Shoemaker Catches Elves

When he got into the lift, his watch said it was seven o’clock, but it was still on Hungarian time and they were an hour ahead. He liked getting an early start in the morning, particularly at weekends when most people sleep in. There was something about being up and about while others slumbered which made him feel kind of virtuous.

He hit the lift button twice before the “0” lit up green. The rubberised, non-slip floor had a couple of glossy patches of something spilled and sticky and, among the crumbs in the corner, a sticking plaster was folded over and stuck to itself, its absorbent pad stained reddish-brown.

One wall of the lift was mirrored and the short journey down gave him just enough time to run his fingers through his hair, turn sideways and suck his stomach in. The running was helping, but he knew he wasn’t going to lose the weight without keeping a better eye on what went past his teeth. The doors slid open at the ground floor and he turned left through the wedged-open double doors to the reception area.

The budget hotel had been designed for maximum turnover and minimum maintenance. There were no curtains or carpets and everything, from the linoleum floor to the plastic seating and laminated MDF table tops, radiated wipe-down convenience. All the furniture had been given bright and happy solid colours, like a post-mortem room masquerading as a nursery.

The girl on her mobile, prowling back and forth in front of the reception desk, glanced at him briefly without pausing in her conversation. She was speaking Polish maybe, or Czech - he couldn’t tell. She was slim - too thin for his taste - and good-looking in a severe sort of way, with heavy eye liner, bright red lipstick and bottle-blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She was dressed up for a night out, with a black leather biker-style jacket over a short cut black skirt and the sort of high black stiletto heels which take years of practice to master. Her legs were long and smooth, with a single delicate tattoo curling about five inches up the outside of her right calf.

The soft-spoken French girl who had been on reception when he arrived the evening before had been replaced by two Pakistanis for the night shift; one small, round and cheerful, the other tall and bald with the low, dark brows and ominously long beard of a man who ties maidens to railway lines in silent films. The counter was fifteen feet long and doubled as a twenty-four hour convenience store, stacked with packets of biscuits and instant noodles. As Smith approached, the smaller man greeted him with a smile.

Smith held up a coin.

“Got two fifties for a pound… for the machine?”

“Of course, Sir.”

Smith went to the coffee machine on the far wall. As he passed the front doors, they sensed his presence and slid open automatically, admitting a sudden rush of cool morning air, then closed again with a disappointed sigh.

While he was waiting for the machine to spit the coffee into the paper cup he had carefully positioned under where he hoped the nozzle might be, another girl came and knocked on the door of the toilet a few yards away. This one was thick-set with wide-spaced teeth, a post-sunset Princess Fiona in a light summer dress patterned in shades of brownish grey. She was barefoot and her long, sandy hair was recently towel-dried. She hovered for a moment, rubbing her eyes, and, when whatever she was waiting for did not happen, she muttered something under her breath and left.

Smith looked at the piece of paper taped to the door, on which somebody had written, in black marker:

“LOCK BROKEN PLS NOCK LOUD THANKS”

At least she had complied with the instruction.

There were two flat television screens suspended at opposite ends of the reception area; one showing the best-selling hip-hop videos of the ‘90s, the other tuned to BBC twenty-four. On both the volume was turned down low. Smith collected his coffee and went and sat at a table at the BBC end of the room, beneath the screen. He took out his laptop and opened it on the table in front of him, so that he could work and watch the room at the same time.

The blonde, high-heeled girl, still on her phone, stopped pacing, then peered out through the glass frontage onto the street beyond. The doors were waiting for her and shushed open expectantly. Smith watched her as she walked out onto the pavement and down the side of the building, never taking the phone from her ear, until she was lost from sight.

Smith tried to focus on the laptop screen in front of him, but it was only a minute or two before his fragile concentration was broken, this time by the reappearance of the barefoot girl. She was accompanied by a very tall, skinny boy, carrying two large bottles of cider made to look like champagne. They exchanged a few words with the Pakistanis behind the desk, which Smith did not hear, and then they all laughed. Hers was the loudest, a throaty smoker’s gurgle that rolled round the reception area, bouncing off the hard laminated surfaces like a pinball of phlegm.

One hand on chunky hip, with the other she pushed her damp hair around. She asked the big bearded Pakistani, in an Irish brogue, “So, what’s there to do roind here on a Sonday?”

He looked perplexed, but was evidently keen to be of assistance. He shrugged.

“What do you want to do?”

“Boars. Where’s the good boars roind here?”

He was obviously struggling, so she repeated.

“Y’know… boars. Fer drinkin’.”

He got it. He nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes. There are a lot of bars. Plenty bars.”

“Whaur the good ones, though?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Jaysus! Ye don’ drink?”

“No. I’m Muslim.”

“An’ ye don’ drink. Koinda religion’s that?.”

She laughed her rattling laugh again and the Pakistanis joined in obligingly. The tall boy with the cider said something and the pair disappeared in the direction of the lift. The bearded man went to the juice machine reserved for those customers who, unlike Smith, had taken advantage of the £4.95 breakfast deal, and helped himself to a glass.

There was a commotion at the far end of the desk and the bearded man put down the drink and went back to join his colleague.

“Was there a girl here?” someone said. There was urgency in the strong northern accent, but Smith could not see who was talking.

“Which girl?” asked the smaller Pakistani.

“A girl. I just spoke to her on the phone.”

“A foreign girl?”

“Yeah. She was foreign. Russian or something. Where is she?”

A man in a wheelchair rolled into view in front of the desk. He was young – no more than early twenties – fresh-faced and clean-shaven with a huge grin. He spun the chair round, looking this way and that. The practised confidence of his manoeuvres and his well-developed shoulders and arms, spattered with tattoos, suggested to Smith that the wheelchair was not a temporary accessory. More inky designs peeped out from under the edges of his clean white singlet.

“She’s gone already,” said the Pakistani. His bearded friend made corroborative noises.

“But I was just speaking to her. I told her I was coming down.” He peered out of the front windows, scanning the empty street beyond. “Did she have pink hair?”

“What?”

“Pink hair. She had pink hair, yeah?” He was still smiling, apparently undaunted, and exuded an innocent exuberance which was hard not to like.

“No. Blonde hair.”

“But she was pretty, yeah?”

The two Pakistanis nodded and said yes the girl was very pretty. The young man went on.

“She had pink hair in her picture. She was pretty. Should be – seventy quid for a half hour. I can’t believe it.” He grinned at Smith and said, “I was just speaking to her and I said I’d be right down.”

Smith was not sure whether he was addressing him or not, so he smiled a half smile for the sake of politeness and looked down at the laptop.

The young man rolled himself toward the front doors, which parted in anticipation and stayed open, waiting to see what he was going to do next.

“I can’t believe she just fucked off. Which way did she go?”

Both of the Pakistanis came out from behind the desk and the bearded one went to the window and craned sideways, his head touching the glass, in the direction the blonde girl had taken, then shook his head.

“I don’t see her.”

“But she went that way, yeah?”

“Yes. That way.”

Both Pakistanis pointed.

“Right.”

The young man propelled himself through the doors and the Pakistanis followed him out onto the pavement, where they regrouped for more discussion and pointing. Having established the girl’s trajectory, he set off at full speed, hunched over in his chair and flinging the wheels round with big, powerful strokes. The Pakistanis watched him for a while, then laughed and came back inside to take up their positions behind the desk.

Smith had just returned to his computer screen when a taxi pulled up outside and emitted a man in a fashionably cut suit with a briefcase, who entered the lobby with confident determination. He was not here for a business meeting, for he was too sure of himself in gait and eye to be selling and too young and fashionable to be buying. Sure enough, he walked behind the counter, giving the Pakistanis no more than a cursory nod, opened a drawer and went through its contents. Then he closed it and started pressing buttons on the desktop computer, squinting at the monitor while he jabbed decisively at the keyboard. He was in charge here now.

The Pakistanis put some croissants on a shelf next to the juice machine then seemed to melt away just before the first family of package holidaymakers, anxious not to miss their flight to sand and sun, trotted bleary-eyed and squabbling into the reception area for breakfast. The manager was too busy on his computer to greet them, but used a remote control to turn up the sound on both televisions, so that neither had an unfair advantage.

Smith waited, lurking behind his laptop, but the young man in the wheelchair did not re-appear. Eventually, he checked his watch and realised it was time to wake his own family, so he folded his computer, tucked it under his arm and headed back to the lift. The sticking plaster and the crumbs were gone and the rubberised floor had been mopped, erasing all trace of the night. He turned sideways to the mirror and sucked his stomach in.