A Love Like Blood

by Marcus Sedgwick

  Hunter seemed to be hesitating.

  ‘Go on,’ I almost whispered.

  ‘I forget the details.’

  ‘You remember his name?’

  Hunter shook his head.

  ‘But this murderer, he drank blood?’

  ‘Not as far as anyone knows. But they say that the mere sight of the blood of his victims was what he was after.’

  ‘The sight? Why?’

  ‘Oh work it out for yourself, man,’ said Hunter, and there was more than an edge to his voice. ‘He was some kind of pervert, obviously.’

  The penny dropped into place in my mind and I felt myself blush for being so slow.

  ‘If you want to know any more, I’d find a shrink.’

  ‘To help me with my research?’ I laughed. ‘Or to cure me?’

  Hunter didn’t respond to my joke, but I thanked him for what he knew, and left soon after. I think it was the first time I ever saw Hunter defer the opportunity of giving his opinion, and pass the chance to someone else.

  I could see he was reluctant to talk about the matter any more. He had tried, he said, and we had our answer – the case, far from being closed, was never to be opened.

  So I did ask a psychologist: Donald. I wrote to him, explaining what I was after, and we met in a pub in London one evening in September.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘You should see the rest of me,’ I said, smiling weakly. It had been weeks since my double assault, and yet I still bore the scars. My nose had been put straight, but was still swollen, a few cuts had yet to heal.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was hit by a car,’ I said. ‘Nothing serious. Look, what do you know? Did you find anything out?’

  Donald looked at me oddly.

  ‘What’s all this about anyway? Something to do with your research? Got a screwy patient?’

  I decided that was the easiest angle.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Something like that. So, what do you have?’

  ‘Not much. There have been a few papers written, no books. It appears that there are cases of certain people who have been found to . . . well, drink blood.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Listen here, Charles, what is this about? If you have a patient with some disorder you ought to pass them on to the psychiatric unit. It’s not your—’

  ‘I know, I know. I just want to know what I might be dealing with before I decide what to do. What do you have?’

  Donald seemed placated by that. He sipped at his drink, then sighed.

  ‘As I said, not much. Essentially, we have two types of blood drinkers. There are those with the desire to drink others’ blood. And there are those who drink their own. In this latter camp are some cases of patients who display factitious disorders; who want to maintain the fiction that they are ill, in order to seek attention. There’s some French guy, I’d have to look the name up again, who’s writing about cases of self-induced anaemia in young girls. The doctors were mystified until it was found how they did it. These girls were biting the backs of their own tongues and swallowing the blood in massive quantities. Very often they’d be sick, but the resulting anaemia was all too real.’

  I listened to everything that Donald had to say, and felt sure that he was telling me everything he himself knew.

  ‘Do you think it’s possible,’ I asked, ‘that someone could become obsessed with drinking blood? Other people’s blood? Maybe thinking they are a vampire, or that they gain some power or strength that way?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Anything’s possible. And our mental institutions have plenty of cases of people who’ve done terrible things, without any idea that what they were doing was wrong.’

  ‘But could such a person seem normal otherwise? I mean, aren’t they all just raving lunatics? Climbing the walls, literally?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Donald said. ‘Many cases of psychosis go undetected for long periods of time for the simple reason that the sufferer appears, to all external appearance, to be utterly normal and rational.’

  Donald told me the rest of what he knew. He’d asked around his colleagues and found that there were a couple of Americans who were about to publish on the subject of what they termed clinical vampirism.

  ‘It’s not exactly been a popular field of study,’ he said. ‘For obvious reasons. No one even seems to have agreed on a name for the thing. For the will to drink blood, and the wider, underlying cause, a desire for blood in general. It ought to be called haemophilia, but your chaps bagged that one, didn’t they?’

  I nodded, smiling wryly. ‘I’ve always said it was a stupid name.’

  ‘A blood drinker would be a haematophage, I suppose.’

  ‘And what about someone who derived pleasure from blood? Sexual pleasure.’

  ‘Christ, Charles, I really think you ought to—’

  ‘Please, Donald. I can handle it. I’m just trying to know a little more.’

  I had nearly said ‘know my enemy’, but managed to swerve the sentence elsewhere.

  He blinked. Looked at me hard for a while.

  ‘Well,’ he said, finally. ‘A sexual obsession, or deriving sexual pleasure from blood, that would be haemolagnia, I suppose, or haematolagnia. We use the suffix in relation to various perversions and lusts.’

  So there, finally, I had a name for Verovkin. There really were such people in the world.

  ‘Actually, now I think about it,’ said Donald, ‘I read an account of a case like this during my training. There was a man called Peter – oh what was it? Peter Kürten, I think. A serial killer. He murdered a whole string of people, young children, for their blood. Not to drink it. Just for the sight of it, which made him orgasm. This was in Germany, in the twenties.’

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck as I realised Donald was talking about the man that had inspired Fritz Lang’s movie.

  ‘He had a name, a nickname,’ Donald was saying, though I wasn’t really listening too closely any more.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the Vampire of Düsseldorf.’

  ‘You’ve heard of him?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Donald. You’ve been a great help.’

  I meant it, for above everything else, he had shown me that I wasn’t going crazy, that it was entirely possible Verovkin was a madman acting out some deeply perverted desires.

  So, I knew he was out there, and we had met. He had an advantage over me in that I didn’t know his real name, but I had one advantage over him: he hadn’t connected me with Marian, and presumably thought that I had been sufficiently scared off in Avignon to leave him alone.

  But my bruises healed, and my fear left with them. Instead, in its place came the determination once more that having turned to the law for help, and the law having failed me, I would find him myself, and bring him to some kind of justice.

  Just what that meant, I don’t think I had decided then. It was more a feeling, an intention, a determination not to let go, not to let Marian’s memory go.

  I wouldn’t be able to act, not for a very long time, but somehow I didn’t care. I didn’t forget what I wanted to do; if anything, I had a chance to think about what I would do, and how I could do it, in a calm manner. And I knew that was important. I’d been stupid before, blundering into the South of France without a clue what I was up against, but then I hadn’t had any reason to suppose that I was fighting an army.

  Now I knew differently, and I decided to be better prepared when I went back. I thought about arming myself. I’d barely used a gun in the war, once my training was over. I had been a doctor, not a soldier, not really. It would be a little tricky to get one, but I thought I could, and decided to look out for the chance to get hold of a pistol of some kind, as soon as it came my way.

  In the meantime I threw myself into my work, which needed attention. That group in Oxford had left behind snake venom and was instead starting to make serious progress on identifying clotting facto
rs, or so we’d heard. The goal of a cure for haemophilia was becoming a reality, and meanwhile, the lives of sufferers would be helped enormously through the production of these factors. We were being left behind, and the pressure was on me to catch up.

  So work got in the way. I worked hard, and when an invitation came to speak to an Italian research group at the university in Rome, I knew I should accept.

  THREE

  Rome

  October, 1961

  The question is not what we think about when we’re not having sex, the question is what we think about when we are.

  Chapter 1

  The morning I left for Rome, I had another strange letter. I took it with me on the train to London, reading it on the plane a dozen times or more.

  It was from Captain Leclerc. There was no return address.

  Mr Jackson,

  I got your address from the department; I was aware that you did not take my advice, to leave this business well alone. I am also aware that you made enquiries into the man you met in Avignon. You called him by some Russian name, but that was not how we knew him.

  I knew something of his affairs; we turned a blind eye to many things, but I was not about to sanction murder in my city. Fortunately for you, the owner of a photographic shop thought better of his involvement with this man, and informed me of your situation.

  After I intervened in your case, the man you hunted used his influence to have me dismissed. That is what I believe. I also fear for my life now. I heard that the owner of the photographic shop was beaten to death one night, without apparent motive. So I am going to retire to my mother’s country, and hide in the mountains, where I trust he will not bother me.

  But I want to tell you three things. First, I urge you to do nothing more. He is rich and has power. Secondly, since something tells me you are going to ignore this first thing, I should tell you that even your clumsy work has had some effect. You upset a precarious balance here and he came under more scrutiny than he liked. He has left Avignon; my best sources tell me he is still in France, though I do not know where. And thirdly, I will tell you his name, then I ask you to burn this letter in return for the favour I once did you. His name is Lippe, and to all outward appearances he is a rich German business tycoon, though I do not know what type of business he is in.

  François Leclerc

  Chapter 2

  The office of Professor Enzio Mazzarino at La Sapienza had written to me in September asking for my help. They were trying to improve their research methods into various blood disorders, and had heard of our work in Cambridge. The professor, they explained, craved my advice. I had to admit that this was very flattering; Mazzarino’s had been one of the few papers I had seen given at the Paris conference, all those years before, and that this enormously respected man should crave my advice was enough to get my interest. The offer of a hotel, my plane fare and a generous ‘consideration’ was enough to seal the matter, and I exchanged a couple of letters arranging things.

  I arrived at lunchtime and checked into the hotel that had been booked for me by Mazzarino’s secretary, but was disappointed to find it a squalid little place near Termini Station. Perhaps Mazzarino had not been as impressed with my Paris paper as he claimed, but I soon found the hotel to be close enough to the sights, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain and so on, and my spirits lifted. Having never been to Rome before I was naturally eager to see these things.

  That afternoon, I found myself wandering to the Vatican, for everyone has heard of the Sistine Chapel, and I was keen to see it too. I knew very little about it apart from the image of God creating Adam with a languid touch of a fingertip. I had been expecting it to be a light and uplifting place, like the Lady Chapel at Ely, but with paintings. I found I was wrong.

  An interminable series of gaudy hallways finally led to a small set of steps that led down into the chapel: a dark box of horrors. The windows were way above head height, the light was poor. There in the centre of the ceiling were God and Adam, but this was just one part of a mismatched and hideously coloured series of frescoes.

  This was not what disturbed me the most. The entire end wall of the chapel was given over to a massive depiction of the Last Judgement, I assumed, depicted with pornographic horror and morbid excitation. Hell and the devils and souls in torment, skins being pulled off, bodies rising from the grave, crucifixions, punishments and terrors of all kind, and all of that could be understood to be shocking. The glabrous flesh of even the good figures in the painting was equally repulsive.

  Very soon I was desperate for sunlight, desperate for something less horrific, and though I found my way outside again, I did so only after passing a series of exhibits of reliquaries and chalices, with which, I assumed, the faithful would worship pieces of saints’ bodies and drink Christ’s blood.

  Even though it was October, it was a powerfully hot evening.

  By the time I wandered back across the river I was starting to feel exhausted from the sun. I was supposed to be meeting Mazzarino and two colleagues of his for dinner, but suddenly my head swam and I knew I needed to sleep early, so I took a taxi back to my hotel and had the receptionist phone the restaurant I’d been told to meet them at. I asked them to give sincere apologies but that I had a migraine. That wasn’t strictly true, but I didn’t want to offend them.

  Instead, I wandered down a quiet, narrow alley, looking for somewhere to eat, and finally I staggered into a small pizzeria in some backstreet and had an early supper, drinking lots of water and only a little wine.

  It took me a while to sleep, and as I waited to get drowsy, I found myself thinking about Michelangelo’s masterwork. Impressive, undeniably. But also undeniably grotesque, hideous, and to my mind, of dubious intention.

  Chapter 3

  I woke early and prepared for my ten o’clock meeting with the professor. I thought back to ’51 and the Paris conference. Even ten years later the shame of my failure burned, yet Mazzarino had been impressed, according to the letters from his office. And he’d been reading about our progress with haemophilia with interest. I tried to picture the man but wasn’t sure I had him right; I could see a fifty-something, grey hair and bushy beard, but then wondered if that was Doure of Heidelberg.

  I’d know soon enough.

  I found my way to the campus easily, and arrived early, but made my way to Mazzarino’s offices anyway, hoping to brush away any offence I might have caused by my no-show at dinner.

  What happened next took me by surprise, and threw me so much that I know I didn’t think clearly.

  I knocked on a door and let myself in to find a secretary for the Department of Medicine looking at me expectantly.

  ‘Lei parla Inglese?’ I asked and was relieved when the woman smiled.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ I said, ‘because that’s the total of my Italian.’

  She politely ignored my apology.

  ‘How may I help you?’

  I explained who I was and that Professor Mazzarino was expecting me.

  ‘There must be some mistake,’ she said.

  ‘No, no mistake. I’m sure. I have a letter here which . . .’

  I trailed off as I fumbled in my briefcase for my papers, but she wasn’t listening.

  ‘No, sir. No mistake. The professor is away today, he has no appointments. Perhaps you have the wrong day?’

  I was surprised enough not to be angry, not then, anyway.

  ‘Well, I suppose . . .’

  ‘Why don’t you come back tomorrow? The professor is here tomorrow. Leave me your name, please, and I’ll inform him as soon as he arrives in the morning.’

  And with that, leaving my name and the name of my hotel, I stumbled back out into the streets, without even thinking to check my letter with her, or to see if she was the one who was meant to have invited me.

  Trying to work out if I’d got the day wrong, or even the month, I wandered through the backstreets and finally came into a beautiful s
quare, the Campo de’ Fiori, I think. I was by now getting angry at being stood up by the professor after flying to Italy to meet him, and cursing the lackadaisical nature of the Mediterranean in general, when suddenly I laughed. I was being foolish, for here was a chance for a pleasant holiday, and at someone else’s expense.

  I sauntered into the square in a much better mood.

  The campo was long and surrounded by elegant buildings, but what attracted me was the market in full swing in the centre. There were flowers, of course, but also fruit and meats and cheeses. There were stalls selling clothes and others selling trinkets of various kinds, some of them aimed at tourists, for sure, but much sold by locals, for other local people.

  I slowed myself down and crawled around the market, taking in all the wonderful smells and colourful sights, and then, I saw a girl.

  I should correct that; I mean I saw a young woman, with long, light brown hair, cross in front of me. One second she was not there, a moment later I could not take my eyes off her. She was fingering the material on a skirt hanging from a stall, idly, her head on one side, and then she drifted on.

  I could do nothing but follow her.

  What had happened to me? I have thought about it a lot, and though I would like to claim it was love at first sight, I have to confess that it was lust.

  Something inside me just switched on, switched on again, having been asleep for a long, long time. I hadn’t been with a woman since Sarah died, and even when married I think I can guess that our physical life was no better than adequate. We did not have sex very often; she did not seem very interested in it, and once she became ill, not at all, and at that point nor was I any more. I just wanted her to be better. But she died.