“Yes, you are. And for a very good reason.”
George took out his pipe again. “It’s not very helpful, you know, when they keep us in the dark. Hard to know what we’re supposed to be looking for.”
“You’re looking for anything that doesn’t seem to be natural. Like that piece of skin.”
“Hmm,” said George, frowning around the clearing as if he had lost something important.
Bullet picked up the Screechers’ trail almost immediately, and began to trot ahead of us with his nose down. He led us to the edge of the park, and out into the suburban streets again, heading back in the direction of Croydon Aerodrome. Every now and then we found spots of blood on the sidewalk, which indicated that the ginger-headed girl must have been pretty seriously wounded.
Jill said, “Another thing—I always thought that vampires could only come out at night.”
“You’re thinking about the
nosferatu
, like Dracula, and all the vampires you see in the movies.”
“The
strigoi
are different?”
“They have some similarities, but they’re more like distant cousins. The thing is, the
strigoi
were isolated for hundreds of years in the forests and mountains and small village communities in Romania, and because of that they became very inbred, and they developed different strengths and different weaknesses. They can walk around
in sunlight, which the
nosferatu
can’t do, and they can eat normal food. And, like I say, there’s even a legend that female Screechers can even conceive.”
“How can a dead woman give birth to a live baby?”
“Search me. How can a dead woman walk around at all? But when a
strigoi vii
becomes a
strigoi mort
, there’s a radical change in its body chemistry. It becomes—I don’t know, like liquid mercury, and smoke. It can walk on ceilings and it can pass through a gap only an inch wide, which is why the people in Romania always close their windows at night, even in the summer.”
“Here, look,” said Jill. Bullet had reached a red mailbox at the corner of the street—what the British call a pillar box. The female Screecher must have leaned against it for a while, because there were splatters of blood on the asphalt pavement all around it, and a smear of blood on the white enamel plaque which gave the times of mail collections.
“I hope she hasn’t gone too much farther,” I said. We had already walked over a mile and a half, and we were close to the perimeter of the aerodrome.
But Bullet turned around and barked at us, and so we continued.
We climbed a grassy hill next to the main airfield, where young children were flying kites and kicking footballs. From here, we could see all the way across Croydon, with its Victorian town hall tower, and even as far as the City of London, and the dome of St. Paul’s. It could have been idyllic, “Earth has not anything to show more fair,” if we hadn’t been following that dogged black Labrador on the trail of
strigoi
.
As we crossed the grass, Jill said to me, “I was wondering how you started chasing Screechers. It’s rather a funny choice of career, don’t you think?”
“Hey—I’m not a professional Screecher-chaser. My real job is giving cultural advice to businessmen. You know, if American executives want to know how they should behave when they sell their products in Belgium, say, or Greece, or India, I tell them what the protocol is. In India, for instance, nobody ever says no. You want something they don’t have, they always tell you tomorrow.”
“So why Screechers?”
“My mother’s fault, most of all. She was Romanian. She told me all about the
strigoi
when I was little, and when I went to college I did a whole lot of research into them. Without really meaning to I became something of an international expert.”
“Is your mother still alive?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about my mother just now. I didn’t want Jill to know how intent I was on hunting down Duca, and destroying it, and why. In any case, anger was unprofessional. Anger could lead to fatal mistakes.
Bullet led us across the field and back into crowded residential streets. Soon I found that we were walking down a street that I recognized. It was the same street where the birthday-party massacre had taken place. We passed the same house and the same Victorian church, and soon we were back on the busy main road, just opposite the Red Deer pub. I would have given £5 for a beer right then, even a warm one, but of course the pub’s doors were closed.
We passed a small parade of shops, a barber’s and a
chemist’s and a sweetshop. Outside the sweetshop there was a color poster for
The Curse of Frankenstein
, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, showing next week at the Regal Cinema.
“I can’t stand horror films,” said Jill, and then she looked at me with a self-deprecating smile. “I’m really not very good for this job, am I?”
“Jill—nobody’s good for this job, believe me, but some poor sucker has to do it. You’re doing fine.”
Jill bent down to take hold of Bullet’s collar and we crossed the main road. On the other side, the streets were even narrower and the houses were smaller and closer together—orange-brick Victorian terraces with black slate roofs. We walked up a short steep hill into Bynes Road, which backed on to the main London to Brighton railroad line. We were only halfway up the road when—just above the rooftops—a Pullman express train flew past, with its distinctive brown-and-cream carriages, and pink table lamps shining in every window.
Whoosh
, bang, a decompression of air, and it was gone.
“That was the Brighton Belle,” said Jill. “London to Brighton in sixty minutes flat, and a good lunch, too.”
“Well—we’ll have to do that one day, you and me, when this is all over. And paddle in the sea.”
“
Yes
,” she said, “that would be lovely.”
Bullet continued to sniff his way along the sidewalk, but then I said, “Grab his collar, Jill! Look.”
About a hundred yards farther up the street, a glossy black Armstrong-Siddeley saloon was parked. Apart from a ten-year-old Morris and a motorcycle, it was the only vehicle in the street, and it was far more expensive than anything that the people round here
could have afforded—well over $4,000 new, I would have guessed.
Bullet whined and strained, but Jill pulled him back across the street, and we took shelter in the doorway of a small laundry on the corner. The woman behind the counter looked at us oddly, but didn’t come to ask us why two grown people and a dog were playing hide-and-go-seek in the front of her shop.
We waited over ten minutes, and then the front door of the house opened. After a further pause, a tall gray-haired man in a gray suit appeared. He was too far away for me to be able to see his face clearly, but he had a very upright bearing, and he was carrying a cane. He opened the garden gate, and as he did so he turned back to the house, as if he were saying something to the occupant. Then he climbed into the Armstrong-Siddeley and drove off.
Bullet made another strangled noise, as if he were disappointed that the man had gone. “I’ll bet money that was Duca,” I said.
“Well, we have his registration number,” said Jill. “All we have to do now is get the Ministry of Transport to look it up for us. NLT 683.”
“I’ll call Terence. Then I want to take a look in that house.”
I went into the laundry and asked the woman if she had a phone I could use. “Of course,” she said. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh, sure. My girlfriend and I are just playing a trick on somebody. It’s his birthday.”
“Oh,” said the woman, blinking at me. Then, “You’re
American
, aren’t you?” as if that explained why I was behaving so strangely.
When
the MI6 operator put me through to Terence, he sounded distracted. I gave him the license number of Duca’s car, and told him that I’d call him back later.
“But, Terence—on no account take any action, even when you’ve found out who the car belongs to.”
“Don’t worry, old man. I wouldn’t have the first idea.”
We walked up Bynes Road toward the house. It had a peeling, brown-painted front door, and a knocker in the shape of Mr. Punch. The tiny front garden was covered over with concrete but dandelions were growing up between the cracks. I tried to see into the front window but a pair of sagging net curtains were drawn across it, and all I could make out was the sunlight shining in the backyard. In Louisville they would have called this a “shotgun” house, in the sense that you could fire a shotgun in through the front door and the pellets would go clear through the house without touching anything.
The front door of the adjoining house opened, and an elderly woman appeared, wearing a flowery summer dress that appeared to have been modeled on a bell-tent, and wrinkled red socks. From the open door I could hear “Diana” playing on the radio. “
I’m so young and you’re so old
.”
The elderly woman made a phlegmy noise in her throat and said, “If you’re looking for the Browns, mate, they’ve been poorly.”
“Really? When was the last time you saw them?”
“Three days ago. The doctor’s been round twice a day. He even came round in the middle of the night. I asked him what was wrong with them and he said meningitis.”
“Was that their doctor? The guy in the black sedan?”
“That’s right. He’s not their usual doctor, though.
Their usual doctor’s Dr. Bedford. I suppose he’s on his holidays, Dr. Bedford.”
“Yes, I imagine he is. Well—thank you for telling us.”
The elderly woman didn’t appear to be in any hurry to go back into her house. She said, “I go to Dr. Cotterill myself. She’s a woman doctor. You don’t want to go to a man doctor at my age. I get this rash on my legs, see.”
“I see.”
I thought we were going to be delayed there for hours, talking about the woman’s skin problems, but after two or three minutes a younger woman appeared at her front door and told her that her tea was getting cold, so she went inside.
I said, “Thank God the British can’t survive for more than ten minutes without a cup of tea.”
“I think there’s somebody in the living room,” said Jill. “I saw a shadow moving across toward the door.”
I shielded my eyes with my hand, and she was right. There was definitely somebody in the house, moving around, although it was impossible to tell what they were doing. I decided to go in cold. Normally, I would have made sure that we had covered the back of the house, but the railroad embankment was very steep and trains were rattling past every three or four minutes, some of them at fifty or sixty miles an hour, and even a Screecher would have thought twice about trying to escape that way.
I opened the garden gate and went up to the front door. It may have been bolted on the other side, but the main lock was only a cheap Yale. I turned my back on it, and at the same time I reached behind me and took out my gun. Jill said nothing, but held on to Bullet’s collar and waited. “Don’t let Bullet go,” I warned her. “These
bastards are capable of breaking his neck without blinking. And once I’m inside, bring my Kit in, will you, as quick as you can?”
“All right,” said Jill, apprehensively.
I had started to count to three, “
One—two
—” when I heard the young man’s voice inside the house.
“Who’s there? Is there somebody outside? Beryl—there’s somebody outside, I can smell them!”
Without any more hesitation I kicked backward and the door burst open. I barged into the hall and hurled myself sideways so that I virtually bounced off the wall. There were three or four coats hanging up and for one desperate moment I was entangled in empty sleeves, as if the coats were trying to catch hold of me, but then I fought my way out of them and pushed my way into the living room.
The young man we had seen in the park was standing in the far corner, behind a frayed brown couch. Lying on the couch was the gingery-headed girl, with its knee heavily bandaged. The living room was stuffy and hot, and there was a sickening smell of putrescent flesh and dried herbs, the unmistakable stench of Screechers.
“Jill!” I yelled, pointing my gun at them with both hands. “Get in here, now!”
“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” the young man sneered at me. “
Kill
us?”
“We’ll suck you empty,” said the gingery-haired girl. “You and your girlfriend.
And
your bleeding dog.” There was no doubt where the piece of skin in the park had come from: the girl’s face had a pale greenish tinge to it and its eyes were already starting to milk over. It was very close to becoming a
strigoi mort
.
Jill came in with my Kit. Bullet was close behind her, eager to get at the two Screechers, but Jill said, “
Stay
, Bullet!” and he reluctantly waited in the hallway, panting, his tail thumping against the umbrella stand.
Keeping my gun pointed at the young man, I went down on one knee and opened up my Kit. The young man started to come around the side of the couch, and as it did so it took his kitchen knife out of its belt.
“I’m going to split you wide open, mate, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”
I was reluctant to shoot it. For one thing, I didn’t want the neighbors to call the police. For another thing, I had only six Last Supper bullets left, and I wanted to conserve them. The young man came up to me, crouching slightly, holding out its knife, and grinning. Like most Screechers, it thought that it was immortal, and that even if I shot it, it would survive.
“I think that’s near enough, son,” I warned it. Out of my case, I lifted the Bible with the ash-wood cover and the silver crucifix, and held it up in front of it. Immediately, it turned its face away, as if I had shone a blinding light in its eyes. The gingery-haired girl clamped both her hands over its face and cried out, “What’s that? Micky,
what’s that
?”
“I’ll tell you what this is. This is the first Bible that was translated into Romanian for Serban Cantacuzino, of Wallachia, when he swore to rid his country of unholy vermin like you.”
“Take it away!” the girl screamed at me. “Take it away, it’s hurting my eyes!”