Suckers

by Anne Billson

  I didn't want to look any more. I looked down at the floor instead, and spotted a diamante crucifix gleaming in the middle of a lot of broken glass, so I picked it up and watched the light glint off it in all kinds of crazy directions, and decided it was the prettiest thing I had ever seen.

  'You OK?'

  'We need black bags,' I said, trying to be practical. 'We have to dispose of all the pieces separately.'

  'Honestly, I don't think that's necessary.'

  'Did you get it right this time?'

  He looked at me coldly and said, 'No.' I limped towards the doorway and my knees buckled and gave way. He stopped me falling. 'You're not OK at all, are you?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'I mean, no. To be honest, I'm not sure.' Then I felt myself going all floppy, and told him, 'I think I banged my head.'

  When I woke up I was no longer wearing the soggy pink bathrobe but wrapped in a large quilt, on the bed, surrounded by damp towels and bloodstained tissues, and my hands were stinging like crazy. Duncan had one of them wedged between his knees and was peering closely at it through his spectacles, picking the glass out with tweezers. The sensation of the steel tips foraging under the skin made my eyes water. By the time he'd finished, my palms looked as though they'd been flayed. He applied TCP and wrapped them in bandages. They didn't hurt so badly after that, so long as I kept my fingers bent.

  He lay down beside me. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of salt and blood and perfume. The first thing I saw when I opened them again was the bite on his neck. The skin was broken in two places, and the wounds were moist and leaking. 'What about this,' I said, prodding it with a bent finger.

  He winced. 'It's OK. I'm fine.'

  I wasn't so sure. 'You might turn into one of them.'

  He sighed and sat up and gingerly probed the wound. 'It's sore.'

  'It's all puffy,' I observed.

  'It'll take more than one lousy bite to turn me into a vampire.'

  This was true, but there was no need to take chances. 'We should put something on it. Salt? Alcohol?'

  We looked at each other. 'How about the Lord's own logo?' he suggested, and fetched a glass of brandy and dunked I my cross in it.

  'Here, let me,' I said, making him lie back with his head to one side. Then I knelt over him and pressed the crucifix against the bite. There was a sizzling noise, and he tensed and said 'Ouch.' I thought of the way Lulu's skin had hissed whenever the metal had touched it, and perhaps he was thinking of it too, because I could feel him getting stiff. It was the best erection he'd had of late, so I parted my bathrobe and worked myself down on to it, trying not to use my hands, so that it reminded me of those pass-the-banana party games. Then we bounced around for a bit, trying and utterly failing to synchronize our loin movements. The throbbing behind my eyes diminished, then returned with renewed force until I thought my head was going to explode, like the man in the Kuroi commercial. But it didn't. I collapsed and tried to get my breath back.

  After a while Duncan asked if I'd finished. I thought he was talking about the sex and felt vaguely insulted, but then realized he'd been referring to his neck.

  'Let me check.' There were blisters on the skin. This time when I applied the cross there was no sizzling, nor was there another erection, though he said ouch again. He put his arm round me and we stayed like that, not speaking, until I said what I really fancied was the cocoa he'd promised me earlier - light-years ago, it seemed now.

  'Me too,' he said. 'I'll do the bathroom in the morning.'

  'She'll crumble in the daylight,' I said. 'No problem, never had a chance to toughen up, not like Violet. The older ones are trickier.'

  I hadn't meant to be insensitive, but there was an acerbic edge to his voice as he said, 'Don't I know it.'

  'Duncan...'

  'Yes?'

  'She said you'd know what to do.'

  'Who said?'

  'Lulu. She was told that you would know what to do when she got here. So what do you suppose that was all about?'

  "Well, we all know what I did,' he said bitterly. 'I stuck it to her real good.'

  'Maybe that's it.'

  'What?'

  I shook my head. 'Sorry.'

  'Yeah,' he said. 'I should never have let her go.' He made a feeble joke about how he ended up murdering all his girlfriends. I laughed and said I trusted him not to murder me. 'Well you should be all right,' he said, 'since you're not my girlfriend.' Had I not been so exhausted, the remark would have stung almost as badly as the broken glass.

  I fell asleep while he was in the kitchen preparing the cocoa, and woke later to find a mug of cold pale liquid stagnating on the floor. I stayed awake long enough to notice the other half of the bed was empty. Duncan was sitting in the wicker chair by the window, gazing out at the first streaks of daylight in the east. Before I drifted back to sleep, I thought I could hear him snuffling very softly to himself. But I might have been mistaken.

  Chapter 6

  It was nearly lunchtime when I woke up. Duncan had already popped out to buy the Sunday papers. We sat on the bed and went through them. Nothing, not the slightest hint of our story in any of them except the Sunday Sport, which had plastered the headline LONDON SHAKEN BY VAMPIRE EPIDEMIC across its front page, with a fuzzy reproduction of one of Dino's photographs dwarfed by a large colour shot of a busty blonde with fangs. 'Great,' I said. ' 'Now we'll never get anyone to take us seriously. What on earth possessed you to send the photos to the Sport?'

  'I didn't,' Duncan said testily. 'I thought it was you.'

  'Well, we're screwed now anyway,' I said, holding up the business section from one of the broadsheets. There was a big announcement at the top of the page, MULTIGLOM BID FOR ICI, and further down a photograph of two men shaking hands. One was fat and balding and horribly familiar; he was smiling at the camera and showing his teeth but this time there was nothing unorthodox about his dental work. Out loud I read, 'Under the new chairmanship of Mr Ferdinand Drax, the Multiglom takeover looks set to win additional support from the upper echelons of the business community.'

  The whisper of a suspicion tiptoed into my mind. I riffled through the rest of the newspaper until I found the letters page and checked the address at the top. Readers were instructed to send their letters to Multiglom Tower. In all, we found three readers' letters pages with the same address.

  'I think we may be too late with the newspapers,' I said.

  The bathroom was a mess. Duncan had left the window wide open and drained the water away and the body in the bath now resembled the remains of a large Chinese takeaway regurgitated by a team of drunken rugby players. It smelled almost as bad, but at least it had decomposed so thoroughly there was nothing left to remind us of Lulu. This was just bad meat.

  'What now?' I asked, one of my hands clamped over my nose to block out the stench. 'Can you just flush it down the plughole?'

  Duncan made a face. 'I'll wait. It's coming apart quite nicely.' We had made an unspoken pact to refer to the corpse as 'it'. Vampires were things, not people, and it would have been dangerous for either of us to start thinking otherwise.

  My head still ached, and there was a small soft lump on the temple where I'd banged it. I felt hungover and bloated and extremely depressed. It was past two when I finally summoned the willpower to get up and get dressed. Duncan said he'd put my red dress in the washing-machine because it was all trampled and stained, so I helped myself to the contents of Lulu's wardrobe. She wouldn't be needing them now.

  I wondered what would happen between Duncan and me, now she was gone for good. Everything might have been perfect if it hadn't been for the hovering presence of Violet. But then again, if it hadn't been for Violet, Lulu would still have been with us, and I would still have been confined to the outskirts of Duncan's life. There were pros and cons whichever way you looked at it.

  When I had dressed, I went into the living room and found him rooting through an expensive-looking handbag, black leather with lizard-skin trimming. 'Lu
lu's bag,' he said - quite unnecessarily, because I knew it wasn't mine.

  I curled up on the sofa next to him. 'Anything interesting?'

  'Make-up. Hairbrush. Filofax. Tissues. I don't know, I've never gone through a woman's bag before. I guess it's all the usual junk.'

  'Let's look at the Filofax.' He handed it over and I went through it. The pockets were stuffed with old receipts, Lulu's driving licence, and credit cards. The diary section was almost blank, apart from the occasional bit of cryptic scrawl: dentist 2pm, Jack & Alicia, phone Katy. The latest entry was for the previous Tuesday, and it read, RM/Multiglom Tower/Malassus Warf 10am. 'Nothing we don't already know,' I said, handing it back and noticing that Duncan was half-sitting on a plain white envelope, trying so hard not to draw my attention to it that it became impossible to ignore. 'What's that?'

  'Nothing,' he said. 'An invoice.'

  'From the bag?'

  'Of course not,' he said, sounding annoyed. 'It just came in the post.' He upended the bag and shook it so that various bits and pieces came tumbling out: hair grips, hand lotion, a packet of mints. When it was empty he held it out to me. 'You want this?'

  'Sure,' I said. 'Thanks. It's really nice.' Then I told him I was going home, though I didn't tell him the reason - that I was dying for the bath I'd never had the night before. I waited for him to suggest I come back to see him later on, but he didn't. I then dropped a strong hint that he should come round to see me at my place, Krankzeits or no Krankzeits, but he didn't pick up on that either. 'So what are we going to do?' I asked finally. 'About Multiglom, I mean.'

  'I guess I'll have to talk to her.'

  'Talk to Violet? Are you mad?'

  'It's me she's after. She's not interested in you.'

  This was true, and. I couldn't work out why it should make me feel so aggrieved. He was almost making it sound as though I were irrelevant to the entire business.

  'There's not much else we can do,' he said.

  'We can do some serious damage. Put her out of the running.'

  'We tried that before, and look where it got us. No, this has gone on long enough. It's time I faced up to her.'

  'She'll kill you,' I said. But what really worried me was that I didn't think she would kill him at all. As soon as Duncan and Violet connected, it would all be over, one way or another. It was essential they be kept apart. 'Listen,' I said. 'Before you do anything rash... Tomorrow's the fourteenth, isn't it? Well, that's my appointment with Murasaki.'

  'You can't be serious. You're not thinking of going.'

  'Why not?' I said, sounding more optimistic than I felt. 'I've been there before. I know my way around. I'll take precautions.'

  'I won't let you go. Christ, this is like Lulu all over again.'

  'I'm not Lulu. I can look after myself.' I was touched by his concern, but a little worried in case he insisted on accompanying me. The varnish on my nails was chipped; I worried at it with my teeth until another strip peeled off, and told him, 'I think I've got an idea.'

  Duncan said it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard, but couldn't come up with a better one. It wasn't as risky as he thought, because of course I'd done this sort of thing before, though he wasn't aware of that. And I had an ace up my sleeve, or at least a high-ranking card which might be mistaken for an ace in a bad light. And the light was all bad around here.

  Just as I was preparing to set off homewards, the phone rang. Duncan answered and poked the receiver into my ribs. 'Weinstein. For you.'

  'Hello, Ruth,' I said. 'Thank you so much for the wonderful party.'

  'Dora, it was awful. At least you took off before it got really bad. Sara had one of her fits, and we had to get an ambulance, and I kept getting calls from her sister, only I couldn't find out which hospital they'd taken her to, and no one knows where she is. And Charlie disappeared, I still don't know where he got to, and I couldn't find Jack either, and then everything fell apart, and somebody got beaten up, and somebody else fell through a window and cut their head open, and there was blood everywhere. And then all these gatecrashers turned up, and...'

  'Sounds great,' I said.

  'Oh, and Lulu arrived just after you went, and she was furious when I said Duncan had already left. I've never seen her like that before, she was spitting poison. Did she catch up with you in the end?'

  'In the end,' I said.

  'Listen, you remember what I was talking about last night? Well, there's a meeting this evening. Can you make it?'

  'You've got to be kidding. I am not schlepping all the way up to Archway again.'

  'No, no, you don't have to. You know the gallery? Well, in the offices upstairs. Just round the corner from you.'

  'Matt's old office? After all these years? Good Lord.'

  'Matt? Oh, you mean Matthew. Yes, he'll be there as well. Nine o'clock. We'll have drinks and things.' I told her it sounded perfectly lovely, and hung up. I had no intention of letting myself in for another question and answer session with Ruth.

  Duncan emerged from the bathroom wearing pink washing-up gloves and carrying a bottle of Liquid Gumption. 'What did Weinstein want?'

  'She's throwing another party. Tonight. Want to come?'

  'One dose of Ruth per weekend is quite sufficient.'

  He saw me to the front door without taking his rubber gloves off. On the doorstep he asked, 'What are you doing tonight, I mean after the private view?' At last. I'd thought he was never going to ask.

  'This and that,' I replied noncommittally.

  'Well, be very careful. Especially if you're out after dark. Don't take those earrings off again.'

  This wasn't what I'd been expecting to hear, 'So what are you up to? How about getting together?'

  'Dora, you know what happened last night,' he said reproachfully. 'It's something I'll have to come to terms with. I need to spend time on my own.'

  As I was walking away, I replayed his words in my head. They seemed ominous. I wondered what had been in the white envelope; perhaps Lulu had written him a letter, or perhaps it really had been an invoice. I vaguely remembered him saying he'd got it in the morning mail. But he must have been confused, because there were no postal deliveries on Sundays.

  On the way home, I took a slight detour and found myself in the crescent where Jack and Alicia lived. The curtains were still drawn in their first-floor windows. I wondered whether Jack had made it back from the party in one piece, and - on an impulse - rang their bell to find out. The entryphone speaker crackled, and a woman's voice said, 'Yes?'

  'Alicia. It's Dora.'

  I waited for the sound of the lock being released, but there was silence. I pressed the bell again. There was a long pause, then Alicia said, 'You can't come in. Go away.'

  'Alicia? It's me. Dora. Is Jack there? Let me in.' There was another pause, then a click as the lock was released. I barged in before she changed her mind.

  She was peering down over the banisters, face pinched and anxious. 'Sorry, Dora. Are you all right?'

  'I'm fine,' I said, climbing the stairs towards her. 'Why shouldn't I be?' I was surprised to find her wearing a dressing-gown over dance tights and a naff T-shirt with the Mona Lisa on it. Her hair was scraped back into an elastic band. Alicia was normally very finickety about the way she looked.

  'Jack phoned this morning,' she said, as though it was quite normal for husbands to phone their wives in order to say things to them. 'He told me not to let anyone into the flat, though I can't believe he meant people we know, like you.'

  We went into the living room. There was just enough light filtering through the closed curtains for me to see it was unusually messy - old newspapers and unwashed cups all over the place, and a slightly rancid smell I couldn't identify. Abigail's cot was in the middle of the room, and Alicia's knitting lay on the table, next to a half-finished mug of tea. She asked if I wanted some, and disappeared into the kitchen to pour me a cup. When she handed it over I took a sip and almost choked. It was stone cold.

  'Where did Jack
call from?' I asked casually.

  'Don't know,' she said. 'He sounded funny when I spoke to him. Not like Jack at all.'

  I was wondering whether he'd been phoning from Roxy's, and whether it wasn't time someone told Alicia what was going on, when all of a sudden she began to snivel. I looked on, embarrassed, as she wiped her nose with her sleeve. The small bundle of grubby pink blankets in the cot began to whimper in sympathy, and Alicia stared at me accusingly. 'Shit. Now you've gone and woken Abby.'

  'Wait a minute,' I said, but she turned to scoop up the baby, and as she did so I caught a glimpse of Abigail's face. It was grey, and the eyes seemed unnaturally black and beady. It stopped crying for a moment, breathing in with a sort of whiffling noise before opening its mouth for another bawl. 'Christ,' I said. 'It's got a lot of teeth already.'

  'She,' said Alicia. 'She's not a thing. And she's got a name, Dora. She's called Abigail.'

  I didn't really blame Alicia for being tetchy. I would have been tetchy too, if my husband had forbidden me to talk to anyone before buggering off for a dirty weekend with his personal assistant. Then I saw she was rucking up her T-shirt and preparing to feed the baby. I tried not to imagine what might happen when those sharp little teeth fastened on to one of her swollen nipples, but an image of Lulu in the bath popped unbidden into my brain and I began to feel lightheaded. 'Don't you think you should give her a bottle or something?' I said. 'I wouldn't breastfeed, if I were you - it's too dangerous.'

  Alicia looked amazed and exasperated at the same time. 'Don't be stupid,' she said, quite vehemently. 'It's been proved time and again that mother's milk is better than the bottled stuff.'

  'I didn't mean it would be dangerous for the baby.'

  But she had stopped listening. I eyed Abigail doubtfully, and Abigail stared back - rather maliciously I thought. The little beast had stopped crying; now she was licking her lips.

  I tried once more. 'Don't do it, Alicia.'