That final line, the last piece of legible writing before the page ended in a ragged black stain, was striking. What was ‘salvation’? Joel quickly gave up on it and went on studying the rest. ‘Anchi’ was obviously half a word, written in capitals, its first letters obliterated by mould. When Joel tried to scrape it away, the paper just came apart. He gave up, and chewed his pen as he stared at the number underneath.
666. The biblical Number of the Beast. His skin crawled as he read it over and over.
But not as much as when he read the words overleaf.
15th April 1975.
I have destroyed one of THEM, but there are more.
…narrow escape. Who will believe what I’ve seen?
Now THEY will come looking for me. I must hide.
…my loved ones…not safe for them
God protect me.
Joel was stunned by the realisation as he read the entry over and over again, willing the faded writing to reveal more.
But it was enough. Now he knew why Crazy Nick had walked out on his family and tried to hide himself away as best he could all those years ago. He hadn’t been crazy at all. He’d been trying to protect them all from the horror he’d encountered back in Italy.
Knowing that one day the vampires might catch up with him again.
Chapter Fifty-One
Jericho, Oxford
The next day, 12.33 p.m.
Joel had left his grandfather’s cottage at dawn, vowing for the second time in his life that he’d never return. His eyes were burning with fatigue as he parked the bike outside the Georgian house in Walton Well Road and wearily climbed the steps to the glass-panelled front door. Too tired to even strip off his bike leathers, he trudged up the passage towards the kitchen to brew himself a badly needed coffee. By the time he’d reached the kitchen door, he’d already unzipped his backpack and was flipping through his grandfather’s notebook like a man possessed. He walked into the kitchen on auto-pilot, his eyes glued to the faded writing. And almost fell over as his foot caught on something lying on the floor.
He looked down. The ceramic tiles were covered with debris. Drawers ripped out and upturned, shelves torn down, containers of utensils hurled across the room. Glancing through the open-plan archway into the living room beyond, he saw it had been taken apart too. His bookcase was collapsed on its face across the wreckage of his coffee table. The carpet was slashed to ribbons and half the floorboards had been prised up. The place looked as though a Panzer Division had gone through it.
Joel sensed a rapid movement out of the corner of his eye, then something silvery flashed down in front of his face. He realised it was a garrotte wire just in time to get his hands up to protect his throat. The wire closed in tight across his wrists, pulling back with maniacal force. Only the thick cuffs of Joel’s leather jacket saved his hands from being sliced clean off. He lashed out with a backwards headbutt and felt his skull connect with something solid. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the bald crown glistening under the kitchen light and the wizened face contorted in effort.
It was Seymour Finch, and this time he meant to kill.
As he struggled desperately to get free, Joel could feel the wire biting through the leather. Any second, it would be through – and then death would be an instant away. He kicked out with his right foot, found the edge of the kitchen worktop with his toe and pushed hard against it, hurling his weight backwards. They toppled over together and crashed to the floor, and he felt the impact of his weight drive the wind out of Finch’s lungs. For the shortest instant, the man’s grip on the garrotte went slack, and Joel was able to wrench the wire away from his neck and twist out from under it. He went to kick Finch in the ribs, but the man was already up on his feet. Joel saw the blur coming for his face too late to react. The heavy fist caught him on the jaw and sent him sprawling to the floor.
Lying there with the taste of blood filling his mouth and his vision flashing with white spots, Joel saw Finch spot the fallen notebook and snatch it up. He ripped through the pages and his eyes lit up in animal triumph.
Joel staggered to his feet, glanced around him for a weapon. The knife block was across the other side of the kitchen – he’d have to go through Finch to get to it. A cast-iron saucepan lay on the floor. Edge-on, it was as good as an axe. Joel was about to grab it when he remembered the uncomfortable lump of steel that was still shoved down the back of his jeans. He’d ridden so many miles with the old Webley in his belt that he’d no longer registered what it was.
He ripped it out and aimed it at Finch in the two-handed stance he’d been taught in his police firearms training. Lined the rusty sights up centre-of-mass on his target, thumbed back the hammer and yelled, ‘Down on your knees. Or I’ll kill you.’
Finch’s eyes widened in surprise, but he recovered quickly from the shock. Then he charged with a wild scream.
Joel didn’t have time to pray that the ancient weapon would still fire. Finch was just a yard away when he squeezed the trigger. The room filled with the huge noise of the gunshot, and the revolver kicked back against his palm.
Finch flew backwards as if he’d been jerked off his feet by an invisible cable. He hit the floor and slid across the tiles, thrashing and roaring, blood pumping from the hole in his chest. Then, incredibly, he sprang back up on his feet and made a mad dash for the hallway, still clutching the notebook. He burst through the front door with a crash of breaking glass and out into the street.
Stunned, Joel stood there for a moment, with the smoking revolver in his hand. Coming to his senses, he threw the empty weapon down and gave chase.
By the time he’d run out of his front gate, Finch was already twenty yards away, sprinting like a wild man down Walton Well Road and leaving a trail of bright blood splashes in his wake. Joel went after him, racing down the hill past the rows of red-brick houses. He was certain he could catch the man. He’d come first in every police athletics and running competition he’d ever entered, even done some weekend training in the Welsh hills with the boys from the Territorial SAS and not entirely disgraced himself. But after just a few yards he realised with a shock that this maniac, even with a large-calibre bullet in his chest, was outpacing him. He willed himself to run faster.
It quickly became clear where Finch was heading. At the bottom of Walton Well Road was an old stone hump bridge, and beyond it was Port Meadow, a vast expanse of open country protected from the developers by ancient common land laws, where the snaking river Thames became the Isis.
Finch reached the bridge and dropped out of sight. By the time Joel had got there, Finch was already sprinting across the grass, aiming for the river. Joel pressed on, forcing all the power he could muster from his legs. His racing feet ripped through the long grass as they neared the water.
Finch was nearly fifty yards ahead of him now. Joel saw him slither down the reedy bank and disappear – a moment later, he saw him again. Finch had boarded a small wooden boat. His muscular fists gripped the oars and his arms moved like pistons. He was covered in blood, more like some kind of fiendish machine than a man. Water foamed white as the boat surged forward. Joel caught a fleeting glimpse of the notebook lying in the bottom between Finch’s boots. He saw the twisted smile on the man’s lips.
He’s getting away.
But there was one chance. Thirty yards downriver, an iron footbridge spanned the water. Finch had almost reached it.
Joel threw himself into a fast sprint through the long grass. He reached the footbridge and propelled himself up the clanking metal steps four at a time. Raced across until he was right over the water, and looked down over the rail just in time to see the prow of the rowing boat emerge from under the bridge, and the top of Finch’s bald skull gleaming with exertion. Joel clambered over the rail. It was a ten-foot drop. If he delayed half a second too long, he’d hit the water in the boat’s wake and there would be no hope of catching Finch as he rowed frenetically away.
Joel launched himself into space.
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The boat and its occupant rushed up to meet him with frightening speed. Joel had timed it right. He landed squarely on top of Finch with an impact that almost knocked the wind out of him. But the man was too powerful an adversary to give him even a split second’s chance to recover from the shock. Joel pummelled his face and head with blows. Felt his knuckles smashing in the cartilage of his nose. Blood sprayed. Finch lashed out with his fist and caught Joel above the eye. Joel fell back in the boat. Finch roared up onto his feet and came at him with a stamping kick that would have crushed his ribs if it had landed. Joel twisted out of the way just in time, and Finch’s boot almost crashed through the bottom of the boat. The ferocity of his kick rocked the little vessel violently. Finch lost his footing and fell with a splash into the water.
Joel dived straight in after him, gasping at the shock of the cold water. He resurfaced to see Finch just two feet away, white foam boiling around him and turning rapidly pink as he struggled back towards the boat. Joel grabbed the bald man brutally by the ears and headbutted him. And again. Finch’s eyes blazed in a mask of blood.
Joel was too terrified to hesitate even for a moment. He punched him three, four, five times in the face, numb to the blows the bald man was landing on him in return. Pain was something to worry about later. He dug his fingers into Finch’s collar, plunged his head under the water and held him there. Finch’s strong hands thrashed underwater, lashed punches at his stomach, grasped for his wrists. Joel gritted his teeth and used every ounce of his strength to keep him under. The man’s head twisted from side to side and Joel could see his bared teeth as he tried to tear into him like an animal.
Ten seconds. Twenty. Bubbles erupted to the surface as Finch flailed wildly for air. Joel hit him again and kept him down. The water was clouded pink around them.
It was a full minute before Finch’s struggles had diminished to nothing. Joel let him go and watched the inert body bobbing on the swell.
The rowing boat had drifted in towards the bank. Joel kicked out towards it, reached up over the side and felt in the bottom. It was half full of water, and, to his horror, his raking fingers found the notebook almost completely submerged. He splashed away from the boat, holding his grandfather’s work clear of the surface, and hauled himself up the bank by fistfuls of reeds. He collapsed on his knees on dry land, spluttering and coughing and feverishly checking the pages of the notebook. It was soaked and bloody.
He heard voices.
Two young women were approaching down the towpath on the opposite side of the river, accompanied by a little girl who was playing on a portable computer game as she walked. Joel pressed himself flat among the rushes and waited breathlessly for them to pass by. They had only to glance to their right, and they’d see Finch’s corpse drifting face-down, spreadeagled in the water, turning a slow horizontal cartwheel as the current eased him away downstream. It was just pure luck that the women were too deep in conversation, and the child too engrossed with her electronic gizmo, for them to spot him floating past.
When they were at a safe distance, Joel let out a long wheezing sigh of relief and shakily got to his feet. Only then did he begin to realise the kind of shit he was in. It wasn’t enough that he was suspended from duty for harassing and assaulting an innocent man. Now he’d shot that same man in his own home with an illegal handgun, then killed him in broad daylight with his bare hands.
He made it back to his flat without meeting anyone in the street. Safely inside, he carefully laid the soaking wet notebook over the bathroom radiator to dry as he stripped off his dripping, mud-smeared clothes and blasted away the filth and blood under a hot shower.
He knew he couldn’t stay here. Once the sun had gone down and Finch’s vampire master realised his servant wasn’t coming back, Joel would be vulnerable to a far worse visitor than any mortal man. He couldn’t fight them. He was going to have to run and hide, and figure out his next move.
‘You see, Joel, of all the things a vampire fears, this one cross is what they dread most. And the person who wields it – well, that person is the most powerful enemy those monsters have in all the world.’
He could only hope that the old man hadn’t just been clinging to some old myth.
But where to start searching for this mythical cross of Ardaich? Such clues as the notebook offered gave him precious little to go on.
He couldn’t do this on his own.
Someone had said they could help him. Now it was time to call her.
Chapter Fifty-Two
‘Remember me?’ he’d said on the phone earlier that afternoon.
‘The belligerent police inspector,’ she’d replied. ‘Funny, I was just thinking about you.’
‘Can we meet? I need to talk to you.’
‘Can you come to London?’
‘I’m kind of at a loose end for a while. I can go anywhere.’
‘I live in Canary Wharf. Take down this address.’
That was how, just after three in the afternoon, Joel came to be standing inside the luxurious glass lift in his motorcycle leathers, heading for the top floor of the expensive apartment building overlooking the river.
What kind of journalist must this Alex Bishop be, he wondered to himself. You’d have to be rolling in money to live in a place like this. His own meagre police salary wouldn’t buy him a broom cupboard here.
The lift doors glided open and he stepped out into an airy landing filled with exotic plants and the scent of flowers. In one hand he was carrying his crash helmet, in the other the holdall that he’d hurriedly packed full of clothes before escaping from his place in Jericho. He had no idea when he’d be able to return there.
The sweeping view across London was breathtaking. He paused for a moment, gazing out through the tall windows. Rays of late autumn sunlight shone brightly through the glass roof.
‘Hello again,’ said her voice behind him. He turned to see her leaning casually in her doorway. She was wearing faded jeans and a chunky roll-neck kimono-style woollen jumper. Her auburn hair caught the sunlight.
A few seconds went by before he realised he was staring at her.
‘What’s the holdall for?’ she asked with a smile, noticing the bag at his feet. ‘Going somewhere?’
‘Right now, I have no idea where I’m going,’ he said. ‘A lot of it depends on you.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘You said you could help me. Here I am.’
‘Then you’d better come in.’
The penthouse apartment was even bigger than he’d imagined. Joel’s place could have fitted inside it four or five times over. He felt self-conscious as he trudged across her plush carpet in his heavy bike boots, worried about setting down the holdall in case it had road dirt on it after being strapped to the back of the bike. But she didn’t seem to mind. While she disappeared into the kitchen to get them drinks, he settled nervously in a creamy leather armchair and looked around him at the pictures on the walls. Taste and style were commodities that Alex Bishop seemed to have in abundance, alongside the money to enjoy them.
She returned with a tray, laid two heavy cups filled with foamy cappuccino on a glass-topped table, and curled up in the armchair facing him.
Joel took a sip of the coffee. It was the best he’d ever tasted.
‘I’m glad to see you again, Inspector,’ she said.
‘It’s Joel. And I wasn’t kidding. I really do need your help.’
‘This has something to do with the boy in the hospital?’
He nodded.
‘I thought so. How is he?’
‘He’s fine. But there’s more. A lot more.’
‘Are we talking about vampires, Joel?’
He hesitated before saying, ‘Yes, we are.’
‘There’s something I have to tell you, Joel. Before we go any further. I haven’t been completely honest with you.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning there are things about me I’ve been hiding from you. I�
�m not really a journalist.’
‘I didn’t think so, seeing this place.’
‘I’m kind of an investigator,’ she went on.
‘Private detective?’
She laughed. ‘Put it this way. It’s not humans I investigate. My interest is in the paranormal.’
‘Ghosts and spirits?’
‘Vampires, Joel.’
‘You believe in them.’
‘I ought to. Let me tell you a story. Eight years ago, my elder sister fell very ill. The doctors were baffled. Pernicious anaemia, they thought. She had all the tests, but they couldn’t find anything. But I noticed something strange. Something nobody seemed to take seriously.’
‘The bite marks?’
She nodded. ‘I knew what was happening. I hid in my sister’s room one night. I saw him visit her. Drinking her blood. I couldn’t do anything to stop him. The next day, I told my family. They thought I was crazy.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Joel said. ‘What happened to your sister?’
‘She died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And then she came back. As one of them.’ Alex paused, and sorrow misted her eyes for a moment before she continued. ‘I finished her. Ever since that day, I’ve dedicated myself to researching everything I could find out about these creatures.’
Joel didn’t speak. Couldn’t say a word. Sitting there in this luxurious environment, he was suddenly transported back to that dark place.
She was watching him keenly. ‘You’ve had a similar experience,’ she said. ‘I can tell from the look in your eyes. That’s why you were so quick to believe the boy’s story.’
Joel met her steady gaze. ‘It’s all true,’ he said. ‘Dec Maddon saw vampires. And I know where they are. When I find what I’m looking for, I’m going to go back there and destroy them all. That’s where you come in. I think I need your help to find it.’
Alex sipped her coffee. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’
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