April waited for the questions and the mickey-taking and the suggestion she visit a shrink, but Caro remained silent, just staring back at the school.
‘Well, this isn’t the reaction I was expecting,’ said April with a nervous laugh.
‘Hey, you’re preaching to the choir here, remember,’ said Caro. ‘I told you we were surrounded by vampires the first day you were at school.’
‘Yes, but I thought you were talking figuratively. Like they were sucking the life out of you or something, not actual real-life bloodsuckers.’
‘Well, that too. But the thing about this place? I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of that for years. I’m pleased that I’m so goddamn clever, honestly, I’m just a bit too sick to do cartwheels right now.’
April looked at her. She had been expecting laughter or derision or at the very least some whooping and ‘I told you so’s. She was disappointed and a little annoyed that Caro was so calm. After all, she was telling her that they were surrounded by the undead. To most people, this would be big news.
‘Don’t you think this is weird?’ she asked with irritation.
‘Of
course
it’s weird,’ said Caro soothingly, ‘but you’re missing the big picture, honey. Three people have been killed within a few hundred metres of each other in the space of less than a month, but there’s been weird stuff happening here for ages. Something is wrong in Highgate and very wrong at Ravenwood. I know it’s hard for you to get your head around, with it all happening so fast and, well, so horribly close to home, but some of us here - those who have been paying attention, anyway - have been living with this for years. You coming here and giving it a name, a proper explanation, it just confirms what I’ve suspected for a long time.’
‘And what’s that?’ asked April.
Caro took off her sunglasses, and her eyes were terribly sad. ‘That we’re surrounded by evil.’
Fortified by strong coffee and two fizzy vitamin tablets, Caro was feeling more human by lunchtime. She and April had gone to the library to research the final days of Alix Graves on side-by-side Internet terminals.
‘It’s amazing what you can find, isn’t it?’ said April, staring at the screen. ‘If you’re a celebrity, it’s like you’re constantly
under surveillance. You can find out where he went shopping, who he was meeting, everything.’
‘I can even tell you what he had for lunch,’ said Caro, swivelling her screen towards April. ‘Have a look at this.’
It was a website called ‘
Celebstalking.com
’ which had a headline reading ‘Grave Danger’. April read:
If you are what you eat, then drop-dead gorgeous singer Alix Graves is a heart attack waiting to happen. Spies in Soho yesterday spotted him coming out of Rancho Diablo, the Texas steak joint. Further investigation revealed that the Belarus frontman had gorged himself on a full rack of ribs followed by a very rare T-bone steak, all washed down with ‘three or four’ beers. Watch out, Alix, you’ll be growing horns. Or love-handles!
‘God, it must be awful having people following you everywhere,’ said April.
‘Well, it’s lucky for us they did,’ said Caro.
‘Morning, ladies!’
They both turned to see Simon saunter in. He looked as fresh as Caro looked wrecked: hair perfectly combed across his forehead, casually dressed in a navy jumper and jeans with a silk scarf at his neck. He looked like he’d stepped off the back page of
GQ.
Caro and April exchanged a ‘what-the-hell?’ glance.
‘Well, isn’t this all very exciting?’ said Simon. ‘I get a mysterious text in the middle of double Maths asking me to come to the library, and now I get here to find two gorgeous girls beavering away. What gives?’
‘We were just wondering if you wanted to look at some pictures of Alix Graves?’
Simon pulled a face. ‘Not really. Seems a bit passé, if you know what I mean.’
‘I thought you loved Belarus?’ said Caro, narrowing her eyes.
‘Did, past tense,’ he said airily, heading back out. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Want to meet for lunch with the girls?’
‘What was that all about?’ said April when he had gone. ‘I thought he loved dissecting Alix’s outfits and stuff?’
Caro had a frown line between her eyes. ‘Did you see what he was wearing? And who are “the girls”? I thought we were his girls.’
‘You don’t think he’s talking about the Faces, do you?’
Caro nodded. ‘I think we should keep our investigations to ourselves for the moment,’ she said.
April watched her friend form the corner of her eye as she got up and walked over to the printer. She was obviously upset by Simon’s behaviour, but she just as obviously didn’t want April to know about it. Caro picked up a sheet of paper and handed it to April.
‘Have a look at this,’ she said. It was a double-page spread from a German tabloid, published two days after Alix’s death. The photos from the news story were of the outside of his house, showing an ambulance behind a police cordon as his body was brought out on a stretcher.
‘Basically, the story says that Alix was having a big party on the night of his death,’ said Caro. ‘The Europeans aren’t so hot on libel and all that as we Brits are so they can be as sensationalist as they like, and they’re saying this party was a big goth orgy. Candles, incense, drugs, booze and ladies of the night - the other kind, of course - every decadent cliché you can think of.’
‘Wow,’ said April. ‘But then I guess they can say anything now he’s dead, can’t they?’
‘Exactly. It’s not terribly reliable stuff, especially when they go on to suggest his death was some drugs-and-sex experiment gone wrong. Personally, I got the feeling it was a lot more violent than that. Anyway, that’s not what I was looking at. Check out the big photo on the right.’
April’s heart jumped. Alix Graves was stripped to the waist, looking moody and pouting at the camera. But it wasn’t the singer’s magnificent pecs April was staring at.
‘See anything that looks familiar?’ Caro asked.
She did. There was a tattoo on his right shoulder in the shape of a star, the exact same shape as the one on her head. April jumped up and rushed into the library toilets. Leaning in to the mirror, she scraped her hair back.
It’s the same! It’s the same!
she thought as Caro came in behind her.
‘Oh, Caro, what does it mean? Was Alix part of this? Was he killed because he knew about the myth?’
‘I’m sorry, honey, I wish I knew,’ said Caro. ‘Maybe they were trying to turn him, maybe he wanted out, who knows? But that isn’t all. Ten days before the so-called Goth Orgy, he had a meeting at Transparent Media.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because of this.’ She handed April another page. It was a copy of a news story from the music industry newspaper
Music Week
. The picture showed Alix Graves shaking hands with a man in a suit, with a caption reading ‘Graves plans to change the way Transparent sells music to the consumer’.
April looked up. ‘So?’
Caro smiled. ‘So Transparent Media is registered as a subsidiary of Agropharm. And who’s the chairman of Agropharm?’
April gasped. ‘Of course! Nicholas Osbourne.’
Caro nodded.
‘Davina’s daddy.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
Caro was fuming. When they got to the refectory, Simon was sitting with the Faces and the rugby boys, laughing and joking like they’d been best friends for years. He waved to Caro and April, but didn’t make a move to come over to their table.
‘Has he been recruited?’ whispered April.
‘Either that or he’s just got really annoying overnight.’
‘But he is a maths genius, isn’t he? He’s exactly the sort of brainy kid they’d target,’ said April.
Caro turned to her and there was anger in her face. ‘We’ve got to do something about this,’ she said. She looked down at her watch. ‘Come on.’ She jumped up and headed for the exit. ‘I’ve got an idea. I’ll tell you on the way.’ She pushed through the double doors and strode off.
‘Well? Are you going to tell me?’ asked April, trotting to keep up.
‘To my mind, the way to stop them is to go to the source, find out who’s behind Ravenwood, yes?’
April nodded. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Cut off the head, the snake will die,’ she said. ‘We might also flush out whoever killed your dad into the bargain.’
April grabbed her arm and pulled her to a halt. ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’ she snapped.
‘What?’ said Caro, surprised at the anger on April’s face. ‘What did I say?’
‘What did you say? You said your stupid conspiracy is more important than my dad’s murder, that’s what!’
‘Eh? No, I didn’t mean—’
‘Nothing __ and I mean
nothing __
is more important than finding out who killed my dad, do you understand?’
Caro gaped at her. ‘Yes, yes of course,’ she stammered, taken aback by the sudden fury. ‘I wasn’t saying it wasn’t important, honestly. But there is still a good chance that the Regent or whoever’s behind Ravenwood may well have ordered your dad’s murder, so we might crack both cases at once. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
April nodded. ‘Sorry, I guess I’m a bit sensitive at the moment.’
Caro smiled. ‘It’s understandable after all you’ve been through.’
‘Okay,’ said April, taking a deep breath. ‘So where are we going?’
‘To the source. Hawk always goes out for his lunch - blood probably - so we just need to sneak past his secretary.’
‘Hang on,’ whispered April as they pushed through the double doors and along the corridor towards the front of the school. ‘You think Mr Sheldon is a vampire?’
Caro stopped and looked at her seriously. ‘We have to assume everyone is now,’ she said. ‘Guilty until proven innocent and all that.’
‘Guilty of what, exactly?’
April whirled around to find Miss Holden standing in the corridor, blocking their way.
‘Oh, we were just talking about—’ stammered April.
‘Boys,’ said Caro.
Miss Holden sighed. ‘I’m not surprised. It would be too much to ask that you were discussing something constructive like schoolwork, something you could both do with paying more attention to.’
‘Yes, Miss Holden,’ said Caro, ‘sorry, Miss Holden,’ with just the slightest edge of sarcasm to her voice. Miss Holden simply stared at her until Caro looked away.
‘All right, Caro, you run along and chase boys or whatever it was you were doing - I want a word with April.’
Caro looked as if she was going to say something more, but the teacher flashed her a warning look and she sloped off.
‘April. How are you?’ said Miss Holden when Caro had gone.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re sure? It’d only be natural if you were feeling a little fragile after, well, after everything that’s happened.’
‘No, I’m okay, honestly,’ said April, itching to get away.
‘All right, well, as I said to you the other day, I need to speak to you about something important.’
Something about the look on the teacher’s face made April pause.
‘Is it about my dad?’
Miss Holden smiled sadly. ‘In a way, yes. Can you stay behind after school today?’
April looked at the floor and shook her head. ‘I told my mum I’d be straight home. She’s not very well at the moment.’
She didn’t want to tell Miss Holden that she had arranged to go to Davina’s house after school; she knew she wouldn’t approve.