by Helen Harper
As I jerk my head away and duck out from under his arms, he blinks in surprise. I look up at him and feel ashamed. My cheeks heat up. This isn’t me.
‘I’m sorry.’ My voice sounds strange, almost disembodied. ‘I can’t do this.’
And before he can do or say anything else, I turn on my heel and run. Away from him and away from the club. If only it was this easy to run away from my real problems.
***
It takes me a while to get back to the flat. I walk first to clear my head and I berate myself for being an idiot. I feel bad for Mr Tortoiseshell. I suppose he thought I was leading him on then stiffed him – so to speak – in the final moments. But even if I could have found the words, it was just too complicated to explain.
I’m right outside the door when all my senses tell me that something is wrong. I pause, straining my ears. The only reason I catch the sound is because O’Shea is clearly still in pain and can’t stop himself gasping aloud. As I watch, the door knob slowly starts to turn. I smile humourlessly. He’s obviously not realised I’m standing on the other side.
I edge slightly left and wait for the door to creak open. When it’s about an inch ajar, I snap my foot up and out, kicking it backwards with as much force as I can muster. O’Shea yells in pain and I leap through, the base of my palm ready to smash into his nose to prevent him from attempting to go anywhere. I needn’t have bothered. He might have extricated himself from the bed, but he’d achieved it by taking the cheap gilt headboard with him. When the door hits him, he staggers backwards and succeeds in getting the corner of the bed post snagged around a wooden chair. He yanks at it several times in desperation, clawing with his free hand, but it’s stuck fast. I watch him, vaguely amused, then step forward. It’s not until I reach his kicking feet that he finally looks up at me and his body relaxes. Just as I thought. It’s damn hard to come across as a badass PI when you’re wearing a short flowery dress.
I crouch down. ‘Do you remember me?’
The corners of his mouth turn up. ‘Darling, how could I not?’
He’s flirting. Idiot. The slim file Tam provided me with before the debacle at Wiltshore Avenue told me one salient detail that O’Shea was now stupidly trying to conceal in a bid to charm me: I was most definitely not his type. I give him an exasperated look and I see comprehension dawn in his eyes.
‘Oh.’ He gives me a half grin. ‘You know I’m gay.’
‘Indeed.’
I settle myself at his feet, cross my legs, rest my chin on my hands and look at him.
‘Are you going to help me get out of this?’ he asks, holding up his chained wrist. The headboard rattles.
I shake my head.
He blinks at me with his large orange eyes. ‘You saved my life.’ It’s not a question.
‘Yes.’
‘So now you’re going to keep me tied to a bed to have your kinky way with me?’
‘We’ve already been through that.’ I keep my voice calm. The five martinis I recently downed help with that. ‘Though it’s not too late for me to change my mind about the saving your life part.’
There’s a flicker of doubt in his eyes, as if he’s already decided that a little girl like me wouldn’t have the stomach for it. He has no idea. After the last twenty-four hours, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. Something in my manner finally makes him realise this because the doubt changes to fear. Good. I stretch my arm forward and lightly touch the wound on his torso. The fear grows.
‘Tell me what you were doing at the house.’
He swallows. ‘It’s my childhood home. I was taking a trip down memory lane.’
I press my fingers down and he gasps. ‘Okay, okay! There’s no need to go all Guantanamo on me. Jeez.’ He rolls his eyes as if I’m infringing on his human rights. Alright, I suppose I am. But I’ve got cause.
‘Tell me what you were doing at the house,’ I repeat. I know what Tam told me but I have no reason now to believe what he said.
O’Shea looks hangdog. Unfortunately for him, his sunset orange pupils remind me of my grandfather’s evil cat rather than a cute puppy.
‘Fine. It’s no big deal. I was just selling an enhancement spell, that’s all.’
‘What kind of enhancement spell?’
He grins at me, although I can tell it’s forced. ‘You know…’
‘No, O’Shea, I really don’t.’
He gestures at his crotch. ‘An enhancement spell.’
My cheeks colour. ‘For virility or for size?’
‘The bigger they are, darling, the harder they…’
I interrupt him. ‘Okay. I get it. Why the secrecy? Why there?’
‘It’s not exactly legal.’
‘Elaborate.’
‘There are some,’ he licks his lips, ‘side effects.’
I dread to think. Still, I need to know so I gesture for him to continue. He shrugs. ‘Well, you’re the one who brought up virility. Unfortunately the spell renders the recipient impotent. I mean, obviously they can still get it up.’ He laughs. ‘That’s rather the point. But in terms of being able to reproduce, well, the spell kind of takes that away.’
I don’t entirely understand. ‘But I’m sure there are lots of men who’d be more than willing than to undergo a magical vasectomy. No more worries about any little accidents…’
He frowns. ‘It’s not a vasectomy as such. Magic is unreliable and this spell in particular is base physical magic. You start messing with that and all sorts of things can happen. Virility is linked to testosterone. Testosterone is linked to behaviour.’
‘So take away virility and you take away testosterone. Take that away and you’re left with … what? Passive men?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘How can they,’ I cough awkwardly, ‘how can they get it up without testosterone?’
‘The spell contains a marker to artificially increase libido,’ he explains.
I nod like it makes sense. It doesn’t. This is one of the reasons why my grandfather hates magic makers. Then again, my grandfather hates everyone.
‘I still don’t see why male passivity is a problem,’ I say. ‘In fact, I think it sounds like a damn good idea.’
‘You’re not the only woman to think that. The client I was meant to be meeting is female.’
I can see a certain twisted logic there. I think of the odd scent of rosewater when I opened the door on his tortured body. But even though I didn’t see his face, I’m pretty certain that the vampire who attacked Tam and the others was male.
‘Did your client show up?’
He shakes his head. ‘Just that fucking bloodguzzler. He leached the spell, cuffed me to the chair and then tried to kill me.’
‘Do you know who he was?’
‘No.’
‘Was the female client a vampire?’
‘I never met her. But no, I don’t think so.’
‘If you’ve never met her, how did you set up the drop?’
‘A private chatroom. People contact me directly through that.’ He shrugs. ‘I used to contact them the old-fashioned way and write codes in birthday cards, that kind of thing, but it became too much hassle. Everyone prefers the internet these days.’ He sounds miffed, as if it’s a personal affront.
I gently manoeuvre him back to the real topic of the conversation. ‘What’s her name? The client’s?’
‘I only ever knew her via her avatar, Lucy.’
Just like Mina’s friend in the book Dracula, I realise. The one who enjoyed ensnaring men while human but who then turned vampire. Appropriate. ‘Lucy could still be a man,’ I point out.
‘Nah. I know how women write. This was definitely a woman.’
I’m not sure I can trust him on this but I’m prepared to let it go for now. ‘Why would anyone want you dead?’
‘I don’t know. I’m a good boy.’ He blinks at me innocently.
‘A good boy who deals in dodgy under-the-counter magic and who was almost drained of all his blood.’
He juts out his bottom lip. ‘It must be the spell.’
‘How long do the effects last?’
‘Please. I’m a professional. They’re permanent. Cast this baby and, believe me, you ain’t having any more babies.’
I’m startled. ‘You mean you don’t just deal? You created the spell?’
‘Of course. There’s no other spell like it,’ he says, but then his face falls. ‘Yeah, they tried to kill me for the spell.’
Perhaps. But that doesn’t explain why they – whoever ‘they’ are – also tried to set me up for his murder. Or why they succeeded in murdering pretty much everyone in my company. Or what would make Tam involved. It all seems so sordid and very, very petty.
I remember something Tam once said to me about sex and money. I’d only just joined Dire Straits and I’d expressed my frustration about the lack of variety in the assignments I was given. He laughed and said that in the end there was never any variation, that cases always boiled to either one or both of two things: sex and money. I certainly have the sex element here but that seems unimportant. From what O’Shea has told me, it seems as if this has more to do with power. And power equals money. I need to start with that and track down his original client.
‘How much were you being paid?’ I ask.
Before O’Shea can answer, a phone starts to ring. The pair of us jump. I get to my feet and look for the source of the sound, eventually discovering an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse phone to the side of the sofa.
‘You don’t know where your own phone is in your own flat?’
‘It’s not my damn flat,’ I snap and lift the receiver.
‘It’s me.’
I’m relieved. ‘Excellent timing.’
‘Your flat’s fine. It’s being watched but it’s not been obviously turned over.’
I nod. That makes sense. It would be far too suspicious if the prime suspect in a murder had her flat robbed on the same day. The theft of my handcuffs was clearly done surreptitiously. I really hate the idea of someone rooting around my things. I think of my underwear drawer and shudder.
‘You have only three more nights at Markmore.’
‘That’s fine.’ I’ll either be in the morgue by then or I’ll have sorted out an alternative of my own. ‘There’s something else I need you to do.’
‘I’ve got homework.’
‘It’s four o’clock in the morning!’
‘So?’
The vagaries of teenagers. ‘This won’t take long,’ I say, hoping I sound persuasive.
There’s a heavy sigh. ‘Okay. What?’
‘Find someone called Lucy.’
I pick the phone up, annoyed at the short cable as I try to stretch it across the room, and hold the receiver to O’Shea’s ear.
‘You’re going to tell the person on the end of this phone how to access your private chatroom,’ I tell him.
‘Who’s on the end of this phone?’
‘Just tell them.’
Chapter Seven: Hacker
I first met Rogu3 three years ago, long before I’d heard of Dire Straits. He was eleven years old then, making him fourteen now. I’m terrified of what he’ll be like when he finally matures into an adult.
I was working as an insurance fraud investigator at the time for one of those large faceless companies whose bottom line is always about profit. It was a truly awful job and I hated every minute of it. They were often happy to pay out small amounts as they felt that gave them an ‘honest face’. When it came to larger sums of money, however, it was an entirely different story.
The organisation dealt mainly in life insurance. The basic package covered accidental death, such as car crashes, as well as dying as a result of long-term (although never pre-existing) conditions. The premium package included a much wider range, such as death by triber. It also provided a payout in the event that your loved one was inadvertently transformed into a vampire. They called this ‘implicit passing’ – the bigwigs at the company loved their euphemisms. Customers signed up for the premium package in droves. At the time, I suspected it was down to some carefully planted articles in the media about helpless victims who were turned while out shopping or at the park with their kids. It was all nonsense, of course. Each of the vampire Families only recruits new members once or twice a decade, depending on their attrition rates. And there is never any shortage of volunteers or ‘vampettes’ as the human hangers-on are known. No Family would be so crass as to randomly turn someone who was doing nothing more than going about their daily business.
Cleverly, the premium policies were considered null and void if someone voluntarily turned themselves over to the bloodguzzlers. So say you were dying a long and drawn out death of cancer, and you happened to luck into a Family recruitment drive and were chosen to be turned, then your loved ones received nothing. If you chose to die quietly, they got a semi-generous payout. I understand why so many tried so hard to achieve the alternative. Few succeeded. With such a large pool to choose from, the Families can afford to be choosy. There are plenty of people lining up who aren’t sick; they want to be vampires because of a spine-chilling blood lust or a desire for a longer life.
Where the insurance company’s genius really paid off, however, was that once you were recruited into a Family, you disappeared. Contrary to popular myth, it’s only new vampires who are vulnerable to the sun’s glare. To protect them from daylight, and keep them away from the general public because they can’t control their desire to drink blood, new recruits are often not seen for years after their transformation. Even when they’re finally allowed to make contact with their loved ones, few choose to do so, preferring to remain immersed in the new life they’ve chosen for themselves. Vampires are notoriously loyal and the Families are tight-lipped about whether someone has been accepted or not. Part of that is down to their own politics, and not wanting rival Families to see what new blood, so to speak, is available. But I’ve heard that it’s also because often recruits don’t survive the initial turning process.
This is a dream come true for insurance. If no one can prove that you’ve been turned, then no one can prove that you haven’t – so the insurers don’t have to pay up. Of course this only works in the absence of a body but if, for example, you bumped into a Kakos daemon and were in possession of a premium policy, there would be no body left as evidence and no one would receive the money. The insurance company would send out a standard letter informing the real family that in all likelihood the victim voluntarily went vamp and no money would be paid out. All due regrets and blah blah blah.
There are other tribers besides Kakos daemons who are also impressively circumspect with the leftovers of their attacks. Considering that the vast majority are of the ‘live and let live’ variety, however, I had strong suspicions that the company paid some less savoury tribers (and probably humans too) to dispose of many corpses of people who died from natural causes. I could never prove it. They were – and indeed still are – far too clever to leave a trail. But when I worked there, there was an incredible number of people whose bodies were never recovered and whose policies were cancelled as a result.
It was my job to investigate cases where the bodies were missing. I was green, which is probably why I’d been recruited in the first place. The insurance company could put its hand on its heart and say their investigators had done the best job they could but had discovered no evidence to prove it hadn’t been a voluntary vampire recruitment. It didn’t help that there was a bonus for investigators who didn’t find any evidence to disprove voluntary turning.
I didn’t last long at the company. To be frank, almost any job would have been better than depriving normal, hard-working families of the insurance payouts they deserved. God knows, they already had enough to deal with once their loved one was dead without being screwed by the company. I’ve come across other insurers since that have been far more honourable. But the guys I worked for were bastards.
Things came to a head with Alice
Goldman. She disappeared when she was seven and a half years old, snatched in broad daylight half a mile from her house. It was all over the news. For a time, people assumed it was a straightforward abduction and that sooner or later she’d be ransomed then released, or her mutilated body would be found in a ditch by some traumatised dogwalker. But her body was never discovered. About two weeks after her disappearance, her discarded clothes were found in a bin, soaked in as much blood as a seven year old can have. The blood was a match for hers.
After months of grieving, the Goldman family pulled themselves together and put in a claim. Unfortunately for me – but perhaps fortunately for them – I was the investigator. I was given strict instructions from on high to deal with the case as ‘quickly and quietly’ as possible. I knew what that meant: spend a day or two looking for evidence then, in its absence, put in a standard report stating it was possible she’d voluntarily applied to the vampires. Even if the Families’ own laws didn’t prevent them from recruiting anyone who was under twenty-one, little Alice Goldman’s biggest concern was whether Barbie would find her lost shoe, not whether she’d live to be two or three hundred years old.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was going to find evidence to prove she’d not gone to the vampires and shove it under the insurance bigwigs’ noses then force them to pay that family what they deserved. Why I thought I’d succeed in finding out what happened to her when half the British police force couldn’t, I have no idea. But I wasn’t going to let the Goldmans get that standard fucking response letter.
I spent a day tramping around Alice’s former neighbourhood and knocking on doors, trying to find anyone who knew anything useful. People were polite but they were exhausted. The police had covered the area and spoken to everyone more than once. So had the journalists. The residents had had enough. After several hours, I sat down on the edge of a pavement, utterly defeated.
My gloom was interrupted by a small high-pitched voice. ‘Are you here for Alice?’