Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(19)
With a quick shake of his head to focus on his task, Roma rifled through another pile of stripped bedsheets, peering around the room to find an almost identical setup. Perhaps the bedsheets being left behind meant that though the room had been sorted and inventoried, the used items had yet to be discarded. So maybe…
He spotted a small trash can in the corner. Peered in. Nothing except a single cigarette. But now he was intrigued. These rooms still held the remnants of the guests who had last resided here.
Roma continued checking through all the rooms that easily opened under his palm, groping his hands around the empty wardrobes and patting the corners of the windowpanes. In one of the final rooms down the hall, at the very end of the inn, he entered and immediately smelled cigarette smoke, potent enough that he wasn’t surprised when he peered into the trash can and found six end stubs. Beneath it, he spotted several ripped pieces of paper, some of the corners singed and charred.
His nose wrinkled. Grimacing, Roma reached in and fished the pieces out. No matter how disgusting it was to be going through someone else’s trash, he reminded himself of Yulun’s panicked face and Mila’s sad frown, then started to join up the six jagged fragments.
No. 143
Invoice for Services
Description: A hundred yuan
Pay to: [Redacted]
The writing was incredibly faint. Though much of it had been obscured by the cigarette burns, Roma rubbed his finger against some of the legible parts and confirmed that its coloring wasn’t because the pen had run out of ink—no, this was a piece of copy paper that had been pressed underneath the original to duplicate exactly what had been written on top. It must have been thrown out after they received their money and didn’t need the copy for their records anymore.
Roma scooped up the invoice pieces and put them back in the trash can. There were no identifying details to be found, but it was written in Russian, which confirmed it was related to the call to Vladivostok. A hundred yuan was a considerable sum of money. If the occupant of this room had been issuing invoices to be paid in such amounts, surely it had to be for something significant.
With his head pulsating with questions, Roma exited the room, his perusal of Happy Inn complete.
“… not at all—Oh, hello, my love,” Juliette greeted, breaking off mid-ramble. “Did you have a good search?”
Roma approached the desk casually, hands in his pockets, while Juliette still had the gun out. He waited for a few seconds before saying, “It was adequate. Good conversation?”
“Absolutely,” she replied, at the same time that the receptionist grumbled, “No.”
Juliette flashed a grin. In that expression, she silently asked Roma if they were ready to depart, and Roma gave the barest nod that only she could catch. He leaned forward to look at the guest book again and, thinking it might come into use, tore out the relevant page.
“We will keep this, thank you.”
Before the receptionist could splutter in protest, Juliette was reaching into her coat pocket and pulling out a wad of cash. She took a step back, then set the money on the floor with the gun on top. “We will get out of your way now,” she added, sounding as pleasant as ever. “Have a good morning.”
“It is not morning!” the man called after them, aggrieved.
Roma and Juliette were already outside, ducking away from view before the receptionist could follow them out. With a careful eye for rocks in his path, Roma hurried down the steep grassy decline, finding his footing a second before Juliette and lunging to catch her elbow before she could teeter on her own landing.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I don’t suppose you stumbled onto Mr. Pyotr’s birth certificate alongside a manifesto for his experiments?”
“Unfortunately not.” Roma tucked her hair behind her ear. “I found a copy of an invoice. The group who stayed here must have made the call to Vladivostok, and someone among them was also asking for a payment of a hundred yuan.”
Juliette’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know what that means.”
Roma sighed. “Neither do I, to be frank. I think we may have exhausted this route. Let’s go wide again tomorrow.” He paused. “After the shipments come, that is. We have incoming deliveries.”
They had new problems on their hands, but their business did not stop. They still had to make their living somehow.
A thick cloud swallowed up the moonlight, drowning them in darkness for a few seconds. He could feel Juliette’s shoulders sag, using sheer intuition before wisps of silver light streamed through the clouds again and he confirmed that her posture had indeed slumped.
“I guess we knew this was a long shot.” She kicked a rock. “Home?”
“Home,” Roma agreed. “Are we sharing the sofa?”
Juliette reached for him, curling a hand around his upper arm and latching tight as they started to walk.
“We can even cuddle if you ask nicely,” she said.
8
She was dreaming that god-awful dream again, and it always started the same way.
First, the smell of smoke and dust, heavy in the air and at the back of her throat. If dreams weren’t supposed to make sense, Juliette wished that hers would scramble this opening a little instead of re-creating her memories down to every last visceral sense: the sights and the sounds and the horrific screaming that had ricocheted through the blood-filled streets.