by Lee McGeorge
“McGovern is the only person we’re looking for.”
“I know,” Noica said. His brow furrowed, he looked uneasy.
“Let me just say it,” Lupescu said. “This guy killed two men, at least two that we know of and then he’s fled the country. But it all happened suddenly, he was fine, then he was violent. That’s the sort of person you specialise in, right?”
Noica nodded solemnly and said, “That is my area of expertise,” then more seriously, “But the type of person I deal with rarely has the sense to flee the crime scene. The same mental disintegration that makes them violent is what stops them having common sense. It’s an illness that damages their brain, it makes them violent and stupid. But this McGovern... if he is the perpetrator, he managed to travel to Bucharest, board a plane and fly to London. That is hardly the behaviour of a man suffering mental disintegration.”
Lupescu stared directly at Noica and said, “The old women would call a man this violent a vampire.”
Noica nodded. “I hope he’s not. He wouldn’t be the first to keep his mental faculties once he became violent. But... you don’t ever want to have to deal with one of these things.”
“Things?”
“A ‘vampire’ like this. A vampire is a poor, deluded and sick man, Mr. Lupescu. They’re violent but they’re also confused. Their brain tissue softens, a symptom called encephalomalacia. To put it in simple terms they’re suffering a rapid descent into Alzheimer's with outbursts of violent behaviour. But there are rare occasions when the brain softens and the violence erupts but the man keeps his wits and thoughts about him. Take my word for it, you don’t ever want to come across one of these - things!”
----- X -----
What he was doing was stupid beyond compare, but somehow he just couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t even six in the morning and he’d left the squat and travelled across town to walk the streets of his recent past. He was back in West London. It was still dark and it was bitterly cold, but it was better to be on his feet in the street than in bed and dreaming. Strange noises and anxiety had kept him awake at the squat. Fantasy dreams overlapped with real events and his brain seemed to assimilate the whole thing as truth. His dreams had always been vivid and lifelike, but of late they had become troubling and confusing. Somehow he felt he’d lost the ability to tell fact from sleeping fiction.
The most vivid dream was of fighting a policeman after attacking the kids in the park yesterday. The boy was unconscious on the ground and the girl was gasping for breath, the gardener was coming to help and using his mobile phone. As he ran from the scene he’d been confronted by a passing police constable. They’d scuffled. The policeman had tried to use restraining moves on him but he’d escaped using brute force. He had an enduring image of the policeman on the floor with blood rushing from the bridge of his nose after stomping on his face... But that couldn’t be true. He had no memory of that detail as actually happening, yet everything else in the dream was perfectly remembered from the real event.
It was a worry.
This is what had happened in Romania. Dreams that felt real, reality that felt like a dream. A soft merging of truth and fantasy that were impossible to separate. In Romania it had gotten so bad that he managed to convince himself that Ildico had given him a blowjob and then dreamed of a vampire killing her. Then he convinced himself that he’d dreamed the blowjob and killed her himself. In the end he discovered that none of those things had happened... or had they? Were any of those things true? His memories were untrustworthy. His ability to create new memories was compromised. This was the sickness that he had to control and defeat. Crazy memories. Crazy dreams. Crazy behaviour.
He avoided walking through Ravenscourt Park but passed the area where he’d dreamed of stomping on the policeman just to check for any residual evidence. A blood spot on the ground, or perhaps a detail of the environment incongruent with the dream.
There was nothing to see.
He decided to declare the policeman attack a dream. He had definitely attacked the boy and girl and he had definitely escaped without attacking a policeman... probably... at least he suspected he had.
It was stupid returning to the place of this particular crime. It was a compulsion. A mental pressure to make sense of the world. He had to put things right. He had to get a grip on his own mind.
He walked along the edge of the park to Goldhawk Road looking at the faces of people riding busses. These were the first wave of commuters heading to work. The hotel clerks and cleaners beginning work on a seven o’clock shift. They looked blank, almost like shop mannequins arranged to ride the bus.
He made it to Askew Road.
HOLY FUCK...
What the hell was he doing?
He knew what he was doing. He’d wandered here subconsciously, but why hadn’t his conscious mind woken up and stopped him? He was standing on the corner of the road where Nisha Khumari lived.
What the hell?
He had got out of bed in the middle of the night and against his better judgement, travelled to an area of town where he may be recognised. Only now did he realise precisely where his unthinking navigation had decided to bring him.
His mouth went dry and his heart beat faster. She was down there. Her road was a very long straight row of Victorian terraced homes. She lived a few hundred yards down... on the right... with a green front door with frosted glass...
“Oh Jesus, Paul... what the fuck are you doing here?” he whispered to himself. “Turn around. Get out of here.”
His feet remained rooted to the spot. He wanted to go down there and look at her home. He wanted to be outside and see a light switch on from a bedroom window. That was what he wanted whilst standing here, but what would he want when he got there? Would he want to go inside the house? Would he want to hurt her?
Of course he wanted to hurt her.
“You’re supposed to be hiding, Paul. This is stupid.” His heart was beating so fast he felt faint. With the last ounce of his sanity he somehow turned himself around and walked away, but the steps he took were slow and laboured. He didn’t want to go.
Just observe, he thought. Only look.
He crossed the street and went into a workman’s café for breakfast. From the window he could see the end of Nisha’s road. If she travelled to work by Underground, she would have to come out of her street at this end.
He ate his breakfast slowly, but after an hour of staring through the window over an empty plate he knew he had to move on or else he would look suspicious. He ordered a takeaway coffee and moved to a launderette a few doors down. He stared through the window towards the end of her street, barely able to blink.
At precisely seven forty-five in the morning, he saw her.
For a few moments time stood still and he was overcome by the physical sensation that he was falling forward. He couldn’t believe it. He was actually looking at Nisha Khumari.
She was wearing a beige Macintosh coat and a purple beret. In her hand was a cigarette held with an exaggerated bent wrist to hold it away from her body. She swayed and swished, walked with a swagger, her brown hair flowing around her shoulders.
“That’s it Paul. You’ve seen her... Let it go. Get her out of your system.”
She would never be out of his system.
Obscured in the launderette he watched, his body ducked low to peek from behind chairs. She fidgeted. She blew smoke in a theatrical manner as though she was putting on a show. She shuffled her weight from one foot to another. She checked her telephone. Then she got on the bus.
No... No she couldn’t leave.
The moment she went out of sight he was hit by a tsunami of physical pain. His arms locked up, his fists clenched... wait... she was there. She had moved to the top of the bus, he could see her... The bus indicated and moved on, driving away. Paul winced, sucking air through his teeth. There was pain, serious jarring pain rushing through his body.
Fighting against it all, he twisted his head to scan the lau
nderette to double check he was alone. He caught sight of his reflection in the glass door of a tumble dryer. He looked grotesque and deformed. His teeth were clenched, his face red and swollen, the veins of his neck sticking out.
“FFFaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...” He tried to say something that came out only as a sound.
Jesus, what the fuck is wrong?
He squeezed his eyes tightly closed and focussed on releasing the stress.
“What is wrong with me?” he slurred to himself against the pain. “What is wrong?” The pressure eased. “What is wrong?”
Nisha is what is wrong.
She’s alive... and it hurts that she’s alive.
PART II
The sun rose across London.
He was still walking the streets after seeing Nisha Khumari and found himself falling into fits of rage and muscle spasms. She should be dead. She needed to be dead.
In his wanderings Paul came across a camping and outdoor equipment shop preparing to open. The owner had a shaved head and tattoos up both arms; he was preparing his store despite it being before eight, fastening backpacks and equipment above the doorway like it was the entrance to an Aladdin’s cave of wilderness requisites.
“Are you open?”
“Aye, I’m open.”
Paul pressed through the archway of colourful goods into a musty urban workshop filled with odd smelling military surplus clothing. The inside was nothing like the outside but it looked like it had most of the things he would need at the squat.
“I want one of these, these cooking stove things,” Paul said pointing to the blue cooker strung to the ceiling.
“Aye, mate, a camping stove. You want gas ‘n all with it?”
“Please. And I need some clothes, some combat pants and T-shirts.”
The Army-Man shopkeep pulled out a step ladder and climbed up to loosen the stove. “Over there mate, just have a look at whatever you want. I got a changing room just here.” He nodded to a curtain. Paul looked in to see a Z-bed and a small table with a kettle and tea bags. Army-man lived in his shop at almost the same minimal level of existence as he would at the squat. “No, next curtain, mate,” Army-Man called.
“Oh, OK, I see... thank you.”
Paul picked out anything drab. Black combat pants, black T-shirts. He found a long grey overcoat with shiny silver buttons.
“Aye, that’s a real nice coat,” Army-Man said climbing down from the ladder. “Russian Air Force. Officer’s coat.”
The buttons put him off. Too ostentatious, too visible. He found a similar coat in drab olive green with simple buttons and took his armful of clothes to try on but got distracted by a collection of knives in a glass case. His mind spun back to Nisha Khumari. The knives were desirable.
“Excuse me... But why are some of these knives so expensive, what’s the difference between them?”
“It’s the steel, mate. You get a shite knife and it’s so blunt you can’t cut through a baked bean. You spend money on a quality knife and it’ll chop through bricks and still be sharp enough to shave with. Always go for quality. Cheap shite is cheap shite, if you know what I mean.”
Above the knives was a DVD called Combat Knife Commando, Training Techniques for Elite Soldiering. A muscle-man wearing a beret and holding two knives was squaring off against another tooled-up muscle-man. It looked cheesy, but the man holding dual knives looked like someone you didn’t want to fuck with.
“I’ll take this DVD,” Paul said. “And your best knife.”
“If you want that DVD I have something much better for combat knife techniques.” He momentarily went behind the curtain of his sleeping quarters and emerged with some papers. “See this,” he said showing a thin pale blue book as though it were a family heirloom. “This book here is the daddy of all knife fighting techniques. Now I can’t sell it yer’ but I can sell yer’ this photocopy.”
“You want me to buy a photocopy?”
Army-Man nodded and turned the pages of the book. It was barely forty pages long, badly printed and worn. There were black and white images of men squaring off with knives. “This book is rare,” he said. “Like really super rare. You can buy it on the internet but it goes for hundreds of pounds. I’ll sell you a photocopy for ten pounds and believe me when I say that’s a bargain.”
Paul examined the photocopy. The book was called Put Him Down and Fast Kills: Knife Fighting Techniques From San Quentin Penitentiary. The first page he flipped to showed correct and incorrect knife fighting positions. The incorrect method was the movie way, with the knife held in front, the correct way according to the book was to hold the knife close to the right hip with the left hand stretched out for defence or to grab the opponent. The next page he flipped to had a checklist of mental preparations for a practice drill with advice on how to visualise a real victim and ended by asking, ‘did you mentally kill the opponent?’ The book gave him an icy shudder. For a moment he fantasised of standing in the correct knife fighting position, then saw himself slam the knife into Nisha’s stomach. The fantasy dissolved from his vision but the calm and clarity of mind it brought lingered on. He was looking at an instruction book for killers. Knives were in a glass case begging to be bought. Nisha was on his mind.
“I cant believe something like this exists,” Paul said. His eyes turned back to the images of stabbing techniques.
“Aye. You know this text was written by an ex-convict, but they use it as a training manual for special forces. Same techniques. Efficient.” Army-Man unlocked his display case and withdrew two matching sheathed knives. “And if you’re really interested in knife combat, this is what you need.” He pulled the knives from their protective sleeves and rested them atop the counter.
Paul’s eyes sparkled on seeing them. Long and slender blackened objects of desire. The handles and blades were matt black, the cutting edges glowed with a fine silvery razors edge that culminated in a sharp angular tip. He didn’t even ask the price. They looked terrifying. Tools of deadly empowerment. Nisha was on his mind.
“I’ll take them.”
----- X -----
Lucian Noica spent the night in a hotel beside the police station and arrived early hoping to see photographs of the ‘vampire writing’. He’d never heard of such a thing. The pictures hadn’t arrived. No further deaths had been reported. The focus was on McGovern who had left the country and the Romanian investigation suddenly felt sleepy.
Noica wasn’t sure there was any point to him staying in town and he decided he would stay until there definitely was nothing at all happening; at the minute things felt in limbo rather than stopped.
He was already seated in the interview room when Mihai was brought in. The room was bleak; pale green walls last painted a decade ago, a plain table, an ashtray, a smell of smoke and no windows.
“Buna,” a young woman with blonde hair greeted him in an upbeat manner. “Esti Doctor Noica?” she asked. He nodded. Another social worker came in, an older, heavier woman in a floral dress. She brought Mihai with her; he looked terrible. The boy was swathed in filthy clothes and had dirty unwashed skin and oily black hair.
Lupescu had told him Mihai’s mother was refusing to attend the police station and was quite unconcerned for her own son’s welfare. Her conduct, and the needle tracks on his twelve year old arms, meant that Mihai would be put into care.
“Mihai, can you tell me about the English vampire?”
“He drinks my blood,” the boy mumbled.
“He drinks your blood? Where did that happen?”
“He drinks my blood.”
“Did it happen at your home?”
...nothing
“Where did he drink your blood, Mihai?”
…
“Can you tell me about the English vampire?”
“He drinks my blood.”
“OK... Mihai. Do you know what happened to Nealla and Raul...”
Nothing. No response.
“Mihai do you know that the English vampire was fighting wit
h Nealla and Raul?”
Mihai mumbled and nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you know why they were fighting?”
“He drinks my blood,” he said, but this time raising his hand wrapped in a rag. “He drinks my blood.” Mihai pointed to his hand, stabbing his finger at the rags with a quiet determination.
The older social worker rested Mihai’s hand on the table and asked if she could examine. He didn’t respond but he didn’t stop her from looking. “Oh, my...” she exclaimed. The blonde lady peered in with a serious look. Noica had to lift out of his seat to see.
There was a festering wound to the back of Mihai’s hand. Bloody and scabbed with yellow pus around the edges. A sliced cut that had become infected.
“We need to stop,” the older lady said. “He has late stage HIV. Get some gloves and the first aid kit. We’ll wrap this and take him to hospital.” She turned to Noica. “I’m sorry, this needs treatment first before we can ask him anything.”
Noica nodded. It was a bust. Talking to the kid was going to be a chore.
As the blonde was fumbling with a first aid dressing, Mihai spoke again. “English is a vampire but the lady says he is a good vampire,” he said.
“The lady, what lady?” Noica asked.
“Who is the lady?” the social worker asked.
“The lady with the English.”
Those were the last words out of Mihai. He was taken away to have the wound cleaned at hospital and then to begin a new life in an orphanage. Noica was left in the interview room with nothing but his thoughts. “HIV positive, Mr. McGovern... I hope you didn’t drink his blood. And who is the lady with you?”
----- X -----
Ciprian was back making door to door enquiries in Noua. They were proving surprisingly fruitful. Noua was a village of curtain twitchers who observed the world outside their homes like it was a soap opera.