Simon Green - The Dark Side of the Road

‘No surprise there,’ said Leilah, not taking her eyes or her gun off me. ‘You’ve been sniffing round Ishmael ever since he turned up. And with your stepbrother and your father dead, you’re the only one left to inherit all this … If something was to happen to your mother …’

‘Unnatural child …’ said Melanie, slumped back in her chair again.

‘I swear, if you say that one more time, Mummy, I will slap you a good one,’ Penny said coldly. ‘And it will hurt.’

‘I think we’d better lock you up with Ishmael, Miss Belcourt,’ said Jeeves. ‘Just as a security measure. If we’re all still alive come the morning, there will be plenty of time for apologies then.’

‘Lock me up and you won’t live to see the morning,’ I said.

‘Shoot him,’ said Melanie. ‘Shoot him! He murdered my Walter …’

I stepped forward, to say something reasonable, and Jeeves shot me twice. Except I wasn’t there. By the time the bullets slammed into the wall I was already somewhere else, heading rapidly for Jeeves and Leilah, ducking and dodging bullets as I closed in. They both fired with professional speed and accuracy, but I was faster. My eyes work better than most people. I can see bullets travelling through the air. It’s all a matter of concentration.

I grabbed the guns out of Jeeves and Leilah’s hands, careful not to break their fingers in the process, and then stepped back and covered both of them with their own guns. James and Leilah looked at each other incredulously, then at me, and decided to stand very still.

I glanced quickly round the room. Khan and Sylvia were staring at me open-mouthed. Penny was grinning broadly. Melanie wasn’t looking at anything. I smiled at Jeeves and Leilah, and then stepped forward and gave them their guns back, again.

‘Really,’ I said reproachfully. ‘How many times do we have to do this dance? If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.’

‘I never saw anyone move that fast in my life,’ said Leilah.

‘What are you, Ishmael?’ said Jeeves.

‘Busy,’ I said.

‘All right …’ said Leilah. She hefted the gun in her hand uncertainly, as though I might have somehow substituted a fake, and then looked at me squarely. ‘Maybe you aren’t the killer. But we still have to work the evidence logically. The killer made a real mess of Mister Belcourt, so they should have blood all over them. No one here has had time to change their clothes. But I don’t see blood on anyone …’

Everyone in the room looked at everyone else, took in the complete lack of blood and actually started to relax a little.

‘The killer can’t be one of us!’ said Sylvia. ‘The lack of bloodstains proves it!’

‘Unfortunately not,’ I said. ‘Things are a little more complicated than that. I’m pretty sure the vampire has the ability to mess with our minds, make us see what it wants us to see. To hide its true look behind a glamour; a pleasing illusion. The killer could be standing right here, in this room, soaked in the blood of its victims, and we still wouldn’t know it. Because the vampire wouldn’t let us know it.’

‘Oh, that’s just marvellous!’ said Sylvia. ‘First you tell us the killer is a creature of the night, and now we can’t trust our eyes, either?’

‘I’m not buying any of this,’ growled Leilah.

‘I’m not sure I do either,’ said Jeeves, frowning deeply. ‘But something weird is going on here. Hiding behind a pleasant illusion … You mean, like hypnosis?’

‘Something like that,’ I said. ‘I think that’s how the vampire takes down its victims so easily. It hypnotizes them, overpowers their mind temporarily, holds then in place unresisting, and then attacks them. That’s how it was able to take down a seasoned old fighter like the Colonel. He literally never saw it coming. That’s why the vampire only attacks one victim at a time, so there’s no distraction to break the trance.’

‘So there are some limits to this thing’s power,’ said Jeeves. ‘That’s something …’

Leilah looked at him. ‘You’re buying this …?’

‘I’m … going along, for now,’ said Jeeves.

I looked around the room, studying everyone, taking my time. Jeeves and Leilah were standing close together, still guarding the locked door. Still holding their guns, though they didn’t seem too sure where to point them. Penny was right there at my side, looking hopefully at me for an answer. Or at least some idea of what to do next. Melanie was leaning forward in her chair, staring sullenly at me, and Penny. Sylvia stood alone, hugging herself tightly, lost and scared and confused by what was happening. Khan stood off to one side, studying one face after another, trying to spy out the real face beneath the mask, through sheer concentration.

‘Someone in this room has to be the killer,’ I said. ‘Can’t be Penny, because she was upstairs with me while Walter was being killed down here. Can’t be Jeeves or Leilah because they’ve been working as a team, and what evidence there is suggests a single killer.’

‘What evidence?’ said Leilah.

‘The single set of bite marks on each neck,’ I said.

‘They could be killing separately,’ Penny said eagerly. ‘Providing alibis for each other!’

‘That would mean two vampires operating under one roof,’ I said. ‘How likely is that?’

‘How likely is one vampire?’ said Penny.

‘True,’ I said.

‘Wait just a minute,’ said Leilah. ‘Following your logic … you say Penny was upstairs with you all the time, but how can you be sure? How can you be sure she didn’t just hypnotize you into believing she was there, while she nipped down the stairs and killed her father? And then hurried back, before you came out of your trance?’

‘You are a deeply cynical and suspicious woman,’ said Penny.

‘Just doing my job,’ said Leilah.

‘I don’t think it works like that,’ I said. ‘It’s clear the vampire can overpower human minds, but only when we don’t notice. Most of its strength must go into maintaining its cover illusion; keeping us from seeing it for what it really is. Any further mind control must be a real effort, or I’d never have been allowed to work out this much. It kept you all from noticing Walter’s absence, but only until I pointed it out. And once the spell was broken it couldn’t keep you from noticing any longer. It can’t stop us from discussing its existence, not now I’ve got you all thinking about it. It’s probably reaching its limits just hiding from us, now we’re looking for it.’

‘You keep using the word probably !’ said Jeeves. ‘I need a hell of a lot more than probably , if I’m going to try and take down a vampire!’

‘What’s it going to take, to bring down a vampire?’ said Leilah. ‘I’m guessing bullets won’t do it.’

‘Silver bullets?’ said Sylvia.

‘That’s werewolves,’ said Khan. ‘With vampires, you must drive a wooden stake through their heart.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I used to love Christopher Lee, in all those old Hammer horror movies.’

‘I don’t think we can trust what they say in the movies,’ I said.

‘Wooden stakes feature in all the old stories and legends,’ Khan said firmly.

‘What else would work?’ said Leilah. ‘Fire?’

‘I’m not an expert in this field,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got Van Helsing’s home number, feel free to call him. I’m working this out as I go along.’

‘Maybe we should start sharpening some wooden stakes?’ said Khan.

‘You go right ahead,’ said Leilah. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. How do you sharpen a wooden stake?’

‘No one here has an alibi for the Colonel’s murder,’ I said loudly, to draw everyone’s attention back to me. ‘Or for Roger’s, because we can’t be sure of when they were killed. And Diana could have been killed before or after Roger. And we can’t be sure who was and wasn’t in this room when Walter was killed. So; we have to face the fact that we can’t rule people out through alibis. That just leaves deductive logic. I wish the Colonel was here; he was always so much better at this than me. But he did do his best to teach me the basics. And I do notice things, even if it takes me a while to realize.’ I turned slowly, to face Sylvia. ‘Why did you scream, when you looked through the open door into Roger’s room?’