England's Finest

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  ‘Around here?’ asked May incredulously.

  Bryant pulled into a street that looked derelict. At the end they found a café with rather too many raffia lamps, but at least the food was heartwarming. They ate goulash served in an entire loaf, and pork ribs sluiced down with Ciuc beer.

  A wrinkled babushka who looked like a crazy old woman from a Frankenstein movie came over to the table and tried to press a foot-high icon on Bryant. The portrait of the crucified Christ had been badly printed onto plastic and glued to a piece of chipboard. When Bryant explained that he didn’t want to buy it, she swore at him for a couple of minutes before wandering off to sit on the other side of the café, where she ordered a pizza the size of a drain cover and sat glowering at him as she folded pieces into her mouth.

  ‘Cursed by an old gypsy,’ said May. ‘All we need now is to be chased by wolves.’

  Stuffed, they headed back to the car, which was already half buried by fresh snow.

  The journey to the castle couldn’t have been more atmospheric if they’d chosen to make it by stagecoach. Cutting through the Carpathian Mountains in a snowstorm was an exhausting experience. May offered to take over as his partner’s driving was making him queasy, but Bryant was determined not to let the hairpin bends and sheer drops dampen his spirits or, indeed, reduce his speed.

  ‘We’re nearly at Castle Dracula,’ said Bryant, squinting up through the windscreen. ‘DA-da-da,’ he sang off-key. ‘DA-da-da, you get it? DRAC-u-la.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said May wearily. The springs of the passenger seat were already starting to dig into his spine again.

  ‘James Bernard wrote the music to the Hammer film Dracula and keyed the notes around the syllables in his name. Look out there, it’s just like a horror film.’

  The arrival at the castle itself was inevitably a bit of a letdown; the area proved more suburban than anything in the surrounding region of Brașov. At his first sight of the building Bryant thought: Is that it? It was certainly a lot smaller than he’d imagined, and those photographs showing its pointed circular turrets against a background of steep cliffs must have been taken from a very narrow perspective, because it was surrounded by ugly modern houses and what appeared to be a funfair with a boating lake.

  Yet as they drew closer he began to appreciate its melancholic grandeur. It was stark and unadorned, imperious and somehow alone.

  ‘We’d better be staying in a decent hotel,’ warned May.

  Bryant had checked them into a three-star lodge called the Hotel Extravagance. It had a yellow plastic fascia and a life-sized model of a fat pink chef in a chequered apron holding up a severed pig’s head. The receptionist was a smiling, pretty girl of about twenty who cheerfully admitted that she had been on duty for over twenty-four hours. It was the standard length of a shift in these parts, she said.

  ‘Can you send the porter for our bags?’ May asked, accepting his key.

  ‘We have no porter,’ she replied, stifling a yawn.

  ‘Then which way to the lift?’

  ‘We have no lift. You are only on the fourth floor. My mother could manage your bags.’

  May was horrified. ‘I would never let her carry them.’

  ‘No, I meant she could manage them so you should be able to.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  The detectives headed for the stairs.

  ‘All right, what are we really here for?’ May asked as he hefted both bags.

  ‘I don’t know to what you are referring,’ said Bryant, looking shifty.

  ‘Yes, you do, you’re up to something. We didn’t come to Transylvania just to wander around a castle.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got you here rather under false pretences,’ Bryant admitted. ‘A fellow called Kemp, an antiquarian book dealer based in Mayfair and Paris. Most of the editions he sells are extremely rare and stolen to order, and when he can’t fill an order he sells a very good fake. It’s a big-time racket, and the Organisation Internationale de Police Criminelle have been after him for several years.’

  ‘What has this got to do with us?’

  ‘They got in touch with the City of London Police, who sent his file through to the Unit, but Raymond Land told me not to act on it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Kemp has to be caught in the act, and you don’t mess with the Romanian police. But he’s our villain. Unfortunately we’ve got no one on the ground here, and I’d always wanted to visit…’

  ‘You crafty old sod. So we’re here without backup. Why do I let you involve me in these things?’ May stopped before a door and tried the key. ‘This one’s yours,’ he said. ‘What has Kemp done this time?’

  ‘It’s what he might be about to do. The OIPC intercepted a series of emails suggesting he’s come here to pull off some kind of heist. We know he has arranged a meeting at Bran Castle. Casual visitors aren’t aware that there’s a private library on the premises. It contains works that have been in the castle’s collection for centuries and is mostly used by historians. I think he’s going to steal a book for a private client.’

  ‘Something rare in the castle’s collection?’

  ‘No,’ said Bryant, hefting his case on to the bed. ‘Rare is a Shakespeare First Folio. This is unique. The only full version in the world.’

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, the detectives parked in a sloping field full of strutting turkeys and made their way to the castle entrance. The stone staircase was so steep that Bryant had to keep stopping to catch his breath. May had to push him up the last six steps.

  Tall studded doors opened into a courtyard, but the interior of Bran lacked grandeur, and none of the mismatched fixtures were original. The bookshelves were nearly all empty. The walls had been painted white, which destroyed the atmosphere—still, it wasn’t a film set, Bryant realized, just the inspiration for a novel. Rereading the book on the journey, he still found the prose flat and earnest, but the sense of dread accumulating in the tale excited him. There were some details he had forgotten, like Jonathan Harker realizing the castle had no staff when he spied Dracula making the beds. He couldn’t imagine Christopher Lee agreeing to do that.

  Standing in the central courtyard, they could see that the castle was crisscrossed with narrow, open-sided corridors, winding staircases, spires, turrets and a deep well that conjured up memories of old Hammer films. There were hardly any other visitors.

  ‘Now what?’ asked May, slapping his gloves together.

  * * *

  —

  Outside the tower an ancient woman with a face like a dried apple handed Charlie Kemp and Alexandra Constantin a set of keys on a huge iron ring.

  ‘Oh, the locals are helpful when you run out of gas, kind even,’ Alexandra told him as the guard let them through. ‘In the time I’ve been here I’ve got to know a handful of them very well. They don’t open up to strangers. There’s too much terrible history here. It’s hard to comprehend what many of them have been through.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me they hang out garlic and crucifixes at night,’ Charlie joked, then wished he hadn’t as they passed a seven-foot-high painted Jesus with staring eyes. The narrow corridor had a domed roof and led around the edge of the castle.

  ‘There are no vampires,’ said Alexandra with a straight face, ‘but the local people believe in Vlad Dracul. He casts a long shadow. That’s why you still find paintings in bars and cafés that show him gorily impaling his victims. It’s his memory they honour. The book is just a useful means to an end, a way to hook tourists into visiting now that the economy airlines are coming in. This is a deeply religious country, so they’re very ambivalent about the whole thing. It’s a pity the area’s solely associated with the vampire trade.’

  Charlie wasn’t interested in the country’s problems. He examined the spi
nes of a few tattered history books on the shelves. ‘So if this is the tourist junk, where’s the rest of the library? What happened to it?’

  ‘What happened to anything here under the Communists?’ Alexandra gave a shrug. ‘It disappeared along with everything and everyone else that genocidal maniac Ceaușescu came into contact with. The one thing he couldn’t take from these people was their belief system.’

  Charlie could think of one thing he could take from them.

  A curving chalk-white wall opened onto a tall room with windows overlooking the valley, rocks tapering down to red clay rooftops.

  ‘There’s some more stuff up here in the tower,’ said Alexandra, unlocking the door. ‘I gave a guard a fistful of lei to let us in for half an hour.’

  He couldn’t stop himself from asking the question uppermost in his mind. ‘Why are you doing this, Alexandra?’

  She gave him one of her assessing looks. ‘I always fall for the bad ones. Maybe I want to believe there’s still some good in you.’

  They climbed the plank staircase to the top of the chapel tower, past dusty looms and farm implements. In a single bookcase at the end of the top floor Charlie glimpsed a handful of leather- and cloth-bound volumes. He headed for the book cupboard and opened the glass case.

  ‘I don’t think you should do that,’ Alexandra said.

  ‘I’m just having a little look,’ he told her. The volumes inside were old but of no interest. Most concerned crop planting and animal husbandry. All were printed in Romanian.

  Alexandra seemed to make up her mind about something. ‘Look out of the window,’ she said. ‘See what the babushka is doing.’

  Old Apple-Face had retired to the outside wall and was sitting on a kitchen chair in the lightly falling snow, wearing just a thin grey shawl around her shoulders, doing nothing and apparently feeling no cold.

  ‘OK, come with me.’ They crossed the tower floor to a rough wooden chest of drawers. ‘I know it’s not your idea of a library, but it is here. They keep the most valuable items in things like this.’

  Charlie studied the chest. It was fastened with a fat rusty lock.

  ‘Is there any way we can get inside?’ Alexandra was timid and culturally over-respectful, but Charlie had no such compunction. ‘You want to get lost for a few minutes?’

  ‘You can’t just break in! This is what I was afraid would happen. You promised, Charlie.’

  ‘Go downstairs. I’m not going to steal anything, I swear.’

  ‘It’s a federal offence to remove anything from the building. You’ll go home tomorrow and I still have to live here.’

  ‘I’m just going to take a look, OK? I swear I won’t touch a thing.’

  ‘You really are a piece of work, Kemp,’ she said, lighting a fresh cigarette. ‘You come from a country that has never been sucked dry by a parasitic invader. This is something you can’t have. I know these people; they’re not thrilled about having a tourist industry built around a book by a British author who never even visited their country.’

  ‘I give you my word I won’t do anything,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘It’s just closure for me. To say that I saw it. I’ll be down in a minute, I promise.’

  After she had reluctantly left, he dug out his Swiss Army knife and worked on the lock. It slid open with embarrassing ease.

  Inside the drawers were a number of gaudy icons, all fake, priests’ robes embroidered with red silk, brocaded white christening dresses, hand-stitched blankets and, at the bottom, a handful of books. He removed the stack, checking out of the window.

  Alexandra was stumping about in the courtyard, smoking hard, trying not to look suspicious.

  He looked down at the volume in his hands. The blue leather cover jumped out. It was entirely blank, with one gold word embossed on the spine: Dracula.

  The book had never been read—you could always tell a virgin copy by the way the pages seemed unwilling to leave one another, the tiny ticking sound the spine made as it was stretched for the first time, the reluctance of the covers to move further apart. It was unsullied, the first and last one, the only one.

  Stupidly, he’d forgotten to bring his cotton gloves. He didn’t want to release sweat-marks on to the pages, but he had to open it and check. The book had crimson edges and the dye came off on his thumbs, but the white interior showed no discoloration and the smell of the print was still overwhelming.

  The publication date matched. The ending was brief but new to his eyes, describing the utter destruction of the castle. It seemed desultory and flatly written, as if it had been tacked on because the author had no other way of finishing the story. He could see why Stoker had subsequently removed it. He wanted to sit down and read right through but had to content himself with riffling through the pages, just to prove that he was not hallucinating.

  He fumbled in his rucksack for the forgery he’d had made. He’d known the size and shape of the edition, but that was all. No one had ever mentioned that the real version was a different shade of blue and had painted edges, but no one here would know or care. Back home, the literary world would sit up and take notice when they saw what he had.

  Replacing the lock and closing it, he made his way back downstairs. The babushka was still on her chair, basking in the lightly falling snow as if it was a summer’s day.

  He looked around but there was no sign of Alexandra. He waited but she didn’t return. He started to get cold. Beyond the entrance, the turkeys were eyeing him with suspicion. There was no one around. It was beginning to snow more heavily. He set down the backpack and looked at the low hills.

  Someone brushed past him.

  The snow was in his eyes. He had the sense of a figure, tall and black—and then—and then—

  He reeled back. What he saw was not possible. He stared at the scene, half-obliterated by falling snow, and gasped.

  He backed into an archway and tried to catch his breath. He had no idea how long he stood there. Moments, minutes, half an hour.

  The hand that fell on to his shoulder made him jump.

  ‘You’re under arrest, Mr Kemp,’ said John May. Behind him was an older, smaller man wrapped in scarves. Accompanying him were two Inspectori de Politįe, the Romanian police.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Charlie said anxiously, looking around for the backpack. It was already in the hands of one of the inspectors. The other policeman stepped forward. ‘You’ve been under surveillance,’ he explained. ‘You’re being arrested in connection with the murder of Alexandra Constantin.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, panicked. ‘It was Dracula.’

  * * *

  —

  The great grey concrete police station at Brașov had not been designed to reassure anyone placed under arrest that all would be well. It was, however, efficient and well ordered, and had, May noted, faster Wi-Fi access than he was used to in King’s Cross.

  The detectives were received with civility and accorded a meeting with the chief inspector, Ştefan Timmar. The inspector was a small, sharp-featured man who remained motionless in repose but seemed filled with contained energy.

  ‘I take it that’s your Wolseley outside?’ Bryant said amiably. ‘A fine English car. The rest of us seem to be driving Dacias.’

  ‘We make sure we have the best of what is available,’ Timmar said, looking from one to the other. ‘It is indeed a fine old English motor. Are you retired?’

  ‘No, we’re still in active service,’ Bryant explained.

  ‘This is good. Life is prolonged by hard work. I must thank you for aiding us in this matter. But you do understand that Mr Kemp is now under European jurisdiction?’

  ‘Of course,’ said May, ‘and that will be respected. However, we would like to interview the suspect.’

  ‘I’m sure that can be arranged. You can sit in while we take his state
ment.’

  ‘And we’d like to see the body,’ said Bryant.

  ‘That is a little more problematic,’ said Timmar. ‘There are fewer of us here than we would wish. We have no coroner’s office in Brașov—we mostly deal with tourists losing their wallets in nightclubs—so the body will have to be taken to a mortuary in the valley where we have professional staff on site. Obviously it must remain sealed until then to prevent contamination.’

  That’s never bothered us in London, Bryant thought with some embarrassment. It would be mortifying to think that the Romanian police were more thorough.

  ‘It’s Saturday, so we will have to wait for someone to come up on Monday,’ Timmar said, ‘but you are welcome to accompany them then.’

  It was out of the question. The detectives needed to be back in London at the start of the working week.

  The three of them visited the cold-storage facility in the basement, where they were able to view the body through sealed plastic. They were handed copies of the initial report.

  ‘She died from a single wound at the right side of the throat,’ said Timmar. ‘We have no murder weapon. Her blood was found on Kemp’s coat. There are no other footprints going out of the castle gate, and that is the only exit.’

  ‘So—no other suspects,’ said Bryant.

  ‘None.’

  They sat in on Kemp’s interrogation. When he heard the British voices once more, he turned anxiously on his stool. ‘Can you get me out of here?’ he begged the detectives. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘I’m afraid that as the arrest was made on Romanian territory you must remain here,’ May explained. ‘We can have a lawyer appointed by the consulate. Is there anything more you can tell us?’

  ‘They’ll find my fingerprints on her,’ Kemp warned. ‘We spent the night together. They’ll find her scarf in my bag. She dropped it at the hotel. I was going to return it. They’ll find something else in the bag, too…’