Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (43 page)

Steiger pulled up outside the police station in time for Kate to observe a textbook Good Cop/Bad Cop procedure. A growling, red-faced detective in a stained, wide-collared suit dragged a longhaired, complaining youth along the pavement. At the front doors, a grandfatherly uniformed sergeant offered the lad a cup of tea and his choice of biscuits.

‘Get inside, you horrible hairy,’ shouted the detective, Jack Regan. ‘Or we’ll have your lungs out for carrier bags.’

‘Mind how you go on the steps, son,’ said the uniformed man, George Dixon. ‘You don’t want to have a nasty accident.’

Kate guessed the youth was the aforementioned Timothy Lea. His muslin shirt was bunched up under his arms and around his neck because Regan had a big-handed grip on most of it. Lea’s unbelted, bell-bottomed jeans flew at half-mast, exposing milk-chocolate-with-white-trim y-fronts. Barefoot, he bled from his soles, smearing the pavement. Regan and Dixon showed fangs.

‘Get sticking plasters for his footsies and shove him in an interview room,’ said Bellaver.

‘I never done nuffing,’ whined Lea.

‘That’s a double negative, son,’ said Bellaver. ‘You’d better sharpen up now you’re assisting the police with our enquiries. If you never done nuffing, you must have done somefing. Stands to reason.’

Regan roughly yanked an arm. Dixon politely helped with the other. They could easily tear the poor kid in two. Regan’s scowl and Dixon’s smile were both hungry. The terrified Lea went whiter than a sheet fresh-washed in Omo. Bellaver and Kate followed them into the station. The local fuzz — all warm — kept out of B Division’s way, not wanting to appear ticked off by an undead invasion. She spotted empty patches on a noticeboard and scrunched-up pro-Enoch posters in a wastepaper basket. Even before running into Desk Sergeant Tom Choley, Kate knew Shooter’s Hill plods were not generally well-disposed towards ‘the vampire community’. She’d lay odds that, around here, Drakky Bashing was considered high spirits rather than criminal assault.

Choley had to let vampire coppers pass unimpeded, but took against her. The desk sergeant’s non-regulation hair crept over his collar. His smirk was highlighted by a beauty mark on his cheek. He had no crucifix to hand so he barred her way with a lengthy form. Bellaver was a smart cynic, Regan a canny thug and Dixon a born beat-walker; different methods, all good coppers. Choley was a proper pig — the sort of police who’d done well when Caleb Croft was in charge. A self-satisfied sadist, his position gave him enough power to be exactly as much of a monster as he dared. Without the guts to wade into a demo or kick in a villain’s door, he could do his damage, and get sick jollies, from behind a desk. He behaved as if stripes made him untouchable. For all she knew, they did.

‘What’s the hold-up, Skip?’ Bellaver asked.

Kate handed over her filled-in form. Choley picked up the paper by a corner, as if it were contaminated. He pinned a visitor’s badge to her shirt, effecting an accidental nipple-knuckling in the process. He smiled. She thought about his soft neck and strong pulse.

Being a vampire was like having a loaded gun on your hip. Every irritation was a reminder you were lethal. It’d be so easy to let the teeth slide out…

She kept her mouth shut.

The palaver with Choley took up enough time for Timothy Lea to get settled in an interview room.

Bellaver and Kate examined him through a one-way mirror. Left alone by the vampire sergeants, Lea had reverted to a sullen composure. He wasn’t under arrest, so his pockets hadn’t been emptied. With a pencil-stub, he drew a naked, headless, limbless woman on the table top. Not the first art on this classic theme scratched into the surface.

The Super had Lea’s thick folder.

‘Student?’ she asked.

Bellaver snorted. ‘Not our Timmy. Chucked out of school for being a useless herbert. String of mickey mouse jobs, off the books. No PAYE for Timmy. Window cleaner, driving instructor, holiday camp… pop performer, it says here. Not in any hit parade I know. If they needed a picture of a long-haired layabout for an encyclopedia, Timmy Lea would pose for it. Fall asleep halfway through the sitting.’

‘Anything violent?’

‘Not him. Too much like hard work. He’s soft as cottage cheese. Strictly rubbish crime. Hopes to get away with it with his cheeky grin. Tried being a drug dealer, but hasn’t the head for sums. That’s modern crookery for you. Got to be good at arithmetic or you get docked more than a gold star when it comes to settle-up time. He’s not even much of a ponce. Only had the one girl. Lord knows how he’ll get by without Carol to bring in the readies.’

Timothy Lea seemed very young to her. She wasn’t fooled by his pose. The lad was scared to his bones.

‘Let’s have a chat with the specimen, shall we?’ Bellaver proposed.

Bellaver held the door open for her.

At the sight of Kate, Timmy shrank like a salted slug. She glanced over her shoulder, into the mirror where she didn’t reflect. No doubting what she was now.

‘Relax, Timothy,’ said Bellaver. ‘You’re not here to be bitten. This is Miss Katharine Reed. She is a civilian observer. Not a policewoman.’

Kate tried to seem even less threatening than usual.

Sergeant Dixon came in with a mug of tea and a plate of custard creams. Bellaver confiscated them at once and sat opposite Lea.

‘If it’s about those pills I sold that geezer in the Winchester,’ the youth blurted, ‘they were Trebor mints coloured with purple pencil, not BOP. Just a giggle.’

‘A hilarious prank, I’m sure,’ said the Super, dunking a biscuit. ‘But of no present interest. You are well acquainted, as they say in the papers, with a Miss Carol Thatcher.’

‘What about Carol?’

No one had told him. Kate had a conscience pang. Timmy Lea wasn’t a vampire, so he wasn’t a suspect.

And he didn’t even know the girl was dead.

‘You and Carol came to the Smoke eighteen months ago,’ said Bellaver, reading from the file. ‘From somewhere called Oakham. Her dad’s a mortician, which will be handy. She’ll get a cut rate. Since then, she’s been a busy little tart. Made many friends. Paying friends. Businessmen, actors, politicians, oil sheiks. Wad of fivers in an envelope, shoved into your hot little hand while she earns it on her back? She’s “modelled” for the Neville Hetherington and Sybil Waite Agencies. Names well known to the Vice Squad. Still, what’s a few mucky pictures between friends, eh? You put her in blue films.
Sixth Form Girls in Chains. The Science of Sex. Bathtime with Brenda.
Can’t say I’ve seen those at the Essoldo, but my tastes run more to musicals. Me and the Mrs thought
Half a Sixpence
was smashing. For a complete nit, you were doing nicely with your pet scrubber, weren’t you?’

Lea said nothing, but fairly eloquently. Bellaver shut the file.

‘That’s in the dim and distant, Timmy. Not at all what concerns us, though I suppose we could bung the file over to Obscene Publications for a larf. No, we’re interested in the last few hours. Would you be aware of Miss Thatcher’s movements over the weekend?’

Now, Timmy had more than an inkling. He looked at Bellaver, at her, at the mirror.

‘Where’s Carol? What’s happened?’

Now, he
knew.

‘Do you recall who Miss Thatcher was — ahem —
with
between the hours of two o’clock this morning and sun-up? Come on, lad, you must keep a diary. Little black book of names and times and places? Standard business practice in your line.’

Timmy was bled-white pale.

‘Carol went on from the party last night,’ he said. ‘It was a scene, man. Not a thing. You dig?’

‘I don’t speak Raver. Do I need to get a translator in? Katie, have you the foggiest what Mr Lea means?’

‘Who was Carol with when you saw her last?’ she asked.

Damn. Bellaver had made her Nice Cop.

She didn’t like being included in this. It might yield results, but she was uncomfortable with cruelty.

‘A crowd, you know,’ Timmy said, relieved to talk with someone — anyone — who wasn’t a policeman and might conceivably take his side. ‘People, you know. That photographer bloke? Some of his birds.’

‘This photographer?’ said Bellaver. ‘Presumably, he has a name.’

Timmy was distracted. He would soon ask questions himself, but now he had to concentrate. He can’t have had much sleep. And he’d been on the piss last night. Dope, too. If it was a scene, not a thing.

‘Nolan,’ he said. ‘Thomas Nolan.’

3

C
arol Thatcher still sewed her name in dresses. When she went to big girls’ school, her mum probably bought a supply of tags which had lasted a lifetime. Griffin — less of a musicals fan than his Super — said he recognised Carol from his spell on the Ob Pub Squad, but official identification was necessary. Models — that was the deceased’s profession on the tax books — habitually shared and stole fab gear, so there was a slim chance another bird was kitted up in her clobber. Timmy Lea was packed off to the morgue with WPC Rogers to view the body. Bellaver said he could go home after that, provided he didn’t stray too far.

Before leaving, Timmy asked Kate something she’d heard before.

‘Will she come back? Like you did? As a…’

He made fang-teeth with curled forefingers.

‘It doesn’t work like that, Mr Lea. She’d have to have drunk vampire blood before, ah, death.’

His face fell, hope squashed. He got in the Austin with Rogers, who lifted her veil to drive. B Division cars had slightly tinted windows.

‘Did anyone tell him how Carol died?’ she asked Bellaver.

Bellaver looked at Regan, who shook his head.

‘Then how does he know?’

‘Pimps’ intuition?’ Bellaver suggested.

Regan made fists.

‘Another thing,’ said Kate.

Bellaver looked at her, glumly.

‘How do we know Carol’s attacker
didn’t
make her drink his blood before draining her?’

It was a longstanding irritation to the police that, by law, autopsy couldn’t be carried out until three days post mortem on the off-chance the deceased might turn. That had happened, but rarely. The three-day delay meant coppers twiddling their thumbs before they knew whether or not they were on a murder enquiry.

‘We couldn’t be that lucky,’ Bellaver said, ‘but someone will sit shiva just in case. She was white-lips.’

White-lips. She knew the expression. A victim drained to death without the benefit of the Dark Kiss. No tell-tale vampire blood about the mouth. There were other callous terms: throwaways, non-returnable bottles, dolly mixtures.

‘I suppose the bastard could have wiped her off with a hankie just for jollies,’ mused Bellaver.

Most, if not all, new-borns passed through a transitional state indistinguishable from death. Kate’s lasted only six hours. Three days seemed to be a cut-off point. The few who turned after then were brain-damaged ghouls, bereft of personality or intellect. Different clergymen cited the fact that Christ rose on the third day to characterise vampires as blessed or blasphemous. Legal precedents had been hashed over for eighty years. Turning someone against their will was a crime, but not murder. It sometimes led to lengthy, expensive lawsuits, referred to in chambers as Tepes v Westenra cases. The boon of
potential
immortality was weighed against the social opprobrium and medical inconvenience which came with turning vampire. Even with the National Health, a frighteningly high proportion of newborns didn’t survive their first year. Among the fatal perils: allergy to sunlight, rapid ageing, out-of-control shapeshifting, self-destructive mania and a wasting condition whereby a new-born’s body literally ate itself from the inside. Oh, and being murdered by Drakky Bashers. Kate argued that vampires who were profligate with bestowing the Dark Kiss on short-lived get should be subject to the penalty of law, which added to her already considerable unpopularity among the more traditionally arrogant, high-handed and thick-headed undead.

The dead girl might resurrect and identify her assailant. Kate couldn’t see it happening.

From Timmy, they had a rough itinerary of Carol Thatcher’s last hours.

Yesterday afternoon, she had been with the plastic surgeon Sir John Rowan. Timmy tried half-heartedly to pretend she had a consultation about mole removal, then admitted it was sex for cash. Sir John was one of Carol’s regulars. Bellaver blanched at the list of ministers, big shots, famous entertainers, diplomats and crooks Timmy came up with. He envisioned another Keeler Affair — the kind of scandal-festooned investigation which gets vast press coverage, but also leads to officers on the case being quietly demoted to traffic duty in Welwyn Garden City. Carol generally shied away from vampires. Timmy thought she’d never been bitten (before), but she was a sometime professional arm-ornament for Baron Meinster, a disciple of Dracula who proclaimed himself the late Count’s successor. The Baron took the trouble to appear in public with a succession of glamour gals, especially since his 1953 conviction for ‘importuning for immoral purposes’ in gents’ conveniences around Chelsea. Meinster was in Rome just now, reputedly prostrate at the feet of Helmut Berger — so he was off the list of suspects.