I give in and do what I should have done at the start. I make my way back down to the ground floor and Reception, sweet-talk one of the receptionists and then the junior manager — possibly leaving the latter with the impression that I just want to revisit the site of an old conquest, mw-ah-ha-ha — then take the middle service stair to the fifth floor and let myself in.
The lights don’t work. They might have mentioned this.
I use the torch function on the rubbish phone: not as good as the iPhone’s. The wan, ghostly, white-screen light guides me along through the darkness of the deserted fifth-floor corridor to the offending toilet.
The place feels cold and gloomy, lit only by the phone and the watery light filtering through the etched glass of the single window. The green floral curtains that preserved the modesty of the undersink plumbing have gone, as have any towels and toilet rolls. The cubicles stand empty, doors open. I gently close the door of the middle one as far as it’ll go, which is about seven-eighths to fully.
I wait patiently while the rubbish phone sorts itself out to upload email, then I negotiate the clunky interface to find the attachment I sent myself from Al’s computer. I open up the photo of the red gloves. I take out the copy I printed earlier this morning too, comparing images. I reluctantly concede the phone’s image is the more useful even though it’s smaller, and put the print away.
So I stand there, looking up at the top of the middle cubicle’s door and holding the phone up and out and then closer to and further in, trying to get everything aligned.
There’s no problem with the photos taken from under the sinks, from beneath the curtain. Any kid could have taken them; so could any adult, prepared to stoop so low.
It’s this one, the one featuring the pair of red satin gloves hoisted ecstatically (if I may make so immodest) above the cubicle door, that poses credibility problems.
I squat on my heels, shoulders resting against the surface supporting the three sinks, but that doesn’t work. Nothing fits until I’m standing upright, the image — and, by implication, the camera that took it — at about adult head height. I turn and look down at the formica surface I’m resting against. I suppose a kid could have jumped up onto this and got the angle that way. Though in that case…they’d be even higher than I can plausibly hold the camera here. They might even have stayed standing on the floor but held the camera as high as they could, and trusted to luck…Maybe even that, plus jump and snap at the same time.
Except you wouldn’t expect a kid to do that. And Jel’s arms/hands were raised like they are in the photo only for a few seconds, max. (I remember; they came down to grasp me, hard, at the nape of my neck, immediately afterwards.) So not much time for a wee person to spot the gesture and scramble up here to take the relevant shot. Though of course some of the kids with cameras weren’t so small; a few were maybe ten or eleven: straw-thin beanpoles who looked like they’d fall over if you sneezed too close to them, but already maybe eighty per cent as tall as they’d be as adults. Maybe one of them could have stretched to the required height…
Oh well. I take a few photos with the rubbish phone; it insists on using flash. In my head these count as evidence somehow, though probably only in my head.
Altogether, nothing that would stand up in court, Your Honour, but pretty flipping suspicious if you ask me, and it’s me that’s doing the asking, so I ask myself and sure enough my self says, Yeah, pretty fucking suspicious, right enough, matey boy.
I pocket the phone, take a last, sad, nostalgic, slightly despairing look at the relevant toilet-bowl seat, then exit, pad along the gloomy corridor and walk slowly, thoughtfully back down to Reception, returning the keys with a smiling, borderline-unctuous Thank you.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Ferg asks.
‘I could tell you,’ I tell him, ‘but then I’d have to cut you dead.’
‘Hnn. Needs work.’
I go to walk past a table where Phelpie is sitting playing on a Gameboy while a couple of intense-looking boys spectate. The boys are maybe just pre-teenage and look uncomfortable in their slightly too-big suits. Phelpie finishes whatever level he’s playing on — it’s some dark, monstery, shooty game I don’t recognise — with a series of deft twists and a flurry of control taps, then hands the device back to one of the kids, who is obviously, if reluctantly, impressed. Phelpie stands up, saying, ‘There you go. Easy, really.’
‘Aye, ta,’ the first boy says, sitting down, while the other kid draws up another seat and they both hunch over.
‘Aw, hi, Stu,’ Phelpie says with a grin when he sees me.
‘That was quite neat,’ I tell him.
‘Aye, well,’ Phelpie says, grinning. He looks a little drunk for once, which makes such reaction-time-critical gameplay even more impressive.
‘How come you don’t play cards that fast?’ Phelpie shrugs. ‘No money involved. Just a game.’
