I drew a few more lines on Charles Frith’s blotter. “When I was hunting down Screechers after D-Day, it was a totally different ballgame. We were attached to an advancing army, which was driving the Screechers ahead of us. But here — well, this is South London, in peacetime. We can’t go from street to street, searching every house. We can’t ask the Royal Engineers to blow up buildings for us if we suspect that a couple of Screechers are hiding in the attic.”
“So what can we do?”
“We’ll have to use a combination of plain old-fashioned police work, plus some inspired deduction, plus — well — something else.”
“Something else?” asked Charles Frith, suspiciously, raising one brambly eyebrow.
“I guess you’d probably call it sorcery or the occult.”
“You mean Dennis Wheatley kind of stuff? The Devil Rides Out? Dear God, I can just hear myself explaining this to Sir David.”
“I hope you won’t have to, sir. But let’s make a start. From what happened today, it’s pretty clear that Duca has found himself an automobile. We need to check any reports of stolen vehicles in that part of South London over the past six weeks, but we also need to ask the public if they have seen a neighbor’s automobile — not stolen but being regularly driven by somebody unfamiliar.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Strigoi mortii aren’t half-rotten and sick-looking like strigoi vii. They look perfectly normal. In fact they usually look better than normal. But they’re dead, and dead people find it difficult to rent or buy property, because — well, they’re dead. So they have a habit of killing other people and taking over their lives — their homes, their property, even their clothes — and usually they’re clever enough to do it without arousing suspicion.”
“So how do we get the public to help us?”
“I’m not really sure, to tell you the truth. Maybe some kind of announcement in the newspapers.”
“I’ve got it,” said Terence. “We could tell the press that we’ve had an intelligence report from Washington. They suspect that a KGB spy has moved into a flat or a house in South London, and that he might be driving the car belonging to the previous occupier. We could give out a special telephone number for the public to call. We could even offer a reward.”
Charles Frith pulled a disapproving face. In his opinion, newspapers were only good for wrapping up cod and chips. But Terence’s idea was actually a pretty good one. We were right in the depths of the Cold War, and every day the press was full of scaremongering stories about Soviet spies living among us, leading what appeared to be commonplace lives (and as we later discovered, they actually were).
“Very well,” Charles Frith told Terence, “why don’t you scribble something down on paper and see if you can have it on my desk by five o’clock? I’ll talk to Sir Kenneth bloody McLean and see if he can get his beat chaps to start asking questions about people driving cars that they shouldn’t be. What are you going to do, Jim?”
I looked at my watch, the gold Breitling that Louise had given me on our wedding day. “I have some persuading to do.”
Tea for Two
Terence let me borrow his Humber and I drove back over Chelsea Bridge toward the south suburbs. The sky was deep blue and streaked with mares’ tails, and it was so warm that I drove with all the windows open and my cow’s lick blowing. The river Thames sparkled in the sunlight like smashed mirrors.
I drove through the built-up center of Croydon at an overheated crawl. I hadn’t driven a manual shift for over ten years, so I kept stalling, and kangaroo-jumping, and it took me over an hour to get to Purley. By the time I turned into Combe Road, my shirt was sticking to the leather seat and I was so thirsty that I could have drunk blood.
Purley was a prosperous suburb with huge 1930s houses concealed behind high beech hedges. Shining new Rovers were parked in every graveled driveway, and I could see tennis courts and gardeners clipping rose bushes and well-dressed children running around in Aertex shirts and white socks and sandals. There was a tranquil air of summer heat and confidence and money.
I found “The Starlings” at the end of Combe Road, an enormous mock-Tudor house with glittering ivy all down one wall and pigeons warbling on the roof. I steered the Humber into the drive and parked outside the garages. A middle-aged man in a droopy cotton sun hat was clipping the edges of the front lawn, not that they looked as if they needed clipping. The lawn itself was so perfectly kept that it looked unreal, and striped like a pair of green silk pajamas.
I climbed out of the car and walked up to him, shielding my eyes with my upraised arm.
“I’m looking for Jill,” I told him.
“Oh, yes?”
“My name’s Jim Falcon. Captain James Falcon, actually. Jill and I have been working together.”
“Yes, I know about that. Well, as much as I’m allowed to. I’m her father.”
He climbed up over the herbaceous border on to the driveway. He had a squarish, pugnacious face, and a prickly gray mustache.
“Is Jill home?” I asked him. “I really need to talk to her.”
“I don’t know if that’s a very good idea, Captain Falcon. Jill came home in a state of considerable distress and we had to call the family doctor to give her a sedative.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She hasn’t told us what happened, and of course we haven’t been pressing her to tell us, because we’re aware that it’s extremely hush-hush. But if it’s going to have this kind of an effect on her. well, we’re her family. We have to put her personal well-being first, before her work.”
“Yes, sir, I can understand how you feel. I know Jill’s extremely shocked and I’m sorry about that. But this investigation we’re working on is critical. We’re talking about people’s lives here, sir. Maybe hundreds of people’s lives. Maybe even more.”
“Well, I’m really not sure.”
I paused for a moment, and then I said, “Sir — you saw action during the war, I guess?”
“Yes, of course. I was out in Burma.”
“You saw plenty of things that shocked and distressed you, I’ll bet. You saw people killed.”
He blinked at me. “Captain Falcon — are you trying to tell me what I think you’re trying to tell me?”
I nodded. “What Jill and I have been doing together — it’s just as important as what we did during the war. In some ways, even more so, because nobody’s prepared for it.”
“Something to do with the bloody Russians, I suppose?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to tell you. But I need her, sir. I need her expertise. I need Bullet. The situation’s getting more and more desperate by the day and she has to pull herself together.”
“I can’t say I’m altogether happy about it.”
“Look at it this way, sir. Jill also has to realize that her entire career could be in jeopardy. I covered up for her this afternoon. I told my boss that she took Bullet to Croydon to follow up some new trails we found. But if she won’t get back on the job they’ll probably have to demote her, or even sack her.”
Her father lowered his head so that I couldn’t see his face under the brim of his sun hat. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Jill was lying on a flowery chintz sofa in the drawing room. Bullet was lying on the rug next to her, panting.
“I thought you’d come, sooner or later,” she said, wanly. “Turned out to be sooner.”