The Mammoth Book of Dracula (64 page)

“Unfortunately not. I invested unwisely.” O’Cooler said something else angrily behind his hand that Sylvia didn’t catch. She thought he mentioned Lloyd’s.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to help in some way: we can do something to assist you.”

Strope spoke up then. “Mr O’Cooler and I had a chat while you were away,” he said, “and we’ve come up with a little plan.”

“Oh?” How
very
unprofessional! Mr Strope had no right to do anything of the sort. She was the experienced caring person. It was up to her to decide, with the assistance of the Volunteer Coordinator, what could and would be done to alleviate her client’s suffering. Strope knew nothing about such things. He was totally inexperienced. It was unfair to the client to make promises that could not be met. She was sorry, but she had been right to assume he was unfit for the task he had set himself. He’d have to be put in his place. She would, as gently as possible, point out the faults in whatever scheme he had cooked up.

“What
plan?”
she said.

Strope, regarding her greedily, with unconcealed voluptuous satisfaction, seemed delighted with her obvious anger. She realized her flesh was quaking with tension. She attempted to control herself, but made things worse. Strope’s eyes rolled slightly, and his hands twitched.

“Well, not so much a plan, perhaps, as an understanding,” he said.

“A gentleman’s agreement,” O’Cooler suggested almost jovially, “made to our mutual satisfaction. Simple, but very ingenious. We all have our part to play,” he added, as an afterthought.

Strope gave him an uneasy look, as though he had spoken out of turn.

“And it was his idea?” Sylvia asked, nodding towards the little lecher. She was not best pleased to learn that whatever it was they had in mind apparently included her. “I think I ought to warn you he is in no position to make decisions about your future.”

O’Cooler turn his owlish black eyes on the other man and made a sound that was the verbal equivalent of a question mark.

For a moment, Strope’s confidence visibly wavered, but, after a moment’s reflection, he recovered his composure.

“I’m not the fool you take me for, Sylvia, my love.” Strope smirked craftily and pointed at O’Cooler. “I know more about him
and
you, and the habits of both of you, than you might care to hear about.”

Sylvia’s apple-red cheeks blanched.

“You’d better explain,” she said, not at all sure she wanted to learn what might come next.

“A pleasure,” said Strope. “It just so happens I live across the road from here. In a first floor flat looking out on the street. Being without work, and broke, I have nothing to do, twenty-four hours a day, but stare out. So I see what’s going on. Not much, a lot of the time, but, thanks to this chap, enough to keep me entertained. A single gentleman living alone, or so he would have us believe, in this great castle of a place, who sometimes has night guests who go in but never come out, and who has filthy black smoke pouring out of his chimney at three and four o’clock in the morning, and who buries bags of charred bones in his back garden is bound to provide a bit of novelty interest to someone as bored as me.”

“You have been trespassing on my property,” O’Cooler observed testily.

“In the public interest,” Strope agreed. “You should have been more careful. I didn’t have to dig deep: there are bones sticking out of the ground all over the place. I tripped over them. You should have made sure your curtains were properly closed too. I saw what you were putting in that stove.”

O’Cooler took his hand away from the lower section of his face and gave his neighbour a cold, dangerous look. His lips jerked down in a way that suggested he had muscles around his mouth that others do not have. Sylvia noticed for the first time how very powerful his jaw looked. She caught her breath. What a
noble
head he had. She watched him, spellbound. She didn’t understand what Mr Strope was saying—was hardly listening, because it seemed to have nothing to do with her—but she could see he was upsetting their client, who they had come to help. Before they could start to argue, she said, “I think we can bring this interview to a conclusion now. I have enough information. We will contact you again soon, Mr O’Cooler, when we’ve put together a package of assistance to offer you. Subject to your approval, of course. Now, if you’re ready Mr Strope? I think it’s time we were going.”

“I’m staying here, sweetheart. And you’re not going anywhere either.”

Strope’s tone was extremely unpleasant. Sylvia looked to the aristocratic figure in the wheelchair for support. O’Cooler noticed her appeal, and shrugged.

Sylvia’s eyes went slightly out of focus as she considered her situation. Was she at the mercy of these two men? To make things worse, Strope started speaking again, about her now.

“I’ve been angling to get you to myself for a long time, my love” he revealed. “I’ve been crazy about you since I saw you eating the five course special in the Corner Cafe, weeks ago. My dream woman, that’s what you are, Sylvia. Big as they come, and beautiful with it. But I could tell you didn’t think much of me. I smiled at you more than once in the Cafe, when you looked my way, but you didn’t even see me. You were too busy eating. Fair enough, I told myself. When you left I decided to follow you, and of course, before long, I got to know
all
about you.”

“You spied on me,” Sylvia said, contemptuously.

“You bet. Every day, from dawn to dusk. Watching your house was much more interesting than watching this one. I’d got Mr. so-called-O’Cooler’s number by then anyway. I had no doubts about who and what he was: all I lacked was some way to turn that knowledge to my advantage.”

O’Cooler seemed about to speak, but in the end decided to keep his own counsel. His owlish eyes watched Strope keenly however, as the little man continued his monologue.

“I almost went up and spoke to you a number of times, but you stared through me, or gave me a haughty look, so I didn’t dare. I’m a bashful man, by nature. Anyway, when I realized you did unpaid work for the Volunteers, I saw my chance to get close to you, so I offered my services too. They soon had me on trial, answering the phone in their office. That’s when I put two and two together and I saw an opportunity to get you where I want you. It was me that brought the plight of the “poor old gentleman” to the attention of the Volunteer Service. I pretended a call came in requesting help just when I knew you were due to take the next case. It was me that hinted to the Coordinator that you ought not go alone. There was nobody else around who could have gone with you, I made sure of that.”

“And here we are,” Sylvia said. “I see.” She looked again to O’Cooler for assistance, but he had still not taken his eyes off the little man. “What’s this bargain the two of you struck?” she asked.

Strope gave her a blissful smile. “Simple. As you so rightly guessed, our friend here has “special dietary needs”. Requirements that are not being met, because he can’t get about to satisfy them. I can and will provide him with what he requires. In return, he allows me the uninterrupted use of part of his premises for my own purposes. I must have somewhere away from my flat, where I can satisfy
my
needs occasionally. Somewhere my activities won’t be overheard.”

“Where do I fit in to this agreement?” Sylvia asked, glancing desperately back and forth from what she could see of the inexpressive features of the resident of the house to the gloating, triumphant face of the little man. “I don’t understand. What am I going to get out of it?”

Strope move closer to her.

“My undivided attention,” he said.

~ * ~

Sylvia snatched up her bag and attempted to leave the room. She was slow on her feet, however, and Strope was as agile as a lizard. He slipped out of the door ahead of her and slammed it in her face. She heard the lock turn.

She turned to O’Cooler. “Are you going to let him keep me here?” she demanded.

O’Cooler’s eyes were heavy-lidded—almost closed. He looked tired out. Obviously he wasn’t used to such excitement. Not during the hours of daylight, anyway.

“That was one of the terms of our pact,” he acknowledged wearily.

Sylvia folded her arms across her breasts in an angrily protective gesture, as though she was preparing to repel boarders. “What’s he up to now? Where’s he gone?”

“Checking the security arrangements, I imagine. He asked about them earlier. I had them installed some years ago, to stop the more predatory local youths getting in, and other, more welcome people getting out, during occasions when I was forced to absent myself for one reason or another. There are steel bars up at all the ground floor windows, which are made of bullet-proof glass. The outer doors are similarly protected. The whole ground floor can be sealed off from the upper regions at the press of a button.”

“So I’m trapped. You’re going to let him do what he likes with me?”

“He led me to believe you are not the first, and probably won’t be the last, of his victims.”

“Well, that’s a consoling thought, to be sure,” Sylvia snapped.

O’Cooler raised one furry eyebrow at her sharp tone and unexpected irony, then fatigue got the better of him. He held back his head, opened his mouth, and yawned widely.

Sylvia noticed the yawn, and the glint of O’Cooler’s fangs.

She was a well-meaning, good-hearted person who tried always to see the best in people. She was the sort who made an effort to keep up a cheerful front, and tried not to dwell too much on the dark side of life. She had to, the kind of work she did, to get through her days. True, she was a bit slow on the uptake, but she wasn’t stupid. She was a supremely practical girl, who didn’t try to ignore the evidence of her own eyes. And she could think fast, when she had to.

“There’s something you should know,” she said to the increasingly dormant creature in the wheelchair.

“Mmm.” He hardly stirred.

“I was voted ‘Most Valued Volunteer’ by my fellow workers recently. I got a certificate.”

O’Cooler twitched slightly, perhaps with impatience. “Oh: good.”

“Most Valued Volunteer”
she repeated. “I’m an important part of the set-up back there. Very experienced. They need my expertise.”

O’Cooler stifled another yawn. “How very gratifying for you.”

“They’ll miss me soon, if I don’t get back. They have your address. Strope slipped up there, in his hurry to get his hands on me, and wrote it down on a piece of paper for my Coordinator. They’ll certainly come looking for me. Maybe with the police. I should have thought you were the last person in the world to want
them
snooping around, under the circumstances, especially if Strope was right about what you’ve got buried in your back garden.”

Her words aroused the sleepyhead quicker than an alarm clock could have done. “Are you sure about that?” he spluttered.

“Absolutely. I’ve been gone a long time already. And, let’s face it, you’re as much a prisoner here as I am—in your condition, in the middle of the day. There’s nobody to help you make your escape in that thing.” She pointed to the long, lidded wooden case she had earlier mistaken for a blanket-box.

O’Cooler’s composure had vanished: he was wide awake. Sylvia could almost hear the alarm bells ringing in his head. “But if I stay here, and let you go ... ! That man said if I let him have you, he would bring me food regularly, until I recovered.”

“If he promised to lure people here for you to feed on, forget it. He couldn’t deliver. And he’d dump me and run, when he’d finished doing what he wanted to me. You’d just have another corpse on your hands for the police to find when they get here.”

“I had no option but to believe him or starve.”

“But I told you I could put an aid-package together for you myself. Individually tailored to your needs, now I understand exactly what those needs are. We’ll work something out.”

“Can you give me some details?”

“Okay.” Sylvia explained that the Health, Social and other Services were being manned more and more by otherwise unemployed and untrained volunteers who, if they were considered at all suitable, were told to put in plenty of time for nothing, if they wanted to continue to receive benefits. Millions of people were desperate to comply with this scheme, as it offered the nearest thing most of them would ever get to security.

“There’s a vetting process they all have to go through, and most of them are worse than useless, as you can imagine. Those, we have to reject. It’s part of my job to interview these people. I have access to the names and address of thousands of the rejects, who mostly have no income at all. Consequently, they will do anything,
anything at all,
for a little cash.”

O’Cooler fiddled thoughtfully with his walking stick. Out of touch with social and economic conditions in the world outside, he hung on to her every word.

“See what I’m getting at?” Sylvia said, as her bleak revelations sank into the invalid’s brain. “I am in a position to hand-pick any number of reliable—let’s call them
donors—
of either sex, who will provide you with a discreet personal and anonymous service, brought to you
in your own home,
for a few pounds a week. I know you made some unwise investments, but you can afford that surely?”