Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell

of cheap hotels and houses of call and disreputable lodging places in the vicinity of Paddington Station, so he went there first on the Metropolitan Line out of Liverpool Street. But times had changed, the hotels were all respectable and filled up already with foreign tourists and quite expensive. The reception clerk in one of them recommended him to Mr Azziz (who happened to be his cousin) and Alan liked the name, feeling it was right for him. It reminded him of A Passage to India and seemed a good omen.
    Staying in hotels had not played an important part in his life. Five years before, when Mrs Summitt had died, she had left Pam two hundred pounds and they had spent it on a proper holiday, staying at an hotel in Torquay. Luggage they had had, especially Pam and Jillian, an immense amount of it, and he wondered about his own lack of even a suitcase. He had read that hotel-keepers are particular about that sort of thing.
    The Maharajah was a tall late-nineteenth-century house built of brown brick with its name on it in blue neon, the first H and the J being missing. Yes, Mr Azziz had a single room for the gentleman, Mr Forster, was it? Four pounds fifty a night, and pay in advance if he’d be so kind. Alan need not have worried about his lack of luggage because Mr Azziz, who was only after a fast buck, wouldn’t have cared what he lacked or what he had done, so long as he paid in advance and didn’t break the place up.
    Alan was shown to a dirty little room on the second floor where there was no carpet or central heating or washbasin, but there was a sink with a cold tap, a gas ring and kettle and cups and saucers, and a gas fire with a slot meter. He locked himself in and emptied his bulging pockets. The sight of the money made his head swim. He closed his eyes and put his head on to his knees because he was afraid he would faint. When he opened his eyes the money was still there. It was real. He spread it out to dry it, and he hung his raincoat over the back of a chair and kicked off his wet shoes and looked at the money. Nearest to him lay the portrait of Florence Nightingale which he had torn in half and mended with Sellotape.
    Outside the window the sky was like orangeade in a dirty glass. The noise was fearful, the roar and throb and grind and screeching of rush traffic going round Shepherd’s Bush Green and into Chiswick and up to Harlesden and over to Acton and down to Hammersmith. The house shook. He lay on the bed, tossed about like someone at the top of a tree in a gale. He would never sleep, it was impossible that he would ever sleep again. He must think now about what he had done and why and what he was going to do next. The madness was receding, leaving him paralysed with fear and a sensation of being incapable of coping with anything. He must think, he must act, he must decide. Grinding himself to a pitch of thinking, he shut his eyes again and fell at once into a deep sleep.
    Nigel delayed till half-past six, waiting for the traffic to ease up a bit. As far as he was concerned, when you drove a car your right foot was for the accelerator and the brake and your left one for nothing. He got into the Escort and started it and it leapt forward and stalled, nearly hitting the Range Rover in front of it because Marty had left it in bottom gear. Nigel tried again and more or less got it right, though the gears made horrible noises. He moved out into the traffic, feeling sick. But there was no time for that sort of thing because it was a full-time job ramming his left foot up and down and doing exercises with his left hand. He didn’t know where he was aiming for and it wouldn’t have been much use if he had. His knowledge of London was sparse. He could get from Notting Hill to Oxford Street and from Notting Hill to Cricklewood on buses, and that was about all.
    The traffic daunted him. He could see himself crashing the car and having to abandon it and run, so he turned it into a side road in