Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (44 page)

After leaving Sir John’s space age penthouse, Carol went shopping at Biba in Kensington, buying more clothes to sew tags in and never wear, toting them back to her Chelsea flat in an ‘I’m Bleeding Britain’ bag. She met Timmy at the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping, where they tallied up her week’s take over fish and chips and a pint. Timmy didn’t mind talking — bragging — about sex, but blushed like a convent girl when the subject of the money was raised. At the riverside pub, they met Clive Landseer, a young man with no visible source of income, and his latest discoveries, white-blonde male and female twins who ‘came together’. Timmy was in awe of Clive, who’d been tossed out of several posh schools and talked like a toff. He’d also recently turned. The five of them went to a ‘scene’, which is to say a party, thrown (but not attended) by the Persian-American millionairess Syrie Van Epp on the
Fevre Dream,
a Mississippi riverboat reassembled on the Thames as a floating pleasure palace. Timmy dropped more names from pop music, fashion, industry and films. There were vampires among this in-crowd. Sebastian Newcastle, now a tycoon, bloated and replete after his hostile take-over of the Cyril Lord carpet empire. Herbert von Krolock, Baron Meinster’s amusing ex. Mrs Michaela Cazaret, collector of art and artists. Paul Durward, the pop singer. Canon Copely-Syle, Black Cardinal in the Church of Satan, a frequent, combative guest on
Late Night Line-Up.
And Professor Caleb Croft, with a retinue of favoured students.

Kate would love to pin Carol on Croft. Again, they couldn’t be that lucky.

The professor was most likely the biggest monster on the guest list. But she didn’t see him being tripped up by a clumsy lust-murder. He’d been getting away with far worse for centuries. As a prime specimen of vampire behaviour B.D., he was the poster boy for rapine. Born Lord Charles Croydon, he’d been an eighteenth-century Hellfire Club rake. Even before turning, he used up and threw away wenches, relying on title and connections to evade the gallows.

Yes, there were drugs at the party. Half the guests were on Bowles-Ottery Pellets, which Bellaver guessed one of Croft’s bright young things had likely brought along to spread the goodwill. Of course, there was sex. Kate felt sorry for Timmy, who spent more time totting up Carol’s fees than having anything like a good time. Even he couldn’t keep track of who went with who, though he reckoned Clive tried to get Carol together with the twins to put on a show for a newspaper columnist who ‘liked to watch’. He knew Carol nipped into a private berth with one or more members of the band Forever More, just for kicks. More seriously, she balled the Emir Abdulla Akaba with Plainview Oil picking up the tab. A busy night’s work. Timmy got seasick, though the boat was solidly moored. He didn’t say so, but Kate supposed Clive Landseer put something amusing in Timmy’s gin fizz. He was lucky not to wake up tattooed and ring-sore.

Bellaver wasn’t happy with the jet set
dramatis personae.
The sort of people it was hell to have as witnesses, let alone suspects. Being famous, beautiful, wicked and rich in various combinations meant they all felt the rules — not to mention the law — didn’t apply to them. Just getting them to answer questions would be a colossal chore. Most would be too spacey to provide evidence which would stand up in court.

Eventually, Timmy came round to where he’d come in.

When he last saw Carol, she was talking with Nolan, the photographer. He had a couple of tall, scary birds with him. Girls with hungry eyes. Not tarts, but your actual fashion models, too skeletony to get by in Carol’s trade. Probably not vampires, since they’d need to show up on film to make a living. Timmy said Nolan expressed an interest in shooting Carol.

‘I’ll tell you who wants shooting,’ Bellaver muttered. ‘The lot of them.’

Then, Timmy lost track of Carol. There was nothing to say she didn’t give Nolan the brush-off, latch on to Newcastle or Croft or Durward or Vampires Unknown, and stagger off down whatever tragic life-path led to Maryon Park. But Bellaver had to start somewhere and Thomas Nolan was elected. There was even a smidgen of evidence: Griffin came back from litter duty with a flattened cardboard package found near the body. It had contained a roll of photographic film, and not the cheap stuff they developed at Boot’s.

The Super told Griffin to hop off and track down Nolan’s gaff.

WPC Rogers came back with the official word. Timothy Lea had verified the identification and gone off, pale and shaking. Carol Thatcher’s pencilled name could be rubbed off the forms and replaced with biro ink.

‘If she’d got stabbed or overdosed, nobody’d give five new pence,’ Bellaver said. ‘But she had to get fanged.’

Rogers — a thin-faced, weirdly attractive woman — had colour in her cheeks. Kate wondered if she’d nipped Timmy in the car. He was the type who’d do whatever a woman in uniform told him.

Griffin came back. He’d found the address of Nolan’s studio. Pottery Lane, Notting Hill. Evidently, the photographer lived there too, over the shop.

But Griffin had other news. He brought in a Super 7 transistor radio.

‘What’s the matter, lad? Can’t bear to miss
Two-Way Family Favourites?’

The lunchtime news was on. Kate recognised the voice.

‘…if this is indeed the first case of its kind since the War, and not merely the first case to have been
publicly owned as such,
we can take little comfort in that, for it was an
inevitable consequence
of government after government turning a blind eye to the escalation of the situation. A girl —
a young girl
— is dead, has been sacrificed… Let her not die in vain, let us draw a line and say
“this far, and no further”.’

‘Enoch,’ said Bellaver. ‘Flaming Enoch.’

The snippet ended. In accordance with the BBC’s policy of balance, a vampire clergyman — Kate’s old boyfriend Algernon Ford — came on next. Algy uttered sympathetic platitudes about the friends and family of the victim and insisted the fiendish, probably foreign culprit was unrepresentative of the long-established, patriotic British vampire community.

‘Griffin, did I or did I not make it plain that certain details of this case should not reach the press?’

‘You did, Super.’

‘And yet those details are now on the wireless?’

‘Yes they are, Super. None of our lads is responsible.’

Kate knew it was unlikely that the information had come from inside B Division. It could have been Brent, the police surgeon, or whoever — she hadn’t thought to ask — found the body in the first place. Most likely, it was a local copper. Every nick had some friendly officer willing to swap a pint for tit-bits. Kate had sources like that. Griffin was one of them when in the mood. This was more likely a malicious leak.

‘It’ll be Choley,’ she said.

‘Who?’ asked Bellaver.

‘The desk sergeant with the black spot and the greasy fingers.’

‘If so, he will rue the ruddy day. Griffin, you’re too wet for what I have in mind. Rogers, go and dragoon someone terrifying, like Herrick or lawd-help-us Berkeley-Willoughby, then set them loose on these premises, fangs full out. I want this shop locked tighter than a fraidy cat’s arsehole. Intimate that throats will be ripped if I hear any more of this on the news before we have the murderer clapped in silver in the dock at the Old Bailey.’

Griffin nodded and took his radio away. Rogers went out in search of an attack dog.

‘Too late,’ Kate said. ‘The fraidy cat’s out of the bag.’

Bellaver looked sour but did not disagree.

4

E
ven on a Sunday afternoon, the high-ceilinged waiting room of Thomas Nolan’s studio was crowded with aspirant models of all sexes. Kate had never seen so many long legs, knobbly vertebrae and knife-blade cheekbones. Pulses throbbed in throats, wrists and ankles. She wouldn’t know where to bite, for fear of scraping bone. Pretty creatures perched on low, backless couches like uncomfortable grasshoppers. They wore in fancy dress: astronaut, flamingo, cowgirl, Boy Scout. Glass-top tables had still-life arrangements of foreign-language magazines the waifs couldn’t read and exotic fruits they wouldn’t eat.

Big black-and-white movie star posters hung on whitewashed walls. Bogart in a white tux, Rita Hayworth as Gilda, Jack Andrus as Ulysses, Bardot on a motorbike, Byron Orlok as Clayface, Theda Bara as Countess Addhema, Toby Dammit gaunt and drugged. Someone had reddened their eyes with magic marker and added fangs to black-lipped mouths. She didn’t get the point. A chrome-and-crystal American jukebox played Procul Harem. She glanced at the selection panel: ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, over and over.

…her face, at first just ghostleeeee, turned…

Nolan’s Chinese personal assistant was present, issuing orders to minions. Kate was surprised — the PA was the woman she knew as the Daughter of the Dragon. She’d used more elaborate names, but now called herself Lin Tang. Kate hadn’t kept track of the woman, but heard the Lord of Strange Deaths, her father, had joined his ancestors. Before the ceiling fell in on his Limehouse lair, he had issued his customary statement, ‘the world shall hear from me again’. So far, it hadn’t.

‘Kate,’ Lin Tang acknowledged, stone-faced. ‘And some official gentlemen.’

Shorter and slighter even than her, Lin Tang wore a black miniskirt, vinyl kinky boots and a sleeveless top consisting of gold rings sewn together. Her hair once fell unbound to her knees. Now, she had sharp-cut fringes and showed the nape of her neck. Kate remembered the Daughter as a
hapkido
whirlwind in 1896, dicing Carpathian Guardsmen with twin scimitars in the Battle of Lamb’s Conduit Street. Did anyone else here realise the tiny woman was more dangerous than the bald, pockmarked wrestler who barred the inner doors? He was for show: arms crossed like the genie in
Aladdin
, single earring, flower painted on his forehead. Lin Tang might have inherited him from her father.

In the ’90s, a time of odd alliances, Kate and the Daughter had served in different branches of the Underground dedicated to the overthrow of Prince Dracula. Then, Lin Tang dutifully carried out her dreadful father’s bidding. Later, she turned against him — for love, Kate understood — and made her own way in the world. Good for her. Not a vampire, she seemed about the same age as she had eighty years ago. Her family had access to potions and elixirs. Like vampirism, they carried a high, invisible price. The Lord came to resemble a Chinese mummy. Lin Tang’s painted face might crack yet.

Bellaver searched through his pockets for his warrant card, and found it only after Griffin had flashed police I.D. at Lin Tang.

‘We’d like a word with Mr Nolan, miss… ?’

Lin Tang gave nothing away.

‘It
is
a serious matter,’ Bellaver insisted.

The wrestler shifted a little.

In this bubbleworld, B Division’s authority was scarcely recognised. No wonder the Super was wary of the case. When Kate started as a crime reporter, policemen found it almost impossible to interview anyone of superior social standing. Well-born ruffians of the 1880s, like Caleb Croft and his chums generations earlier, could more or less get away with anything. In this egalitarian age, being famous — no matter what for — earned the privileges which once came with title and estates.

‘Thomas is not to be disturbed,’ said Lin Tang.

The doors opened behind the wrestler, bumping him out of the way. Thomas Nolan, more wasted than Toby Dammit in the poster, stalked out, blond hair wild, brick-dust streaks on his blinding white jeans. Not a tall man, he displaced a lot of air. Behind him somewhere, a woman sobbed.

Lin Tang noticed the Presence.

‘Thomas looks disturbed to me,’ said Bellaver.

The photographer began inspecting the crop of models, pinching chins and staring into eyes. None spoke.

‘Hopeless, useless, spotty, malnourished, too tall…
t’chah!
The lot of you, out out out!’

The astronaut misted up the inside of her plastic bubble helmet and passed out. Her spacesuit had a vent which exposed her miraculously flat midriff in a manner not advised for extra-vehicular activity.

Lin Tang clapped her hands, like her father signalling that more Western barbarians be tossed into the river. The models were banished, though Kate guessed they’d be replaced by interchangeables within the half-hour. The cowgirl took the spacegirl with her.

‘You must be joking,’ he said to Bellaver.

Then he came to Kate…

‘…but you… interest me.’

He made a square with thumbs and forefingers and looked through it at her.

‘Snappy snappy,’ he said. ‘Teeth please.’

‘He means smile,’ said Lin Tang.

‘I means teeth,’ said Thomas.

Kate opened her mouth, as if for the dentist. Her fangs slid out of gumsheaths.

Often, her teeth noticed she fancied someone before her brain did. Thomas Nolan. She felt a sting of interest. Meanwhile, he saw her as an object. Damn. She’d been here before.

‘Lovely gnashers,’ he said. ‘Come in and we’ll expose some film.’