Chapter Thirty-Seven
April saw him waiting
for her as she crossed the square and cursed under her breath.
I shouldn’t have stopped off at home,
she thought, I should have gone straight to
Davina’s. DI Reece was standing by her garden gate. More
questions were the last thing she needed right now. Answers, that’s what I want.
In particular, she
wanted to know what their discoveries had meant. Could Nicholas
Osbourne be the Vampire Regent? He certainly had all the power and
influence you’d expect from someone in charge of a sinister
conspiracy, and there were links to both Alix Graves and Ravenwood.
Who was he expecting Hawk to ‘recruit’ for him? Was he choosing the
brightest kids for the Regent to turn? April just didn’t know and
that was what was so frustrating; she kept stumbling on little
clues, whispy bits of information that disappeared as soon as you
clutched at them, but nothing concrete, nothing she could rely on.
And even if she did find absolute proof that Davina’s father was
the Regent, what then? Tell the police? DI Reece was a nice man and
pretty open-minded, considering, but honestly, who would believe
such a crazy idea?
‘Ah, there you are,’
said DI Reece, throwing his cigarette into the gutter. ‘Sorry to
hang around in the street, but I didn’t want to come to the school
again and there was no answer at the house.’
‘Have you got news on
the case?’ she asked, without much hope.
Reece shook his head.
‘Only in a roundabout way. We’ve had the full forensic report
back.’ He nodded towards April’s yellow front door. ‘Do you want to
go inside?’
April shook her head.
‘I’d rather not if it’s okay with you, Mr Reece,’ she said,
stifling a shiver. ‘I don’t really want to be talking about that
stuff where … well, you know.’
The detective nodded.
‘Understood. How about I buy you a coffee?’
They walked to
Americano in silence and settled into a booth at the back where
they could talk in privacy.
‘I’ll cut to the
chase, April,’ said Reece. ‘The report told us virtually nothing.
No fingerprints, no fibres, nothing under the fingernails. To be
frank, we don’t know who was in your house or how they got there
and the only unusual thing the post-mortem revealed was, well …’ He
hesitated. ‘It was rather unbelievable.’
April could see it
was something he would rather not tell her. The policeman looked
decidedly uncomfortable.
‘What is
it?’
‘The cause of death.
It seems your father’s throat was torn out.’
‘Torn?’ she said,
feeling bile rising.
‘Yes,’ said Reece,
holding her gaze. ‘I realise this must be hard for you to hear, but
according to the coroner, it was as if an animal had got hold of
him.’
April shook her head.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Are you saying it was an
animal?’
‘No, I’m saying it
was a human bite. They attacked him with their teeth.’
April stifled a
moan.
‘Biting cases are
surprisingly common, I’m afraid, usually in drunken pub brawls
where ears or even noses are torn off. Those nasty primeval urges
are still with us, just under the surface.’
‘But to bite
someone’s throat—’
‘Indeed,’ said Reece.
‘According to the coroner, it would take enormous strength. The
jaws are the strongest muscles in the body, of course, but even so,
the attacker would have to be extremely disturbed to do what he
did, so we’re starting to think that we’re dealing with a
lunatic.’
‘Why? I mean, why do
you think that now?’
The detective paused,
running a finger along the rim of his coffee mug. ‘This is very
sensitive information, April,’ he said, ‘but I’m trusting you with
it because I think you need to know, for your own safety if nothing
else.’
April waited,
screwing her hands into tight fists under the table.
‘All of the murders -
Alix Graves, Isabelle Davis and your dad - all have identical
causes of death.’
April had to struggle
to draw a breath. ‘They were all bitten? ’ she
whispered.
Reece nodded. ‘Yes.
All of them.’
April’s hand went to
her throat. She had guessed as much, of course; there were vampires
on the loose - for God’s sake, she had seen them with her own eyes,
so it was only to be expected - but having a policeman spell it out
to her was still a shock. Somehow, she had managed to stop herself
thinking about it. She knew her dad had been killed, of course, but
up until now, she had avoided thinking about how.
‘So what now?’ she
asked, looking at him with pleading eyes. ‘Can you stop
him?’
‘We’ll have your
house watched, of course,’ he said. ‘We’re taking this extremely
seriously.’
‘That doesn’t answer
my question,’ said April angrily. ‘Can you stop him?’
Reece looked away. ‘I
have to be honest - I don’t know. We’ll do everything we can, of
course—’
‘Great,’ said April,
glaring at him. ‘Just great. So that’s your plan? Watch the house
and hope this maniac turns up to rip our throats out?’
‘Of course not,’ said
Reece firmly. ‘I will never let that happen. Never.’ But his face
told a different story. There were dark rings under his eyes and
the lines on his forehead looked more pronounced than the last time
she had seen him.
‘We’ll catch him,
April,’ he said. ‘And we’ll catch him the same way we catch every
other criminal - through good, solid police work. It might not be
as spectacular or as fast as we’d like, but it always gets results
in the end.’
‘In the end?’ she
snapped. ‘Do you think we can wait that long?’ She knew it wasn’t
his fault, but she was frustrated and she was scared. She was
jumping at every shadow, flinching each time the telephone rang.
Gabriel had said he had the feeling he was being watched, led into
a trap; April could feel it now too. There were eyes everywhere and
she was convinced some of them were watching her.
She fixed Reece with
a probing stare. ‘Who could have done it, Mr Reece? Who could have
killed my dad?’
‘Well, as I said, it
would take someone in a frenzy—’
‘No, I mean who had
the opportunity to do it? Who are the suspects?’
Reece put his cup
down. ‘Can’t tell you that, April. It’s privileged information.
I’ve already told you more than I should have.’
‘Exactly, so why not
tell me this as well?’
‘The information in
the coroner’s report related directly to your safety—’
April sat forward.
‘But so does this, don’t you see? If the killer didn’t break in,
the chances are my dad knew them and therefore the chances are I
know them too. Putting a car outside the house isn’t going to do a
thing if the killer is popping around with a cup of sugar, is
it?’
The detective sat for
a moment, staring at his hands. ‘I suppose there’s no real reason
not to tell you,’ he said finally, ‘but I don’t think it’s going to
help.’
‘Please, Mr
Reece.’
He rubbed his hand
over his chin. ‘Okay, let’s start with you. As we know, you were
with Mr Sheldon in front of the school, then you left Ravenwood and
walked up the hill with your friend Caro. You saw the ambulance and
ran to the house. That eliminates you and Caro for a start. Your
mother was with your grandfather all morning and was making her way
home from central London when my sergeant called her and she went
straight to the hospital. Your grandfather verifies her story, by
the way, and vice versa,’ he added, looking up at April. ‘Now, I
was with your friend Gabriel Swift at the time—’
‘He’s not my friend,’
said April.
‘Well, regardless, we
know where he was and we’ve also checked out most of your
schoolmates: Davina and Ben Osbourne, Marcus Brent, Simon Oliver,
Ling Po Chan, Layla—’
‘How do you know who
I hang out with?’ interrupted April, a little unsettled. ‘Have you
been watching me?’
Reece smiled
slightly. ‘We asked your teachers. They always know what’s going on
in their school.’
April
blushed.
‘After that, we
widened the net to your dad’s friends - all at work or in
Edinburgh; your mum’s friends - most of them were tucked away in
various hairdressers’; and other possible disgruntled people who
your dad may have upset in his work as a journalist, but again, our
most likely suspects are either in prison or out of the
country.’
‘So you have nothing?
No suspects?’
‘Unfortunately, it’s
quite the opposite. Most of the alibis are full of holes: “I was at
home watching telly” or “I was asleep at the time”: very hard to
prove, very hard to disprove. Take your own alibi, that you were
with Mr Sheldon. We have other witnesses that saw you together, but
we only have your word and his as to when it took place. Also, Mr
Sheldon has a fast car, he could have driven up to the house,
knowing you’d corroborate his story. If you want to get all Agatha
Christie about it, you could be working together.’
April understood what
he was saying, but she didn’t like it at all.
‘So you’re saying
anyone could have done it?’
Reece smiled without
humour. ‘Almost everybody has a weak alibi, April. Your friend
Davina says she went shopping, Benjamin says he was “hanging out”
with his friends: do you see? We check their stories as far as we
can, but unless we stumble across a bloody knife when we question
them, we need other evidence first.’
‘So what do I do?’
she asked, a note of desperation in her voice. ‘How can I tell who
might be the killer? Who can I trust?’
DI Reece’s face was
hard when he spoke. ‘Trust no one, April. It sounds melodramatic,
but it’s the best advice I can give you. As I said before, I think
we’re looking for one killer - that’s the logical conclusion - but
then nothing in this case is straightforward. Normally I’d ask,
“why would any of these suspects kill your dad? Why would they kill
Isabelle or Alix?” And I’ll be honest with you, I’m drawing a
blank. Nothing I can see links all of the suspects and the victims,
except Ravenwood - and only then in a very vague way. None of the
usual rules apply here.’
‘So what are you
telling me, Mr Reece?’ asked April, a horrible creeping feeling in
her stomach. Reece shook his head and sighed.
‘anyone of the people
I’ve mentioned could have killed your dad,’ he said, looking her
straight in the eyes. ‘And one of them probably did.’