noticed that in a slightly scruffier hand - next to the clearly written note about the man’s general location - another pencilled in scribble had been added which claimed the man had been seen living somewhere in a forest on the outskirts of the town.

Amanda removed the paper clip that held Milch’s picture to his file and brought the image close to her face. The picture was a little bigger than a passport photo, but it seemed to Amanda as if it had been cut from an even larger image as several fingers rested on Johann’s shoulder; digits which probably belonged to the same body as an ear on the very edge of the photograph. When she had seen that this person of unknown abode was male, the thought crossed her mind that perhaps she had already found a real suspect, but this notion was undermined somewhat by what she saw. The vampire she was looking at had probably been in his thirties when he died and, at least in the picture, had a shock of unruly, dark brown hair. Though it was plausible that Milch could have had his hair shaved off, he clearly was not bald and it was unlikely that he had lost his ice-blue eyes. Amanda supposed it was possible Brenden had made a mistake when he had described his attacker as having grey eyes, even though this was one of the very few things that the boy seemed to recall about the man. There was also the additional detail that Brenden had expressed his belief his killer had been overweight and pale: Milch was neither.

As Johann’s file did not seem to be of too much help, Amanda put it to the side and made a note to herself to ask some of the other vampires in the area if they could provide a more up to date and accurate account of the whereabouts of the man. However, she did not hold out too much hope that they would tell her anything. If the school had lost track of Milch, there was a chance he had given up its rules meaning it would be no good thing to be associated with him.

The second file did at least seem to be a little more promising; at least it included an address. The picture provided was much larger than the one in Johann’s file, about the size of an ordinary album photo, and contained an image of a woman who was possibly in her 30s. From the look of the woman’s large tinted glasses, long brown, centre parted hair and mauve shirt with an oversized collar, Amanda guessed that the picture was taken at some time during the 1970s. On the back of the picture was a scrawled note outlining that the image had been taken before the woman had even become a vampire. While this was a little odd, Amanda assumed that the woman, who on inspection of the file turned out to be one Mary O’Hare, must have still resembled the picture as otherwise, the school would surely have taken a new one.

Amanda scanned the rest of the information in the file and discovered nothing that she thought was particularly out of the ordinary for a vampire. Mary had been intermittently employed in one job or another since she had left the Tithonus School in 1978 and, like many of the vampires Amanda knew, her blood supplies had been suspended several times during periods when she had been unable to keep up her payments due to prolonged periods without work. The file also noted that like many others, Mary had undergone some further training in the early 2000s so that she could learn to use a computer to enable her to work from home, and that she had just recently started a new job.

Though Amanda was sure that Mary had not been involved in Brenden’s attack directly, unless she had indeed gone through a dramatic change since the picture in the file had been taken, she supposed there was still a chance that the woman might know something of importance, even if she was not aware of it herself.

“What the hell could I ask her that would get her to tell me something like that?” Amanda mumbled to herself.

She looked blankly at the picture for a couple of minutes, but no real questions came to mind. A feeling started to build within Amanda, a certain anxiety resulting from her conviction that it was ridiculous for the deputy to have given her the task of talking to these people: for her, it was not only clear that she was entirely devoid of any detective experience, but also at a complete loss as to where to start.

“Sod it,” she exclaimed as the thought came to her mind that it did not matter if she did a great job as she believed the reason she had been sent was that the powers that be at the school assumed there was nothing to find anyway and so no need to send anyone with any real competence. At least she was going to get a little more blood from the school. She activated the screen on her phone to check the time: it was still the early afternoon and there was plenty of time to go and visit Mary to see what, if anything, she knew about the attack on Brenden. Rather than wallow in any doubt over why she was in Radcliff, she got going.

***

“Brenden, before you go, I’d like to have a word.”

Brenden had managed his best to hide in plain sight for the rest of the lesson and to avoid looking at his teacher. However, just as Brenden was about to leave, Adam called out the boy’s name. The other students filed out - giving an opportunity for Namenkhetamun to surprise Brenden again with her quick and sharp movements despite her dry, ancient skin - leaving the

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