by Matt Haig
“That’s because it is a most unusual Monday, Elaine.”
“Right. Wil you be wanting a coffee?”
“No, thank you, I’ve just had a drink.”
She looks at the envelope but he doesn’t think she notices the empty vials. Either way, he doesn’t care.
“Right you are,” she says, backing out of the room. “Right you are.”
CSI: Transylvania
DCS Geoff Hodge is laughing so hard he is struggling to keep the half-chewed, final piece of his third cheese-and-onion
pastry inside his mouth.
“I’m sorry, love, run that by me again.”
So she tel s him again. The “she” being Greater Manchester Police’s Deputy Commissioner Alison Glenny, a woman he hasn’t met before. Indeed, he has never had face-to-face contact with any Manchester police officer before, as Manchester is a good fifty miles outside their jurisdiction.
True, you occasional y needed to gain information from other regions, but there are databases for that sort of thing. You didn’t burst in unannounced into another authority’s headquarters with a look like you were sent by God himself. Even if you were a bloody deputy commissioner. She isn’t his deputy commissioner.
“You need to leave this case alone,” she says, repeating herself. “We wil take over from here.”
“We? Who the chuff’s we? The Greater Manchester Police? I don’t see how a North Yorkshire lad being washed up on the east coast has got owt to do with your mob in Manchester. Unless you’ve got a serial kil er on the loose you’re not tel ing us about.”
The deputy commissioner analyzes him with cold eyes and makes a little hyphen of her mouth. “I work for a national unit, coordinating special branch resources across the UK.”
“Wel , love, I’m sorry, but I haven’t the slightest fig what you’re talking about.”
She hands him a lime green form with a Home Office insignia at the top and lots of smal print.
Forms. Always bloody forms.
“I need your signature in the box in the bottom. Then I’l be able to tel you everything.”
He studies the form. Starts to read the line closest to the signature box. I hereby declare not to disclose any information relating to the Unnamed Predator Unit.
“Unnamed Predator Unit? Look, love, I’m lost here. Special Branch stuff goes past me, it real y does. It’s al smoke and mirrors as far as I can see. Have you spoken with Derek?”
“Yes, I have spoken with Derek.”
“Wel , you do understand that I’l have to ring him and check.”
“Go ahead.”
So he picks up his phone and makes an internal cal to Derek Leckie, his commissioner, to ask about this woman.
“Yes, do as she tel s you,” Derek says, with maybe just a trace of fear in his voice. “Everything.”
Geoff signs his name in the box, asking a question as he does so. “Right, so if this is Special Branch, what the hel has it to do with this body? It hardly looks like a counterterrorism job.”
“You’re right. It’s not counterterrorism. It’s countervampirism.”
He watches her, waiting for a smile to crack on her stony face. But none comes.
“Good one, love. Good one. Now, who put you up to this? Bet it was Dobson, wasn’t it? Yeah, bet he’s getting me back for hogging the Beamer.”
Her eyes stay total y neutral.
“I have no idea who Dobson is, but I assure you, Detective Chief Superintendent, this is not a setup.”
Geoff shakes his head and rubs his eyes. For a moment he wonders if this woman is a pastry-induced hal ucination. Maybe he’s just been working too hard. But no amount of blinking does anything to make this woman or her face of granite any less real.
“Good, because I thought you just said countervampirism.”
“I did.” She parks her laptop on his desk without even asking. “I take it you haven’t seen pictures of the body or received an autopsy report?” she asks him, with the tone of a mildly frustrated teacher, as the screen blinks into blue life.
Geoff stands back and watches the woman and her computer. The sleek, softly aging hair, the tal ness of her, the subtlety of her makeup, the fine gray cotton of her expensive jacket and trousers, the general sense of steel and elegance. As he watches he is aware of a faint queasiness, a sudden physical weakness. He’s aware of the grease in his mouth, the taste of onion and processed cheese. Perhaps Denise is right. Perhaps he should think about having a salad or a baked potato once in a while. “No, I haven’t.”
“Good. It briefly made the news this morning but East Yorkshire are going to keep the lid on this from now on. And so are you.”
That old bearlike anger surges through Geoff. “Wel , excuse me, love, but we’re under a chuffing big torch with this one. It’s a public interest case and we’re not going to stop talking to the press just because some—”
He loses the thread of what he is saying the moment the JPEG file opens on the screen. He sees the boy’s large, muscular naked body, covered with wounds that are unlike any he’s ever seen. Massive chunks of his neck, chest, and stomach appear to be eaten away, the flesh rendered a drained rose pink from the saltwater. These aren’t injuries done in any conventional way—knife, bul et, or basebal bat.
“They must have set dogs on him.”
“No. It wasn’t dogs. And there was no ‘they.’ Only one person did this.”
It doesn’t seem possible. It can’t be possible.
“What kind of person?”
“These are vampire bites, Superintendent. As I said, the UPU is a countervampirism unit. We work nationwide, liaising with members of their community.” She delivers this in the same deadpan tone she has deployed since entering the room.
“Community?” he asks incredulously.
She nods. “Closest tal y we have is seven thousand, nationwide. It’s hard to judge as they are very mobile, and there’s a lot of cross-traffic between various European cities. London, Manchester, and Edinburgh have the three highest per capita rates in the UK.”
His laugh is more forced now, sounding jagged and bitter. “I don’t know what they slip in your tea in Manchester, but this side of the Pennines we don’t go hunting ghouls and goblins.”
“Neither do we, I assure you. We only deal with threats we know to be very real.”
“Like chuffing vampires?”
“As I am sure you wil understand, this is a very sensitive issue and, for obvious reasons, we don’t publicize our work.”
The image she eventual y stops on is a naked woman with possibly a hundred or so bite wounds, like deep red smiles across her blood-spattered legs and torso.
“Jesus chuffing Christ,” says Geoff.
“What I do, with my team, is liaise with key members of the bloodsucker community, much of which can be done in and around Manchester. You see, in the past, vampires were exterminated.
Manchester and Scotland Yard trained members of Special Branch with crossbows.”
Geoff flinches away from the computer screen, from the dead girl. He is feeling quite il now. He urgently needs to get rid of the taste in his mouth. He grabs the can of orange Tango he bought urgently needs to get rid of the taste in his mouth. He grabs the can of orange Tango he bought with his pastry, pul s it open, and glugs it back as Alison Glenny keeps talking.
“We deal with the community directly now.” She pauses for a moment, apparently to check if her words are getting through. “Talk to them. Negotiate. Establish trust and gain information.”
Geoff sees Derek’s head go by the window and he rushes to the door, Tango in hand. “Derek?
Derek? ”
The commissioner keeps walking down the corridor. He turns briefly to repeat what he said on the phone, and there is unquestionable fear in his normal y tranquil blue eyes. “Do as she tel s you, Geoff.” And then he turns again and is just his silver hair and black uniform, before he disappears down another corridor.
“So, what do y
ou want us to do?” he asks, when he steps back in his office. “Fil our water pistols with holy water?”
“No,” she says, closing her laptop and placing it in her briefcase. “You see, we have cut down incidents like this by nearly half. And we have done this by establishing mutual rules and respect.”
She tel s him about the Sheridan Society and its list of untouchables.
“So, love, let me get this right. You come in here, talking like something off CSI: Transylvania and expecting me to believe in the existence of a swarm of chuffing Draculas living al over the shop, and then say there’s nowt we can do to stop them?”
Alison Glenny sighs. “We do masses to stop them, Superintendent. If you are a vampire today, you stand less chance of getting away with murder than any time previously. It’s just that we prefer third-party solutions. Vampire against vampire. You see, we have to think of the greater good. Our main aim is to handle this without public knowledge.”
“Right, yeah. And what if I decide to make it public knowledge?’
“You’d be dismissed and declared insane. You’d never work for the police again.”
Geoff swigs the last of his Tango, keeping the fizzy liquid in his mouth a moment before swal owing back. The woman is deadly serious.
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“I need everything you’ve got on the Stuart Harper case so far. Everything. Do you understand?”
He absorbs the question while observing the flaky crumbs and the smal circle of grease on the paper bag. “Yes, I understand.”
Radley Makeover Day
At lunch break, out on the yard, the pupils of Rosewood Upper are divided, subconsciously, according to gender. The boys are active, playing footbal or keepie-uppie or engaged in mock or genuine fights, dead-arming each other or swinging each other around by their bags. The girls talk and sit, either on benches or on the grass in groups of three or four. When they notice the boys, it is more with confusion or pity than with fawning admiration, as if they aren’t just separate genders but distinct species. Wise, proud cats licking their paws and looking with disdain at the floppy overexcited spaniels and aggressive pit bul terriers seeking to claim territory that can never be theirs.
The one unifying factor, this sunny afternoon, is that both girls and boys want to be clear of the old Victorian school buildings and safely out of the shade. And normal y, on any equivalent day before this, Clara Radley would be fol owing her friends out into the golden light and doing her best not to let the migraine and nausea show.
Today is different. Today, even though she is with Eve and Lorelei Andrews, a girl whom nobody likes but who manages to dominate every social situation she’s part of, it is Clara who is leading them to a bench in the shade.
She sits down. Eve sits on one side of her, with Lorelei on the other, stroking a hand through Clara’s hair.
“It’s incredible,” says Lorelei. “It’s just, like, what happened ?”
Clara eyes Lorelei’s wrist and its thick blue veins and catches the scent of her deliriously rich blood. She is frightened at how easy it would be, right now, to close her eyes and lose herself to her instincts. “I don’t know,” she manages. “A change of diet. And my dad’s put me on these supplements.”
“You’re just, like, al hot al of a sudden. What foundation are you using? Is it Mac? Must be, like, Chanel or something.”
“I’m not using any foundation.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’ve switched to contacts, though?”
“No.”
“No?”
“And she doesn’t feel sick anymore, either,” adds Eve. Clara notices she sounds annoyed by Lorelei’s sudden interest in her friend. “That’s the main thing.”
“I was lacking vitamin A apparently. That’s what my dad said. And I’m eating a bit of meat now.”
Eve is confused, and Clara remembers why. Hadn’t she told Eve some story about a virus? She wonders if her dad has told her the truth yet. About the Radleys. If he has, she obviously didn’t believe him, but maybe a doubt is setting in right now.
Clara has other worries too.
Mrs. Stokes’s solemn words about Stuart Harper at assembly this morning.
The kids from Farley, talking on the bus.
Her parents arguing last night.
Rowan drinking blood.
And the simple undeniable truth that she has kil ed someone. No matter what else she does or says in her life, nothing would change that single fact.
She is a killer.
And al the time there is superficial old Lorelei. Lorelei, stroking her and gushing away, who would cuddle up to Hitler if he shaved his mustache and got a nice indie-boy haircut and some skinny jeans. Lorelei, the girl who starved herself for weeks before failing an audition for a TV
show on Viva cal ed Teen Dream Beauty Queen UK—Series 2: Chic versus Geek.
“You just look so good,” she says.
But then, as Lorelei keeps stroking, Clara senses someone walking toward them. A tal boy with perfect skin who, she takes a second to remember, is her brother.
“Oh my God, is this Radley makeover day or something?” asks Lorelei.
Clara shrinks back against the school wal as her new-and-
improved brother stands in front of them, staring straight at Eve with worrying confidence.
“Eve, I want to tel you something,” he says, without a stutter.
“Me?” says Eve, worried. “What?”
And then Clara hears her brother do what she told him he should do. Now, though, she pleads with her eyes for him to stop talking. He doesn’t.
“Eve, you know you said yesterday—on the bench—that if I had anything to say to you, then I should just say it?”
Eve nods.
“Wel , I just want to tel you that, in every possible way, you are the single most beautiful girl I have ever known in my life.”
Lorelei stifles a giggle at this, but no blush arrives on Rowan’s cheeks.
“And before you moved here,” he continues, “I didn’t real y understand what beauty was, the completeness of it . . . and if I spent my entire existence without doing this, then I’l probably end up compromising on everything else until I find myself in twenty years working away at a job I only half wanted to do, living with a woman who isn’t you, with a house and a mortgage and a sofa and a TV with enough channels to stop me thinking about what a car crash my life is because at the age of seventeen I didn’t walk across the schoolyard to this most beautiful and enchanting and captivating person and ask her if she wanted to go out with me. To the cinema. Tonight.”
They are dumbfounded, al of them. Lorelei is entirely snigger-less. Clara is wondering precisely how much blood Rowan must have consumed (and, guiltily, if there’s any left). And Eve is wondering about this warm fuzziness inside her as she stares into Rowan’s confident, yearning eyes.
“Tonight?” she manages to ask, after about a minute.
“I want to take you to the cinema.”
“But . . . but . . . it’s Monday.”
Rowan doesn’t quiver. “I thought we’d be unconventional.”
Eve considers. She realizes that she does in fact actual y want to go with him, but reason is setting in. She remembers something. “It’s, er, my dad . . . he . . .”
“I wil look after you,” says Rowan. “Your dad doesn’t need—”
A voice breaks the moment. An aggressive, spat-out shout coming from the direction of the field. “Oi, dickweed!”
It’s Toby, running toward them, with his face wrinkled upward in hate.
“Get away from my girlfriend, you freak!”
Eve scowls at him. “I’m not your girlfriend.”
But Toby keeps on with the same theme. “Fly away, Robin Redbreast. Fly the fuck away.”
But Toby keeps on with the same theme. “Fly away, Robin Redbreast. Fly the fuck away.”
Clara’s heart p
ounds.
Something is going to happen here.
Toby’s eyes switch to her, the hatred stil as strong.
“And you,” he says, “you sneaky little whore. What the fuck did you do to Harper?”
“She didn’t do anything to Harper,” says Eve. “Just leave her alone.”
“She knows something! You Radley freaks know something!”
“Leave my sister alone.”
Rowan is standing in front of Toby now, as other pupils start to notice the commotion.
“Rowan,” says Clara, not knowing what to say in front of these people.
But it’s too late to cool things down. Toby is pushing her brother across the yard. His hands press into Rowan’s chest, trying to provoke a retaliation.
“Come on, slo-mo. Come on, ghost face. What have you got? Come on, impress your new girlfriend. Yeah! That’s a joke! Like she’d touch a freak like you!”
“Oh wow,” says Lorelei. “Fighting.”
And al the time, Clara is watching her brother’s face, knowing he could change and blow everything at any moment.
Toby pushes him one final time and Rowan fal s back onto the concrete.
“Toby, stop it,” says Eve. She is off the bench but Clara is ahead of her.
She reaches her brother, kneels in front of him. His eyes are stil closed but she sees his teeth change behind his lips. A subtle movement of the skin. She knows what it means.
“No,” she whispers, as Toby keeps taunting him. “Rowan, listen to me. No. No. Please. He is genuinely not worth it.”
She squeezes his hand.
“Don’t, Rowan.”
People are watching them, and laughing. Clara doesn’t care because she knows he’d only have to open his mouth right now for it al to be over.
“No, Rowan, no. Be strong, be strong, be strong . . .”
And he listens or seems to, because he opens his eyes and nods, knowing he must protect his sister by not giving anything away.
“I’m okay,” he tel s her. “I’m okay.”
They walk back to their afternoon lessons, and she is quite relieved when Eve lets Rowan down as gently as possible.