London Under Midnight (2 page)

    Elmo gulped. He could hardly breathe. Yet he couldn't turn away. Even when she moved from her victim's face to another part of his body, Elmo couldn't close his eyes. The horror of what the creature did next would remain seared on Elmo Kigoma's heart until his dying day.

    

    

    
VAMPIRE SHARKZ

    ☺
They're coming to get you
☺

    

    The graffiti spread across London that long, over-heated summer in a great, blazing rash. The big blood-red lettering was everywhere: bridges, walls, subways, statues, gravestones - you name it. This time, some joker had sprayed it in crimson along the aluminum flanks of the train that squealed to a stop in the tube station at Piccadilly Circus.

    The subterranean station lay deep under the London streets. On this humid July night it made the atmosphere more stifling than a tropical nightclub. The comparison wasn't a wild one. The platform swarmed with men and women who'd already spent hours in the pounding clubs and pubs. On the hot midnight air, perfume and alcohol odours clashed amid the sound of laughter and party beasts singing the night away.

    'Vampire Sharkz! Vampire Sharkz!' A drunk male dressed as a nun used both his fists to pound the VAMPIRE SHARKZ graffiti on the side of the train. 'Vampire Sharkz! They're coming for you!' His foot caught in his wimple and he staggered backward ranting, 'Vampire Sharkz! They're coming to get you!' The drunken man-nun whirled across the platform swinging a fist. Mascara smeared the man's face. His lip-glossed mouth was a vermilion slash.

    Ben Ashton stepped in front of the girl to shield her with his own body until the man went windmilling away.

    The girl smiled up at Ben; it was so warm it made the sultry air chill in comparison. 'Thank you,' she breathed. 'Nobody's ever saved me before.'

    Ben smiled back. 'Don't mention it.'

    The man-nun punched wildly into the air.

    'Just who is he fighting anyway?' the girl asked.

    'His own personal demons, if you ask me.'

    'Ben.' Her expression took on a certain quality that made Ben Ashton's spine tingle. 'We don't have to go to the club. You could come home with me…' The shrug she gave with a bare shoulder managed to be both shy and suggestive at the same time. 'I like you.' The smile was like a flood of warm plasma in his veins. 'Do you want to?'

    The surge of people for the train carried them into the carriage. A moment later they sat side-by-side. Ben had only met the girl a couple of hours ago. He'd been to collect a cheque from an editor who insisted on paying contributors in person, just so he could have that pleasure-thru-power buzz of watching them sign a contract that waived all their creative rights away. Later, Ben had wound up at a party at Soho House, the club for film industry young-bloods. It had been hotter than hell. He'd manoeuvred his way through the packed bodies to the only open window in the upstairs bar where a girl, with blonde hair cascading down her back, watched the clientele.

    'Is this the coolest part of the room?' was Ben's best opening line, after he had endeavoured to make himself heard in this raucous hot-house of ambition. The beautiful woman conceded that it was. Then she invited him to share the breeze from the window. They hit it off like magic. Everything they discussed they agreed on. They loved the same food; the same music, and concurred that London was slowly going mad. Then he suggested a quieter club that he knew so they'd caught the tube even though it was only a couple of stops away.

    Just a moment ago she'd made that tantalizing suggestion:
'You could come home with me.'

    As the train surged along the tunnel he said softly, 'I'd like that.' Then, as his mouth broadened into a grin, he added, 'A lot.'

    'That's great.' Her eyes twinkled as she scrunched her bare shoulders with pleasure.

    Ben said, 'What line do we need?'

    'We'll stay on this one. We can get off at Holborn then get a taxi from there. It's not far.'

    This was a theme-park ride of erotic proportions; that headlong rush downward where gravity takes hold. There's no going back. In his mind's eye he saw himself making love to this beautiful blonde-haired goddess. He glanced down at her bare ankles. A gold chain glittered there. On her feet were sandals that displayed toe-nails that had been painted a vivid purple. She scrunched her shoulders again. Ben found it so sexy - a suggestion of shyness and, in the words of the song, sweet surrender.

    Her eyes twinkled as she gazed into his face. 'I'm glad you said yes.' Her hand found his.

    'I'm glad I said yes,' he replied with feeling.

    Then she shared an intimate secret with him. 'You'll be able to watch me have sex.'

    The train sounded loud again. Ben Ashton found he was noticing the clamour of revellers sat around him.

    'Watch you?' he echoed.

    'Yes.' Her face shone with excitement.

    'Damn,' he groaned.

    'What's the matter?'

    'I've just remembered. I've got to work tonight.' He grimaced. 'Deadline tomorrow. I clean forgot.'

    'Oh no. I was so looking forward to you being there tonight,' she told him. 'I can just picture you in my favourite costume.' She squeezed his hand even more tightly as if its pressure would be enough to change his mind.

    'Sorry. I'll lose my contract if I'm late.'

    'What is it you do again?'

    'I'm a writer.' He slid forward on the seat, ready to stand as the train roared into the station.

    'A writer! That's amazing. I've always wanted to do that.' Through the glass behind her, the graffiti sprayed there made it appear as if her blonde head was haloed by a blood-red mist. 'What do you write about?'

    'Vampires.'

    Before he knew it he was standing on the platform watching the train pull out, carrying the beautiful woman away. She waved to him but what he noticed most was the graffiti:

    

    
VAMPIRE SHARKZ

    ☺
They're coming to get you
☺

    

    

    From a wonderful night to crap had taken seconds. Ben Ashton now walked along the embankment. The night still burned hotter than a Bangkok knocking-shop. The chimes of Big Ben sounded a shimmering two across a town that seemed hell-bent on enjoying itself until the doomsday. Lights blazed from buildings. Taxis hurtled along the road to the right of him. To the left, the wide stretch of the River Thames was an expanse of liquid darkness. From this angle it didn't even reflect the lights on the opposite bank. It was as black as the pupil in the centre of your eye.

    There were no other pedestrians nearby. Only a couple approaching arm-in-arm in the distance. Now was a great time to vent his frustration.

    'If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all,' he fumed. 'I thought I'd struck gold… and what is it she wanted? Me, to watch her performance with her boyfriend… that's just… just bollocks…'

    Ben paused to lean forward against the wall so he could look down into the river. The full tide had swollen it. Its surface now lay just a few feet below street-level so he could see his forlorn reflection gazing right back at him. 'And you know something else, Ben Ashton? You shouldn't be talking to yourself. You know what happens to people who do?'

    His own reflection held his gaze. A broad face framed by unruly black hair. There I am, he told himself. A thirty-something writer that feels as if Christmas has just been cancelled. Stupid bugger… Now you're feeling sorry for yourself.

    A shape floated by in the water. Even though it was the dead of night he could see enough in the street lights to identify it as a jacket, perhaps chucked into the river by a reveller. Come to think of it, he disliked looking into the river. It was more than dislike, it made him shiver. To look at the Thames creeping blackly along like that seemed to divert some of its cold currents through his own bloodstream; chilling a vein or two. Ben took a step back but the water exerted an uncanny grip on him. When he was as close as this to the river it always snatched him back to the week he'd moved to London, and left his mother's home for good. He'd been high on the exhilaration of living footloose and fancy free in one of the biggest cities in the world - all those thrills and possibilities: they were lying waiting for him to come along and scoop them up in his two hands. That's when he'd walked down here, just like tonight. Full of the joys of freedom, he'd come to this very spot, near Cleopatra's Needle, to gaze happily over the wall into the water.

    A corpse had been floating there. It had been naked with the arms and legs stretched out so it formed a white X mark there in the oily, black water. He remembered alerting a group of men nearby, 'There's someone in the water.' Then it all happened so fast. More people appeared from nowhere. A police car arrived. Within moments of Ben shouting 'There's someone in the water', the body had been dragged out on to one of the pleasure-boat jetties.

    Ben had stared down at the sopping remnant of human flesh in the street light. Someone had said, 'It's the body of a young woman.' He'd seen the butterfly tattoo on her waxy arm. The tattooed image had pink wings fixed to a green body. He'd seen a pattern of freckles on her thigh in the shape of a palm print. There was a bizarre detail he still remembered clearly. These days he couldn't figure out whether it was some product of the shock; a detail burned into his brain by imagination, as he tried to deal with the horror of this dripping corpse that two hours ago might have been a living, breathing woman, laughing and talking with friends in a bar. But in one of the cadaver's hands that had bunched into a tight fist was a child's plastic doll. Strangely the doll - also naked - and the woman appeared similar. But the woman must have been struck by the propeller of a passing boat because that's where the similarity ended. The plastic doll still had her head.

    'Hey!'

    Ben's bones nearly jumped free of his skin.

    'Ben! Where on earth have you been? I haven't seen you in months.'

    Ben whirled round to find a familiar face. 'April?'

    'Why the hesitation? Don't tell me I've changed that much… but you haven't seen this.' She touched her short dark hair. 'I had the old mop cut off just after you left.'

    April's familiar face was a welcome one. Even though he'd been back in London six months he'd convinced himself that he'd never see her again. Now, here she was: April Connor. The same sparkling eyes, the same light-up-the-room smile. Her body-language now exuded a supple confidence that she lacked before. Meeting April Connor by chance at two in the morning would have made his night. What tore the pleasant surprise apart was that she stood arm-in-arm with a tanned man, sporting close-cropped blond hair and gold neck chains. The man appeared every inch a millionaire success story.

    'April, it's lovely to see you.' Immediately Ben's words sounded awkwardly formal. He tried to be more easy-going. 'How's life treating you?'

    'Great. Oh, I haven't seen you in ages. I can't believe it. Come here, you lunatic.' She slipped a bare arm around his neck. For a second he occupied her air-space, and breathed in her perfume. She kissed him firmly on the cheek. The sincerity of it made his heart beat hard.

    'You're looking well.' Hell, that sounds lame, he thought. 'Are you still flogging the mag?'

    'No, I'm doing PR for an agency now. So it's Hollywood movies one day, sewer pipes the next.' April gave him a playful punch on the arm. 'But what happened to you? All I got was a text saying you were going to New York and you'd be back after the weekend. Then you vanished.'

    'The magazine liked the article I did for them so much they asked me to stay.' The blond man's wide-eyed stare was beginning to irritate him. 'What was supposed to be a five-day assignment became a six-month posting.'

    April laughed, marvelling at it all. 'Congratulations. You must have loved being in New York. All those beautiful women.'

    'It had its moments.'

    'I don't know whether to hug you or strangle you. Why didn't you call me?'

    'Someone stole my case with my computer and-'

    'Oh, I'm sorry I'm being so rude,' she broke in, still smiling in an outrageously pretty way. 'I haven't introduced you. You'll have to excuse me, we've been celebrating. We just signed for an apartment today.'

    Ben's heart sank. 'That's great. Congratulations.'

    'And this is Trajan.'

    The blond man held out his hand. A handshake every bit as businesslike as Ben expected it to be. 'Trajan.'

    Ben nodded.

    April continued. 'Trajan, this is Ben Ashton. One of the best feature writers in the world - and craziest man in London. Only he'll never admit to either.'

    'April, you should be my agent.'

    'Then I could have been rich, not a poor little PR girl.' Her eyes twinkled even more brightly as she said, 'Trajan's in shipping.'

    'Container logistics.' Trajan's voice was oddly flat as if reluctant to say any more than the minimum.

    'Trajan, everyone used to think that Ben and I were an item… or even married. Imagine that, Ben.'

    Ben forced a laugh. 'Imagine.'

    'For over a year we were best friends. People couldn't believe there was never anything more to it than that.' She squeezed Ben's arm as if to reassure herself he was really there. 'Ben, what have you been doing with yourself?'

    'Freelancing mainly. There's a new magazine that needs-'

    'April.' Trajan checked his watch. 'It's getting late.'

    'Oh, of course.' She hugged Trajan's arm. 'We're going up to Aberdeen tomorrow for Suka's wedding. Do you remember Suka? She told everyone that she was going on this odyssey to India… overland by car, would you believe? She got as far as Folkestone, met a schoolteacher in a cafe, and fell in love with him.'