“Shit,” said Tina.
“Precisely. Sunless faeces. Roughly a week old.”
Tina dollied in with the camcorder, capturing a close-up image of the long, black-red turd. “Just laying on the rail like that. Aren’t these vamps, like, housebroken?”
“It’s a signpost,” Redlaw said. “For the benefit of other vampires. I’d say this one was deposited by an adult male, judging by the calibre.”
“You can date it. You can tell whether it came from a man or a woman. You’re like a Navajo tracker, only with vampire poop.”
“If I’m not mistaken, there’ll be more nearby. A couple of dozen yards further along... Ah yes.”
The flashlight’s ring of brightness targeted another clump of faecal matter, a much smaller one.
“It’s known as a secondary marker,” Redlaw said. “It points the way.”
“Ugh,” said Tina, although she sounded as much fascinated as revolted. “So the biggie says ‘here we are’ and the little one says ‘keep going’.”
“That’s more or less it.”
“This is good shit. That’s not a joke. I mean as in good material.”
Redlaw ventured on, Tina following with the camcorder held up before her face, her features ghostly in the moonglow of the screen.
A soft scuffling sound ahead brought Redlaw to an immediate standstill. He whipped his Cindermaker out.
“Whoa,” said Tina. “What’s up?”
“Could be nothing.”
“Mighty big piece of artillery you’ve got yourself there, if it’s nothing.”
“Just a precaution.” Redlaw trained the flashlight along the tunnel, pointing the barrel of the Cindermaker alongside. The beam extended fifty yards before beginning to lose brilliance and definition. Streaks of moisture glistened on one wall, where a water main or a sewer above was leaking through. Some kind of moss or fungus flourished in a semicircle beneath, forming a thick spongy mat that covered half the tunnel floor.
“This is so fucking creepy,” Tina whispered, just loud enough for the camcorder’s mike to pick up. “We’re about one mile underground, I’d guess, and we’re on the trail of vampires. That man there is John Redlaw, who used to be with London SHADE, a.k.a. the Night Brigade. Nobody even knows we’re down here, so if anything goes wrong, we’re—”
“Shh!” Redlaw hissed.
“I’m narrating.”
“Well, don’t.”
“But you’ve got to narrate,” she protested. “It adds to the general atmosphere.”
“No, all it does is annoy me and make it hard to listen out.”
“So I should shut up.”
“Ideally you should be somewhere else entirely, but since we can’t have that, shutting up would be great.”
“Okay,” Tina pouted. “I’ll tack on a voiceover later, then. Won’t be the same, but what the hell.”
Redlaw advanced slowly. All at once, a rat popped up from behind one of the rails. It blinked in the light, whiskers fibrillating madly. Another rat appeared behind it and started grooming the first’s fur, nibbling with its incisors and combing with its claws.
“Hmm,” Redlaw said. “That’s pretty telling.”
“Aw, Mr and Mrs Rat are in lurve.”
“They’re comfortable. They’re not scared. Which implies that there aren’t any predators around. Any ’Lesses that were here, they’re gone, so the rats feel it’s safe to be out in the open.”
“You are just a mine of useful vampire information, Mr Redlaw.”
“Come on.”
Not much further on, their destination came into view—a huddle of very basic living accommodations. There were sticks of furniture, little cubicles divided from one another by blankets or sheets of plywood, loose newspaper pages lying everywhere, and a few rudimentary creature comforts such as books, board games, kerosene lanterns and rusty camping stoves. Everything was tattered and broken, riddled with holes, overturned, strewn. Clearly there had been some semblance of order once, and then something like a hurricane had come tearing through.
Redlaw bent into a crouch. “Look,” he said, indicating the ground directly in front of him. “What do you see?”
Tina adjusted focus with the camcorder, zeroing in on what he was pointing at: a glinting expanse of small round objects littering the track, like an army of dead metal cockroaches.
“Those are bullet casings, right?” she said.
Redlaw picked one up and examined it closely. “Fraxinus. Nine millimetre. See?” He showed her the “FRAX-9” stamped on the cartridge case head around the primer. “But also...” He sniffed the small copper cylinder and held it out to her. “Yes. Not just cordite. There’s a distinct smell to a spent Fraxinus round. Burnt wood, like a bonfire or a hearth.” He straightened up. “And that there...” He gestured at the wreckage. “That’s been shot to pieces. This is where your homeless man’s ‘foreigners’ were living, until someone came along and raked the place with gunfire and wiped them out.”
He strode five paces and bent again. He dabbed his forefinger into what appeared to be a thick scattering of dust, then held it up.
“Ash,” he said of the gritty grey coating on his fingertip.
“You mean to say that’s...”
“Vampire remains.”
“So gross.”
He pinpointed several other mounds of dust with the flashlight beam. “Must have been around twenty of them. A mid-size nest. The question is, who did it? Who dusted them? Who’s responsible?”
“Those soldiers.”
“Seems logical. You obviously caught them on their way out, after they’d completed the task. Overall, I’d say you were pretty lucky, Tina. Had they spotted you, I imagine at the very least they would have confiscated your camera, but at worst...”
He saw her shudder. Good. He wanted her to be frightened. It would stop her treating everything like a game.
“Jesus,” she breathed. “I mean, not Jesus. Buddha, Allah, L. Ron Hubbard, someone else. You really think...?”
“I think we’re talking about some well-organised and well-equipped people, ruthless, with a very specific agenda. I’ve no idea who they are, but I do know that they’re easily a match for the quarry they’re hunting. There’s no indication that any one of them was hurt during their attack. No blood at the scene, no scraps of torn clothing, no suggestion that the vampires gave as good as they got and went down fighting. Your footage backs that up. Nobody in it looked like they were limping or injured in any way. It was a massacre. A one-sided, cold-blooded massacre of vampires. And I don’t mind admitting I’m really quite unnerved. Even a squad of seven SHADE officers couldn’t have pulled off something like this, not without taking casualties.”
“So what’s the plan?” Tina asked. “What do we do now?”
Redlaw deliberated. She was using him as documentary subject matter. He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do to change it now. He might as well get something in exchange and use her.
“Film,” he told her. “Film everything. Gather evidence. Make sure it’s all recorded for posterity. If anyone wants proof of what’s going on, we can supply it, proof aplenty. Get it all into your camera, Tina Checkley.”
Tina didn’t need any further prompting. She fired up the built-in light on her camera and set to work.
CHAPTER
TEN
“TEA,” SAID REDLAW, gazing morosely at the murky brown liquid in the mug in front of him. “You’d think, this being the world’s last remaining superpower, the cradle of liberal democracy and free-market economy, and all that, that Americans would have the nous to be able to brew tea properly.”
Tina held up a finger. “One. We’re in a diner in Hell’s Kitchen. I think you’re raising your hopes a little high.”
“They certainly got the name of the place right,” Redlaw muttered.
“Two.” A second finger rose to join the first. “We chucked crates of tea into Boston harbour to show how much we hated yo
ur British asses. You think we’re going to make an effort with the stuff now?”
“You’re saying this abomination I’m drinking is a calculated insult?”
“Call it a historical tradition. A protest. Don’t take it personally.”
“Well, it’s just not my cup of tea.” Redlaw shunted the mug aside and scooped up a mouthful of scrambled eggs instead.
The diner was steamy hot, its windows fogged with condensation. Lunchtime patrons filled every booth, some hunched over tabloid newspapers, others over laptops, many consulting their phones. The waitress barked at the short order chef, she enormous and Jamaican, he tiny and Vietnamese. His response every time was to curse her in his native tongue, to which she simply rolled her eyes and gave a talk-to-the-hand gesture. They wore matching wedding bands.
A wall-mounted TV set added to the general hubbub. The news was on, and yet again the weather was the lead story. “Forecasters predict no end in sight, as the Big Freeze enters its nineteenth day,” intoned an immaculately coiffed anchorman. “Last night’s fresh snowfalls will be followed by blizzard conditions this evening, lasting well into tomorrow morning. Already it’s being called the worst winter in living memory, and the battered economy is taking a further pounding as industry and commerce all along the East Coast grinds to a halt, with workers struggling to make their daily commutes.”
“Missing home, then?” Tina said to Redlaw.
“Somewhat. Certain aspects of it.”
“So why’d you leave, again?”
“It’s personal.”
“Yeah, only, the thing is, I’ve just remembered something about you. Vaguely. Am I right in thinking you got yourself into a spot of bother back in the UK?”
“This isn’t bacon, either,” Redlaw said, intent on trying to spear some with his fork. The rasher shattered into a dozen pieces. “Bacon’s meat, not this brittle nonsense.”
“Wasn’t there some kind of scandal? I’m pretty sure there was. You were in the headlines.”
“And a jug of syrup on the side? With the main course?”
“Avoid the subject all you like. I’ve got my BlackBerry. I can do a search and have the full story at my fingertips within seconds. Whyn’t you save me the effort and just tell me yourself? Give me your side.”
Redlaw put down his fork with a heavy sigh. “It’s simple enough. I uncovered a plot to eliminate Sunless. It was a Final Solution affair, concentration camps by any other name. I blew the whole conspiracy wide open. Stopped some very bad people doing a very bad thing.”
“For which you were hailed as a national hero,” said Tina.
“For which I was vilified, accused of murder, and obliged to go on the run.”
“Well, I wasn’t so far off. Have you considered there might be some way of clearing your name?”
“So you believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You hardly know me. All you’ve heard is my account of things, and you take it at face value. Don’t journalists need to double-check their facts?”
“From what I’ve seen so far, you’re a straight kind of guy. I may not be a professional journalist—yet—but I’ve got the instincts. Some people are fakers. Some are lying fucks. Some people you shouldn’t trust any further than you can throw them. You’re not any of those. You act like you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. And whistleblowers always, always get screwed over. It’s like...” Her shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t know, a law of nature. The bastards are in charge. Anyone who crosses them or challenges them comes off worst. Sucks, but that’s the way it is.”
“Doesn’t mean one should stop trying,” said Redlaw. “Jesus defied the authorities all his life. He stood up to the money lenders, the Pharisees, the Romans...”
“Yeah, and look how he ended up. You want to martyr the fuck out of yourself, go right ahead. That’s your prerogative. But this thing we’re doing, this investigation or whatever it is, don’t you see that ultimately it could be your way out, your ticket back to respectability? I’m providing you with a platform here, a public forum where you can defend yourself and show that you’re fighting the good fight. It’s a chance to state your case, somewhere where nobody can mess with you or shout you down. A chance to put John Redlaw’s point of fucking view.”
“You swear an awful lot.”
“Point of fudging view.” Tina gripped his hand on the tabletop. “Redlaw, I’m willing to be your Woodward and Bernstein, all in one charming half-Italian, half-Baptist package. Together, we can stick it to the twenty-first-century Nixons. We can... Redlaw? Are you even listening?”
But Redlaw’s attention had shifted abruptly to the TV, where a report was being filed live from a Brooklyn dockyard. A reporter with chapped pink cheeks stood in front of a stack of shipping containers, the topmost of which appeared to have been broken into from above.
“...still baffling NYPD,” she was saying. A caption identified her as Molly Chan, Home Affairs Correspondent, and stated that she was broadcasting from the East River docks, Brooklyn. “The container has been extensively vandalised and there are reports, as yet unconfirmed, of large quantities of shell casings and spent bullets being found inside.”
“Turn up the volume, please,” Redlaw asked the waitress.
She either failed to hear or chose to ignore the request.
“Yo!” Tina bellowed across the diner. “Lady! Man wants to listen to this. Turn it up.”
The waitress sucked her teeth, but complied.
“Most puzzling of all,” Molly Chan said, “is how the culprits were able to open the roof of the container. They clearly used cutting equipment and possibly crowbars, but we’re talking half-inch steel. To bend that, you’d need to apply more pressure than an ordinary person is capable of. One theory is that a ‘jaws of life’, the device firefighters use to cut accident victims out of wrecked vehicles, was involved. However, that doesn’t account for the strange ‘curl of butter’ effect that you can see behind me.”
The cameraman zoomed in over her shoulder to the container. On it stood a pair of police officers who were gazing down at the peeled-back roof. They looked appropriately mystified.
The anchorman in the studio asked, “Molly, what can you tell us about the possibility of an alleged vampire connection with all this?”
“Dale, that’s one of the many rumours that are swirling around right now, but detectives investigating remain tight-lipped on the subject. The container came from Poland and supposedly was being used to transport furniture destined for a well-known chain of department stores. However, since its point of origin is eastern Europe, some kind of vampire element to the crime cannot be completely ruled out.”
“Thanks, Molly. We’ll give you more on this breaking story as we get it. Now, over to Kevin Weingarten with the latest from the stock exchange. Kevin?”
“It’s them,” said Redlaw firmly. “I know it is.”
“You think?”
“Same modus operandi. A military-style infiltration. A hail of bullets. I bet you anything those are Fraxinus rounds in that container. I bet you anything there are piles of ash in it, too, like in the subway. The police just aren’t telling us that yet.”
“But the report was mostly supposition,” said Tina. “That skinny little bitch with the bad nose job was inferring and sensationalising. She didn’t know.”
“Shipping containers are ideal for Sunless who want to travel overseas. Sealed so no light gets in. Like giant steel coffins. The things get ferried around from A to B to C and nobody ever looks inside, not until they reach their final destination. The number of ’Lesses who’ve been sneaked into Britain that way—it beggars belief. We didn’t have enough manpower in SHADE to put a stop to it, and we found it hard to persuade customs officials to do more than just glance at the container manifests and wave them through.”
“Not exactly club class, is it, though?”
“Usually there’s no alternative. Sometimes the vampires can manage unaided, sl
ipping into a container when no one’s looking, but more often organised crime’s involved. Gangs can make a bundle out of smuggling them across borders. The ’Lesses scrimp, save, steal, use cards from the wallets of their victims, until they’ve got the money together to pay for their passage. It invariably costs a small fortune. But worth it, to be transported to a new land where there’s room to roam and no vampire overpopulation problem.” Redlaw quickly finished up his meal. “I want to visit that dockyard. Brooklyn, it said. Can you get us there?”
FINDING THE RELEVANT dockyard was easy. It was where police cars and outside broadcast vans were parked in droves. Getting beyond the crime scene tape, however, proved impossible. Back in London, in the good old days, Redlaw could have waltzed past with just a flash of his SHADE badge. But this wasn’t London, and the days were neither good nor old. The cop stationed at the gate was turning away everyone who didn’t have a legitimate excuse to come through. He was also flatly refusing to answer queries. “No comment” was all he would say. To anyone. About anything.
Redlaw had to be content with joining the throng of gawkers and rubberneckers on the wrong side of the perimeter fence. There was little to be seen but the damaged container in the far distance and, nearer by, a couple of CSU officers in pale blue coveralls conferring together and several of New York’s finest standing around drinking coffee from cardboard cups and looking robustly officious.
“This is a waste of time,” Tina said. “We could stand here all day freezing our tits off. No way are we going to see anything interesting.”
“I disagree. This is all very revealing.”
“How so?”
“Look. Police crawling all over the place. No effort’s been made to disguise what happened here. There’s been no attempt at a cover-up. The attack was incredibly bold. Brazen, even. Out in the open where everyone can see.”
“Meaning whoever’s responsible has clout.”
“Or cast-iron self-confidence. Also, they’re starting to swagger. Which makes them even more dangerous. They’ve made a big splash, so now they may well be tempted to make an even bigger and splashier one. There’s somebody I need to warn about this.”
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