Flint studied the page and tried to hand it back dismissively, but it stuck to his fingers. ‘My son had a warped imagination, that’s all.’ He pulled at the page and managed to stick it to the desk.
‘He wanted to shame you into doing something about it.’
The consul’s face did not move a muscle.
‘His reinvention as an artist was more than just an embarrassment, though, wasn’t it? Perhaps I can focus your attention on the strings of numbers at the top and bottom of the picture. Those are bank deposit account codes, aren’t they? Actually, I don’t know why I’m asking you because we’ve already checked them out. Jericho Flint wasn’t just painting retro circus posters on walls, he was humiliating the rich and powerful by airing their secrets in public. And in your case, he was exposing the accounts you kept hidden. You sent Samuel Fellowes to threaten him into silence.’
‘I asked Sam to have a word with him, that’s all,’ said Flint. ‘He was embarrassing himself.’
‘So you weren’t embarrassed by the series of posters he painted depicting you as an object of ridicule?’
Flint remained silent.
‘Arthur, where are you going with this?’ asked May quietly.
‘You’re not an art lover, I take it,’ Bryant asked the consul. ‘The name Rose Clavi means nothing to you.’
Flint got to his feet. ‘This is going nowhere, and I have important business to attend to. File your report, and we’ll take the action we deem appropriate.’
‘Jack, stand by the door and make sure he doesn’t get out,’ said Bryant.
‘You have no right—’ Flint began.
‘Probably not, but you will do us the courtesy of hearing what the Unit is going to put in its report. Please sit down.’
Flint stayed where he was.
‘Your son told everyone he had reinvented himself as an artist, and the artist was a woman. Rose Clavi. Here was the consul’s son, painting scurrilous portraits, dressing as a female and refusing to accept what you saw as his adult responsibilities. His van was filled with colour plates torn from old art books. Marcel Duchamp had an alter-ego. Rose Sélavy—a terrible pun: Rose C’est La Vie. He taunted you, pushed you and pushed you again. Finally you sent in your enforcer, Sam Fellowes. He went to find Jericho at the Wilberforce cocktail bar, and found himself in the company of a young woman. I wonder how long it took him to realize it was Jericho. I imagine that as soon as he twigged, a little bit of unconscious sexism kicked in and he thought his job would be a lot easier. There was a party going on in the bar, so he forced Jericho through the back door into the basement.’
‘If you think I’m going to stand here while you accuse me—’
‘You can sit if you want,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. You sent Mr Fellowes to talk some sense into your son, and get back any incriminating data he had on you. You didn’t know that the river was going to play its part.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Bryant pointed down at the floor. ‘The River Fleet, Mr Flint. It’s little more than an underground stream now, but it passes through the basement beneath us. And it makes the stonework slippery. Our workmen noticed footmarks in the slime. There was a scuffle and your man slipped over, cracking his head on the ice box. Your son thought fast. He put the documents he was carrying into Fellowes’s jacket and rolled him into the box, covering him with a cloth that was left in one of the café’s catering packs. Ice keeps things fresh. He bought himself some time. Then he left. As soon as you saw the body, you knew exactly what had happened. Your son wasn’t capable of physically hurting anyone. You thought you’d use us to find him, knowing he couldn’t reveal himself because you had declared him dead. So what you could do, Mr Flint, is leave your son alone now, and let him be free.’
‘You don’t know that’s what happened,’ said Flint. ‘You’re guessing,’
‘I’m guessing, but I’m right,’ Bryant replied.
The consul studied each of them with distaste, an explorer stumbling across an alien species. ‘You Brits,’ he said finally. ‘You’re nothing in the world anymore, just warm beer and wet weather.’
* * *
—
Bryant and May went to the Scottish Stores for two pints of Old Sheepshagger. ‘He’s right, you know,’ said Bryant, setting their beers down on a copper-topped table. ‘I’m glad we no longer have an empire. It’s better to live in a country that doesn’t want to be a world power. Get this down you before the others arrive. Raymondo can break open the petty cash.’
Meera put her head around the door. ‘You going to finish your round, sir?’
Bryant tutted. ‘You’d rob an old man out of his pension.’
‘You haven’t got a pension. Wait, that’s Abi, the sound engineer.’ She darted between the tables and seized Abi by the sleeve of her jacket. ‘You told me you saw Jericho and Rose together. You knew they were one and the same person.’
Abi smiled. ‘Jerry’s a mate of mine.’
‘So you know where he is.’
Abi collected her drink from the bar. ‘Of course I do, but I’m not about to tell you.’
‘Let her go,’ said John May. ‘We can’t prove anything. The case is closed.’
‘Not for the family of Samuel Fellowes,’ said Bryant, sipping his beer. ‘We’ll never know whether he provoked an attack. It’s better the consul’s son remains hidden for now. Cheers.’
Bryant & May Meet Dracula
Charlie Kemp knew the country wasn’t getting many tourist visits at this time of the year because everyone else in the arrivals hall was standing on the ‘Nationals’ side of the passport line, coming home after working in England. He had headed in the opposite direction, returning to Romania because of Dracula.
There were people who would tell you that Charlie was one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts on popular Victorian novels. Charlie knew that you had to be an expert before you could become a great forger.
Alexandra Constantin was also an expert, but she was on the level. Charlie had followed her here to Romania once before, but this time the arrangement was purely business. She had agreed to provide him with access to a very special library, and in return—well, he wasn’t sure what she expected to get back. To be honest, he hadn’t expected her to agree to anything. The last time he’d seen her she had threatened to call the police on him. But Charlie knew how to turn on the charm, and he was in deep enough debt to take a chance. So he had come here to steal the undead count away from his homeland.
In the world of Victorian pulp fiction, the vampire’s popularity was second only to that of Sherlock Holmes, but it hadn’t always been the case. Stoker had died broke. Although Dracula was enthrallingly lurid, it was also epistolary and fragmented in form, and had been published to decidedly mixed reviews. Everyone remembered the films and nobody thought much about the book, which suited Charlie just fine. He was seeking to find and forge a very special edition.
He knew that the original Stoker manuscript had been heavily amended and signed by the author. At that point the novel had still borne the title The Undead, and contained several marked differences. In Stoker’s first version, after Harker and Morris kill Dracula the count’s castle is destroyed in a volcanic eruption. The idea wasn’t so far-fetched; Transylvania was an earthquake region, although Stoker never went there and only saw Bran Castle, the model for the count’s home, in a photograph.
A 529-page manuscript that formed the basis of its first printed incarnation had vanished for nearly a century. In 1980 it reappeared as if from nowhere and was put up for auction by Christie’s in New York. When it failed to reach its reserve price it was withdrawn. Nobody knew what happened to it after that. The story of the world’s rare objects is a hidden history of wealth and deception.
Alexandra Constantin was a Lithuanian currently living in Tra
nsylvania, and Charlie had come here because news had reached his ears through a third party that she might know the Blue Edition’s whereabouts. He thought about her spiky crimson hair and the red fur coat she kept wrapped around her, the Gitanes she drew from the packet with her lips, the cool, assessing look she gave him, the way she never said good-bye when she left a room but turned to leave without a word, the way she watched him from the taxi as it pulled away.
Charlie Kemp was more of a lover than a book lover, but he knew there was a lot of money to be made from the right purchase. Bram Stoker was just another pulp hack who got lucky and died a pauper, accidentally leaving a thousand critical essays by academics like Alexandra in his wake.
He picked up a hire car at the Cluj-Napoca airport and headed off towards Sighișoara to meet Alexandra. If she did know where to find the item he sought, he hoped she would be able to guide him through any access restrictions, but it was important not to alert her to his real purpose.
Transylvania occupied the central part of Romania and was bordered by dark, spearlike mountain ranges. The car he’d hired was a primrose-yellow piece of junk called a Dacia Logan. The Dacia was seemingly the only car available anywhere. It took hills like an old man with bad lungs climbing a staircase.
Charlie passed through villages that hadn’t changed in a thousand years, accessed through avenues of tall trees in the tops of which sat bushes of leeching mistletoe like cranes’ nests. It was tempting to use the vampiric analogy, because everyone was getting something from someone else; tucked away from the beauty spots were the smoke-belching factories owned by rich corporations reliant on cheap labour.
As the Dacia struggled on, Charlie was overtaken by men in black felt hats driving teams of carthorses, hauling logs. It looked as if the whole country ran on burning wood. Every town he passed was walled and had a graveyard built right beside its houses, as if to remind families that they would always be surrounded by the dead. Stoker may have only worked from what he’d read, but he’d got the atmosphere of the place right.
Sighișoara looked shut. Its main attraction was a complete medieval village with covered wooden walkways. Around that was a town with one hipster coffee bar called the Arts Café, lots of bookshops, a couple of Russian Orthodox churches, some postwar Communist buildings finished in cheap crumbling concrete and some stunning fin de siècle neo-Baroque houses painted in odd colours: rust red, custard yellow, lime green. Wet sleet slanted across the empty streets. There were a handful of shops selling tourist crap, the weirdest item being the pleading chicken, a china figurine of a bird with its wings pressed together in prayer, begging for its life. Eastern European humour, he decided.
* * *
—
‘You do know if it did exist it would be regarded as a national treasure, right?’ said Alexandra, smiling with secret knowledge. She raised a glass to her dinner companion. Between them stood a terrifying steeple of pink sausages and pork parts, surrounded by hard-to-identify vegetables in gravy. Luckily, it was more delicious than it looked.
‘Everyone said the manuscript was lost,’ Charlie reminded her.
‘But the “official” manuscript has some glaring gaps, which is possibly why it never reached its reserve at the Christie’s auction. It just wasn’t that collectable. Stoker was never a great writer, you know that. His prose is purple and really not very interesting.’
‘Everybody said the same thing about the Pre-Raphaelites, but look how their stock jumped.’ Charlie stabbed another sausage onto his plate. ‘And Dracula will become more valued in time. You know what makes the difference? Movies. There have been nearly three hundred films made from that one book so far, almost as many as from all of the Sherlock Holmes stories.’
Alexandra pushed back her plate and took out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered that the country’s no-smoking policy had come into force. ‘You have to face the fact that Dracula doesn’t have the same cachet.’
The last thing Charlie wanted was Alexandra figuring out what he was up to. He wondered how much she knew about the real value of the book. She was an academic; she cared about language and history, not resale value. He needed her help, but she had to make the offer unwittingly.
‘It was the wrong time for the sale of the manuscript,’ she said, spearing white asparagus. ‘That’s why it was withdrawn. Its value is higher now.’
‘I still believe the Blue Edition is out there. I’d just like to see it once. Then I’ll never have to dream about it again.’ For a moment, Charlie even convinced himself. ‘What else do you know about it?’
‘In May 1897 Constable published the first edition, bound in yellow cloth.’ Alexandra held an unlit cigarette between her fingers. ‘It wasn’t a success. The export edition was also to be in English but printed differently, with more narrowly spaced paragraphs and a blue leather cover. Stoker approved this second limited run even though the advance was almost nothing. He sent off the manuscript and waited for the paperwork to arrive. It never came.’
‘So what happened?’
‘The theory is that the printer complained. The edition he’d been sent was not the one he’d read. It was longer—a liability for the export version—and had a different ending. I think Stoker sent them his first version of the manuscript not even bothering to keep the master, and this became the Blue Edition. He’d told them they could edit it for length if they wanted. He just wanted the money.’
‘You want to smoke that, don’t you?’ said Charlie, leading her out to the freezing veranda. ‘What makes you so sure it’s here?’
‘I know they ran off at least one uncut copy because there was a photograph of the book in a sale catalogue printed in 1905 in Brașov, Transylvania, and it totalled 556 pages. It had to be from the longer manuscript. The book was described as having eight woodcuts and a dark blue cover. It was bought by the priest of a town called Viscri. On the receipt he had written his reason for the purchase: to form the centre of a display showing how Transylvania’s fame had reached the world outside. The priest didn’t die until 1979—just before the “official” manuscript failed to meet its reserve. No other Blue Edition ever surfaced, making it virtually priceless.
‘I have one other interesting piece of information.’
‘Please, tell me.’
‘I have to be able to trust you, Charlie.’
‘Rare books are my life, Alex, you know that. I just want to see it.’
‘I have provenance.’ She blew smoke out into the pink dusk-light. ‘The library at Viscri was appropriated by the government to help make the interior of Bran Castle look more authentic.’
‘So you think it’s there…?’
‘The Blue Edition could be gathering dust on a shelf somewhere at Bran Castle, a genuine rarity dressing up a shelf of fakes. There’s irony for you.’
The next morning they breakfasted early and went to Bran Castle.
Around its base were dozens of wooden huts selling Dracula fridge magnets, key rings, woollen hats, fur waistcoats and snow globes containing castles that swirled with bats when you shook them. Mamas in shell suits were buying vampire teddy bears while feral dogs cruised the takeaway stands, hoping to catch pieces of sausage. Castles always had peasant huts around their foundations.
Alexandra and Charlie headed up to the ticket booth.
* * *
—
Arthur Bryant attempted to crunch the car into gear, but was swaddled in so much padded clothing that he had trouble moving. With his woollen scarf tied around his head he appeared to have been hand-knitted.
As the detectives headed into the black hills below the Carpathian Mountains the weather changed and visibility dropped. The sleet turned to great powdery flakes of snow the size of paper scraps, and soon began to settle. The next few hours were spent stuck behind filth-encrusted trucks lumbering along single-lane highways, barely getting out of
third gear while the locals overtook at hair-raising speeds.
‘Let me give you a little historical background,’ said Bryant, trying to open a packet of extra-strong peppermints without letting go of the wheel.
John May had allowed his partner to take charge of the hideous yellow Dacia, figuring that Transylvania might be the one place where Bryant’s unorthodox driving skills would go unnoticed. ‘As the radio’s not working, you may as well,’ he said.
Bryant warmed to his subject. ‘In 1920 Bran Castle became a royal residence and the favourite home of Queen Marie. It was inherited by her daughter, who ran a hospital there in World War Two. The Communists booted out the royal family in 1948, but in 2005 the Romanian government said they’d acted illegally, so the castle was given back. Since then—’
‘I have a hangover, Arthur,’ said May. ‘I drank too much pălincă last night. Fruit brandy—never again. Please try to keep it simple for me. A lot simpler, as in no dates.’
‘Anyway,’ Bryant continued, entirely unfazed by his partner’s disinterest. He attempted to overtake a horse and realized the car wasn’t up to it. ‘It was opened to the public as a private museum but now it’s up for private sale, so nobody knows whether it will be preserved or closed down for good. This may be my only chance to see inside it. That’s why I wanted to come here. And you said you needed a break.’
‘I was thinking of a weekend at a spa in Dorset,’ May groaned.
‘This is a lot cheaper.’ Bryant swerved around a goat. ‘Transylvania in February isn’t high on too many wish lists.’ He tried to see through the windscreen but one wiper had stopped working.
It was still snowing lightly as they passed another walled village that had barely altered in a millennium. Only a couple of cars parked by a church set them in the present. Everything else looked like a medieval woodcut. Bryant was getting tired of staring at tarmac and truck wheels. ‘This weather’s awful. I can’t see, and you know I can’t see anyway. Let’s get some lunch.’
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