I didn't feel too good myself. Into my head floated a picture I'd been trying to suppress for so long — small, fetid packages wrapped in leaking black plastic. I tried to distract myself by going through Dino's photos again. I hadn't recognized Andreas Grauman at first. He looked strange in a tuxedo, with his hair tied back, but the sight of him still gave me the creeps. In fact, it was making me feel ill. My skin went hot, then cold, then hot again, and there was a roaring like motorbikes in my ears, and a faint chirruping noise as well. I put my head down between my knees, until the chirruping noise had died away and been replaced by the sound of a tinkling mountain stream. After a while, I realized the water wasn't some New Vague soundtrack in my head, but was coming from the dark-room next door. I sat up as Duncan came back, blowing his nose on a paper towel.
I made small talk, trying to hide my discomfort. 'Rotten photographer, Dino. Did you find out when these were taken?'
'Six weeks ago.' He was explaining about the filing code scratched into the emulsion when the chirruping started up again. Duncan tensed and swore and hurled himself through the door. Belatedly, I recognized the sound of the telephone, and followed. He was too late; the answering machine had already clicked on, and the caller hung up without leaving a message.
'Shit,' he said, looking devastated. Both of us had the same thought — that it could have been Lulu. 'Shit, shit, shit.'
'Maybe it was her who rang before. While you were throwing up.'
Duncan pressed the replay button. There was a whirring, and a pause, then the familiar little-girl voice. 'Duncan, are you there? Dunc? I guess not… Well, I'm having a great time earning pots of money. And don't worry, I'm not doing anything you wouldn't want me to do. I'll call you tomorrow. Take care. Bye now.'
'What the fuck does she mean by that?' asked Duncan.
We listened to the tape again. I was disappointed and relieved at the same time. 'You heard her,' I said to him. 'She's not doing anything you wouldn't want her to do.' It was an odd thing for her to say, but I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it, especially since she had given no indication of wanting to come home.
We inspected the photographs again and then, over another drink, discussed what to do. I thought we should take them to the Sunday Times or the Observer. Duncan thought we should give them to Jack, whose magazine was small but ideologically sound. We eventually decided that Duncan should print up as many as he could, and we would send them to all the publications we could think of. I wasn't sure what good it would do, but people needed to be made aware of what was going on. There was bound to be an outcry. Someone, somewhere, would settle Murasaki's hash.
Duncan went back into the darkroom to churn out some more prints while he still had the chemicals mixed. While he did that, I went through the Yellow Pages and made lists. Then, just to be on the safe side, I went round the flat leaving cloves of garlic on window-ledges and around door-frames, in the bed and on the dressing-table. After all this and a nightcap, I was too tired to walk home. Duncan offered to call me a cab, but I said I preferred not to go out in the dark at all, and not after the photographs. I told him I was too scared to sleep on my own, so we ended up in the same bed. He was drunk, but not as drunk as he'd been after our night on the town. It wasn't a very good erection, but it was better than nothing and I exploited it to the hilt.
Chapter 2
I woke with the smell of bacon fat in my nostrils. Duncan was already up and beavering away in the kitchen. I stumbled in, searching for Paracetamol, and before I knew what was happening he'd got me sitting in front of a plate of fried food. He'd already polished off one of his own. Lulu would have hit the roof; she kept a close watch on his cholesterol intake. Breakfast, for Lulu, was muesli or nothing. He was really living it up behind her back.
'I can't.' I stared at the egg, and it stared back, unblinking.
'Nonsense,' he said briskly, shovelling a dripping slice of fried bread on to the plate. 'Eat up. We have a busy day ahead of us.'
'We have?'
He sat down next to me and poured a generous slug of brandy into his mug of tea. 'Want a pick-me-up?'
I shook my head and pushed the food around my plate with my fork, leaving a trail of coagulating grease and dark speckled bits. It reminded me of the places I used to go to with Grauman.
Duncan explained he still had some printing to do if we were to have enough copies of the photographs to hand around. In the meantime, I should set out some of our suspicions in a letter. He frowned. 'I don't know. Vampires sound a bit far-fetched, don't you think?'
'We can play down the paranormal side and pump up the conspiracy angle. Maybe we can tie it in with AIDS. Blood sucking spreads diseases.'
'Don't give too much away. Let them phone for the juicy details.'
'Hang on a bit,' I said slowly. 'Let me get this straight. You think we should give them your telephone number? You think we should give them our names and addresses?' I was thinking of Patricia Rice.
'Why not?'
He took a lot of persuading, but eventually I convinced him we should preserve our anonymity. 'Even with Jack's mag?' he asked. I hadn't made up my mind about that, but since Jack's magazine was a weekly and we'd missed the deadline, the decision could be postponed for another few days.
There was one other factor we hadn't considered. We considered it now. Once all this stuff about Violet came out, someone was bound to start digging around in her past. They might find more than they bargained for. They might find… us. It may not have been murder, but some people were going to have trouble understanding that.'
'If only she hadn't moved when Dino pressed the shutter,' Duncan said. 'Then we would have had proof that Violet Westron is alive and well and living in… where is it? Molasses Wharf?'
I struggled through breakfast and half a dozen cups of tea and eventually felt human enough to sit down at a typewriter and compose the letter. It went like this:
Dear Sir or Madam,
We feel you may be interested in the enclosed photographs showing a gathering of executives from the well-known Multiglom corporation. As you can see, these people hold orgies in which the participants wear plastic fangs. We have stumbled across important data which suggests these activities are not quite as harmless as they appear.
Some of these people are involved in sadomasochistic pursuits which include biting and the shedding of blood — blood which is not necessarily that of consenting adults but frequently extracted from the veins of innocent children and teenage runaways who have been lured into a career of vice and licentiousness. In these days of viruses communicable via exchange of body fluids, we would suggest that such behaviour is at best irresponsible, at worst a danger to public health.
We also have reason to believe there are bogus social workers involved, as well as at least one prominent Tory MP. Perhaps you might care to investigate further, starting with Rose Murasaki, editor of Bellini magazine, which is based in Multiglom Tower at Molasses Wharf. This is not, repeat not, a crank letter.
Yours sincerely,
Concerned of Kensington.
PS. The man who took these photographs has since gone mad and set fire to a building.
I was pleased with this, but especially proud of the bogus social worker angle. I popped out to the local newsagents to make Xerox copies. It was raining again, so Duncan lent me one of Lulu's raincoats. It was see-through pink plastic and I felt a bit like a walking condom, but there weren't enough people around to point at me and laugh. The wind picked up sheets of wet newsprint and whirled them through the air, but I didn't mind the rubbish any more. I felt pretty good. After all these years, Duncan and I were together again. He had cooked me breakfast. We were working towards a common goal. And it was fun. I was hoping like mad that Lulu wouldn't suddenly come back and spoil the party.