by Anne Billson
'Sorry,' I said without thinking. Then I did think. This man was going to rape me, or worse. 'I've got to go,' I said, tipping up the driver's seat and lunging for the door handle.
He grabbed my wrist and hauled me back. 'Go where? After her? Oh no, you stay here with me.'
'I left a note; my parents know where I am; they'll call the police...'
'Bullshit,' he said, peering into my face. His attention made me feel uncomfortable and I quickly looked away. 'You are on something, yes? I can see from your eyes. What have you been taking?'
'Nothing,' I said, pulling my wrist free and rubbing it sulkily. 'I think you'd better let me out.'
He chuckled. 'Maybe later. Tell me, have you been introduced to Violet, or is it just the guy you are interested in?'
'Neither.'
'Don't lie to me. You were following her tonight, yes? How much do you know? Who is the guy?'
'And who the fuck are you?' I asked, outraged. 'Why don't you tell me what's going on?'
He said he would, all in good time, if only I behaved myself and sat quietly in the passenger's seat. On the way to Kensington Church Street we stopped several times at red lights. I had several chances to open the door and make a run for it, but something held me back. I had already decided that if I was going to be horribly murdered, it would have happened already, back in the cemetery where it had been nice and quiet. In fact, I had the feeling the man with the foreign accent had probably saved me from being horribly murdered. Not for the first time that night, curiosity got the better of me. I snatched a couple of sideways glances at him as he drove. He was dressed in brushed-denim flares and a brocade jacket, but something told me he was not of the peace and love persuasion. He had longish straw-coloured hair with sideburns, a beaky nose, and wire-rimmed spectacles. The hair looked bleached. I decided I didn't like him one little bit.
We parked in a side street. He frogmarched me to an anonymous brown door and pushed it open. Inside, a steep flight of stairs led downwards. I hovered warily. 'Well, go on,' he said. 'I have no sinister intentions. Here is the only place I know that is open at this hour. London is bad like that.' I started down, and he followed.
We were greeted at the bottom by a man in a shabby dinner jacket who asked to see a membership card. The man with the foreign accent said he'd forgotten it, but dropped several different names and that seemed to do the trick because we were waved in. It was a drinking club, unremarkable apart from its opening hours, decked out in peeling brown and maroon like any shabby old bar in urgent need of refurbishment. There were three or four middle-aged couples sitting around, talking quietly in advanced but practised states of inebriation. I slid into a corner booth and my companion, if you could call him that, fetched a bottle of red wine and two glasses. I sniffed the wine.
'It is not so bad,' he said in an offended tone. 'It is not German.'
'But you are?'
'My name is Andreas Sigismund Grauman.'
'Dora Rosamund Vale,' I said. We shook hands.
Andreas Grauman was not a vampire. He told me later that Violet called him her 'Hatman'. He never wore hats, he said. It was an ancient Moldavian term meaning Commander-in-Chief. He said this with a straight face, and I couldn't for the life of me tell whether or not he was having me on.
He was one of the creepiest people I'd ever met, but I was naive enough to think I could pump him for information. We circled each other warily for a while, smoking cigarettes (his cigarettes - I'd long since run out) and sipping wine, each trying not to give too much away while trying to find out how much the other knew. I got the impression that none of this conversational shuffle was strictly necessary - he was teasing me and enjoying it. I asked how long he'd known Violet. He told me they had a sort of working partnership which went 'way back'. Meanwhile, he was trying to find out more about the 'guy'. 'Do you know that guy? Is he your boyfriend?' I assumed he was referring to Duncan, and said no, we too had a sort of 'working partnership'.
Grauman grinned sarcastically. 'We are not getting very far. Why don't you tell me? You can trust me, you know. I am on your side.'
'Oh yes,' I said.
He gazed at me earnestly. 'You want to have your boyfriend back. I want you to have your boyfriend back. So - we both want the same thing.'
I squinted at him through the smoke from my latest cigarette. 'Don't tell me that woman - that thing - is your... mistress?'
He laughed. 'No, no, no. That would be like die Blutschande. Like fucking my own mother. But Livia is very precious to me, like my favourite aunt, and I do not want her to continue to meet with your friend. It is bad for her, you understand. Bad for health, bad for business. There are certain things she must do while she is here in London, and she is not doing them. Because of him. He is fucking everything up.'
'Livia? That's her real name?'
'She has many names.'
'How old is she really?'
He leaned forward conspiratorially. 'I tell you what. I tell you her age, and you tell me all about your boyfriend.'
'Not a very good bargain. You tell me her age and where she comes from and where she gets her money from.'
'OK.'
'And you go first,' I said.
He didn't know exactly how old she was. She either habitually lied about her age, or had genuinely lost count. But he put it at somewhere between two and three hundred years.
'Fernand Khnopff,' I said, more to myself than to him.
He stared at me in amazement. 'You have seen that painting?'
'I've heard about it.'
He looked grim. 'Well, there you are. It is like I told you. She is becoming careless.'
'Go on.'
She came originally from Moldavia, he said, which was now a part of the USSR. She had led a normal, respectable life as a daughter of Bogdan until, in a port on the Danube, she encountered a certain Italian aristocrat.
'Then what? Who was the aristocrat?'
'I have told you my story. Now you tell me yours.'
'You haven't finished. Where does she get her money?'
He sighed. 'There is a very old man who lives in Colorado, in the United States of America. He is extremely rich. There is another old man who lives in a castle in Mexico. He too is a millionaire. There is an old woman, I think, who owns a small island off the coast of Japan. There are others, I am not sure where - maybe in the Aegean, or Nepal. But I know they are all very old, and all very rich. They give her money.'
'Why?'
'Because they are vampires too.'
'Good Lord. How many vampires are there?'
'Not many. Like many species, they face extinction.'
'Why don't they spread it around, then? Bite more necks?'
Grauman sighed, his eyes glazing over. 'It is not so simple, not like in the movies. One bite may be enough to infect you, but it will not bestow on you the full range of powers. That process is long and arduous, and extremely dangerous, as the recipient will hover on the threshold of death for six or seven days, while fluids are still being exchanged. And, so long as this recipient exists, the original vampire is unable to bestow his or her gift on another. At least, not in its entirety.'
'How inconvenient.'
'Yes, it is. Most inconvenient.'
'So what is Violet being paid to do?'
His eyes snapped back into focus. 'I have kept my part of the bargain,' he said pleasantly. 'Now you will keep yours. Tell me your story, or I will break both your arms.'
I looked at him to see whether he was joking, but I didn't think he was. 'What was it you wanted to know again?'
'Tell me about your boyfriend. What is his name?'
I sipped some wine. 'Duncan.'
He snarled. For a second I thought he really was going to lean across and break my arm. 'Duncan what?'
After the first shock of waking up to find him there, I had found him simply creepy. Now he was beginning to frighten me again.
'Duncan Fender,' I said.
A look of
such ferocious anger crossed his face that I quickly estimated the fastest route to the door, just in case I had to make a run for it. But then he sighed and sat back and lit another cigarette.
'Duncan Fender,' he said. 'I thought as much.'
Chapter 4
I saw a lot of Andreas Grauman in the next few weeks. Or rather, he made sure I saw a lot of him. He was keeping tabs on me, but I was careful not to give too much away. I refused to tell him where I lived, for example - I didn't want him springing any nasty surprises. But it was true I was spending more time in W11 than in NW1. I had a friend called Matt who was attempting to run a tiny independent record company from a couple of rooms at the dingy end of Blenheim Crescent. I talked him into giving me a set of keys so I could use the place as a makeshift base at night. It was somewhere to make coffee, chop up sulphate, and smoke cigarettes - all fast becoming my favourite hobbies. And it was only a short walk away from Duncan's.
Violet killed people. I knew that now. She wasn't turning them into other vampires; she was tearing their throats out and drinking their blood. Down and outs, drug addicts, people who wouldn't be missed - but they were still people, and I wasn't happy about it. The cemetery was obviously a favourite dining area. I followed her as far as the gates, once or twice, but I had seen it once, and had no desire to see it again, and I couldn't bring myself to follow her in. I never found out what happened to the corpses, but there was never any mention in the press of a serial killer at large. I had the impression, from something he let slip, that one of Grauman's duties was to clear up after her. This struck me as a demeaning task, and I wondered why he put up with it.
Sometimes, I wondered if I were transferring my obsession from Duncan to Violet. I couldn't get enough of her. I felt cheated during the daylight hours, when she disappeared into the basement of her big empty house in Holland Park. It was as good as a fortress, and it needed to be. The windows were barred, and the door was solid as a rock. Without keys, or a bulldozer, there would be no way of getting in. Grauman warned me not to try; the place was rigged, he said.
While she slept, I browsed in libraries, mulling over books and taking notes. I made lists, concocted theories. I theorized, for instance, that the traditional effectiveness of garlic as a deterrent was due to its playing havoc with the finely tuned sense of smell, triggering off some kind of debilitating migraine. I was curious about how people were turned into vampires in the first place. It would be a long drawn-out process requiring more than one blood-draining session - probably a whole series of them. I began to look even more closely at Duncan when I saw him, but while he was obviously having trouble keeping normal hours he didn't seem particularly distressed by the garlic I waved under his nose.
I still dropped in on the occasional college seminar, justifying my absences by dropping hints about the grand designs in which I was engaged at home. In fact, I was turning my dealings with Violet into a sort of artistic project. Matt let me fix up a bulletin board on his wall and, since it was quite decorative, never asked what it was all about. I constructed a collage of maps, coloured cotton, and drawing-pins to record Violet's movements. The blue drawing-pins recorded her wanderings, the green stood for her meetings with Duncan. Fatalities were red.
My main reason for going in to college, though, was to keep myself supplied with drugs. Ruth Weinstein had lots of hippy friends and had consequently become our resident dealer. Mostly she supplied various forms of hash, but the rich kids liked to splash out on cocaine for special occasions, and she turned a tidy profit on the side. I had never had the money to fritter away on recreational drugs, but I needed to stay awake at night. Ruth supplied me with the means of doing so, usually on credit, and every so often I would fiddle the till at the cake shop to pay her off. This was her idea of making friends; she was convinced we were going to be chums for life.
Meanwhile, I was meeting up with Grauman in smoky pubs and greasy cafes where I would push coagulating food around my plate and drink endless cups of coffee. After that first meeting he was sparing with his information, even though I tried to coax him into commenting on some of my theories. I never believed for a moment that he was interested in me personally. I think in his grotesque Teutonic fashion he might have found me diverting, but I kept reminding myself I was only a means to an end. There was no question in my mind he was ruthless, vicious, and entirely without sentiment - and that once I had served my purpose, he would calmly arrange for me to be removed from the face of the earth.
For now, I was determined to spin my usefulness out for as long as possible. Grauman wanted Duncan out of the way and he thought I could help him there. And what was in it for Andreas? I had no idea. He insisted his interest in Violet was neither sexual nor financial. He talked about duty, to sponsors and to heritage, but I could tell that underneath the high-sounding words, it all boiled down to something personal. Grauman and I were very much alike in that way. Naturally, I wondered what it would be like to go to bed with him. The thought of it made me squirm, and not from anything remotely resembling pleasure.
One day, I had just finished rearranging some mushrooms on toast when he made an outrageous suggestion. He'd wolfed down his own food and I'd watched in repelled fascination as he had whipped out a length of dental floss and sawed at the gaps between his teeth. I had witnessed this ritual several rimes before. He had asked more than once if I realized fewer teeth were lost to decay than to gum disease, had talked at length about plaque and disclosing tablets, had even advised me on what type of toothbrush to buy. Now he finished with the floss and dropped it into the ashtray, then sat back and took a long, cool look at me, a faint smile on his lips, but not in his eyes. I had learned never to trust his smiles.
'You always wear black,' he observed eventually. 'And your skin is unusually pale. Good God, Dora, don't you ever go out in the sun?'
'Not a lot.'
'If I didn't know better, I might think you were like Violet.'
'What? Me? A vampire?' I laughed.
He laughed too, but his laugh went on long after mine had faded. 'Speaking of which, I should like to ask a small favour. You will be in a certain place, at a certain time. You will not speak. You will do nothing, except take what is offered, and then you will give it to me.'
I glared at him. 'What the hell do you think I am? A messenger service? Do it yourself.'
I could tell he was wondering whether to use threats, but he opted for keeping it sweet. 'But that is impossible. You see, I am too tall, my hair is the wrong colour, and I am also the wrong gender. No one else can do this. Only you.'
The enormity of what he was asking finally dawned on me. 'You expect me to impersonate Violet.'
'Not impersonate, don't flatter yourself. No one could ever do that. You will simply be a stand-in, like in the movies.'
'And is she part of this? Does she know?'
After weighing the possibilities, he went for the truth. 'No.'
So it was that, two nights later, I was lurking in the undergrowth outside Violet's basement, dressed in my best black. I knew Grauman wasn't far away, but I could neither see nor hear him. My chief worry was that Violet would make an unprecedented decision to leave Duncan early and I would run slap-bang into her on her own doorstep. It crossed my mind that Grauman might have set the whole thing up specifically in order for this to happen. But then I dismissed my fears; it would have been too elaborate a ruse. He could have delivered me up to her at any time without needing to resort to that sort of baroque subterfuge.
While waiting for the appointed hour I explored the overgrown garden. In summer, any such freedom of movement would have been impossible, but now my path was not quite blocked by false cypress and rampant ivy. I smoked five cigarettes, one after the other, and was just about to light a sixth when the hinges on the garden gate creaked and the light from the street cast an elongated shadow across my path. My heart skipped a couple of beats; this was going to be more difficult than I had anticipated. The newcomer spotted me stand
ing there and swooped. I melted back into the foliage before he could get too close a look at my face.
But, as he approached, I saw my first impressions had been mistaken. I had been expecting a vampire, but this man was obviously human, and hardly a prime example of the species. It was impossible to be afraid of someone this puny, who had an Adam's apple bobbing up and down with nervousness. With a thrill of excitement I realized he was more frightened of me than I had been of him.
'Hello?' he whispered. 'Miss Westron?' He was clutching an attache case to his chest as though he thought someone was going to leap out of the shadows and snatch it away.
I followed Grauman's instructions and said nothing.
'Miss Westron,' he repeated, extending a trembling hand for me to shake. I ignored it. 'William Fitch,' he said, nodding like a car mascot. 'I've got the papers you sent for.'
'Oh good,' I said, before remembering I was supposed to be keeping my mouth shut.
'Do you want to go through them now?'
I shook my head and grabbed the case, but he continued to hover. 'Perhaps if I...'
I fixed him with what I hoped was a spine-chilling stare, and hissed, 'Go away.' His mouth opened wide, but no words came out, then he turned tail and fled. I watched him go, chuckling delightedly to myself. If this was power, I was already hooked. Being Violet full-time might be fun.
As soon as he was out of sight, I opened the case. It was full of loose pieces of paper and typewritten sheets, and I pulled out a bunch of crumbling yellowish cuttings. The top one was a picture of people milling around a blazing building, cut from an old French newspaper. The man nearest the camera had his mouth wide open and was yelling something. Visible in the background, wrestling with giant snakes and ladders, were harried firemen. My French was rusty but it wasn't hard to decipher the headline - Eleven Perish in Hotel Inferno.
I dug around in the case again and drew out a dog-eared black-and-white photograph of people sitting round a table in a restaurant, clinking glasses at the camera: two men, two women. One of the men was familiar; I knew I'd seen that face before somewhere and wondered if it was someone famous. One of the women was slender and chic, a bit like Audrey Hepburn only wispier and blonde. The other woman was a blur; she had moved while the shutter was being pressed and the flash hadn't been fast enough to capture her.