But these were scumbags, not professional criminals, probably more used to mugging pensioners for their weekly payouts so they could score their next hit than taking on a cop.
Stoner’s shock and confusion was apparent, and Marty pointed at him and screamed, “There! Vampire! He’s going to kill you, look out, he’s got a knife, there, there!” The smoking cop was already half out of the car and on the pavement, and he glanced behind him as Marty pointed.
Stoner turned and ran.
As Marty reached the police car, the driver’s door was opening and the second cop was climbing out. It was a woman, dark hair tied up in a bun, and Marty made another snap decision. They’d try to calm him down, send him on his way, unless he did something…
He ran to the front of the car and kicked in one of the headlights.
“Hey!” the woman cop shouted.
Marty danced to the right and kicked in the other headlight, then started booting the car’s grille.
“Leave it!” the smoking policeman shouted. He threw his cigarette aside, pulled his pepper spray and Marty backed off, hands up, submissive.
“Little shit,” the woman said, checking out the damage.
“Vampires!” Marty shouted. But looking around, checking both ways along the street, he saw that the three scumbags had already vanished.
He went to his knees and sat calmly. His heart was thundering, and he wondered what he had just avoided. And that was how, for the first time in his life, Marty Volk was arrested.
11
“HOLY SHIT,” Lee said, and he looked directly at Francesco.
That’s not good, Rose thought. Not good at all.
Lee had been sitting in the corner for over an hour, working on his laptop. At first she’d sat with him, intrigued by what he was doing and, in truth, impressed. He had one application open, which was scanning police radio and mobile phone traffic in the Greater London area, with word-recognition software running in the background instructed to look for the keywords “Marty,” “Volk,” “Vampire,” “Ashleigh Richards,” and “Otter Street.” With another application, he was trying to build up a picture of Richards’s habitual movements over the last ten years. He’d already managed to find the numbers of six credit and debit cards listed under her name over the past decade, and from these he was establishing a pattern of movement that built an impressive picture of her everyday life.
To begin with, at the turn of the decade, there were three train routes that she traveled a lot, all of them to and from London: Yorkshire, Monmouthshire, and Wiltshire. Lee established that she had family living in Yorkshire, and that the other two counties were work related. She holidayed in Cornwall, and also made trips to the States, Canada, Greece, South Africa, and Nepal. From this larger picture, he started pinpointing more defined aspects of her life. There were over three hundred purchases made at a bakery just off New Oxford Street between 2000 and 2003, as well as numerous shopping receipts from various shops in that area. Lee could even narrow down these purchases to specific times and days, and the bakery purchases were usually made around lunchtime.
From around 2003 onward, the trail became more difficult to follow. Her traveling seemed to lessen, and card purchases ceased. He could track her cash withdrawals, all of them from the same ATM in the same bank in Colliers Wood, and it seemed obvious that she’d started buying everything with cash. Utility bills showed that she’d remained in the same house where she’d lived for years, and gas and electric usage had increased steadily throughout 2003. From then until now, as far as they could gather, she had remained at home.
The changes in her habits had begun soon after the King of Stonehenge dig.
“British Museum,” he said when Rose asked where she’d worked. “Already brought up her tax records.”
As for where the Bane might be located, the museum was an obvious first choice, but there were still dozens of potential sites in and around London. Knowing more about Ashleigh Richards still told them nothing about where she had possibly hidden the relic.
When Lee started finding and tracking Richards’s family and friends in London, Rose moved away and left him to it. She was hungry, and there was nothing here to feed upon. Nothing allowable, anyway. Francesco sat where he’d come to rest as soon as they’d entered the basement, back against the damp wall and eyes closed. For Rose, the fact that they never needed rest had been one of the most shocking aspects of becoming a vampire; with a body that never tired, the only pressing requirement was food. She used to enjoy drinking, but that was no longer a necessity, nor even a pleasure. She’d liked sex, but though she still indulged from time to time, the drive seemed to have dwindled with the beating of her heart.
She knew that Francesco was resting his mind rather than his body. And she wondered, as ever, whether the passing of so much time could tire a mind whose body was still young and vigorous.
“He’s very good,” Rose said, sitting next to the old Humain.
“I know. That’s why we use him.”
“‘Use him,’” she echoed, not liking the term. But she could not deny its truth.
She had sat silently with the vampire who had turned her five years before, closing her own eyes but unable to rest her mind.
And then that comment from Lee. “Holy shit.” And he looked directly at Francesco.
“What is it?” Rose said, leaping to her feet and crossing the basement in less than a second. Lee drew back, like a startled cat in a car’s headlamps, clawing at the headphones strapped across his head.
Francesco was beside her then, though she hadn’t even heard him move.
“What is it?” she asked again.
“Marty’s name was mentioned,” Lee said. He pulled the headphones from the laptop and hit a button. At first, all Rose heard was a shower of white noise interspersed with crackles and electronic squawks. But then she heard it properly, and the voices emerged.
“…station. Right nutter, kicked… lights in. You wouldn’t believe… shouting about vampires… got in car willingly enough. Couple of hours ago now, but… still shaking. Said his name was Volk. Wasn’t that the family… house that burnt… ?”
“Christ,” Rose muttered. “Can you tell where that’s coming from?”
“Hang on.” Lee tapped away on his laptop and a map of London popped up on the screen. It rotated counterclockwise, slowly, and when it had described a full circle, the map increased in size. Rose watched, her eye already on the place she suspected, and as the map zeroed in she was sure.
“Home,” she said.
“So now the police have him because he’s been talking about vampires,” Francesco said. He stood quietly for a while, and Lee lowered the volume on the police-band scanner.
“He won’t—”
“He’s not our problem anymore,” the tall vampire said.
“What if he leads them here?” Lee asked.
“It’ll be dusk in a couple of hours. By the time they’ve calmed him down, booked him in, let him stew in a cell for a while…” Francesco shrugged. “Besides, they’ll think he’s mad.”
“I’m sure,” Rose said. “But what if he got to the woman first?”
“He didn’t.” Francesco gestured at the laptop. “He went home. Like any animal facing extreme circumstances.”
“No,” Rose said. “He’s been gone seven hours. Something must have happened.”
“What do you mean?” Lee asked. “What something?”