They didn’t dare to drink the blood of anybody who had been vaccinated, and it was easy to understand why. The Salk vaccine was made of dead polio viruses. Dead polio viruses didn’t affect humans. But when a strigoi vii was transformed into a strigoi mort, all of the dead and dying cells in its body were revived. Not only revived, but enhanced so much that the strigoi mort became immortal. So if it had polio viruses in its bloodstream, the viruses would be revived, too. The strigoi mort might be immortal, but it would be totally paralyzed.
“Dr. Shulman,” I said, “you’re an angel. You’ve made my day.”
“Well, I think you must be some kind of an angel, too, Captain Falcon. We certainly wouldn’t have thought of making comparative blood tests if it hadn’t been for you.”
I put down the phone. George said, “Has something happened?”
“Yes, George, I believe it has. I believe we’ve found the way to wipe out these goddamned Screechers for good and all.”
“You mean it? You really mean it? That’s a bloody relief.”
I was just about to leave the operations center when a young man in a blue RAF uniform appeared, with his cap tucked under his arm.
“I’m looking for Captain Falcon.”
“That’s me. You must be the dog handler I asked for.”
“That’s right, sir. Warrant Officer Tim Headley, sir. Keston’s outside in my van.”
W/O Headley was a serious-looking young man with very thick eyebrows and very blue eyes and very red cheeks. His hair stuck up in a sprig at the back as if he were about six years old, and he had been sleeping on it.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Warrant Officer Headley. I’ll call you Tim and you can call me Jim.”
“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”
“Listen, Tim, I have to go back to my diggings right now to change my clothes and take a bath, but then we’ll be ready for action. I have a list of addresses for Keston to go sniffing around, and I’m pretty confident that we’ve found a way of dealing with the characters we’re likely to find there. How much have you been briefed?”
Tim’s cheeks flushed even redder. “I’ve got a rough idea of what’s going on, sir. I’ve been told to keep it very hush-hush.”
“Do you know what it is we’re going after?”
“I was told some pretty odd types.”
“ ‘Some pretty odd types?’ ” I hesitated, wondering if I ought to tell him more. But then I said, “Yes, OK. ‘Pretty odd types.’ I guess that just about sums them up.”
Tim drove me to Thornton Heath in his RAF Police van. I felt as if I had gone through fifteen rounds with Rocky Marciano — bruised, exhausted, with a thumping headache. But Dr. Shulman’s discovery had got my adrenaline going and I couldn’t wait to start hunting down Screechers.
Keston turned out to be a large German shepherd with a shaggy coat and a black face. It was hot in the back of the police van, and he panted on the back of my neck all the way to Terence’s mother’s house.
“Keston’s a whiz at finding deserters,” said Tim. “One chap was hiding in an empty water tower, fifty feet above the ground. Keston sniffed him out, didn’t you, boy?”
Keston barked about two inches behind my head.
“You found him, didn’t you, boy? None of the other dogs could, but you did!”
Another bark. I turned to Tim and said, “No more compliments, OK? My head won’t take it.”
We parked outside Terence’s mother’s house. “Do you mind if I bring Keston in for a bowl of water?” asked Tim.
“You can bring him in for a cup of tea and a sausage sandwich for all I care.”
Tim was opening up the back of the van when I noticed that the front door of Terence’s mother’s house was open. I looked up and down the street. Although it wasn’t yet 9:00 AM, the morning was glaringly bright and very hot. There were only two other cars parked anywhere nearby, and a motorcycle with sidecar.
I approached the front door cautiously. Maybe I was overreacting. After all, the temperature was almost in the 70s already, and Mrs. Mitchell might have left her door open for a cooling draft. But the house was unusually silent. Mrs. Mitchell always kept her wireless on, humming along to Sound Track Serenade and Johnny Dun-can’s Song Bag.
“Mrs. Mitchell!” I called out. “Mrs. Mitchell!”
There was no answer. Tim was coming through the front gate now, with Keston.
“Everything OK?” he asked me.
“I’m not sure. Probably.”
But as I opened the front door a little wider, Keston started to whine and lower his head, like a dog who has been smacked on the nose for misbehavior.
“Mrs. Mitchell!”
I stepped into the narrow hallway. Tim tried to bring Keston in after me, but he scrabbled his claws on the path and refused to come into the house.
“Keston! Scent, boy! Come on, boy!”
Still Keston refused to come any further. Tim dragged at his leash, but he wouldn’t budge.
“He’s never acted up like this before, never.”
“Maybe there’s something here that he seriously doesn’t like the smell of.”
“Keston! Come along, lad! Keston!”
I took out my gun and cocked it. I had no more Last Supper bullets left, but I had reloaded with a clip of regular bullets, rubbed with garlic. Not nearly so effective at stopping a strigoi vii, but hopefully still enough to give me a few seconds’ advantage.
I went down the hallway and eased open the kitchen door. The green floral curtains were drawn, and the main overhead light was still burning. There was a single saucepan on top of the New World gas cooker, and the table was laid for one, with a place mat and a soup spoon.
Tim came up behind me. “Keston won’t budge. I’ve had to put him back in the van. I’m really sorry about this.”
“He’s been spooked, Tim. And I can’t say that I blame him. I’m spooked, too.”
We both listened. All I could hear was the droning of those hairy blue blowflies the British call bluebottles. Scores of bluebottles.
I stepped into the kitchen. I could smell vegetable soup, but I could also smell that distinctive rotten-chicken odor of dried human blood. At the far side of the kitchen there was a door with frosted-glass panels which led through to the scullery and then to the backyard. The frosted-glass panels were spattered with dark brown spots.
Tim said, “Oh, God.”
“How about going back to your van and calling George Goodhew for me?” I asked him.
“Somebody’s been killed here, haven’t they?”
“It sure smells like it. But if you don’t want to see it — look, I lost my last dog handler because she couldn’t take the sight of people with their insides hanging out.”
“Is that what you’re expecting to find?” Tim’s face was very pale, although his cheeks were still fiery.
“I don’t know. Let’s take a look, shall we?”
I opened up the scullery door. I had been prepared to see all kinds of horrors, but at first I couldn’t really understand what I was looking at. Tim made a retching noise and clamped his hand over his mouth. Then he hurried back through the kitchen and out into the hallway and I could hear him noisily vomiting in the front garden.
On the side wall of the scullery, in a grisly display of blasphemy and butchery, both Mrs. Mitchell and Terence had been nailed, completely naked and upside down, their feet together but their hands outspread.
Their heads had been sawn off, and underneath each of their gaping necks an enamel basin had been placed to catch their blood. A zinc bucket stood in the corner, and I could see a bloody tangle of gray hair in it, so I knew what had happened to their heads.