The Last Room on Floor Nine – Part 1: The Key Under the Carpet

The hotel had a rule about room 912. Nobody booked it, nobody cleaned it, and nobody asked why.

Defne had worked the night desk at the Pera Lantern for three years, and she had followed that rule without question. Then, on a wet Tuesday in November, the maintenance man called her from the seventh floor.

"Someone's been in nine-twelve," he said. "The dust is moved. And there's a key taped under the carpet."

"Don't touch it," Defne said. "I'm coming up."

The corridor was dim, the old brass lamps throwing amber circles on the faded wallpaper. The door to 912 had been locked for a decade. The key the maintenance man held out to her was small, black and warm, as if someone had only just let go of it.

She turned it in the lock. The door swung open with a sigh.

The room was empty of furniture, but the walls were covered in photographs. Dozens of them, pinned edge to edge. Every one of them showed the same thing: the hotel lobby, the revolving door, the night desk, and a woman behind it with her hair tied back and a green cardigan on.

Her.

"Who would do this?" the maintenance man whispered.

Defne didn't answer. She was looking at the last photograph, pinned alone in the centre of the far wall. In it she was smiling at someone outside the frame, and her hand was resting on a brass bell, the one that only staff were supposed to ring.

Beneath it, someone had written in neat black ink: You never asked about the last room, Defne. That was the mistake.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. An unknown number. One message.

Don't call the police. Come to the rooftop bar at midnight. Come alone. I'll explain the key.

She stared at the screen until the words blurred. Then she looked up and saw, reflected in the dark window at the end of the corridor, a tall man in a grey coat standing at the lift, watching her with calm, unhurried interest.

When she turned around, the lift doors were closing, and he was gone.

Defne sent the maintenance man away, locked the door of room 912 behind her, and slipped the key into the pocket of her cardigan. Then she went down to the night desk and sat very still, watching the revolving door and waiting for midnight.

At 11:59 she was already climbing the rooftop stairs.