Fatal Encounters
By Irv Pliskin
Chapter 5
Hallen and Murchinson were in the elegant dining room of the St. Emmons hotel.
“Eating breakfast in a place as handsome as this is somewhat intimidating,” Hallen said.
“What do you mean, old boy?”
“Well, look around you. White tablecloths and napkins and the place is elegant. Those marble walls must be worth a fortune, and that mahogany paneling hasn't been used in construction since the early 1900’s. This place is so elegant it is hard to enjoy the food.”
He looked at his plate heaped with kippers, bangers and scrambled eggs. “Man, British breakfasts are great. Just thinking of them makes me salivate. When I was in uniform driving a cruiser up and down the turnpikes I ate at so many greasy diners and coffee shops, you wouldn’t believe it. There's a hundred mile stretch of what we call the North East extension. The road goes from Philly to Scranton. Well, I can tell you every joint within three miles of the Pike entrances and exits where you can get coffee and a doughnut. I can tell you which are clean, which are dirty and which has the better coffee. You get to be expert at that and at knowing where the decent johns are, too.”
“Johns? What do you mean, Johns? I don't think you mean hooker's customers, do you?”
“Hardly. The Loo, Inspector. We call the Loo a john. Don’t know why, but we do.”
Hallen finished his coffee and his toast and looked at the inspector.
“What do we do now?”
“I thought we would go back to my room at the Yard and review what we have at the moment. And then, if you want to, check out the lady our victim worked with, If you would rather we can visit her flat, you make a choice. I know you will want to get some sleep in, you are probably getting tired.”
“No, I’m okay, at least for now.”
“I’ve booked you into this hotel,. It is around the corner from The Yard and so it is very convenient. We can give the porter your room number and he can put your luggage in there for you. Okay?”
“Sure thing, Inspector. Thanks. Let’s get moving then.”
Murchinson’s office table held Eliana’s computer and printouts of E mails they had recovered from it.
“These here are from the sent files,” Murchinson said. “As you can see we have an E Mail address, but we can’t trace it to any given location. Perhaps when you get home your experts will be able to do more than we will. They may have access to this ISP, and might be able to get some hard information. We've hit a blank wall here.”
“I’ll have it checked out when I get back.” Hallen said.
“Good, Jerry. That will be good. Let's continue here. The lady had a special folder set up which she called Carl’s Corner. She put most of his E- mails in that folder, and we have been able to access them and maybe get an idea about the man. Here are E- mails she kept.”
He handed Hallen a large packet of printed out E -Mails.
Hallen fanned the page, looking at them quickly.
“When I get back to the states, we’ll go over these with a fine tooth comb, and see what we can get from them. What did your people come up with Inspector?”
“You know Jerry, we are going to be working on this together for some time, I think. Why don’t you call me by my given name? Unless you are uncomfortable with that, call me Peter. Won’t you?”
"Be happy to Inspector, err Peter.”
They smiled at each other. The inspector went on.
“This is what we know or can determine if this fellow is sending her the truth, which I doubt. He calls himself Carl Rogers. Of course, that may or may not be his name. He says he is five foot l0 inches tall, slightly pudgy with curly brown hair and brown eyes.”
“Well, I guess there are about 30 million men in America, if not more, who meet that description. But it’s a start I guess.”
“With some study, I think you’ll be able to find out a lot about him,” Murchinson said. “Look here. She writes and tells him she works for a company that specializes in collectibles and antiques. He then tells her that he has just purchased a bentwood Thonet rocker at auction for a wonderful price. He bought it at some auction house in Philadelphia. If that’s for real, it could lead somewhere. Right?”
"Right."
"What impressed my people was that this man is playing right to her interests. See what I mean? He's telling her things he thinks she wants to hear."
“Yes, that seems to be the case. It is well worth checking, Peter. As soon as I get home I’ll start checking it out.”
“My people have printed out all this stuff, and we are now putting everything in the computer on CD’s so you can have that too, for reference. That should help a lot, don’t you think?”
Hallen and the inspector reviewed the information they had, and then Hallen asked if he could go talk to the lady at the Antiques place.
“Good idea. You might pick up something we missed. I'm certain that she will be more likely to answer a good looking young fellow like you, than an elderly man like me.”
“Oh cut it out, grandpa. What are you, a half a dozen years older than I am?”
“Probably less,” Murchinson said. “I just look old and beaten, It’s this bloody damn job, you know.”
Hallen suddenly felt a wave of fatigue. Although he had napped on the plane coming over, it was still almost 24 hours since he had been asleep in a bed.
“Peter,” he said. “I think I have to call it a day. I’m feeling beat, and think I should get some sleep. Do you think we can go visit the lady in the Antiques place and the flat tomorrow? I think I’ll go back to the hotel, call my chief and then hit the sack. Would that be okay?
"Certainly. I’ll see you in the morning and we can go on from there."
“Good, Peter. Meet me at the hotel for breakfast at 8 am, or is that too early?”
“Fine, Jerry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Due to the time zone change, and the excitement of what was happening, Hallen couldn’t sleep more than a few hours. He awakened at Four AM London time and took a few moments becoming acclimated to his surroundings.
He tried to go back to sleep, and knew that he couldn’t. He finally got out of his bed, and decided not to flick on the small TV, but rather to work off some energy with a run. He put on his sweats, his running shoes and slipped a couple of pounds in his pocket, locked his room securely, took the small and rickety elevator to the lobby and then out to the street. He wondered about the elevator. This was a prime, first class hotel, and yet the elevators worked like those in a pre-world war 1 building. As he thought about it on the snails trail down from the seventh floor where his room was, he realized that that was because these were probably the original elevators installed when the hotel was constructed, well before World War 1. And, the Brits probably felt, with typical frugality,” that if it ‘ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Hallen strode through the marble foyer, past the heavy Elizabethan type tables and furnishings and walked to the double doors that opened out into the street. He nodded to the night porter who looked up at him in surprise.
“Going for a run a this hour sir?
“Time change has gotten to me, and I can’t sleep,” he said.
“Shouldn't be no trouble sir. But let me suggest you go through the little park in front of the hotel to the next boulevard over. That’s a pretty busy street, and well lighted. Safer to run there, I think than back here.”
“Thanks”, Hallen said. “I'll do that.”
“But you know sir, looking at the size of you, I don’t think you’re apt to have any trouble with street toughs or the like. We don’t get many here, close to the Yard you know. Scotland Yard is just around the corner, but there are some punks around sometime.”
“Thanks, Hallen said. I’ll look out for them.”
The St. Emmons hotel is built like a horseshoe. There are two wings that extend out to the street, and a main section attached to the wings. That leaves a large, cobble stone driveway and walk from the street back to the marble hotel steps and the large Victorian porch. The Cabs drive up one side of the U, and drop their passengers off or pick up new ones, and down the other. The center is left clear for emergency and special vehicle parking. By the time Hallen got to the street, he was trotting and loosening up. Once through the park, and on the boulevard, he turned and began to jog down the street past offices, businesses and closed restaurants and pubs.
The street was remarkably clean, with very little litter or debris. From time to time, as he glanced to his right and left he could see a homeless person cuddled up in a doorway, covered with a dirty blanket getting his rest The homeless, he knew were becoming a universal problem. He wished he could solve the problem, but there was no way he could think of to get these poor people off the streets and into some kind of acceptable shelter. Some of them, his experience told him even wanted to live as they did, on the streets.
He ran for an hour and thirty minutes on one side of the street, and thirty minutes back on the other. By the time he got to the hotel, his shirt was stained with sweat. He was warm, and loose and feeling comfortable. He was hardly breathing hard
“Good run, sir?” the porter asked him as he walked through the doors.
“I was beginning to worry about you. About to call the Bills and report you missing, I was.”
“The Bills? Who may that be?”
“No disrespect, sir. That’s what some folks call the coppers.”
“Oh, I see.”
Feeling refreshed and energized Hallen met Murchinson at 8 AM and they went to breakfast.
“Well, what do you think we should do first, Peter?” Hallen asked.
“I think we should first check out the flat. We may not find out anything there, but we can do that before we go to the lass' workplace. The shop won’t be open much before l0, anyway.”
Hallen and the inspector spent an hour in Eliana’s flat. Although it had been seriously searched, they poked around, looked under furniture, in pockets of clothing, under drawers. It had all been done by the technicians, but one never knew.
There was always the possibility that someone had missed something that they would find.
No luck.
At l0:l5 that morning they were sitting at Maggie Morgan’s desk, chatting about the dead woman. Hallen believed that the more he knew about her, the better his chances of finding her killer and where they had been in the states. He had a general idea, of course. Somewhere at the upper reaches of the Delaware river, but it would help to have a more generalized location.
“You know, Miss Morgan, it might help if I could chat with anyone else here he may have known her well. The more information I have, the better it may be. You seem to have been close, was there anyone else?”
“I think we should talk to Mr. Steward.. He’s our managing director, and he knew her pretty well, too. He trained her in her specialty of glass and china, they were pretty good friends. He was pretty broken up when he saw the picture in the tabloid.”
Steward was a tall, gangly man in his early sixties, Hallen judged.
He welcomed them into his office, and then the four of them went to the company board room where there was more room to talk comfortably.
“Would you like some tea?”
They declined.
“Mr. Steward,” Hallen said, “Miss Morgan has been very helpful so far, and has given us a pretty good idea of the sort of person Eliana was. We know it was she, the dental records prove it. But anything you can tell us might be very helpful in tracking down the bastard, pardon me Miss Morgan.”
“A thoroughly bloody bastard,” Miss Morgan interrupted
“Who did this. Any help at all.”
“As Maggie here may have told you, gentlemen, Eliana was my protégé, sort of. She was a real luv, that gal and with me for a long time. I didn’t think she should go off to America with that man, but she felt that it represented an opportunity she could not afford to pass up. Moreover, he made her very happy, almost as soon as she met him. So, I didn’t stand in her way. Not that I would have, or could have, you know. But when she asked for a leave of absence, and agreed to stay on for a fortnight until I could find someone to do her work, I agreed. But I think I may have something that can help you.”
He picked up the phone and dialed two digits.
“Warehouse,” he said. “Timothy in the warehouse, pick up please.”
Someone came on the line.
Timothy, will you please go to my locker and bring me the red Samsonite suitcase that is in there? No, the big one. There is only one red case in there."
He looked up at the two policemen.
“I think, gentlemen, that this suitcase may prove to be important.”
To be continued in Chapter 6 - January, 2006
Irv Pliskin is a retired advertising agency owner. He is a combat veteran of World War II and an Ex Prisoner of War of the Germans. Married, with three kids, and four grandchildren he devotes his time to writing flash fiction. He hopes, that someday, he may become the Grandma Moses of flash fiction. He lives with his wife of 58 years in Cherry Hill, NJ. Contact Irv.
