Vampire "Unleashed" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 3) (3 page)

Down in a second, unconscious in less than a minute, dead in five.

Then it was still.

----- X -----

ROMANIA

Corneliu Latis parked his car in the courtyard behind the apartment blocks and relaxed into his seat. Noua was a shithole of communist era tower blocks, peeling paint and dirt tracks. It was the worst district of Brasov and the cheapest, meaning it was full of Roma gypsies and the poorest Romanians. He checked his watch, just before nine in the morning and it was already getting hot. Today would be a scorcher. He rubbed his hand across his face and traced the lines of his scars with a fingertip. Thick, deep wounds of purple lines with suture marks across his cheeks and nose. He had a face that made children cry.

“Let me see you,” he said to himself.

She was usually out by nine thirty.

“Today, I guess you’re going to the picnic area,” he said. “Judging by the weather and the fact that it’s a Thursday.”

If she didn’t go to the picnic area she would be going to her mother’s, but that was normally on a Sunday. Alternatively she would be going to the mini-market but it was most likely she did her grocery shopping after morning play with the baby. Her only other morning routine was to visit her doctor. Her routine would change if it was raining, in which case she didn’t come out unless she absolutely needed to; but her Thursday routine had become pretty predictable.

She was a creature of habits and Cornel had learned them all.

“There you are,” he mumbled as the familiar figure of Ildico Popescu backed out of the doors, pulling the pushchair with her child. Today she wore a white summer dress with a wide brimmed hat, her hair tucked underneath. She looked nice, like something from a postcard if the forest mountains were behind her. Less so whilst surrounded by dirty tower blocks.

The lady Popescu took her child for a walk. Cornel followed on foot. He didn’t need to be close, he knew where she was going. He followed her through allotments, along a dirt track to cross the only road in the district that was surfaced. He let her get ahead into the picnic area whilst flanking and climbing the forested hill. He sweated, he grunted and panted as he made his way up the steep incline, he held onto tree trunks and pulled as much with his arms as pushed with his legs until high above her. When in position he sat behind a wide trunk to watch and unscrewed the cap to a fresh bottle of whisky. He took a big drink from the neck. Whisky was becoming his ruin. He was getting through a bottle a day, sometimes more.

Ildico took the baby out of the pushchair to sit on the grass. They played a game of touching hands, the child’s giggles drifting just enough to be heard.

It was interesting that she came to this place. To this picnic spot. Whilst there were few other nice places she could take her baby to play outside, it can’t have been unknown that this patch of ground was the site of a double murder. She knew the victims personally, Nealla and Raul. They had antagonised her, they had abused her physically and psychologically for years. Then Paul McGovern stabbed them to death on the very spot she now bounced her child on her knee.

Interesting.

Paul McGovern raped that girl and gave her the child, he then left the house, came here and killed two men; yet this was the place she came to smile and laugh and have fun with her rape baby? It would be nice to know why. It would be nice to scream at her, to threaten, to demand to know what hold Paul McGovern had over her. In his mind he could imagine punching her, grabbing her dress and screaming, “Why? Why? Why?”

He didn’t want to hurt her.

He was sure he didn’t want to hurt her.

What he really wanted was to see Paul McGovern suffer. He wanted him caught, he wanted to read in a newspaper that McGovern was in prison. Even better he wanted to read how McGovern had died in a police shootout. He’d even dreamed of being the shooter, imagining being interviewed on television about how he had killed Paul McGovern.

The fantasy was crushing him by its failure to materialise. Paul McGovern was a ghost. He had vanished. Cornel wanted the saga to be ended, but rather than end it had gone into perpetual limbo, leaving him to twist and squirm with a scarred and deformed face and a hollow existence.

The mother and daughter below him laughed out loud. He wanted to go down there and shoot them both. Anything to hurt McGovern. It was all part of the proxy war that fought in his head. Somebody had to pay for the pain he lived in and if he couldn’t hurt McGovern directly then he would hurt the people he loved… or those who loved him.

----- X -----

The stairs were dangerous for children and Ildico was taking them one at a time. Her hair had lost its gloss over the last year and looked flat and lifeless. Her milky skin was beginning to look haggard and dark rings had emerged under her eyes. Worse still, her slender figure had atrophied, changing her from slim and sexy to looking frail and anaemic. Single parenting had added twenty miserable years to her looks.

“Unu, doi, trei,” she said counting the stairs to the baby balanced on her hip. “Can you count, Alina? One, two, three… One, two, three.”

The baby was wrapped in a pale blue coat, the hood tied tight around her face. “Ooo, doo, tooo,” she gurgled.

“Ooo, doo, too? No, Alina. It’s one, two, three.”

She rolled the pushchair wheels down the steps. There was no elevator in this block, hence cheaper rents the higher you lived. Ildico had a single room on the sixth floor. It was the typical oppressive block, a prison-like structure of concrete staircases with iron banisters. The railings were badly designed and wide enough for a toddler to slip between, meaning she had to carry Alina up and down less she risk losing the child to communist architecture.

At the foot of the stairs a man in a dark blue overcoat was searching mailboxes for a name. She smiled at him and prepared the pushchair. Alina was already standing with her hands in the air waiting to be lifted. The man took a letter and was about to post it in Ildico’s mail box.

“Is that for Popescu?”

“Yes,” the man replied. “Are you Ildico Popescu?”

“I can take that.” She held her hand out for the letter but the man withdrew it. He handed over a business card.

“My name is Iancu Petran. I have a letter for you, but could you show me some identification, please.”

Ildico’s eyebrows dipped. She looked at the business card. Mr. Petran was a lawyer. She noticed how fine his clothes were; he was unusually well dressed for this district. She found her ID card.

“That’s fine,” Petran said. “I have a letter and some keys for you.” He handed over the letter.

It had her name on the envelope and said ‘To be opened by addressee only.’ The writing was in English. Her heart lurched. English… it was written in English. Petran produced two keys on a silver ring. He opened a small leather folio and produced a document. “Can you sign here please, to say you have received.”

Ildico scratched her name but didn’t immediately take the keys, she was reading the english sentence on the envelope over and over again.

She opened the letter, her hands shaking.

Dear Ildico,

I am sorry for all the hurt and pain I have put you through. Things were out of my control and I was powerless to stop it, but the responsibility is mine, I am the one to blame. You have done nothing wrong, yet must shoulder the greatest burden. I am so sorry for what I have imposed on you and would give anything to undo the pain I have caused.

I’ve taken steps to make your life easier. We will never be able to meet again. All I want is that you find a way to live your life to the fullest.

Please destroy this letter. Do not keep it. It could harm you and the child. Destroy it now.

There was no name or signature. It didn’t need one.

Ildico tore the note in two, then again, automatically following the instructions. Burn it, she needed to burn it. She dropped the fragments into her purse.

Petran watched her. She wanted to look normal. Wanted to make it seem as though nothing was happening. “Is everything alright?” he asked.

When Ildico said, “Yes, it’s fine,” her voice cracked and made her out to be a bad liar.

“This is for you too,” the lawyer said holding out keys.

“What is this?” Ildico asked, her voice high through a tight throat.

“For your home in Centrul Nou.”

Ildico looked at the keys as though they were alien. “My home?”

“Yes… I’m guessing this is a surprise for you?”

Ildico could feel herself swaying. She wanted to ask if there had been a mistake but she knew there hadn’t been. The letter. It wasn’t a mistake. “Where is this home?” her voice cracked as she tried to get the words out.

“I’m going that way,” Petran said. “If you like, I can take you.”

Petran drove.

He asked questions about Alina.

Small talk.

Pleasantries.

They arrived outside a tall modern apartment building finished in brilliant white render. Ildico set up the pushchair and locked the baby in. She kept looking up at the building like a tourist on their first visit to New York, fascinated by the height of the real estate.

“You have my number,” Petran said leaning across the car seat to talk through the open door.

“Uh, huh.”

“Yours is apartment ninety one. There are some more documents laid out on the dining table for you. If you have any trouble with them, you can call me.”

Documents on the dining table… a dining table? Could this be real?

“Miss Popescu? Is it alright, is everything okay?”

She nodded shallowly. “Yes. I’ll call if I need help, thank you.”

“Good luck to you, Miss Popescu. La revedere.”

“La revedere,” Ildico replied. Goodbye.

“Ra, rava rava,” Alina said joining in.

The lawyer drove away.

The apartment block was in the most prime location of Brasov. The lobby had black polished floor tiles. There were two large plants beside the doors of the elevator… an elevator.

She fitted the key in the lock expecting it not to fit. It opened without effort.

“Oh, my God,” she said it with a hand covering her mouth.

The apartment was simple but large. The main room was open plan with a kitchen, dining area and a modern sofa arrangement. It was brand new. Everything was new. There was a modern kitchen that had never been used, a simple modern dining table with chairs of chromed steel and black leather. The sofas were cream and stylish, angled to where a television should go. The walls were white, the windows undraped and a smell of fresh paint hung in the air.

Ildico walked to the bedrooms. One room had a double bed and simple furniture, the other had a crib and a set of drawers. She looked into the bathroom, clean and white.

Back at the kitchen the first thing she noticed was a thermostat on the wall. This home had its own heating. Then she looked at the dining table and saw the documents. They were from a bank with account numbers and her details. Typed in English was a single sentence.

‘Take this to the bank with your I.D. to get your ATM card.’

She went back to her purse and found the torn up note fragments and reassembled the jigsaw. Three sentences kept repeating in her mind over and over again. She could even hear his voice as the words cycled.

I’ve taken steps to make your life easier.

We will never be able to meet again.

All I want is that you find a way to live your life to the fullest.

She looked at the note fragments for a long time, then lit the stove and set each fragment alight. She kept the final fragment in her hand, reading and rereading the final portion, doing her utmost to commit the phrase to memory. Eventually, when she was sure it was so ingrained within her mind it could never be forgotten, she touched the paper to the flame and dropped it in the sink.

She put the keys in her pocket and picked up the paperwork.

“Alina, come here… We’re going to the bank.”

----- X -----

Cornel stepped into the room first.

“This is typical of how the decor is finished, but we can have it made to suit,” the realtor said. Cornel nodded and began walking around the lounge, looking at the details. “Of course, it comes with gas central heating and constant hot water.”

He didn’t respond. He wasn’t in the market. He was pretending. “Are all of the apartments laid out the same?” he asked. “The apartments above and below, are they the same shape as this one?”

“Yes. Except those on the end of the corridor. They’re smaller, but have a private balcony. Would you like to look at one?”

“No.” Cornel said. “I want living space more than a balcony.”

It was unbelievable.

Fucking unbelievable.

A week ago he’d watched Ildico Popescu move into the apartment above this one. He ran his finger across the granite kitchen worktop. A brand new building? The most expensive new block in the city? “Do you handle all the sales?”

“Yes,” the woman said with a grin. “I’m the sole agent… The bathroom is over here.”

Cornel looked in nonchalantly. “And do you rent any of the apartments or are they all sold?”

“They’re sale only. Just to make clear, we have a clause that the apartments cannot be rented privately for the first five years.”

“So everybody who lives here right now is an owner?”

The woman nodded. “Yes.”

“You know, how I know about these apartments is a friend of mine just moved in, Ildico Popescu. She lives upstairs in number ninety one, but I’m sure she told me she was renting.”

“Ildico? No, she owns the apartment.”

“Oh…” Cornel tried not to show any emotion. “She owns it does she?”

“Are you related?” the woman asked. “To Ildico and Alina. Bless her, such an adorable baby.”

“No. Not at all, we have an acquaintance in common.”

He left Europe Apartments.

He stood across the street staring at the building. How the hell had an uneducated, unemployed single mother from Noua bought an apartment with the hottest address in town?

He went to the town hall, he asked for the land registry of the building, looking for ownership rights. It took two hours of bureaucracy and a fee of thirty five euros. The apartment was registered in her name. The purchase details showed the realtor in Brasov and... someone else… “And who are you?” Cornel whispered. The purchasing agent was listed as Burkhalter & Company, a law firm based in Zurich, Switzerland. “Explain yourself, Ildico. How do you buy an expensive home through a Swiss law firm?”