was bound to be able to access Checkya files. If Vanka couldn’t make withdrawals legitimately then he’d have to buy blood on the black market and that was expensive and dangerous, because the black market was run by Shaka’s Blood Brothers.
The other problem he had was that having skedaddled at such short notice all he had to his name was what he stood up in and what he’d squirrelled away in his safe-deposit box at the St Petersburg Blood Bank. Enough to keep him going for a month, tops. A month, that is, if Burlesque didn’t get greedy, didn’t get wind of just how desperate Vanka was for a place to lie low. If he did, then the price of the two shitty garret rooms Vanka now called home would rocket. Burlesque was a master at squeezing people dry. The bastard had really stiffed him on the blood trade they’d done at the end of Autumn.
The odd thing was that yesterday, when Vanka had shown up at the Prancing Pig pub – the dive that Burlesque used as the headquarters for his pub empire – the fat Anglo had been almost friendly, almost as though he was pleased to see Vanka.
Remarkable.
Vanka arrived outside the Pig, stepped over the frozen body of the drunk that was decorating the doorway, took a deep breath and pushed his way inside.
Burlesque Bandstand was sitting in his booth at the side of the pub, dolly-mop at his side, toying with a glass of twenty per cent Solution. He was wearing his usual hangdog expression, the dog in question being peculiarly mangy and flea-infested.
‘Afternoon, Burlesque, how’s things?’ Vanka said by way of a greeting.
Burlesque looked up from his examination of the hugely fat comic who was fiddling around with the megaphone on the stage and blinked in Vanka’s direction.
‘Hello, Wanker, glad to see the swelling’s going down. Yous look almost human.’
Thanks.
‘My name is pronounced Vanka,’ protested Vanka for the umpteenth time, moderately relieved that in the two days since he’d been beaten up by Skobelev’s boys he had, at last, regained the ability to talk without dribbling down his shirt front. ‘I was born and raised in Rodina.’
‘Vanka, Wanker, Spanker… it’s all the same between friends.’
Vanka grimaced at the thought of being classified as a ‘friend’ of Burlesque’s. Burlesque didn’t do friends, he did debtors.
Waving him into a seat, Burlesque turned his attention back towards the comic and Vanka was – unfortunately – obliged to do the same. It took only a few moments for him to decide that of all the truly diabolical variety acts that Burlesque put on at the Pig – which he laughingly called ‘entertainment’ – Maurice Merriment, the Monarch of Mirth, was perhaps the most dire.
The comedian wasn’t just bad: he’d left ‘bad’ behind several jokes ago and was now exploring that seldom visited and deathly unamusing hinterland that existed somewhere between ‘terrible’ and ‘fucking awful’. So bad that even the fifty-strong audience in the back room of the pub was becoming restless, which was quite remarkable given that Vanka was convinced two of them were dead, and the remainder so blasted by the adulterated Solution Burlesque sold that their relationship with the reality that was the Demi-Monde was tenuous at best. Only those with a truly outrageous death wish drank ‘Bandstand’s Best Blasting Solution’ and even then they did it with reluctance: no one wanted to go to the Spirit World with nary a tooth in their head.
Fortunately for Vanka’s sanity and Maurice Merriment’s continued good health (the audience was getting very restless), the manager of the Pig, the huge and uncompromising Blowback Trundler, strode onto the stage and grabbed the megaphone away from the comic. ‘Thank you, thank you and… thank you. Now, ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for Horace Humour, the King of Comedy.’
‘It’s Maurice Merriment, the Monarch of Mirth.’ The comic’s protests were truncated as Blowback’s kick up the arse encouraged him to vacate the stage.
Burlesque Bandstand leant back in his chair and spread his hands contentedly over his ample stomach. The chair gave a protesting groan: Burlesque wasn’t so much round as blobby. ‘So whaddya fink, Wanker?’
‘Think about what?’
‘Abart Maurice-bleedin’-Merriment, ov course,’ said Burlesque, twitching his head towards the now empty stage.
Vanka looked at Burlesque for as long as he was able to stomach it. ‘What do you mean, what did I think? He was terrible, useless, arse-clenchingly bad. It was a uniquely awful performance.’
Burlesque beamed and nudged him in the ribs. Vanka winced: he was still very tender from the kicking Skobelev’s goons had administered. ‘Unique, eh? That’s good, ain’t it? To be unique’s good, ain’t it?’
‘The answer to that question, Burlesque, is both yes and no, or more accurately in the case of Maurice Merriment: no.’
‘So what do you fink ‘e’d ‘ave to do to improve ‘is act?’
‘I’m tempted to suggest suicide.’
Burlesque descended into a sulk: he hated to have his acts criticised. Finally though, after a slurp of Solution, he roused himself to continue the conversation. ‘I’m sorry you fink like that, Wanker. I arsked you ‘ere to get an appreciation ov the standard of artiste I ‘ave performing at the Pig.’
‘Yeah, Burlesque, I appreciate them all right. I appreciate that they’re shit. But I knew that already.’
‘I fort ‘e wos funny,’ observed the girl sitting to Burlesque’s right. Reluctantly Vanka turned his attention to Burlesque’s trollop de jour and studied the girl for the first time. Burlesque changed his tarts as often as he changed his socks – more often, decided Vanka, judging by the smell drifting up from under the table – and as the brasses he used and misused were always the most vacuous and stupid of doxies there was little point in engaging them in conversation. But as this one had deigned to express an opinion, Vanka felt obliged to reciprocate with a show of interest. She was just the type of girl that Burlesque preferred: blonde, with a body that looked as though it had been inflated to bursting and then viciously constrained around the neck, waist and ankles. It was like sitting across the table from a sexy blimp, a sexy blimp blessed with the most stupendously enormous tits Vanka had ever seen.
Knowing that his finances were as precarious as the grip the girl’s dress had on her tits, Vanka determined to be as pleasant as possible. He thrust out a hand in greeting. ‘I’m delighted to meet you. I’m Colonel Ivan Ivanovich Maykov, Licensed Psychic, but my friends call me Vanka.’
The girl’s eyes widened. ‘A psychical? Wot, like them seers and such everywun’s bin talkin’ abart? Well, chuffed to meet cha, Wanker; me name’s Sporting.’
An awful feeling of inevitability descended on Vanka. ‘I don’t suppose your surname is Chance by any… er, chance, is it?’
The girl’s dull eyes widened in amazement. ‘Gor blimey, ‘ow d’ya know that? Yeah, that’s me: Sportin’ Chance. You really are one ‘ell ov a psychical, ain’t cha, Wanker?’
Vanka just smiled a fatalistic smile.
Burlesque smiled too, which was a mistake. Burlesque’s face wasn’t built for smiling. The exertion of smiling caused his face to strain in a very odd way, making his potato of a nose twist in a most peculiar fashion and his piggy eyes become engulfed by his chubby cheeks. The best word Vanka had ever found to describe Burlesque’s appearance was ‘ugly’ but now, on closer inspection, he was veering towards amending this to ‘fucking ugly’.
But what he found most alarming was the way Burlesque’s thin, harsh lips pulled back to reveal his three remaining teeth, a consequence of his success in the entertainment business. There was a lot of competition in the entertainment business, competition that expressed itself in a very physical manner.
‘You wan’ anovver drink, Wanker?’ asked Burlesque, smacking his lips in anticipation of downing another glass of Solution.
Vanka eyed Burlesque suspiciously. For Burlesque to be buying drinks meant he wanted something. Burlesque never bought people drinks. By reputation he had the shortest arms and the deepest pockets of anyone in the Rookeries.
‘Yeah, I’ll have a double b-and-t.’
Burlesque scowled and then gave a reluctant wave to a scabrous waiter. When the blood and tonic had been served he leant towards Vanka in a conspiratorial sort of way. Vanka rather wished he hadn’t: the smell coming from his armpits was repellent.
‘So yous still in this psychical lark, Wanker?’ Burlesque asked casually.
