Innocent Blood

by Graham Masterton

  ‘No, me neither. I’ll call you later, if I get the time, OK?’

  ‘All right, then.’

  He was still thinking about Margot as he overshot the entrance to Nevile’s house. The truth was, he was beginning to miss her, in a way. She might have taken herself way too seriously, with her Eastern philosophy and her paintings and her macrobiotic diets, but that was one of the things that had first attracted him, because it had brought stability and order into his life, whereas he had always been susceptible to sudden enthusiasms, and to rush off and do things before he had thought them through – followed by deep depression because they hadn’t worked out.

  Even her paintings didn’t seem so bad, in retrospect. They were calm; they were peaceful. And, as Mo had once remarked, they were no more objectionable than a blank wall, after all.

  He U-turned outside the Earth Mother Juice Stand, his tires squealing, and doubled back. Further up the road a hitch-hiker, his thumb already half lifted, frowned at him in annoyance, as if his future had suddenly changed in front of his eyes.

  Nevile was sitting in his study, laying out picture cards on his polished black marble table.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. His black shirt was buttoned up to the neck but he wasn’t wearing a necktie, so that he looked like an ascetic priest.

  Frank eased himself down on the opposite side of the table. ‘I feel like I’ve been over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Twice nightly, with an extra performance on Saturday afternoons.’

  Nevile looked up. ‘How about mentally?’

  ‘Sad. And very angry. Revenge? Jesus . . . if I could lay my hands on those bastards . . .’

  ‘When are the police going to talk to Charles Lasser?’

  ‘Today sometime, they told me. It probably won’t do any good.’

  Nevile dealt more cards, then frowned.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Frank. ‘Fortune-telling?’

  ‘No, it’s a game. Cats and Moons. It’s like solitaire except that you play it with a spirit.’

  Frank couldn’t help looking around the room. ‘You mean you’re playing with somebody now?’

  ‘A very old spirit. He was one of the first who ever came to me when I moved to California. His name’s Erasmus and he used to own a fruit farm near Bakersfield. He died at the age of ninety-seven.’

  Frank watched Nevile picking up cards and placing them one on top of the other. ‘How does Erasmus, like, play his hand?’

  ‘He gives me instructions,’ said Nevile, tapping his forehead with his fingertip. ‘And in no uncertain terms, too. “The Dog Star card next to the Siamese card, you moron!”’

  Frank sat back. Now that he had seen spiritual manifestations for himself, he didn’t find it at all unbelievable that Nevile was playing a game with a man who was long dead. In fact, he wished that he had known about spirits years ago, especially how close they like to cluster to the living.

  ‘Do you think it was Charles Lasser who sent those men to kill you?’ asked Nevile.

  ‘I don’t have any proof apart from that news broadcast, but I’m pretty sure of it.’

  ‘Three cats!’ said Nevile, triumphantly. ‘Beat that!’

  ‘I’m just wondering how they knew that I was waiting for the cops to show up.’

  Nevile began to gather up cards. ‘I hate to say this, but your prime suspect seems to be Astrid. You told her, didn’t you, that you suspected Charles Lasser of bombing your office, and you told her that you were going to call the police? Not only that, she made sure she left before they arrived.’

  ‘I don’t know. The police thing could have been a coincidence. I mean, if you want somebody to open up their hotel room door for you, then shouting “police!” is a pretty logical thing to do, isn’t it? You’re not going to say “hitmen!”, are you?’

  ‘There’s something very unusual about Astrid,’ Nevile mused. ‘It’s not just the fact that she won’t tell you what her name is, or where she lives. Do you think she’s still seeing Charles Lasser?’

  ‘I don’t have any idea. I can’t follow her everywhere. I don’t have the right.’

  ‘You have the right to protect yourself.’

  ‘What do you mean? You think she’s dangerous?’

  ‘If she called those two men last night, of course she is. But even if she didn’t call them, it seems to me that she’s getting you involved in something very complicated and very risky, although I can’t think what.’

  ‘Whatever you say, she’s given me comfort, she’s given me reassurance, she’s kept me from falling to pieces.’

  ‘Of course she has,’ said Nevile. ‘But at the same time, she could have been trying to win your trust, for the sake of her own agenda.’

  ‘What agenda? I mean, I’m a comedy writer. What else could I possibly do for her, except make her laugh?’

  ‘Maybe Danny knows.’

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘He’s appeared to you twice this week, to save your life. The chances are that he knows who’s trying to kill you. He may also know what Astrid wants from you, too.’

  ‘So that’s why you suggested another séance?’

  Nevile lifted both hands. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

  At that moment, however, the Cats and Moons pack was suddenly knocked off the table and scattered across the floor. Nevile looked around the room and said, ‘Temper, temper! If there’s one thing I don’t like, Erasmus, it’s a sore loser!’

  They sat in silence for more than twenty minutes while the sun crept stealthily across the study wall and illuminated a painting of a woman in lilac standing by an overgrown grave, her hair entwined with flowers and her hands covering her face, so that only her eyes looked out. For some reason, the painting was titled The Gates.

  Nevile was staring out of the window. His breathing was very deep and slow, almost as if he were falling asleep. Frank’s left nostril began to itch, and it was all he could do not to sneeze.

  ‘I want to talk to Danny,’ said Nevile at last. ‘Danny, can you hear me? Your daddy’s here.’

  ‘You got through?’ asked Frank.

  Nevile said nothing, but continued to stare at the clouds in the sky outside. Another five minutes went past, and the sun edged even further across the painting. It had the strange effect of making the girl’s hands melt away, so that Frank could see her face, serious and pale, and staring at him directly, as if she recognized him.

  ‘Danny? Can you hear me?’ said Nevile. He listened for a moment, and then he turned to Frank. ‘He’s here, but he doesn’t think that he can speak to us.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Nevile listened some more, and then he nodded. ‘He says that if he speaks to us, he could get into trouble.’

  ‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’

  ‘He says that there’s a lot of hurt, and that there’s only one way to make it better.’

  ‘Yes, but what trouble?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but it feels to me like he’s being threatened.’

  ‘Threatened? In the spirit world? Who the hell can threaten him there?’

  ‘Other spirits. He says they’re looking for a way to get over their pain.’

  ‘What the hell does he mean? Is there any way that I can talk to him direct?’

  ‘He says he loves you. He says he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to you, the same way it happened to him.’

  ‘Yes, but can I talk to him myself? I want to know who’s giving him such a hard time.’

  ‘They’re spirits, Frank. Even if he told you who they were, what could you do about it?’

  Frank stood up. ‘Danny! Can you hear me, Danny? Come on, Danny, you appeared last night, you saved my life! Let me see you, Danny, please! At least let me hear you!’

  There was another silence, and then Nevile said, ‘He says he can’t talk to you, not now.’

  ‘Danny, I need to know what’s happening. I need to know who killed Lizzie and Mo. I need to know who killed you.’

&nb
sp; An even longer silence. A fly settled on the Cats and Moons cards and began to walk across Ursa Major. Somewhere close by a dog started barking.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Nevile.

  Frank looked at his watch. ‘Five after eleven. Only fifty-five minutes before some other poor bastards get blown up. Dear God, Nevile, we have to find out who’s doing this!’

  ‘Danny couldn’t have told you, even if he knows. As I told you before, spirits can never tell you who killed them. They can’t break the laws of natural justice.’

  ‘But for Christ’s sake, so many innocent people are going to get killed! What kind of natural justice is that?’

  Nevile collected up his playing cards. ‘The world couldn’t work without secrets, Frank. If we knew exactly was going to happen tomorrow, life wouldn’t be worth living. All that keeps us going is hope, isn’t it? That, and curiosity.’

  Twenty-Five

  After he left Nevile’s house, Frank drove along Franklin Avenue, past The Cedars. Maybe he could make contact with Danny here, where he had breathed his last breath. He parked on the opposite side of the street and climbed out of his car. A demolition crew was bringing down the last of the school library, and the morning echoed with the heavy thumps of falling masonry. It was right here, only two weeks ago, that his life had changed forever.

  ‘Danny,’ he said, under his breath, and tried to think of Danny swinging his school bag, but he could only picture him lying in his casket, with that creepy center parting and those doll-red cheeks, like one of the kids from Our Gang.

  He paced up and down outside the school for almost twenty minutes, checking his watch repeatedly. If Dar Tariki Tariqat were as good as their word, another bomb was due to go off in less than a quarter of an hour.

  With a thunderous roar, another wall fell, and the air was filled with dust. A demolition worker appeared through the haze like a ghost, and Frank was reminded of the way that Astrid had emerged from the bomb smoke, limping. In some respects, Astrid had changed his life more than the bomb – more than Danny’s death.

  He thought of the feeling she had given him that morning – the feeling that he already knew her, or that he had met her before, and it occurred to him that the woman who had seen her walking down Gardner Street had said the same. Maybe Astrid had one of those faces that remind people of other people. It was a common enough hazard of living in Los Angeles. Frank had been approached in the street two or three times and asked if he was Johnny Depp. It happened.

  He stood outside the school for a long time, thinking. Specks of glass still glittered in the gutters, and Mr Loma’s security hut still leaned at an impossible angle, as if it were being blown by a long-forgotten hurricane.

  He climbed back into his car and drove south toward Sunset. A few blocks west, he passed Orange Grove Avenue. He slowed. What had Danny said, up on that locomotive footplate in Travel Town? Emeralds and orange groves.

  Frank stepped on the brakes, provoking an elephant blast from a Ralph’s truck driver close behind him and an ostentatious fanfare of trumpets from a gold Mercedes convertible. He turned down Orange Grove Avenue and drove very slowly southward, hugging the right-hand lane. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he had the feeling that he was being guided here. He also had the feeling that he was very close to something important. Emeralds and orange groves. Seven thousand and eleven orange groves.

  He reached the intersection with Melrose Avenue. The signal was red, so he had to stop and wait. Right opposite stood a derelict church with a flaking, turquoise-painted dome. It was surrounded by corrugated-iron fencing, which was plastered with faded and tattered fly posters for rock concerts and health clubs. But a signboard still stood outside, announcing that this was the Church of St John the Evangelist, 7011 Orange Grove Avenue.

  Frank felt the same scalp-shrinking sensation that he had experienced when the image of Danny had first appeared on the patio. Emeralds – the stone of St John the Evangelist. Orange Grove Avenue. Seven thousand and eleven. When the signal turned to green, he crossed Melrose and managed to find a tight parking space right in front of the church, much to the annoyance of the woman driving the gold Mercedes convertible, who had been following close behind him.

  ‘You couldn’t drive a fucking shopping cart!’ she screamed at him.

  He climbed out of his car and walked around the hoardings. On the Orange Grove Avenue side there was a makeshift door, fastened with a padlock. He peered through a triangular gap right beside it, but all he could see was half of the steps leading up to the church door, and a heap of rubbish, including an iron bedhead and several split-open bags of cement.

  He took out his cellphone and punched in Nevile’s number. Nevile was a long time in answering and when he did he sounded out of breath. ‘Sorry, I was taking a swim.’

  Frank said, ‘You remember at Travel Town, when we were talking about Dar Tariki Tariqat, and where they might meet? And Danny said, “emeralds and orange groves and seven thousand and eleven?”’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll bet you didn’t know that twelve biblical saints have their own stones – you know, like birthstones – and that emeralds are the stone of St John the Evangelist.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that. What of it?’

  ‘Guess where I’m standing now.’

  Saturday, October 9, 11:59 A.M.

  Frank was sitting in his car waiting for Nevile when he heard the explosion in the distance. A flat thud, over to the north-east. Within two minutes, KRCW reporter Kevin Jacobson had broken into the morning music program.

  ‘Reports are coming in of a massive explosion on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. A number of people have been killed and seriously injured. So far we have no more details than that, but we will bring you more news as and when we receive it.’

  By the time Nevile’s shiny black Mercedes had turned the corner and parked on the opposite side of Orange Grove Avenue, Frank had heard that at least twenty-five people had died, and scores had been critically hurt. A furious Warner Brothers executive blamed the police and the FBI for their ‘abject failure to protect the entertainment industry.’

  Warner Brothers’ French Street set had been almost totally demolished by 1,500 lbs of C4 explosive packed into a van. The director John Portman had been blinded and the actress Nina Ballantine had lost both legs. Five extras had been beheaded by the blast.

  Nevile came across the street looking serious. ‘You’ve heard the news, too?’ Frank asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nevile, ‘and believe me, they’re not going to stop. They’ll go on bombing until they get what they want. It was the same with the IRA when I was working in Northern Ireland – same back-to-front thinking. They feel that they’re totally justified in what they’re doing, and they’re blaming all of the casualties on the entertainment industry, for not giving in to them. It’s a case of “now look what you made me do!” Even worse than that, they believe they have God on their side. I’ll tell you something, Frank: a lot more people are going to die before this is over.’

  Twenty-Six

  They walked around the church of St John the Evangelist, occasionally shaking the corrugated-iron fencing to see if any of it was loose enough to pry free. In the end they concluded that they would have to force the padlock that was holding the gate closed.

  ‘Tire iron?’ suggested Nevile, and Frank unlocked the trunk of his car.

  While Frank kept a lookout, Nevile inserted the tire iron into the padlock, and twisted. A police cruiser crept past, and one of the officers stared at Frank as if he suspected him of being a street-corner drug dealer, but Frank gave an exaggerated performance of checking his watch and frowning up and down the street, as if he were waiting for somebody who had let him down, and the cruiser kept on going. At last the padlock snapped like a pistol shot, and Nevile was able to scrape the door open.

  They clambered over the rubbish until they reached the steps. Most of the stained-glass windows were broken, and th
ere was graffiti on the doors. De Skul and Marmaduke had apparently been there, as well as Uncle Horrible and Señor Meat.

  Together they climbed the steps. The doors were solid oak, and locked. Nevile laid his hands on them, his palms flat, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Any vibes?’ Frank asked him.

  ‘A lot. This is quite overwhelming. There’s so much hatred here, you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve never felt anything like this in any building before, let alone a church.’

  ‘You think that this is where they meet? Dar Tariki Tariqat?’

  ‘I’d be very surprised if it isn’t. My God . . . there’s so much pain here, so much suffering. So much desperation.’

  Frank took a few steps back down. ‘The point is, how are we going to get in here?’

  ‘Let’s try around the back.’

  They made their way down the narrow alley that separated the church from the tire-replacement workshop next door to it. They could hear drills and hammers and clanking jacks, and the banging of inflated tires. Halfway along the alley, Nevile said, ‘Let’s try this.’ There was a basement window covered with a screen of fine mesh. Nevile slid the tire iron underneath the mesh and it took only four or five wrenches to pull it away. He climbed down into the space in front of the window, and gave it a hefty kick with his heel. The glass smashed and Frank heard it tinkling into the basement.

  ‘You should have been a burglar.’

  ‘There’s not enough money in it.’

  Nevile wriggled through the broken window and dropped out of sight. ‘It’s OK,’ he called. ‘It’s only about six feet down to the floor.’

  Frank looked left and right to make sure that nobody was watching, then squeezed himself through the window and jumped down on to the basement floor. ‘Shit, I’ve cut myself.’ He looked up and there was a single shark’s tooth of glass left in the window frame, stained with his own blood.

  ‘Here.’ Nevile took a white linen handkerchief out of his pocket and deftly tied it around Frank’s thumb. ‘You can thank my mother. I was never allowed to walk out of the front door without a clean handkerchief and bus fare.’