The Vampire’s Skull – Sample Chapters

Chapter One

The setting sun turned the city a dirty orange, moisture hanging in the air not sure whether to be mist or drizzle. I was wearing my regulation private eye trench coat, so I didn’t care either way. Some of my clients aren’t sure about the whole female detective thing. The coat is a cliché that reassures them. I also have an old revolver and keep a bottle of whisky in my desk drawer. I’d inherited them from the former owner, an old-school detective who had hung up his battered fedora.

If truth be told, I also wear the coat to reassure myself. I figure that if I look like a detective then I’ll feel like one. Sometimes it works. Imposter’s syndrome, that’s what they call it. When you’re doing a job and your lack of self-confidence makes you worry that you’ll be found out at any minute. I’m not exactly Philip Marlowe. But I do have a knack for finding things. Missing husbands, lost pets, a misplaced wedding ring, a stolen car. Once I even reunited a ten-foot rubber python with its owner, but I literally tripped over that in the street. Mine wasn’t exactly a psychic talent, but it was somewhat uncanny. 

“It’s a pity your skill doesn’t run to finding a few paying clients,” I muttered to myself. I was going through a lean patch. So far it had lasted three years.

Apart from the coat, I don’t look like a detective. I’m too short and if I had to describe myself, I’d say ‘not thin.’ I like my food. When I can afford it. The lack of paying clients has helped me shed some of the extra pounds. The blue eyes I get from my mother’s side of the family. Aunt Judith insists they’re ‘sapphire blue’ and who am I to argue? The uncontrollable hair comes from my dad, though I got it in a shade of brown so light it’s almost blonde. But not quite. There are a few grey hairs, but you have to look really closely. My thirtieth birthday had been an occasion for deep denial but now, eighteen months later, I’m over it. More or less. 

What does a grumpy, down on her luck wannabe gumshoe do on a dreary autumn evening? She heads for her favourite watering hole. Alcohol may not solve your problems, but it does numb the pain.

It was a proper old English pub. The sign outside said it was the Green Man, but most people I knew called it Oskar’s. It’s in one of those cobbled backstreets that’s barely wide enough for a single car. Built of Victorian red brick, it sits in a row that backs into a sandstone cliff. Walking towards it is like travelling back in time. Sherlock Holmes would have felt at home here. If he’d ever come hunting supernatural hounds in Nottingham.

Despite its quaintness, Oskar’s didn’t attract many students or tourists. I’ve heard it said that mundanes can’t find the place, even when they’ve been told where it is. That there’s some kind of low-level protection spell. Or maybe no one comes here because it doesn’t look very exciting. A narrow building with frosted windows promising Fine Ales and a weathered sign sticking out on an old iron bracket.

My father first brought me here when I turned eighteen. Bought me my first legal drink. But I didn’t become a regular until I moved to the city. That was after he was gone.

Looking up at the pub in the half-light, I felt an odd sense of foreboding. I shivered and shrugged it off, blaming the drizzle that was now falling.

I opened the old oak door and stepped inside. A few people looked up from their drinks, but it isn’t the kind of place where they called your name when you came in. In Oskar’s, people mind their own business. It’s one of the reasons why I like it.

The entrance area is more brightly lit than the rest of the bar. People inside can see you come in before your eyes adjust to the gloom and see them. There’s a side door near the back so a patron can slip out into the alley if someone comes in that they want to avoid.

There are booths with old red vinyl seats and the middle of the floor has battered bentwood chairs and round tables with black cast-iron legs. 

It was too gloomy to see people clearly, but I could tell some of the figures huddled over their drinks weren’t human. The floor was dark with varnish and age. The spilled beer that had soaked into it over the years gave the place that unique old pub smell. There’s no jukebox and no karaoke machine. But there is an old upright piano that someone will play occasionally.

The walls were dark oak panelling and the frosted glass lamps had those dim orangey bulbs that flicker and dance like candle flames. In winter, there’s a log fire in the grate. In summer, the sandstone behind and below the building keeps the heat out. I’m pretty sure the cellars are part of a system of caves that run under the whole city, but I’ve never been down to check them out.

The ceiling was low, covered in embossed paper with a rich glossy gold patina over paint that might once have been white. A long, dark wood bar stretched back into the room, its far end almost lost in shadow. There was a mirror behind the bar and the usual shelves of spirits and liqueurs. There were some older bottles, oddly shaped and unlabelled – I suppose you had to know what was in them if you wanted to order a drink.

I usually had a pint of Guinness – blame my half-Irish grandmother. But Tuesday was curry night and that would go down better with a cold lager. The food at Oskar’s isn’t spectacular, Ziggy the chef is ex-military, so we’re not talking gastropub cuisine. But the big draw for me is that the prices are sort of old-fashioned too. I could afford to eat here.

As always, Fitz stood behind the bar polishing glasses. He was a big hulking brute. He reminded me of that guy in Beauty and the Beast – somewhere between a lion and a boar, complete with fangs and tusks. His long mane was a rich reddish gold. Not even a hint of grey. I wasn’t jealous. Not much. Was there a beauty in this beast’s life? I didn’t know him well enough to ask.

I always thought Fitz was a softie, like that big guy on The Muppet Show. Until one night I saw him pick a bloke up and throw him out into the alley. Without opening the door. Not someone to get on the wrong side of. His voice was a deep bass rumble and when he laughed, you could feel the vibration in your chest.

I nodded a greeting, planning to go to my favourite booth. Fitz knew I’d want the curry and lager. But he motioned me to approach the bar. He never did that. His expression was serious. My heart sank. He probably wanted to talk to me about paying my bar tab.

Fitz didn’t own Oskar’s, Oskar did. I’d never seen Oskar. He was a vampire, or so people said. Even Fitz would be afraid of a vampire. If Oskar wanted me to pay what I owed, I was in trouble: I didn’t have any money. I hadn’t had a paying client in over a month. Was this what had given me that uncomfortable feeling outside?

I joined Fitz at the bar, and he leaned towards me. Even when he whispered it was a deep gruff sound that a tiger might make. I looked up into his big, amber-coloured eyes.

“Bad news,” he said. “Theo Pherson came looking for you earlier.”

“He’s in prison,” I said.

I knew Pherson was in prison, I’d been at his murder trial. My witness testimony helped put him behind bars.

“He’s out. Escaped,” Fitz said.

My brain went into freefall for a moment. Theo Pherson was a thief, a good one by all accounts, but I’d seen him put three bullets into a man’s chest and one in his shoulder. A fifth bullet had only nicked an earlobe. The victim probably never felt that, he’d have been dead before he fell backwards into the water.

“Did he say what he wanted?” Stupid question. My brain was still processing the news.

Fitz just raised a shaggy blond eyebrow. He was a beast of few words.

“Revenge,” I muttered.

This was the source of my bad feeling. Theo Pherson was free. And he wanted revenge on me and anyone else who’d put him in prison. He’d had a couple of years to decide what he was going to do to me.

“I’m going out the back way,” I said. I’d lost my appetite for curry. Fear upsets my stomach.

Fitz just nodded and went back to polishing the glasses.

The door into the alley was at the end of a narrow corridor. Past the kitchen and the toilets. There were framed photographs on the walls here. Signed black and white photographs of Karloff, Lugosi, and a young Vincent Price. Maybe Oskar had known them personally. And there was a faded picture of Edgar Allan Poe, unsigned, with him scowling like it was his mug shot. He was probably just short-sighted.

I was halfway down the corridor when I got a queasy feeling. It wasn’t just the way the smell segued from stale beer to stale urine. Something wasn’t right. It was the kind of gut feeling that had saved my life on more than one occasion. A warning that my present course of action wasn’t going to end well. Sadly, my intuition isn’t proper precognition. The feeling isn’t sharp enough to tell me exactly where the danger lies. 

My best guess was that Theo Pherson was waiting for me out in the alley. He could have guessed I would try to sneak out that way when Fitz warned me.

I hesitated in the corridor, feeling hemmed in and thinking I should go back the way I’d come. I decided to pee first. This could end up being a long night. Another great thing about Oskar’s is that there’s never a queue for the ladies’ room. Most of the patrons are male. Even the non-human ones. I ducked through the door.

After I’d used the facilities and washed my hands, I opened the door and stuck my head out into the corridor. I looked back towards the bar. The voice came from the other direction, from the door to the alley.

“Hey, Frankie!”

Recognising the voice, I turned. Theo Pherson looked bigger than I remembered. His hair was shorter. And he was smiling at me. I almost fell back into the bathroom. I should have run towards the bar. Too late now. I’d have to make my stand here. I didn’t want to die in a ladies’ room. It would be such an inconvenience.

Desperate for something to defend myself with, I looked around the beige-tiled room. No time to smash the mirror and grab a jagged shard for a knife. I’d probably slash a vein trying. There was a large metal swing-top bin under the paper towel dispenser. I picked it up and stood beside the door, ready to swing it with all my weight behind it the moment Pherson entered. His weapon of choice for the murder had been a revolver. I had to hit him first.

The door swung slowly inwards. I tensed.

Someone came through the door. It was an old Japanese woman. She entered looking back over her shoulder, telling Theo Pherson this was the peeing place for girls.

I was already swinging the metal bin. It whooshed over the top of the old woman’s head, the draft from its passing ruffling her iron-grey hair. It smashed into Pherson’s face with a loud sound somewhere between a Thump! and a Clang!

Oblivious, the Japanese woman shuffled into one of the cubicles, closing the door.

Pherson stood motionless in the doorway, his expression frozen. Blood trickled from his nose and a cut over his left eye. He swayed a little. Then, before the door could swing shut, he pitched forward, landing face-down on the floor. Unconscious.

I placed a Caution! Wet Floor sign over his body so the old lady wouldn’t trip over him.

When I went back through to the bar, Fitz was surprised to see me.

“You might need to call an ambulance,” I said.

“You hurt?”

I shook my head. “Theo Pherson is lying on the floor in the ladies’ room.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“Pondering his life choices.”

A hint of a smile tugged the corner of Fitz’s mouth. “I have a first aid kit.”

“He’ll probably need some ice too.”

“You hit him?”

“With a trash bin. It’s got an imprint of his face in it, like in a cartoon.” I shrugged an apology, giving him my goofy look.

Fitz laughed his big booming laugh. I felt the vibrations in my chest.

“Go sit down,” he said. “I’ll get Ziggy to bring your curry.” He reached for a glass and began pulling my pint.

It would have been rude not to stay. And, on the plus side, he hadn’t mentioned my tab.

Chapter Two

Fitz made me take a taxi home. He said he’d add the cost to my tab, but I knew he wouldn’t. He was worried for my safety. With good reason. He’d laid the unconscious Theo Pherson on a couch in a back room and locked the door. He would have needed Oskar’s permission before he could tip off the police that the escaped murderer was there. Police boots stomping about the place tended to upset the patrons.

At some point during the evening, Pherson had slipped away, unseen by anyone. Like a thief in the night. Fitz was right, I needed to be cautious. Pherson would come looking for me again. Once he’d recovered from the smashed face.

‘Home’ is a tiny apartment in an old stone building. It’s up in the attic space so the ceilings in every room slope under the roof. It comes with my office, which is on the floor below, the middle floor. 

From the street you can see my office window and on it is a decent example of the sign-writer’s art: Frankie Rowan – Private Detective. The guy who painted it said if I wanted it to say ‘Francesca,’ I’d have to move somewhere with a bigger window.   It was dark up there now, but the gold lettering reflected the moonlight. Any potential client could look up and see where I was. And so could Theo Pherson. Not a comforting thought.

I wasn’t feeling afraid. I’d had a couple of lagers. And then a couple more, so I wasn’t feeling anything much. Except for a strong urge to pee.

The ground floor, under my office, is occupied by a charity shop. There had been a newsagent’s there years ago, but you don’t see many of those nowadays. I had a door at street level, the black paint peeling. I left it open during the day so clients could just walk in and up the steep narrow stairs. There wasn’t room for a lift. Maybe it was the stairs that were putting people off. That or word had got out that I wasn’t a very good detective.

I unlocked the door and slipped inside, closed it and locked it behind me. I also slid the bolts across top and bottom. Hurrying up the steep stairs, I remembered there was no toilet paper in my bathroom, so I decided to use the loo in my office. It also meant fewer stairs to climb.

My office door had a frosted glass panel and the sign-writer had put gold paint on there too. It said Frankie Rowan – I rivate Detective. I’d once tried to clean a piece of chewing gum off the glass using nail polish remover, not realising it would take the paint off as well. One day soon I’d buy one of those gold marker pens and fix it. I unlocked the door and stepped inside. It was a small office. Luckily, I’m not a big person.

Against the far wall were a couple of filing cabinets and in front of them was my chair with the squeaky castors and my battered old desk. There was a threadbare rug on the floor and against the wall under the window was a worn Chesterfield sofa, the leather scuffed and a couple of buttons missing. All the furnishings had come with the office. I have no idea how they got the desk and the sofa up the narrow stairs.

Opposite the window is a tiny corridor-cum-alcove. The door to the left is the toilet and the door to the right is a little kitchenette where I make my pot of coffee. When I can afford coffee.  I didn’t bother to turn the light on. Why advertise my presence here? I dropped my raincoat on the sofa and ducked into the toilet.

The toilet seat was cold and the shock of it against my skin made me go eek! But at least I had no trouble starting to pee. You never really own a pint of lager, do you? You just get to carry it around for a while and then you have to give it up. Back into that rain cycle diagram they used to show you in school. I don’t remember that including a picture of someone on the loo. My thoughts were wandering. Probably the alcohol.

A sound out in the office made me clench and stop the flow so I could listen. Had it been the squeak of one of the brass chair castors? I listened hard, straining until the blood was singing in my ears. Nothing. I finished up and flushed. I grabbed the toilet roll off the back of the tank to take upstairs.

Cautiously, I opened the door and stepped out. I should have put the light on when I came in. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I couldn’t hear anything except my own breathing. I moved towards the light switch by the door. 

“Hi, Frankie.” The voice was more nasal but still recognisable.

The shock stopped me dead, my arm reaching out. If I hadn’t just tinkled, I might have wet myself.

“Turn the light on,” he said. It sounded more like ‘Turd da lide od.’ 

I flicked the switch, resisting the urge to ask him if he had a cold. It’s never a good idea to wind up the crazy people. The bulb in the overhead light is one of those cheap low-energy things that takes a couple of seconds to come on.

Theo Pherson was sitting behind my desk looking like he’d gone a few rounds with Muhammad Ali. His left eye was swollen almost shut and his nose looked worse. He was wearing a denim jacket with a fake sheepskin collar. The grey sweatshirt underneath was splotched with dark stains. Blood. There was an aluminium baseball bat on the desk in front of him. He saw me looking at it.

“It’s for my protection,” he said, eyeing me warily.

“This day keeps getting better and better,” I muttered.

Pherson sighed. “Tell me about it.”

To be fair, he did look like his day had been worse than mine. On the plus side, having the crap scared out of me had completely sobered me up.

We looked at each other for a while. It felt awkward. I’m not good with silence.

I hadn’t seen him properly earlier. Adrenaline keeps you focused on the big picture. On survival. I could feel my nerves buzzing now, but I felt more in control. His light brown hair was almost blond. It had been longer before, the kind of style surfers wear. Natural waves that were almost big curls. Now it was short. Spiky. It made him look older. Darker eyebrows, quite thick, arching over his eyes. One of them was darker because of the crust of blood over the cut that ran through it. It might scar. I could have marked him for life. Nice going, Ms. Rowan.

The one eye I could see was a clear dark blue. The big eyes had been one of the things that made him look young and innocent. Those and the long dark lashes. I remembered that from the courtroom. Squeamishness and guilt made me skip over the ugly, swollen lump that was his nose. A couple of days of stubble on his cheeks. Strong jawline and a long, slightly pointed chin. Like a manga hero. The top lip was pale, but the lower one was plump and a rosy pink. You just knew it could do a great pout. It looked soft. Inviting.

I shook myself. What was this, Stockholm syndrome? Or some low-level magical glamour? Dammit, I needed to be careful with this one. He would be sneaky.

I reminded myself that I’d seen Theo Pherson fire multiple shots into a man’s chest. I’d seen his face twisted with anger before he squeezed the trigger. His intention had been clear – he wanted Vadim Fredek to die.

“Why are you here, Theo?” I asked.

‘Theo’ wasn’t Theodore. I learned that at his trial. He was Thelonius. I’d say his parents were jazz fans.

“I want to hire you,” he said.

That was unexpected.

“I don’t run an escort service,” I said.

“What?” Confused.

“You just got out of prison. I don’t sell what you’re looking for.”

“What? Oh! No!” Was he blushing? “It’s not that. I don’t need anyone to… I can do that for myself.”

After two years in prison, I was sure he could.

“You’re a private detective,” he said.

“I know.”

“I want you to work for me.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He looked confused again.

Maybe he had a concussion. I felt another twinge of guilt.

“Theo, I helped put you behind bars. Today I hit you in the face with a metal bin – you got a smashed nose and you’re going to have a black eye. Why would you want to hire me?”

His hand went up to his face. “You really think it will be black?”

I nodded. There was a good chance both his eyes would be black by morning.

The silence dragged out again. I was just opening my mouth when my phone began to ring. It made us both jump. The phone was in my coat pocket.

“You should get that,” Pherson said.

“They can leave a message.”

We waited until the ringing stopped.

During the murder trial, he seemed lost and vulnerable. Like someone’s kid brother. I thought at the time that he looked like someone who was just discovering the consequences of his actions. That this wasn’t some video game, it was his life. And he was going to spend the rest of it in prison, locked up with other killers.

When I gave my testimony, I felt conflicted. Torn between wanting justice for Vadim Fredek and wanting to hug the accused and tell him everything was going to be okay. I could see that some of the jurors felt the same way. In the end, I just described what I’d witnessed, as clearly and accurately as I could. That was all I was obliged to do. The jury would have to decide his fate. I was one of three eyewitnesses. The last one also had smartphone footage of the killing. I’d just happened to be at a riverside pub when Theo Pherson shot Vadim Fredek in the chest, it wasn’t related to a case I was investigating. Life sometimes has these little surprises for you.

If Pherson’s solicitor had managed to come up with a halfway decent story – extenuating circumstances – then a manslaughter verdict could have been a possibility. The man did the best he could, but I don’t think Pherson gave him much to go on.

As the trial progressed, Theo Pherson seemed to shrink in on himself, giving up hope and resigning himself to his fate. On the last day, he looked like he’d been dragged out of bed to attend. Unshaved, hair uncombed, the grey prison sweatshirt and trousers looking like he’d slept in them.

When the foreman of the jury announced the guilty verdict, there wasn’t much of a reaction in the courtroom. We’d all expected it. And, based on the evidence, it had to be the correct verdict. But I’d still felt disappointed, as if I’d expected the doors at the back of the court to burst open and someone to announce they had fresh evidence that explained the mystery. But that only happens in the movies.

In the weeks after the trial, I wondered if Pherson’s little boy lost act had been an act. An attempt to convince people that he couldn’t possibly be a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe he’d used that moody, vulnerable James Dean thing all his life to manipulate people. Trick them into letting him get away with things. Unlucky for him, the jury had decided they were having none of it.

I still had nightmares sometimes. The bullets striking Vadim Fredek’s chest. The blood. Him falling backwards into the river, like a slow-motion shot in a Sam Peckinpah movie.

“Is that for upstairs?” Pherson asked, pointing to the toilet paper I was still holding. “Because you’ve run out.”

He must have been upstairs when I got back. Of course he could break into my home, he’d just walked out of a high-security prison. I put the toilet roll on the arm of the sofa. It seemed ridiculously mundane under the circumstances.

“You haven’t told me why you want to hire me,” I said.

He shrugged. “You’re the only private detective I know.”

I suppose that was as good a reason as any.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, “at Oskar’s… I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Why didn’t you just call and make an appointment?” As soon as I said it, I held up my hand. “Forget I said that, it was a stupid question.” Escaped convicts do not make arrangements to meet someone at a specific place at a specific time. They don’t want to make things too easy for the police. “What do you want, Theo?”

“I didn’t kill him.”

Don’t roll your eyes, don’t roll your eyes, I told myself. Somehow, I managed not to. How many guys in prison wanted you to believe they were innocent? Almost all of them.

“I saw you pull the trigger. You put five bullets in him.”

“It would have been six, but he moved.”

“Can you blame him?”

“He wasn’t human, Frankie,” Pherson said. “He was a vampire.”

“I know. But it was still murder. The High Court ruled that years ago. Vampires have a right to life too.”

Although people referred to vampires as ‘the undead,’ the medical boffins still hadn’t determined whether they were dead or just alive in a different way. When the first vampire killer had challenged his murder conviction, the judges had taken a pragmatic view. If it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was a duck. As far as the law was concerned, a vampire was a living person with a right to the protection of the law. Parliament passed The Preternatural Persons Act a year later, giving vampires and other creatures of the night the equivalent of our human rights, with a few caveats and exceptions.

“If all you’ve got is a vague theory…” I said.

Pherson shook his head. “It’s not just that. I received a warning. In prison. They told me someone was coming for me. A vampire.”

“They were just trying to scare you.”

“They did a bloody good job. That’s why I had to get out of that place. I was a sitting target. When you’re locked up, there’s nowhere to run.”

I wanted to tell him that he was being ridiculous. That he would probably be safer in prison. But I couldn’t know for sure. Could a vampire get into a prison, kill someone, and then slip away unnoticed? No one knew for sure what abilities vampires had. They were very good at keeping their secrets. Who knows how many of the legends about them are true? Only they do. 

If I’d been in Pherson’s position, I would have wanted out too.

“Are you still in touch with that homicide detective on the case?” Pherson asked.

“Why do you want to know that?” I asked, a little too sharply. His question made me feel awkward. I’d bumped into Detective Inspector Matt Holden a couple of times since the trial. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. He’d made no secret of the fact that he was attracted to me, but he hadn’t pushed it.    

“I want you to find out what happened to the vampire… to Vadim Fredek’s remains,” Pherson said.

“What for?” I asked. But I think I knew where this was going.

Pherson took a deep breath – through his mouth, his nose wasn’t working – and squared his shoulders. “I don’t think he’s dead.”

His face was deadly serious. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Laugh at someone who’s unstable and who knows what they’ll do.

“The bullets you fired into him made big holes,” I said.

Pherson nodded. “Soft-points.”

“I could see daylight through his chest.” It was one of the images I saw in the nightmares. “Even a vampire can’t survive that.”

A couple of expert witnesses, one of them a vampire, had come to court to testify that this was true.

“But what did they do with the body?” Pherson asked.

“After they fished it out of the river, it went to the morgue. It was examined by two pathologists. He really was dead, Theo.”

“And then what happened to the body?”

I shrugged and it was an exaggerated sit-com shrug. “I don’t know.”

Pherson leaned forward, the castors of the chair squealing.

My phone rang again.

Pherson leaned back. “Answer it. Please.”

I fished the phone out of the pocket of my detective coat. The screen said it was an undisclosed number. I jabbed the green answer button.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end of the phone was another familiar one.

“Detective Inspector Holden,” I said loudly.

Pherson’s eyes were on me. He didn’t look happy. I couldn’t blame him. Could he see that I was blushing? I hoped not.

“Frankie? Are you alright? When you didn’t answer, I called Oskar’s. Fitz told me you left over an hour ago.”

The note of panic in Matt Holden’s voice was enough to make me worried.

“I’m fine,” I said. “What’s the emergency?”

“Theo Pherson and broke out of prison. Slippery sucker just walked out like he had the keys to the place. Him and his cellmate. I’m sorry, someone should have called you. You could be in danger.”

I looked over at Theo Pherson and his baseball bat and wanted to say, ‘No kidding!’ But I didn’t.

Hearing Matt Holden’s voice, it wasn’t difficult to picture him. He was a big man, like a rugby player but without the cauliflower ears. Blond hair cut very short. Big blue eyes. From what I’d seen at the open neck of his shirt, I’d say there was a lot of body hair. Nice to cuddle up to on a cold winter night, but you might need a smoother guy for the summer months. Or a gift card for a salon waxing.  

“Like I said, I’m okay,” I assured him. “What did Fitz tell you?”

“That you had a curry and a couple more drinks than usual. And then you went home.”

I guess Oskar had forbidden any mention of Pherson being there tonight. Understandable, I suppose.

“I’m at home now,” I said.

“I should send someone over,” he said. “Or I could…”

“There’s no need. I have someone here with me.”

“Oh…” That wasn’t a happy sound.

Pherson’s eyes were dark slits. He knew this could go badly for him. I shook my head at him.

“Since we’re talking about the Vadim Fredek case, can I ask you something?” I tried to sound as casual as I could.

“Sure,” Holden said. I think he was still wondering who was here with me.

“I’m only curious but… what happened to his body after the trial was over?”

Pherson relaxed and gave me a thumbs-up. I put my finger to my lips, urging him to keep quiet, and then I put my phone on speaker.

“Same thing that happens to all victims,” Holden’s voice said. “The body is released to the immediate family. An undertaker usually picks it up. Why?”

“I’m a private detective. I feel I should know these things.”

Holden hesitated then said. “Yeah, I suppose you should.”

He earned points for not sneering at what I did for a living. Most police detectives regard themselves as The Professionals and us as amateurs or charlatans.

“Vadim Fredek’s family collected his body, then?” I asked.

Pherson nodded his approval.

“Erm… probably,” Holden said.

“You don’t know?”

Holden sighed heavily before he answered. “After the trial, they prepared the body for collection. I think it was in the morgue for a while because no one came forward.”

“What happened to it?”

“There was a mix-up with the paperwork, I think. But eventually, someone came to take him away.”

“What kind of mix-up?” I asked, making it sound like simple curiosity.

Holden sighed again. “I didn’t tell you this, okay? But when the undertaker came, the morgue didn’t get all the papers signed. Or they were misfiled. No one’s sure. But it’s not like anyone is going to steal a dead vampire, am I right?”

“No, that would be just weird,” I said, putting a smile in my voice. 

Another of Holden’s sighs came out of the phone speaker. He’d probably had a long and frustrating day. Putting criminals behind bars is hard enough. Having them just walk out of prison must feel like a kick in the teeth.

“Look, if Pherson has any brains, he’s trying to get out of the country,” Holden said. “He probably won’t come anywhere near you. But just in case…”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

“If you’ve got any other questions, about anything, give me a call.”

“I will, thanks, Matt.”

“As soon as I hear anything more about Pherson, I’ll let you know.”

“I appreciate it. Goodnight.”

After I hung up, it was Pherson’s turn to sigh, releasing the breath he had been holding. “You didn’t tell him I was here.”

Theo Pherson didn’t seem dangerous. He sat there, battered and bloody, and again I felt the urge to put my arms around him and tell him things would turn out fine. Was he as gentle and innocent as he seemed? Or was he playing me? I’d just deliberately misled Matt Holden, a policeman. But my intuition wasn’t sending me warning signals. But maybe Theo was good enough to fool it.

Sensible Frankie made tutting sounds inside my head. I want you to promise you’ll be careful, she said. Don’t trust him. Don’t fall for his golden boy charm. Keep your emotions in check. Gather the evidence. Then decide.

“Just the facts, ma’am,” I promised.

“What?” Pherson asked.

I didn’t realise I’d said it out loud. “Just taking my own advice.”

A slight frown, but he didn’t say anything. Some internal voice perhaps telling him not to provoke the crazy lady.

“What do you think?” Pherson asked.

“I think maybe you didn’t kill Vadim Fredek. Not completely.”

“Does this mean you’ll take my case?”

“It means I’ll think about it.”

Pherson pushed the chair back and got to his feet. My heart jumped a beat when he picked up the baseball bat. Was he going to whack me with it until I agreed to help him?

He tossed the bat to me. I fumbled the catch and it fell to the floor.

I frowned. “Why did you do that?”

“Gesture of goodwill. I would never hurt you; I hope you know that.”

That just made my guilt even worse. “I’m sorry I broke your nose.”

He shook his head. “It’s not broken. I know what that feels like. When I was ten, I crashed a motorbike into the back of Santa’s sleigh. Long story.”

I couldn’t help smiling. As evenings go, this one had gone from bad to weird.

“There’s paracetamol in the top drawer if you need them,” I said.

“Thanks.” He pulled out the drawer and it came out all the way, crashing to the floor and spilling everything.

“I should have warned you about that,” I said.

Pherson grinned and shrugged. “Can I have a glass of water?”

“No, but you can have a cracked mug of water.”

I fetched it from the kitchenette while he scooped all the junk up off the floor. Most of it had come with the desk.

Pherson popped four tablets into his mouth and chewed them. He shuddered and then washed them down with water. He drained the mug and then deliberately did a loud burp.

I found myself smiling again. Part of me was already hoping Theo Pherson was innocent.

“I have some money,” he said. “Not a lot, but some.”

“For what?”

“For your fee,” he said, expression earnest.

I think he was expecting me to say something like in the movies. Fifty dollars a day plus expenses. I’m not very good at asking people for money. When I didn’t say anything, he took an envelope out of his inside pocket and placed it on my desk.

“Don’t you think you’d be better off talking to the police about this?” I asked.

“They’d never believe me. I’m not a good person like you. I’ve always been a criminal.”

“Ever since you vandalised Santa’s sleigh?”

“That wasn’t vandalism. I didn’t have any brakes.”

“But you did steal the bike.”

He smiled. “How did you know?”

“Just a hunch.”

We stood looking at each other, but this time the silence didn’t feel awkward. Maybe it was just the fact that the bat was lying at my feet.

“I heard that you’re good at finding things. And people,” Pherson said. “Will you find Vadim Fredek for me?”

I didn’t need to think about it. The decision was made when I withheld information from Matt Holden.

“If he is walking around out there, I’ll find him,” I said.

“Get some pictures of his face – good ones. Then we can take them to the police, and they’ll have to believe me.”

I nodded. That sounded like the beginnings of a plan.

The time on my phone said it was after two in the morning. I never stayed up this late on a school night.

“Do you have somewhere safe to stay?” I asked.

“I’ll be okay,” he said.

“You can stay. Down here on the sofa. There’s a blanket in the filing cabinet.”

Pherson frowned at me.

“You’ve seen upstairs,” I said. “There’s hardly any storage space.”

I wasn’t about to tell him that in winter I liked to snuggle up on the chesterfield with an Agatha Christie.

He looked undecided for a moment, then shrugged out of his jacket. He’d have to use that as a pillow.

“Thanks,” he said.

“If you give me that sweatshirt, I’ll put it to soak in salt water.”

He stretched the neck out as wide as it would go and then pulled it carefully up past his damaged nose. Looking down at it, he shook his head.

“I think this is beyond saving. Don’t worry about it, I’ll get another one tomorrow. What’s wrong?”

He’d noticed that I was staring at him. The white t-shirt fitted him snugly. He must have spent some time in the gym while he was in prison. He wasn’t muscular, he was too thin for that, but he looked wiry. A swimmer’s body, isn’t that what they say?

I didn’t know if Vadim Fredek was still in the land of the living. If he was, Theo Pherson had spent two years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

“Frankie?” He was frowning. I hadn’t answered him.

“I was just wondering what it was like,” I said. “In prison.”

“It could have been worse. I made a friend. A big guy called Maxim. He looked out for me.”

“And what did you have to do for him?”

Pherson shifted uncomfortably. “Nothing.”

I raised an eyebrow. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said. “Maxim just had this thing about toes. I don’t want to talk about it.”

I didn’t want to talk about it either. Just when you think things can’t get any weirder… I picked up the toilet paper and unrolled a good portion of it, folding it up. I held it out towards him. “In case you need to go in the night.”

“Guys don’t need…”

“I was thinking about number two.”

“Oh, right.” He took the offered toilet paper. “Thanks.”

“There’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen if you want to try and clean up your nose a bit.”

“Okay.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much else.”

“I noticed. I’ve seen guys with more stuff in their prison cells.” Seeing my expression, he backed away. “I’m not criticising. Minimalism is a thing.”

“Nice save,” I said. I opened the office door. “Lock this when I’m gone.”

“There’s no key.”

“You don’t need a key.”

He grinned at me. It would have been attractive except for the blood on his teeth. His expression changed to a half-frown and he nodded towards the lettering on the door.

“There’s something wrong with your ‘P’.”

“That’s what my urologist said.” It wasn’t the first time I’d used that line.

“What?”

To be fair, that’s what everyone else said.

“Goodnight, Theo.”

“Goodnight, Frankie.”

Upstairs, I locked my doors. And I wedged a chair under the front door handle and another up against the bedroom door. I needed to get a couple of good-sized bolts.

The nightmare woke me just after five in the morning. I’m not sure which was the worst part – Vadim the Vampire walking through the bedroom door, baring his fangs, a bloody hole still in his chest. Or the fact that I was naked in bed with Theo Pherson. And I was sucking his toes.

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