Kiss & Die - Lee Weeks [48]
Mann held the door open with his foot whilst he stood for a few minutes in the doorway. Even though Mann couldn’t see it, he smelt it. The first rule of a crime scene: take in everything, let your senses register it all. Now he smelt it the way connoisseurs smell wine, the overtones of blood, the undertones of butchery and death. This was a big room – plush. He couldn’t see the bed. The television was on low in the background, it was an English channel, BBC World News. Mann stepped further inside the room. The door sprang closed with a click behind him. To his right was a wardrobe, desk and minibar. There were a couple of used glasses, whisky miniatures and small can of Coke. A half-drunk bottle of champagne was further along the desk. Just where Ruby had left it.
‘Oooh, champagne.’ Ruby picked up the bottle in the top of the fridge. ‘For me?’ she pouted.
‘You must be joking. It cost more than you. Put it back.’ Max Kosmos laughed hard at his own joke.
Ruby pretended to laugh with him. She squeezed his arm. ‘You got great physique. What you weigh, two hundred twenty pounds?’
‘Two hundred and twenty-five pounds of pure beef, baby.’ He laughed.
Ruby smiled as she turned her back to him. She stuck her bottom in the air and hitched up her dress a little to distract him as she reached inside the small fridge to get his drink out. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, made sure his eyes were glued to her rising skirt whilst she stirred the sedative into his drink. She would start with a small amount; she only wanted to make him tired enough so that she could tie him up. She didn’t want to knock him out so that he wouldn’t feel the pain. She poured herself a small shot of gin and a lot of orange.
‘Here, big man.’ She handed him the drink and clanked her glass against his. ‘Down in one, yes?’ She needed to make him drink it fast. She watched him drink it down and she swallowed hers in one gulp and then she poured him another.
‘Cheers.’
She clashed her glass against his. She could see his lips were wet, she smelt his sweat beneath his aftershave. She knew what he’d be thinking: he could handle his drink, and that it wouldn’t be him who was drunk. He would think he was being clever and that he knew these Asian women. They took some loosening up. A few drinks and she’d be legless with her arse in the air. He could be in for a good night. Cheap too: he could probably get away without paying her. After all, who was she going to complain to? She was nobody and he was Mr International Businessman.
Mann pushed the bathroom door open just enough. This was a plush room, marble finish. Toiletries lined up on the back of the basin, once neatly rolled facecloths now soaked with blood. Someone had cleaned up in there and not cared about the mess. Blood ran down the sides of the sink. Bloody pools washed over the marble top. Blood stained the fluffy white towels. He looked at the mirror. In the centre were smudges: kisses in pink.
Ruby breathed onto the mirror and drew a heart in the mist and put an arrow through it. On one side she wrote Ruby and on the other she wrote a man’s name, then she leant forward and kissed the cold mirror. She drew back sharply as her lip caught on a minute crack in the glass. A round drop of blood quickly bulged on her top lip and then dribbled down, she tasted it with her tongue, she touched it and watched it spread across her fingertips, a pretty colour: ruby red. She told herself that was why she had called herself Ruby. Rubies were precious, rare, the colour of a fresh cut just made, fresh blood spilt. But, someone else had named her it, the man who never came back, the man who left her to