Talulla Rising (12 page)

Zoë sneezed against me, minutely. The night smelled of wet leaves and tarmac. Rain cross-hatched the street lamps’ haloes. We moved quickly.

The front of Merryn’s property was bounded by a high stone wall but the iron gates off the pavement were open. A short, brick driveway went from these in a single curve between small shrub-planted lawns to the front of the large white house. Georgian? Edwardian? I was ignorant of such things. It looked like it dated back to powdered wigs and horse-drawn carriages, but for all I knew could’ve been built last year. One big glistening horse chestnut overhung the pillared porch. Behind the closed curtains the downstairs lights were on. Upstairs was in darkness. The wet lawn exhaled its heavy peaceful odour.

Draper met us at the front door, closed it behind us, issued us with latex gloves. ‘I don’t know what you’re looking for in here,’ he said, ‘but whatever it is you’ve got five minutes. That baby starts, we’re out of here immediately, no argument. Understood?’

‘Got it.’

‘You sure you want to see this?’

‘We have to.’

‘You’re not going to throw up or anything?’

‘No,’ I said, moving past him, ‘we’re not.’

The housekeeper’s body was at the foot of the stairs in a lake of congealed blood. She was face-down, one leg bent, the other leg turned completely the wrong way in its socket. Her throat didn’t look like it had been bitten, it looked like it had been wildly machined. The veins were out: jugulars, pharyngeal, thyroid. Oesophagus and trachea severed. (Learn anatomy, Jake told me. It helps. Why do you think doctors can live with being such assholes?) She was in her early fifties, grey roots under a honey-blonde dye. A tortoiseshell barrette hung from her bangs. Cream woollen sweater, navy blue skirt. The wrenched around leg evoked all the dolls Lauren and I had ever abused. One shoe was missing, baring her surprisingly well-kept foot, toenails painted peach. I imagined single parenthood, a guy who hadn’t appreciated her, a life with a hole in it now the kids had left for college, a touch of unexpected late glamour working for Merryn.

Draper’s surprise at my
sang-froid
was palpable. ‘The others are in here,’ he said, eyebrows raised.

We followed him into a large study, floor-to-ceiling books, a green leather Chesterfield, a colossal desk of dark red wood, a gold Persian rug, a fireplace with the fire long since gone out. The room was chandelier lit, filled with spangly light. Khan, silencered pistol in hand, stood by the window’s closed curtains keeping a lookout. From his double take when we entered it was clear that between the car and now he’d forgotten the baby’s existence. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘This is surreal.’

The two guards had been shot in the head and lay unspectacularly side by side on their fronts. Merryn – I assumed it was Merryn given his prominent placing – had been extravagantly ripped at the throat and groin, feasted-on, then propped in an open-armed sitting position on the Chesterfield. I put him in his early sixties. He was long-limbed and long-faced, with a hooked nose and a big intellectual forehead from which the grey hair had receded. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed. He looked as if he was waiting to receive the Holy Communion wafer.

The vampire remains were on the floor by the window. The head was missing, as far as I could tell. The bulk of the body was far into its reduction: the abdominal area was a black viscous puddle; the ribs were stubs of charcoal; one thigh remained recognisable, as did the left foot, long and delicate and showing in black every minute detail of its dead capillary system. Toenails of polished glass. Beyond that what wasn’t gone was going fast.

‘D’you want to tell us what the story is?’ Khan said.

‘We can’t,’ Cloquet said. ‘We don’t know.’

‘I take it you know what you’re looking for?’ Draper said.

‘See if his phone’s on him,’ I told Cloquet, indicating Merryn, while I poked around in the boochie’s leftovers for the same. ‘An address book... anything.’

Nothing. All six of the desk’s drawers were out on the floor and all six of them were empty. I checked the fireplace. In the movies you found just enough of a charred map or diary, but there was nothing like that. ‘Look for a computer,’ I said. ‘A laptop, cellphones. We need to search the house prop—’ then Zoë coughed, and started to cry.

‘We go,’ Draper said. ‘Now.’

‘Wait—’

‘No argument, remember?’

‘She just needs feeding,’ I said. But they were already heading to the hall. ‘Wait!’ I hissed. ‘Khan! Stop!’ Incredibly, he did. ‘I’m
paying
for this,’ I said.

‘No one said women and kids. No one said
crying babies
, okay? That wasn’t the job. You want to stay, fine. But you’re sitting here with four stiffs and an alien and a bawling kid and fuck knows who turning up any minute, so I’d advise against it. Be smart, come out with us now.’

‘I’m not leaving till we’ve searched this place properly,’ I said.

I thought Draper might have stayed. All that quiet masculinity. But he gave me an apologetic smile that said he was getting out of this game soon, had another identity almost ready (I saw a mousey woman he loved, a small house in the middle of nowhere, pleasure in ordinary things), and in a matter of seconds he and Khan were gone. So much for Aegis. So much for Charlie Proctor and People I Could Trust. I wondered who else wouldn’t pan out.

‘I’m going to feed her,’ I told Cloquet. ‘You keep looking.’

‘Keep looking? Keep looking for what? Secret vampire addresses stuck on the fridge?’

‘Listen,’ I said, settling Zoë at my breast, ‘Jacqueline knew that you knew Merryn. Merryn knew where they were taking my son. Jacqueline killed Merryn to stop him from talking to you. That’s it. Now, please, will you just see if you can find anything that might be a clue?’

‘That’s it? What about
that
?’

The dead vampire, he meant.

‘I don’t know. Maybe Merryn managed to stake one of them. Maybe there was another guard who got away. Just keep looking!’

There would once have been a long hypothetical list of things I didn’t imagine ever doing. Somewhere on it would have been: breastfeeding a baby in a house kept company by five corpses, one of them a vampire’s. As it was I sat in the desk’s ergonomic leather swivel chair with Zoë drinking from me and found nothing strange. The milk came from some other dimension through me into her, like an electric current. A microclimate of physical peace formed around us, though my brain continued labouring, frantically. I’d blurted out my explanation of Merryn’s death readily enough, but did I believe it? Was it really likely Merryn had known anything? According to Cloquet his big interest (aside from trading stolen relics) was vampire
literature
. He was as close as humanly possible to being an expert on vampire languages. I glanced at the nearest bookshelf. Mesopotamian history, archaeology, antiquities, rare coins, hallmarks. Nothing unusual. I imagined my son somehow seeing all this, his mother following the wrong leads, blind alleys, red herrings, squandering time and energy while he... while he—

Stop it. It won’t help. You have to think of him as an object. Like you did when he was born.

Zoë’s hand was tangled in my hair. I looked down at her. She had Jake’s long eyelashes. Lucky girl. At the Los Angeles villa she’d wear a coral ankle bracelet one summer and be surprised when I didn’t care if she got a tattoo, though I’d have to warn her she’d be stuck with it for four hundred years. She’d start off reading trash but one day I’d notice a volume of Emily Dickinson or a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
on her nightstand. When she got out of the pool the sun would gleam on her wet shoulder blades. There’d be no grieving for the time before the Curse because for her there would be no time before the Curse. I’d bring her up unashamed, elite, triumphal, loved for what she was, a natural born werewolf. Then boys. And no Jake to play the scary dad. She’d be embarrassed by Cloquet. Hey, Zoë, that French dude’s a fag, right? Or some kinda eunuch, or what? She’d ask me to tell her about her father and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I’d lose some of her to him, to the glamour of the dead. She’d start looking for him in guys, and then all the trouble would start.

But God hardened Pharaoh’s—

‘We should go,’ Cloquet said. He’d been upstairs, searching the bedrooms. ‘I’m sorry. It may be right what you say, that there’s something here, but we need a week to look. Maybe we should go and see the assistant tomorrow after all? She could know something.’

It was remote. But with Merryn dead what else did we have? My search-the-house plan was desperation, and in any case to do it properly would take hours. Still, the thought of walking away no closer to finding my son was intolerable. We had to have information.

‘I’m going to look,’ I said. Zoë had stopped feeding. I put her over my shoulder and stood up, feeling suddenly dizzy. The residual stink of the Undead had been sickening me since we’d entered. ‘We’re not going to get the chance again. There has to be something, an invoice to one of their companies, an email... Fuck, I don’t
know
.’ Moving out from behind the desk I banged my knee on its edge and shut my eyes for a moment to absorb the pain.

I still had them closed when an American male voice said: ‘Don’t move, please.’

17

I opened my eyes. A good-looking boyish guy with tangled brown and blond hair stood in the study doorway holding a gun pointed directly at Cloquet. Two-handed grip. No shake. Professional. Glamorous blue-green eyes and a mouth that wanted to smile. Levis, red plaid shirt, pale green combat jacket. An odour of damp clothes and tired skin. He looked twenty-five but something told you he was ten years older.
Charmer
, the female consensus would be.

‘Hey, there,’ he said, and the mouth did smile, with what looked like delight at being alive. ‘Any weapons, very slowly, out and down on the floor.’ The accent was East Coast, maybe even New York. I wondered if I’d ever passed him in the street or sat next to him on the subway. I could see him in Veselka with a rapt East Village hipster girl who wouldn’t know he was unmaliciously and comprehensively screwing her roommate as well. ‘Cloquet, you first. Miss D, please, no acrobatics with the kid.’

‘Who are you?’ Cloquet said.

‘Weapons first, then introductions. Do it now, please. Slowly.’

Cloquet reached in and removed a Beretta from his left shoulder holster. He had a Luger in the right but didn’t touch it. I had a Smith and Wesson M&P (all supplied by Aegis) in a rear holster under my jacket. Going for it was out of the question.

‘Okay, slide it over to me. That’s it. Couldn’t have done it better myself. Now, Monsieur Cloquet, face-down on the floor, hands on your head. Think toupée, think gale.’

A second guy appeared at the gunman’s side, also armed. Taller, older, dark hair flecked with grey. Black eyes polished by exhaustion. Midnight-blue jeans and a donkey jacket. He gave the younger one a single nod: upstairs clear.

‘Okay. Fabulous. Miss D, are you armed?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know the drill. Can you manage?’

I tightened my hold on Zoë (who’d been negligibly sick on my shoulder) and reached around slowly for the gun in the rear holster. I bent and put it on the floor. The older guy frisked Cloquet – whereupon the Luger was discovered and removed, without comment, for all of us to see. New York came over to me. ‘In the light of which,’ he said, ‘my apologies, but...’ He frisked me, efficiently, without indecency, despite my blouse being still half unbuttoned from feeding Zoë. He had an outrageous gentle glittering confidence about him. Closer up, I could see he hadn’t slept in a while. I could also see a small white scar just below his left eye.

‘Okay, that’s the guns,’ I said. ‘Now can I get dressed and put my daughter in her carrier?’

‘Sure, sure, go ahead. Again, my apologies.’

‘What is this?’ Cloquet said. ‘Who are you?’

New York indicated the captured weapons with another big smile. ‘We ask the questions,’ he said. ‘You didn’t kill these people, I’m guessing, but did you see what happened?’

‘No,’ Cloquet said. ‘Let me get up off the fucking floor.’

‘Easy, tiger,
easy
. Foot off the gas. You can get up, very slowly, very calmly. Calm as Carradine. There you go. Beautiful. Couldn’t’ve done it better myself.’

I’d buttoned my blouse and resettled Zoë in the carrier, snug against me. I kept imagining the sensation of a bullet hitting her while I held her. The older guy was down on his haunches, examining the vampire remains. He poked at the foot with a pencil.

‘How do you know who we are?’ I asked New York.

‘In our organisation everyone knows who
you
are. Colleague of mine’s got you as his desktop wallpaper. And with the greatest respect, the picture does not do you justice.’

‘What organisation?’

‘Ex-organisation. We don’t think of ourselves as WOCOP any more. Not since they started trying to kill us.’

‘WOCOP?’

‘Let’s go,’ the older guy said. The
L
of ‘Let’s’ indicated Eastern Europe, Russia maybe. He’d snapped out of whatever fugue he’d been in.

‘Go where?’ I said.

‘If you harm her,’ Cloquet said. ‘If you do anything—’

‘Easy, easy,
easy
,’ New York said. ‘With the
drama,
this guy, always. You must be hell to share a kitchen with, Slim. We’re just talking about going somewhere that’s not quite so much of a murder scene. Have you seen the lady in the hall? I don’t know about you but I’m not—’

‘Let’s go,’ the Russian repeated. ‘Now.’

18

New York, smiling, held us just behind the gates. My skin tingled. Adrenaline forced its way through exhaustion. Cloquet buzzed with pointless action calculations. Less than a minute and the Russian pulled-up in a mirror-windowed BMW 4x4. The only available blindfold was Cloquet’s vast handkerchief. Could I be trusted to keep my eyes closed? Or was I going to have to have a jacket over my head? The Russian drove. New York turned in his seat to make sure I wasn’t peeking. He should have been a surfer. His face was full of masculine prettiness and immensely likeable. Which, by horror’s law of inverted aesthetics, made me sure we were being taken to our death.