The Way Inn. Will Wiles

approaching through layers of concrete and breezeblocks.

      ‘Awful weather today,’ I said. I had to say something.

      ‘Awful,’ the young man said, shaking his head at the horror of it all. ‘It barely even got light, did it? And it’s already getting dark.’

      The lift arrived and we stepped in together. Moody light, mirrored walls and soft music, like a tiny nightclub. Out of the lift on the second floor, the staffer walked briskly down the corridor, throwing my bearings again – I had wanted to see where I was in relation to the stairs, but missed the chance. At the door to 219, the staffer inserted the keycard into the box above the handle and was rewarded with an immediate green light and satisfying clunk. The handle turned and the door opened.

      ‘If you keep it away from your keys, your cellphone and your other cards, it should be just fine in future,’ the staffer said, handing back the card with one hand and holding the door open with the other.

      ‘Thanks,’ I said, stepping into my room and sticking the card into its niche in the wall. The room lights turned on.

      ‘No problem,’ said the young man with a little bow, hand behind his back and smiling broadly. And he turned sharply away, as if relishing the fact that this moment did not call for a tip. The front door closed.

      While I had been at the centre, the room had been cleaned. The bedspread was as creaseless and immaculate as the icing on a wedding cake. My few belongings had been organised and now looked absurd and tawdry in the pristine room. A newspaper I had bought yesterday had been neatly placed next to my laptop on the desk, looking filthy and out of date. I had left yesterday’s clothes strewn across the bench at the foot of the bed – they were still there, but folded, their creases a source of shame. The shirt I had draped on the armchair had been placed on a lonely hanger in the wardrobe. On the bedside table, a small heap of crumpled scraps of paper and low-denomination coins was scrupulously untouched like an exhibit in a museum of low living. Everything about the scene suggested to me that the cleaner had been greatly dismayed by the poor quality of the clothes and possessions they had been forced to deal with, but had done their best.

      This was paranoia, I knew, but it still needled me. I dropped the newspaper and some of the paper scraps into the bin, and stuffed the clothes back in the bag. Then I took off my tie and shoes. I opened my laptop; there was nothing of any importance in my email inbox – including nothing related to Meetex that could explain the incident with Laing at Emerging Threats. Just arrangements for coming trade shows and conferences – my life, my work, stretching out into the future in a reassuring manner, beyond this unfortunate professional hiccup. I snapped the laptop closed, took a beer from the minibar fridge and lay on the bed, back and head propped up with cushions. Eight cushions on this small double bed, along with the two pillows – serving no purpose beyond their role as visible invitations to be comfortable. This was presumably exactly the sort of moment a chain hotel imagined itself making a positive intervention – the weary guest comes in from a challenging day of combative big-B Business and finds solace; a private cube of climate-controlled air; a cold beer; a yielding bed covered in well-stuffed cushions. The group intelligence of the operating corporation’s marketing and public relations people, its designers and buyers, its choosers and describers had considered this moment, it had considered me. It was only a simulation of hospitality, of course, but still it provided some respite.

      I sipped the beer straight from the can and listened to the quiet sounds of the hotel around me: the low vibration of its air systems, distant doors opening and closing. I closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t seem likely or desirable. Instead, I mentally replayed the day, examining and twisting it like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to line up its faces so it made sense. A man I had thought to be a prospective client was instead the event director of Meetex. I had given him a very detailed description of the service we offered, and in short order he had named me as a threat to the meetings industry. A threat to the meetings industry! How pompous, how vain of Laing to see himself as the guardian of a stronghold of civilisation, an ‘industry’ no less – though he would probably consider it a ‘community’ and a ‘family’ as well, the self-aggrandising prick. It was a stunt, a bid to look important and concerned for his customers, but a splash that would ripple away quickly. What troubled me, as a matter of pride as much as any practical concern, was that my anonymity had been breached – certainly this afternoon many more people knew the nature of my work than did this morning. Adam had really laboured the message that I had to be discreet on this particular job: he had told me so in every email relating to it, and in all our recent phone conversations. Perhaps he had had some premonition of what was in store, or had picked up on clues pointing to the ambush? If so, why hadn’t he warned me? But I was getting too far ahead of myself.

      Adam would have to know about all this – in time. For a couple of minutes I considered emailing him right away, and I experimented with different wordings in my head. But I did not want to attach an air of emergency to the incident, and make it into a bigger problem than it really was. Sure, Laing knew who I was and what I did, but how many others? A couple of hundred people heard him – but were they listening, and did they care? A couple of hundred out of tens of thousands. There was Maurice to consider. He had gone to some effort to sit next to me. Maurice, early for a talk! He was a consummate latecomer, a man who no amount of tutting would deter from blundering past the knees of seated audience members to reach an empty seat in a middle row while a speaker was in mid-flow. It was, in retrospect, an incredible performance by him. If he had not found me after lunch (how long had he been looking?), I could be fairly sure that he would have lain in wait at the door of the lecture hall until I happened along. And now I remembered his request for a business card, our conversation about what I did. Cunning – far more cunning than I had imagined him to be – but, mysteriously, I once again found it hard to muster much anger towards the journalist. And, for the first time in our acquaintance, I discovered I was looking ahead to the next possible moment I could contrive a meeting with him. I needed to know his view on what had happened, and minimise it in his eyes.

      He would be at the party tonight, of course. The party. With so much looking back – dismantling, examining and reassembling the recent past – I had neglected to look forward. For a brief while I considered not going to the party. But that wouldn’t do – hiding away, acting as if I had something to be ashamed of, was not the way to behave. It would be business as usual. And I would have an opportunity to prove to myself that I remained anonymous. And besides, I wanted to go: my ego had taken a knock, and a few drinks and some flirting would set that right. There would be girls there, for sure. Things had been going pretty well with Rosa – maybe something could happen there tonight, and I could hang the Do Not Disturb sign on my door. That would certainly restore the natural balance of my interior ecosystem. The aggressive energy generated by Laing’s subterfuge had left me restless. I had obtained my day-long desire, to be back in my hotel room, and I was almost ready to leave it again.

      After finishing the beer, I dozed on the bed, letting the painting on the wall in front of me focus and unfocus. An idea coalesced. My mobile phone was on the bedside table: I picked it up and used it to take a photograph of the painting on the wall. One more for the woman’s collection – one she could not have seen, because it was in a guest’s room, not a public area. If we did run into each other again, I would have something to say to her, a way to show interest in her pastime, and if she wanted the picture she would have to give me a mobile phone number or an email address. I would not lose contact with her again.

      Around me, I could sense the hotel filling with life as people returned from the conference in greater numbers. Footsteps and fragments of muffled conversation sounded in the corridor. From the room next to mine, 217, I could hear music playing faintly through the wall, drifting in and out of the realm of perception in a way that was more distracting than if it came through loud and clear. I switched on the television. It had reset to the hotel welcome page, the smiling staff, the weather for tomorrow and the latest from the restaurant, which was ‘Closed for private party’. I turned to a news channel and ordered a sandwich from room service. Forty-five minutes to an hour – they were busy. I half-watched the news, which was fretting over a lacklustre economic statistic – a poker-faced little number representing the aggregate of thousands of individually bland decisions made in fabric-covered