The Limehouse Hotel: Harrison Lake Investigations, #2

By Ben Oakley

ONE NIGHT. ONE LOCATION. NO WAY OUT.

 

Private investigator Harrison Lake accepts an invitation to a prestigious hotel's final night but is forced into action when a body is found in one of the guest rooms.

When another guest turns up dead, Harrison finds himself at the centre of a terrifying hostage situation, as he and nine others are ordered to remain in the hotel by a mysterious voice.

With no way out, and with police surrounding the building, Harrison is forced to uncover the dark secrets of the Limehouse Hotel, before he too becomes a victim…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twelvetrees Camden
• Release date: Jun 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223250371

Book preview

One

Dear Harrison Lake,

Let the sane be grateful, for they do not know Eden has escaped us.

Let the dead be restful, for they do not know the pain of the living.

What am I reading? I asked.

"The last letter you'll ever need," Melissa 'Mel' Harvey, croaked into the phone, secretly bemoaning the fact I was leaving her firm.

For they do not know the pain of the living? Red wine it is then, I smiled generously to myself, placing the double-sided sheet of paper on the table in front of me.

I stood from the comfortable desk chair in the large hotel room and looked out the window to the quiet park below. I expected to see dog walkers, joggers, and groups of teens but the park was as grim as the waters of the Thames, ready for destruction to make way for a new housing block. The entire park had been cordoned off and minor groundworks had already begun, which was going to take quite some time due to the Limehouse Link Tunnel running underneath the park. I guess I was deemed lucky to have seen it before it went, though I wasn’t certain luck had brought me to the hotel.

A deep orange dusk was setting in as the late Autumn daylight had come and gone. The streetlights in the distance had just flickered to life and were illuminating the way for thousands of Londoners, going about their lives on a cool Saturday evening. On the other side of the hotel, though I couldn’t see it, was the Limehouse Basin, the gateway to the River Thames or hundreds of miles of canals, depending on which way one was to access it.

"Would you like me to continue?" she pushed, dragging me back into the moment.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen Mel in the flesh. She had been my boss at the Oculus Investigation firm for the entire ten years I had been there. It was an ecumenical pairing of many private investigation companies with the aim at having one port of call for customers, and the hotel job was my last before stepping out on my own with Harrison Lake Investigations. She was either not at the office when I was around, or she was out running damage control all over the country, and Europe.

Continue with what?

"Filling you in with information about the letter, of course. Have you taken your pain meds, Harrison?"

I reached down to my lower left side and placed a hand over the spot where the knife had gone in. It had only been a month since the Camden Killer had stabbed me and it was taking a fair bit of time to get over it. I was only forty-one but I still didn't heal as quickly as someone half my age. I had spent the previous four weeks preparing for Harrison Lake Investigations to open its doors, and everything that went with it but I knew the Limehouse Hotel was waiting. I had been adding to my research pile in the meantime and knew more about the hotel than the workers probably did – and a little extra info from some well-to-do friends. I appreciated Mel hadn’t pushed any further freelance jobs on me while I recovered but I wasn’t going to miss the Oculus.

I'm fine, Mel. Fill me in.

"There's no name on it apart from yours on the receiver details. The paper is standard stock, I had Mike in admin run a quick check over it and there were no fingerprints showing. It was posted from Islington Borough by special delivery and landed on my desk two days ago, with a cover note that said to have it ready at Limehouse Hotel in time for your check-in."

How accessible is Islington?

"It won’t work. It's the most densely-packed borough in London. 216,000 people live there, it would be nearly impossible to track a letter through CCTV or by other methods. Especially not in time for the Limehouse’s last night."

You believe everything in it?

"Listen, Harrison, can't say I'm the biggest fan of my own voice, so I'm gonna hang up."

Just hold on a minute!

I sighed, a little too obviously. In the ten years since I’d been under Mel’s tutorage, I had seen most of everything. Yet, the letter had landed at the end of one era and the beginning of another, and it wasn't yet piquing my interest at all. It just seemed a little too flashy and much too conceited to be taken seriously.

I continued, what's special about this letter? You know what we feel about stuff like this and the lack of providence.

"Have you read the last sentence?"

I had, and it had scared me a little bit but if it was true then I hoped Mel had phoned in a threat to the police.

Have you reported this?

"You think I would have sent it to you if I hadn't logged it?"

Did you? I was expecting a no.

"I didn’t need to."

Why?

"Because you have something you didn't have on your last case."

I lowered myself onto an amazingly comfortable armchair that had a view through the wall-length window. I grabbed the bottle of red wine and poured myself a glass.

You know I've only just got here, right? I've been out of the game for a little while now.

"You can't leave, your name was on the invitation. You're representing the Oculus at the hotel's last night. You know what to do."

I held the glass of wine in my hands and looked through it to give a hazy reflection out the window. I had never been to the Limehouse Basin, despite it being less than eight miles from my home in Hampstead Heath. I had been on a Thames taxi-boat past it but there was simply nothing that interested me about it. Its marina was lost on me as I didn’t have a boat, nor was I likely to ever own one, and the mixed architecture of the area did not entice. Though it was only a couple of miles from the City of London and close to Canary Wharf, it seemed far removed from the hustle and bustle of Central London but within commuting distance if needed. It was why the five-star Limehouse Hotel had been so popular with tourists and travellers alike.

I decided not to drink from the glass and put it back on the small table beside the chair. I stood again with a rising anxiety and put my hand to the window. I was on the third floor of a four-storey luxury dwelling in the original part of the building. A glamorous and old fashioned five-star hotel but blessed with the latest modern additions; tablet controlled amenities, shiny and sleek furniture and extravagant fittings. The only eye-sore was the extension to the side, a six-storey mini metropolis with no qualms about its inferior status. As far as I could tell when I passed through reception, the extension side of the hotel was already barriered off, ready for demolition.

I was hoping to have a nice relaxing night, meet new people, and eat lots of nice food.

"You can still do two of them."

Meet people and eat lots?

I heard Mel light up a cigarette, her vice of choice, "time for relaxing is long gone. This has got your name written all over it. You’re back in the game, Harrison, one last job for the Oculus and then you’re free to do whatever it is you want to do."

What if I just stayed in the room, drank, and watched crap TV all night? I’m still in the hotel.

"Your curiosity would get the better of you long before that ever happens."

Then you know me too well.

"I'm gonna love you and leave you, be careful."

Right, just blow some of the smoke my way and let me suck it in.

"The hotel has cigarettes behind reception, go and bloody get some. Oh, and Harrison?"

Yeah?

"You've never been out of the game." With that and as always, she hung up as quick as she had answered.

So many questions hung in my mind and I did not have the energy to entertain them all. I was not one for pussyfooting around any subject and had a knack of working things out pretty quickly but the letter had thrown me and I didn't like to be out of control of things.

I looked around at the décor of my room, wondering if I could or even should stay in it all night. I had only arrived at the hotel half hour ago and it never occurred to me how lonely I could become – and how quickly it could happen. I removed myself from the view of the park and city beyond the window and turned my phone on, to look at an email I had been sent over a month ago. I opened the PDF and reread it.

Dear Mr. Harrison Lake,

You are cordially invited to the Limehouse Hotel to celebrate our long and illustrious history. We would be honoured if you could join us for the hotel’s final night.

Sincerely, John Capperfoot.

Capperfoot. He was going to be my first port of call at the opening event in the central atrium.

I returned to the window and pushed my head against it, feeling the vibrations of the world on the other side, wondering what was going down across London, imagining the lives of millions of souls crossing each other’s lines. I found my own reflection staring back reminding me to focus my energy inward. There was nothing beyond the dimness of the distant lights, save for my flesh in the glass, like a two-dimensional image of life imprinted in the corridors of time. I believed wherever I travelled I would always leave a part of myself in reflection or imprint. The only thing I never left behind was my curiosity, of that, Mel was right, and it was piquing again. I reached for the letter and read the second section.

Let the souls of sickness suffer the punishment of eternal flame.

Let the veracity of vengeance stalk the guilty to the grave.

Veracity of vengeance, I said to myself, over and over, waiting for the repetition to give me something.

Repeating things sometimes worked, just not in this case. There was no great epic ending of salvation and no hidden meaning in the conclusion of re-telling the same stories. I was as confused as maybe the author was intending, though I suspected there was more within the words than I knew. But it was the last section of the letter that was playing on my mind more than anything else.

Let the memories of the forgotten remain forever haunting.

Let the Limehouse Hotel witness retribution on its final night.

Two

I took one glance back into the room to see if I had shut all the windows and secured any valuables, of which I had very little as I was a fifteen minute journey from my own home. I was always a little paranoid when leaving things in a hotel room, no matter how safe people told me it was. I shut the door behind me and took a deep breath. Why did I suddenly feel pressure to investigate this letter? I had a month off after the Camden incident but still felt it wasn’t long enough. Then I supposed, if not now, then when?

To be fair, the hotel was genuinely nice, too good for a Camden-born investigator but it was a perk of working freelance for the Oculus, where invites were the norm. The invite was a result of business relationships that had been nurtured over many years, and I only hoped to have the same success when I stepped out on my own, which by my calculations, would begin the very moment I checked out of the hotel the following morning. I had stayed in a few five-star hotels before but none quite as extravagant as the Limehouse, at least not the original 1920s building, I endeavoured to ignore the monstrosity of the extension.

The main entrance was slightly hidden from the main road in and out of the Limehouse Basin. Trees enveloped the entire site with a semi-circular entranceway and a small access lane that led to off-road car-parking. I knew the history of the Limehouse Hotel like the back of my hand. Designed in 1921 by an American conservationist turned architect named Robert Newton Maxwell. He had fallen in love with London and decided to stake his claim on the rising tourist industry.

The hotel was mostly destroyed in June of 1944 by Luftwaffe carrying the V1 flying bombs, as part of a sustained attack on the country’s capital. Due to the damage, it remained as such until 1949 when the hotel was purchased by an investment group named Port Len Holdings. They spent the next three years seeking funds to turn the hotel into a beacon of light within London. They had partially achieved their goal until they went bust fifty years later in 1999.

In 2000, the hotel was refurbished by the Capperfoot family who ran luxury hotels all over Europe. They had pretty much started from scratch and leaned heavily towards a more modern style, influenced by Greek luxury hotels. The much loathed extension had been developed under the Capperfoot era to increase revenue and placate the wants of the big-name investors. It wasn’t just the hotel ownership that had an illustrious history attached to it. The stories regarding unexplained phenomenon, criminals, murders and mystery disappearances, well, they really caught my attention.

I stepped to the balcony which was part of a circular mezzanine level. I didn’t mind heights and looking down to the terribly underused space below didn’t faze me at all, but I could imagine it would have been a struggle for those with vertigo. There was an oversized plant in the centre of the floor, surrounded by one of the fanciest water features I had ever seen. I looked up to the fourth floor and the huge consumerist chandelier that hung from the glass ceiling.

Each floor of the original hotel was the same size; twenty-five rooms on each level, all considered to be the pinnacle of luxury travel. However, the location was never ideal as there were similar hotels much closer to Central London, though it mostly catered for those on business trips to Canary Wharf. The extension to the left of the hotel, which I hadn’t been to yet, had created an additional one hundred and eighty rooms with thirty on each level. From what I understood, those rooms were no better than any standard motel or airport hotel room but I wouldn’t have minded one of those. Luxury was never an expected necessity.

The Capperfoot’s had expanded a hundred-room hotel to a near three-hundred room hotel, complete with leisure facilities, a small shopping mall and a large central atrium that put some of the grander hotels to shame. Overall, the hotel was a mismatch of styles that I supposed worked to some degree. It was a 1920s masterpiece, tainted by the modern sensibilities of a Mediterranean tourist trap.

I took another deep breath and pulled my shirt down a little, to loosen my shoulders. It wasn’t a formal evening but they had gone with formal-casual, whatever that really meant. I figured I could wear a shirt and get away with it but jeans and a t-shirt were out. I actively disliked wearing suits at the best of times, I found them too restrictive and representative of an image-based system of class I had never been privy too.

I assumed a nice, crisp, dark-blue shirt with long sleeves and dark jeans was suitable enough, even if my dirty brown hair falling to below the ears didn’t quite match up. If a t-shirt and jeans were a no-go then taking out the ‘t’ must have been acceptable. Besides, a suit jacket caused me some degree of discomfort where it tightened against the area of the stab wound. I made my way to the elevator with thoughts of unexplained phenomenon and mystery disappearances on my mind.

Three

I waited by the lift, realising it was only three floors to go and decided to stroll down instead. At least I could work out any creases my jeans may have got while sitting. I could also hear the buzz of the small crowd of people gathered in the atrium and didn’t want to meet someone in the lift, which usually started a pointless conversation that went nowhere. As I searched for the stairs, a room door opened in front of me and a younger man walked out in a dark black suit, eager to get to the party. He turned and looked straight at me.

Hey, are you taking the lift? he asked, with a strong West London accent.

I thought I’d walk down instead.

Gather your thoughts, eh? Can I join ya?

I appreciated it was a social event after all and at least I wouldn’t be trapped in the lift with him. The more, the merrier.

He offered his hand out, Seth Flamer, journalist for Hollow Daily and independent celebrity handler.

He pushed open the door to the dimly lit stairwell and held it open for me. He seemed nice enough so there was no harm in introducing myself and walking down with him. As much as I was in the hotel to mingle, I had been a little nervous ever since the Camden Killer incident, and a lot of that had to do with the resulting media attention I had received. The thought of having to talk to possibly hundreds of people throughout the course of the night was making me anxious, and the letter wasn’t helping.

I had never really suffered from anxiety before but I was certainly struggling, I was sure of it. I was however, determined to stay strong and fight through whatever this new demon was. I owed it to myself and the lives of those I ended up saving. I had to push the memories of the Camden Killer out of my head. I was in the hotel to do a job regardless of the rising feeling of nervousness and unease.

What do you do, buddy? he asked, as we started walking down a rather less-fancy stairwell.

This and that.

You gonna leave me hanging? That’s a terrible answer. Let me guess. He looked me up and down, biting his inner cheek, head of social and behavioural research with the department of education.

I almost laughed, but didn’t, that would be quite something. I’m a private investigator, just about to step out on my own.

Would never have guessed that. You here on a job?

I shook my head, just representing my old boss. What the hell’s a celebrity handler?

He smirked, someone who makes celebrities a lot of money. I take a cut for placing them with events, shows and talking opportunities. I’m a glorified agent but it’s a cut-throat industry and I can’t wait to get out of it if I’m honest. It has its perks but beyond that, it’s all lies and back-stabbing. Word of advice; don’t become a celebrity handler.

Right back at you with private investigator.

He chuckled and I smiled with him. Maybe the night wasn’t going to be too bad after all.

Ever get a feeling the stairwells weren’t meant to be used? he said.

It’s a bit of a difference to the room levels, that’s for sure. Perhaps they’ve started stripping them down.

I looked at the walls as we descended, they were basically exposed concrete with a poor white paint job on them. It was clear the hotel wanted us to use the elevators and I was sure the clientele of the Limehouse did so with pleasure. I then noticed the security camera as we descended to the second floor. Seth noticed me looking at it. The security light flashed and the camera tilted slightly, tracking our descent.

Ah, Seth said, didn’t think there was security tonight.

I frowned, why wouldn’t there be?

It’s the last night this hotel is ever gonna be open. If you were a guard, wouldn’t you want to celebrate it or at least not come in?

There was a guard on the main door, I remembered.

Yeah, but he was door security. Just checking names on a list, not a hotel guard.

Might be a motion camera, I proposed, just doing its thing.

Seth shrugged and skipped two steps ahead, seeing the camera on the first level. He watched it closely as it tracked him to the lower level. I looked back at the camera and saw it track me too, all the way down. He opened the door to the ground floor and held it open for me.

Well, someone’s watching us, he winked.

Four

We exited to the ground floor, right in front of the water feature. It was an extravagant series of interconnecting faux stone rocks which the water trickled through, built up to look like a small mountain with a large plant protruding from the top. I took another glance up to the four floors above, their mezzanine levels proclaiming their five-star status with wondrous confidence.

Not bad for a twenty-year old refurbishment, Seth said. You know much about the hotel?

Enough to get by, I lied.

So, you know about the Sigmon mystery?

I stopped and looked at him, false curiosity in my eyes. Should I?

You claim to be an investigator but you’ve never heard of the Sigmon case?

I was familiar with the Sigmon mystery, I had even written a report about it before but I let Seth think I didn’t know. If I played ignorant to some people then they occasionally let me in on information I was not familiar with. It also kept them talking while I worked out their true intentions. Paranoia was really creeping in and I didn’t want it to take over the evening.

Enlighten me, I said, as we made our way towards the main central atrium.

"Five years ago, Amanda Sigmon and her new husband, Jay Sigmon, booked a stay at this hotel. They were from Yorkshire and had come down to see a rock gig somewhere in Central London, can’t remember the band’s name. Apparently, they skipped the gig and went to a nightclub instead, and that was called the Booming Twenties, I won’t forget that. They were seen exiting the club around midnight and came back to the