Descendant

One of the bobbies lifted the tarpaulin for her. Bullet jumped on to the bus and she followed him. “Pretty girl,” the bobby remarked, as I walked past him. I didn’t say anything. I was married to Louise, and I had always thought of myself as faithful. But I was surprised how pleased I had been when Jill had turned up.

I rejoined Charles Frith and Terence.

“Got everything you need?” said Charles Frith, peering at his wristwatch. “I must get back to Town by twelve thirty. Lunch with the minister, for my sins.”

“Jill — Miss Foxley — she’s seeing if she can pick up a trail.”

“Do we know exactly what went on here?”

“Attempted hijack, most likely”

“ ‘Hijack,’ eh?” Charles Frith seemed to like the American sound of that. “ ‘Hijack.’ Mm. Well, keep me informed.”

Inspector Ruddock came over, looking hot and cross. “There’s some press boys wanting to know what’s happened. And they say they’d like some pictures, too.”

“Tell them that somebody on the bus was infected with the Korean flu, and collapsed. The driver tried to take the bus to the nearest hospital and misjudged the low bridge. Everybody else on the bus has been quarantined, just to be on the safe side. You’ll give them have a fuller statement later.”

“Oh, I will, will I?” said Inspector Ruddock, aggressively. “And what will I tell them then?”

Charles Frith patted the silver pips on his shoulder. “I’ll let you know after lunch. Now I really must dash. Can’t keep the minister waiting.”

Beneath the Trees

Bullet spent over fifteen minutes sniffing around the bus, downstairs and up. When Jill emerged from the tarpaulin she looked pale and upset.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before. That was too horrible for words.”

“Are you OK?” Her hair was damp with perspiration and I lifted a strand of it out of her eyes. “Do you want a drink of water or anything?”

“No, I’m all right. It’s the way that they’re just sitting there.”

Bullet looked up at me and barked, twice.

“I really think he’s getting to like me.”

“Actually he’s warning you not to get too close.”

“Oh. Sorry. Sorry, boy. Do you think he’ll ever get to like me?”

Jill smiled. “Once he gets to know you better, I’m sure he will.”

“OK, then,” I said, “does he have a trail for us to follow?”

“Yes, he does, and I think it’s quite strong.”

I called out to Terence. “Terence! We’re going Screecher-hunting. You want to go get your car?”

“Oh! OK, then! Righty-ho!”

Jill and I walked along the crown of the road, trying to keep up with Bullet, while Terence crept along behind us in his Humber.

Although the sky was cloudless, we could hear distant collisions of thunder, and the lime trees along the avenue began to rustle uneasily. After only ten minutes we reached the entrance to a large public park, where there was a tarmacadam parking lot surrounded by giant elms.

“What’s the betting the Screechers were planning on bringing the bus here?” I asked Jill. There was a bus stop close, only ten yards away, for numbers 403 and 403a, so the bus would normally have passed this way.

Bullet hesitated and lifted his head. He sniffed in several different directions, as if he couldn’t make up his mind which way to go.

“I think they must have split up somewhere here,” said Jill. She took the scarflike piece of linen out of her purse and held it in front of Bullet’s nose to refresh his memory. Bullet immediately galloped through the entrance to the park and crossed the parking lot until he reached the trees on the far side. There he stopped again, and barked.

“He’s confused,” said Jill. “He can still smell something, but it’s different.”

We led Bullet up and down the parking lot for over ten minutes. Every now and then he lifted his head and sniffed the air, but the strong scent that he had been following from the bus seemed to come to an end here, very abruptly.

“You know what this means?” I said. “The strigoi have a car. Or even cars plural.”

“That’s going to make things damned awkward,” said Terence, mopping his face with his handkerchief. “How can we follow them if they’re driving around in bloody cars?”

I got down on one knee and opened up my Kit. Bullet snuffled around me suspiciously while I took out my compass and opened up the silver-filigree cover.

“That’s rather fancy,” said Jill. “What is it?”

“Strigoi compass. For locating any nearby Screechers.”

“Really? It looks like an antique.”

“It is. It’s nearly three hundred years old. The priests of the Romanian Orthodox Church designed it, in 1682, on the instructions of the Voivode of Wallachia, Serban Cantacuzino.”

“The who of where?”

I held the compass up higher, and slowly moved it right and left. “Serban Cantacuzino was a great social and religious reformer. He had the Bible translated into Romanian, and it started a huge religious revival, like the King James Bible in the West.”

The compass needle spun around and around. “He was determined to root out the strigoi, all of them, because they were so unholy.”

“Obviously he didn’t have much luck.”

“No. the strigoi got him first. Some treacherous boyars allowed a strigoi mort to slip through the window of his palace one night, and the poor chap was sliced open and completely drained of blood.”

The compass needle suddenly stopped spinning, and started to see-saw in between north and northeast.

“I’m pretty sure the strigoi mort must have driven off,” I told Terence and Jill. “But there are still some other Screechers not too far away. Bullet can smell them, can’t you, boy?”

Bullet growled in the back of his throat.

“It’s quite a thing, isn’t it?” asked Terence, bending over and peering at my strigoi-compass. “How does it actually work?”

“Look at the needle. It’s made up of pearl, copper and silver. Silver is highly sensitive to evil and moral impurity. Copper is responsive to lies and deception — ask anybody who has ever taken a lie-detector test. And pearl goes dark when you expose it to hydrogen sulphide.”

“Hydrogen sulphide?”

“That’s the principal gas given off when human beings start to decompose.”

“Golly,” said Terence. “That makes it sound almost scientific, doesn’t it?”

I stared at him. Almost scientific, my rear end. He was talking about a theological tracking device invented and constructed by some of the leading intellects of the seventeenth century. I didn’t argue about it, though. I had a job to do, and very little time to do it in.

Gradually, nervily, the needle began to settle down, although it was still twitching from side to side. Whatever it had picked up, it was still quite a long way off, and the needle couldn’t seem to make up its mind exactly which way it wanted to point. To me, that meant that it had probably picked up more than one Screecher, and was dithering between the two, as Bullet was. Distance: maybe a half-mile. Direction: diagonally northeast across the park, across an avenue of poplars, and then a bright green playing field.

“Go on, boy,” said Jill. Bullet circled around for a while, sniffing and snorting and sneezing as if he had a head