Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (47 page)

Laura’s friends admitted she’d been knocking about with Clive Landseer, who’d soon be quizzed about his unfortunate habit of knowing murder victims. As a paid-off parasite, Landseer’s duties included trawling for biddable popsies to dress any social occasion. On Saturday, he’d roped Laura in to decorate Syrie Van Epp’s boat bash. She told her sceptical flatmates she was only expected to dance on the
Fevre Dream.
Kate knew how the game worked.
Have a drink, have a pill, have some more, they’re just like Smarties… This is an MP, be nice to him, chicken… yes, he likes you, who wouldn’t?… Go into a cabin and have some fun… you’ve seen him in the papers and on the telly, and he likes you loads… We’re all fancy-free, chicken… have another drink, another pill… three’s not a crowd, you know, it’s an
experience…
Try this, it’s called a purple passion… you’ve no hang-ups, love, you’re not square, you’re an angel, a princess… nothing you don’t want to do, and I’ll make it up to you, but I’d appreciate it… another drink, another pill, another man… hang loose, babe.

Some time last night, Laura Bellows had been bitten and bled out. Some time today, she had been dumped in a wheelbarrow.

‘We were supposed to find her tomorrow morning when work started,’ said Bellaver. ‘But kids “playing” turned her up. Probably on the scrounge for stuff to nick, bless ’em.’

They were in Deptford, not far from Maryon Park.

Five streets of back-to-back houses had been flattened, wrecking balls from Langly Construction accomplishing what the Luftwaffe couldn’t. Three tower blocks were due up here. Currently, it was a ghost community: the shells of homes, a bulldozered playground, street-signs thrown in a pile, rubble and rubbish. She’d been at the press launch where Sir Billy Langly proudly showed off the plans for his high-rises. Critics likened them to vertical rabbit hutches or battery farms in the sky. To Kate, they looked like coffins. She’d spent decades trying to stay out of coffins.

The dead girl had been left in place until B Division took a gander at her
in situ.
The discovery of a body on the site wouldn’t hold up work. The police — and Laura — should be gone before the builders brewed up their first Monday morning round of tea.

The body was supposed to be found. Whoever the killer was, he didn’t care about secrecy. He might
want
a high profile. These maniacs were often frustrated showmen. He’d copyright a ‘trade-name’ next, like Jack the Ripper or the Steel Claw or the Peeping Tom.

The Super told Griffin to take away the polythene.

A St Bartolph’s scarf was knotted round Laura Bellows’ white arm.

‘There it is, Katie,’ Bellaver said. ‘You were asking.’

‘Funny place to wear a scarf, Super,’ said Griffin.

‘The murderer must have tied it there,’ said Rogers.

‘I hate the ones who play parlour games,’ said Bellaver. ‘The silly buggers imagine they’re matching wits with you, sending their darling little messages, planting clues all over the place. It means they think you can’t touch them.’

‘Sometimes they’re right,’ said Rogers.

Bellaver shook his head.
‘Anybody
can be nicked. Maybe not for what they’ve done, but for something.’

That chilled rather than cheered Kate. She remembered other policemen with that attitude.

‘Caleb Croft teaches at St Bartolph’s,’ she said, neutrally. ‘That’s a St Bartolph’s scarf.’

‘You think Croftie’s a drinka pinta nighta man?’ asked Bellaver. ‘Two pintas, one nighta?’

‘He’d drain London dry if he could get away with it.’

‘Leaving the empties tied up with a bow?’

She shrugged. That didn’t seem like the grey eminence she knew. But the scarf meant something.

Was she acting like a Black and Tan? Trying to fit up someone she didn’t like even if it meant the real culprit went free? She worried about such niceties. That told her she was still herself, still Katie Reed. She wasn’t (yet?) only the Vampire Katharine. She held herself to a higher standard than she expected of the monsters. Which didn’t mean Croft wasn’t guilty, just that a case against him had to be based on more than prejudice. She wouldn’t frame him, even if he was the worst vampire unimpaled in Britain.

Laura Bellows might have been killed
before
Carol Thatcher. The girls had certainly been exsanguinated within an hour of each other. Kate’s first thought was
feeding frenzy.
A pack of leeches, battening on the victims. Your basic blood orgy. The Living Dead, the vampire bike club, supposedly enjoyed regular Gang Fangs, to initiate new members or get rid of wasted groupies. In that scenario, the girls would have suffered multiple bites. Carol and Laura had only the classic neck punctures. Autopsies would have to confirm it, but that suggested a single biter. So: one killer, wolfing two victims at a time. That indicated an overpowering
red thirst
. Nolan’s photos suggested Carol died where she was found. Laura was killed somewhere other than the building site where she was dumped. Maryon Park? Leaving the bodies in different places didn’t fit the profile of a vamp gone blood simple. Spree-killers weren’t hard to catch: they kept tearing into people until they were brought down with silver or the stake. This monster wasn’t going to make it easy. They were dealing with a cunning, ruthless,
experienced
murderer. Bellaver was right: that scarf was a message… an invitation.

In the daytime, St Bartolph’s College was within sight of this place.

The Super chewed the trailing ends of his moustache, thinking it over.

‘Tell you what, Katie — you go, with the blessings of B Division, and beard the beast in his den. If you can make a case against Croftie, bully for you.’

‘If not, you haven’t pissed off a member of the Establishment for no good reason? It’ll have been radical muckraker Katie Reed barking up the wrong tree?’

Bellaver gave a ‘take it or leave it’ shrug.

‘I daresay the Diogenes Club could shoulder some of the blame,’ he said.

‘While I go back to school, where will enquiries take you?’

‘Chummy Clive Landseer is an obvious first port of call. He smells like as right a tree to bark up as any. Fact: he knew both women. Fact: he’s a new-born vampire. Fact: he’s an excessive little shit.’

Kate couldn’t disagree. Past the dome of artificial light, she saw the silhouette of a spire. St Bartolph’s chapel. She was being reeled in. It was as if that scarf were knotted around her neck.

7

T
he next morning, she reported to the Diogenes Club. Richard Jeperson was still in bed, though he was a warm man and everyone else in the building was a vampire. Their doorstep order was fifteen pints of blood and two of milk. Vanessa, one of Jeperson’s Lovely Ladies, came to reception to see her. The tall girl’s enviable hair was as red as Kate’s but long, straight and untangled. Vanessa explained that the Chairman of the Ruling Cabal was sleeping off a psychedelic dream-quest. That sounded like taking a nap after a nice long rest but Kate admitted she wasn’t attuned to the switched-on generation.

What would Mycroft Holmes or Charles Beauregard have made of Diogenes in the Age of Aquarius? Danny Dravot was a rare survivor of their era still in service. The thoroughly unlovely sergeant was off in Welsh wilds, supervising brutal training courses, which left Pall Mall to the Lovelies. As a reporter, Kate just about kept straight the international roster of cat-suited, karate-chopping vampire women: Whitney (American), Maureen (Irish), Louise-Ésperance (Barbadian), Lady Celia (English), Quelou (French), Zarana (Egyptian), Nezumi (Japanese) and Lorelei (German). Nezumi was her upstairs neighbour, the quiet Miss Mouse. Kate assumed that, when not undercover as fashion models or go-go dancers (this lot couldn’t go undercover as school dinner ladies to save their lives), the Lovelies were abseiling out of helicopters to assault the mountaintop lairs of megalomaniac gazillionaires. This Monday, they were draped elegantly over the stuffed leather couches and armchairs where once were parked the substantial bottoms of unsociable Victorian clubmen. The fanged pussycats wore what looked like swimming costumes and didn’t even pretend to read
Go Girl
or paint their nails; the Lovelies just awaited their master’s bidding. Kate’s Associate Member status meant she didn’t qualify for Jeperson’s entourage-cum-harem-cum-strikeforce. She didn’t lose any sleep over that.

Vanessa passed her to Corri, another Lovely. The Club’s archivist — a
Playboy
cartoon librarian in slit skirt and too-tight blouse — had a beehive hairdo fixed by crossed pencils, was drenched in
ylang-ylang
and fiddled with diamante eyeglasses worn on a long chain like an ornamental fan. Corri unsealed the file on Caleb Croft aka Charles Croydon aka Adrian Lockwood aka the Worst Vampire Who Ever Lived. A century or two into his potentially long life, Croft had a spotty record of cruelties B.D. and a considerably nastier sheet A.D. Kate knew all too well how he’d served the Crown while Dracula was wearing it. Kept on by Lord Ruthven after the Terror, he’d burrowed deep into the British Secret State, moving from one acronym to the next: MI5, MI6, CI5, GCHQ, WOOC(P). It was all the Circus: civil servants playing Cowboys and Indians at taxpayers’ expense. With reorganisation of the intelligence services following the Second World War, Croft had even been up for membership of the Diogenes Club. A single black ball — Charles Beauregard, Kate would have bet anything — denied him. In the 1950s, he was designated ‘C’ at Universal Exports, then ‘Mr Hunter’ at the Section. The game stayed the same: handing down kill orders to laddish thugs who code-named themselves Sandbaggers or Scalphunters. Forced out of the Circus in the purge of the old guard prompted by Kim Philby’s defection in 1963, Croft took up teaching. He grew his hair over his collar and wore foulards. At St Bartolph’s, he was a popular lecturer.

Corri found a 1923 report by Edwin Winthrop, an old attachment of Kate’s, on the subject of a conference held at Mildew Manor (what a name!) where Croft tried to play kingmaker and foist a new arch-vampire on the world. Winthrop wrote that Croft was at least self-aware enough to realise his countenance was not suited to public rule. He was by nature a behind-the-throne, corridors-of-power
eminence grise,
an enforcer of ruthless dictats. ‘C’ for Control. Not a King of the Cats, but a master of cat’s paws. Was he also a rash murderer? Had he killed two girls over the weekend? In his new-born days, he
had
been that sort of monster, but he must have grown more restrained to last this long. Still, over the years, one weakened. If his inner beast was off the leash, he needed to be taken out and shot. The stake wasn’t enough. He was a silver-bullet-to-the-brain case. That had been his favoured means of executing vampire dissidents. Sometimes, Kate forgot she was opposed to capital punishment.

Before leaving, Kate gave Vanessa a run-down of everything she knew about the victims and an update on B Division’s progress. The Club kept abreast of the way the murders were reported. Ripples were tracked across the city. While Enoch Powell gave polite interviews on the wireless and television, Lorrimer Van Helsing held angry meetings in pub cellars. There was talk of demos and direct action. The Midnight Mess, a vampire restaurant in Richmond-Upon-Thames, suffered an after hours/mid-morning arson attack. Plainview Oil denied they employed Carol Thatcher or, indeed, anyone who serviced clients the way Carol did. Laura Bellows’ parents sold her life story to the
Mirror.
Kate pitied the poor hack who’d have to write that, and reckoned the series would break down ten per cent life to ninety per cent death. Screaming murder headlines forced Harold Wilson, after weeks of holding out, to make a concession to a faction in his own party who were as prejudiced as Powell but less patrician about it. The Prime Minister announced a Royal Commission of Enquiry into ‘the vampire problem’ and plucked James Manfred, O.B.E. — a time-server at the Department of Administrative Affairs — to serve as Chairman. Depending on the fall-out, Manfred could expect a knighthood or early retirement after he turned in his findings.

Not unkindly, Vanessa asked Kate if she’d like anything from the Box of Tricks. A vinyl shoulder-bag with hidden compartments full of knock-out gas, grappling wire and skeleton keys pricked her fancy, but it was a shocking pink which didn’t match her outfit and wasn’t kind to her complexion.

8