if I just remained where I was, changing towels and wiping down tables, then all would be fine.
Not, of course, that there would be any police attention, because this was all going to work out fine. But, you know, just in case it all went wrong.
The great news was that, according to a budget I did on the back of an envelope, I was saving loads of money on this project. I could have flown to Arizona, at a cost of thousands. Instead, I was actually doing shifts at three different jobs—admittedly all of them minimum wage, but there we go. I was down £50 on drugs mixed with laxative, but Jaramy reckoned he could palm them off on someone (“I have a client I want to get rid of,” he said with a shrug).
The week passed in the way that these things do. Night cleaning in a hotel, actually utterly exhausting. Most new jobs are tiring, but this is advanced tidying at a time when your body is screaming, ‘Let me go to bed, please.’Plus, the kind of cleaning you get to do at night is grim. A lot of toilets, vomit in the corridors, cleaning the steps, scrubbing out the hotel restaurant, then, if there was spare time, trying to polish the brassware of the hotel doorstep. Plus there was a mountain of sheets back from the laundry that needed pressing, but no-one really seemed that bothered by all that.
I had to grab all the shifts they offered me, in case that was the night that Harry’s people placed the call. I had to stay alert, which was proving tricky. When I’d finally slump home the cat would want to play with me, and I’d have to placate it for a bit before grabbing a couple of hours’ sleep before staggering out to chug. This all felt bloody grim.
Finally, just as I was dealing with a dead rat in the basement, my disposable phone bleeped. ‘Deal’s done.’ We were on.
I SPENT THE next few hours nervously trying to do everything casually. I think I looked like a disaster, but then again, no one was looking at me. I steered clear of CCTV as much as possible, just to practice. I’d spent most of the last week learning where the cameras were in the hotel, and had worked out ways through the building without showing up at all, and also ways of ducking in and out of vision so that, if someone were checking the logs, I’d be accounted for without arousing suspicion.
The only problem was that no one had yet summoned a cleaner. There was an outside chance that they’d just do a runner and leave the company to pick up the bill. But I was hoping the results would be so explosive that they’d need a cleaner immediately.
Jeez, how long can it take a pop star to take some drugs?
The call came at 2am. Actually, that made sense. He’d had the supplies laid in for when he got back from some club or other.
I hurried up to the floor he was on. There’s a wing of the Waverley that is ‘discreet.’ It’s a little L-shape on one floor. There’s one way in, half-a-dozen rooms for entourage, a nice suite at the end and no cameras. I trundled through, making sure I was seen on a camera, and tapped at the suite door I’d been summoned to.
A groan answered, “Door’s open.” I walked into the suite. It was in darkness apart from a slit of light from under the bathroom door. The smell was fairly incredible. You could chew it. But you wouldn’t want to.
When I was a child we’d had a puppy. It’s why I hated dogs. It had started on the diarrhoea in the car back from the kennel. It had continued, spraying the kitchen in a fine cloacal mist until Dad banished it to the garden while he phoned the vet. The vet said the dog just needed to calm down. It lived in a shed for a fortnight. After which, Dad burned the shed rather than attempting to clean it.
This £3,000-a-night suite looked like that shed. An interesting thing I’d learned about hotel rooms is that they’re like prison cells, branches of McDonald’s and pub carpets. There’s almost nothing you can do to them that can’t be reasonably quickly hosed
Not, of course, that there would be any police attention, because this was all going to work out fine. But, you know, just in case it all went wrong.
The great news was that, according to a budget I did on the back of an envelope, I was saving loads of money on this project. I could have flown to Arizona, at a cost of thousands. Instead, I was actually doing shifts at three different jobs—admittedly all of them minimum wage, but there we go. I was down £50 on drugs mixed with laxative, but Jaramy reckoned he could palm them off on someone (“I have a client I want to get rid of,” he said with a shrug).
The week passed in the way that these things do. Night cleaning in a hotel, actually utterly exhausting. Most new jobs are tiring, but this is advanced tidying at a time when your body is screaming, ‘Let me go to bed, please.’Plus, the kind of cleaning you get to do at night is grim. A lot of toilets, vomit in the corridors, cleaning the steps, scrubbing out the hotel restaurant, then, if there was spare time, trying to polish the brassware of the hotel doorstep. Plus there was a mountain of sheets back from the laundry that needed pressing, but no-one really seemed that bothered by all that.
I had to grab all the shifts they offered me, in case that was the night that Harry’s people placed the call. I had to stay alert, which was proving tricky. When I’d finally slump home the cat would want to play with me, and I’d have to placate it for a bit before grabbing a couple of hours’ sleep before staggering out to chug. This all felt bloody grim.
Finally, just as I was dealing with a dead rat in the basement, my disposable phone bleeped. ‘Deal’s done.’ We were on.
I SPENT THE next few hours nervously trying to do everything casually. I think I looked like a disaster, but then again, no one was looking at me. I steered clear of CCTV as much as possible, just to practice. I’d spent most of the last week learning where the cameras were in the hotel, and had worked out ways through the building without showing up at all, and also ways of ducking in and out of vision so that, if someone were checking the logs, I’d be accounted for without arousing suspicion.
The only problem was that no one had yet summoned a cleaner. There was an outside chance that they’d just do a runner and leave the company to pick up the bill. But I was hoping the results would be so explosive that they’d need a cleaner immediately.
Jeez, how long can it take a pop star to take some drugs?
The call came at 2am. Actually, that made sense. He’d had the supplies laid in for when he got back from some club or other.
I hurried up to the floor he was on. There’s a wing of the Waverley that is ‘discreet.’ It’s a little L-shape on one floor. There’s one way in, half-a-dozen rooms for entourage, a nice suite at the end and no cameras. I trundled through, making sure I was seen on a camera, and tapped at the suite door I’d been summoned to.
A groan answered, “Door’s open.” I walked into the suite. It was in darkness apart from a slit of light from under the bathroom door. The smell was fairly incredible. You could chew it. But you wouldn’t want to.
When I was a child we’d had a puppy. It’s why I hated dogs. It had started on the diarrhoea in the car back from the kennel. It had continued, spraying the kitchen in a fine cloacal mist until Dad banished it to the garden while he phoned the vet. The vet said the dog just needed to calm down. It lived in a shed for a fortnight. After which, Dad burned the shed rather than attempting to clean it.
This £3,000-a-night suite looked like that shed. An interesting thing I’d learned about hotel rooms is that they’re like prison cells, branches of McDonald’s and pub carpets. There’s almost nothing you can do to them that can’t be reasonably quickly hosed
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