Alle Kapitel von The Silent Wing : Kapitel 91 – Kapitel 100

(Adrian)I have been afraid in my life. In cellars and stairwells and on a rooftop I still don't like to describe. But I'd never been afraid at a party, in black tie, with a glass of champagne in my hand and a string quartet tuning behind a pillar, and I want to say plainly that it is worse. In a stairwell you know what you're afraid of. At a party, everyone is smiling."Say something," Elena murmured. She walked at my elbow with her eyes front. "Anything. You've gone grey.""He knew about the van.""I heard." Her voice was low and absolutely level. "So he's listening, or he's watching, or someone in that van is talking to him.""It's not Corinne.""I didn't say it was.""But you thought it.""I think everything," said Elena. "It's exhausting. Smile at the woman with the feathers."I smiled. The woman with the feathers said how wonderful it was to see me, and I said how wonderful it was to be seen, and she moved on with the vague satisfaction of someone who'd been charitable.In my ea

(Adrian)I left the table while the applause was still going. That's the only reason it worked. Four hundred people clapping for a woman in green is the best cover a man will ever get, and I used it without a word to anyone, because if I'd stopped to explain, Elena would have stopped me, and I'd have let her."Corinne," I said, low, walking. "Corinne, can you hear me?"Nothing. The earpiece had that dead pressure, like cotton in the ear."Rafe.""Here." His voice came through clipped and quiet. He was somewhere ahead of me, moving. "I heard it too. The line went at eight twenty-two. I'm on my way to the loading bay.""Don't. If they've got her, they'll be watching the van door.""If they've got her, someone has to open it.""Rafe.""Adrian." A sharp breath. "I'm not leaving her in a van. Go find your door."He cut off. I cursed him quietly, with a sort of helpless gratitude, and pushed through the service door behind the stage.I've worked buildings like the Calloway my whole career.

(Adrian)The lift died between the first basement and the ground floor, and for a long moment the only sound was Corinne breathing.Then the emergency lamps came on, one after another, down the shaft and across the ceiling of the car. Red, the dull red of a darkroom. Dale had his palm flat on the steel wall as if he could hold the building up. Corinne had slid down it until she was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn in and her hair hanging over the cut on her forehead."It's the generator," Dale said. "It'll kick in. Thirty seconds.""It's been thirty seconds.""Then it's a different thirty seconds.""Is Sienna" Corinne began."She's fine," I said, too quickly, and heard how it sounded. "She's on a stage with four hundred people watching. Nobody touches a woman in front of that."Corinne looked at me with an expression I knew. It's the look of someone who has heard that sentence at a dinner table, from a man who didn't believe it either.I pried the doors apart with my fingers

AdrianThe Chairman's suite was a hallway before it was a room. A long, low corridor of dark wood lit by amber sconces, with a carpet so thick my footsteps vanished into it. After the concrete and the red dark it felt like walking into a held breath. Somewhere ahead, a piano was playing very quietly. A piece I almost knew."Don't," I whispered, as Dale reached for the door."It opened itself.""That's why."He stopped with his hand in the air. Behind him Corinne had gone white. The three of us stood on the threshold, and I thought of the oldest rule in my trade, which is that the most dangerous door is the one that welcomes you."Dale. You and Corinne wait here and hold this open." I took the rubber wedge from my pocket, the one from the thirteenth landing, and kicked it under the door. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, take the stairs down to the lobby. Find Elena. Tell her everything.""Ten minutes is nothing.""It's what I've got."Corinne caught my sleeve before I went. "There's a

AdrianI'd like to say the news was quiet. It wasn't. It was the loudest night of my life.By two in the morning the Calloway Hotel was on every channel in the country. By four it was on every channel I could find. Rafe sat in the back of an ambulance with a blanket round his shoulders and a laptop on his knees, watching feeds from three continents. Gala fire. A charity event ends in tragedy. Vale family heir praised for composure. A woman on one network cried, quite genuinely, over footage of Julian carrying an elderly donor down the front steps.Nobody had counted the dead yet. They said two. Then three. They said it had been an electrical fault.I sat on the curb with a paramedic's hand on my wrist and a plastic mask over my face and watched the building burn. What I remember most is how ordinary the world looked. A newsagent across the road with its shutters half up. A bus going by with a pantomime advertised on its side. People on the far pavement filming on their phones and laug