The Cross

moment, then added more brightly, ‘Maybe I could join up with that Federation. You know, the one you talked about on TV. Maybe they’d take me on?’

‘Fact is, Dec, I don’t know any more about them than you do. I’ve no idea how you could contact them, or who they are. That video clip isn’t much to go on.’

Dec’s shoulders drooped. He slumped deep in his chair with a look of defeated resignation. ‘Then it looks like I came all this way for nothing, so it does.’

Knightly sighed heavily, and turned away from the window to face him. ‘Where are your family? Who else knows you’re here?’

‘Me ma and da and brother Cormac are home in Wallingford. I didn’t tell them where I was going.’

‘What about work? College? Is anyone expecting you back tomorrow?’

Dec shook his head. ‘I work for me da. I can call him and make an excuse. I do it all the time. He’s used to it.’

Knightly let out another big sigh. ‘Very well. I’ll help you.

You can stay here for a while. I’ll teach you everything I know. I’ll train you in the use of anti-vampire weaponry. I’ll even give you one of my advanced vampire detection kits — worth PS49.99. You can be my apprentice.’

Suddenly glowing with joy, Dec jumped out of his armchair. ‘Cool!’

‘On the strict understanding that every evening, after your training’s over, you’ll sit with me and help me get every detail of this down on paper. I mean everything. The house. The vampires themselves, what they looked like, how they talked, how they dressed, exactly what they did.’

‘No problem. I remember it all.’

‘And all about this cross. This library has books centuries old, filled with illustrations of ancient crosses. We’ll go through them systematically, until we find one that’s similar to yours. We’ll make drawings of it. You’ll tell me precisely what happened when your friend pointed it at Kate. Every last shred of detail.’

Dec’s face fell. ‘I can remember that too. I could never forget it.’

‘It’s a deal, then?’

‘Deal,’ Dec agreed.

Knightly grabbed his wallet and peeled off two fifty-pound notes. ‘Here’s the money.’

Dec hesitated, embarrassed, then thought of the credit card payments for the new laptop and took the cash.

‘Good. Now, I need to make a phone call,’ Knightly said, looking at his watch. ‘Griffin will show you to the guest quarters.’ He walked over to the sash and gave it a yank to summon his manservant.

As the bent old man led Dec away from the library, Knightly waited until they were gone, then ripped a mobile phone from his waistcoat pocket and feverishly dialled his agent’s number in London.

‘Harley, it’s me,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Listen, you won’t believe what’s just happened. You know the thing I told you about …?’

‘Your little, ah, problem?’ the agent’s voice said dryly.

‘My writer’s block.’

‘Or basic lack of material,’ Harley said. ‘Other than that phoney video footage some nutter sent you from Romania. Maybe if you’d ever done any of the things you’ve written about, instead of just putting on this dismal Van Helsing act for your readers. It would help even more if you actually believed in vampires.’

‘I do believe in them,’ Knightly exploded, deeply hurt. ‘Just because I’ve never had actual, you know, first-hand experience of them …’ He flapped his arm impatiently, as if the inconvenient truth was an irritating mosquito he could swat away. ‘Anyway, never mind all that. I’ve just come across enough material for three more bloody books. Five more, if we pad it out a bit.’

‘So you won’t have to refund that hundred grand advance-on-signature payment,’ Harley said. ‘That’s welcome news.’

‘And you’ll get to keep your commission.’

‘Even better. What is this new material?’

‘Pure gold. I’ll tell you all about it over a champagne lunch next week,’ Knightly said. ‘You’re going to love it. The publishers are going to love it even more.’

Chapter Nineteen

London

It was just before midday by the time Alex arrived at the Ritz off Piccadilly and walked up to the desk.

‘Hailey Adams,’ she said to the receptionist, charming but authoritative, flashing her VIA ID too quickly for the woman to scrutinise it. ‘Starburst Pictures. I’m here to see Mr Burnett. The Trafalgar Suite, right?’ It was only fifty-fifty, she thought as the receptionist checked the register, that Baxter hadn’t left his regular London hideaway and headed back home to the States. Life as one of the beautiful people.

The receptionist smiled. ‘Trafalgar Suite, that’s right.’

Alex used the stairs. Lifts were too slow. Arriving at the door to the suite, she pushed straight through with a splintering of wood.

The lavish rooms were just as she remembered them. Except … no Baxter. The only sign of him was the Armani jacket carelessly thrown over the back of one of the Louis XI settees and the laptop sitting open on a marble-topped coffee table. Alex strode across the Persian rug and peered at the screen-saver, a handsome close- up of Baxter’s face, a still shot from one of his Berserker movies — Alex couldn’t remember which. Still, it was definitely his computer.

With a flick of the keys, the screen-saver vanished to reveal Baxter’s opened email program. The last message to have come in was clocked at 10.38 that morning. Its heading was ‘Let’s have lunch’.

The name of the sender, Piers Bullivant, was one Alex recognised. A cinema fan right from the days of silent movies, she’d been there for the heyday of Keaton, Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, all the greats, and must have seen a hundred thousand films since. She rarely missed an issue of Movie Mad magazine, and Piers Bullivant was one of their long-standing writers. Alex had read enough of his articles to know that Bullivant was a savage and vitriolic critic of anything to do with the commercial movie industry, Hollywood in general, and vulgar, untalented and overpaid stars like Baxter Burnett in particular.

Let’s have lunch? It seemed just a little unusual, Alex thought to herself, that Baxter should be in friendly email correspondence with the critic who, more than anyone, seemed to delight in every opportunity to hack and bludgeon him to death with the pen. But then, looking at the message more closely, she saw something even odder. Bullivant’s reply read:

Dear Gwendolyn — Lovely to hear from you again. Yes, I agree, it would be great to meet up. How about lunch today, my place?

Below, Bullivant gave his address in Wimbledon. Seeing that the email had been replied to, Alex clicked into the sent messages folder. The reply from GwendolynCooper@hotmail. com had been posted at 11.46, just a few minutes before she’d got here.

Hi Piers,

It’s a date. See you at 12.30. I’ll bring a bottle.

Gwendolyn xxx

‘Shit,’ Alex muttered as Baxter’s ploy began to dawn on her. She scrolled up and found six more messages from ‘Gwendolyn’ to Bullivant. Attached to the first message was a picture that most definitely wasn’t of Baxter Burnett. The blonde was maybe nineteen or twenty. Low-cut blouse, painted-on jeans, heavy eye-shadow, glossy lipstick, provocative pout, the works. Apparently, she was a final-year media student at London University and a huge fan of Piers’s work, passionate about getting into film journalism; and did he know of any openings coming up at Movie Mad? She’d just love to meet and talk.