Free Kultus by Richard Ford

were others within her organisation who bent over backwards for the nobles, only too happy to act as little more than lapdogs for the upper classes in return for the few scraps that were thrown from the overflowing tables of the privileged.
    ‘Who did he spend time with? Whores? Dealers? Anyone who would have wished him harm?’
    ‘What can I say, he was a popular man, very generous. Besides, we provided him with all the… friends he needed. What reason would there be to kill him? He’ll be sorely missed, won’t he, lads?’ Trol looked around at his men for their agreement, to which they nodded nervously, still staring at the rock steady barrel of Hodge’s carbine.
    This was fruitless, and Amelia knew it. She could always take out her frustrations by ransacking Snapper’s den, and maybe she would even find something incriminating, but what use would it be? This bog-wallowing turd would only be less inclined to tell her anything the next time she wanted to question him.
    Besides, she could wait. They would all get what was coming in the end, when the inevitable tide rose to consume their sins forever.
    ‘Well, it’s been a pleasure,’ said Amelia, standing up and pulling her gloves back over her fingers. ‘We must do this again sometime.’
    ‘The pleasure’s been all mine, Indagator,’ replied Snapper with a grin.
    Amelia tried to avoid looking at him, knowing that locking eyes with his smug face would only encourage her to violence. She turned and walked from the room, as Bounder and Hodge backed out behind her and slammed the door.
    Her frustration burned. There were no leads now, other than the ridiculous idea that Beuphalus had been killed in some kind of blood sacrifice. Amelia refused to believe that. Any notion that demonists were at work here would quite obviously have aroused the suspicion of the First Fane of the Sancrarium. Surely their representatives would have liased with the Judicature if there was even a hint of numinous involvement in the killing? Why would she have been left out of such an important loop if that were the case?
    The further they retraced their steps through the Cistern, the more it bothered her. The unshakeable feeling that something was going on that she did not know about worsened.
    And she hated not knowing.
    Amelia found herself suddenly distracted from her self-pity as she passed through another of the Cistern’s pleasure rooms.
    Pleasure! How could they call this pleasure? It was decadence of the most lascivious kind. Self-delusion; a way to block out the world, to wallow in ravishment and intoxication.
    ‘I assume from the look on your face, this little sojourn was fruitless, Amelia?’
    Bounder and Hodge both reached for their weapons as Amelia swung round to face the unexpected voice.
    Indagator Surrey was sprawled on a chaise longue, a scantily clad woman with a heavily made-up face was puffing from an elaborate hookah by his side. In his Indagator’s uniform he looked oddly out of place amongst this rabble, but there was something about his demeanour that also seemed to fit in so well with the bawdy surroundings.
    ‘Making yourself at home, Indagator Surrey?’
    ‘Ssshhhh,’ he replied, with a grin. ‘I’m under cover.’
    ‘You’re a disgrace,’ she said, turning to leave.
    ‘Indeed, Amelia, but I’m further along with your case than you are.’
    She stopped in her tracks, turning to regard him, half wanting to leave him to his drugs and doxies, half wanting to set Bounder and Hodge on him.
    ‘Explain.’
    ‘Well, word on the street is there was a break in at one of the Manufactory’s more exclusive quarters. Something almost unheard of in this day and age. The residence of a man said to be something of a mover and shaker in the demonist community. Bit of a coincidence isn’t it? Two nobles with reputed occult connections, accosted in their own homes?’
    ‘Not this hocus pocus tripe again, Surrey.’
    ‘Well, the last time I looked, Amelia, you