Death & the City Book Two (15 page)

I shoot a glance towards the stage, and the backs of the customers enjoying the band. Dorothy is dancing on a table for the entertainment of
Davy Crockett
, to the annoyance of the barman, who is waving a mop at her trying to get her attention. Wolf Boy/Scarecrow is sitting down, rolling a cigarette, in a world of his own.

"Any time this year," says Connor, reminding me that I'm here to play along, not do any work.

I turn back to the pool table, and break. About three balls rattle down into the pockets, unfortunately for me, including the white ball.

"Never mind." Connor chuckles, retrieves it and takes over my position to line up his first shot. He downs one and misses another, taking a safety with his bonus shot, snookering me in a corner.

While I figure out my options, chalking my hand, and the cue again to pass the time, he takes a pack of darts out of his inside pocket, and takes a couple of shots at the dartboard idly.

"You carry your own darts?" I observe.

"Well, obviously," he remarks.

I get out of the snooker he's left me in without giving away a free shot, but I don't pot anything this time. He leaves his darts in the board and takes a quick shot of his own on the pool table, before going back and retrieving them.

Dorothy gets down from the table at the end of the first song, while the customers cheer and whistle (at the band, not at her) and the barman shouts 'How many times have I told you, feet off the table!' She just smiles and leans down to whisper something to Wolf Boy, before wiggling her way through the crowd towards us, aiming for the toilets. I try to guess if she's just asked him to join her in there.

But in passing, she leans out of the exit to the garden, out of sight of the rest of the bar, and blows a kiss at
Van Helsing
, before grinning, and continuing into the Ladies' toilets.

Connor catches my eye and indicates with a nod of his head for me to follow her.

"Keep her talking," he mutters, as I pass him.

"Hello," I say lightly, finding her at the speckled long mirror, retouching her already over-done make up with the biggest blusher brush and powder-puff I've ever seen. I go straight for the sink and examine my hand, before turning the tap on, to rinse the blue chalk marks off. "Think I got a splinter from that pool cue."

"Oh, that happened to me once. It was so bad, I had to go to hospital. It was nearly in a vein when they found it." She rolls her eyes at me in the mirror, and I wonder if I've accidentally come across Desdemona's or Lucinda's long lost relative. "I've never seen you before, do you like it here?"

"Yeah, it's all right. It's my boyfriend's kind of place really, I've never been to see one of these bands before," I tell her. "They're good, aren't they?"

"This band is, the lead singer is my ex, so I'm always here when they perform," she says. "Sometimes they're not so good. Last Thursday's band was rubbish, they were too stoned to even remember a complete song. But this lot don't mind, as long as it's entertainment. My ex is a bit jealous at the moment. He's just got to get over it, seeing me with other guys."

"Yeah, tell me about it," I agree, more to encourage her to keep chatting than in feigned empathy. It works. Too much experience in conversation skills with barmaids, I think to myself. She gives an exaggerated sigh, as she puts the powder puff away and takes out a flame-red lipstick.

"He doesn't understand my situation at the moment. He was all for settling down and having a little farm and kids. You know, a REALLY nice guy type. Wanted it all done properly, because you know, my grandparents are really proper and own a lot of the land around here, and my Dad was a Mason and has a LOT of influence and money. It's not easy getting Daddy's respect."

"No, of course," I agree, doorman-listening mode kicking in.

"The thing is, there's a lot of people who'd take advantage of that, and want to try and get with me just to get in the Will, so I have to be careful who I get involved with. And then I met Justin, and he's completely different. He's all about protecting me and my interests. And he said he'd kill anyone who tried to take advantage of me or my family. And he could, I mean, I'm not joking. He's killed a man already. He's been on the run for ages. It was in self-defence, of course. But now we look out for each other." She puts the lipstick away, and gets out a liquid gloss and brush. I get the feeling she quite likes the sound of her own voice. "But there's also this other guy Daddy has paid to follow me, I think. Foreign. Kind of a bodyguard. Private detective. I sussed him out, I said, like, you're following me, and he admitted that although he was originally paid to watch me, now he does it because he cares about me too and doesn't want to see me get hurt. Told me a lot of things are going on in the world that the public don't know about. And sometimes he has to deal with them, you know, like, permanently."

"Wow," I say, and I mean it.

"It's all very hush-hush," she says, slurring just a little. "Sometimes I'm his paid go-between. If he needs information. I'm very good at getting men to talk. Especially in bed. And I can hold my drink too, which they can't. And keep a secret. Of course, you don't count. You're a girl, and a stranger. I'll probably never see you again, so it doesn't matter, does it? It's just beer talk between girls."

"I probably won't even remember in a couple of hours," I say, thinking it might be the case already.

"Exactly. Because this is what we're like, girls out drinking." She zips up her cosmetics bag, and tucks it away in her patent quilted gilt-trim purse. "It's important not to bottle things up when you're out. You're meant to let your hair down and hang loose and all that."

"Oh, I know the feeling," I agree. I've never heard of a pimp referring to his slut girls as his Private Dick go-betweens before, but I guess it would work. Especially if the girls were gullible enough to believe it. So not only are they earning the pimp a living, they're also bringing back information, by which he can blackmail the customers in future. Two birds with one stone - or throwing two stones with one bird, as is the case. The girls just think they're seducing someone for information, like Cold War spies. Not realising they're hookers, and their service has been paid for. They probably think any money they get from the pimp is their detective work expenses. Like, for travel, lube, and condoms.

"There's all sorts of people after us, because of what we know, and because of Justin," she says. "I have to keep my eyes open all the time. Usually I suss them out pretty well. Some of them are on our side now, because I was smart, and confronted them."

"Too clever for them," I nod. There's a crash outside in the corridor. "Oops. What was that?"

"Some drunk, I expect," she says.

I open the door to the toilets, and immediately get sprayed with blood.

"Stop him bleeding," Connor orders me. "We don't want either of them dead."

Scarecrow is on the floor of the corridor, a hole through his upper arm. It looks like a brachial artery. Connor is kneeling on the floor over
Van Helsing
with his hand around his throat, also covered in blood, and as I look I see Connor shoving his darts wallet away quickly.

"Oh my God, oh my God…"

I realise Dorothy is just behind me, looking past me at the scene, from inside the toilets.

"We want her too," says Connor. "Shut her up for a bit."

My elbow takes care of that, and as she slides down the wall, I'm glad her lipgloss smear on my arm is lost in all the blood I'm now covered in.

I crouch over Scarecrow, and lift his injured arm vertically up over my shoulder, pulling his belt out of his jeans with my other hand and looping it around the limb as a tourniquet, pressing into the wound with my fingers to stop the blood flow.

"Are you always this messy?" I ask Connor, and spit out blood. "I've got blood in my eyes."

"Can't hear you, I've got blood in my ears," Connor says, sarkily. "I told you, I don't do up close and personal. Not if I can help it."

"Oh, dear, what's happened here?"
Davy Crockett
greets us, approaching from the beer garden. "A pub brawl?"

"Looks like it," says Connor. "Could you get the bar staff to ring an ambulance? And just keep the other customers away until they get here. It's all right, we're both First Aid trained."

While
Davy Crockett
ambles away, Connor gets his phone out with his free hand, wipes the blood off the screen and keypad as best he can on his jeans, before phoning head office.

"All three secure, two bleeding, one unconscious," he says. "Usual Emergency Services response needed. One biohazard victim, skin complaint. Will have to treat Lara as well if confirmed, he's bleeding all over her at the moment. Might need checking over. No, I don't think she has any broken skin or injuries." He looks at me and I shake my head. "I'll clean her up at my place, I've got stuff there I can give her. Yeah, it's just kicking in now." He picks up
Van Helsing's
arm, and lets it drop. "Got muscular apathy in limbs. Some involuntary eyelid movement. Should be able to question him in an hour or so. Needs a few stitches in his neck first. Well, it was either that or aim for his face, you should see what he's come dressed as. Firearm not yet secure, he dropped it, which is when it misfired and hit the other guy. I've kicked it under the pool table nearest the toilets. Special Unit will have to pick it up."

He disconnects the call, and puts his phone away.

"Well, that was fun," he remarks, mildly.

I remember Adam Grayson giving me an anti-fungal tablet in the ambulance, after confirming that Wolf Boy's mysterious lycanthropic skin condition is a nasty form of ringworm.
Van Helsing
and Dorothy were taken away by Special Unit in separate ambulances. Adam had the job of delivering the un-Wolfed Scarecrow - who turned out to be the Justin that Dorothy was talking about - to the University Hospital, for serious gunshot wound treatment, probably a lot of fungicidal cream, and possibly some light interrogation by police, who have collected my statement regarding the conversation about him in the toilets. I wonder how many more untreated skin complaints in Medieval times led to the invention of - and stories about - humans who changed into the undead, or other creatures, and whether the same conditions really are perpetuating the myth in modern times.

A police uniform driver takes us back to Connor's place, and all he has to say about it is that he wishes he had bigger plastic covers on the seats. Most of the blood is drying on now, and my clothes feel stiff and tacky, adhering to me unpleasantly in places. It reminds me of the incident where a customer was bottled in the neck, and I went home and sat on the sofa alone with a cup of tea for nearly two hours without moving afterwards, with the tea going cold, and my clothes plastered onto me with blood.

Connor's not going to let me do that this time, because he's concerned that there's still a chance of catching something from the blood of Scarecrow Wolf boy Justin. He takes me straight into the downstairs shower next to the study, fully clothed, and turns on the water.

"Maybe I'll sober up as well while I'm in here," I say. He peels off his t-shirt and uses the back of it, which isn't bloodstained, to start cleaning up my face and around my eyes. "I can do that, it's okay."

"I can see better than you where the blood is. You just help by doing me."

The water pouring down isn't shifting the dried blood on its own. I squeeze some shower gel onto my hands and rub it into his neck and around his ears, helping the smudges dissolve and sluicing them down his arms.

"You need to wash your hair," he says, matter-of-factly.

"So do you." I try to rub caked-on blood from his eyebrows and jaw line.

"Take this off." He tugs the front of my t-shirt. "Don't be funny, come on. It's covered. Arms up."

I raise my arms obediently and he strips it off, dropping it on the floor of the shower. He rubs blood off my arms and neck, then reaches for the shampoo.

"Hold your hands out," he says, and pours some into my hands for me to use before starting on his own. "Tell me if I miss any."

I watch as he rinses his hair, scrunching shampoo through my own, feeling it clogged in the lengths.

"Nearly," I tell him, as he rubs water out of his eyes. "Just the back of your ears, I think."

He turns around so that I can check, and I find a streak left behind one ear, which rinses away as I wipe it.

"Need some help with yours?" he asks, turning back round. It's more rhetorical that he's asking, because he helps anyway, adding more shampoo to the ends of my hair, which came out worst.