Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

The Bash Street Gang called itself the Circle of Light. Lorrimer Van Helsing's Knights Templar were Joseph Hawkins, Adam Cochran, Reginald Bird and Peter Craven. The names meant nothing to her. Most were known to the police, with violent previous. It wouldn't surprise her if this shoddy little lot ended up famous. Martyrs to their cause.

They all went back to Shooter's Hill in black mariahs.

The press had been told to wait for an official statement, but weren't having any of it. The crowd of reporters outside the police station was agitated. Long after the warm pubs had shut, they gave off a beery, inky funk. Kate tried to shrink and hide among big policemen. Surely, the Fourth Estate would be more interested in who'd been arrested than which journo was getting privileged access. Fullalove of the Gazette, a Fleet Street veteran, recognised her and called out, 'What's the story, Katie?'

She pretended not to hear him.

'Come on,' he insisted. 'You've the ears of a bat. Cough up.'

'I'm a witness, Jamie,' she said, making a hands tied gesture.

'Witness to what?' asked Stenning of the Express.

She was hassled by hacks she owed drinks, favours and money to and hacks who owed drinks, favours and money to her and hacks she wouldn't trade drinks, favours and money with if the earth caught fire. They tried to invoke a solidarity none of them would have felt with an exclusive at stake.

'Enough of that,' said Bellaver. He pulled her away from the wolfpack and escorted her up the stairs into the nick. 'Do I have to lock you up too?'

She assured him she wouldn't talk. He let her go. The nick was crowded. Anger in the air.

Bellaver was sick to his stomach and his men were on the dangerous side of irritable. Even placid George Dixon flashed fangs at the holding cells, while Regan and Herrick showed wolf faces and growled through peepholes at the Bash Street Gang. If the Circle of Light had thought vampires were out to get them before, they should be happy now.

Bellaver gave a 'hands off' speech to his men and summarily told WPC Rogers to end her shift. With one of the Squad on the way to the morgue, he knew there was a risk of unfortunate accidents. The Super wasn't like DCI Charlie Barlow, whose New Town Task Force was famous for never bringing a felon to arraignment without something broken. On Bellaver's watch, suspects in custody did not 'fall down stairs'. Persons helping the police with their enquiries were not to fetch up drained dry and packed under a cell-bed.

Donna Rogers was partially out of uniform, herringbone civilian coat and chiffon headscarf over blue serge skirt and white blouse. She arranged with the night desk sergeant  -  not the odious Choley, but a trustworthy Northern Irishman named Lynch  -  for her duties to be covered. She dealt with the practicalities as if she were off home to cope with a burst pipe rather than a dead boyfriend.

Kate couldn't read Rogers. Was the vampire woman so far gone she didn't feel anything? Some new-borns got hard fast. Griffin had said they were cooling. Leaving the WPC in the wind right now was a bad idea  -  though her Super, and everyone else, had so much to deal with it was unlikely she'd get special treatment.

It wasn't as if there was any big mystery. B Division already knew what the attack on campus was about.

The Circle of Light had set out to even the score for Carol and Laura. Two vampires for two warm girls. They hadn't reckoned on their first viper kill being a police officer. Van Helsing, at least, must realise how big a mistake that was. His merry band of thugs were too stupid or sullen to see it. Yet.

Dr Hardy wouldn't be required to suss cause of death. The hole in Griffin's head, made by wood and silver, would have killed anyone. Due to the pioneering efforts of Jack the Ripper, the world knew a stake or silver through any major organ  -  not just the heart  -  brought true death to a vampire.

Kate could imagine what the Bash Street Gang would have done to her in the back of Van Helsing's VW.

Tom Lynn, the boy in the kaftan, was in hospital, healing rapidly. He wouldn't be showing off his guitar skills for a while, since his hands were burned into claws. From experience, Kate knew that being able to grow back skin and sinew was all well and good but it still hurt like a bastard. For months. After eighty years, there were no analgesics which worked on vampires. Heightened senses meant heightened pain receptors. Part of the deal. Oh, you didn't look at the small print when you turned? Tough luck, chum.

Finding time to take pity on her, Dixon brought a cardboard box from Lost Property and told her to take her pick from a selection of specs. She tried random pairs until she found something close to her prescription. Red horn-rims with flamingo-wings. They could have belonged to Danny LaRue.

She could see again.

Detective Superintendent Bellaver was fending off phone calls from interested parties. He would not be pressured into making statements until he had to. While he had the Circle of Light in custody, they'd get the proper grilling.

None of the Bash Street Gang were masterminds. Even Lorrimer Van Helsing, a Professor of Anthropology, was pretty much an imbecile. He'd been kicked off the faculty of St Bartolph's after his one-man sit-in failed to disrupt Mrs Brabazon's office routine in the School of Vampirism for even a morning. Croft had been away at a conference that day, or he'd have taken the would-be vampire hunter's head. Vice-Principal Goodrich had no alternative but to sack Van Helsing. An anti-discrimination complaint was working its way through the system. Leading a guerrilla raid on campus would presumably shift those forms to the bottom of the pile.

This personal history explained why Van Helsing chose to target the college in his 'retributative strike'. Bellaver suspected the Circle had a source on the force, and had followed B Division's lead back to St Bartolph's. After a lightning moment of deduction, Kate suggested the Super give Sergeant Choley his turn under the interrogation room lamps for further information.

The sorry crew were booked, had their dabs taken and posed for pictures. Adam Cochran, aka Desperate Dan, didn't resemble his previous mug shots. They could do wonders with plastic surgery, nowadays. Sir John Rowan could transplant Cochran's bum skin to his face, if he could be bothered.

A reporter had telephoned Enoch Powell, waking him in the small hours. The MP told the papers he didn't endorse Van Helsing's circumvention of the law and recited a paragraph which explained this was exactly the sort of violence that would become commonplace if the vampire population were allowed to grow unchecked. That was like saying it wouldn't rain so much in England if they had fewer church fetes.

After she'd given her statement to a sour-faced Jack Regan, Kate was allowed to look through a two-way mirror at Joe Hawkins aka Dennis the Menace. He had a thick pad of bandages stuck to his neck. She identified the bovver boy as her assailant. Hawkins was comfortable in custody. It was what he expected. Wanted, even. This proved he was right to hate and fear and strike first. Against procedure, Regan showed her Hawkins's form. He was a passionate Drakky Basher, usually as part of a gang.

If Eric DeBoys, who was giving his statement elsewhere, had killed Hawkins, Kate wouldn't have cared. Even if it weren't a fair fight. If Hawkins were waylaid by an entire order of Black Monks and chewed to bits, it'd be no more than he deserved. She hated Hawkins all the more for making her think like that, think like him.

Hawkins scratched at his wound. Even through glass, Kate smelled blood. Her thirst quickened. She sucked air over her teeth. He looked at her as if she were in the room. He blew a kiss and smiled. His shorn head made him seem like a big baby.

'If it wasn't vipers, it'd be something else,' said Jack Regan. 'Joey hates students and hippies and blacks and coppers as much. Going to love doing bird, he is. Toads like him thrive in prison. Should hang the lot of 'em.'

She reminded herself she didn't believe in that.

Peter Craven  -  Plug, Griffin's murderer  -  would not go to the gallows. He was sixteen, still in school. He'd have to wait two years and murder someone else if he wanted to hang.

Kate and Regan walked along the dimly lit corridor adjoining the interrogation rooms. One-way windows made each room like an aquarium tank.

Craven shifted, handcuffed to the table, trying to strike up a conversation with the mirror. He had shoulder-length hair and smiled too easily, but his eyes were already like Hawkins's. Nailheads in a board. He whined about his knee, which had taken a bash  -  Nezumi's handiwork. He seemed relieved it was all over. He thought he'd just get to finish his schooling in Borstal. She wondered if he even knew he'd killed a copper. At the least, Craven would be detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure. For a long time.

She tried to see the boy as a victim, cajoled and manipulated, threatened and lied to. His monstrousness had been fanned. She turned vampire overnight. It had taken years to turn Peter Craven into what he was.

His mum was outside, talking to the reporters. She'd already started asking how much her story would go for on the open market.

'Why is he so chirpy?' she asked Regan. 'He's dead to rights.'

'He's got in with his mates. It's why he was so eager to fire the first bolt. The others have crosses tattooed on their sides. Hawkins has three. Craven can get his, now. He's done one of us. A step up from Drakky Bashing. He's FVK now. A Fearless Vampire Killer.'

'So they've done this before?'

'Or say they have. Two of 'em are full of shit. Probably turned up with a coal scuttle full of ash and bone and said they'd topped a Carpathian. No doubt about Hawkins. Nasty piece of work. Herrick's digging up what we can get to stick on him. Put names on the crosses.'

'What's the answer?' she asked. 'Education?'

'I'd educate 'em all right,' said Regan. 'All the way up to an exam they wouldn't pass.'

For the next few hours, Kate looked through interview room window-mirrors as if flicking between TV channels. Bellaver took Van Helsing, who had dragged in his brief, Jasper Lakin. The lawyer's argument was to claim that the attack was only supposed to be an act of guerrilla theatre to draw attention to the vampire problem at St Bartolph's, but Van Helsing's lads got out of hand. Van Helsing said as little as possible and let Lakin do the talking for him.

Regan was given a free run at Craven, who mainly wanted his viper-killing quarrel back so he could get it framed. He freely admitted his part in the raid and was proud to be the only one to stake a vampire last night.

Bird was given to a couple of B Division newcomers, Perryman and North, who went round the houses with him and couldn't get him to remember his own name, occupation or place of residence.

Cochran was in hospital, under guard, having his face seen to. His interrogation would have to wait.

Hawkins, the most interesting face, would have been Griffin's. He'd had a knack of getting through to the harder nuts. Bellaver had to trust Pickering, a little, whiny, bald, fanged fanatic, to take a run at the unresponsive skinhead. Hawkins, bored, said nothing but kept staring at the mirror.

According to Dixon, DeBoys and the other Black Monks were helpful. They gave articulate, concise statements which agreed with each other. They'd make impressive witnesses in court, earning them gold stars in any copper's book. Observing a commotion, they'd taken steps to cool the situation until the police could respond. Kate wondered how cool Cochran was just now: he was only alive because Anna's venom had anaesthetic/narcotic properties (which she hoped someone was analysing).

The students were polite. Dixon made sure they stayed out of the incident room which was papered with pictures of Carol and Laura, alive and dead. DeBoys politely asked if they could leave before dawn. Bellaver had no reason to keep them around. The Super disapproved of the general public taking action in such cases but had to thank them for thinking fast. Kate knew they'd saved her life. Nezumi had slipped away and no one mentioned her; not even Craven of the shattered knee, who didn't want to admit he'd been nobbled by a schoolgirl.

'Besides poor Julian, the worst thing about this is the distraction,' said Dixon. 'An open and shut case which is going to get a lot of ink. The papers will be all over it. By tomorrow, the public will be against us and for them. In the meantime, whoever killed those girls is free and liable to do it again. We have to waste time on these monkeys. They're stopping us catching the vampire murderer.'

'The murderer is their wet dream, though,' she said. 'As long as he's out there, killing innocent warm women, then all vampires are monsters, fit only to be staked. He's the best recruiting sergeant the Circle of Light could have.'

Could there be a tie-up between the killer and Van Helsing? Croft and he had been on the same faculty, after all.

All the interrogations ended at five a.m.

Kate glanced along the windows and saw the interviewers standing, gathering their notes, and leaving. Their subjects remained seated. Uniformed constables came into the room to take breakfast orders.

Only in England... commit a murder, and have your pick of tea and jam or marmalade on your toast.

'Hello hello,' said Dixon, 'what's going on here then?'

It took a moment for Kate to register what he'd seen. In Craven's room, a WPC jammed a chair under the door-handle. Donna Rogers. She'd either not gone home when ordered or snuck back when everyone was busy.

Kate had a track-and-zoom moment.

Rogers turned. Craven gave her an insolent smirk. He quite fancied himself with the ladies.

Then he noticed the WPC was a vampire and shut off the come-on.

Donna Rogers' mouth grew to four times its usual size. Lamprey-teeth projected. She drooled bloody spittle. Her eyes were red marbles.

Craven looked to the mirror with the beginnings of panic. He rattled the chain that fixed him to the table. Uncuffed while answering questions, Regan had shackled him after the interview was wound up. Was that procedure? People were going to ask. Rogers tore Craven's chair out from under him. He fell with a bump, chin against table. That drew blood. Rogers wiped a smear off his face and licked it with a long, liver-coloured tongue.

The murderer was crying for his mummy now. So loud Kate thought the woman might hear him from outside the nick.

The door shook. Bellaver's voice sounded through it.

Kate made a fist and smashed the mirror. Blood scent caught in her nostrils.

'Donna, no,' she said.

Rogers, realising she was out of time, picked Craven up and took a bite out of his neck which exposed bone, severed arteries and scraped away meat. She chewed and swallowed and let gore gush into her maw.

Dammit, Kate's fangs sharpened.

The chair under the doorknob dislodged. Bellaver and Regan rushed into the room and restrained Rogers.

Craven fell, dead. Kate saw it as if in slow motion. Gobbets of blood went everywhere. His wrist was still fixed to the table. His head flopped back, loose. His neck was nearly bitten through.

In sudden death, the boy's eyes showed expression  -  pure terror. Then nothing. Until Rogers bit him, Peter Craven hadn't really bought all the vampire-hating stuff Van Helsing poured into him. He just wanted to be like his mate Hawkins, hard and feared. He wanted to earn his cross and be part of the gang.

Finally, Donna Rogers had put the fear of vampires in him.

'Well done, love,' said Bellaver, sarcastically. 'Know how difficult it's going to be to clean up this mess?'

Rogers' face was back to its normal configuration, but everything below her eyes was painted with blood.

She spat out meat and gristle.