Stephen Leather - Once bitten

The phone warbled and Rivron picked it up, took down a few notes and replaced the receiver.

"Toss you for a vampire?" he asked. "Downstairs in room D. Bit a couple of down and outs."

"Killed them?"

He shook his head. "More likely he'll be going down with alcohol poisoning. Or worse."

The phone rang and I reached for it this time. "You have it, I'll take this one," I said to Rivron and he sighed and picked up his briefcase. Inside was his laptop computer and a copy of the Beaverbrook program. He waved as he went through the door and I waved back.

"Beaverbrook," I said. It was a sergeant on the desk. They had a possession case for me. I started taking notes until it became obvious that he was talking about a teenager caught driving a stolen Rolls Royce.

"You cannot be serious," I said.

"Hey, Doc, possession is nine tenths of the law," laughed the sergeant, and hung up. Everyone's a comedian.

So you reckon this whole full moon stuff is a crock of shit, do you? That there's no way a satellite whizzing around the earth can possibly affect the actions of the billions of tiny people going about their business far below? Most scientists will laugh in your face when you suggest that the moon has a direct affect on the incidence of abhorrent behaviour, but you ask any police desk sergeant and he'll tell you without a trace of hesitation that when the moon is full, the crazies come out to play. OK, so maybe they've been influenced by too many video nasties and it's not actually a physical reaction, just a Pavlovian-type response, see the moon and howl sort of thing, but the end result would be the same, wouldn't it? Me, I've done enough basic research to know that there is a statistically significant increase in criminality during the full moon. I've started retesting suspects who were first examined during the full moon, running them through the Beaverbrook Program a couple of weeks after their arrest and comparing the results. There's a difference. Not much, to be sure, the curves don't shift so that a criminally insane person becomes sane when the moon's on the wane, but there is an effect. Once I've got enough raw data I'll put together a paper for one of the less serious journals but I already know I'll come in for a lot of stick.

Many people have a gut reaction about the moon, accepting without too much thought that they tend to get drunk easier when the moon is full or that they're more likely to get into an argument or a fight. There are lots of farmers around who reckon that crops grow better if you plant them when the moon is waning rather than waxing. It doesn't matter why, they just believe that it happens.

There is a theory that says the effect of the moon on men is tidal, that it has the same pull on the water in our bodies as it does on the planet's oceans. Water accounts for more than eighty per cent of our bodies, so it's possible that the pull of the moon effects the concentration of the chemicals in the body and the reactions they undergo. Another theory reckons its something to do with the light from the moon, something like Seasonal Affective Disorder which is reckoned to effect about one person in a hundred, mainly women. SAD usually occurs between October and March and is reckoned to be a form of light starvation in people whose hormones can't adjust to the seasonal lack of light. Sufferers tend to get depressed, anxious, and sometimes violent, and they can be helped with a form of light therapy, sitting in front of a light box that gives out ultra- violet light, not enough to tan but five or six times what you'd get under normal domestic lighting. It works. So if lack of light can effect susceptible individuals, maybe moonlight can change others, in a different way, but a way in which we don't yet understand. Whatever the reason, the end result is the same.

When the moon shines, the crazies come out to play.

I left the precinct at about four o'clock in the morning, dog-tired and feeling dirty, mentally and physically. Someone had hung a garland of garlic around the aerial of my car. I threw it on the back seat. It wasn't funny anymore.

The Release I guess I was so wrapped up in my work that I forgot about Terry Ferriman for a day or two. Peter Hardy hadn't called me back about the film star and I had a lot on my mind, what with Deborah's financial bombshell and all that, but it was mainly work that kept me occupied. Over the nights of the full moon my team and I worked pretty much around the clock, processing the alleged bad guys. I was on my way in after a hurried lunch with Rivron when De'Ath grabbed me by the arm in the squad room.

"My man, your bird is about to fly," he leered.

"My bird?" I replied, totally confused as I usually was when talking to Black De'Ath.

"Bird. Bat. Whatever. Ferriman, Terry. Ms. Alleged vampire of this parish."

"What, you're letting her go?"

He grinned. "I thought that would brighten your day," he said. "She came up with a brief, a real high-powered hot-shot lawyer, and she managed to get the bail down to six figures."

"That's still a hell of a lot of money, Samuel. For a girl living in a tiny apartment like she does."

"Maybe she's got real rich parents," he said with a shrug.

"Parents are dead, she told me."

"Yeah? I must have missed that in the file. Orphan?"

"So she says. Maybe that's where she got the money."

"Inheritance you mean?"

"Inheritance, or insurance settlement. Any news on the victim?"

"Still dead, last I heard." He guffawed and then repeated the joke to Filbin, who'd just walked up to his desk with styrofoam cups of coffee for them both. Filbin laughed with him.

"You know what I meant," I said patiently.

De'Ath slapped his desk and laughed all the louder. "No," he said eventually after he'd calmed down. "Still no ID."

"She still here?" I said. "You said the bird was about to fly."

De'Ath wiped his eyes. "She's just getting her things together. You wanna see her?"

"Not really," I lied. The fact was that I did want to see her, though to be honest I wasn't sure why. Yes I was, I was attracted to her, that's why I wanted to meet her, even if it was just to say 'hello' and to ask her how she was. I dumped my briefcase and computer in the office and then went to the main entrance to the precinct house, knowing that was the way they'd send her out. She was already there, arguing with the desk sergeant, making sweeping gestures with her arms and raising her eyes to the heavens at his answers. The sergeant was Patsy O'Hara, a genial Irish American with five children and a grandchild on the way, and I knew he wasn't normally hard to deal with so I wondered what her problem was. I looked around for her lawyer but she was on her own so I went up to the desk.

"I don't want to go!" she said and banged her fist down on the desk.

"Acting like that won't get you anywhere, young lady," O'Hara said, and I could tell from his voice that his patience was beginning to wear thin. Terry was dressed in the clothes I'd seen in the bag on Filbin's desk: miniskirt, ankle boots with leather tassels on the side, black stockings, and the leather jacket over a white t-shirt. And sunglasses. She looked older than she did when she was just wearing the grey police-issue tunic.

"I just, like, wanna stay here until later, you know? You can't make me go!" She stamped her foot as she spoke.

O'Hara sighed and shook his head. "Ms Ferriman, your lawyer has gone to a devil of a trouble to get you released, for the life of me I can't understand why you don't just go."

"Terry?" I said, standing next to her.

She turned and saw me, and removed her sunglasses. "Jamie, thank God," she said. "Can you make this guy see sense, please?"

"What's the problem? Lieutenant De'Ath tells me you're free to go."

"That's the problem," she said. "I don't want to go. Not now."