Suckers

One day, I had just finished rearranging some mushrooms on toast when he made an outrageous suggestion. He'd wolfed down his own food and I'd watched in repelled fascination as he had whipped out a length of dental floss and sawed at the gaps between his teeth. I had witnessed this ritual several rimes before. He had asked more than once if I realized fewer teeth were lost to decay than to gum disease, had talked at length about plaque and disclosing tablets, had even advised me on what type of toothbrush to buy. Now he finished with the floss and dropped it into the ashtray, then sat back and took a long, cool look at me, a faint smile on his lips, but not in his eyes. I had learned never to trust his smiles.

'You always wear black,' he observed eventually. 'And your skin is unusually pale. Good God, Dora, don't you ever go out in the sun?'

'Not a lot.'

'If I didn't know better, I might think you were like Violet.'

'What? Me? A vampire?' I laughed.

He laughed too, but his laugh went on long after mine had faded. 'Speaking of which, I should like to ask a small favour. You will be in a certain place, at a certain time. You will not speak. You will do nothing, except take what is offered, and then you will give it to me.'

I glared at him. 'What the hell do you think I am? A messenger service? Do it yourself.'

I could tell he was wondering whether to use threats, but he opted for keeping it sweet. 'But that is impossible. You see, I am too tall, my hair is the wrong colour, and I am also the wrong gender. No one else can do this. Only you.'

The enormity of what he was asking finally dawned on me. 'You expect me to impersonate Violet.'

'Not impersonate, don't flatter yourself. No one could ever do that. You will simply be a stand-in, like in the movies.'

'And is she part of this? Does she know?'

After weighing the possibilities, he went for the truth. 'No.'

So it was that, two nights later, I was lurking in the undergrowth outside Violet's basement, dressed in my best black. I knew Grauman wasn't far away, but I could neither see nor hear him. My chief worry was that Violet would make an unprecedented decision to leave Duncan early and I would run slap-bang into her on her own doorstep. It crossed my mind that Grauman might have set the whole thing up specifically in order for this to happen. But then I dismissed my fears; it would have been too elaborate a ruse. He could have delivered me up to her at any time without needing to resort to that sort of baroque subterfuge.

While waiting for the appointed hour I explored the overgrown garden. In summer, any such freedom of movement would have been impossible, but now my path was not quite blocked by false cypress and rampant ivy. I smoked five cigarettes, one after the other, and was just about to light a sixth when the hinges on the garden gate creaked and the light from the street cast an elongated shadow across my path. My heart skipped a couple of beats; this was going to be more difficult than I had anticipated. The newcomer spotted me standing there and swooped. I melted back into the foliage before he could get too close a look at my face.

But, as he approached, I saw my first impressions had been mistaken. I had been expecting a vampire, but this man was obviously human, and hardly a prime example of the species. It was impossible to be afraid of someone this puny, who had an Adam's apple bobbing up and down with nervousness. With a thrill of excitement I realized he was more frightened of me than I had been of him.

'Hello?' he whispered. 'Miss Westron?' He was clutching an attache case to his chest as though he thought someone was going to leap out of the shadows and snatch it away.

I followed Grauman's instructions and said nothing.

'Miss Westron,' he repeated, extending a trembling hand for me to shake. I ignored it. 'William Fitch,' he said, nodding like a car mascot. 'I've got the papers you sent for.'

'Oh good,' I said, before remembering I was supposed to be keeping my mouth shut.

'Do you want to go through them now?'

I shook my head and grabbed the case, but he continued to hover. 'Perhaps if I…'

I fixed him with what I hoped was a spine-chilling stare, and hissed, 'Go away.' His mouth opened wide, but no words came out, then he turned tail and fled. I watched him go, chuckling delightedly to myself. If this was power, I was already hooked. Being Violet full-time might be fun.

As soon as he was out of sight, I opened the case. It was full of loose pieces of paper and typewritten sheets, and I pulled out a bunch of crumbling yellowish cuttings. The top one was a picture of people milling around a blazing building, cut from an old French newspaper. The man nearest the camera had his mouth wide open and was yelling something. Visible in the background, wrestling with giant snakes and ladders, were harried firemen. My French was rusty but it wasn't hard to decipher the headline — Eleven Perish in Hotel Inferno.

I dug around in the case again and drew out a dog-eared black-and-white photograph of people sitting round a table in a restaurant, clinking glasses at the camera: two men, two women. One of the men was familiar; I knew I'd seen that face before somewhere and wondered if it was someone famous. One of the women was slender and chic, a bit like Audrey Hepburn only wispier and blonde. The other woman was a blur; she had moved while the shutter was being pressed and the flash hadn't been fast enough to capture her.

Grauman appeared from nowhere and, no respecter of personal space, started to breathe down the back of my neck. 'I will take those,' he said, easing the cuttings out of my hands so as not to tear them. Reluctantly, I handed him the photograph as well. He said, 'I do not remember giving you permission to examine the goods.'

'And I don't remember you saying I couldn't,' I said, watching him check the contents of the bag. 'Why can't I look? I played my role perfectly, didn't I?'

He flashed me a grin, unable to keep the smugness out of it. 'Maybe later. Maybe after you do for me another small favour.'

'What are you going to do with those?'

Grauman closed the case and patted it. 'She wants to keep Fender a secret, all to herself, because she knows there are others who would not hesitate to have him killed, if they knew who he was and thought he was getting in the way. She would do anything — anything — to protect him.'

'So, what next?'

'I show her these papers. And she will be grateful I was able to stop them falling into the wrong hands. But there will be other envelopes, and other cuttings, and she will be aware of that. She will leave Fender alone, because she fears for his safety.'

'If she's so fond of him, why doesn't she turn him into a vampire? Then she wouldn't have to worry about his life being in danger.'

Grauman stopped being smug. 'It is not so simple,' he snapped.

'I see,' I said, though I didn't. All I knew was that I was going to have to tread very carefully. 'And the favour?'

'Fender's five minutes are up,' Grauman said. 'It is time for him to find out the truth about his lady love. This is where you come in, Dora. You will tell him what she really is.'

I thought it was a bad move, but didn't say so, because Grauman was still in a snappy mood. I had to swallow a lot of pride in order to phone Duncan. I kept telling myself it was worth it; soon I would have him all to myself. But he didn't sound exactly overjoyed to hear me. In fact, he could barely remember who I was — just a vaguely familiar name dredged up from some dim, distant, pre-Violet past.

'Dora,' he echoed.

'Dora. You know, from college.'

'Oh yes.'

I said I had to see him, it was urgent. He didn't seem bowled over with enthusiasm. I was tempted to give up, but the thought of admitting my failure to Grauman was more than I could bear. I gave it one last shot, and he grudgingly agreed to meet for lunch the next day, in the cheapest restaurant I could think of.