“Footprints,” I said. “The boy tried to get away and one of the strigoi chased him.”
“On the ceiling?” said Terence. He looked at the chap and the chap raised his eyebrows and puffed out his cheeks, but didn’t say anything.
“You have to understand what we’re up against here,” I told him.
The other chap came in from outside. “Your dog handler’s here,” he told us. “Bit of all right, as a matter of fact.”
Bullet
I went out on to the porch — not only to greet my dog handler but to breathe some fresh air. During the war I had grown pretty much inured to the ripe stench of cut-open human beings, but over the past twelve years I had forgotten how sickening it was, and how it seemed to cling to your clothes and your hair for hours afterward. You could even taste it in your mouth when you were eating.
The dog handler had parked her pale green Hillman Minx estate car next to Terence’s Humber, and was opening the back doors so that her dog could jump out. The dog came up the path first, a glossy black Labrador with a crimson tongue, panting furiously in the heat. The dog handler followed, and the other chap hadn’t been exaggerating — she was “a bit of all right.”
She was very slim, with dark shiny hair cut into a bob. She looked as if she might have had some Burmese or Siamese blood in her, because she had high cheekbones and dark feline eyes. She was wearing a white short-sleeved blouse with the collar turned up, and she was very large-breasted. I don’t know what it is about white blouses and big breasts that does it for me, but for a split second I felt a rush of blood to the head, as if I were fifteen years old again.
Her waist was cinched in with a large silver-buckled belt, and she wore a navy pencil skirt that came down just below the knee.
“Hallo,” she smiled. She had a clear, upper-middle-class accent, and she spoke as if she were reading the BBC news. “You must be Captain — Falco, is it?”
“Falcon. With an ‘n.’ Like peregrine falcon. But call me Jim.”
“All right. I’m Jill Foxley, from the Metropolitan Police dog section at Keston.”
“Great to meet you, Jill Foxley. And your dog, too. What does he answer to?”
“His proper name is Willowyck Gruff but his working name is Bullet.”
“Bullet, I like that. Hey, Bullet! How are you doing, boy?”
Bullet turned to me and gave a single contemptuous bark.
“Hey! I think he likes me already.”
Jill said, “I’m sorry. He’s very loyal, once he gets to know people. But he’s been trained to be suspicious of strangers.”
“Well, that’s what we need, suspicious. In fact we need very suspicious. You’ve been briefed about this job, I hope? I mean, you know what you and me and Bullet here are supposed to be looking for.”
“Yes. They gave me a general idea. They said that if I needed to know anything more, I should ask you about it. Apparently you’re the world’s greatest expert.”
“And? What do you think?”
She pulled a face. “I’m not at all sure. At first I thought they were having me on toast. But I’ve always liked unusual work. Bullet and I spent the last six months tracking down heroin smugglers in Limehouse. That was fascinating. You know, all that Chinese culture and everything.”
“You understand what these Screechers are, don’t you?”
“Well, yes.” She seemed embarrassed. “Vampires, sort of.”
“Exactly. We’re not dealing with human beings here. They don’t have a soul and they don’t have a conscience. They don’t have any compunction about killing anybody of any age, with no warning at all.”
“Like wild animals, then, really?”
“Unh-hunh. They’re not like animals. They’re intelligent, and they’re so damn quick you can’t even see them, and they won’t give you any second chances.”
“I understand.” She had an alluring way of tilting her head sideways and looking at me out of the corner of her eyes.
“Well,” I said, trying to sound brusque and professional, “you’d better bring Bullet inside. You’ve visited a homicide scene before? It’s not too salubrious in there.” The language I was using, I was starting to sound quite British. I would probably start saying “constabulary” next, instead of “cops.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jill. “I’ve been called to quite a few murders. The last one was a husband who beat his wife and their seven-year-old daughter to death with a hammer, and then cut his own throat with a bread knife. That was quite yucky.”
“Quite yucky? Yes, I guess it must have been.”
Out of her navy blue pocketbook, Jill pulled a strip of brownish fabric about the length of a woman’s scarf. She held it up against Bullet’s snout so that he could sniff it and lick it. “This is a piece of the linen shroud they found in the casket,” she explained. “If the same Screecher has been here, then Bullet will be able to tell.”
“Good for Bullet. Let’s take a look, shall we?”
I led her through the hallway into the dining room, with Bullet trotting obediently beside her. I think she was determined not to show that she was nauseated, but as soon as she entered the door she clamped her hand over her mouth and couldn’t stop herself from letting out a high, cackling retch. “Oh my God, it’s disgusting.”
“Do you want to go back outside?”
She shook her head. “I can manage, thanks. It’s the flies, more than anything else. I can’t stand flies.”
“Join the club. But this is fairly typical of a Screecher attack. The strigoi mort gains entry first — in this case I’m guessing that it came through one of the skylights here. It probably came in so fast that nobody saw it — or, if they did, it would have looked like nothing more than a dark blur, whizzing through the room. It would have opened the front door and let in its companions, and then the three of them would have come back in here and had themselves a feast.”
Bullet was snuffling around the carpet, occasionally licking it with his thick crimson tongue.
“How many victims were there?” asked Jill.
“Seven. The Screechers would have sliced their stomachs open first, and cut the Achilles tendons in their heels so that they couldn’t get away. Then they would have gone from one to the other, cutting them open even wider, pulling out their hearts, and drinking their blood directly from their aortas.”
“That’s so horrible.”
“Yes, it is. But if you and I don’t stop them, the Screechers are going to multiply. I don’t know how much they told you when they briefed you, but there are two kinds of Screechers — the infected ones who are still alive, the strigoi vii — and the dead ones, the strigoi mortii.”
“I didn’t completely understand that when they briefed us. The strigoi mortii — they’re really dead? I mean dead dead?”
“Dead in the sense that they’re not human any more, and never will be. They can be nostalgic, for sure, in a very selfish way. They can shed tears for their lost humanity. They can even have relationships with humans. You’d never know if you passed a strigoi mort in the street, except that they usually look unnaturally flawless. Perfect skin, perfect teeth. It’s just that they have no soul.”
“They said that the dead ones spread the infection.”
“That’s right. by sharing their blood or other bodily fluids with human beings who attract them. They call it ‘the Embrace’ or ‘the Witch’s Kiss.’ ”
“There must be a cure for it, surely?”
I shook my head. “Once you’ve caught the infection, that’s it. You have a raging thirst for blood and you can never get enough of it. It’s like being a drug addict, only a thousand times worse.”