Blacklight Blue by Peter May Read Free Book Online Page B

d’Or Chinese restaurant, and glass doors slid aside to draw them into the warmth of the hotel reception.
    ‘I have a reservation. Two rooms under the name of Macleod.’
    The girl behind the desk tapped on her keyboard and scrutinised her screen. ‘I’m sorry, monsieur, we’ve given those rooms away.’
    Enzo stared at her in disbelief. ‘What? Why?’ His hot shower was suddenly fading into an uncertain future.
    ‘I’m afraid your credit card was rejected.’
    Enzo snorted his frustration. He had given them the number over the phone. ‘That’s not possible. There must be a mistake.’ He fished in his wallet for his card. ‘Here try it with the actual card.’
    ‘I’m afraid it won’t make any difference. The hotel is full.’
    ‘Just try it, will you?’ Enzo snapped at her and she winced, but decided not to argue. She slipped the card into the machine. He tapped in his code. They waited, and then she shook her head, with an undisguised pleasure. ‘I’m sorry, monsieur. It’s still rejected.’
    He sighed heavily and gave her another card. ‘Try with this one.’ The girl set her jaw in sullen acquiescence and they went through the same procedure again. The second card was also rejected.
    Kirsty pushed a card at the girl. ‘Try one of mine.’
    The same thing.
    Enzo looked at his daughter. ‘So it wasn’t a faulty ticket machine at the tram stop. It was our cards.’ He waved his hands in frustration. ‘All of them. And that can’t be a coincidence. Like the mugging in the park that left us without any cash. We’re being shafted, Kirsty. Royally screwed.’
    The girl behind the desk smiled at them with an infuriating smugness. ‘I’m sorry. Like I said, the hotel
is
full. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
    Outside, Kirsty fought to hold back the tears. She was very close to the end of her tether, and Enzo wasn’t far behind. But crying about it wasn’t going to help. She went into her purse in search of her cellphone. ‘I’m going to call Roger.’
    Enzo felt an irrational spear of anger jab at him through his misery. ‘Why? What can Roger do? He’s in Paris.’
    ‘He can use his credit card to book us into a hotel by phone. And maybe he can come and get us in the morning.’
    Enzo cast her a surly look. To involve Raffin would be like admitting that somehow he had failed. Good old Enzo charging to the rescue and falling flat on his face. But right now, he couldn’t think of a viable alternative.
    ***
    They sat in a bar nursing coffees paid for with the handful of coins they had managed to scrape together from pockets and purses. Enzo stared morosely out into the street, watching each passer-by on the sidewalk, wondering if any one of them might be the stranger who was so efficiently deconstructing their lives. He tried not to listen as Kirsty explained their predicament to Raffin. He could just imagine how the young Parisian journalist would interpret their circumstance as somehow being Enzo’s fault. He could picture the look of supercilious superiority on the face of his daughter’s lover.
    And then they waited, for nearly half-an-hour, before Raffin phoned back with the news that he had found them rooms at the Hôtel Regent in La Petite France.
    ***
    The River Ill divided in the centre of Strasbourg, sending a loop around the very heart of the old city, before it rejoined the main flow a couple of kilometres downstream. So the original mediaeval city centre, with its cathedral and six churches, was effectively an island. The east end of the island, with its wharves and waterways, and ancient narrow streets, was known as La Petite France. In the middle ages, it was home to the city’s merchants and burgeoning middle class. It was now a main tourist attraction, filled with restaurants and hotels and souvenir shops.
    Enzo and Kirsty turned down through a deserted square, the last customers sitting in the window of a vegetarian restaurant. A seventeenth century house on three