Mary caught his meaning better than the others. She looked at Bell’s reaction. She’d just lost her … what? Servant? Slave? Friend? Lover? And there was nothing except barely contained glee that their plans were going awry.

She knew people like that, back in London. They were the ones to avoid, the strange, dangerous ones who ended up getting locked away for the rest of their lives.

‘Then we’d better go and find him.’

28

28

The steward was over by the door to the bridge. And under the table. And halfway up the wall where something, some part of him, had been thrown with great force and stuck.

‘It looks like a fucking abattoir,’ said Mary, and retreated quickly, intercepting Luiza with a muttered, ‘You don’t want to go in there.’

Dalip had been to an abattoir, where they killed animals to eat according to Sikh rules. Quick, clean, one cut. The room – the killing floor, because that’s what it was called – had been almost spotless. The store room was far from that.

He stepped across the threshold and looked around. Stanislav could now be anywhere, either in the castle or even outside it. But he could still be here, hiding behind the barrels and the shelves, and he needed to check. The far door was still barred, but he peered into the shadows made barely lighter by the meagre lantern.

The steward had been decapitated, his head torn off with a force that was beyond human capacity. Hopefully, he’d been dead before that, because the thing that was glued to the wall was the sticky remains of his burst heart.

Dalip walked the room as if he was in a dream, the knife not even in his hand. What could he possibly do in the face of such primal forces except succumb? But Stanislav wasn’t there, and he stepped outside and back on to the staircase to report.

‘If he didn’t come up, he had to go down.’ He tugged at the hair on his chin. ‘We need to stay together. I think … I think he’s having some kind of psychotic episode. He was in a war where he came from, and he’s pretty much reliving it now. The very worst parts of it.’

‘Was that the guy’s head?’

Dalip nodded. ‘I don’t think Stanislav used anything but his hands to do that.’

Mary grimaced. ‘Seriously, he should be easy to find. He’ll be covered in blood, everything. Just, where the fuck are his footprints? Hand-prints? I’ve seen places where some kid got stabbed, and it’s everywhere: floors, walls, ceiling, and there’s always footprints and smears and marks on the walls where you brush against them. I mean, just look.’

Dalip did. His bare feet were leaving almost perfect dark impressions on the stonework, like a child’s printing set.