Page 119 of Disturbing the Dead
“Good job,” Gray says as he reaches through to unlock and open the door. “See? You are a valuable member of this team, Hugh. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”
As Gray starts pushing open the door, I grab his jacket. “Uh, trap?”
He frowns at me. I nudge him aside, hoist my skirts, and kick open the door while holding the others back. Inside, the window has been covered, and the room is pitch black. McCreadie lights a match, and we step in.
The woman might have claimed this was an apartment, but it’s no bigger than a closet. In fact, I’m quite sure that’s what it had been before the house was converted into apartments. At the very most, it was a small child’s bedroom. It’s a single room, no more than eight feet long and half that wide. There’s room for a cot and nothing more. Except there is no cot. Just blankets piled on the floor… with a man lying atop them.
McCreadie lifts his lit match, and the face of the man comes clear.
It’s Selim Awad.
THIRTY-SIX
We rush in then. With such a tiny space, there’s no chance that someone is lying in wait to attack. Selim is on the blankets, with empty bottles beside him and something else. Something that I see Gray notice at the same moment.
I yank newspaper from the tiny window, and light floods in. When I glance over, I can see what that pale object is. A length of rope, lying right beside Selim.
Gray is already bent next to the young man.
“He’s alive,” Gray says as he checks for a pulse. He grips Selim’s shoulder. “Mr. Awad? Selim?”
A low groan. Gray shakes him and says his name again. Selim falls over, head lolling. The stench of alcohol overwhelms the stink of Selim’s unwashed body. There’s another smell, too. Sickly sweet.
“Vomit,” Gray says.
He shoves aside a filthy blanket covered in that vomit. Then he returns to trying to rouse Selim. When he slaps his face, I wince, but it does the trick. Selim jerks awake, blinking and looking around.
“Dr. Gray?” He blinks harder. “Miss Mitchell and Detective McCreadie. Where—? Oh!”
He tries leaping to his feet, but staggers and needs to be held up by both men.
“Where am I?” Selim says, looking around. His gaze falls on the empty bottles. “What are—?” He looks about again. “How did I get here?”
“Well, according to a note I received,” McCreadie says, “you were spotted entering here with a woman last night.”
“What? No.” Selim gazes about himself in horror. “That’s not—I did not—” He points at the bottles. “Those are not mine.” He sees the length of rope and goes still. “And that definitely is not mine.”
“We have questions for you, obviously,” McCreadie says. “But for now, we need to get you home to your sister, where Dr. Gray can take a better look at you.”
While McCreadie goes outside to hail a hansom cab, I talk to the neighbor. Gray has given me coins to draw answers out of her. The saddest part is that they aren’t even big coins. Pennies and ha’pennies are all it takes, and so I don’t begrudge her demanding payment incentive. The real concern will be that she’ll start making things up to earn more money. So I’m careful with my questions, and I pay her even when she can’t answer.
Last night, two men brought Selim to the apartment. Definitely men, meaning whoever wrote the note was lying about seeing a woman take him in, which suggests the whole thing was a setup.
The neighbor can’t describe the men beyond saying they were big and rough, like dockworkers. They didn’t see her with her door cracked open, and she had the good sense not to throw it open and confront them with all the noise they were making. Also it was two in the morning instead of the afternoon.
Selim had been unconscious. Drunk, she said, the smell cutting through even the stink of the building. They put him inside the room, and then they left. Before they went, one said something very specific to the other.
“Did you leave the rope?”
I don’t even need to question Selim Awad to know he was set up. We would have strongly suspected it from the note and from finding him unconscious and surrounded by empty liquor bottles. His boots are also missing, suggesting they were used to make the prints that seemed to tie him to the attack on me.
By the time I finish my questioning, the guys are helping Selim downstairs. I slip in after them to search the room. Gray has taken the rope. I scoop up the bottles in the least filthy blanket. I also realize Gray took the one with the vomit. Gross, but a good call.
The setup here was that Selim was dead drunk. That blanket may tell us what was actually in his system, be it alcohol or something else.
Once those items are removed, the room is empty save for two other blankets, which I shake out. Empty.
The men had dumped Selim in that room overnight. They’d staged it with booze bottles and rope, and then someone sent that note to Gray. McCreadie might grumble that everyone is passing the clues our way, but I suspect if there’s any insult in there, it’s not directed at McCreadie.
