"You know what just happened," Susan said correcting several dislocated fingers, "some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground!"
Wallet looked on as the two of them rolled around laughing and trying to sing the words to Smoke on the Water like drunken sailors. Dislocated fingers were enough and he turned around and climbed back onto the coach. He checked Scavinio's injuries and suggested the coach driver should get him to a hospital.
RavensWish - concert cancelled fighting everywhere heart broken nothing left to live for
JarniHeijnkes - sounds bad. can see the pictures on the news. place looks like a battleground #totenherzenriot
Antonlagarde - WTF how did it come down to this?
Carlwallace15 - travelled from Nottingham. Still choking from all the smoke. never seen anything like it! #totenherzenriot bitsy.fr/cw15/2667
Dekuip2010 - they still got their shit, proud of our Rotterdam girl #susanbekker @totenherzen never die
RavensWish - theres nothing to be proud of
Dekuip2010 - fuck u @totenherzen rule the world, people get reminder of that 2nite
RavensWish - how old r u? You probably werent born when they were around. #FAKE
Dekuip2010 - old enough to know the truth @totenherzen take shit of no1 #susanbekker for queen of nederland
37 (November)
Raven turned off her phone for the first time since buying it a year ago. In the confusion of the riot she and several others had been bundled out of the building and no amount of pleading saw her bundled anywhere near her 'host' for the evening. Treated like any other hanger on, she was left powerless as the coach pulled away from the Ahoy. Any hope of turning her life around drove away with it. The point of her journey was gone and she was left to wander aimlessly, trying to find a patch of clean air in the sulphurous hate of the Rotterdam night. Around her was the blue light blinking and siren wailing evidence of a large police presence, and armoured men and women rounding up any groups who looked like they might have some fight still in them.
She could see the footbridge over the road and the route back to the city centre. There might still be trains back to the central station, but how safe would they be after everything, at this time of night. A deep, heavy unbearable sense of sadness and loneliness pulled her to the ground and she wept uncontrollably.
Then a hand on her shoulder made her jump. "I'm sorry," said a tall man leaning over her. "I saw you earlier, backstage. I wondered if you were all right." He didn't look like a regular Toten Herzen fan, but then what would that look like: flare in hand, troubled expression, blue hair, runny mascara.
"Yeah, I was. And I'm not all right. I'm fucking horrible."
The man knelt down beside her. According to her pass she was called Raven! "It's probably not safe for you to be here on your own now."
What was he saying? What was he up to? Where was this heading? One question after another swept the innocuous concern aside and replaced it with every terror imaginable. "No, I'm okay," she said springing to her feet. "You know what I'm gonna do?" The man shook his head. "I'm going over to their hotel and I'm gonna tell em what a bunch of fuckers they all are."
"You know where they're staying?"
"As a matter of fact I do, yeah. And she probably forgot she told me." Raven set off with a new plan. The guy was left alone to watch her go, mumbling and muttering. "You're not leaving me here like this, you fucking witch. You got me over here, you're gonna sort me out. Yeah, that's what you're gonna do. Sort me out." She turned her phone back on and as she walked through what was left of the event, suspicious police officers, a stray fire engine, several ambulances and shell shocked fans watching nothing particularly interesting, she found the hotel's website. The Rotterdam Crown Hotel. "Five stars, you rich bastards." It was on the other side of the city according the map. "You better still be there when I get there."
-
By the time Raven arrived at reception she was limping heavily. The time was coming up to four o'clock in the morning and only anger and adrenaline were keeping her awake. The night manager, alone in his spacious empty world, wondered who, or what, was wandering into his hotel at this time. Raven was a left over from the evening's 'events' at the Ahoy. Fodder for hotel security, the trouble was crossing their threshold now.
"I want to speak to Susan Bekker, please."
"Is she expecting you?" said the night manager positioning himself firmly against the reception desk away from the telephone.
"Yeah she is. She invited me backstage at the Ahoy and then left me there when they all came back here and I want an explanation why she would do that." She started filling up. "After everything we talked about why did she fucking leave me there?"
The night manager must have been softened by loneliness. "Who shall I say is asking for her?"
Raven wiped her eyes dry. "Tell her . . . Barbara!"
He made the call. Raven waited. "Hello, sorry to trouble you at this time. There is a young lady in reception called Barbara asking to see Susan." He covered the mouthpiece and turned. "Are you also called Raven?" Raven nodded. "Yes." He looked at her again. "Blue hair, yes. Okay, thank you." He put the receiver down. "Someone will come down to see you in a moment. You can take a seat here if you like."
"Thank you." She turned down an offer of tea even though she had a raging thirst. Before she had time to wince at the pain in her feet, the lift door opened and Susan was standing there beckoning Raven to join her. Forgetting the pain, she limped over and as soon as the doors closed grabbed Susan and poured her heart out.
"You bitch, you left me there in all that. . . ."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It was chaotic, we were pushed around and on the coach and then a fight broke out and everything was, I don't know, all over the place."
Raven saw for the first time heavy bruising all over Susan's throat and shoulders. She had four red lines running down the left side of her face. "What happened?"
"I looked worse a few hours ago. Everything's healing. Dee and I had a bit of a disagreement, but we're all cool now." Susan led Raven out of the elevator and along a rich golden atrium flanked by vivid orange doors. "I'm gonna make it up to you." She put a cold arm around Raven's shoulders and led her into a room. Now at last Raven felt safe.
Susan's room was quiet. Modern. A million miles from vampiric. None of the gothic flourishes she was expecting, but she should have known that from the start. Susan Bekker, in her own words, was no whining teenager. She wasn't the stuff of fiction or films. She was real, and real vampires stayed in real hotel rooms and lived in real houses, slept in real beds . . . Susan's hadn't been slept in, but a suitcase was open with clothes spilling out of it. That looked familiar, that looked almost homely. A tablet was lying on a coffee table. Susan picked it up and looked at her digital reflection. "These marks should be gone in an hour."
"Is that a mirror?" asked Raven.
"Yeah, clever isn't it. It's the webcam, then I flip the image and voilà."
Raven processed part of the explanation, but her feet were hurting so much she only wanted to get her boots off and sit in a bowl of hot water. Susan opened the mini fridge and took out a bottle of cola. "You can gulp this down first and then you can have something stronger if you want."
"What are you going to do?"
Susan sat next to her on the edge of the bed. "I'm not sure. I'm still not sure you're ready to change, so the deal is you spend some time with us until your mind's made up. We've still got a lot to do, you can be part of the team. We'll work out what you can do; personal assistant, I don't know. I can't think of anything right now. We'll see how it goes. I'm making no promises, but if you still want to change and I think you can handle it, then we'll see what happens."
"When you say change. . . ." She couldn't bring herself to say the word. The V word. Sitting so close to Susan she could smell the coldness of her skin, see the veins in her eyes and delicate bulge over her canine teeth, the chill was radiant, cooling the air between them. In
the tranquillity of the room, so distant now from the night's chaos, the promise of change was not the casual desire it had once been; it wasn't the adventure she was expecting. It was a long, one way journey, an agreement that could never be cancelled.
"It's what you still want isn't it?"
"Yeah. Yeah it is."
"Okay. Look, you must be exhausted. I don't need the bed tonight so get comfortable here. Take a shower. Take as long as you want. There's a slight chance the concert might be on again tomorrow night, but don't hold your breath. I'm not giving up on this though." Raven didn't remember undressing, or taking a shower, but at five thirty in the morning she woke up in the bed. There was conversation in the corridor that sounded like Susan, Rob Wallet and another woman, possibly Dee Vincent or Elaine Daley. The conversation moved away and Raven was too exhausted to care.
-
Wallet was at the entrance to the hotel when a tall bloke pushed past him. The quality of guest must diminish as sunrise approaches. He watched him pace towards the night manager, head down, square shouldered. Fucking hell . . . it was Patrick Wells! He must have followed Raven across the city. Wallet was about to play hero and grab him from behind, he had the strength these days to take down the big ones, but then an inner voice told him to hang back, wait to see how Wells was going to play this.
"Hello, I'm sorry to trouble you, but I believe my daughter is here. She's running after this rock band and her name is Raven." Wells hadn't recognised Wallet. He turned to look back just as Wallet was about to go up to Susan.
"Can you describe her, sir?" said the night manager.
"Five feet five, dressed in black, black leather jacket, black jeans, black lace up boots, blue hair. She told me she was coming here to meet the band. Has she been here?"
"Yes. A young woman of that description arrived earlier. May I ask who's calling?"
He paused. "John Waters," he said firmly.
The night manager glanced over to Wallet just as he vanished. God knows what he must have seen at that moment!
Wallet appeared in Susan's room, making her jump. Raven was asleep in the bed. There was no time to ask. "Two things: Patrick Wells is downstairs."
"You're fucking joking."
"I never joke, Susan, you should know that by now."
"And?"
"And I think the night manager might have seen me vanishing when I came up here."
She sighed. "Go back to your room, I'll deal with it. Just like I deal with everything else you mess up."
Wallet's phone was ringing in his room. It was the night manager.
"Hello again, Rob."
"Hi. How are you?"
"Fine thank you, never been so busy. There is a Mr Waters in reception to collect his daughter. Raven Waters?"
"Right. I think Susan Bekker might be going down to meet him."
"Okay, I'll tell him. Thanks Rob."
"No problem. Must be quite a weird night. Bet you see all sorts of things on this rota." Wallet laughed.
"I've seen everything, Rob. Or I thought I had." He put the phone down.
"Bollocks."
Susan was outside, marching down the corridor with Terence Pearl. Wallet had to join them. This was as much his cock up as anyone's. In fact, it was exclusively his cock up. One of his better examples. Susan didn't object to him joining her and Pearl in the lift. "Why we going down in the lift?" Wallet asked.
Susan glared at him. "Why do you think?"
The lift doors opened and they saw Wells sitting in a deep chair studying the night manager who turned away as the three oddballs from the second floor stepped out into reception. Wells gathered himself and nervously stood up. "Is there somewhere quiet we can sit?" Wallet asked the night manager who looked confused. Everywhere was quiet at this time in the morning.
"The restaurant, please feel free. It isn't open, but you can talk there. Would you like a taxi or will you find your own way there?"
"We'll walk." Wallet blushed. Susan and Pearl headed towards the restaurant with Wells several paces behind them.
"Right, this is it. The moment of truth," said Susan, "What's the game?"
"Game?" Wells was growing in confidence: the confidence of a man who was finally facing his target, the confidence of a man who was going all the way. "What game? I'm not playing a game. Where's the rest of you?"
"They'll be here in a minute," said Susan. "Who are you?"
"Look at me. Look at me and you'll soon figure out who I am."
"You look like Pete, but I know it can't be him."
"Pete, oh it's Pete. Pete! The same Pete who you murdered in 1973, the same Pete you hid from his relatives, the same Pete who you mocked on your album cover in 1974, the same Pete whose family you destroyed."
"It isn't like that, Patrick," said Pearl.
"Patrick," said Susan. "So which side of the family are you from?"
"Peter was my uncle. His sister is my mother and she has been bereft for forty years because of you."
"We didn't kill Pete. We don't know what happened to him, but we didn't kill him."
"I don't believe you."
"It's pretty obvious you don't believe us."
"You're lying now like you've lied for the past forty years."
"Patrick," Susan took one step forward, "we saw him alive and he was drunk, Micky Redwall took him home and we never saw him again. We don't know what happened. We've tried to find out, but after all this time it's next to impossible."
Wells would have to wait. Without the band here he'd only get half the job done. There might be time to pacify him and salvage some miserable conclusion to this whole desperate episode. No one would emerge from this with any valour, but there was a chance if Wells didn't try anything stupid that some kind of closure, no matter how minuscule, might be possible. But he was already hyped up from confrontation and lack of sleep. He wasn't acting like a man ready to back down.
"I'm not prepared to listen to any more of this. You've had forty years to apologise, forty years to offer an explanation, forty years," he was raising his voice now, "to show some kind of regret, offer some mark of respect. Offer to meet his parents, offer to put yourselves at their mercy, but you've never done that and why? Because you don't care."
"We didn't care," said Susan. "Back then we didn't care, we didn't care about anything, but now we do and we are trying to find out what happened, and we will meet Pete's family, but Patrick I'm not lying anymore."
"Yes, you are."
The night manager appeared. "Is everything okay?" Wallet reassured him, but he probably wasn't the best person to put the night manager at ease. Not after, well. . . .
"I'm not lying Patrick," said Susan, "Terence, can you explain to him?"
Pearl offered to speak, but Wells shut him up. "I'm not listening to him. He's a bloody idiot."
"What?"
"I'm sorry Terence," Wells continued, "but I told you to call it a day. You got me this far. I'm grateful, but I'm not going to listen to someone who is here, in a hotel, with this lot. How much are they paying you?"
"They're not paying me, I listened to them. I listened to Rob, he was convincing and you should listen to him to."
"Wells turned to Wallet. "Who the hell are you anyway? This has nothing to do with you."
"Susan asked me to find out what happened to Peter. I've spent months trying to get to the bottom of this and Terence here has been helping me."
"Months!" Wells turned to Pearl. "You were supposed to be helping me. You were helping me!"
"And I did. You're here now, Patrick. If you let them, they can help you."
Wells was drying up, running out of options, running out of time. "Where are the others?" he demanded. He didn't want help, didn't want a resolution; a hug and a handshake and we'll get back to you. He wasn't being brushed off like one of their fans.
"They're not here," said Susan.
Wells put his hand in his inside pocket and took out a pistol. "Where are the others?" he said slowly takin
g the safety catch off.
Wallet could see Wells knew his way around a gun, but beyond that the world still had a few mysteries. Who, or rather what, was standing in front of him? Susan glanced at the gun. "Go ahead, get yourself into trouble for all this. Create another tragedy for your family."
"Susan," Wallet warned.
"No, you want to shoot me, if that makes you feel better, if that's your solution, shoot me."
And he did. The gun fired startling everyone and a small red bullet hole appeared in Susan's forehead. There was a deathly pause and months of assurance, months of certainty and confirmation in the supernatural hung on the say so of a single bullet. Wallet knew there was no such thing as a racing certainty, but even though. . . . Everything he'd witnessed, everything he'd experienced, everything he'd learned was about to be tested by that one solitary gun shot. He and Pearl waited for Susan to drop.
But she didn't. Wells looked at his gun and at Susan. He tried again and missed! He was shaking violently now, but she gave him enough time to take a third shot, which hit her in the shoulder. And still she didn't move. Susan simply stood and smiled as one bullet hole after another appeared, effortlessly, ineffectively, until Wells had almost emptied the gun's magazine. Gasping for breath, he readied himself one last time hoping this would be the killer shot and that her refusal to drop was some kind of stiffened euphoric pause, one final beatific smile before death, but before he could fire Pearl launched himself forward.
The two men went over a table backwards as Pearl sank his teeth into Wells' exposed neck. The night manager had already come running and, frozen with shock at the sight of Susan taking one bullet after another with no effect, he now had one man on his back being bitten by a second. Wallet and Susan pulled Pearl away as he tried to apologise to his victim. "You're wrong, Patrick, you are wrong." He pulled himself free and ran towards a staffroom door.
We Are Toten Herzen (TotenUniverse Book 1) Page 30