Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

AQUARIUS

Chapter 1

Sunday morning, before nine. A godly hour, the smug might say. Church bells were pealing in Greenwich and Blackheath. Merciless June. A cloudless sky. Blazing sun. Shade hard to find.

Like most vampires, Kate Reed was no fan of early summer. Nights passed in seconds, days crawled for a week. Her cheeks and the backs of her hands tingled with the beginnings of burns. She ought to be senseless in her tightly curtained flat, cocooned under her continental quilt. Ideally, she'd be in the Southern Hemisphere.

Grass shone golden-green, as if coated with reflective paint. She had a choice: oversize el cheapo sunglasses and calming turquoise blur or clear National Health specs and headache-making focus. Prescription shades, her idea of decadent luxury, cost what she made in a month. A good month. For a while, she'd got through daylight with the home-made option: granny glasses, tinted with felt-tip pen. Those got trampled by a police horse outside the American Embassy. The Guardian spiked her copy on the Grosvenor Square demo. Too partisan. And where was the vampire angle? Editors looked to her for that.

This morning, there was a vampire angle. So she could sell it...

...if the papers had room for a little murder. Monday: Andy Warhol shot in New York... Wednesday: Robert Kennedy killed in California... Yesterday: James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King, arrested at Heathrow Airport... Ongoing death tolls: Vietnam, Biafra, K?r. Soviet tanks massing on the Transylvania border. American riot cops loaded for bear in Watts, Selma and Jerusalem's Lot. France preparing an above-ground Gamma Bomb test on Bali Ha'i. The Troubles kicking off again in Belfast.

That was the week, that was...

Twelve months ago, 1967  -  the year of The Monkees. The Summer of Love. Kate had certainly been in love last summer. Twice. Not concurrently. She wasn't that kind of girl, or hadn't been so far. Now, 1968  -  the Year of the Monkey. The Summer of Something Else. The Burning Season? She'd lost the taste of last year's loves: a warm Hells' Angel, Frank Mills, and a vampire vicar, Algernon Ford. Neither trustworthy, both 'trips'... as the young were saying. The young also said 'never trust anyone over a hundred and thirty'. She wasn't that old. Yet.

It was coming down. The Age of Aquarius. The Permissive Society. The Kali-Yuga. The Revolution. Flower Power. Helter Skelter. The Hallucination Generation. Fear and Loathing. The White Heat of Technology. The Green Green Grass of Home.

No more water. the fire next time.

Jesus Saves... with the Woolwich.

Go to work on an egg! Burn, baby, burn!

Commercialisation. Radicalisation. Decimalisation.

People who'd been excited or apprehensive were now elated or terrified. It was no longer enough to report news. Journalists had to anticipate, comment on breaking waves, name and package trends for general consumption.

She was writing more for New Worlds than The Grauniad. Michael Moorcock, the editor, encouraged her to chronicle the New Terror. He reminded her of Frank Harris, her father-in-darkness, but was a much better writer. Mike coaxed something half-decent out of her. Along with the porny purple passages of Horatio Stubbs's serial Harelipped in the Bed, her supposedly inflammatory piece lost NW its Arts Council grant. She was still waiting to be paid. Mike was rattling out Seaton Begg paperbacks for rhino to plough back into the magazine. She needed fashion commissions from Woman or Compact to pay the rent. Unless they came through, she'd have to ghost 'confessions' to go between pin-ups in Bikini Girl or Wow Magazine. 'I Was a "Groupie Girl" for a Gore-Crazed Groover!' 'House of Thwacks!' 'Soho After Sunset!'

Squinting through Tizer-bottle specs, she acclimatised to the glare. She was in Greenwich, just outside Maryon Park. Some students wanted to use the tennis courts. They were kept back by blue-uniformed, tit-helmeted policemen.

As soon as she saw fuzz, Kate realised she was dressed like a burglar: black pocketless fly-on-the-thigh trousers, horizontally striped black and orange t-shirt with a cartoon bee on the front, black plimsolls, slightly ratty grey cardigan with sleeves long enough to cover her hands, oversized black peaked cap with a pom-pom. Her shoulder-bag wasn't labelled 'SWAG', but was cavernous enough to stash loot.

She showed her press-card. Fred Regent, a young plod she knew, let her pass. Kate was expected. A posh athlete complained and was ignored.

This was once Hanging Woods, a haunt of highwaymen. Then, Charlton Sandpits. Now, the place was tamed. One of those leafy public spaces the English loved to keep tidy but would prefer people not use. No litter, no dogs, no children, no vampires. A familiar, alien place, like the abandoned suburbs, cracked launch-pads and drained swimming pools J.B. Graham wrote about in New Worlds. So quiet you wouldn't know you were in a city.

Keeping to the path, she passed the tennis courts and walked over a gentle hill. The park was mostly grassy slopes, trees straining against dark green slat fences. She saw people near the treeline. A copper got in her way, gauntlet out in sign language for 'stop in the name of the law'. His helmet's blue visor was down, blanking his face.

Being a woman, mouthy, Irish, a leftie and a blood-drinker, she'd had her differences with the police. Even before the Terror, peelers shoved her about. Kate had been arrested as a suffragette and insurgent, as a rebel and rabble-rouser. She'd marched to Aldermaston and against Vietnam. She'd been force-fed, hosed down, truncheoned and garlic-sprayed. She'd been interned without trial, locked up for her own protection and bound over to keep the peace.

Helmet-head wasn't a riot cop. The visor meant something else. He wore B Division sleeve flashes. He was a vampire.

'Let her through, Herrick,' said a plainclothes officer. 'You know who she is.'

The pig stepped aside like a robo-man. Without seeing Herrick's face, she could picture his expression. Lips a straight line. Eyes red flints. No love lost.

Press credentials wouldn't get her into Maryon Park this morning if she were only on a crime beat. The early morning call made that clear. She was invited in her capacity as Associate Member of the Diogenes Club. Her shadowy capacity. Funny how you could be an enemy of the state and a secret civil servant at the same time.

She knew the OiC, Detective Superintendent Bellaver. He had a doleful, surprisingly groovy moustache. Most officers under him were vampires, but the Yard liked a living super at B Division. Old coppers' tales about the undead being not 'creative' enough for high-level police work were still trotted out. Your basic biter made a decent enough plod, all right. Nothing puts the wind up a scrote like a fang-flash and a speed-burst. But when it comes to a whodunit, you want a live mind on the job. The thinking was shite, but Kate was happy to leave that argument to vampire cops. Bloodsuckers in blue did her few favours. If anything, nosferatu filth tended to be bigger bastards than warm police just to prove they weren't soft on their own kind.

Detective Sergeant Griffin, a vampire, handed Bellaver a polystyrene cup of tea. The swirly violet pattern of Griffin's trendy Nehru jacket hurt her eyes. Bellaver took a swig of brown liquid and made a face as if a tramp had pissed in it. He looked like that most of the time, and no wonder.

B Division was Scotland Yard's unit for crimes involving 'the vampire community'. Kate thought being called a 'community' was one step from mandatory bat symbol armbands. After that came internment camps, then scythes and stakes.

Anticipating a Soviet crackdown on the limited reforms of Transylvania's Premier Torgu, Central European undead had been arriving in Britain since spring. Six weeks ago, the Tory MP Enoch Powell delivered an alarmist speech about Carpathian immigrants. He invoked 'rivers of blood' and not in any metaphorical sense. Lord Ruthven threw him out of the Shadow Cabinet, which only made him more popular with an aggrieved, resentful section of the warm population. Powell's followers were as keen on marching as any radical student and more prone to bursts of the old ultra-violence. Enoch was too patrician and parliamentarian to endorse street-fighting. Others were happy to carry flaming torches. Extremists like Lorrimer Van Helsing  -  supposedly descended from Dracula's arch-enemy, though Kate knew Abraham Van Helsing and couldn't remember him having children  -  came close to advocating extermination. The boot-boys had a craze for what they charmingly called 'Drakky Bashing'. Early morning assaults on lone vampires by gangs of short-haired thugs seldom prompted thorough police investigations.

'Enock is Rite' was scratched on her front door, above a crude cartoon of a bat with a stake through it. The building's other tenants were also vampires: Morgan Delt, an artist semi-permanently shifted into long-armed apeshape 'to make a statement', and a quiet Japanese girl whose nameplate was a kanji which meant 'Mouse'. Delt had Kate sign a petition against some Van Helsing rally and asked her out to a counter-demo, but she'd had enough of police horses. Even she thought it best to keep her head down rather than risk deportation. In Eire, vampires had by law to be referred to as Dearg-Dul to keep the Ghaeilge word in use. Silver-toting priests strode about Dublin in a righteous fury which made Enoch seem vamp-symp.

'Hello Katie,' said Bellaver. 'Sorry to keep you up after bed-time.'

'What's it all about, Alfie?'

'Nasty business. Potentially political. We've already seen off Peculiar Crimes. Bryant and May want to bolt it onto their Leicester Square case. It's no surprise your lot want it too. The Diogenes Bloody Club.'

'My lot aren't exactly mine.'

As ever, the situation between her and the British Secret State was delicate.

'I heard something about that. They'll never cut you loose.'

'They might not be them any more. Not in any sense I recognise. It's the Diogenes Happening now. Next it'll be the Diogenes Experience. Mycroft Holmes would not have approved.'

She'd eventually have to go to Pall Mall and report to Richard Jeperson, Chair of the Ruling Cabal. He got a lie-in and the Sunday supplements in his big circular bed. She risked spontaneous combustion. It was ever thus.

'Why was this place called Hanging Woods?' Bellaver asked, out of the blue.

'Why d'you think?' she responded. 'They hanged people here.'

'In a minute, you'll be sorry they stopped.'

'I've never been in favour of capital punishment.'

'Good for you, Katie,' said Bellaver. 'Twenty years on the job and I'm in favour of capital punishment in schools.'

The Super led her towards the trees. More uniformed police stood about, all vampires, one a woman. WPC Rogers' regulation hat came with a practical black veil. She darted birdlike looks about the park, quickened senses attracted to tiny sounds, scents and sights. It was overwhelming at first. Donna Rogers had the beginnings of a focus which would be handy in police work and offputting in her personal life. She could spot a new pin in a lawn and a peroxide hair on a lapel.

Geoff Brent, the warm police surgeon, was grave and useless. He wore a 1961 cream mac to spite the fabber world of this end of the decade. A sheet lay over someone on the ground. They weren't taking a nap.

'What makes this one of yours?' she asked Bellaver.

'It's a vampire murder, ducks.'

Flashbacks. Whitechapel, 1888. Jack the Ripper. France, 1918. The Bloody Red Baron. Rome, 1959. The Crimson Executioner. If there was a string of vampire murders, she tended to trip over it. She had to admit it looked suspicious.

'Not that kind of vampire murder,' Bellaver said, knowing what she was thinking. 'The other kind. Meet Carol Thatcher...'

He nodded. Griffin lifted the sheet.

A young woman. Formerly warm, now dead. Blonde, open-eyed. Make-up caked. Orange-and-pink Mary Quant dress torn off the shoulder, purple-and-taupe Balenciaga tights shredded, one white Courreges go-go boot missing. On her neck, two ragged punctures. The classic 'Seal of Dracula'.

Kate looked at Bellaver.

'How long since... ?'

'I knew you'd ask, so I checked out Edgar Lustgarten's Big Book of British Murderers. In London, this is the first one of these since the Blitz. 1944. The Blackout Bloodsucker. John George Haigh. Remember him? Disposed of the drained delicti with sulphuric acid. Guillotined 1949. Peculiar Crimes' Leicester Square case is a meat-skewer stabbing made to look like a vampire murder. Otherwise, there are rumours. But we scotch rumours. B Division is particular about closing those cases.'

Kate knelt by the dead girl, Carol.

'Vampires kill, all right,' said the Super. 'We don't need Edgar Bloodlustgarten to tell us that. Vampires kill like every other sod. You know the songs. "Couldn't stand the wife's nagging any longer so I shut her up." "He called my pint a poof so I went for him." On top of that, vampires get carried away and suck some poor popsy dry. A very specific type of manslaughter, Katie. I've seen too many bloated, befuddled mugs when sun comes up and the girlfriend's cold.'

She hadn't been there herself, but dreaded the possibility. The warm didn't understand what a mouthful  -  even a taste  -  of blood was to a vampire. Some vamps had contingency plans for how to get rid of the body, cope with the guilt and carry on. Kate cared more about not being a monster than about getting away with it when the red thirst became the red mania. Too many otherwise decent vampires lost self-control while battening on innocents. She wasn't immune. She was only a hundred and five, seventy-nine years a vampire. Her elder friend Genevieve confided that over the centuries she'd killed three people without meaning to.

'There are vampire villains out there too,' Bellaver went on, warming to the subject. 'Proper impalers like Waldo Zhernikov, smug leeches like Big Bloodsucker Hog and motorcycle maniacs like the Living Dead. They certainly kill people. And use teeth and claws to do it. But they kill because they want to or to prove a point, not because they need the blood. Blood's everywhere, Katie. You can buy it in a Wimpy Bar. Since they're at each other's throats all the time, vampire villains mostly kill other vampire villains. They'd do their own mum if she got between them and a payroll blag. Tears are not shed in B Division, truth be told, when the likes of Jack "the Bat" McVitie fetch up with tent-pegs through their ribs.'

Griffin gathered up the sheet and made a mess of it. WPC Rogers took it away and folded it properly into a square.

Kate had an impulse to touch the dead girl's wounds.

'This is what vampires used to do,' she said. 'B.D. Before Dracula.'

'On the nose, Katie. It's new and old at the same time. What you mob were like when folk scarcely believed you existed. Drag a bird off the street, bite her neck, suck her like an orange, chuck the peel in the bushes.'

'He'll do it again,' she said.

'Or she,' said the WPC.

'Good point, Rogers,' admitted Bellaver. 'Female of the species and all. But, returning to the nub  -  yes, he or she will most likely re-offend. Kill again. Haigh did six before Inspector Hornleigh nabbed him.'

Kate was sick to her stomach, disgusted with the way her fangs sharpened and the need pricked in the back of her throat. She knew this would be bad. There were implications.

'So here we are again,' Bellaver said. 'In the vampire-hunting business, God help us. Any tips?'

'Take early retirement?'

'No such luck.'

'Then, get a shit-proof sou'wester. When Carol gets her picture in the papers, it's going to start pouring.'

From his face, Kate saw Bellaver had already worked that out.