Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3)

Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) Page 40

Carol Thatcher still sewed her name in dresses. When she went to big girls' school, her mum probably bought a supply of tags which had lasted a lifetime. Griffin  -  less of a musicals fan than his Super  -  said he recognised Carol from his spell on the Ob Pub Squad, but official identification was necessary. Models  -  that was the deceased's profession on the tax books  -  habitually shared and stole fab gear, so there was a slim chance another bird was kitted up in her clobber. Timmy Lea was packed off to the morgue with WPC Rogers to view the body. Bellaver said he could go home after that, provided he didn't stray too far.

Before leaving, Timmy asked Kate something she'd heard before.

'Will she come back? Like you did? As a...'

He made fang-teeth with curled forefingers.

'It doesn't work like that, Mr Lea. She'd have to have drunk vampire blood before, ah, death.'

His face fell, hope squashed. He got in the Austin with Rogers, who lifted her veil to drive. B Division cars had slightly tinted windows.

'Did anyone tell him how Carol died?' she asked Bellaver.

Bellaver looked at Regan, who shook his head.

'Then how does he know?'

'Pimps' intuition?' Bellaver suggested.

Regan made fists.

'Another thing,' said Kate.

Bellaver looked at her, glumly.

'How do we know Carol's attacker didn't make her drink his blood before draining her?'

It was a longstanding irritation to the police that, by law, autopsy couldn't be carried out until three days post mortem on the off-chance the deceased might turn. That had happened, but rarely. The three-day delay meant coppers twiddling their thumbs before they knew whether or not they were on a murder enquiry.

'We couldn't be that lucky,' Bellaver said, 'but someone will sit shiva just in case. She was white-lips.'

White-lips. She knew the expression. A victim drained to death without the benefit of the Dark Kiss. No tell-tale vampire blood about the mouth. There were other callous terms: throwaways, non-returnable bottles, dolly mixtures.

'I suppose the bastard could have wiped her off with a hankie just for jollies,' mused Bellaver.

Most, if not all, new-borns passed through a transitional state indistinguishable from death. Kate's lasted only six hours. Three days seemed to be a cut-off point. The few who turned after then were brain-damaged ghouls, bereft of personality or intellect. Different clergymen cited the fact that Christ rose on the third day to characterise vampires as blessed or blasphemous. Legal precedents had been hashed over for eighty years. Turning someone against their will was a crime, but not murder. It sometimes led to lengthy, expensive lawsuits, referred to in chambers as Tepes v Westenra cases. The boon of potential immortality was weighed against the social opprobrium and medical inconvenience which came with turning vampire. Even with the National Health, a frighteningly high proportion of newborns didn't survive their first year. Among the fatal perils: allergy to sunlight, rapid ageing, out-of-control shapeshifting, self-destructive mania and a wasting condition whereby a new-born's body literally ate itself from the inside. Oh, and being murdered by Drakky Bashers. Kate argued that vampires who were profligate with bestowing the Dark Kiss on short-lived get should be subject to the penalty of law, which added to her already considerable unpopularity among the more traditionally arrogant, high-handed and thick-headed undead.

The dead girl might resurrect and identify her assailant. Kate couldn't see it happening.

From Timmy, they had a rough itinerary of Carol Thatcher's last hours.

Yesterday afternoon, she had been with the plastic surgeon Sir John Rowan. Timmy tried half-heartedly to pretend she had a consultation about mole removal, then admitted it was sex for cash. Sir John was one of Carol's regulars. Bellaver blanched at the list of ministers, big shots, famous entertainers, diplomats and crooks Timmy came up with. He envisioned another Keeler Affair  -  the kind of scandal-festooned investigation which gets vast press coverage, but also leads to officers on the case being quietly demoted to traffic duty in Welwyn Garden City. Carol generally shied away from vampires. Timmy thought she'd never been bitten (before), but she was a sometime professional arm-ornament for Baron Meinster, a disciple of Dracula who proclaimed himself the late Count's successor. The Baron took the trouble to appear in public with a succession of glamour gals, especially since his 1953 conviction for 'importuning for immoral purposes' in gents' conveniences around Chelsea. Meinster was in Rome just now, reputedly prostrate at the feet of Helmut Berger  -  so he was off the list of suspects.

After leaving Sir John's space age penthouse, Carol went shopping at Biba in Kensington, buying more clothes to sew tags in and never wear, toting them back to her Chelsea flat in an 'I'm Bleeding Britain' bag. She met Timmy at the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping, where they tallied up her week's take over fish and chips and a pint. Timmy didn't mind talking  -  bragging  -  about sex, but blushed like a convent girl when the subject of the money was raised. At the riverside pub, they met Clive Landseer, a young man with no visible source of income, and his latest discoveries, white-blonde male and female twins who 'came together'. Timmy was in awe of Clive, who'd been tossed out of several posh schools and talked like a toff. He'd also recently turned. The five of them went to a 'scene', which is to say a party, thrown (but not attended) by the Persian-American millionairess Syrie Van Epp on the Fevre Dream, a Mississippi riverboat reassembled on the Thames as a floating pleasure palace. Timmy dropped more names from pop music, fashion, industry and films. There were vampires among this in-crowd. Sebastian Newcastle, now a tycoon, bloated and replete after his hostile take-over of the Cyril Lord carpet empire. Herbert von Krolock, Baron Meinster's amusing ex. Mrs Michaela Cazaret, collector of art and artists. Paul Durward, the pop singer. Canon Copely-Syle, Black Cardinal in the Church of Satan, a frequent, combative guest on Late Night Line-Up. And Professor Caleb Croft, with a retinue of favoured students.

Kate would love to pin Carol on Croft. Again, they couldn't be that lucky.

The professor was most likely the biggest monster on the guest list. But she didn't see him being tripped up by a clumsy lust-murder. He'd been getting away with far worse for centuries. As a prime specimen of vampire behaviour B.D., he was the poster boy for rapine. Born Lord Charles Croydon, he'd been an eighteenth-century Hellfire Club rake. Even before turning, he used up and threw away wenches, relying on title and connections to evade the gallows.

Yes, there were drugs at the party. Half the guests were on Bowles-Ottery Pellets, which Bellaver guessed one of Croft's bright young things had likely brought along to spread the goodwill. Of course, there was sex. Kate felt sorry for Timmy, who spent more time totting up Carol's fees than having anything like a good time. Even he couldn't keep track of who went with who, though he reckoned Clive tried to get Carol together with the twins to put on a show for a newspaper columnist who 'liked to watch'. He knew Carol nipped into a private berth with one or more members of the band Forever More, just for kicks. More seriously, she balled the Emir Abdulla Akaba with Plainview Oil picking up the tab. A busy night's work. Timmy got seasick, though the boat was solidly moored. He didn't say so, but Kate supposed Clive Landseer put something amusing in Timmy's gin fizz. He was lucky not to wake up tattooed and ring-sore.

Bellaver wasn't happy with the jet set dramatis personae. The sort of people it was hell to have as witnesses, let alone suspects. Being famous, beautiful, wicked and rich in various combinations meant they all felt the rules  -  not to mention the law  -  didn't apply to them. Just getting them to answer questions would be a colossal chore. Most would be too spacey to provide evidence which would stand up in court.

Eventually, Timmy came round to where he'd come in.

When he last saw Carol, she was talking with Nolan, the photographer. He had a couple of tall, scary birds with him. Girls with hungry eyes. Not tarts, but your actual fashion models, too skeletony to get by in Carol's trade. Probably not vampires, since they'd need to show up on film to make a living. Timmy said Nolan expressed an interest in shooting Carol.

'I'll tell you who wants shooting,' Bellaver muttered. 'The lot of them.'

Then, Timmy lost track of Carol. There was nothing to say she didn't give Nolan the brush-off, latch on to Newcastle or Croft or Durward or Vampires Unknown, and stagger off down whatever tragic life-path led to Maryon Park. But Bellaver had to start somewhere and Thomas Nolan was elected. There was even a smidgen of evidence: Griffin came back from litter duty with a flattened cardboard package found near the body. It had contained a roll of photographic film, and not the cheap stuff they developed at Boot's.

The Super told Griffin to hop off and track down Nolan's gaff.

WPC Rogers came back with the official word. Timothy Lea had verified the identification and gone off, pale and shaking. Carol Thatcher's pencilled name could be rubbed off the forms and replaced with biro ink.

'If she'd got stabbed or overdosed, nobody'd give five new pence,' Bellaver said. 'But she had to get fanged.'

Rogers  -  a thin-faced, weirdly attractive woman  -  had colour in her cheeks. Kate wondered if she'd nipped Timmy in the car. He was the type who'd do whatever a woman in uniform told him.

Griffin came back. He'd found the address of Nolan's studio. Pottery Lane, Notting Hill. Evidently, the photographer lived there too, over the shop.

But Griffin had other news. He brought in a Super 7 transistor radio.

'What's the matter, lad? Can't bear to miss Two-Way Family Favourites?'

The lunchtime news was on. Kate recognised the voice.

'...if this is indeed the first case of its kind since the War, and not merely the first case to have been publicly owned as such, we can take little comfort in that, for it was an inevitable consequence of government after government turning a blind eye to the escalation of the situation. A girl  -  a young girl  -  is dead, has been sacrificed... Let her not die in vain, let us draw a line and say "this far, and no further".'

'Enoch,' said Bellaver. 'Flaming Enoch.'

The snippet ended. In accordance with the BBC's policy of balance, a vampire clergyman  -  Kate's old boyfriend Algernon Ford  -  came on next. Algy uttered sympathetic platitudes about the friends and family of the victim and insisted the fiendish, probably foreign culprit was unrepresentative of the long-established, patriotic British vampire community.

'Griffin, did I or did I not make it plain that certain details of this case should not reach the press?'

'You did, Super.'

'And yet those details are now on the wireless?'

'Yes they are, Super. None of our lads is responsible.'

Kate knew it was unlikely that the information had come from inside B Division. It could have been Brent, the police surgeon, or whoever  -  she hadn't thought to ask  -  found the body in the first place. Most likely, it was a local copper. Every nick had some friendly officer willing to swap a pint for tit-bits. Kate had sources like that. Griffin was one of them when in the mood. This was more likely a malicious leak.

'It'll be Choley,' she said.

'Who?' asked Bellaver.

'The desk sergeant with the black spot and the greasy fingers.'

'If so, he will rue the ruddy day. Griffin, you're too wet for what I have in mind. Rogers, go and dragoon someone terrifying, like Herrick or lawd-help-us Berkeley-Willoughby, then set them loose on these premises, fangs full out. I want this shop locked tighter than a fraidy cat's arsehole. Intimate that throats will be ripped if I hear any more of this on the news before we have the murderer clapped in silver in the dock at the Old Bailey.'

Griffin nodded and took his radio away. Rogers went out in search of an attack dog.

'Too late,' Kate said. 'The fraidy cat's out of the bag.'

Bellaver looked sour but did not disagree.