There were four men squatting down and dancing.
And they were talking to one another-with Ukrainian accents, but still in my own native Russian. Although you might say they were using the underground version. In more or less printable form it went something like this:
“Up yours!” one pantomime Cossack dancer spat merrily through his teeth. “Move it, you louse! Keep the rhythm going, you tattered condom!”
“Go to hell!” another man in fancy dress answered. “Quit grousing. Wave those arms about. We’re losing money!”
“Tanka, you bitch!” the third man joined in. “Get out here!”
A girl in a bright-colored dress started dancing, letting the Cossacks take a short break. But she still found time for a dignified reply with no serious obscenity:
“Bastards, I’m sweating like a pig, and you sit there scratching your balls!”
I started making my way back out of the crowd of whirring and clicking cameras. Close beside me I heard a girl speaking to her companion in clear Russian.
“How awful!…Do you think they always swear like that?”
An interesting question, that. Always, or just when they’re abroad? Does everybody? Or just ours, the Russians, in the strangely naive belief that nobody outside Russia knows Russian?
I’d rather believe that’s the way all street artists talk to one another.
Buses.
Tourists.
Pubs.
Shops.
A mime artist wandering around a small square, feeling at nonexistent walls-a sad man in an invisible maze.
A cool black dude in a kilt, playing a saxophone.
I realized why I was in no hurry to get to the Dungeons of Scotland. I had to breathe this city into my lungs. Feel it with my skin, my body…with the blood in my veins.
I decided to wander around in the crowd for a bit longer. And then buy a ticket for the “room of horror.”
The tourist attraction was closed. The huge sign was still there on the pillars of the bridge. The double doors fashioned in the entrance-to-ancient-dungeons style were open, but the gap was roped off at chest height. A sheet of cardboard hanging on the rope politely informed me that the Dungeons were closed for technical reasons.
To be quite honest, I was surprised. It was five days since Victor had been killed. Long enough for any police investigation. The Edinburgh Night Watch would have examined everything they needed to without advising the human police about it.
But the place was closed.
I shrugged, lifted up the rope, ducked under it, and set off down the narrow stairway. The metal-grid steps echoed hollowly under my feet. Two flights down there were toilets, then a narrow little corridor with ticket offices that were closed. A few lamps were lit here and there, but they were only intended to create a lurid atmosphere for the customers. Standard, dim energy-saving lightbulbs.
“Is anyone alive down here?” I called out in English, and then realized with a start how ambiguous that was. “Hey…are there any Others here?”
Silence.
I walked through a few rooms. The walls were hung with portraits of people with brutal faces, the kind that would have delighted Lombroso’s heart. Framed texts told the stories of criminals, maniacs, cannibals, and sorcerers. There were display cases with crude models of severed arms and legs, vessels full of dark liquids, instruments of torture. Out of curiosity I took a look at them through the Twilight. All newly made-no one had ever been tortured with them; they didn’t carry the slightest trace of suffering.
I yawned.
There were strings with rags dangling from them stretched out above my head. I guessed they were supposed to represent cobwebs. Higher up I caught glimpses of a metal ceiling with rather unromantic rivets the size of saucers. The tourist attraction had been built in a strictly utilitarian, technical space.
There was something bothering me.
“Is there anyone there? Alive or dead, answer me!” I called out again. And again there was no answer. But what was it that had alarmed me like that? It was something that wasn’t right…when I looked through the Twilight.
I looked around again, using my Twilight vision.
There it was! That was what was so odd!
There was no blue moss-that harmless but unpleasant parasite that grows on the first level of the Twilight, the only permanent inhabitant of the gray reverse side of the world. In a place like this, where people constantly experienced fear, even if it was only circus fear and not the real thing, the blue moss ought to have flourished like crazy. It ought to have been dangling from the ceiling in shaggy stalactites, spread out across the floor in a repulsive, wriggling carpet, covering the walls like thick flocked wallpaper.
But there wasn’t any moss.
Was someone cleaning the premises regularly? Burning the moss off (if he was a Light One) or freezing it off (if he was a Dark One)?
Well, if there was an Other on the staff here, that would be a help to me.
As if in response to my thoughts, I heard the sound of footsteps. They were quite fast, as if someone had heard me shout and was hurrying toward me from a long way away, through the maze of plasterboard partition walls. A few seconds later the black-painted door from this room into the next one opened.
And in walked a vampire.
Not a real one, of course. He had a normal human aura.
A man in costume.
A black cloak, rubber fangs in his mouth, pale makeup on his face. A good-quality makeup job. Only, all this didn’t fit too well with the curly red hair. He probably had to wear a black wig when he was working. And another thing that didn’t fit was the plastic bottle of mineral water that my visitor was just about to drink from.
The young guy frowned when he saw me. His good-natured face turned not exactly angry, but strict and reproachful. He reached up to his mouth and turned away for a second. When he looked at me again, the fangs were gone.
“Mister?”
“Do you work here?” I asked. I didn’t want to use magic and break his will. There are always simpler ways of coming to terms with someone. Human ways.
“Yes, but the show’s closed. Temporarily.”
“Because of the murder?” I asked.
The young guy frowned. Now he certainly wasn’t feeling well-disposed.
“Mister, I don’t know how you got past…This is private property. The place is closed to visitors. Come with me, please, I’ll show you out.”
He took a step toward me and even reached out one hand to demonstrate that he was prepared to take me out by force.
“Were you here when Victor Prokhorov was killed?” I asked.
“Just exactly who are you?” he asked cautiously.
“I’m a friend of his. I just flew in from Russia today.”
The young guy’s face dropped. He started backing away, until he came up against the door he’d come in through. He pushed it, but the door didn’t open. I must confess that was my fault.
Now he was in a total panic.
“Mister…I wasn’t to blame for anything! We’re all cut up about the way Victor died. Mister…Comrade!”
He spoke the last word with a Russian inflection. I wondered what old action movie he remembered it from.
“What’s wrong with you?” I was the one who was confused now. I moved closer to him. Could I really have been lucky enough to come across someone who knew something, who was involved with the murder somehow? Otherwise, what was all the panic about?
“Don’t kill me, I didn’t do anything!” the young guy babbled. His skin was whiter than his makeup now. “Comrade! Sputnik, vodka, perestroika! Gorbachev!”
“That last word could certainly get you killed in Russia,” I muttered, and reached into my pocket for my cigarettes.
It was a very unfortunate thing for me to say. And that movement wasn’t the best of ideas either. The young guy’s eyes rolled up and back, and he fainted on the floor. The bottle of mineral water fell beside him.
Out of sheer stubbornness, I dealt with him without using any magic. A few slaps to the cheeks and a sip of water soon fixed him up. Then I considerately offered him a cigarette.