Omega

Perched in his head, I was astonished both by the phantoms and the realisation that they might actually be emanating from the ICA in my own world. Minutes before they could have been Tanya’s audience. They were fleetingly manifest in this world because of my link to Owain.

He found the Windsor easily, saw that it was a Georgian remnant squashed between the egg-box façade of a furniture repository and a big rectangular water tank on galvanised trestles. It looked as if it had been converted from some earlier use decades before, its red plastic lettering faded, the crown over the W askew. A hoppy aroma in the snow-filled air told him that there was a brewery in the vicinity.

The hotel foyer was full of dark wood, crystal chandeliers and framed photographs of young servicemen. Owain stamped his feet on the doormat and dusted the snow from his cap.

An elderly woman wearing gold-framed bifocals was sitting behind the reception desk.

“Good day, major,” she said to him in an impeccable English accent. “Isn’t it appalling weather.”

“Awful,” he agreed. “I’ve come to see my brother, Rhys. He told me he was staying here.”

She didn’t check the register but slowly swivelled her chair to glance at the rows of keys hanging on brass hooks.

“I do believe he’s at home,” she told him.

A quaint way of putting it, and rather contrived, too: as far as he could see, only one key on the board was missing.

She was in her seventies, wearing an expensive silver cardigan that long had seen better days. Blue rinsed hair and a string of what might have been real pearls at her neck. Withered, arthritic hands. A relic, like the hotel itself, of another age.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said, reaching for the telephone.

“I phoned earlier,” he lied. “He knows I’m coming.”

The furrows on her brow deepened. He guessed that she had been at the desk all morning.

“I rang his portable,” he improvised. “By a miracle there was a signal. We had dinner together yesterday evening.”

“Ah.” She was mulling it over. “I do believe I remember him mentioning that at breakfast. He was rather late coming down.”

“Between you and me,” Owain said, “he’s never been much of an early riser.”

His tone conveyed sympathy with her disapproval of such tardiness. She looked mollified. Part of him was relieved to hear that his brother had returned safely. He needed him in one piece, and fully sober, if he was going to get any sense from him; but he also wanted to catch him off guard.

The keys were arranged in rows that he suspected represented the six floors of the building. The absent one was in the upper right-hand corner.

“Top floor?” he guessed.

“Of course,” she told him. “The suite. It has the best views.”

He was doing his utmost to be diplomatic and withheld his smile. The place was as quiet as a deserted barracks. It was probable that none of the other rooms was let.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to catch him,” he remarked. “The line was poor. I thought perhaps it might just be an overnight stay.”

“No, no,” she assured him, not even pretending to check the register. “Payment for three nights has already been made.”

“Ah. I’ll go straight up in that case, if it’s all right by you.”

“I’m afraid the lift isn’t working. You must forgive us. It’s such a problem these days. One simply cannot get the tradesmen.”

All this was said with an eggshell dignity. Her head was shaking slightly as if to say: What could you do? When would this intolerable state of affairs ever end?

“Please don’t concern yourself,” Owain commiserated. “I’m used to the exercise.”

“Turn right at the top of the stairs,” she told him. “It’s the third on the right. You remind me of him, you know.”

“Sorry?”

“Griff.”

It took him a moment to realise she was referring to his uncle. “You know him?”

“When I was younger. We were good friends in those days. I haven’t seen him in years. Your brother tells me he’s in fine fettle.”

What was the point in disabusing her? “Hale and hearty,” he said.

“We used to go dancing.”

“Ah.”

He thought she looked misty for a moment, but she quickly pulled herself together.

“Well,” she said, “you mustn’t let me delay you.”

The carpets were threadbare, dark with age. None of the sconced lights on the stairway were working. He ascended into the gloom, past landing windows thick with outside grime. All the corridors on the left side of the building were boarded up, with hazard stickers on them. It was probably bomb damage, judging by the way the repository next door abutted it as if to shore up the facing walls. Of course there might have been an outbreak of something, especially if the place had been used to house refugees. Few establishments could afford the expense of decontamination, and fewer still had the contacts to expedite the work. Its aura of shabby gentility would not be likely to appeal to

Rhys. Sir Gruffydd had probably arranged the accommodation as a favour to an old friend fallen on hard times. And as a means of keeping Rhys close on hand—but not too close.