Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

Arc-lights rigged inside the police perimeter made the building site seem like a film location. The harsh, fizzing glare hurt less than the sun. At midnight, Kate felt sharper, less muddy-headed than at dawn.

Griffin lifted the smeared polythene as if it were a see-through shroud. Laura Jane Bellows was folded up inside a wheelbarrow. She had long dark hair and white, white skin.

'Gawd,' said Bellaver.

Rogers looked critically, as if judging the murderer's aesthetic sense in posing the corpse. Dried blood was smeared around the girl's throat. Whoever had bitten her made a mess of it. On her last night out, Laura had worn a black bikini, black thigh-boots and a black crochet poncho. Witnesses would remember the outfit.

The dead girl had been identified quickly. Her dabs were on file from a pot bust. She hadn't paid her fine. So far as anyone could tell from a quick ring-round, Laura was an ordinary flower child. From Hatfield, originally  -  where was that?  -  she'd shared a flat off the King's Road with two other girls. After dropping out of college, she'd worked in a coffee bar and a travel agents but hadn't stuck to either long. She'd been scrounging rent money from her parents and going to parties she wasn't really invited to. Kate recognised her as one of the incidental pretty faces in Nolan's photos of the Fevre Dream bacchanal. Girls like Laura Bellows were welcome anywhere. Heavies who might resolutely guard a door against speccy reporters would step aside at the flash of a smile and the twirl of a poncho-fringe. There was a downside. Girls like Laura Bellows and Carol Thatcher weren't in short supply. Their murderer wasn't alone in seeing them as disposable, to be used once or twice and thrown away.

Laura's friends admitted she'd been knocking about with Clive Landseer, who'd soon be quizzed about his unfortunate habit of knowing murder victims. As a paid-off parasite, Landseer's duties included trawling for biddable popsies to dress any social occasion. On Saturday, he'd roped Laura in to decorate Syrie Van Epp's boat bash. She told her sceptical flatmates she was only expected to dance on the Fevre Dream. Kate knew how the game worked. Have a drink, have a pill, have some more, they're just like Smarties... This is an MP, be nice to him, chicken... yes, he likes you, who wouldn't?... Go into a cabin and have some fun... you've seen him in the papers and on the telly, and he likes you loads... We're all fancy-free, chicken... have another drink, another pill... three's not a crowd, you know, it's an experience... Try this, it's called a purple passion... you've no hang-ups, love, you're not square, you're an angel, a princess... nothing you don't want to do, and I'll make it up to you, but I'd appreciate it... another drink, another pill, another man... hang loose, babe.

Some time last night, Laura Bellows had been bitten and bled out. Some time today, she had been dumped in a wheelbarrow.

'We were supposed to find her tomorrow morning when work started,' said Bellaver. 'But kids "playing" turned her up. Probably on the scrounge for stuff to nick, bless 'em.'

They were in Deptford, not far from Maryon Park.

Five streets of back-to-back houses had been flattened, wrecking balls from Langly Construction accomplishing what the Luftwaffe couldn't. Three tower blocks were due up here. Currently, it was a ghost community: the shells of homes, a bulldozered playground, street-signs thrown in a pile, rubble and rubbish. She'd been at the press launch where Sir Billy Langly proudly showed off the plans for his high-rises. Critics likened them to vertical rabbit hutches or battery farms in the sky. To Kate, they looked like coffins. She'd spent decades trying to stay out of coffins.

The dead girl had been left in place until B Division took a gander at her in situ. The discovery of a body on the site wouldn't hold up work. The police  -  and Laura  -  should be gone before the builders brewed up their first Monday morning round of tea.

The body was supposed to be found. Whoever the killer was, he didn't care about secrecy. He might want a high profile. These maniacs were often frustrated showmen. He'd copyright a 'trade-name' next, like Jack the Ripper or the Steel Claw or the Peeping Tom.

The Super told Griffin to take away the polythene.

A St Bartolph's scarf was knotted round Laura Bellows' white arm.

'There it is, Katie,' Bellaver said. 'You were asking.'

'Funny place to wear a scarf, Super,' said Griffin.

'The murderer must have tied it there,' said Rogers.

'I hate the ones who play parlour games,' said Bellaver. 'The silly buggers imagine they're matching wits with you, sending their darling little messages, planting clues all over the place. It means they think you can't touch them.'

'Sometimes they're right,' said Rogers.

Bellaver shook his head. 'Anybody can be nicked. Maybe not for what they've done, but for something.'

That chilled rather than cheered Kate. She remembered other policemen with that attitude.

'Caleb Croft teaches at St Bartolph's,' she said, neutrally. 'That's a St Bartolph's scarf.'

'You think Croftie's a drinka pinta nighta man?' asked Bellaver. 'Two pintas, one nighta?'

'He'd drain London dry if he could get away with it.'

'Leaving the empties tied up with a bow?'

She shrugged. That didn't seem like the grey eminence she knew. But the scarf meant something.

Was she acting like a Black and Tan? Trying to fit up someone she didn't like even if it meant the real culprit went free? She worried about such niceties. That told her she was still herself, still Katie Reed. She wasn't (yet?) only the Vampire Katharine. She held herself to a higher standard than she expected of the monsters. Which didn't mean Croft wasn't guilty, just that a case against him had to be based on more than prejudice. She wouldn't frame him, even if he was the worst vampire unimpaled in Britain.

Laura Bellows might have been killed before Carol Thatcher. The girls had certainly been exsanguinated within an hour of each other. Kate's first thought was feeding frenzy. A pack of leeches, battening on the victims. Your basic blood orgy. The Living Dead, the vampire bike club, supposedly enjoyed regular Gang Fangs, to initiate new members or get rid of wasted groupies. In that scenario, the girls would have suffered multiple bites. Carol and Laura had only the classic neck punctures. Autopsies would have to confirm it, but that suggested a single biter. So: one killer, wolfing two victims at a time. That indicated an overpowering red thirst. Nolan's photos suggested Carol died where she was found. Laura was killed somewhere other than the building site where she was dumped. Maryon Park? Leaving the bodies in different places didn't fit the profile of a vamp gone blood simple. Spree-killers weren't hard to catch: they kept tearing into people until they were brought down with silver or the stake. This monster wasn't going to make it easy. They were dealing with a cunning, ruthless, experienced murderer. Bellaver was right: that scarf was a message... an invitation.

In the daytime, St Bartolph's College was within sight of this place.

The Super chewed the trailing ends of his moustache, thinking it over.

'Tell you what, Katie  -  you go, with the blessings of B Division, and beard the beast in his den. If you can make a case against Croftie, bully for you.'

'If not, you haven't pissed off a member of the Establishment for no good reason? It'll have been radical muckraker Katie Reed barking up the wrong tree?'

Bellaver gave a 'take it or leave it' shrug.

'I daresay the Diogenes Club could shoulder some of the blame,' he said.

'While I go back to school, where will enquiries take you?'

'Chummy Clive Landseer is an obvious first port of call. He smells like as right a tree to bark up as any. Fact: he knew both women. Fact: he's a new-born vampire. Fact: he's an excessive little shit.'

Kate couldn't disagree. Past the dome of artificial light, she saw the silhouette of a spire. St Bartolph's chapel. She was being reeled in. It was as if that scarf were knotted around her neck.