Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (50 page)

‘What is your secret?’ asked Armstrong, notebook ready.

‘“Diet and lots of sleep”,’ she said.

‘That’s from Elisabeth Bathory’s paperback,’ said Moïse.

‘And she took it from Herbert von Krolock,’ Kate responded. ‘Almost all the witty things ascribed to vampire socialites are Herbert
bon mots
passed around and polished up. Most of us lose the ability to be funny after a century or so. If an elder makes a joke, he usually has to say “ho ho ho” afterwards to be sure you know to laugh.’

‘Point of etiquette,’ said Scrawdyke. ‘Generalisations are unhelpful. Give specific instances.’

She smiled and shrugged.

‘You’ve ducked the question, luv,’ said Keith Kenneth. Or was he Kenneth Keith? ‘Keeping your secret?’

‘It wouldn’t be a secret if I blabbed everywhere, would it?’

If Kate had a secret, she didn’t know what it was. Not of the Dracula bloodline, she escaped the rot which cut down many of her generation, but it wasn’t as if she was particularly careful. She’d put herself in harm’s way often. Too often. How many times can you be sole survivor of some catastrophe and shrug it off? On the principle that a tightrope walker shouldn’t look down, she didn’t like to consider the occasions when she’d nearly tumbled.

Even now, she was in a lions’ den, taking questions from cubs.

‘I wouldn’t take me as an example,’ she said.

Armstrong wrote that down.

‘What are your thoughts on the Before?’ asked DeBoys.

‘Point of explanation,’ said Scrawdyke. ‘DeBoys means…’

‘I know what he means,’ she said, hastily. ‘B.D. Before Dracula. I had little experience of it. We didn’t know what was coming. It wasn’t like decimal coinage. We weren’t told the thing would happen, given a date to expect it by and charts in the papers to learn so you’re ready for it. When I was a girl, when I was
warm,
we’d barely heard of vampires. They weren’t even worth not believing in. Angels or ghosts or the soul or a truly good man. we talked often about whether those existed. My father wrote
A Counterblast to Agnosticism.
He was one Protestant who took the “protest” part seriously. He had decided opinions on
Irish
beliefs. At a meeting of the Home Rule League, he told Parnell that Ireland would never be a nation until we stopped wittering on about the wee folk. He had no patience with the Celtic folklore with which some Nationalists dressed up the Cause. Before the Dracula Declaration, vampires seemed like fairies. Children’s stories. The scholars who credited them, Calmet or Hesselius or Abronsius, were marginal crackpots. One thing which happened A.D. was a revival of all manner of nonsensical beliefs on the principle of “if there are vampires, then why could there not be…” boggarts or gorgons or the Easter Rabbit or two-headed llamas? That took a while to die out. There are modern equivalents of such foolishness, like flying saucers or the vanishing police box.’

If more people knew about the Mother of Tears, the epidemic of credulousness might take fire again. That was the least of the reasons why Kate hadn’t written about the creature who secretly ruled Rome.

Scrawdyke tried to put up his hand, but several of the others stopped him.

‘So you admit you can’t understand what it was like for Caleb B.D.?’

DeBoys used Croft’s Christian name. The name he had
taken.
Why Caleb? Was the former Charles Croydon sticking with his initials? Vampires often did that, so their names matched the initials on their luggage. Or else they went in for anagrams like ‘Carmilla’ or ‘Alucard’. Croft might be working his way through Bible names. Caleb of the Tribe of Judah was one of the spies Moses sent into Canaan, who came back and said the land could be taken.

‘Oh, I can
understand
,’ she said. ‘I can understand what it was like — what it
is
like — for a lot of people in a lot of situations. It’s called empathy. A trait not often associated with vampires and virtually absent in elders.’

DeBoys grinned.

‘…but it has its uses.’

‘There were glories in the old days,’ said DeBoys. ‘When there was more of a nightly challenge… when we — vampires — weren’t so
common
…’

The Black Monks would defend their Black Abbot, of course.

‘I didn’t expect to hear that at a university. Aren’t children today into throwing off the dead weight of history? It’s the time of the season, the age of Aquarius, the Now Generation, the Happening Thing. Aren’t you
with-it?’

‘Mr DeBoys follows his own course,’ said Croft. With pride, or resignation, or. something else?

‘And we follow it with him,’ said Withnail, smirking to show he saw the joke in that. ‘Black Monks all, and hellfire to quaff…’

All the students snapped their fingers. A private joke. A prearranged response to a trigger phrase.

Scrawdyke snapped so hard he broke bones. He winced, gripping the finger while it healed.

Eastman, a hold-out against the joke, scowled. Kate decided she liked him.

Croft allowed himself an indulgent smile. She’d forgotten how disgusting that was.

‘What are the Black Monks?’ she asked.

DeBoys’ fangs glinted. ‘We are vampires among vampires,’ he said.

10

O
utside, the seminar done, it was still annoyingly light. These long summer evenings were a bore.

Kate didn’t know if she’d learned anything.

The Black Monks were a scary concept — the disciples of Caleb Croft, yearning for the good old days of unfettered slaughter and
hellfire to quaff
(snap!) — but mostly ridiculous individuals. Weary Withnail or Apologetic Armstrong couldn’t get it together to hurt anyone, though she supposed they might hold the others’ coats in any group atrocity. Moïse King would swallow any evil impulse and redirect it into a sonnet sequence. Anna Conda and Full-Bosomed Fran were just passing through. Neither were so into the Black Monk scene they wore the habit, though they cared enough not to clash. James Eastman was not of this party — to squelch a pang of embarrassing desire, she decided she fancied the brooding biker
much
more than DeBoys.

Which left Evil Eric, Carnal Keith and Scruffy Scrawdyke on her active suspects list. DeBoys was the obvious Top Cat in this alley (‘He’s the boss, he’s the pip, he’s the championship… he’s the most tip-top…’) while Keith was a fashion-plate sensualist with brawlers’ knuckles. Point of information: Scrawdyke was a vicious misogynist. He’d glared at her throughout the seminar, waves of loathing spilling over onto Anna and Fran. When Croft dismissed the group, Scrawdyke wheedled, trying to get Anna to lend him notes on a lecture he’d missed. A painful performance. When generally powerless people thought they could hurt someone without consequence, they were terrifying. Still, he’d have to stir from his coffin and show some initiative to hurt anyone.

The open, mostly concrete space between the college and the river was busy. More Rag Week shenanigans. Mummified medical students trailing bandages were chased around yellowing grass and by Groucho-loping whitecoats with big butterfly nets. ‘They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!’ roared from speakers. The routine — and the song — ended and hats were passed for small change. A white-faced mime shook a shako at her. She got rid of some threepenny bits from her purse. What charity were they supporting?

Sat around a fountain was the negative image of the student gang she’d run into earlier: six or seven vampires, mostly not dressed in black, and one warm girl in a grey shroud. Croft wasn’t the only lecturer with a seminar group in the School of Vampirism — this must be another clique. Now the lunatics’ act was over, a vampire boy in a kaftan, eyes bright with recent feeding, took up an acoustic guitar. Fingers strumming faster than humanly possible, he combined Robert Johnson’s ‘Cross Road Blues’ with Tony Hatch’s ‘Theme From
Crossroads
’ in one too-clever-by-half racket.

The scarf knotted around Laura Bellows’ leg could lead to any vampire at St Bartolph’s. Student or faculty. Or the murderer might want to direct attention here, away from themselves. Clive Landseer or Syrie Van Epp or Sebastian Newcastle or U.N. Owen-Vampire?

‘Kate,’ barked someone.

She scanned the area. First, she clocked her bodyguard. Nezumi, her mousy neighbour, must have been marking her since she left the Club. Dressed in claret blazer, skirt and straw boater, she solemnly joined a warm schoolgirls’ skipping game. She was, as might be expected, expert. Though they lived in the same building, Kate hadn’t talked much with the young-old Japanese girl. Thanks to an insufficiently soundproofed ceiling, she knew Nezumi was a devoted listener to
Junior Choice
on Saturday mornings. She often played children’s or novelty singles on her Dansette. ‘Nellie the Elephant’, ‘I Am a Bat and I Live in a Hat’, the Goons’ ‘Ying-Tong Song’. As a Lovely, she was presumably lethal. To match her uniform, she carried a battered, bandaged hockey stick — a formidable weapon in a street-fight. However, it was hard to see Nezumi as a samurai sex kitten when she looked thirteen and sang along in a thick accent to ‘A Mouse Lived in a Windmill in Old Amsterdam’.

Nezumi hadn’t called out to her, though.

Sergeant Griffin sat alone on a bench, pretending to read the
Mirror
(ENOCH SAYS ‘NO MORE VIPERS’). Every student who passed grunted or snorted like a pig, so being in plainclothes — if an electric blue suit and crimson shirt could be counted as plain — wasn’t working. He might as well wear a tit-helmet with a blue lamp on top. A wag in a
Magic Roundabout
t-shirt set fire to an enormous roll-up and exhaled a marijuana cloud. Griffin told the kid to push off and take a dip in the Thames.

Kate had no choice but to go over and sit next to the vampire copper.

‘It takes all of ten minutes to read the Mirror,’ he said. ‘Including the flippin’ horoscopes and Andy Capp. I’ve been here an hour. it’s been a pain.’

‘You should have brought a book. I always have one on the go.’

She was in the middle of J.P. Donleavy’s
Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule
.

‘I’m stuck on the first chapter of
Valley of the Dolls
and don’t want to carry the thing around in public.’

A warm student kindly put a hand-drawn ‘BEWARE OF THE PIG’ sign on the bench next to Griffin. The policeman flicked out fangs. The student flashed the peace sign and scarpered.

‘Is Bellaver calling me off? Did Landseer confess?’

‘Far from it. Bastard’s got an alibi. Edward Langdon, MP, no less. While the girls were being drained and dumped, the Honourable Member was getting sucked off by our Clivey. After arm-twisting, Langdon gave up a statement. Checks out, too. Wouldn’t you know it, Langdon is on the Manfred Commission. At least he can’t be prejudiced…’

‘Don’t you believe it, Sergeant. Some of the loudest Enochites cover love-bites with make-up. You know the type. Spend the week screaming we should be impaled and burned and buried at the crossroads in graves sprinkled with salt and sown with garlic, then crawl round the viper bars on Saturday night begging for a little nip. Remember that shrink in the 1950s who said he could “cure” vampirism? Dr Holstrom. Held the Hyde Park rallies which kicked off the Blood Riots. He turned out to be one of Lis Bathory’s castoffs. He turned. After all the trouble, I doubt he’s been embraced by “the community”.’

Griffin folded his paper and chucked it in a bin. He threw the funny sign after it.

‘If you’re hoping for a culprit here, I can’t give you one,’ she said. ‘Every vampire I’ve seen today looks guilty. Including you.’

‘I have an alibi too. I was on duty Saturday night. Until the call came in, it was a boring shift. We played Monopoly in the B Division squad-room in Holborn. Bellaver cheats. Keeps a “Get Out of Jail Free” card up his sleeve. What about you?’

‘If either of my neighbours were home, they’d have heard typing from my flat. One thousand words for
Woman
on bright red or royal blue Bri-Nylon long-johns for the younger — or younger-seeming — girl.’

She didn’t mention that she could produce a neighbour with a loud whistle. The Diogenes Club liked to keep some separation from the authorities — the
other
authorities.

‘Thin. You could have a fascinated minion hitting random keys for hours while you were off haunting the night in search of your prey.’

‘If I had a fascinated minion, all sorts of things would be much, much easier. Still, if I’d drained two girls an hour or so before I saw you in Maryon Park, I’d have been practically purple.’

Two tall warm girls in mini dresses walked by. Griffin’s eyes nearly popped. They sat on the lawn, arranging their legs into lotus positions. The dope-smoker offered his huge reefer and they took substantial hits. Grass did nothing for Kate but give her a headache. The drug revolution turned up all sorts of hallucinogens and narcotics which didn’t work on vampires, and one or two which did. Griffin ogled the pretty girls. They were swan-necked as well as long-legged.

‘Volunteer for this?’