Free Garment of Shadows by Laurie R. King Page B

to know what had happened to Russell than the crew itself. Without a word, he caught up the bags and headed for the stairs.
    He went through every centimetre of both bags. One contained garments and equipment she had not thought necessary for a week’s filming in the desert. The other bag’s garments were less precisely folded and had sand in them. He strewed the room with the contents, and when the bags were empty, prodded the seams for hidden pockets, ripping apart one of the handles that felt lumpy.
    He found neither passport nor revolver. Nor was the small leather valise she used inside the larger bags. The absences were reassuring, suggesting that her disappearance was deliberate, the lack of word merely an oversight or mislaid letter.
    The water from the taps was actually warm; the water in the bath when he climbed out was opaque. He opened his shaving kit, squinted at the reflection in the spotted glass, and closed it again. Shaving could wait until he was certain that a beard would not be required.
    He shoved his young wife’s clothing any which way into the bags, did the same with his own, and returned to the lobby.
    “Where do I find those local crew members?” he demanded.
    “Monsieur, I have no idea, I—”
    Holmes put both hands on the desk, leaning forward until the man drew back. “I see that there is money involved. Some minor crime. I am not interested. I merely require to speak with the crew.”
    “I … that is … Yes, Monsieur.” The desk man wrote an address on a piece of paper, and pushed it across the wood.
    Holmes took it without looking, then said, “The gentleman who left the envelope for me. When was he here?”
    “Monday.”
    “What, four days ago?”
    “Yes, Monsieur, in the afternoon. Not a European, Monsieur; a big man with—”
    But Holmes turned on his heel and made for the door. He knew what the man looked like.
    With his hand on the door, he whirled to see the desk man’s face. The Moroccan looked relieved, but it was not the queasy relief that comes from getting away with a profound wrongdoing. Whatever scam the man had going on with this crew of locals, it did not touch on Russell’s safety.
    It took a couple of hours to run the crewmen to earth. They were not at the medina coffee house whose address Holmes had been given, nor at the home where he was directed next, but in a warehouse of sorts clear across town, not far from the hotel where he’d begun.
    Four men looked around as he pushed open the door. All wore beards, turbans, and djellabas; three of them had the build of stevedores; one of them was six feet tall, an extraordinary height here. The youngest man, a slim figure whose beard was precisely trimmed and whose robe was more neatly tailored, spoke up, in French.
    “You are in the wrong place, Monsieur.”
    “I think not,” Holmes replied, then changed to Arabic. “I need to ask about one of the moving picture crew. You are just returned from the desert, I think?”
    “The picture crew is off working on a boat,” the man said, sticking to French.
    Holmes shifted back to that tongue, since the others were Berbers, and to at least one of them, Arabic appeared to be a closed book.
    “My wife, Mary Russell, was with them when I left Rabat, but at the hotel, they tell me that she did not return with the others.” He slid his hand into his jacket, drawing out his note-case. He opened it, and removed several franc notes, which he tucked beneath the handle of a hammer that lay on the packing case by his side. He looked at them, and said simply, “I am concerned.”
    The four men consulted in silence for a moment. One of the heavily bearded individuals said something in a language Holmes recognised, although he only spoke a few words of it. Thamazigth was the language of the Berbers of North Africa, and of an intriguing structure. One day, he intended to study it properly. Today he merely required communication.
    “Do you know the person I mean? Tall,