Operation WetFish, Vampire Detective: Ultimate Omnibus Volume 1 of 4 (Operation WetFish, Vampire Detective Ultimate Omnibus)

by Adam Carter

  “I don’t know. But if we hurry we might actually get there in time.”

  “Is this the big Christmas Day surprise Welles has planned though? Attacking this area? There’s nothing here, Jeremiah. There’s not even much crime.”

  Now Jeremiah did stop and turned to her with inquisitive eyes. “I don’t know the area. What do you mean by there not being much crime?”

  Lin shrugged. “There isn’t. I checked the stats for this area recently, just random checks. There’s not a lot that goes on here. A fair bit of open street prostitution actually, but that’s about all the illegal activity which ...” She could see by the sudden light in his eyes that Jeremiah was onto something. “What?”

  “This is it,” he said. “The area Sanders protects. Welles drew him out so he could hit this place. The one place Sanders has built up as a safe ground.”

  “The one place he knew Sanders would definitely go to protect. Which is why Sanders knew to park us here while we waited.”

  “Come on,” Jeremiah said, hurrying once more. “I don’t want to miss this for the world.”

  They had only taken two steps however before they almost collided with Sanders.

  “Finished your tea party?” he said. He gave no indication that he had heard anything they had been discussing, but Lin still felt like a schoolgirl who’d just been caught behind the tuck shop with the sixth form stud.

  “Sorry, boss,” she said, “we’re coming.”

  Sanders looked at them without expression, which was even worse than condemning them. “Jeremiah, circle this alley and come in from the other side. Lin, I have a special assignment for you.”

  Jeremiah hesitated, but departed to obey. Lin’s heart hammered as she was left with the DCI, but he did not berate her. Instead he told her precisely what he needed her to do, which, considering where they were, did not come as a shock. If there had been any doubt before, Lin now knew their suspicions had been correct; this was indeed Sanders’s patch, and this was indeed personal. Whatever was going on, there was no doubt it was the DCI this maniac had in his sights.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Detective Chief Inspector Edward Sanders was a dark, repressive man. Jeremiah had spent the past twelve years trying to unearth his terrible secrets and had nothing to show for his efforts. As he raced down the back alleys, Jeremiah’s heart was leaping, pushing him to even greater speed. This was the day, Jeremiah knew, where he would at last discover something of Sanders. Something he could use against him.

  Happy Christmas indeed.

  He rounded the corner to find no one in sight; then the wall exploded beside his head as someone took a pot-shot at him. Diving for cover, Jeremiah briefly entertained the thoughts that it was Sanders trying to kill him, but then he saw Welles holding ground behind some bins and bagged rubbish he was using as a barricade. Nothing that would stop bullets, but Jeremiah wasn’t packing.

  There was no sign of Sanders.

  Welles fired another shot and Jeremiah ducked once more, knowing he would have to end this quickly. Taking up a fist-sized rock from the ground, Jeremiah hurled it in Welles’s direction. His aim was good, although even Jeremiah would not have expected to take the guy out with one blow. The rock slammed into one of the bin bags with enough force to expel its contents in a sickly wave of fish bones and potato peelings. Welles dropped out of sight with his rifle and Jeremiah scrambled forwards, leaped through the air with an inhuman bound, and landed atop the hapless vigilante.

  That should have been the end. Welles should have been so shocked, so terrified, that Jeremiah should have been able to tear out the man’s throat before he even realised what was happening. Instead, Welles was ready for him and Jeremiah fell back, his hands flying to his face as agony burned through his skin.

  Pain was not a new experience for Jeremiah, and he knew that to remain in the vicinity of his foe would be to die, so he was half stumbling, half rolling away before he even registered what had happened. Falling back to a defensible wall, Jeremiah collapsed, rubbing his face with his sleeve and struggling to work through the fire coursing through his face.

  “Should have waited for backup,” Sanders said, beside him. Jeremiah had not even realised the older man was there. Jeremiah did not bother answering; they both knew Jeremiah had gone in quickly because he wanted to interrogate Welles alone.

  “He’s packing acid, Sanders.”

  “Holy water.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” The pain was already subsiding, for Jeremiah’s quick and unconscious reflexes had enabled him to avoid most of the splash.

  “Monsters always have a weakness,” Sanders told him.

  “I’d prefer to find Welles’s weakness.”

  “You’re missing my point. He came prepared.”

  Now his senses were returning, Jeremiah’s reason was coming back as well. Bullets and knives would be effective against anyone, but to truly catch Jeremiah off-guard acid was one of the best weapons Welles could have used. Sanders was right: somewhere along the line Welles had done his research on Jeremiah and had armed himself accordingly.

  “Sanders, what’s going on?”

  Getting a straight answer from the DCI, however, was like asking a great white shark to stop grinning.

  “Go left,” Sanders told him, readying his gun. “I need you to distract him while I put some bullets in him.”

  “We’re not going to question him?”

  “We’re going to kill him.”

  “Aren’t you in the least bit curious what he’s …”

  “Jeremiah, we’re going to kill him.”

  Jeremiah considered arguing, but once the DCI had made up his mind there was never any point in arguing. “Fine. Where’s Lin? We don’t want her wandering into this guy’s sights.”

  “Concerned for your fellow officers?”

  “Stop hating me for a minute and accept I’m your only ally here.”

  Sanders grunted, but his eyes showed acceptance. “I got her to clear the streets. A lot of girls out there, and any one of them might be a target for Welles.”

  “Concerned for criminals?”

  “They’re citizens we need to protect, now stop talking to me and get out there.”

  Pushing the DCI was always fun, but if Lin was clearing whores it meant there was indeed some strange reason Sanders was looking out for them all. Moving off to the left, as ordered, Jeremiah focused on their target and realised one important thing: if the DCI intended to kill Welles without any preamble at all, it meant he didn’t want to risk the felon revealing something, which meant Sanders knew precisely what was going on.

  Welles saw Jeremiah moving and opened fire. He had taken cover behind an overflowing grey metal skip and Jeremiah knew it would be difficult getting to him. There was a lot of cover in the alley, however, and Jeremiah dropped behind a worn stone staircase leading to the back entrance to one of the buildings. Stone chips exploded with every shot Welles fired, but for the moment Jeremiah was safe.

  Venturing a look across the alley, he could see Sanders was making his own way towards Welles, and the villain seemed entirely unaware the DCI was there. If Sanders managed to kill Welles before Jeremiah could talk to him, this entire venture would be wasted. What he needed to do was get Welles talking, right now.

  “I spoke with your sister,” Jeremiah shouted over. It was a lie, but Stockwell had spoken to her so that was good enough. “She’s says hi.”

  “Diana’s dead,” Welles shouted back, amidst another volley of gunfire. “The drugs killed her.”

  “So you’re killing drug dealers, I get that. But why here? I mean, if she died in Australia, why kill the dealers over here? Couldn’t you afford a plane ticket to go get the actual people responsible?”

  Further shots kept Jeremiah’s head down. He risked a peek to see the DCI was now worryingly close to a kill shot.

  “Diana didn’t die in Australia,” Welles shouted back. “She was killed here. She came back when her marriage broke up.
She had no money, had given everything into her new life. She came back home, broken and poor.”

  The man’s delusions were strange indeed, Jeremiah thought. Welles seemed to know full well his sister had gone to Australia, but why would he think she had returned?

  There was no more time to think about things, though, because Sanders was lining up his shot.

  “Welles,” Jeremiah shouted without thinking, “behind you!”

  Welles span, releasing a volley which sent the DCI stumbling into the darkness of an alleyway. Jeremiah seized the moment and leaped, hurling himself clear across the stairs, through the ten metres of alleyway and over the skip. He landed atop Welles with a snarl.

  Shock registered in Welles’s face that Jeremiah could have made the jump, or that he could move so quickly, but Jeremiah did not allow him the opportunity to react. The last time Jeremiah had taken this man for granted he received a knife through the leg. Tearing the rifle free of his grip, Jeremiah tossed the weapon aside and closed his left hand about the man’s throat, raising him into the air.

  “What’s going on?” Jeremiah hissed. “Who killed your sister?”

  “The programme,” Welles wheezed. “She was desperate. She joined a programme. Drugs testing.” He strained against Jeremiah’s grip, but it was futile. “It went wrong and she died.”

  “Drugs testing?” Jeremiah asked, some of this making sense at last. “So Diana was killed by experimental drugs? Fine, but why target us? Why bring us out in the open like this?”

  “She … I don’t …”

  Now they were so close, Jeremiah could see the man’s eyes were not sane. There was something in his system, something fuddling his brain and making him believe certain things. Whoever was behind all this had a real dislike of WetFish, which was worrying in itself considering no one was supposed to even know what WetFish did. But there was something curiously familiar about the way the man looked, something Jeremiah knew he should have been able to recognise.

  “Jeremiah.”

  That was Sanders’s voice, although Jeremiah did not turn. “I got him,” he told Sanders. “Now let’s see what he knows.”

  He heard a safety being removed behind him and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He purposefully did not turn.

  “Set him down and go,” Sanders told him levelly. “I’m only going to ask you once.”

  “I was wondering whether you were going to do this,” Jeremiah said, still facing Welles. “You want Welles, I want to know why.”

  “You’re never going to know why.”

  “Maybe Welles will tell me. How about it, Peter?”

  “Jeremiah, drop him. This is your last chance.”

  “I thought you were only giving me one chance, Sanders.” Jeremiah dropped Welles in a gasping heap, turning then to find Sanders holding the revolver upon him. Jeremiah’s mind worked frantically at how he could remove the weapon from the man’s hand before he could pull the trigger. Jeremiah was fast and strong and he could think of at least a dozen ways in which to do it; indeed Sanders did not stand a chance against him. But Sanders knew that, so why was he continuing to hold the gun upon him? Either lower it or shoot him, nothing the man was doing made any sense.

  “I want you and Lin to head back to the bunker,” Sanders told him calmly, although Jeremiah could see the nervousness to his eyes.

  “I’m sure you do. This is all about Australia. What’s in Australia?”

  “Australians.”

  But it was more than that. Jeremiah could see as much. Sanders had some connexion to Australia, but what was it? Jeremiah could not think that Sanders was connected to this case, could not believe that Welles could have known Sanders at all. But if that was true, what had all this been about? Why did Welles want Sanders involved here?

  “What’s all this about drugs testing?” Jeremiah asked, and Sanders’s face registered surprise.

  “Testing?” Sanders asked. “So it is her. She’s doing it again.”

  “Again? She?”

  And suddenly Welles gave a cry and Jeremiah span about to see the man sitting against the wall, his eyes wide and fearful, his neck snapped at an ugly angle. A pure white mist was drifting on the chill air currents, mingling with their frosty breaths. Jeremiah’s own eyes widened then as he caught the scent of that mist. He had sensed it before, had known it only a handful of months earlier.

  Dalton.

  Jeremiah now understood the glassy, controlled look in Welles’s eyes and why it had felt so familiar. It was the lost, mesmerised expression one would have when someone not quite human took control of their soul. Jeremiah had done it himself many times before, but Dalton had somehow mixed it with experimental drugs, and it had proved enough to confuse Jeremiah.

  He turned back to Sanders. There was a chance Sanders had not recognised the scent, that he thought Welles had died of a heart attack or something, but Jeremiah showed no sign that he himself understood. With the gun pointed upon him, it would have meant his death.

  An out-of-shape, hyperventilating Detective Lin charged onto the scene then. She surveyed the situation, noting the gun Sanders held, and just as she was about to ask why he was levelling it at Jeremiah did Sanders lower it. He could claim he was pointing it at Welles, behind Jeremiah, and Lin would be satisfied. Jeremiah could see the canny mind of Edward Sanders at work.

  “That’s how to close a case,” Sanders told them both. “Now let’s get out of here before the cops arrive.”

  It was an ironic thing to say, but as they hurried back to the car Jeremiah knew it was not the only thing DCI Sanders was hiding. Jeremiah had joined WetFish to uncover the dark secrets of this man, and finally, after twelve long years, he actually felt he was getting somewhere.

  As they left Welles’s body propped up against the wall it even began to snow.

  *

  Detective Lin did not go home to her parents for Christmas. Once they returned to the bunker Sanders had told them both to make themselves scarce and Jeremiah had asked her back to his for dinner. It was a spur of the moment offer, and one he did not himself entirely understand. He wanted nothing more than to be alone with his thoughts, to disseminate the day’s events and work out just what he had discovered. Instead he found himself actually having to entertain. There was little food in the house, there never was much of anything, and his maid had the day off, so Jeremiah was forced to make do and cook himself. That Jeremiah was a superb chef astounded even him, but then he saw cooking much the same as drug dealing. The most successful were those who did not partake of their own product.

  They did not have turkey, since Jeremiah did not have any in his larder, but instead he managed a roast wood pigeon, seasoned with herbs and black pepper, garnished with whatever vegetables he had lying around and swimming in a rich red wine sauce. Jeremiah feigned eating it himself, and Lin was none the wiser. It was an old trick he had mastered long ago.

  During the meal they spoke of light matters, avoiding the subject of work altogether, although it was as Jeremiah frantically considered what to make for dessert, and eventually settled on an apple crumble recipe he was saving for a special occasion, that Lin brought the matter up.

  “So what did today have to do with Australia then?” she asked.

  It was not the question Jeremiah had been expecting. He had thought she would at some point ask him what had happened while she was in the alley, or who had killed Welles, or why Sanders was holding a gun on him. Instead she had asked the one thing that really mattered, and his estimation of her went up another notch.

  The answer was elusive, since Jeremiah had met Josephine Dalton one time and she had not been using an Australian accent. But Dalton would not have used Australia as bait without it meaning something to Sanders, so whatever the answer it had to be something big. He wondered what Dalton’s intention was, though. Perhaps she was trying to rile Sanders, make him nervous maybe; or perhaps she had wanted Jeremiah to learn of her connexion to Sanders, to their joint c
onnexion with Australia. Why she could not have just dropped by the house and told him that herself he did not know. It was clear Dalton was targeting WetFish, and Sanders in particular; it was also clear that Stockwell had not spoken with Diana Welles. Indeed, Dalton had likely phoned Stockwell and messed around with his brain so much that he genuinely believed he had been the one to have made the call and that he was speaking with Diana.

  Now Jeremiah was armed with two pieces of knowledge he did not previously have. He had to investigate the Australia connexion, and he knew Sanders had a soft spot for the prostitutes who worked his personal little Nirvana. Both lines of inquiry would likely yield Jeremiah interesting results. Either could help him destroy Sanders at last.

  “No idea,” Jeremiah answered instead. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  Lin eyed him strangely, clearly not believing him for a moment. “You’re a good cook. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

  He shrugged. “Life’s all about achievable goals, Detective.”

  “You called me Sue last time I was here in your house.”

  “God, was that only this morning?”

  “Mmn.” She was looking at him curiously, her finger absently tracing about the rim of her wine glass. “You know, I never much liked you, Jeremiah. No one at the bunker knows what to make of you, but I think I always disliked you.”

  “Charming.”

  “You’ve changed my opinion. You’ve ... You’re a nice guy, Jeremiah. For a guy without a surname I mean.”

  “And you are wonderful company for a Christmas evening, Sue. I’ve actually quite enjoyed today.”

  “Yeah. Surprised me too. So, you know what I’ve always thought of you. What about me?”

  “What do I think of you?” Jeremiah asked, not knowing whether he had ever really thought anything of her. “I try to concentrate on my work, Sue. Colleagues are a distraction.”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  “I don’t mean that in a nasty way. I … I have a mission. I don’t like things getting in the way.”