“Oh, I’m not criticising. Definitely not. That would be hypocritical. The difference between us is that I don’t pretend to be anything other than what I am. You do. You make a big thing out of being a family man, a faithful husband, the perfect father. And I’m sure you are. But with that comes certain expectations, most of which involve staying away from places where they handcuff you to steel frames and twist leather thongs tightly around your privates. It’s a question of degrees of honesty. I make no bones about my bad habits, and that’s why I get away with it. If you’d tried the same approach, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Mind you, with your proclivities you probably wouldn’t be an MP in the first place, but that’s another story.”
“It’s not fair,” Wax lamented. “It’s just not fair.”
“No, it’s not, Maurice, old chap. But it is politics, and that’s the donkey we’re all riding. So, to recap. This is how it’s going to go. You think Lambourne has come up with an ingenious method for handling the Sunless, putting them out of harm’s way. You’ll recommend to the Prime Minister that Lambourne is given full government backing to pursue his project and bring it to fruition. In a couple of days’ time, you’ll announce the scheme to the world at a press conference, with its architect standing right beside you. You’ll spin it so that it looks like an act of extreme benevolence, which shouldn’t be difficult, since it does. It is. And that, my friend, will ensure that this memory stick does not stray from my safekeeping. It’s not much to ask, is it, in exchange for your life and career staying on track? You might even, if you do this right, emerge as a national hero.”
Wax sighed, heavily, bleakly.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” said Slocock.
Popping the memory stick back into the envelope, he exited the Cabinet minister’s office.
Job done. Lambourne would be happy.
In fact, the memory stick was blank. The information about what Wax got up to at Mistress Sterne’s Parlour of Correction had been contained on a two-page printout enclosed in the envelope, the text drawn from private testimony provided by Mistress Sterne herself. She did not video her clients, unless they requested it specifically so that they might have a keepsake of the occasion, but she was prepared to furnish details of their preferences and peccadilloes to anyone who wanted to know, as long as the price was right (six figures would usually cover it).
The stick had been a prop, a conjuror’s wand, nothing more. The rest was embellishment and misdirection.
Wax had been successfully blagged, and Slocock had every reason to feel pleased with himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Redlaw rose early—three in the afternoon. He opened the curtains and raised the blackout blinds, screwing up his eyes against the slanting spring sunshine. With age, his vision seemed to be getting more sensitive to bright light. Or maybe it was the job, the owl hours, perpetual estrangement from the sun.
He took the Tube to HQ and spent an hour at his desk, researching. It was drudge work—chasing up facts, filling in background detail, checking, cross-referencing. He’d not done the like since his time as a policeman, an eternity ago. For a shady, results were more or less immediate. You didn’t have to painstakingly build a case against a Sunless. You didn’t have to satisfy the criteria for a warrant. There wasn’t much, where vampires were concerned, that couldn’t be resolved on the spot with a stake or a Fraxinus round.
His efforts proved fruitful. By the end of the hour he had established a framework of knowledge which, if flimsy, nevertheless supported his suspicions. Armed with this, he took a patrol car from the pool and drove out to Park Royal where, in a huge warehouse on an industrial estate, could be found BovPlas Logistics’ London distribution depot.
The site supervisor was a man named Nigel Hutchings. He was politely obstructive at first, but a bit of arm-twisting by Redlaw soon had him being politely compliant instead.
“This,” Hutchings said, giving Redlaw a tour of the premises, “is where we load the trucks with their consignments of CG.”
“CG?”
“Short for crimson gold. It’s our euphemism. We’re not squeamish about the blood itself, so much as its end use. Calling it CG helps. That way it sounds like an inorganic chemical or some such.”
Forklifts fetched pallets of blood pouches from room-sized refrigerators and slid them into the backs of waiting trucks. The place was frenetic and loud: workers shouting, diesel engines idling, vehicles moving about with intricate mechanical choreography.
“You’ve caught us at our most manic.” Hutchings kept tugging at one corner of a bushy moustache. Redlaw noted the nervous tic. Here was someone who did not thrive on stress. “During this and the next hour, until the trucks head out, we’re like chefs at a restaurant, rushing about trying to get the dishes ready on time.”
“Not that much of a stretch as metaphors go,” Redlaw observed.
“I suppose not.”
“And where does the blood—excuse me, the CG—come from?”
“Cows.”
Obtuse little beggar. “I’m aware of that. What I mean is, where’s it stored prior to coming here?”
“The hub facility up near Watford. The CG is shipped there from slaughterhouses all over the country, pouched up and parcelled back out to depots in thirty-seven locations. We, of course, are the largest of those.” Said with pride. “London’s where the ’Lesses want to be, isn’t it? Some emigrate to the northern cities, some even to the countryside, but London’s like a magnet to them, a Mecca. Why is that, I wonder?”
“Do I look like an expert?”
The BovPlas supervisor gave an impertinent frown. “If not you, then who?”
“I round Sunless up and corral them and make sure they stay corralled,” Redlaw said. “Doesn’t mean I have any special insight into their psychology. But if I had to guess, I’d say cities are like planets. The larger they are, the greater their pull. Why does anybody come to London? Because there’s so much of it. It’s inescapable. And the numbers of Sunless in the capital keep going up because so many are there already. They cluster, like with like. It reassures them. That answer your question?”
“Adequately.”
“So here’s one in return. Were you, Mr Hutchings, aware that of the bloodlust riots that have occurred since the New Year, not one has taken place in an SRA that hasn’t had its supplies from BovPlas? Not a single one.”
Hutchings was taken aback, but only momentarily. “Well, that’s not what you’d call surprising, is it, Captain Redlaw? Name me an SRA that isn’t supplied by BovPlas.”
“I can name you several. The one in the Gorbals, Glasgow, for instance. The one in Cardiff’s Billy Banks. BovPlas’s network of distribution covers most of England, does it not?”
“All apart from the West Country and the remoter parts of Northumbria and the Lake District. Small independent firms have the contracts there, catering to tiny communities of Sunless, some of them no more than five or six strong. It isn’t economical for us to supply on that sort of scale.”
“And there are no records of riots in those regions or, indeed, anywhere outside England. In other words, anywhere not served by BovPlas. You have to admit, that’s something of a coincidence, isn’t it? At the very least.”
“On the contrary. We furnish every SRA in this land, one or two excepted, with product. What about the ones covered by our distribution network where there’ve been no riots? What about those, eh? You’re misusing the data, if I may say so, Captain Redlaw. If there’s some sort of link between our CG and these disturbances, as you seem to be implying, surely it would be universal? The fact is, BovPlas works hard to help keep Sunless pacified. The CG is there to disincentivise them from aggressive and potentially lethal behaviour. It’s not logical for us to give them something that would aggravate them. I’d say, in fact, that that would be the very definition of counterproductive. Bad for business.”
Hutchings was pulling on his moustache quite agitate
dly now, like a milkmaid pumping an udder.
“Two of my drivers have died,” he went on. “I sent them out there. I signed their order manifests, and therefore their death warrants. I have that on my conscience. And you have the nerve to come here and suggest that I was in some way responsible?”
“Not you. BovPlas. The blood.”
“Ridiculous! What’s worse, this whole affair has got my workforce all riled up and militant. I’ve had drivers phoning in sick. I’ve had ’em demanding pay rises—danger money—and threatening to go on strike if they don’t get them. Insurance premiums are through the roof. I’m trying my damnedest to keep things on an even keel, but it’s not easy. And now I’ve got the Night Brigade accusing me of—”
Just then one of the forklifts collided head-on with a loading dock at speed. Its burden of blood pouches was knocked off onto the floor, slithering in all directions. Many of them popped on impact, and a smooth slick of blood started spreading around the forklift’s tyres.
“For the love of—!” Hutchings exclaimed. “Look at that. Just look. This is what I’m having to contend with, Captain Redlaw. Everyone’s got the jitters. Now we’re going to have to shut operations down for who knows how long while the biohazard team get in there and mop up. Oh joy. I need to oversee this, so you’ll just have to make your own way out. Sorry if I haven’t been helpful. No, I take that back. I have been helpful. Your accusations against BovPlas are completely unfounded. Bordering on slanderous.”
He bustled away, gesticulating angrily at the forklift operator with one hand and yanking frantically at his moustache with the other.
Lucky, Hutchings, thought Redlaw. Saved by the spill.
As he headed out to his car, Redlaw couldn’t help feeling that the BovPlas supervisor had been straight with him. Corporate stooge though he was, Hutchings had seemed justifiably indignant. His outrage over Redlaw’s line of questioning had been genuine. His counterarguments had been plausible.
Perhaps Redlaw was barking up the wrong tree.
On his way back into central London, he stopped off at St Erasmus’s in Ladbroke Grove. It wasn’t his usual place of worship, by any means. That honour went to the unimposing, modestly appointed Anglican church two streets away from his flat in Ealing, where he attended evensong most Sundays. St Erasmus’s was a much larger and more grandiose affair, complete with a neo-Gothic spire that towered above the Westway flyover and a belfry whose bells were so loud their peal easily held its own against the thunder of daytime traffic.
The parish priest, Father Graham Dixon, had done a stint as visiting pastor at SHADE HQ, ministering to the spiritual needs of officers alongside a Catholic bishop, a rabbi, an imam, a lama and representatives of other religions, including a Wiccan druidess and a Class XII Scientology auditor. In that time Father Dixon and Redlaw had developed a friendship which was pretty much confined to meetings for auricular confession, but was no less cordial for that.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” said Redlaw as he knelt at the communion rail, facing the sanctuary.
“No, you haven’t, John,” Father Dixon replied from the other side of the rail. “Don’t talk rot. If you’ve sinned, then it’s truly a sign of the End Times and I should be looking out the window for my first glimpse of the Four Horsemen. What’s troubling you? Care to share?”
For a time Redlaw said nothing, his gaze on the reredos behind the altar. It was a triptych, depicting Christ’s journey through suffering from Earth to Heaven, from Gethsemane via Calvary to the Ascension. Candlelight flickered on the carved, plainly coloured reliefs, lending them a strange liquid animation.
“Is it the job?” Father Dixon prompted. “What am I saying? Of course it’s the job. What else could it be? Captain John Redlaw has nothing else in his life.”
“And does Father Graham Dixon have anything else in his life beyond the Church?”
“Touché. Well, I have my allotment, actually. Those vegetables mean the world to me. But when you get down to it, yes, basically I’m a trad, boring-old-fart vicar who serves his congregation and visits the sick and elderly and tries to get by on an astonishingly meagre stipend. Nothing exciting about me. Not like the two-fisted, all-staking, all-dusting shady Redlaw. Surely he feels fulfilled in his work. Saving us from the Sunless scourge? Now that’s a glamorous existence. Men want to be him, women want to be with him...”
“Stop,” Redlaw said. “Please. Not in the mood.”
Father Dixon let the genial smile ease from his somewhat pudgy features. A frown appeared in its place. “That bad, eh? Come on, fill us in. Me and the Man Upstairs. We’re listening.”
“I know you are, Father. But...”
“Oh. Ah.” Father Dixon nodded. “I see. Is He? Is God paying attention?” He leaned forwards, dropping his voice but not the concern in his expression. “How long have you been feeling this way, John? Is it a recent thing or has it been brewing a while now?”
“How long since I last saw you?”
“I don’t know. Months.”
“Months, then. Maybe longer.”
“You seemed okay last time, as I recall. Bit dour, bit down in the mouth, but that’s default setting for you. You didn’t appear to be having any problems. No existential crises I was aware of. Routine confession followed by a chat and a cuppa in the vestry.”
“I just...”
“Go on. Honestly, He is here. Even if it doesn’t feel that way, He is.”
The church yawned around the two men, chilly and cavernous and full of whispering echoes.
“I’m not sure,” Redlaw began.
“About?”
“Anything, anymore. There was a time when I had no doubts. None. Everything was straightforward. Cut and dried. God wanted me to work for Him. That was the alpha and omega of my life. In my early twenties I seriously considered taking holy orders.”
“I know. You had a narrow escape there.”
“Became a copper instead. More practical. A better way of helping people. Tangible results.”
“Are you implying I’ve wasted my life?” said Father Dixon with a chuckle.
“No. I simply don’t have the knack for guiding others, the way you do. I lack empathy. I think with my head, sometimes with my hands, seldom with my heart. Served me well enough on the force. Model plod, I was, if not outstanding. A reasonable arrest record, a few solid prosecutions, no black marks, not one public complaint lodged against me. Then, after I’d been pounding the beat a few years, the Sunless began appearing. The population explosion in Eastern Europe. The diaspora. The mysterious deaths and then the first confirmed sightings. They came out of the murk of legend, into the light of reality. In no time, SHADE had been set up and I was one of the first to sign on the dotted line, one of the initial pioneers. I joined because I knew this was what I was meant to do. Sunless were self-evidently evil, unholy, an aberration, an abomination in the sight of God. People of faith were needed to combat them, people who also had some professional experience of the grimier side of life. I fit the bill perfectly.”
“No argument here.”
“The Lord had shaped me for this, I understood. He’d been nudging me in this direction all along. There wasn’t a moment of blinding-light epiphany, just the cool, calm realisation that my destiny had arrived. I was a machine. I worked tirelessly from dusk ’til dawn. We unearthed ’Less nests all over the city. We captured when we could, dusted when we couldn’t. I never hesitated, never questioned. I was righteous beyond righteousness.”
Father Dixon knew all of this already, but it didn’t even occur to him to interrupt and say so. Redlaw needed to vent. Let the man vent.
“I fought the good fight with all my might,” Redlaw said. “I worked with teams, or with partners, but I never gelled with anyone, and that never really mattered to me. I was happiest and best on my own. Then Sergeant Leary came along.”
“Róisín. Ah, yes. We all loved Róisín, John. She was—to use my choristers’ favourite adjective—aweso
me.”
“Love wasn’t it, Father. I don’t think I even know what love means.”
“Love is what God feels for you, John, constantly. When you’re least certain of it, that’s when it’s at its strongest.”
“Perhaps. What I had with Leary, it was pure compatibility. We knew what each other was thinking. Out in the field, we barely had to speak. We were the right hand and left hand of the same body. She had my back, I had hers. We could be up against hordes of ’Lesses, just the two of us, isolated, alone, in deadly danger, and I never for one second was worried because Leary was with me. Between us, together, I knew we’d be fine.”
“And then she died.”
“And then she died.”
“And you weren’t there.”
“I wasn’t there. Laid low with a case of shingles, of all things. Never had a night off sick before then. Leary was by herself, chasing up a lead—a sighting of a rogue ’Less up in Walthamstow. Turned out the intel was bad; and it wasn’t a single vampire but a whole nest of them, occupying the crypt of a deconsecrated church, of all places. She didn’t stand a prayer. Or at least, she would have stood a prayer if I’d been with her, or someone had been with her. But Leary was as headstrong in her way as I am. I was the only other shady, apart from Commodore Macarthur, she really respected. Certainly the only one she’d work with in the field. So she went it alone that night and the ’Lesses got the jump on her and...”
Redlaw’s throat felt tight. He had to force the words out.
“According to the scene-of-incident report, Leary used up two full clips of ammo on them, plus all her stakes. There must have been just too many, though. Dr Wing, in her autopsy, counted at least thirty separate bite marks on the body, from different sets of fangs. Child-sized fangs, what’s more. I reckon that’d be why Leary got caught out. They were child vampires. Compassion got the better of her. That was her one weakness: compassion.”
Father Dixon cocked his head. “Compassion is a weakness?”
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