"Medellín runs on tinto, cable cars, and fourteen months of just one more week"
Zainab Hussain, twenty-four, of Bradford, co-hosts the true-crime podcast Murder, She Streamed, narrates her own life in her cold-open voice, and secretly cannot sleep without a Poundland moon night light. She has a network pilot and a stubborn pitch: The City That Refused to Be a Crime Scene, an episode about Medellín, once the most violent city on earth, and the absence of a body. Her producer wants a body. She books the Casa Paisa Rooftop Hostel in El Poblado, a red-brick layer cake of orchids, a mango tree growing through the courtyard, an iron spiral staircase and a rooftop with the whole glittering valley at its feet.
Everybody there loves Toby from Leeds, a former Spanish teacher in a bucket hat who came for two weeks fourteen months ago and never left. He fixes the showers, pours the aguardiente, teaches free Spanish on the roof at five o'clock and brings Zainab proper Yorkshire tea. Around him orbit Anouk, a Belgian designer who rates everything out of ten; Tav, a Samoan rugby coach who cries at every view; Mateo, a silent Argentine tattoo artist who pays cash and draws people; and Garrett Lund, a crypto-nomad filming Narcos IRL, who calls Zainab Podcast Karen. Doña Luz Marina, the widow who owns the place, runs it from her kitchen and can hear a bad T-shirt four floors up. The white Hub behind reception keeps upgrading guests into Room 10.
Then Zainab counts. Three young men have checked out early from Room 10 this year, and one of them, an Australian called Lachie, has been missing since November while his mother posts appeals from Perth. Her murder board goes up on the underside of Anouk's bunk. Garrett turns her into a joke online. Mateo tells her to go home, and to be careful on the seventh. A guest ends up at the bottom of the spiral stairs. And the whole hostel is getting ready for the Noche de Velitas: five hundred candles in a star on the roof, three Santas, a hundred guests and neighbours, a drone over the valley, and Garrett's biggest livestream ever, set for midnight.
Age: 24
Type: True-crime podcaster from Bradford
Fatal Flaw: Has narrated two thousand hours of murder and still goes up the stairs
Role: Protagonist
Age: 30-ish
Type: Crypto-nomad filming Narcos IRL
Fatal Flaw: Believes he is always early
Role: Victim
Age: 35-ish
Type: Long-stayer from Armley, former Spanish teacher
Fatal Flaw: Physically incapable of not being helpful
Role: Long-stay guest
Age: 28
Type: Belgian UX designer on sabbatical
Fatal Flaw: Rates everything out of ten, including the danger
Role: Ally
Age: 30
Type: Samoan rugby coach from South Auckland
Fatal Flaw: Cries at every view and fears every height
Role: Ally
Age: ???
Type: Mysterious presence
Fatal Flaw: None documented
Role: Observer
From the Prologue, "Checked Out Early"
He went down the spiral staircase to get his stuff.
It was iron, painted black, very old and very steep, and it went round and round from the roof down to the fourth-floor landing like the inside of a seashell. The first night he'd been here, he'd come down it after nine aguardientes and missed the bottom three steps completely and landed on his arse in front of a Dutch girl, who'd given him a six out of ten. For the fall, she said, not for him. He'd asked what he got for himself. She'd said she hadn't decided yet.
He went down it slowly this time, one hand on the rail, the metal cool and slightly gritty under his palm. At the bottom was the fourth-floor corridor: tiled in old red and white squares like a chessboard, with a long window at the end over the back of the building, and doors on both sides, each with a little painted sign of a flower. Heliconia. Orquídea. Ave del Paraíso. Anturio. There were real orchids everywhere, in pots, on shelves, tied to the window grilles with bits of wire. The old lady who owned the place, Doña Luz Marina, said her husband had grown them, and when he died she couldn't bring herself to let them die too, so now the whole building was a sort of orchid hospital, and the guests had to be very careful where they put their elbows.
The door to Room 10 had a little keypad with a blue ring of light around it. He typed the code from the app. The ring went green. The lock clicked open with a soft, satisfied sound, like somebody saying mm.
"Mate," he said to the empty room, when he'd turned on the light. "Mate."
It was even better than the photo. The bed was the size of a small boat. The wall really was mango-coloured, and there was a hand-painted border of leaves along the top of it that someone had done freehand, a long time ago, with a steady hand. The ceiling had a wooden fan that turned slowly on its own when he walked in. A cool breath of air came in from the balcony, and with it the whole sound of the city at night: a motorbike climbing the hill in first gear, somebody's reggaeton from three streets over, a dog having an opinion, the far-off hiss of traffic on the big road down by the river, and underneath it all a sort of warm, continuous murmur, like the valley itself was talking to itself in its sleep.
Fictional reviews of the fictional Casa Paisa Rooftop Hostel, quoted from the book.
☠ "room 10 is very popular. the staff are kind. the long-stay guest is very helpful. risk accepted. ☠" — @HostelReaper
☠ "exposure: high. ☠" — @HostelReaper