Talulla Rising
Page 22

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—