to the ones I’d found at the Purley warehouse. They held invoices for millions of pounds from various arms producers in the UK, for weapons from pistols to missiles; a blue envelope had financial information photocopied from various money and financial journals and newspapers about companies that I recognised as other ordnance manufacturers, with notes scribbled on them in various places. The contents of a red envelope set me back on my heels: it was obituary notices cut from newspapers. I knew a couple of the names and pictures, they were CEOs of multinational conglomerates when they were alive – why would Rambart have those in a file?

I took pictures of them, four in all, and then a few of the invoices. The last file was plain but the content wasn’t: a black-and-white photo of our look-a-like lady was stapled to a copy of a sheet of typed paper; it was in a foreign language but the large heading and official hand stamp made it quite obvious where it was from: Turkey.

My phone buzzed. I looked at the text from Gold: ‘Look-a-like coming up.’

I took a photo of the page and taking a last look around the room to make sure everything was where it was when I came in I hurried out, closed the door behind me and took the stairs down.

‘Anything?’ Gold was a lady of few words.

‘Yes, I think so. Do you like doner kebab?’

Gold gave me a quizzical look but didn’t ask me to clarify my seemingly irrelevant question.

‘I’ve got a load of pics of company papers and what