Hunting for Silence (Storm and Silence 5)

‘Now, down to business.’ Quickly and efficiently, I searched the man for any more weapons or combustible objects. ‘No weapon. No nothing.’ Shaking my head, I slapped my hand onto the man’s shoulder, pushing him into the wall. ‘How stupid are you, exactly? You just thought you could come in here and ruin this place without anybody noticing?’

‘H-he said nobody would notice,’ the doorman groaned. ‘He said nobody would be here but musicians with their heads in the clouds. He never said nothing about maniacs with guns! And the money he paid was just so—’

‘He who?’ I interrupted.

The doorman’s mouth snapped shut as if I’d threatened to force-feed him acid.

‘Never mind.’ My grip on his shoulder tightened, and I pulled him away and whirled him to face the door, pressing my revolver into his back. ‘I can guess. Let’s go.’

‘W-where?’

‘I’ll be the one asking the questions here, if you don’t mind. Move!’

Just before we left the room, I pulled the bell pull. As we stepped outside, a messenger boy was already rushing down the corridor. Mr Ambrose had apparently trained his minions well. The little fellow’s eyes widened when he caught sight of the revolver in my hand.

I thought for a moment. I didn’t know French, but surely I could get one single point across?

‘Monsieur Ambrose!’ I snapped at the boy. ‘Dépêche-toilette!’

He blinked—then his eyes flickered to my gun again. Without a word, he turned and ran. Hopefully to get the right person. I would have kept my fingers crossed, if I hadn’t needed them for the handle and the trigger.

I hardly had to wait a minute before the sounds of rapid footsteps met my ears. An instant later, Mr Rikkard Ambrose rounded the corner, thunder and lightning in his eyes. If my dear friend the saboteur had looked scared of my gun before, it was nothing compared to what he looked like in the face of Rikkard Ambrose’s wrath. Sweat was running down his face, and his knees trembled. Although that might also have been a side effect of my triple bollocks blaster.

‘Monsieur Lamarque,’ Mr Ambrose said, coming to a stop only a few yards away. ‘As I recall, you were begging for this job a few years ago, when you had nothing but the rags on your back. Interesting how you chose to repay me.’

‘Please, Monsieur Ambrose, Let me explain—’

‘You don’t need to explain things to me.’

The saboteur blinked, taken aback. ‘I…I don’t?’

‘No. You need to explain things to him.’

Mr Ambrose snapped his fingers—and from around the corner emerged a giant figure armed with beard, sabre and turban, striding towards us with determination. Or maybe I should say towards me?

‘Six days!’ Karim’s voice was like the rumble of a volcano. The saboteur jerked back and cowered behind me, not realizing that he wasn’t the object of the bearded mountain’s wrath. ‘Six whole days I had to rot in that Ro?a de mori[29] of a prison cell before they let me out!’

In prison? That was the first I’d heard of it. But then…it did explain why he had taken so long to appear.

‘You were thrown in chokey?[30] What did you do?’ I asked, curious. ‘Kiss a statue of the queen? Decapitate someone important?’

‘I was observed,’ the big bodyguard ground out between clenched teeth, ‘running after a young man, shouting and apparently armed too heavily for the liking of the English police. They put me in a cell to, as they put it, “cool off”.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Do you have any idea what indignities I’ve had to face? What kind of dregs of society I was forced to tolerate, and—’

He was cut off abruptly when I threw my arms around him and squeezed.

‘I missed you, too.’

The only answer I got from Karim was a kind of gurgling noise you’d expect from a suffocating porcupine. Somewhere in the background, Mr Ambrose cleared his throat. That seemed to rouse Karim from his shock-induced paralysis, and made him realize he was in the arms of his Sahib’s intended, in front of the aforementioned Sahib, and at least one other witness.

‘What are you doing, woman? Release me!’

I smirked up at him. ‘I thought you had already been released six days ago? Or are you only out on probation?’

‘I…you…that’s not what I…!’