The Cross

Ash. Ash the vampire. What kind of a man called himself a vampire?

For an instant, the thought lingered. A vampire killed my father. Chloe let the scene replay in her mind and she saw those pointed teeth, red with blood. She shivered, not just from the cold. Then caught herself — an inward slap on the cheek. Don’t be ridiculous. There are no vampires. There were only frightened people who believed in them. And mentally deluded people who wanted to believe they were one of them. Little wonder, she thought bitterly as she passed a bus stop and paused to glance under the street light at a poster advertising the latest movie release, Sucker — it seemed that everywhere you looked, you were assailed with media hype tirelessly drumming the message that vampires were cool, sexy, glamorous. Maybe in every crowd that walked out of the cinema, happily sated on movie blood and sex and make-believe pain, there was that one guy: the guy who’d been sitting alone in the back row, not there for the fun and the popcorn, but who took the whole thing very seriously, very personally, who bought into the image heavily enough to want to draw power from what he saw on the screen; to take that power and use it to project himself onto the world the way he desperately wanted to appear. Lonely people. Sad people, unfulfilled lives caught up in the wheels of a heartless world that promised everything but only took, took, took from them. People wanting more, wanting freedom, wanting immortality, wanting to be someone whose footsteps shook the earth. Craving it so badly, maybe, that the line between dreams and reality started to blur and fade out.

Yesterday, Chloe might have sympathised. Not any more, not if it meant innocent people suffering to pay the price of some psycho’s delusions. Her fists were so tight in her pockets that her nails pierced the flesh of her palms. She wanted to cry, but she was empty now.

She’d walked the length of Cornmarket without realising it. As she neared the end of the street, the illuminated window display of a large bookstore shone out onto the pavement. She stopped and saw her reflection in the window glass, shoulders hunched, face pale and pinched with cold. Her eye ran across the displays of books on the other side of the glass, and she snorted. Look at this — more vampires. You couldn’t get away from the damn things.

THEY LURK AMONGST US, shouted the stacked hardbacks in the window. They do, Chloe thought — but who are they?

Among the carefully-arranged books were glossy posters extolling the author, some guy Chloe had never heard of called Errol Knightly. That couldn’t be a real name, could it? She peered more closely to read about him. It seemed he was the real deal, a pro vampire hunter with a glittering record of ridding the world of the scourge of the Undead. Read all about it for only PS12.99. Chloe tossed her head and walked on.

But then, fifty yards down the street, her pace slowed.

How many of them must there be out there, these deluded souls who’d come to believe in their own vampiric powers? What if there was a whole weird subculture of screwed-up freaks truly convinced they belonged to a race of the Undead? Wouldn’t they hang out together? A fantasy shared was a fantasy compounded. Maybe they congregated in certain places, like bats in caves. Drank tomato juice together and wore gothic fashion gear in vampire nightclubs. Had vampire conversations together on vampire internet forums. Mostly innocuous, of course; but wouldn’t even the tiny minority of dark, dangerous ones — the ones who took their fantasy a step further, men like Ash — be just a little bit drawn to the edges of that subculture, feeding the delusion?

And, Chloe thought to herself, wouldn’t a guy calling himself a vampire hunter know where to find those kinds of people?

She doubled back to the bookstore window and stood there with her nose to the glass staring at Knightly’s face on the poster for a long time. She nodded to herself. In its own perverse, bizarre way, it seemed to make absolute sense.

She was still thinking about it on the long walk all the way back to the Park and Ride car park. And as she curled up, spent and cold and weak, to sleep on the back seat of her little Fiat, she knew what it was she had to do when morning came. She was going to contact this Errol Knightly. And then she was going to go and talk to him about catching vampires.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

‘Can I have a word?’ Carter asked as Joel wandered into St Aldates police station just before eleven the following morning. Joel was too dulled from hunger to ask what it was about, but he nonetheless noticed the stern note of authority in his friend’s voice.

Once in the privacy of his office, Carter shut the door, turned to him and shook his head. ‘Maybe I wasn’t clear, but I thought you were back on the job now.’

‘I am,’ Joel said weakly.

‘So where’ve you been the last thirty-six hours?’

Joel sat heavily in a chair. What could he tell him? That after a despairing night curled up on the floor of an empty London apartment he’d paced the streets of the city for endless hours, trying to ignore the terrible hunger pains that were getting worse by the hour? Could he tell him about the homeless man down by the Thames embankment that he’d stalked? How he’d very nearly given in to the almost overwhelming urge to attack him and drink his blood? That if it wasn’t for the fact he knew it was futile, all he wanted to do was put a shotgun to his own forehead?

‘I was chasing up a potential lead for the Stone case,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Turned out to be nothing.’

‘Pull it together, Joel, you don’t look good.’ Carter glanced at his watch and winced. ‘Fuck. Listen, I need a progress report from you but you’ll have to fill me in on the way. We had a right nasty murder up in North Oxford last night.’

Carter was acting testy and distracted as the car took them across the city and listened to Joel’s weary report on just how little progress was being made on the Stone/Lonsdale case. It didn’t take long to bring Carter up to date, and by the time they’d reached the crime scene in Frenchay Road and waded through the cordons of police tape, Joel had pretty much run dry of things to say. Carter wasn’t happy. Following him inside the house, where the forensics team led by Jack Brier were still combing for evidence, Joel’s nostrils twitched at the scent that hung in the air. Blood had been spilled here. A lot of blood.

‘Should have seen this place yesterday,’ Jack Brier said cheerfully. ‘I’ve seen some butcher’s yards in my time, but this was something else.’

Joel was already visualising it with a clarity that took his breath away. He could see blood pooled lusciously across the floor, almost taste the glistening red rivulets that trickled down the walls. He could hear the big round fat red velvety drips of it sploshing down from the mantelpiece. For a moment he was swimming through an ocean of it, warm and smooth as melted chocolate, laughing deliriously as he gulped down swallow after swallow …

‘… Matt Dempsey,’ Carter’s voice said, breaking in on his daydream, and Joel realised he’d been talking to him. ‘History guy, American, museum curator. Looks like an aggravated burglary, but we’re still not sure what’s been taken, if anything. Some dusty old relic that’s probably worth a couple of bob on eBay or down the local flea market. Dempsey’s daughter was here when it happened. Poor kid saw everything. She’s in the JR being treated for shock. Williams and Keenan have been to talk to her.’

Even in his dulled state of mind, Joel remembered all too well his past encounters with Inspector Murdo Williams. ‘Williams hasn’t been put on this, has he? The guy’s a total spoon.’

‘You think I should have given it to you?’ Carter said.

Joel ignored the dig. ‘Any idea who did it?’

‘How’re we doing on those DNA results, Jack?’ Carter boomed.

‘Have something for you tickety-boo,’ Brier called back jovially from across the room.

‘Better have,’ Carter said. ‘Though from the daughter’s description of the guy and what the bastard did here,’ he said in a lower tone, turning to Joel, ‘we all know who the money’s on. The fucking bastard vampire.’

Joel’s eyes opened wide. ‘The what?’

‘Not the kind you were so obsessed with lately,’ Carter said. ‘This loony just thinks