The Knighton Vampires
Author: Guy N. Smith
Date: 1992-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: John Mayo, of the secret Government Department codenamed Operation Werewolf, loses his wife of only a few years, and heads away from the memories to recover his wits. He ends up in the Welsh town of Knighton which has recently come to grips with the graffiti and terrorism of Welsh National Activists, as well as a number of mysterious deaths seemingly through vampirism. Mayo believes he sees his dead wife among the vampires, and investigates. As the death toll mounts and the plot complicates, he fights his way to the bottom of the whole affair to find that all the different strands of trouble a
Publisher: Black Hill Books

The Knighton Vampires - Kindle Version 1.01

(c) Guy N Smith 1993 - 2012

Published by Black Hill Books, October 2012

ISBN : 978-1-907846-56-4

First Published by Piatkus Books April 1993.

Converted to Ebook from original paperback by Scan2Ebook.com

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Contents

Title

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

The End

Chapter One

The man in the black fedora alighted from the train almost as an afterthought.

A scattering of onlookers stared at him: the impromptu rising from the seat in the rear carriage of the sprinter, the way he had grabbed his pseudo-leather holdall from the overhead luggage rack and reopened the closed door just as the guard was about to blow his whistle, were the reactions of one who had dozed, almost overshot his intended destination. Or those of a man with a phobia about travelling who sought desperately to escape from his means of transport.

Quizzical eyes watched his every move, squinting against the bright sunlight. There was suspicion in their expressions; the dark denims and outsize headgear presented a sudden threat to this sleepy, rural community where only the conventional was acceptable. Perhaps he was another of those hippies who drifted into town throughout the summer months and spent their days hanging around the clock tower at the top of the town in state-funded idleness, reserving their places on the plinth for the morrow with empty coke or lager cans.

The train began to pull out of the station, faces smudged against the windows for one last look at their former travelling companion who had slept beneath his outrageous hat for the most part of the journey. Good riddance to him, even if he had been the object of bored speculation for the last twenty miles. Now they could sleep or read in peace; the other’s very presence had been a distraction, had made them edgy for no apparent reason. Whoever, whatever, he was, that fellow was up to no good.

People were filing towards the exit by the taxi office: FFORDD ALLAN, and if you weren’t Welsh-speaking then the sign was translated for you – WAY OUT. They were glancing back, shyly, guiltily at the man who lingered on the platform and seemed to be willing them to disperse so that he could be left with his own thoughts, whatever they were. It was almost as though this tiny station was his ultimate destination, a bench upon which to slouch by day and sleep by night; a railroad bum from yesteryear, spending his life hitching from one station to the next.

There was something awe-inspiring about this newcomer that had the others keeping their distance. It wasn’t his travel-stained crumpled clothing, nor his outrageous hat. Whatever he had worn, it would not have made any difference; his audience shivered in spite of the stifling heat. This stranger might be a mortician in search of a corpse. Any corpse.

Theirs.

His head lifted and his eyes met theirs, chips of pale blue ice that even the hot sun failed to melt. Relaxed yet poised, his expression challenging, defying their curiosity, his pallid features seemingly skeletal at a distance. A living cadaver, one who had risen from his grave and come here forthwith, a man with a purpose that was too terrible even to contemplate so that you refrained from asking.

Somebody swallowed noisily, a gurgle that was audible in the stillness of the afternoon, now that the train was gone and forgotten. Feet shuffled awkwardly, kicking up dust clouds that drifted across the railway line. A throat cleared, an unintelligible vocal noise that might have been a strangled apology. Still watching, backing off in case he came this way. Sorry, fellow, we don’t mean you any harm, we’re not really interested in you.

Now they saw him more clearly, the fedora pulled low over his forehead as if to hide his features in its shadow; high cheekbones that gave the impression of stretching his skin, piercing eyes that missed nothing. Suddenly it was he who was studying them.

He was maybe five foot nine inches, certainly no more than five ten, his body lithe, sombre in the black Levis and matching shirt. His age was indeterminable, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, he might even have been touching forty. It was impossible to be sure. And there was something else about him … a youth in a grubby red T-shirt moved back yet another pace. Something … frightening.

And for no reason that was logical.

Then, suddenly, those shoulders hunched, the head bowed. That figure, which only seconds earlier had been awesome to behold, was now dejected. Pitiful. A sadness, an unmistakeable grief hit him with the force of a physical blow and left its mark indelibly on him. His eyes glistened with a wetness until the shadow of his hat hid them from view. The bag dropped to the full extent of its shoulder strap, thumped to the ground. A statue that had tilted in an earth tremor was in danger of toppling, fighting to regain its balance.

Maybe the stranger was ill and he had left the train in search of help. But none went to his aid: they watched, willed him to collapse because he was alien to their way of life, one who had come here uninvited.

Go away!.

It was as though he was fighting an inner battle, drawing on all his resources. The stooped frame straightened, the head uplifted again, staring fixedly at the platform sign, struggling to read it. A wanderer in the wilderness attempting to identify his surroundings:

KNIGHTON
TREF-Y-CLAWDD

Those thin lips pursed, he might have been miming the name, attempting to pronounce the Welsh. The film rolled back from his eyes and he nodded to himself as if satisfied with what he read, a man awaking from a coma and finally coming to terms with the world around him.

John Mayo, the man in the black fedora, became aware of his surroundings, knew now that he had stepped off the train at a small Welsh border town. He accepted that he had no reason for being here. Did he need one? Only the grief which ate into him like a fast-growing cancer and threatened to destroy him in the very place to which it had transported him. His shoulders straightened and he began to fight it.

Finally, it seemed like an eternity, he dragged his unwilling feet in the wake of those who had mocked him with their insensitive curiosity, watched them flee before him, quickening their pace to get away from this nemesis which the train had brought here. His dry eyes burned in their sockets, tears that refused to come, and his stomach cramped with a pain that would not ease. For bereavement is a physical as well as a mental condition.

Somehow John Mayo made it up the steep steps and stood on the bridge surveying the town which nestled beneath thickly wooded hillsides, cottages and houses built of traditional Welsh grey stone with slate roofs. The march of progress was steadily and methodically infiltrating even here: an expanding grain mill, a tyre depot with vehicles parked on the forecourt outside, a builder’s yard and tractor garage behind him. A heavy lorry with a bright yellow cab thundered past, clanked on the bend, gave out a harsh rush of air brakes as it turned left. Following behind it was a red postal delivery van, an orange VW caravanette loaded with tourists, a dozen or more cars. All impatient, hurrying somewhere. For one moment this peaceful township might have been anywhere, had momentarily lost its character and individuality. Then the sudden rush of traffic thinned and was gone. The tranquillity filtered back and it was Knighton again.

Even here there was no escape from grief; wherever you ran it followed you. Mayo accepted that, no longer tried to fight it. You had to ride it out, come to terms with it. That was why he was here.

Compassionate leave, the Department called it. They made out that they felt sorry for you but, in reality, it was a way of saying that you were no good to them until you had got it out of your system – not forgotten it, you never forgot it. You learned to live with it, conditioned yourself to an existence without somebody who had meant the most to you in a cruel world. Where once you had loved the living, you now had to learn to love the dead.

This time Sergeant John Mayo almost made it to crying. Maybe anywhere else except out here in the street he would have surrendered to his sorrow. But he held on and the feeling receded. Perhaps tonight, in the loneliness of a B & B bedroom, he would let go.

It was impossible not to think of Penny. In time, perhaps, he would be able to do so without the overriding sense of loss, remember her as she once was, petite and dark-haired, lying with him in the springy, sweet-smelling late summer heather, that time they had first met. It was like a far-off dream now, one that you grasped at on waking, fearing lest it would fade from your memory for all time.

At the time she had just been a hippy girl in transit, a traveller on a peace convoy that would move on and take her with it. Which was how it should have been. Except that it did not work out that way. A special agent on the trail of an international assassin had been momentarily sidetracked, against all the rules. The end product had been the death of the assassin and marriage between agent and hippy. Two years of bliss and then tragedy had struck, cruelly and unfairly singling out the innocent.

Perhaps Mayo could have accepted an accident – he was conditioned to violent death – but a cerebral attack was something he could not come to terms with. He had thought at first that Penny suffered a migraine, had not thought it necessary to call a doctor. Until it was too late. Just like that.

That Sunday morning she was her usual cheerful self; they had made love, risen late. Two hours later she went back to bed with a blinding headache. When he went up to check on her later she was dead.

He had not even been granted the opportunity to kiss her goodbye.

His train of thought led back to the Department. It always did, because he was dedicated.

Operation Werewolf was set up in 1988, allied to Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist force, a unit comprising highly trained officers under the direct control of Chief Superintendent ‘Charlie’ Wells. It is unique in that it enjoys a freelance role, liaising with Interpol and other continental police forces, concentrating entirely upon the apprehension of known terrorists. It has an advantage over other similar units in that it is not inhibited by boundaries, its agents frequently travelling abroad without restriction. Since its formation it has built up an impressive tally of arrests, compiled a hall of infamy surpassed by none. But many of its successes remain unknown to the public. The priority is to save lives and if, in achieving this, an anarchist disappears from the scene of international intrigue without trace, then no questions are asked. John Mayo was proud to be part of the set-up.

‘Charlie’ Wells had his office in MI5 headquarters. Physically, like most of his hand-picked force, he had few distinguishing features. One could pass a dozen ‘Charlies’ in the street during one’s lunch hour and afterwards fail to remember any one of them. A well-dressed clerk, a senior civil servant, Charlie had long ago mastered the technique of becoming part of the busy commuter background. He rarely ventured beyond the boundaries of inner London, wove his web from his office whilst his task force enmeshed the flies. He was non-political, kept abreast of national and international affairs simply because they attracted fanatics. Only the implications of world events aroused his interest.

He was humourless, impartial, a shadow on the wall of his office, but secretly the men he commanded feared him. With the possible exception of John Mayo. It was rumoured that even the Commissioner himself pandered to Charlie’s whims, backed those unerring hunches of his, such was the power that the man wielded. Screw up an assignment and you didn’t get another chance. Success was the accepted order of the day, earned the faintest of satisfied nods from the Chief, whereas in other departments of the Force you were commended, maybe even received a medal. Operation Werewolf awarded no medals.

You accepted that you were expendable, that the job was bigger than you. If you died in the course of duty then it was covered up with explanations that nobody queried; you were expected to forfeit your life if the need arose, accepted that the ignominy of ‘accidental death’ might be attributed to heroism beyond the call of duty. Your duty to the Department had no limits.

Mayo liked to think that because he had met Penny during the course of an international assignment then she had become an unofficial part of the Department. At least, secretly he allowed himself to savour that delusion, and it was the greatest tribute to his departed loved one that Charlie Wells accepted the need for his top man to ‘drop out’ for a spell. Of course, an agent under emotional stress was of no use to the service; in this instance Mayo tried not to reason logically. Suffice that it was the highest compliment that Charlie could pay him.

‘Take a break, John, head anywhere that takes your fancy, just keep going until you find some place to hole up in and stay there until you feel better,’ Charlie Wells spoke softly, expressionlessly, you had to listen hard to catch his words; even when he was displeased he never raised his voice. He didn’t need to. ‘Just give us a bell when you’re coming back.’

Mayo had left London that same night, took the first InterCity out of Euston that was ready to leave, scarcely noting its destination. He felt bad; maybe running out, even temporarily, wasn’t the answer.

All he carried was that holdall bag containing his basic luggage. He often quipped that you could travel the world with just a change of underwear and a gun. Maybe, thinking about it, he shouldn’t have brought the gun along – he didn’t have an assignment this time. Yes, he did, he contradicted himself, Charlie had sent him on one. Go anywhere, come back when you’re ready. Looking at it like that, he was on official business because Charlie Wells never did anything unofficial. Mayo would have handed in his .38 Smith and Wesson before leaving, except that he had forgotten, but when you worked for the Department you never admitted to forgetting anything. You always came up with an explanation, not an excuse. He brought the .38 in case he might have need of it. That was the explanation he had given to Penny that time on the peace convoy when she had searched his bag and discovered the weapon. If it was good enough for Penny then it was good enough for anybody else who might ask.

As for the fedora … That time in Lichfield it had been the most ridiculous and yet the most successful piece of camouflage he had ever used. Outrageous, nobody could miss it, but they had overlooked it for that very reason. Mayo didn’t need to wear it after that. But he did, and nobody in the Department even commented upon it. The fedora became part of him, nobody could envisage him without it. He had worn it at Penny’s funeral, she would have wanted him to. He had not taken it off since.

And so John Mayo came to Knighton wearing his black fedora and carrying his .38 pistol and a few belongings in a purple sports bag. Something had prompted him to step off the train here, an impromptu decision just when he might have carried on to Swansea or elsewhere. A hunch? A premonition? No, he was just tired of travelling, he decided, as he headed on up the street. Ultimately you had to stop off somewhere and this was as good a place as any. Tref-y-Clawdd – the Town on the Dyke. In a way it reminded Mayo of an Alpine town, and it was right here that he would ‘hole up’ as Charlie had put it. It was a fitting memorial to Penny. And when he had come to terms with her death he would either move on elsewhere or head back to London.

The street was steep, vehicles were parked the whole way down on the one side, and there was traffic confusion, mainly because visiting motorists did not appear to realize that there was room for two cars to pass in spite of the line of stationary vehicles. A queue had built up at both ends, somebody was honking a klaxon.

Mayo moved on up. The imposing clock tower gave the impression of surveying the chaos with disdain; it had doubtless witnessed traffic chaos here for a century or more, even in the days of horse-drawn conveyances. Shoppers bustled on the pavements, a group of hill farmers, clad in their customary brown smocks, were huddled in conversation, impeding other pedestrians, discussing the drought, bemoaning the scorching of their sheep pastures.

Mayo was thirsty; he contemplated going into the cafe opposite the clock for a drink but he saw through the window that it was packed to capacity: a passing cycling club had filled the tables; other customers were queuing for seats. Today the world and his wife had come to Knighton.

He crossed the road, saw the group of hippies seated on the plinth of the clock tower. Unwashed, with ragged filthy clothing, accompanied by a dog of indeterminable species tied to a battered pushchair, they seemed impervious to the wailing of the grubby infant in the broken seat. Swarms of flies troubled both child and animal. An empty drink can bounced on the tarmac, rolled and clinked downhill, was sent spinning by a passing car.

Dirty bastards, Mayo thought. The one, the big fellow, reminded him of Benjamin, the self-styled antichrist who had led that ill-fated convoy from Stonehenge to Lichfield. Mayo’s heart missed a beat; he checked it. Your nerves are bad, they couldn’t be anything else right now. Benjamin had sunk slowly into a deep, dark pool with a .38 slug between his eyes, and when they dragged him out he was scarcely recognizable.[i]

Hippies were hippies; one was much the same as another. Right now he did not want to think about them, it brought back too many painful memories.

He was annoyed with himself for wasting mental energy on those few moments of hatred. The Department taught you not to squander energy, mental or physical. The enemy, whatever species, had to be defeated systematically, efficiently; emotion must not enter into it, it created a distraction, warped your powers of reasoning. Charlie Wells had sent him here to rid himself of his emotions. Only then would Mayo begin to function properly again.

Mayo walked past, began to climb the next hill, a street that narrowed sharply. Further up, concrete bollards had been installed to pedestrianize it. Here it was akin to stepping back in time – half-timbered houses, most of them shops. Some had closed down; a sign of the times, he thought whimsically. Even out here you didn’t escape a recession.

A workman in paint-stained off-white overalls was attempting to erase some aerosol graffiti off a wall. Mayo checked his step, read the sprayed wording: ENGLISH GO HOME.

‘That’s bloody hippies for you,’ the man muttered over the cigarette which bobbed up and down on his lower lip, inclined his head towards the group around the clock tower. ‘Bites the ’and that feeds ’em, adds insult to injury. Stinkin’ bastards! You should just’ve seen the community toilets afore I cleaned ’em this morning. Worse’n bloody animals, they oughta round ’em up, put’em in a compound, chuck ’em their food. There’s about five hundred campin’ out up on the Cantlin Stone.’

Another hurtful reminder for John Mayo. Penny had been on the convoy when it stopped briefly at the Cantlin Stone en route for Lichfield, exactly two years ago. He had been Haggard then, a traveller in a black fedora. He wished he could have stayed that way – with Penny. He muttered his sympathy for the workman, moved on.

‘The Grill’ was empty. Perhaps because it was hot and the tourists down below were too lazy to make it all the way up here. A bell clanged as he pushed open the door and stepped into the welcome cool of the small restaurant.

His trained gaze took in his surroundings, made a mental inventory. Seven empty tables, hand-crafted stained-glass mirrors and clocks; an alcove in the corner by the counter was shared between homemade chutneys and the published work of some local author, a refreshing change from the usual array of cheap souvenirs to be found in most cafes and snack bars.

‘If you’d like to take a seat I’ll come over to you in a minute,’ a female voice called out from the kitchen beyond the counter.

Mayo pulled out a chair, lowered himself into it, habitually sat with his back to the wall. Because it was an assignment, Charlie Wells had sent him here. He could not think of it in any other way. He took off his fedora, placed it beside him on the low windowsill.

‘Tea, please.’ The woman was attractive, he guessed she was in her early fifties. When you worked for Charlie you noted every detail, however insignificant and seemingly unimportant at the time, because you might have to remember it later. He wasn’t hungry. When he was, then he would eat. Your body told you when it required sustenance. Eating unnecessarily was not conducive to super-fitness.

‘I’ve just ordered some hippies out.’ She was eyeing his fedora with mild suspicion. ‘I suppose I’ll get a smashed window or some obscene graffiti on the wall tonight. But you have to stick to your principles whatever.’

‘They’re probably just passing through.’ He tried to make small talk – he’d had enough of hippies right now. ‘A couple of days and there probably won’t be any left in town.’

‘I’d like to think so.’ She moved back towards the counter. ‘I reckon they’re behind this anti-English campaign, playing at being Welsh nationalists and letting the Welsh take the blame. Just an excuse to cause trouble, not that they need one! There was a holiday cottage burned down only a couple of miles from here the other day. It’s worrying, though, when you happen to be English. But,’ and there was no mistaking the defiance in her tone, ‘if we’re going to get burned down then I’m damned if I’m going to serve ’em tea in here and let them make a filthy mess of my toilet!’ she had obviously overcome her initial suspicion of this stranger, decided that he wasn’t a hippy after all. Not that he dressed like one, he was clean and tidy enough, just that he was slightly … odd.

John Mayo nodded. He had learned not to express a personal opinion on controversial matters.

‘Afternoon.’ A man wearing a blue and white striped apron appeared in the kitchen doorway, drying his hands on a towel. Dark-haired, he sported a heavy moustache; Mayo placed him as ex-army, probably catering corps. The husband did the cooking whilst his wife served in the cafe. A convenient set-up with the glassware as a sideline. ‘Lovely day.’

‘Couldn’t be better.’

‘Come far?’

Those pale blue eyes gave nothing away, Mayo was familiar with subtle interrogations. Keep it simple, don’t tell any unnecessary lies, border on the innocuous truth, and you won’t trip yourself up. ‘London.’

‘A bit quieter here than London, you’ll find.’

‘That’s why I’m here.’ The truth again.

‘Of course.’

‘I’ve been admiring your stained glass. Maybe I’ll be interested in that penguin clock before I go home.’

‘Twelve-fifty. I’ve sold three of those already and I’ve got a commission to make two more. I insisted on keeping this one on show. But I can always make an extra one.’

‘I’ll let you know for definite. I don’t suppose you do bed and breakfast, do you?’

‘I’m afraid we don’t.’ The woman paused in her task of wiping down the counter. ‘Not since Mother came to live with us. We had to let her have the accommodation room which is a pity because last summer we were booked up virtually the whole time. You could try either the Red Lion or the George and Dragon. I’d recommend either.’

‘I’ll give them the once over.’

‘There’s loads of places in Knighton doing B & B.’ She came round carrying a small tray with teapot and cup and saucer on it. ‘You’ll easily get fixed up somewhere.’

‘Thanks.’ Mayo poured tea into his cup, added milk. He was only too aware of their curiosity. Everybody was curious about him and he had only himself to blame for that. He should have followed Charlie’s example, blended in with the masses. But he was too individualistic, did his own thing and to hell with everybody else. And he made a good agent in spite of that.

‘I’m Arthur, this is Meg Watson.’ What’s your name, mister, because we’re curious. Like most folks around here.

‘Mayo. John Mayo.’ He almost said ‘Haggard’, that pseudonym that was second nature to him. But he didn’t need an alias this time.

‘This place is up for sale.’ Meg eyed him carefully: everybody was a prospective buyer when you’d had your property on the market for almost a year. ‘We’d like to emigrate. Australia. We’ve got a daughter out there.’

‘I’ll put the word around when I get back to London.’ Mayo was becoming bored.

‘Here’s our card. Just in case. You never know, do you?’

‘This Welsh problem worries me.’ Meg was looking out into the street through the lace curtains. ‘It’s getting worse and nobody English will want to buy property this side of the border and the locals haven’t got the money. Because they’re driving tourism away. There’s a new estate agent set up in town, he’s got a lot of property on his books already but I can’t see him selling any of it, not the way this lot are scaring the English off. Wales will die without tourism. Oh, strewth, here comes Mrs bloody T!’

The bell clanged as the door swung open to reveal an ageing woman negotiating the step, wearing headscarf and topcoat in spite of the heat, her shoulders hunched forward under the weight of two carrier bags loaded with groceries.

‘My, it’s a pull up the hill.’ She shuffled unsteadily inside. ‘Too many people about for my liking and most of them in the bottom cafe. I’ve been telling dozens of people that there’s a proper nourishing meal to be had in here instead of those fancy so-called healthy snacks down the bottom, but they don’t take any notice. You’d think folks’d want a filling meal, wouldn’t you, not titbits on toast and scones and the like.’ The Watsons had gone back through to the kitchen with amazing alacrity. Mayo heard Meg call from afar, ‘I’m just brewing some fresh tea up for you, Mrs Tomlinson.’

‘That’ll be fine.’ The newcomer placed her bags on the windowsill alongside the black fedora. ‘You don’t mind if I join you?’

‘Carry on.’ Mayo groaned inwardly, sensed that his quest for solitude had already failed. But he knew how to shut off when the occasion demanded.

‘Terrible happenings lately.’ Mrs Tomlinson was wheezing after her uphill walk. ‘D’you know, there’s a cottage up on the Knucklas road been burned down. Deliberate, too. The police are up there now, so my brother tells me. But I could tell them who did it. In fact, later on I’m going to telephone Sergeant Davison. But I’m forgetting, you’re a stranger in town, you’ll not know what’s been happening. Words sprayed on buildings, now a fire, and getting worse by the day. Do you know who’s responsible, mister … I’m sorry, I didn’t catch you name?’

‘Mayo,’ he sighed.

‘Do you know who’s responsible, Mister Mason?’

‘Welsh Nationalists?’

‘Poppycock.’

‘The hippies?’

‘Wrong again. They’re dirty and I’ve no time for them, but you can’t help but feel sorry for people who get blamed for something they haven’t done, can you?’

‘No, of course, not. Go on, you tell me who’s responsible for all this.’ John Mayo was about to shut off, that knack of blanking off his hearing, switching his thoughts to other things. But he decided to listen to Mrs Tomlinson’s apportioning of the blame for recent events.

‘You wouldn’t guess unless you lived where I live, on Radnor Drive.’

‘I’m a stranger here.’

‘Pardon me, I was forgetting. Well, I’ll tell you who’s been doing all these terrible things. It’s …’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘It’s … Billy Quick!’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘I’m forgetting again. You’ll have to excuse me, my memory’s not what it used to be. Billy Quick has been in trouble all his life and he’s eighteen next month. The fourth of September, to be precise. I know that because it’s two days after my brother’s birthday.’

‘How do you know it’s Billy Quick who’s spraying the buildings and burned down the cottage?’

‘Because when he was at school he used to write on the wall with blue chalk. Filthy words that a boy of his age shouldn’t have known. And he used blue chalk then. They didn’t have spray paint in those days. Sergeant Davison wouldn’t know that because he wasn’t around here then. But I’m going to tell him. Blue chalk, now it’s blue paint.’

‘I see. And the fire?’

‘Sergeant Davison wouldn’t remember that, either. You couldn’t expect him to, but I remember when Billy was twelve he set fire to Mrs Williams’s garden shed. She lives on the estate, too, and she’ll back me up. Burned it right down – it was gone before the fire engine arrived. All my washing was covered in smuts and I had to wash it all again. Now you see what I mean?’

‘I see.’ Mayo drained his cup, pushed back his chair and reached for his fedora. ‘I have to be going. Nice to have met you, Mrs Tomlinson.’

‘See you again, I hope,’ Arthur Watson appeared with a tea tray. ‘Don’t forget about the penguin clock. And if you hear of anybody looking for a cafe, I’m open to offers.’

Mayo stepped back out into the sunlight, adjusted his fedora. And it was then that a strange but familiar feeling hit him. The warmth was suddenly gone, in its place an icy chill that began at the base of his spine, crept slowly upwards, goose pimpling his flesh all the way. His stomach churned, knotted, his chest tautened. That arctic trickle reached the nape of his neck, spread on up beneath the brim of his fedora and tingled his scalp.

He found himself glancing around, tense and poised, a beast of the jungle that sensed the presence of an enemy. His keen eyes searched the street for danger, his nostrils flared as he tried to scent it. But there was nothing untoward in view, just that throng of hippies by the clock tower, a bunch of tourists looking at wedding photographs in a photographer’s window.

Tranquillity, nothing else. He attempted to relax but his muscles refused. His training with Operation Werewolf had taught him never to ignore a gut feeling, however ridiculous, never to scorn a premonition. In the past such a sensation had saved his life on more than one occasion.

He knew the feeling even though he did not understand it; even though the scene around him was one of normality at the height of the tourist season in a quiet border town. Mayo was not fooled; that sensation of coldness, the tensing and goose pimpling, was an inexplicable sixth sense warning him of lurking danger.

And his nostrils picked up the unmistakable cloying smell of escalating evil. Then it was gone as quickly as it had come, but he knew better than to ignore it. For something was happening in this place of which arson and graffiti were only a small part.

Chapter Two

John Trevino’s only self-indulgence in his successful venture into the property market at the height of the boom in the late 1980s was his holiday cottage in Wales.

At thirty-eight he was shrewd and unscrupulous, had anticipated ‘the crash’ and had capitalized on it. Clients had purchased from him, listened to his advice. Houses, hotels, mostly on the south coast and all in prime locations, might have seemed extortionately priced at the time. But, he explained to prospective buyers, so they had two years ago and just look how their value had increased since then. The ‘peak’ was a long way off, he forecast; another three, maybe four, years, buy now, sell then, or hold on for a worthwhile investment if you could afford to sit out a temporary slump. Either way, you stood to gain.

He was persuasive; the gullible believed him. Confidence, John always said, bred success. It was endemic. Fortunes, life-savings, were invested with Trevino Properties. Within weeks the market had collapsed, properties were worth less than they had been two years earlier.

John had purchased his remote hideaway far from ‘Yuppy-land’ as an insurance against such a happening, and he was well away from London before the investors were baying for his blood. His Chelsea penthouse was only leased accommodation and his rent was already two months in arrears; its purpose had been served.

A change of name; it was not illegal, because he had not broken the law, merely a safeguard. Even in Knighton the residents might be familiar with Trevino Properties, or if they were not they soon would be: the collapse of his enterprise made the front pages of most of the dailies. Terry Bingham, his partner, who was left holding the proverbial can, had no idea where John was. A new name, a new life, maybe one day he would venture into something else. Right now, with that all-too-familiar beard shaved off, he would lie low and enjoy the fruits of his labours. Perry Manders had been visiting his holiday cottage for some time now; the locals were familiar with him even if they did not know much about him. People purchased such retreats frequently, it was fashionable; the natives objected on the grounds that there were no homes available for their children when they married, young couples were deprived of the opportunity to place a foot on the property ladder. But that was the least of John Trevino’s worries; it was a harsh world, survival was the name of the game, you looked after yourself. All the same, he feared for his safety.

Success and wealth are attractive to the opposite sex. A womanizer by nature, John had little else to offer in the way of physical attributes. He was short in stature and his stockiness was already turning to fat, speeded up by his luxurious lifestyle. His dark hair was already thinning, and without his beard his fleshy chin was exposed; an expensive tailor had gone some way towards camouflaging an expanding waistline. Maybe the country life would assist him to lose weight; in theory he fancied the prospect of long walks over the hills – in the autumn and winter, of course, when it was cooler.

His modest four-wheel-drive Suzuki, Barbour coat and green Hunter boots, a cut above the average wellies, gave him the appearance of a country gentleman, he thought. Later, in maybe two or three years, he would purchase a large country house and a Range Rover to go with it. But at the moment neither were conducive to the low profile which he sought.

He had no intention of further property speculation at this point. A good gambler knows when to go home, was one of John’s favourite quips. In any case, Idle Estates appeared to have the monopoly in this part of the world. They had purchased several desirable residences and a few prime business properties in Knighton itself. They were investing at a time when others were cutting their losses and running. They were doing what John Trevino had done for a quick kill, but they were surviving against all odds. Possibly because they had amassed capital at the right time. Within a year they had established themselves as the leading property agents throughout Wales. Glyn Idle had steamrollered his way up from South Wales collecting property on the way. Now he had moved his head office into Knighton itself – a former block of flats was now plush office suites, the focal point of his empire.

John wondered how much further the man could go, surely with all his capital tied up in bricks and mortar, the cash would soon run out. And if he was forced to sell, then it would have to be at a considerable loss. But at the moment there was no sign of this happening. You never could tell, though: these days huge concerns were bankrupted overnight. John Trevino would bask in smug satisfaction if Idle Estates went bust; in the property business the collapse of a rival was always a matter for rejoicing.

But whatever happened, John would leave the property market to Idle Estates. One day, though, he would look up Glyn, make his acquaintance. He was curious to discover what made the man tick.

John Trevino had not gone into hiding alone. He had deliberated whether or not to bring Stephanie along. In some respects she might have been safer ditched in London, except that she knew about the cottage, had been here twice before. In which case, as hell was supposed to have no fury like that of a woman scorned, she would probably have gone blabbing to the papers. So it made sense to involve her, bring her along. And if the investors caught up with John, they would crucify Stephanie as well.

John had plucked Stephanie out of a rut. Tall and blonde, her modelling was confined to second-rate sex magazines. She had not yet made it to the big magazines, only cheap soft porn that paid a pittance for between-the-thighs and boobs shots, and they weren’t particularly interested in much else which she had to offer. A couple of ‘extras’ in TV commercials was the nearest she was ever likely to move towards television or the big screen.

John had casually stated that he might move into film-making in due course, the bait that had secured her. After all, a guy John knew had made a big screen movie from home so why shouldn’t John Trevino do likewise at some stage? He had the money to pay big-name actors; it was simply that the time, the climate, wasn’t right at the moment. Stephanie was desperate, clutched at straws. She overlooked John’s physical appearance; the lure of an affluent lifestyle and the prospect of a role in his film compensated for a lot. Later, perhaps, she might persuade him to lose some weight, but right now that was irrelevant.

All the same, she wasn’t happy being stuck in the middle of nowhere. She missed the night life to which he had introduced her in Chelsea; ‘keeping your head down’, as he termed it, was a downright boring occupation. She was uneasy, too. Whenever she went into town, folks glanced at her. Not just men eyeing her up, but people wondering who she was and what she was doing here. Native suspicion. What are you hiding from? And these Welsh attacks on English-owned property made her uneasy. John, even as Perry Manders, was surely a prime target. She considered running out on him, but that would mean sacrificing a lot. He had money, and money made films. You secured major acting parts through whom you knew, not on the strength of your abilities. If the latter was the case, she was sure she would have made it by now.

‘Relax,’ he snapped one evening when they had been fidgeting in front of a flickering television screen for over an hour.

‘I can’t!’ Stephanie’s fists were clenched so that her fingernails gouged her palms. ‘How can you expect me to relax in a situation like this? There’s been a police car up and down the lane this afternoon.’

‘So what? They’re not interested in us, we’ve not broken the law. The only people who might make life difficult for us are newspaper reporters. I’m glad the cops are around. They’re investigating that cottage fire and the more they’re around the less likely these Welsh bastards are to set fire to another. Bloody anarchists! Look, we just have to …’

‘“Keep our heads down and keep a low profile.” If I hear you say that again I’ll go bloody crazy. Christ, I can’t stand this much longer! And don’t you talk to me about relaxing, John, you’re all screwed up yourself. Don’t try to kid me.’

‘All right, all right.’ He stood up, switched off the television. Tomorrow he’d ask that guy in town to come out and fix the aerial. The only reason he hadn’t done so already was because the fewer folks who came here, the better. Anyway, it might not be the aerial: high pressure distorted television reception, and from what he’d been able to make of the weather forecast this heatwave was continuing for the rest of the week at least. ‘Let’s go and do some filming.’

Stephanie tried to disguise her expression. ‘Filming’ meant setting up that bloody video camera which John hadn’t a clue how to use. His latest toy, it was merely an extension of his sexual fantasies. ‘Let’s make our own blue film, Steph, and then we can turn ourselves on watching it and do it all over again.’

Not for John Trevino the average couple’s fun turn-on with a Polaroid camera – his ambitions transcended such basic photographic erotica. The video camera sessions were worse than those in the soft porn studios, the camera set on automatic whilst John attempted to record his own versions of everything he had gleaned from the Kama Sutra and The Perfumed Garden on celluloid.

‘It’s more than just a bit of fun.’ He even tried to justify his latest obsession. ‘All this will be invaluable experience for when we make the big screen movie. And, in addition, it helps us to rid ourselves of any inhibitions we might have, makes for the perfect love life in later years.’ A hint of a permanent relationship just in case she was having second thoughts about their affair.

‘We won’t be making a sex film for the big screen.’ She uncoiled herself out of the armchair, a move that meant she would go along with his suggestion. She always did, she just wanted to make a point about her ambitions for the future.

‘Oh no, no,’ he assured her, ‘but we can’t really film much else in the cottage at this time of night, can we?’

She sighed. The day had been a catalogue of boredom. A walk up to the top of the big hill, she could not remember its name, besieged by swarms of flies that were as persistent as John Trevino himself, coupled with her fear of stepping on a basking adder in the long grass. Even in the late evening the heat was overpowering. Now she was exhausted and he wanted to make another of those rubbish home videos. It might go on for two hours. On the last occasion they had paused for a ‘break’ and finally finished around 2 a.m.

‘Can we make it a quickie, John?’ Almost a plea.

‘If you like.’ There was disappointment in his tone. ‘Let’s just see how it goes, shall we?’

She tried not to see him undressed. God, he was revolting if you didn’t take everything else into consideration. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed before that he was bow-legged, too. ‘What d’you want me to do, John?’

He explained as he set up the camera. The same as last night, really. Somehow she would have to muster up the strength to fake it again.

She was too tense, anyway. The video camera was like having a third party watching, a lusting voyeuristic friend of her lover’s. At least in the studio it had been matter-of-fact, business; you weren’t expected to get turned on, you were posing purely for money.

A sudden thought, one that had a slight degree of consolation about it. I’m doing it for money now. John’s money. This will cost him dearly – a new outfit the next time we go into a sizeable town. If we ever go out of this hole again.

‘What’s the matter with you, Steph?’ There was annoyance in his tone. ‘You’re not performing.’

‘I told you, I’m exhausted.’

‘All right, we’ll try something less energetic.’

She noticed that he was breathing heavily, the exertion was taking its toll of him. But he never gave up, his determination transcended his stamina.

‘Look, just roll over on your side and …’

‘What’s that?’

He saw her stiffen, her head turned towards the window. The curtain wafted, a summer draught had found a gap in the ill-fitting frame. ‘It’s just the breeze. These old windows …’

‘I heard something, John!’

‘Like I told you,’ he grasped her, his fingers pinched her smooth flesh in his irritation at this diversion, ‘it’s just the breeze. Up here there’s always a breeze, even in the hottest weather.’

‘No, it wasn’t the wind.’ She tried to sit up but his weight was pinning her down. ‘It was like … somebody tapped on the window.’

‘Moths,’ he grunted.

‘Louder than that.’

‘Well, I didn’t hear anything.’ He swung a flabby leg over her.

‘John, please … go and look.’

‘You’re being stupid, Steph.’

‘Please. Just to satisfy me. Then … then I’ll do anything you want.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ He knelt up. ‘Oh, all right, if it’ll please you. Now, just look for yourself when I pull the curtains.’

He padded across the floor, reached up for the curtain. It snagged, he had to tug it sharply, pulled it right back so that the whole of the window was exposed.

And it was then that Stephanie screamed.

The face pressed against the pane was beautiful even though the nose was smudged, flattened on the glass. Long raven hair that accentuated the pallid complexion. Dark eyes that shone hatefully, not a trace of surprise or fear in their expression. A girl, she could not have been more than eighteen, a close-fitting black garment clinging to her shoulders.

Stephanie screamed a second time. John Trevino recoiled, he felt a cry of terror beginning in his throat but it became strangled, came out as a gurgle. Holding on to the curtain for support, he watched transfixed.

The girl outside smiled, and it was then that John felt his senses swim, was on the verge of fainting. Those lips stretched to expose a full set of teeth, twin fangs that protruded over the lower lip, outsize tusks that gleamed whitely, their points tinged with scarlet. The eyes seemed to burn into him, orbs that glinted in the artificial light and seemed to glow redly.

He panicked, snatched at the curtain to close it, to shut out that thing that stared in, but the rotting material tore, came away in his hand, fluttered to the floor. And then that awful apparition was gone, vanished as though it had never been.

‘John … John.’ Stephanie was sobbing, trembling, scrambled off the bed, staggering towards him. ‘John, who … what was it?’

‘Some stupid kid playing games,’ he tried to say, but it did not sound convincing.

‘Oh, John let’s leave now.’ Stephanie clung to him, was on the verge of collapse.

‘All right,’ he agreed, but had no idea where they would go. ‘Let’s get dressed first.’

Hands trembled so that it was almost impossible to pull on garments. Once they fell back on to the bed together, all the time glancing at that uncovered window in case the nocturnal visitor should return. Listening, but there was only silence.

‘We’ll go somewhere in the jeep, come back in the morning.’

‘All right. I …’ She clutched at him again. ‘John, I can smell … smoke!’

Even as she spoke there came a sudden roar, a rushing of flames that might have erupted from hell itself, an inferno that engulfed the hallway and rushed headlong into the bedroom. Tongues of flame that drove the two of them back, reached out for them, touched their clothing, ignited it, blackening and wilting their bodies, overrunning them until they were writhing, screaming fireballs that died in an avalanche of blazing debris.

Chapter Three

Carl Minton played pool in the bar of the George and Dragon most evenings between six and seven. Known to his mates as ‘Copper’ on account of his fiery red hair, his heavily freckled features wore a permanent smile as a testament to his pleasant nature. At twenty-three, his interests were shared between heavy metal, horror novels and his girlfriend, Danielle.

His parents, Frank and Emma, both in their late forties, had bought the pub five years ago, seeing the potential for a restaurant here; their shrewd judgement had proved its worth and trade had virtually doubled. Nevertheless, they had insisted that Carl found a job outside the family business, to begin with anyway.

Carl hated working at the tyre factory; the hours were long, the work was dirty and boring. Every evening he scanned the Situations Vacant column of the Star, in the hope of finding another job. But work was not plentiful in a small rural town.

He potted a red, looked up as the door opened. It was probably Richie on his way to the evening shift at the factory, calling in for a quick pint. Or Mother returning late from her weekly shopping trip to Hereford. Or …

The cue slipped from his grasp, thudded to the floor. Carl stared in amazement at the dark-clad figure framed in the doorway, a sports bag hanging from his shoulder. The other’s eyes roved the room, missed nothing, picked out Carl Minton and held him with a piercing yet friendly stare.

‘Good evening.’ John Mayo let the door close behind him.

Carl nodded, swallowed. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Kaliber, please,’ because Mayo was teetotal: alcohol and working for the Department did not mix. Moderation was dangerous, there was always the odd occasion when you overstepped your self-imposed limit. A second’s slowing of your reactions could cost you your life. If your alcohol consumption was nil, that risk never arose.

Carl made a mess of pouring the non-alcoholic lager, foamed the amber liquid in the glass, had to wait for the head to subside. He was uneasy, his hand was shaking.

‘I’m looking for accommodation,’ Mayo spoke softly. ‘For a few days, maybe a week. This place was recommended to me.’

‘Oh … thanks.’ Carl poured some more from the bottle, had to wait again. ‘Mum isn’t back yet. Dad’s upstairs changing, He won’t be long.’

‘No rush.’ The stranger dropped a pound coin on the bar. ‘Don’t let me interrupt your game.’ Mayo inclined his head towards the vacated pool table.

‘Oh, that’s all right. I was just killing time. We don’t get many in this time of the evening. I usually watch the bar until Dad comes down or one of the bar staff arrive. I don’t work here full time, I work at the tyre factory. Don’t care for it much, thought. I’ll maybe practise my drums then, or read, until it’s time to go round to my girlfriend’s.’ Now why the hell have I told him my life’s story, Carl thought. It was just like the other had asked, you felt compelled to tell him.

‘Heavy metal.’ A statement, not a question. The leather jacket, the studs, categorized the younger man’s taste in music.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he replied, embarrassed for no reason. ‘A couple of my mates and myself are trying to form a band. Danielle, my girlfriend, isn’t keen on the idea, though.’

Mayo nodded in sympathy, his eyes misted for a second. ‘I hope you manage to work something out with her.’

‘Thanks. You come far?’

‘London.’

‘Holidaying?’

‘Yeah, sort of.’

‘The room’s vacant, I don’t have to ask my folks.’ For some inexplicable reason Carl wanted this fellow to stay over. ‘I’ll give it a quick dust over as soon as Dad comes down. If you want a book to read, or a video, I can fix it up.’

‘What’s your line in reading and viewing?’

‘Horror, mostly. Just got a new video film. It’s called “I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle”. Best I’ve seen for years. A spoof. I’d recommend it.’

‘Thanks. If I feel like viewing or reading, I’ll let you know. First, though I need to eat and sleep.’

Mayo felt the door behind him open, smelled the sweetness of a waft of summer breeze. A throat cleared, a spasm of coughing. He heard Carl say ‘Hi, Sid.’

‘A stranger in town, I see.’ The voice was rasping, aged.

‘John Mayo.’ Mayo turned, was surprised how small and old the newcomer was, almost dwarf-like, wrapped in a fawn macintosh that had gone out of fashion thirty years ago. A peaked cap was pulled hard down on his head, sunken features, the toothless mouth pouted, chewing saliva. The eyes, bright and alert, missed nothing, focused on Mayo, regarding him with a hint of suspicion.

‘I seed you up in the cafe a while ago.’ It was almost an accusation. ‘Through the window.’

‘I admire a man who watches what goes on around him,’ Mayo smiled.

‘I’m Sid Knowles.’ A gnarled hand was extended. ‘Town’s oldest inhabitant, still working. Gardening. Still ride my bicycle. I’m ninety-four in November.’

‘Congratulations, Sid. Let me into your secret, will you?’

‘Two bottles of Newcastle Brown every night except Sundays. And these.’ The bent fingers produced a nubbed-out cigarette which the pouted lips grabbed eagerly. The cheeks sucked in as a match flared. ‘Woodbines. These youngsters today can’t take ’em, their fags all have spats on. Spoils the baccy. Never done me no harm. I still do three gardens and my own. Folks call me “the Keeper”.’

Mayo stepped back a pace, dodged the cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘The Keeper, eh?’

‘That’s right. Because I’ve kept the clock in the tower going for fifty years come this September. Wound it, maintained it. Every year I strip and clean it. Only time it’s ever stopped has been when there’s heavy snow, and I’ve had it going again by breakfast. Born and bred here, and proud of it, and they’ll bury me in the churchyard up the road, only I’m not ready to go yet. Too much work to do.’ He cackled with laughter.

‘Mister Mayo’s stopped over a few days.’ Carl glanced towards the stairs, maybe hoping that his father would show up.

‘No better place under the sun,’ the Keeper went on. ‘I’ve bin around – France and Belgium in the Great War, too old for the Second. These hippies, all these demonstrations and the like, they don’t know what life’s about. When I was their age, if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. Simple as that. Now these Welsh loonies are trying to drive out the English. I’m Welsh,’ he added, almost apologetically. ‘But Knighton’s multi-racial. Welsh and English. We mix, no bother. It’s these activators, or whatever you call them, as is stirring it all up. There’s trouble brewing, you mark my words. Never had it so bad as this. There was a cottage burned down again last night. Two people killed.’

‘Killed!’ Mayo stiffened.

‘Aye, the news has only just been released. All we know’d till now was that there was just a fire. Chap by the name of Manders. He was from down London, too.’ Again there was suspicion in those steely eyes. ‘Had a woman livin’ in there with him. Folks reckon they weren’t married, neither. Even if they weren’t, they don’t deserve to die like that. They’d been coming up weekends, on and off, for a year or so. Moved in to stay about a month ago. Kept to theirselves, minded their own business, didn’t bother nobody. Then they got burned in their beds.’

Carl had paled visibly.

‘This business is killing Knighton.’ The old man sucked the froth off his drink noisily. ‘And that new estate agent up the road is buying up the property as fast as folks move out. He’s a fool, he’ll go bust like that other firm that was in the paper last week, ’cause nobody’ll buy the property. There isn’t enough wealth this side o’ the border and if the English are scared to live here then this place’ll die. When that happens, I reckon it’ll be time for me to go as well.’

Mayo was thoughtful. It wasn’t any of his business, he had too many reasons for not getting involved. There had always been Welsh antagonists, always would be. Bombs, too, but generally they never hurt anybody, caused slight structural damage. Protests, really. Graffiti was something you learned to live with. But suddenly it was becoming stark terrorism.

‘I guess the police will find them,’ he said.

‘Well, they ain’t makin’ much of it so far.’ Sid lit another Woodbine. ‘If you ask me, this lot’s too clever for ’em. And we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’

Mayo’s spine began to prickle again, the way it had when he had stepped outside The Grill earlier. Which made him all the more determined to stay clear of whatever was going on here. He thought about the .38 in his bag and was glad that he had brought it along. For self-protection, if need be. No other reason. Penny would not have wanted him to get involved.

The room was comfortable, an aura of homeliness about it that was not to be found in more expensive hotels. Emma Minton seemed surprised that her guest’s only luggage was a holdall bag, but still refused to take any money in advance.

‘Pay me when you’re ready to leave,’ she smiled. ‘Stop as long as you want. And if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.’

Mayo ate a bar meal; his appetite was lacking but he needed food all the same. He glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. He had promised himself an early night, but now that the opportunity was there he did not feel as tired as he had done previously. Which meant that he might have to endure a restless, sleepless night. Maybe he’d go for a walk, familiarize himself with the town by night. Then he would probably sleep soundly.

‘Fancy watching a video?’ Carl Minton appeared suddenly on the landing, an attractive petite girl with brown hair hanging on his arm. ‘This is Danielle, by the way.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she smiled coyly. ‘Don’t you let Carl talk you into watching his videos if you don’t want to. They give me nightmares.’ She laughed nervously.

‘I’ve hired another vampire one from the Gift Shop,’ Carl said. ‘Not a spoof, this one. A sort of Dracula rip-off, if you know what I mean. Gets me wondering though, if there’s anything in these vampires. I mean, it could happen, couldn’t it?’

‘I’ll keep my opinions to myself,’ Mayo laughed. ‘I remember how Father Christmas was spoiled for me by the kids at school.’

Danielle giggled and watched Mayo descending the stairs, adjusting his fedora as he went.

The side streets were narrow and dimly lit, houses that had endured the passing of the years with dignity, renovated but unspoiled, their occupants seeking a lifestyle away from the concentrated stress of city life. Windows were lit, many with curtains unclosed, for here there were no secrets to hide.

Mayo smelled the fish and chip shop before he saw it, an aroma of frying that hung heavy in the balmy night air. From across the road he saw that it was crowded, a youth in a black leather jacket was playing the fruit machine. Close by there was a Chinese takeaway. He increased his pace, felt the need to be away from such mundane establishments, sought the peace and quiet of the half-lit streets.

Way below him was a cluster of houses, a quiet backwater within a backwater, nestling in a valley between the town and the hills. Somewhere an owl was hooting mournfully, its melancholy calls bringing on a feeling of sadness. Maybe it was not such a good idea to seek solitude; during that brief spell in the pub he had felt the need for companionship. He decided on a quick walk, a round trip that would hopefully bring him back to the clock tower, taking in enough fresh air to enable him to sleep. The nights were always the worst.

It was then that that tiny shiver returned to the base of his spine, an icy prickling that had him tensing. He stopped, glanced behind him. The street was empty. His flesh began to goose pimple and he recognized the warning system within his own body trying to alert him to danger. Too often it had been proved right, it would be foolish to try to shrug it off.

Now he was alert, tense, his keen eyes searching the shadows ahead of him. For a moment he regretted leaving the pistol in his bedroom. He thought of turning back but he had never once fled from danger. If there was danger here. Another shiver told him that there was. Ahead or behind? He did not know.

Suddenly a movement some ten yards in front attracted his attention, had him dropping into a half crouch. A patch of dark shadow moved, took on human shape. A silhouette, a slim female outline moving lithely, stepping into the wan circle of light cast by a street lamp.

Small, petite, she was dressed in black from head to foot, some kind of close-fitting tracksuit that rendered her invisible in the darkness. She had short dark hair; her head turned and, in the second when the overhead light shone on it, Mayo was afforded a glimpse of the deathly pallid features.

He almost cried out aloud in surprise and anguish, recoiled from the face that was turned towards him, the eyes that were focused unwaveringly on him. Recognition was instant, hit him with the force of a physical blow, had him staggering back, croaking her name in a voice which he did not recognize as his own.

‘Penny!’

Here in the darkness of a side street, in a town to which he had fled to bury his grief, he had come upon his beloved, the girl whom he had buried in a north London churchyard, tossing a rose down on to her coffin before the grave soil covered her for ever. It was impossible, yet he saw her with his own eyes.

‘Penny … Pen …’ He tried to move forward but his legs threatened to buckle beneath him and throw him to the ground. His outstretched hand touched a stone wall, he tried to steady himself. His senses swam, his vision blurred so that he could no longer see her clearly.

Suddenly she moved, turned so that her face was hidden from him, stepped outside that circle of yellow light and was lost in the darkness. Mayo thought he heard the padding of hurrying feet – it could have been his own rapid heartbeat. With a supreme effort he threw off his weakness, started after her, calling out her name, pleading for her to come back, running, breathless in spite of his fitness, coming to a fork in the narrow road.

Right or left? He didn’t know, stood there trying to listen, but all he heard was the hooting of that owl against the beating of his own heart. It was impossible, it must have been a hallucination brought on by grief. No, the girl was real enough, the only slight doubt in his mind was that it might have been a case of mistaken identity.

No!

It was Penny, he knew her well enough to recognize her anywhere, would never forget her pert features. And his spine was still tingling, his senses had been aware of her presence long before he saw her.

He stood there in the darkness, writhing inwardly with mental agony. If, by some miracle, Penny still lived, then why had she fled from him? Was it possible that she could have been returned to him, that she would remain a spirit of darkness, taunting him like some will-o’-the-wisp? He did not know, it was beyond the ken of mortal man.

He knew it was futile to try to find her. Had she wanted to speak with him then she would not have run away. He shook his head, felt weak and drained as he carried on his way, his eyes searching the shadows on either side although he knew that she would not be there. Perhaps it was some kind of last farewell, her spirit contacting him before it left this earth for higher places.

Shaken, disturbed, he let himself back into the George and Dragon, hoped that Carl would not be looking out for him. The last subject which John Mayo wished to discuss at this moment was that of the undead.

Chapter Four

Sergeant Ken Davison was only a year off retirement. He had spent the last ten years in charge of the Knighton office, had twice turned down promotion: an increase in salary was not worth the additional responsibility, he and his wife had decided. Suddenly, they were not so sure. Rather the hassle of a mountain of paperwork at Llandrindod that the responsibility of having terrorists operating on his patch. He welcomed Detective Inspector Glanville on the scene – at least it was not being left to the bobby on the beat.

God, there wasn’t much left of the cottage, just a fire-blackened, gutted shell, and the bastards responsible for the fire had even left the empty petrol can behind; PC Hughes had discovered it under the hedge down the lane. Sheer bloody arrogance, and they weren’t taking any chances of some country copper putting it down to an accident!

Glanville walked back from the car, his confident posture that of a no-nonsense CID detective, pausing to light a cigarette. In his mid-thirties, his lived-in features wore an expression that was inscrutable even to his close colleagues. He would probably make it to Chief Inspector within the next five years.

‘Well, if we had any doubts about who did this, we don’t have any more.’ He exhaled twin streams of smoke from his nostrils.

‘Welsh Nationalists?’ You stated the obvious, knowing that it would be wrong, took the cue the senior officer gave you so that he could contradict you.

‘No,’ the detective shook his head, ‘Welsh Anarchists.’

‘And who the hell are they?’

‘A splinter group who are much more insidious than our long-established protestors against the English. They murder ruthlessly. See the evidence for yourself.’

‘How do you …’

‘They’ve admitted responsibility – a phone call to the press. We’ve known about them for some weeks now. And in case you should be unfortunate enough to receive a call from them at the station, genuine Welsh Anarchist messages are prefixed with a code word … Vampire. This now, according to the Chief, is Operation Vampire.’

‘A bit corny, isn’t it?’

‘Not if you get burned to a cinder. Or blown up with a bomb. That’s to come, doubtless. This thing is only just beginning, take it from me. They really intend to drive the English back over the border and they won’t pull any punches. There’s a strong possibility that they are being funded by other terrorist organizations who see this as yet another way to further the cause of anarchy. We have to find out who they are, who their Mister Big is. Discover that and we stand a faint chance of eliminating them. You get the gist of it, Sergeant?’

‘This guy Manders, that wasn’t his real name. He’s John Trevino of Trevino Properties, the centre of the scandal that’s been in the papers recently. We’ve known who he was since he bought the cottage but he wasn’t breaking the law. So isn’t there just a chance that somebody who has lost all his life-savings in the Trevino crash has found out where he’s hiding, is responsible for this and is trying to throw the blame on Welsh terrorists?’ Ken Davison thought it sounded feasible, he didn’t really believe it. Put into words, it came out farfetched. He wished that he hadn’t voiced it.

‘No chance. If that was the case, whoever it was wouldn’t have known the code word when they made the call admitting responsibility.’

‘I see.’ The older man felt slightly foolish, inferior. CID officers enjoyed shooting down uniformed theories. You stick to the routine matter, Sergeant, leave the difficult stuff to us.

‘I’ve got a lead to follow up, too,’ Davison said.

‘What’s that?’ The other’s grey eyes narrowed, his tone was sharp. And don’t come up with any more daft ideas.

‘Just a routine enquiry.’ Play him at his own game, show indifference. ‘A local lad, been in trouble all his life, drink is his problem but I think he may have gone on to drugs. One of the women on the estate where he lives thinks that he’s responsible for the anti-English campaign because,’ Davison swallowed, it was starting to sound silly again, ‘he used to write vulgar words on the walls when he was at school in blue chalk. And this current spate of graffiti is all in blue, too. Also, when he was a kid he burned down a neighbour’s garden shed.’

‘Logical thinking.’ Just when you expected to be ridiculed, the CID took you seriously. ‘You’d better check him out. If he’s got pyromaniacal tendencies, then he might just be involved.’

‘He’s not Welsh. Birmingham overspill.’

‘So what? These fanatics will use anybody to further their crazy cause. And you’d better check him for drugs whilst you’re there.’

‘I’ll go up this evening.’ Even if I am supposed to be going off duty for three days. Doubtless all local police leave will be suspended until further notice, Ken thought. And the missus won’t like that – we were supposed to be going up to the Elan Valley tomorrow.

‘I think it’s the police, Billy.’

Ken Davison saw the silhouette of a bulky woman through the frosted, tape-repaired, glass of the council house front door. The garden was a wilderness of sun-scorched weeds; litter had collected in the bottom of the straggling privet hedge. Children played and squealed in the road, a five-year-old was pouring forth a torrent of four-lettered abuse at one of his play-mates.

The police officer sighed. The folks who lived on this council estate did not appreciate how fortunate they were: almost every one of the eighty or so houses looked out on hillsides where sheep grazed and buzzards soared above the woodlands in the background. In the cities there was no greenery on view, just tatty houses identical to your own, tower blocks as far as you could see. Neither hills nor woods, maybe a recreation park a bus ride away. But it made no difference, people were people, wherever they lived, good and bad, and the latter predominated at the lower end of the social scale. It was unfair that respectable residents of such estates were bracketed with the minority of law breakers, regardless of its location. Radnor Drive was no exception: the likes of Billy Quick tainted its reputation.

The warped door was dragged open, scraped on the linoleum, the pane of glass creaked alarmingly but somehow did not fall out.

‘Oh, it’s you, Sergeant!’ Pseudo-surprise, a thinly veiled contempt for the law. Betty Quick was in her fifties, matted greying hair down to her shoulders and a couple of stone overweight. She coughed, sent cigarette ash showering down on to her striped, grubby apron, shuffled her scuffed slippers so that her grimy toenails poked through the ends. ‘Doubtless it’s Billy you want to see?’

‘Please.’ As always.

‘Step inside, please.’

The policeman hesitated momentarily, took a long, deep breath of the sweet smelling evening breeze that wafted down from the hills behind. The Quick household stank: of stale cooking, of dogs and cats that slept on the furniture when they weren’t out scavenging. The BO was the worst, but it was part and parcel of a policeman’s lot.

‘I’ve shouted Billy. He’s up in his room, I don’t know if he heard me. Oh, here he comes now.’

Billy Quick slouched arrogantly down the stairs, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his permanently filthy jeans. Overweight like his mother, a roll of surplus flesh wobbled over his waistband. Small eyes set too close together regarded the visitor with disdain out of a fleshy, unwashed face. A leer showed yellowed, uneven teeth that chewed gum, it’s juices dribbling down his chin. Long fair hair, matted with dirt, completed the familiar picture of self-imposed idleness funded by the taxpayer.

Ken Davison met the stare, confirmed his suspicions. Billy was on drugs, all right. But first things first.

‘You been spraying paint around, Billy?’

‘On my bike.’

Ken had noted the scrap Honda 50 cc propped up against the side of the house in the alley.

‘You take that out on the road, Billy, and I’ll nick you.’

‘I ain’t gonna.’

The paint was red. ‘You got any blue paint?’

‘Na,’

‘I might find it when I search your room.’

Those eyes flickered with momentary unease. ‘I told you “na”. I ain’t got no blue paint, never had any.’

‘All right, I’ll take your word for it. Where were you last night, between, say, eleven and two?’

‘In bed.’

‘That’s right, Sergeant.’ Betty Quick spoke just too hurriedly. ‘I made him have a bath and an early night.’

The former was most certainly a lie, the latter an improbability. ‘You been starting any more bonfires lately?’

‘Any more?’

‘You burnt down Mrs Williams’s shed. I took you to the juvenile court for it. Remember?’

‘Jesus Christ, that was years ago!’

‘You still did it. I’m asking you now, have you lit any more fires lately? You’d better tell me if you have because I’ll find out for sure.’

‘Are you accusing me of firing that cottage?’ Billy gulped, his bravado was a frail façade.

‘Did you?’

‘No, I swear I …’

‘You’re going too far, Sergeant!’ Betty Quick’s features were florid, her smell was suddenly stronger. ‘Watch it, or I’ll …’

‘You’ll what, Betty?’

‘I’ll write to the Chief Constable at Llandod.’

‘You write, if you’ve a mind to. Now, I want to know …’

‘I swear on the Holy Bible it wasn’t me.’ Billy was deathly pale.

‘All right. Any ideas who it might be?’

‘It’s these nutters who are trying to get rid of the English.’

‘Sure it is. You’re English, too. A Brummie. Don’t overlook that fact.’

Mother and son licked their lips nervously. Put that way, nobody was safe.

‘All right, I’ll accept for the moment, Billy, that you haven’t been spraying paint around the town and that you didn’t set fire to Manders’ cottage. But I think you’re on drugs.’

Billy went silent. Ken Davison could hear the youth’s breathing speeding up. Watching him closely, he saw him start to tremble. The blustering was done with, he was scared. Very scared.

‘Well?’

‘I ’ad some give me. Just to try. I d’int like it.’

‘Fetch me what you’ve got left.’

‘I … I ain’t got none left.’

‘Fetch it!’

Billy turned, shambled his way back upstairs. Ken heard a door open, close again. He glanced at Betty but she was looking away. He heard footsteps upstairs, a drawer open and close. The footsteps were returning, dragging on the floor.

‘Thank you, Billy.’

Mother and son watched the uniformed policeman open up the polythene tobacco pouch, sniff the contents. He nodded, tucked it in the pocket of his tunic. Cannabis. A lot of kids had it out here. In all probability Billy had the hard stuff, crack maybe, well hidden somewhere else.

‘I’ll have to make a report. It’ll be up to the Chief whether or not he takes it any further, not me. You sure this is all you got, Billy, and don’t bring the Bible into it again?’

‘I swear on … yeah, I don’t have no more.’

‘Good. I won’t search your room right now. But I want to know where you were last night, and don’t give me any crap about bathing or having an early night ’cause I know that’s bullshit.’

‘I was out. In town.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Better tell ’im the truth, Billy.’ Betty Quick sat down on a straight-backed chair. It creaked ominously, swayed under her weight. ‘I don’t know what you was up to, but I’d like to know as well.’

‘I wasn’t up to nothin’ much.’ Billy looked down at his feet, squeaked his jumble sale trainers on the floor, ‘Met some o’ me mates. We were in the George till ten, or thereabouts.’

‘Which mates, Billy?’

‘Gareth Ingram.’

‘He give you the grass?’

‘Na.’

‘I see.’ Ken Davison nodded, turned towards the front door. ‘Well, you’ll be hearing about this,’ he tapped his tunic pocket meaningfully, ‘in due course. In the meantime …’

‘Sergeant?’

‘Yes?’

‘I …’ Billy averted his gaze, swallowed. ‘I …’

‘Go on.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m mistaken.’

‘I’d like to hear it even if you are.’

‘Well, I got an idea … about who might have fired that cottage.’

Sergeant Davison’s mouth went dry, he felt himself tense, every nerve in his body taut. With an effort he brought himself under control. Bill Quick was a drug addict and a liar, whatever he was about to say was probably a drug-induced fabrication. The imagination of a low mentality stretched to its limits. All the same …

‘Let’s hear it, then.’

‘I reckon that weirdo that came into town the day before yesterday has got something to do with all this.’

‘What weirdo?’

‘The one that’s stayin’ at the George. Bloody queer, he is, Dressed in black with a big cowboy hat. He can’t be right in the head.’

‘I haven’t come across him yet. Tell me more.’

‘Well, me and Gareth was drinkin’ in the bar, must’ve been about half ten. Down the stairs comes this feller, doesn’t look at nobody, goes out into the street. We was just gettin’ ready to leave, anyway, so Gareth says we should follow him. He went up the Narrows, past the chippie, headed on down the Cwm. We ’ad to ’ang back, the guy’s sorta scary and we didn’t want to risk ’im seein’ us. But we lost ’im in the dark, no idea where ’e went. But I’m saying this, ’e’s an oddball, the kinda bloke that’d set a place on fire, if you see what I mean.’

Sergeant Davison nodded, sensed that the other was speaking the truth for once. ‘Thanks, Billy, I’m much obliged to you. If what you say is true, then I’d better find out for myself what this guy is doing in town. In the meantime, keep out of trouble. Take a tip from me, stay clear of Ingram. Got it?’

Billy Quick nodded, was unable to disguise his relief. If only temporarily, he had diverted the attention of the law away from himself.

Chapter Five

At a glance, Gareth Ingram gave the impression of being a cripple, perhaps an unfortunate victim of polio or some other wasting disease. His slim body appeared to be twisted at the waist, and he dragged his left leg as he walked in a peculiar lurching fashion, often using a stick to aid his progress.

The stick was not necessary, his posture was something which he had perfected over the years; it was lucrative in that it earned him a disability allowance in addition to his unemployment benefit. A victim of a teenage road accident, Gareth had, in fact, made a complete recovery from his injuries but had succeeded in fooling everybody, including his doctors. He saw a way in which to capitalize on his ability to feign deformity, and only he realized the full extent of his physical capabilities. He rarely used them.

His angular features bore a perpetual expression of distrust and hatred, accentuated by a harelip. He had also developed the technique of coughing and sneezing in unison, something which had those in close confinement with him keeping their distance for fear of catching some unspeakable contagious disease.

He had served two years in Winson Green Prison for drug offences. That was five years ago. Upon his release he had deserted his Birmingham haunts and headed west. He had stopped off at Knighton, and lived there ever since, because life in a small Welsh township was much easier than in the jungle of a big city.

His only association with the opposite sex had been prostitutes, which was how his relationship with Christine had begun prior to his prison sentence. She had been an additional source of income, had benefited his drug-pushing by finding clients for him as well as herself. So he had agreed to take her with him to Wales. Except that here she became a liability: there was no scope for regular prostitution in Knighton. So their relationship had nose-dived within weeks of the housing authorities finding them a council house on the Fronhir estate.

You had to be more careful pushing drugs in a small town, you were noticed that much more easily. Gareth played a slow and careful game, worked the pubs, sussed out prospective clients – kids mostly, who wanted cannabis for kicks. None of the hard stuff, that was asking for trouble around here. You kept crack for the older clients, kept it well hidden. In an area of high unemployment the majority of the youngsters on the council estates were drawing social security so, in effect, the government was funding their addiction. He was a kind of Robin Hood, Gareth attempted to justify his lifestyle to Christine but she didn’t see it that way. She was getting scared, and a frightened girlfriend was dangerous at any time in this game.

Much to Gareth’s relief, Christine announced one day that she was leaving. That was good news, especially as he had been seeing Libby from up the top end of town for several weeks. So Christine left and Libby moved in; Gareth did not even have to get up out of his bed to assist with the changeover.

He counted his good fortune: he had Libby to wash and cook for him and he still had his reliable, dependable clients. Like Billy Quick whose mother gave him the money for drugs and had just started taking them herself. She would move on to the hard stuff eventually. Life should have been idyllic.

Except that there were things going on in Knighton which Gareth did not understand, things that frightened and worried him. For a start, somebody else was pushing drugs in town on a much bigger scale. And there were girls about after dark, hanging around outside the pubs, hugging the shadows in the side streets and on the council estates. Soliciting, it couldn’t be anything else. He had glimpsed them whilst waiting to meet clients who hadn’t shown up because somebody else was supplying them. It was crazy, impossible, but there could be no other explanation for what was happening. Somebody had stepped in and was running a drugs and prostitution racket where once Gareth had had the comfortable, tiny monopoly.

Then Sergeant Davison called round to see him. The police were bad medicine in any capacity, even when they were just after information about somebody else. Gareth wasn’t concerned in case the police might decide to search for drugs: his cache was well hidden in a waterproof container up in Panpunton Wood. They would not find any evidence in the house.

‘Your girlfriend’s gone, I take it. ’ Davison nodded to where Libby was sunbathing in the weedy garden. ‘The last one, I mean.’

‘No idea where she is.’ Ingram regarded his visitor through slitted eyes. ‘Just up and left. Good riddance.’

‘And so Libby Stewart has moved in with you,’ a statement, not a question.

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’

Davison nodded. He had known Libby since she was a kid. Her family background was responsible for how she had turned out: her father used to beat up her mother, often Libby as well. The mother had left eventually, and then the father had done a stretch for GBH. Libby had been taken into care. Eventually, she returned to Knighton, lived on the dole. Somebody got her pregnant, they never found out who, and she had had an abortion. Embittered, she drifted from one bloke to another, always a real shit; she seemed to thrive on being beaten. A masochist, she’d never change. And she’d have a rough ride with Gareth Ingram, for sure.

‘I’m hoping you can help us.’ Ken Davison looked for a reaction. There wasn’t one.

‘I’ve always co-operated with the law.’

‘That’s debatable. Look, either you’ve gone into drugs in a big way or else somebody else has moved in and taken over.’

‘I’m not pushing these days.’

‘All right, we won’t go into that. Tell me, what’s going on here? We’ve had reports from all over town that girls are hanging around after dark. We might pick one or two up for soliciting except that they don’t seem to have any customers. And Billy Quick’s back on drugs, swears blind you’re not supplying him.’

‘I told you, I’m clean now.’

‘Any ideas who might have fired Manders’ cottage, the others as well?’

‘Your Welsh nutters.’

Davison sighed. This guy was worried, edgy, and it had nothing to do with a uniformed visitor: Ingram was immune to police calls.

‘What do you know about this guy in the black fedora who’s drifted into town?’

‘I’ve seen him around. Why don’t you ask him?’

‘I intend to. Look, it’s in your own interests to help me. If somebody is pushing drugs and prostitution in town then you could find yourself on the receiving end of some very nasty treatment. In Wolverhampton, and that’s only fifty miles from here, they’ve got rival gangs killing each other over hot dog territory, not to mention gangland warfare over drugs and prostitution. Maybe this mafia has decided to widen its scope, and the little man like you will be the first to be put down.’

Ingram was definitely uneasy, Davison decided. These guys scared easier over the prospect of rival gangs than they did over police investigations. You came out of prison eventually; you didn’t get out of your grave.

‘I’ll keep an ear to the ground,’ Gareth Ingram muttered, glancing towards the open door, wondering if Libby had overheard. She appeared to be asleep in the sun.

‘All right.’ The policeman moved towards the door. ‘Remember what I said, you’ll be the first to get the chop. We just have to pick up the bodies. And we’ve already had two this week.’

‘What do the cops want?’ Libby appeared in the doorway as soon as he had gone. There was no mistaking the alarm on her worn but attractive features. She wore a bikini, and her skin was beginning to redden.

‘Nothin’,’

‘You’re not in trouble, are you, Gareth?’ An accusation.

‘I told you, I keep my nose clean these days.’

‘You’re going out nights, though, just like you did when you were seeing me. You ain’t got another woman, ’ave you?’

‘Jesus!’ He whirled on her. ‘You’ve been here a week and you’re trying to keep tabs on me. I go out at night ’cause … it’s business.’

‘So you are pushing?’

‘I got a few regulars. We can’t live just on the social. Me, I keep it small and discreet. Now, shut yer gob woman!’

She paled, turned back to her rumpled towel, but he saw that she was trembling visibly as she stretched herself out, turned so that she was facing away from him. It was a bad move to let her live here; he should have kept the length of the town between them. That way it was fine.

Gareth Ingram had waited in vain for the youth who called himself Tosca to turn up. He had sensed from the moment he left Fronhir that the other wouldn’t show – a gut feeling that was both disconcerting and frightening. In his pocket nestled a small envelope containing cannabis; the kids round here could only afford small quantities at a time. And if there was no sign of Tosca then Gareth would have to dispose of it some way; he wasn’t going back up to Panpunton at this time of night. He shuddered at the prospect, he had never liked the dark. It would be too dangerous to take it home after the latest police visit. Davison might decide to search the council house in spite of his assurance that he was more concerned about what was happening round here.

Gareth thought about hiding it somewhere; there were stone walls round the Cwm with crannies. He’d wait another ten minutes, come to a decision then.

His thoughts returned to Libby. The cow was really intent on getting her talons into him. She was too bloody possessive by far. She’d have to be taught a lesson before long. But she was a different kettle of fish to Christine, and that was worrying. Chrissie had walked right out of his life, she wouldn’t be back. Libby would cling, and she was the vengeful sort who would shop him out of spite. Too late, he had seen her for what she was. Getting rid of her might pose quite a problem. But, in the meantime, he wasn’t going to have his movements restricted; he slept late, mooched the town by night. The hours of darkness were working time.

Well, he was wasting his time hanging around here. Tosca had got his supply where everybody else was getting theirs. Gareth’s business had virtually come to a full stop. Maybe he should co-operate with the police, find out who was behind all this, drop them in it. A police informant was always given anonymity and the information treated in the strictest confidence. It shouldn’t be too hard to get to the bottom of this. And there was another angle to be considered – the pushers might like to take him on. That would be a compromise that would let everybody off the hook …

Bloody hell! He started, recoiled a pace and nearly lost his balance. A patch of shadow beyond the street lamp had moved, taken on a shape. A slim silhouette with stark white features; at a glance the face appeared to be floating in the darkness, a spoof rigged up by some practical joker to scare the shit out of an unwary passer-by.

‘Hello.’ Soft, husky tones, in the blackness the pallid face smiled seductively.

‘Oh … hi!’ Gareth recovered his posture, leaned against a stone wall for support. ‘Do you have to scare people like that?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’ she laughed huskily, ‘but I do have to be a bit discreet, I’m sure you understand.’

‘Oh … yeah.’ He felt his breathing quicken. ‘It’s just that I wasn’t expecting …’

‘The unexpected is always the most exciting.’ She seemed to glide rather than walk, was now standing within a yard of him, careful to keep out of the lamplight. ‘Maybe you were looking for somebody like me, eh?’

It was certainly an erotic thought. Gareth licked his dry lips, his brain was spinning. Doubtless this girl was one of the hookers working the town, and he was being presented with an opportunity to find out what was going on. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Or, failing that, shop ’em.

‘You’re on the game, eh?’

‘That’s putting it rather crudely. Wouldn’t it be better to say that I’m out to give a lonely man what he most needs? And I’m feeling rather lonely myself tonight.’

‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’

‘Does it really matter?’ She was closer now, he could see her features clearly. So white, so beautiful. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. She had made herself up like this, plastered herself with make-up, turned herself into a cheap tart. She smelled strongly of musk, it made him feel quite heady.

‘No, I guess not.’ He averted his eyes, shuffled his feet. ‘How much?’

‘I’m in the mood, too. I won’t charge you.’

This was bloody crazy, he must be hearing things.

‘I’m in the mood for love.’ Her face was within inches of his own. ‘Kiss me, darling.’

Gareth’s tongue licked his harelip, he was shaking. ‘Where do we go?’

‘Kiss me first, then I’ll tell you.’

Her fingers found his, they were deathly cold, gripping him with an intensity. Her young body was up against his own, her breasts rubbed him provocatively. Her lips were upturned in readiness but it was the expression in those eyes that frightened him – they seemed to burn into him like twin orbs of fire. But he felt her beginning to turn him on. Fast.

Her lips seemed to shimmer scarlet in the glow from the streetlight, blood-red lipstick demanding to be kissed. Gareth swallowed, homed in on them with his own deformed mouth.

Suddenly they were there no longer, seemed to twist away from him at the last second, brushed his chin tantalisingly; the head ducked, weaved, dodged him and left him sucking empty night air. She moved so fast that he could not follow her, felt her head go down, then up. In that same instant he was aware of something cold and hard touching his neck, would have jerked back had she not embraced him suddenly, held him close.

Teeth, jagged and razor-sharp, pierced deep into his neck, bit hard into the tender flesh. He gave a shrill scream, tried to tear himself away, but the bite had closed over the severed flesh – it was impossible to escape.

He felt the sticky warmth of his own blood, panicked as he sought to plug the wound with his fingers, and only then was he aware that this nymph of the night hours no longer held him. His free hand flailed empty air, he staggered, fell headlong because she no longer supported him.

His neck was bleeding, spouting arterial blood onto the stone wall; his screams were drowned just as he would surely drown. He tried to rise, fell back, searched the surrounding darkness with frightened eyes, terrified of what he might see. But there was nobody there. This time the shadows remained black and empty, shapeless.

Realization came that he was going to die, bleed to death in the loneliness of a darkened street, his gurgling cries unheard, the night mocking his final minutes, alive with an unspeakable terror. Still trying to stem the jetting blood, he raised his other arm to ward off nameless terrors, until it became too weak and fell to the ground.

Writhing, feet kicking feebly, Gareth Ingram rolled over into the road and lay there. Somewhere beyond the Cwm, perhaps up in Ffrydd Wood, an owl hooted. He gave up trying to plug his wound, resigned himself to his fate.

He thought about Libby, wondered how she would cope. She wouldn’t. Damn the cow, she had been right, he shouldn’t have been abroad at this time of night. If he’d stayed at home, he would have lived. He had played one final hand in an attempt to retrieve his dwindling business. He had lost.

Chapter Six

‘He’ll live,’ Dr Mervyn King snapped irritably and, with no small amount of restraint, refrained from adding ‘worse luck’.

The stocky, ageing GP had, by sheer luck, come upon Gareth Ingram lying in the narrow road in a pool of blood, had slammed on his brakes, slewed the car, and stopped within inches of the unconscious man. No blame could have been apportioned to the doctor had he run over the other, and, doubtless, many parents in the town would have privately congratulated the doctor for protecting their offspring from the clutches of this pedlar of death.

‘A doctor is never off duty’ was King’s motto, one that he repeatedly drummed into his younger partners and reminded his long-suffering wife as an explanation, not an excuse, for the long hours he worked. He had little sympathy for pushers, his concern was for the younger generation and the temptation which Ingram and his kind put before them.

‘And you can damned well pull yourself together!’ He regarded Libby with contempt. ‘I’ve been up all night and I’m not in the mood to let you blub on my shoulder. I am not going to start handing out tranquilizers to the likes of you. Doubtless you know where to get your own. Now, off you go to bed, or anywhere else you’ve a mind.’

Silly bitch. He watched her slouch out of the surgery. She’d been a drain on the NHS for years, would be for the rest of her life. Totally inadequate: an unwanted pregnancy, an abortion, a course at a drug rehabilitation clinic, all paid for by the state and a waste of the taxpayer’s money, perpetual imagined and contrived illnesses that wasted surgery time. Some hypochondriacs he could tolerate. But not Libby Stewart.

Mervyn King had been out visiting a friend that night. The majority of his patients were friends, he regularly combined social and purpose visits, Mrs Wickham had only been out of hospital two days – a hysterectomy. A widow of two years and still grieving for her husband, company for the evening would be instrumental in her recovery. He had stayed later than he intended. Which was fortunate for Gareth Ingram but unfortunate for the townspeople of Knighton.

It had been a near thing. King had treated the bleeding man in the road, called up an ambulance on his car phone; a dash to Hereford casualty unit, an emergency operation and a blood transfusion. It was your duty to save lives, no matter whose. Damn it!

It was the nature of the wound which puzzled, and worried, Dr King. There was no disputing that it was a bite, a deep and vicious one. The teeth marks were clearly imprinted in the soft flesh. And, he had to admit that they were … human.

He returned to Knighton shortly before eight, took his place alongside his partners for morning surgery. Dr Jones had suggested that they could manage without him, and then wished that he had kept his well-meant remark to himself. The ‘boss’ would only slow his pace when retirement was forced upon him.

The police arrived just as King had finished with his last patient, the usually inscrutable Detective Inspector Ian Glanville looking, for once, slightly perplexed.

‘Well, Doctor,’ even the brusque detective showed respect for this man who had become a legend in the district, ‘What do you make of this business?’

‘Dracula Has Risen From the Grave,’ Mervyn King answered dryly, scribbling something on his jotter. ‘Ever seen the film? I did once, trying to keep awake whilst I was waiting for a call from a young husband who wasn’t sure if his wife was going into labour or not.’

‘The mark of the vampire, eh?’ Glanville shook his head. ‘And the victim almost died from loss of blood. Except that it wasn’t drunk, it seeped into the road. Could anybody bite that hard and deep?’

‘If their teeth were strong enough.’

‘Which they apparently were.’

‘Did you manage to interrogate Ingram?’

‘Yes.’ A long pause. ‘That is exactly what he said it was. A vampire. Female. Aged late teens, maybe early twenties. Dressed in black, face stark white. No other details except that she propositioned him. He had cannabis on him, by the way. We shall be making charges.’

‘There had to be some good news somewhere. Have you talked to his girl?’

‘Sure. She doesn’t know anything. Just moved in with him. I don’t think she knew what she was taking on.’

‘She doesn’t know much about anything. Thick and gullible.’

‘What do you make of this business, Doctor?’

‘I’m going to write out prescriptions for garlic.’

Glanville sighed to himself. The old boy had a sense of humour, you just had to learn to live with it.

‘Seriously?’

‘There’s a marked increase in drug addiction in the town. Recently. We’re the last in line: it’s come right up from south Wales into mid-Wales. Systematic, if you ask me. Now it’s the hard stuff. Crack.’

He’s shrewd, the detective thought, would have made a good copper. ‘We’re working on it. I don’t think, though, that we’re going to learn much from our friend Ingram. He’s just a small-time crook working on his own. Getting his nose pushed out, by the look of it. But it’s this vampire business that’s thrown me. A knife would have been easier, why go to the trouble? Is there a link between the arson attacks, drugs and vampires?’

‘You’re the copper, I’m just a doctor not far short of retiring. Anyway, I’ll watch the patients carefully. If I suspect anything, I’ll be in touch.’

‘Thanks.’ Glanville stood up. ‘Likewise, I’ll keep you informed. Take a tip from me, Doctor, get yourself some sleep.’

‘I’m just about to start the daily home visits.’ King was scribbling on his pad again. ‘After coffee, of course.’

‘Vampires,’ the Keeper announced to the crowded lounge bar in the George and Dragon. ‘There’s vampires on the loose in Knighton.’

A week ago raucous laughter would have greeted his words; tonight the background chatter stuttered into an uneasy silence. Heads were turned in his direction, one of the barmaids dropped a wineglass, it shattered and tinkled on the floor.

‘Well, Ingram had his neck bit, lost most of his blood so that they had to give him a transfusion.’ Sid Knowles raised his voice, encouraged by the silence he had caused. ‘Now, thinkin’ back, there was a story my old grandad once told me, don’t remember much about it ’cause I was only six or seven at the time, but there was this young girl up Knucklas way used to get bites on her neck. She went all anaemic so they used to give her bull’s blood to drink. Hung garlic up in her room every night. She died and folks used to put garlic on her grave instead of flowers. That’s what Grandad said, anyway. This business just brought it to mind.’

Customers shifted uneasily, the conversation had dried up. The door opened suddenly, somebody started.

‘Evening!’ It was Carl Minton, Danielle clinging to his arm.

‘Any vampires out there, Carl?’ somebody called out. There was a titter of false laughter.

‘Wish there was.’ Carl threaded his way to the bar. ‘I’d like to catch a glimpse of one. Just a glimpse,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ Danielle whispered. ‘Please don’t say things like that, Carl. You scare me.’

‘Sorry, I was only joking.’

‘Don’t you be too late taking Danielle home tonight.’ Emma Minton spoke from the restaurant doorway. ‘And mind you come straight home, I don’t want you out late.’

‘Is Mister Mayo in?’ Carl asked.

‘I think he went out earlier. Why?’

‘I just asked; no reason except I’ve got a video to lend him.’

‘Well, you can see him tomorrow. Now, you mind what I said. Personally, I don’t believe in vampires,’ she spoke unconvincingly, ‘but there’s things going on round here that I don’t like.’

For once Frank Minton did not have to call ‘last orders, please’. By ten minutes to eleven the bar and lounge were empty. It appeared that everybody wanted an early night tonight.

Mayo had sat in the window of his room overlooking the street, watching the deep dusk blend into darkness. The town was unusually quiet tonight, there were only two or three parked vehicles in sight.

He was tense, disturbed. In his mind he saw again that fleeting figure in the darkness, her white face turned towards him. He tried to recall it in detail, but he did not need to for every image that he conjured up was Penny. Yet … different. Distraught, as though she had not expected to see him and had fled at his appearance. In which case she was avoiding a meeting. That was hurtful.

Realistically, it could not have been her. There was no way that she could have risen from her grave. A nagging thought, he recalled some of the events in the Lichfield case a couple of years ago, happenings that were inexplicable. And now there were rumours of vampires in the town: a man had already been savaged, almost died from loss of blood. He told himself that the two incidents were unrelated, that there had to be a perfectly logical explanation for both. He struggled to come up with one and failed.

The sadness, the grief mounted until it was almost too much to cope with. His eyes burned hotly with those unshed tears. He fought against the temptation to go out there again, walk the streets, search for his beloved, subject himself to anguish and disappointment. It would be a futile mission, it wouldn’t do any good.

But he knew he had to go.

It was shortly after dark that he donned his fedora and went downstairs. There were customers drinking in the lounge and bar, heads turned in his direction. The one called “the Keeper” spoke but Mayo did not catch his words, just nodded to him. He felt their eyes following him as he let himself out into the street. They were scared, every one of them, and who could blame them? But I’m only going to look for Penny, I’m not getting involved in whatever is going on out there. It’s none of my business, I’m not well enough.

The clock struck a single chime: ten-fifteen. But time mattered not to the man who had come here to learn how to live again. He stood for a moment, undecided. Then he headed up the street, following the route which he had taken on the previous night. Up the narrow street beyond the clock tower, past The Grill, left along by the Chinese takeaway and the fish and chip shop. The latter was empty. The proprietor stood in the open doorway looking up and down the street, giving the impression that tonight he might be closing early. He stared at Mayo, his expression almost hostile.

Mayo slowed his step – somebody was coming towards him, walking fast. In the light of the streetlamp he saw the other clearly, a tall, muscular man with dark hair brushed forward. A red T-shirt and jeans, his back ramrod straight, a confidence that belied the fear that gripped the town. Their eyes met momentarily, the other watched him keenly, curiously. Then they passed and the stranger went into the chip shop.

It was too much to hope that the girl who looked like Penny would be abroad again. She had run from him because she was scared, maybe a young hooker who did not like the look of a man who walked the dark streets in a black fedora. In which case if she saw Mayo again, she would run. This time he might be lucky enough to catch her. There could be complications – she might scream, call the police. This man chased me, officer.

All right, he would just walk the route again, and return to his accommodation. At least that way he would satisfy his conscience.

Mayo sensed that somebody was following him. Not that prickling of his flesh, the earlier warning, rather the unmistakable feeling that he wasn’t alone in these darkened side streets. He slowed his pace, caught faint footfalls some way behind him. They halted, too. He listened. Just the hooting of an owl beyond the Cwm. He might have been mistaken; he knew that he wasn’t.

The old alertness returned, the excitement of a game he had played many times in the past, when an error of judgement could cost you your life. He recalled the attack, it was somewhere down here, a man bleeding to death with a deep bite in his neck. A couple burned to death in their cottage. Life was suddenly cheap in this quiet border town and he thrilled to the sense of danger.

He moved forward, treading on the balls of his feet, lithe and stooping, ready to precipitate his powerful body into instant action if the need arose. Listening, searching the shadows ahead of him, skirting the street lamps, a hunter who has suddenly become the hunted.

He glanced behind him but there was only darkness in between the street lighting, which could have hidden a dozen pursuers. Should he wait or carry on? Maybe it was the girl. Penny? His mouth went dry, he pushed the thought from his mind, an emotional distraction that could put him at a disadvantage. Whoever followed him knew that he was aware of their presence, realized that he had paused to listen. Both of them were playing the game now. Mayo’s body tingled in anticipation.

It was none of his business. It might be that fellow he had passed a few minutes earlier, his curiosity aroused, following to see what the man in the black fedora was up to. The occupants of this town were frightened; they would suspect any stranger. That guy back there was the type who might have the guts to go looking for trouble.

A narrow, darkened open gateway beckoned. Mayo saw the wall, the privet hedge. It was the ideal place in which to watch and wait, one in which he could not be approached from behind. If whoever followed him came this way, then the other would pass within a couple of yards of Mayo’s intended hiding place. Mayo could see without being seen, let his pursuer pass unhindered and then creep away unnoticed. A couple of steps and he was crouching beneath the overhanging hedge. Waiting again.

It seemed a long time before he sensed, rather than heard, the other move. Only one trained in the art of tracking by stealth would have been aware that there was somebody else in close proximity. A wafting of the still summer night air, the barely audible scraping of a sneaker sole as the pursuer tested the ground ahead of him for anything that might crack or crunch and give away his position. Stopping, listening; moving on again.

Even when the stalker was close Mayo was unable to see him, a man who knew how to take advantage of every scrap of shadow, avoided the radius of light from the streetlamp opposite. Then a shape was discernible. Relief or disappointment because it was not female? Mayo let his pent-up breath out slowly, silently, was aware of the faintest speeding-up of his pulse. The fedora was pulled low; it had an advantage over lesser items of headgear in that it increased night shadows, hid the paleness of the face beneath its brim.

Mayo knew not to stare hard at the object of his scrutiny because it created telepathic awareness, triggered off that inexplicable warning system which the textbooks did not cater for.

He looked, saw in those few brief seconds that it took for his follower to cross the patch of unavoidable artificial light, everything that he needed to see, and then looked away. Features were indelibly imprinted upon his photographic memory, retained as effectively as if they had been snapshots in the Department’s archives of wanted terrorists: young, clean-shaven, approximately 5 ft 9 in, wearing a dark shirt and trousers to match, short curly hair. Mayo logged the details, they meant nothing to him but he would file them for future reference. But he knew without any doubt that his man was shadowing him, that it was no late-night stroller who happened to be following the same route.

Just once the other looked towards the gateway where Mayo crouched, scanned the shadows, but did not investigate them. It bespoke inexperience: his pursuer had no reason to suppose that he had been detected, that the man he tracked had taken evasive action.

John Mayo let him go, watched as the man in the road increased his pace at the expense of stealth, presuming that his quarry had hurried on and that if he did not catch up with him quickly then he would lose him. A silhouette that faded from light into darkness, and then was gone as surely as if he had never been.

The man in the black fedora straightened up, stepped back out into the road. He listened, made sure that the other was not returning, and that he did not have a colleague following on behind him. There was only silence, until the distant owl hooted again as though it gave an all-clear.

Mayo decided to abandon his exploration of the side streets. He had no quarrel with whoever had shadowed him. His only purpose had been to search for what was surely a figment of a bereaved mind: a girl whom he would, in all probability, never see again, an illusion that was better forgotten. Far rather would he remember Penny as she had once been, vivacious and loving. She had no place in this township of escalating evil.

Later, in the solitude of his bedroom, John Mayo managed to cry.

Chapter Seven

‘He’s not coming back here, I can promise you that!’

Frank Minton drew back at the top of the kitchen steps, doubted the wisdom of entering and encountering his wife’s wrath. When Emma was in a fury, which was an infrequent occasion, you ducked for cover. It was like the sign over the lounge doorway ‘Duck or Grouse’.

An attractive fair-haired girl in her mid-thirties was cleaning the cooker as if it was the most important task she had ever undertaken, probably wishing that she had elected to dust the bedrooms first. Carl stood sheepishly in the far corner trying to hide behind a mug of steaming tea.

‘And I don’t want you having any more to do with him, either, Carl.’ Emma’s attention switched to her son. ‘Lending him vampire videos, indeed! You can take it from me, and the rest of the folks in this town, your Mister Flaming Mayo is the vampire!’

‘We don’t know that for sure.’ Frank’s half-hearted intervention was met with a steely glare. He edged back a pace into the corridor.

‘Don’t we?’ Emma stabbed a finger at him. ‘Then why did the sergeant bring the two young coppers with him to take him away? Answer me that. And that plain-clothes detective fellow was outside in the car, too. I tell you, I’m not having that man through these doors again!’

‘Seems you won’t have to if what you say is true.’ Frank attempted a weak smile. ‘But we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?’

‘They won’t tell you anything, they never do.’ His wife turned back to her chopping board, directed her anger at a carrot. ‘Not until the trial, anyway. This will ruin our trade.’

‘Or make it. We ought to have a plaque put up in the bar – “The Knighton Vampire Stayed Here”.’

‘It’s nothing to joke about. Just let’s see how many we get in tonight. You’d better go and finish getting the bar ready, Frank, it’s twenty to twelve already.’

Carl exchanged glances with the kitchen help. This had the makings of one of those never-to-be-forgotten days.

Mayo recognized the younger of the two constables immediately as the man who had followed him last night, the hunter whose prey had slipped him – which explained a lot. Except about Penny.

‘We’d be obliged if you would come down to the station with us, Mister Mayo.’ Sergeant Davison stood in the bedroom doorway, flanked by his constables, Mike Hughes and Phil Morris. ‘There’s a few questions we’d like to ask you.’

‘Sure.’ Mayo, showing neither surprise nor concern, picked up his fedora off the bed, ‘I’ll be right with you.’

‘We’ve a car outside.’

Mayo was glad that they hadn’t made fools of themselves and arrested him. He could have shown them his ID card then, but perhaps it was better to wait. There were a few questions he was wanting to ask, too. Far better to exchange confidentialities in the privacy of the police station.

‘Oh, I see.’ Detective Inspector Glanville almost showed surprise as he accepted the white plastic card handed to him by the man who sat casually in the interview room. Almost, but not quite. He noted that the other was only a sergeant, but that counted for nothing; where MI5 and its subsidiaries were concerned, you showed respect regardless of rank. The uniformed men peered over their superior’s shoulder, saw but did not fully comprehend. This guy was some kind of undercover cop.

The detective handed back the card, watched Mayo return it to the pocket of his denim shirt. He asked, ‘Official?’

‘No. On leave.’

‘I see.’

Mayo met PC Hughes’s questioning, embarrassed stare. Don’t worry, son, I’m not going to drop you in it. At least a spot of plain-clothes work shows initiative, even if you did make a balls-up of it. You’ll learn.

‘We’ve got a rich mixture here.’ Glanville lowered himself into a chair. ‘A drug and prostitution racket, anarchists, and what seems to be a vampire attack. Not that I believe in vampires,’ he added hastily, ‘but I can’t dispute the evidence. What do you know, Sergeant Mayo?’

‘Not as much as you, only what I’ve heard. It seems I came to the wrong town for a rest.’

‘We could use you.’

‘Sorry, it would have to have official sanction and you wouldn’t get it. I’m on compassionate leave.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘My wife, I’m still inclined to think of her as my girlfriend, that’s how short a time we’ve been together. She died suddenly …’ His voice trailed off, he stared down at the table. ‘I’m supposed to be resting, maybe I should move on.’

‘That’s up to you. I’m sure you’ll appreciate that we had our suspicions about you. A stranger comes to town on the same night that a couple are burned to death in their cottage, then there’s all the hallmarks of a traditional vampire attack. The guy lived, his story supports that theory, crazy as it is. ‘There’s always been Welsh antagonism towards the English, even the occasional bomb that causes structural damage. Suddenly, though, it’s vicious terrorism. I’m afraid that unless we get to the bottom of this very soon then more innocent people are going to die.’

‘I wish you luck.’ Mayo rose to his feet. ‘I’m glad we’ve met. Naturally, if I come across anything I’ll be in touch, but the last thing the Department would wish is for me to get involved.’

‘Thanks.’ Glanville put a cigarette to his lips. ‘I understand. And, again, I’m sorry about your loss. I’ll get the sergeant to run you back to your hotel.’

‘No, please,’ Mayo held up a hand. ‘I was about to go out for a walk, anyway, when you called. I need as much fresh air as I can get.’

He sensed hostile eyes watching his every move as he crossed the road by the supermarket, headed on up towards the clock tower. The rumours were already beginning, he guessed. They’ve let him go, lack of evidence, but it’s him, all right. You can bet on it.

Which was one overriding reason for finding the vampire. Mayo pushed the idea aside, it wasn’t his pigeon. If the Department decided to intervene, then Charlie Wells would assign him to the case. Except that Charlie had no idea where his top man was right now, and Mayo had no intention of informing him of his whereabouts.

Mayo had no reason to stand and run his eye over the properties for sale in the estate agent’s window. He wasn’t in the least interested in buying a house in the country, the most he could cope with was a flat as a base in between assignments. Another week, a fortnight at the most, and he would be back in London.

He was familiar with Idle Estates, had read about them in the newspapers; it was part of the job to keep up with current happenings, however insignificant they seemed at the time. Charlie insisted that all his men read the news or watched it on television. On many occasions some minor snippet had a bearing on terrorist activities.

Idle Estates were in the fastest growing sector of the property market, only kept out of the headlines recently by the Trevino crash. Glyn Idle had started with a small office in Cardiff, had bulldozed his way right up to his new head office here in Knighton. His assets appeared to be limitless, he was handling any property that became vacant.

Idle himself lived in a mansion on the outskirts of town, a controversial property that had somehow been passed by the planning committee although it was totally out of character with its surroundings. Mayo had seen it from a distance, sometime he would take a closer look.

He pushed open the door of the office, found himself standing inside, which he most certainly had not intended to do. It was an impromptu action that his body had effected whilst his mind was otherwise engaged. The girl sitting behind the counter was responsible for his entry, he had no doubt about that. Their eyes had met through the glass front, they had exchanged smiles. It was akin to sitting opposite somebody in a railway carriage: you either ignored each other or else something prompted you to speak. She had prompted him to open the door and come inside.

He guessed she was in her mid-thirties, small and slim, with fair hair. It was her smile he liked most – it was irresistible – which was why he had not stayed out on the street. A nameplate amidst an array of brochures informed him that her name was Gwenda Llanbich. And she was undoubtedly Welsh. He found himself searching for a wedding ring on her finger, saw that she did not wear one. He felt a pang of guilt, mentally apologized to Penny.

‘Can I help you?’

‘No, not really,’ he replied, at which they both laughed.

‘I can sell you a house in any price range, even a flat.’ She knew he wasn’t a prospective buyer, was probably just killing time, needed somebody to talk to.

‘I’ll probably be returning to London in a couple of weeks.’ It was an excuse he didn’t need to make.

‘A holiday home, then?’

‘And get it burned down?’

‘I can see I’m on a loser.’

‘There’s nothing like trying your luck.’

‘Aren’t you the guy who’s booked in at the George?’

He nodded, his pulse went up a gear.

‘I’ve seen you coming out of there a time or two.’ She certainly had a captivating smile. ‘Okay, I’ll concede that I can’t sell you any property. Would you care for a coffee, I’ve just boiled the kettle?’

‘Thanks.’ He leaned up against the counter; she had a nice pair of legs, too. He was only looking, Penny wouldn’t mind that. She would have called it therapy.

‘Touring?’ She poured boiling water into two mugs; Idle Estates even had their logo on the crockery.

‘No,’ he paused, ‘I’m … trying to get myself together again. My wife died. Less than a fortnight ago.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ He sensed that she really was. ‘Sometimes you wonder what life is all about. My husband left me in April. No warning, I never even suspected that he was seeing anybody else. You wonder if it’s worth going on but you stick at it. I’m sorry, my problem is small compared with yours and I’m about over mine.’

They lapsed into an embarrassed silence. Ten minutes ago they didn’t know each other. Now both had poured out the synopsis of their life’s story.

‘My name’s John.’ He remembered that he had not introduced himself. ‘John Mayo. I don’t need to ask yours, even if I can’t pronounce it.’

Mayo told her as much as he was able to about himself. He was a policeman, which was true. You didn’t go into details when you worked for Operation Werewolf.

The guilt feeling hit him again. Okay, he’d chatted a bird up, but it had to stop at that. For now. Out of respect for the dead.

‘I’ll see you again, maybe.’ He left his options open. ‘And thanks for the coffee.’

Out in the street he felt hostile eyes watching him again. As far as Knighton was concerned, he was the vampire. In which case he had done them a favour by putting Gareth Ingram out of action. But they would overlook that because they were scared that any one of them might be next.

He passed the library, wandered into the Heritage Centre. The girl behind the desk raised her head, quickly looked away again. He began to browse through leaflets and posters, which was what tourists were supposed to do.

Maybe he should move on, it would make it easier for everybody, including himself. He wouldn’t though, he knew that. Because now there was something holding him here. And her name was Gwenda Llanbich.

A thought crossed his mind, had the goose pimples tickling the base of his spine again. If there was to be another victim, whether a fire bomb or a vampire attack … No, he couldn’t chance it. First and foremost this was a terrorist job and country coppers weren’t trained to deal with anarchists …

Mayo might have made it official, phoned Charlie Wells. And Charlie might have recalled him, put him on another assignment. Operation Werewolf didn’t act on the advice of an agent on compassionate leave.

And that left only one option open to Mayo. Success or failure, going solo was one sure way to get your ass kicked out of the Department. He checked his watch, calculated how long it was until nightfall. Penny would have wanted him to give it a go, he knew that. Because it was the only way he was going to find peace of mind. And if by some blasphemous freak of nature she had become a vampire, then he owed it to her to put her soul at rest.

Just as he owed it to Gwenda to ensure that she did not become one of them, the undead.

He went outside, sensed the relief of the girl who was minding the centre. And that was when that inexplicable feeling, the warning that came in the form of arctic-cold goose pimples, hit him again.

And he knew that right now there was more evil in Knighton than anybody guessed.

Chapter Eight

The heat haze which had been slowly forming on the hilltops above Knighton since mid-afternoon had thickened, rolled down into the valley. A creeping mist, akin to low cloud, began to envelop the town, blended with the dusk, creating an eeriness that was far more insidious than a winter fog. Threatening.

Billy Quick looked out of the window, shuddered. For once he was tempted to stay at home tonight; even the lure of a pint in the Golden Lion and his obsession with the gaming machines was not an appealing thought. But his craving would drive him out into the foggy darkness – his own and that of his mothers’. They were both out of fixes.

‘You goin’ to go and fetch us some stuff, Billy?’

Betty Quick tipped the contents of her purse out on to the table, two five-pound notes and a jangle of coins.

‘I dunno.’ He fidgeted with the safety pin in his ear.

‘Why don’t you know?’

‘It ain’t safe out there no more.’

‘We’re safe, so long as we buy from them. We don’t have no choice. What ’appened to Gareth ’appened because ’e was sellin’ ’is own. They don’t like that.’

‘That was nothin’ to do with them. It was a vampire got ’im, everybody knows that, and there’s vampires about after dark. You can see ’em, ’idin’ in the shadows, watchin’ you.’

‘You’re imaginin’ things, Billy. Them’s hookers, and don’t you get goin’ with none o’ them, ’cause these days you don’t know what you might catch.’

‘I shan’na, don’t worry.’ He shivered again. ‘But I dunno about goin’ out, not on a night like this.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Her arm went back, had him cowering.

‘All right, all right, I’ll go.’

‘That’s better.’ She pushed the money across the table towards him, swept some crumbs up with it. ‘Now …’ a coarse grin ‘be Quick!’

He forced a laugh at the joke which had worn thin throughout his life. Hurry up, be Quick!

He went outside, dragged the door shut behind him. It was already getting dark and the fog had reduced visibility to less than a hundred yards. It was creepy; he was sure that somebody moved in the shadows down by the estate shop. He resisted the urge to run.

Billy was terrified of his new supplier – a girl, he didn’t know her name, had never seen her before. He was sure that she didn’t live in town or, if she did, then she had only recently moved in. There were a number of unfamiliar girls about these days.

Two nights ago he had gone along to collect his supply from Gareth Ingram; the meeting place was always by the public conveniences on the old Norton car park. There had been nobody there, so Billy had hung around, waited for twenty minutes or so, hugging the shadows. It wouldn’t do to be seen, if the cops spotted him loitering they’d surely ask some questions. Gareth didn’t allow you to call at his house, that was an inflexible rule, the other wasn’t taking any chances. Billy knew that he kept his supplies hidden out somewhere, had even considered shadowing him to find out where, maybe nick some. Just a thought, not a serious one. It was too risky.

Then, suddenly, the girl was there, emerging from the shadows behind him. She might even have been there all along, watching him. He jumped. God, she’d scared the shit out of him!

‘You get your grass from me from now on.’ She was dressed in black, just her face white as if it had been heavily made up. ‘Get it?’

He nodded, trembling. The price had gone up, not a lot but you had to watch your fifty pences when all you had to live on was your social security. The Quicks would have to make cuts in other areas.

The following day he’d heard what had happened to Gareth Ingram, knew only too well that some syndicate had taken over the drug racket in town and how they dealt with anybody who got in their way.

Billy wished that he could kick the habit. The drugs were linked with these vampires, and he knew damned well that they were vampires, not hookers like his mother said. You could tell that girl was one of them, her face was deathly white, her lips frighteningly red. And on a foggy night the prospect of meeting one of them was terrifying.

Which led him to think of Libby, and how she had moved in with Gareth so that she could get cut-price drugs. Nobody would live with a creep like him for any other reason. Billy pursed his lips. Gareth was in hospital, might be for some time; he could even die, so folks said. So in all probability Libby was dossing in her lover’s council house and there was no way that she would go without her grass. He suspected that she might have progressed to hard drugs: neither would she be paying over the odds for it from these new pushers. Which all added up to a very good reason for paying Libby a visit. And there was no way that Billy was scared of her, the dirty little slag.

He thought of going the back way down to the lower estate, but changed his mind: there could be vampires lurking in the side streets. The main street was deserted, the clock tower like a wraith at the top of the hill, its circular white face seeming to watch his progress as he slunk along the pavement. The newsagent’s was still open. He thought about some chewing gum to moisten his dry mouth, was reluctant to linger even for that. The murky night was a myriad of eyes watching him.

He had to pause to get his bearings; rarely did he go on to the Fronhir estate. Vehicles were parked on both sides of the road all the way down, the glimmer of lighted windows faded away into the murk. He could not remember Ingram’s number but he would know the house when he saw it. The fog did not help.

Somewhere a child was screeching. Its mother was yelling at it to stop, four-lettered abuse. A car started up, moved off slowly. Instinctively, Billy stepped back into a patch of shadow, watched its tail lights until they disappeared. He was nervous, he sensed others around, unseen watchers; they might have been spying on him from behind closed curtains or crouching in the gardens. Vampires. We want your blood, Billy Quick. Like we had Gareth Ingram’s.

Ah, this was the house and there was a light showing behind the frayed curtains of the front room. Temporary relief. The sooner he got what he had come for and left, the better. He glanced around. It was as though unseen figures darted back into the cover of the darkness and fog.

He edged his way down the front path, his foot kicking against an empty drinks can, sending it rolling. Its metallic progress grew in volume, ended with a tinny clink as it hit the wall, came to a spinning standstill.

He stopped, looked around. Once again the shadows seemed to dart back, merged with the darkness. You’re cheating on us, Billy. You know what happened to Gareth Ingram!

Billy tapped on the door glass, thought it might fall in but somehow the scotch tape held. The sound echoed in the hallway beyond; two houses further along a dog began to bark.

Come on, Libby, fucking well hurry up!

But nobody came, no stealthy footsteps in the unlit hall, no silhouette against the opaque glass in response to his knocking.

Billy tapped again, this time on the wooden frame, more urgently now. Then he sensed, rather than heard, a movement. The curtains on the window to his right moved, fell back into place.

Somebody was in the hallway, had not put on the light, had slunk along the wall.

‘Who is it?’ A hoarse whisper asked. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Me. Billy Quick.’

‘What d’you want?’

Oh, Jesus Alive! ‘I want to talk to you, Libby.’

A moment’s hesitation and then he heard a bolt being withdrawn with some difficulty. The door edged open a few inches, and features that were vaguely recognizable as Libby’s in the smoky glow from the street lamps peered through the gap.

‘Well?’

‘I want to talk to you. Urgently.’

‘Go on, then, say what you’ve come to say.’

‘I can’t, not out here.’

He heard her sigh. ‘I … I daren’t let you in, Billy.’

‘Why not? You know me.’

‘Gareth wouldn’t like it. He’d half kill me if he found out.’ This was bleedin’ crazy. Christ, I don’t want to bloody screw you. ‘He’s not here. Anyway, what I’ve got to say is in your own interests.’

Another moment’s hesitation. Libby was not one to spurn anything that might benefit her. ‘All right, then, but it’ll have to be quick.’

He squeezed through the gap, tried to push the door shut behind him but the mat was caught up in it.

‘Now, what is it, Billy?’ She was clearly very nervous. ‘I can’t let you stop long.’

‘I need some grass.’ He jangled the loose change in the pocket of his jeans.

‘No!’ Libby recoiled, looked behind her as if there might have been an intruder eavesdropping on the stairway. ‘I … don’t have any grass.’

‘Gareth wouldn’t see you go short,’ Billy sneered, ‘so long as you didn’t let him go short!’

‘You filthy bastard!’ Her arm went back, the slap rang out like a pistol shot. ‘What d’you think I am, a fucking whore!’

‘Bitch!’ He tasted blood as he staggered back. ‘All I want is some grass. I’ll pay you.’

‘Get out!’ There was both anger and fear in her voice ‘Get the hell out of here before it’s too late!’

In the light from the street he saw her face all screwed up, twisted with terror. She was panicking, near hysteria. ‘You know what they did to Gareth because he was selling drugs. Well, they’ll do the same to us both if they find out!’

Billy Quick hung on to the door for support. Somewhere across the estate he heard an owl hooting. ‘All right.’ His lip was bleeding, he had difficulty in tugging the door open. ‘I’ll go, but I won’t forget this!’

‘Please your fucking self, just piss off!’

He backed outside, almost fell over the doormat. He could feel the sticky warmth of blood oozing from his mouth. The door was forced shut with a dull thump, a curtain drawn over the glass. So much for that, he’d got a split lip and no cannabis. He had no choice but to go on down to the Norton car park and chance finding that girl again. He would rather have gone without his fix right now only he knew that later the craving would be unbearable.

Across the road something moved, a flitting shape in one of the gardens beyond the range of the nearest streetlamp. Billy swallowed, peered. He could make out something, couldn’t be sure what it was. And that dog was going crazy, tearing at somebody’s front door in its efforts to get outside. The hackles on Billy’s neck stiffened. He had to get away from here!

He was back in the road when he saw the face, tried to scream but the sound became caught up in his throat, throttled it. Just a head, no body, white as death with hair that streamed out behind it and blood red lips that grinned, dribbled saliva as the glowing eyes picked out their prey and hungered for it. It seemed to float in the air, came towards him.

Billy ran, somehow his weakened legs managed to support his body, drove it forward, sheer panic giving him the impetus he needed. His breath came in gasps, he thought his lungs would burst; once he went over on his ankle but somehow kept his balance, ignored the pain. Hopping, limping, then running again.

Above the roaring in his ears, the pounding of his pulses, he heard an owl hooting, a shrill whistle that came from behind. He turned his head, that face was no more than five yards behind him but now it had a body, the litheness of a young female who sprinted with ease, would surely overhaul him in seconds. Her shapely form was clad in some tight-fitting black garment, hence its invisibility in the darkness.

He made it out on to the road, saw to his relief that some cars were creeping along through the dense fog. Heedless of the danger, he ran into the road; a horn blared, the oncoming vehicles swerved, forced him to leap for the pavement, somebody was yelling abuse, it was sweet music in his ears. But none of the vehicles stopped – they probably presumed him drunk and not worth the ensuing row and possible violence.

At least he was on the main road, the town was only a few hundred yards ahead. Nobody, not even a vampire, would attack him in a lighted street where help was within call. He staggered on, was forced to walk, his ankle paining him now. In his crazed mind he mapped out his escape route, up the street and past the clock tower, on up to where Radnor Drive began. Then he was only a hundred yards from home. He’d make it.

People were drinking in the bar of the George and Dragon. Up above he thought he saw a face at the window, somebody following his progress; it was a comforting thought. The newsagent had closed early, probably thought that business was dead for the night.

Past the clock tower, a closed garage and motorcycle showroom on his left. A general stores that was long closed for the night; the road ahead curved sharply to the right.

And that was where he saw the vampire standing.

She must have taken a short cut that he had avoided, up the dimly lit Narrows, got ahead of him. Oh, God, it was awful!

Possibly Billy Quick would have turned and fled back the way he had come. He glanced behind him, cried his terror out aloud with all the breath that he could muster.

For less than twenty yards behind him another of these female creatures of the night stood watching him, smiling lustfully with stretched scarlet lips.

He glanced up and down the road; the fog had thickened, there was no traffic. Orange filtered light created weird shapes that might have been more of the undead lying in waiting for him. He ran into the road, saw the lighted windows of the houses, cried out to those inside them to help him, but the fog seemed to blanket his shouts, stifled them.

Standing at bay, a wounded stag, he watched the hunters closing in for the kill, one on either side. Features that elsewhere would have been beautiful, here in this fogbound night were masks of malevolence. Bodies that seemed to glide, arms outstretched to embrace him.

We’re going to kiss you, Billy Quick. The Kiss of Death.

He stammered incoherently, apologized for asking Libby Stewart for grass, pleaded with them to spare him this time. But those burning eyes were merciless.

Cold hands gripped him, explored him obscenely, so that he writhed. They smiled, their faces close to his, their breath overpowering, heady like lilies on a fresh grave.

Scarlet lips dribbled strings of saliva, the teeth bared to expose sharp fangs that were already homing in on his open neck.

He screamed, jerked as they bit him, teeth that went deep, tore at the soft flesh. He kicked, struggled, as his blood began to spurt, but they were too strong for him, pulling him down to the tarmac, heedless of any traffic that might appear. A rape of blood, they took him, held him, crazed for his blood, his contorted features awash with crimson.

Only when he was spent, his body twitching feebly, did they relinquish their hold, two bloodied vixens of the night standing over their prey, kicking him in contempt because he had nothing left to offer them.

Their stark white features were streaked with scarlet like clowns from an unholy circus, their bosoms heaving with lust and exertion, glancing up into the fog-enshrouded night sky, listening intently until they heard that distant owl hooting.

They hooted back once, and then they were sprinting for the safety of the darkness beyond the street-lighting.

Chapter Nine

Charlie Wells had one standard piece of advice for his Operation Werewolf agents – ‘Tell somebody a lie, over and over again, and in the end they’ll believe it.’

John Mayo lied to himself a hundred times, that day after his visit to the police station, that this business was nothing to do with him. Charlie’s advice was proving fallible.

It was Mayo’s business. Because of the girl who might, or might not, be Penny.

It could, he agreed, have been a trick of the half-light or his own anguished imagination. Or both combining to torture him.

It might just have been that.

He did not believe in the living dead in any form, whether werewolves, zombies or vampires. Nevertheless, he had been trained to maintain an open mind on any subject, which cast seeds of doubt on any pre-fixed ideas.

Like now.

Okay, so he had to find this girl to satisfy his own peace of mind, no other reason. In no way was he obligated to taking on a drugs and prostitution racket, nor a bunch of terrorists. What he had to do was purely for himself, the rest he would leave to the police. Without, of course, informing them of his intentions.

Fine.

His decision made, he returned to the George and Dragon in the early afternoon just as Frank Minton was about to close the front door.

‘Oh … oh, hi, Mister Mayo.’

‘Good afternoon, Frank.’ For one moment, he thought that the publican was going to bar his way, but the other stepped to one side to allow him to pass.

Carl was casually potting a few balls on the pool table in the bar. A familiar silhouette in the doorway caught his eye, caused him to slice his shot. His mouth opened, the words came out in a stammer.

‘Mister … Mister Mayo!’ He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, afraid that his mother might show. But the door was closed and he heaved an inward sigh of relief.

‘Carl?’

‘Er … yes. Sorry, I was engrossed in my game. It sort of gets you, if you know what I mean.’

‘That video, the one you offered to lend me, a vampire one, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right, “I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle”. A black comedy.’

‘I think I’ll take you up on its loan.’

‘Brilliant, you’ll laugh for a week.’

‘And, Carl …’

‘Yes?’

‘In case anybody asks, I wasn’t arrested, or anything like that. The local Bill invited me down for a coffee and a chat. We’re the best of friends.’

‘Oh, great! I’ll let Mother know.’

Mayo sensed the other’s relief. He said, ‘I wonder if you’d do me a favour’ They were on the stairs now, out of earshot. ‘This girl, have you ever seen her around town?’

It hurt Mayo deep, he tried not to look at the snapshot of the girl in the window of his wallet as he held it up to the other’s view. His stomach knotted, that dry burning behind his eyes returned. He was afraid of the answer to his questions, that Carl might have seen her, that they, against all the laws of nature, had somehow done something to his beloved, used her for their vile purposes.

‘Well, let me see.’ The youth stared at the picture, pouted his lips, ‘Seems vaguely familiar …’

Mayo’s heartbeat stepped up a gear, he felt suddenly physically sick, and the hand holding the wallet trembled slightly.

‘No, I can’t exactly say I recognize her, although I’ve a feeling that I’ve seen her about town. Could be she’s been in the pub on a Saturday night when we’re rushed off our feet. Or in Tuffins. Sort of, you know, somebody you’ve seen but haven’t taken a lot of notice of. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.’

‘Thank you.’ Mayo closed his wallet, returned it to his pocket. ‘Tip me off if you see her, I’d like to meet her.’

It was only when he was back in his room that Carl wondered why, if Mayo didn’t know that girl, he carried her photograph around with him. But it was none of his business. He opened a video case and began to search for the film he had promised to lend John Mayo.

There was only one way John Mayo was going to find the girl he hunted. His first attempt had been abortive, the young policeman had fouled it up by following him. He had to try again. Out there in the blackness of a night of evil. He would not find her, she was far too elusive.

He had to let her find him.

It was John Mayo who found Billy Quick sprawled in the road in a pool of blood, throat savaged as if by a pit bull terrier.

For Mayo it had been a long and uneventful day up until then. He had gone up to his room, recognized the need for rest. His body and mind needed to be recharged for the coming night. Sluggish reflexes could mean the difference between living and dying.

He lay on the bed fully clothed, closed his eyes and began a relaxation technique which was all part of his training. Callously, it seemed, he pushed his grief to one side. He was already coming to terms with bereavement, not that it dulled the ache, the awful loneliness – an acceptance which would become increasingly easier to live with, possibly for the rest of his life.

Momentarily, he allowed his thoughts to switch to Gwenda, a kind of therapy. Right now she was probably sitting at her desk, idly browsing property details to pass the time. Maybe she would welcome a caller to chat with; for himself it would have been a dangerous distraction. Tomorrow perhaps.

A sudden realization dawned on him that today was Saturday; he had lost track of the days of the week, they had not mattered. Even now they were of no consequence except that Gwenda would not be in the office tomorrow unless Idle Estates opened on Sundays. All right, he would see her on Monday, a plan that he shelved in his organized mind. For the moment he would live from hour to hour.

He was allowing himself to be sidetracked by thoughts irrelevant to the task he had undertaken. He made a conscious effort to blank out his mind, a total shut-off. From somewhere downstairs came a clicking noise: billiard balls – Carl Minton had his own way of passing the time. For Mayo the sound was soothing. Within a few minutes he was asleep.

It was seven-thirty by his watch when he drifted back to full wakefulness, a gradual process that embodied a savouring of total refreshment, keeping awareness at bay while he adjusted, then letting reality slowly filter back. That way one did not awake to harsh reality that nullified the benefits of the exercise.

He lay there for a while, stared at his surrounding, the beamed ceiling, the washbasin. The window that looked out on to the street should have been a square of bright early evening sunshine, the rays casting golden patterns on the wall. Instead, it was grey, depressing.

It must’ve clouded over outside, he thought, perhaps the late summer heatwave was at an end. It was not until he finally eased himself off the bed and crossed to the window that he saw the fog. The hills had steamed, created vapour that was already beginning to obscure the town. Mayo nodded his satisfaction, it was going to be one of those nights when one could travel unhindered, be seen only by those one wished to be seen by.

He contemplated leaving his fedora behind – perhaps it was too conspicuous. No, if the girl he sought was Penny, then he wished to be recognized. And tonight he would go armed, there were terrorists out there as well as vampires, a more tangible threat. He took the .38 out of his holdall, slipped it into the holster inside his headgear, an accessible hiding place for the weapon which had proved its worth in the past.

He went downstairs. The restaurant area was crowded, an attractive teenage girl was playing the piano just inside the entrance. His mood picked up the theme from The Third Man – somehow it was appropriate to his own activities this night. Like Harry Lime, John Mayo had an appointment with danger, drugs and death.

Emma Minton was in the kitchen dishing up a variety of meals from her own exquisite menu: tonight beef in beer seemed to be the favourite. If she saw him through the half-open door, she gave no sign. In her estimation, the man in the black fedora was not somebody she wished to have under her roof. He was not exonerated: he had brought the police to her establishment and that was unforgivable.

Mayo stepped out into the deepening, thickening foggy dusk, looked up and down the street. Some youths were drinking outside the hotel lower down, their raucous laughter drifted up to him – alcoholic bravado; they relied on safety in numbers, nevertheless. He turned and walked in the opposite direction, uphill. It was early yet, too early perhaps, but he had a lot of ground to cover: He needed to travel both the town and its outskirts.

There was a disco on at the Plough. He crossed the road in order to keep to the shadows. It was here that he spied a huddled shape out on the tarmac, one that even in the misty orange glow of the fog-enshrouded streetlamp on the opposite side was only too familiar. Apparently, it was not too early in the evening …

Mayo reached it in three strides, stood looking down on the carnage and mutilation, saw all that he needed to see. The head lolled back the savaged throat in full view, with the bite marks that had opened up the jugular and pumped the sticky fluid all over the road.

He saw and understood, read the scene as a layman might have read a book. There had been two vampires – their bloody footprints were still on the tarmac – one to hold the victim, the other to bite; turn and turn about until he became too weakened by loss of blood to resist.

They had done other things, too, but those were no concern of John Mayo’s. He prayed that whatever these vile creatures of the night had done to Penny, however they had transformed her corpse, she was not responsible for this. Because, if she was, then he would have to put her to rest. And he would not hesitate if it was to be so.

He had a moment’s deliberation in which he decided not to report his find. Somebody else would do that; he had no desire to become embroiled in making statements and giving evidence. There was no time.

His dark clothing blended with the night, enabled him to disappear into the murky blackness, a silent, flitting shape in search of a beautiful girl whose soul festered with an evil beyond her control, one whom he still loved in the very depths of his grief. One whom he must destroy.

Chapter Ten

Glyn Idle made no secret of his humble origins. His father had been a South Wales miner, a drunkard and a womanizer; Glyn had never known him because his father had left his mother and gone off with another woman soon after Glyn was born. His mother had struggled to raise her son; his education had been basic but, as he was quick to point out, his hunger for success had been fuelled by a burning desire to better himself.

As a child he had endured hardship and poverty, and he determined to succeed in any field, at any cost. No way was he prepared to endure life in the squalor of that row of tumbledown cottages where he had been brought up. Self-educated, endowed with a shrewd brain and a retentive memory, he spent his free time odd-jobbing, and saved enough money to enrol for a correspondence course in business management.

He made scanty reference to a failed marriage, emphasized how he had saved enough money to put down as a deposit on the two cottages across the street from where he lived, renovated them and sold them at a fair profit. Investment and reinvestment was, he said, the secret of his success, finally enabling him to launch into the property business.

His stature matched his ambitions. Powerfully built, affluence had taken its toll of his once-muscular frame. His head gave the impression of being too large and heavy for his shoulders to support, sagged forward and bowed them. A heavy moustache adorned his upper lip, compensated for his balding crown and hid his yellowed and broken teeth. There were rumours that he had once been beaten up by a bunch of miners over some property he had sold for them, although he vehemently denied this, attributed his dental injuries to his rugby days. None recalled his days as a player, but it wasn’t surprising as most young Welshmen have, at some time in their lives, played their national game.

Expensively tailored suits hung awkwardly on him, jewellery glinted on his soft, fleshy hands. His eyes missed nothing but were averted if you met his gaze and held it for too long.

Twice his business empire had been investigated; once by the Inland Revenue, the other time by the Fraud Squad after alleged complaints that large sums of clients’ money had gone missing. On both counts Idle Estates had been cleared, the complaints withdrawn.

A ‘man of the people’, a champion of the working classes, he justified his claim that he provided homes for first-time Welsh buyers at prices which they could afford, as opposed to his competitors who sold second homes to the English for extortionate sums of money.

Currently he was a prospective candidate for Plaid Cymru at the forthcoming election. He was expected to win, for his political enthusiasm matched his business acumen. He spoke confidently of devolution, promised his future constituents that within five years he would be representing them in a Welsh parliament divorced from Westminster.

He abhorred violence, denounced the arsonists, called for a cessation of the graffiti which was ‘abhorrent to the Welsh culture and to the environment’. Devolution, he insisted, would be won through the ballot box.

Thus it came as a surprise to the residents of Knighton when the head office of Idle Estates, close to the clock tower, was fire-bombed. During the foggy night hours an incendiary device had been planted in the doorway. Some slight structural damage occurred, but nothing that could not be restored during Sunday so that the office could be open for business as usual on Monday morning.

The Welsh Anarchists had shown their true colours, Glyn Idle told both the Star and the Journal. They were only interested in rule by terror, they had struck against one who threatened to destroy them within their own country.

But the fire-bombing was secondary news, and only made a small column on the front page of Monday’s edition of the Star. The bold headlines proclaimed: vampires strike AGAIN. SECOND VICTIM WITHIN DAYS.

Following last week’s much-publicized vampire attack on Mr Gareth Ingram, of Fronhir, Knighton, the vampires have struck a second time. Late on Saturday night a man was discovered dead in Market Street, Knighton, by a patrolling police car. He was later identified as Mr William Quick, of Radnor Drive, Knighton.

His injuries were identical to those of the previous victim, deep and vicious neck bites that caused him to bleed to death. A police spokesman has declined to comment on the nature of the killing but emphatically denies the existence of vampires. The hunt for the killers is in progress and a murder headquarters has been set up at Knighton police station, headed by Chief Superintendent Paul Greenleaf from Llandrindod Wells.

‘Two in one night!’ Detective Inspector Ian Glanville resented the presence of the Super, regarded it as a slight on his own capabilities. What they needed was more manpower, more bobbies to patrol the town at night. As it was, it was the old story of too many chiefs and not enough indians. ‘I can’t for the life of me guess why these Welsh nutters bombed one of their own kind. Agreed, the Anarchists are a splinter group, looking to rule by terror, but surely it would have been better to have let Idle go on buying up all the property for the Welsh. We know why they burn down English-owned homes, but this is cutting their own throats.’

‘I’d like to find a link between these so-called vampires and the Anarchists.’ Greenleaf studied a large-scale map of the area which was pinned to the wall; red drawing pins denoting fire-bombings, yellow ones vampire attacks. ‘I think the vampires are part of a drugs-gang warfare, one faction trying to scare the other off. Personally, I think we’re fighting on two separate fronts which is stretching the resources which we have available. Now, Inspector, you say you’ve interviewed this special branch guy, Mayo?’

‘Yes, sir. I’m more than satisfied. I just wish I could persuade him to help us. Operation Werewolf has a tremendous track record where terrorists are concerned.’

‘I guess I could contact MI5, request that they assign him to the case. And then we’d probably get some chaps from the Yard instead. They don’t look upon the Welsh as a serious threat, I’m afraid.’

‘In the meantime, it’s house-to-house enquiries and night patrols with not enough officers to cover either.’ You’re the Big Shot, it’s up to you to deploy men here but you won’t take them off your home patch. Just me, you sent me on ahead because you don’t like me, any excuse to get rid of me.

‘You’d better interview Idle.’

‘Sure, but you’re treading on thin ice there. He’s as shrewd and slippery as they come. I can go over the fire-bombing with him, lead from there. The Inland Revenue and the Fraud Squad have failed to nail him, what chance do we stand?’

‘Think big, Inspector.’

‘You think he’s behind this?’

‘Everybody’s a suspect, you should know that.’

‘Okay, I’ll see what I can make of him.’ Glanville headed for the door; life was going to be far from easy now that Greenleaf was on the scene. The Chief looked for your faults, never gave credit. Nobody liked him, most kept their heads down, though. If he had it in for you, he never let up.

Ian Glanville made up his mind to talk to Mayo again. There was no chance of changing the man’s mind, and it wouldn’t be fair to try under the circumstances. But Mayo knew a lot more about terrorist activities than all these country coppers put together.

And, a sudden thought had him pausing in mid-step, there were bent cops, even in the elite forces. Whatever his reasons for being here, Sergeant Mayo was worth keeping an eye on. Because all of this coincided with his arrival in Knighton. Altogether it was just too much of a coincidence.

‘Cheeky bastard!’ Glyn Idle stared out of the office window, his deep sunken eyes following Detective Inspector Glanville’s progress across the street and on down towards the George and Dragon, ‘He had the neck to imply that I might be behind the Welsh Anarchists, responsible for this spate of fire-bombing. I’d hardly bomb my own office if I was, would I?’

Gwenda Llanbich did not reply. Her expression was one of guilt and embarrassment. The detective had turned up at Idle’s new house, shown obvious amusement at finding her there. I might have guessed – he’d made no effort to disguise his train of thought – screwing your secretary. Still, they all do these days, don’t they?

‘I’ve a good mind to write to the Police Complaints Department, or whatever they call themselves.’ Idle switched his attention to the doorway where a couple of workmen were busily trying to repair the damage caused by the incendiary device. ‘But I guess you just have to treat these fellows with the contempt they deserve. I told him he’d be better employed spending his time questioning that oddball in the ridiculous hat who’s staying at the pub down the road.’ He paused, noted with no small amount of satisfaction that the other was mounting the steps up to the George and Dragon doorway, ringing the bell. ‘If you ask me, that fellow has a lot to do with all this. Maybe he knows something about these so-called vampires, too!’

Gwenda did not reply. She was fast regretting her affair with her boss. She realized that the initial attraction had been his money, his success, the lure of being the mistress of a prospective MP, maybe even his wife one day. When your husband has just ditched you, left you high and dry, you turn to the best alternative. Glyn paid her a salary that she wouldn’t get anywhere else, bought her things she’d never been able to afford in her life before. Now she felt uneasy, had done so ever since she’d chatted to John Mayo. That was stupid, he’d probably go back to London in a week or so and she would never hear from him again.

She glanced at Glyn Idle, experienced an overwhelming sense of repugnance towards him. He was overweight, no way could he remotely be termed good-looking, and a slob. So far he had shown her nothing but affection, but that might change overnight. She had done things to please him sexually, things which turned her off, revolted her. All for a reason. And for the first time she was beginning to wonder if those reasons were worthwhile.

‘I want this job wrapped up by tonight.’ He was addressing the workmen. ‘We have to be open for business as usual in the morning.’

‘We’ll do our best, sir.’

‘You’d better!’ He turned away, was oblivious of their expressions. Like Gwenda, they were only working for the money, double time on a Sunday.

‘Piss off!’ the estate agent mouthed towards a group of hippies who stood by the clock tower surveying the fire damage. ‘If I had my way, you buggers would be shut in a compound, your food thrown in to you like they do at the dogs’ home.’

Gwenda looked for something with which to busy herself, began straightening up the brochures on the counter. She yearned for a bath, that had been denied her by the arrival of the police, requesting Glyn to go back down to the office. His suggestion that she accompanied them had been an order. She felt physically dirty, wanted to cleanse herself, wash his touch, his smell, off her. Right now she despised herself for what she was doing.

‘Well, that copper’s taken my advice and gone to see that creep at the pub,’ Idle rubbed his fleshy hands together smugly. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if he arrested him.’

Her stomach churned, she felt physically sick. Again it was illogical – that guy in the black fedora meant nothing to her, just a casual acquaintance who had helped to pass ten minutes of a boring day.

She knew that she lied to herself. He did mean something to her, but again it was only silly day-dreaming. Once she extricated herself from Glyn Idle’s clutches she was going to give men in general a wide berth. They were only after one thing!

And that was a promise.

‘Where were you last night?’ Glanville spoke brusquely, tiredness and stress showing momentarily in his expression, his keen eyes focused unwaveringly on John Mayo.

The other had obviously been roused by the detective’s knock on the bedroom door, had slept fully clothed, Levis creased and crumpled. Mayo stood with his back to the window, calmly coming to terms with the new day.

‘Well?’ I want to know, you’re only a bloody sergeant even if you do belong to an elite unit. I’m an inspector, on my patch. That’s the difference between us right now.

‘Out on the town.’ Mayo spoke unhurriedly, his pale blue eyes searching out the other’s piercing gaze, holding it. ‘It was a foul night, weatherwise.’

‘And every other wise.’

‘Yes?’

‘Our vampire struck again.’ Glanville watched for a reaction, but there was none, only a slight nod from the other.

‘I know,’ Mayo said.

‘News travels fast in this town. Supposition, mostly. We haven’t released any details. Folks ought to assume that the victim had been knocked down by a drunken hit-and-run driver, left for dead in the road.’

‘I found him.’ Mayo spoke almost casually, not for effect but because he was telling the truth.

‘You … what!’

‘I found him, probably ten minutes or so after he’d been killed. If it hadn’t been for the thick fog keeping motorists at home then he probably would have been run over, to boot.’

‘For Christ’s sake …’ The usually emotionless detective half rose from the chair he’d pulled out for himself, stared in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe it … yes, I bloody well do! You’ve some explaining …’

‘Not really.’ Mayo seated himself on the bed, crossed one leg over the other. ‘I went for a walk. During the course of my ramblings I spied this fellow lying in the middle of the road. Certainly, my first assumption was that he’d been knocked down by a car. On looking at him I was left in no doubt that it was the work of vampires. Two of them, in fact. One to hold, one to bite. They’d left their dainty little bloody footprints all over the road, in case you didn’t notice.’

‘I did notice!’ Off guard, Glanville took the bait which the other had mischievously proffered. ‘Why in the name of Christ …’.

‘Didn’t I raise the alarm, call the police?’ Mayo smiled, it wasn’t a deliberate taunt. ‘You may well ask. Basically, because it wouldn’t have achieved anything. The guy was dead, beyond help, and somebody was sure to find him sooner or later, and if a car did run him over it wouldn’t have made much difference.’

‘All right,’ the detective leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes momentarily. ‘Point taken. But you told me emphatically that there was no way you were getting involved, with or without you department’s permission.’

‘True. I was just out walking, I happened across the murder scene. There’s no law says I have to report it.’

‘Which means you are looking for the vampires. You left the dead man because you didn’t want to waste any time, followed the trail whilst it was still warm. I’m disappointed in you, Sergeant. I thought we agreed to keep in touch.’

‘I said I’d let you know if I came up with anything conclusive.’

‘You didn’t catch up with the … vampires?’

‘No. They moved fast, the fog and darkness swallowed them up. I stopped out till just after four, but obviously they’d finished their work for the night. Then the Anarchists took over, set fire to the estate agent’s office up the road.’

‘Look, Mayo,’ Ian Glanville’s brusqueness disappeared, he sighed, spread his hands, ‘we’re up against it, no two ways about that. I didn’t believe in vampires before, but I’m beginning to have second thoughts. These Welsh Anarchists are no pushover, either. One way or the other, we’re up against something pretty bloody sinister. You weren’t out there last night just out of idle curiosity, don’t try to tell me you were. Why don’t you come clean? Let’s work together.’

‘You came here because I’m your prime suspect, the latter-day Dracula or else Anarchist Supreme, the godfather in a black fedora. I still might be either, for all you know.’

‘I’ve checked with your department. You’re genuine.’

‘Damn you!’

‘Why, what have you got to hide?’

‘Just the Department. Now the Chief knows where I am, probably suspects that I’m sticking my nose into something without his say-so. The consequences of which might be a recall, posted to armed duty at Heathrow, looking out for terrorists who will sneak in by a much easier route. Thanks a bundle, Inspector.’

‘No, I just mentioned that we’d met, said I was checking you out. He said, “Is he still wearing that fucking silly hat, then?”’

‘Which means you spoke to Charlie Wells in person,’ Mayo laughed. ‘Maybe there‘s no harm done, then.’

‘And you won’t be changing your mind?’

‘No. But, like I said, if I do come up with anything, I’ll be right back to you. I promise.’

‘Why are you getting involved, Sergeant?’

‘Do I have to tell you?’

‘No, I guess not, it just might make it easier.’

‘I doubt it. Shall we say it’s for … personal reasons?’

‘All right.’ Glanville stood up. ‘I’ll have to let it go at that.’

‘Thank you, Inspector.’ Mayo was at the window, looking down into the street. ‘I wonder if you’d do me a favour?’

‘Try me.’

‘On your way out, just call in at the kitchen and tell Mrs Minton that you and I are buddies, that in no way do you suspect me of being either a vampire or a fire-bomber. It might just make my stay here easier.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Glanville said, closing the door behind him as he went out on to the landing.

Mayo remained in the window, watching the fire-damaged building up the street where two men in overalls were starting to repaint the doorway. He wondered if by any chance Gwenda Llanbich was in the office.

Chapter Eleven

Mayo tried to shrug off the nagging sense of guilt which threatened to spoil his evening. Penny was fresh in her grave, he was determined to convince himself that she had not become a gothic creature of darkness, and here he was dating another woman.

It was merely companionship, something which he and Gwenda Llanbich desperately craved, to ease heartbreak and loneliness. He had to cope with his grief, and this was the best way. A platonic friendship. You could still love somebody and at the same time enjoy a friendship with the opposite sex. Couldn’t you?

Whatever the reasons, however unsuccessfully he tried to believe in them, there was no disputing the fact that the two of them were sharing a meal in an otherwise empty restaurant. Tonight all the other diners at the Hundred House had elected to eat in the lounge bar which, Mayo thought, was most considerate of them. It was as though they found the safety they sought in numbers, huddled together in a confined space.

‘Glyn’s had to rush off to Cardiff.’ Gwenda spoke nervously, and kept glancing at the door as if she feared that her employer might suddenly walk in. ‘Something to do with the insurance for the fire. He doesn’t expect to be back until Tuesday afternoon.’

Mayo nodded. Her unease was contagious; they were both edgy, had been ever since she had picked him up in her Fiesta by the clock tower at eight. Their meeting had all the ingredients of a clandestine extra-marital affair.

‘You’re having an affair?’ he asked. So far she had only hinted at a relationship with her boss.

‘Yes.’ She took a sip of wine, averted her gaze, and the slender fingers holding the stem of the glass trembled slightly.

‘I’m sorry. For me, I mean.’ He tried to make a joke of it but it didn’t work, came over as self-pity.

‘I’m sorry, too.’ He thought her eyes glistened in the subdued lighting. ‘In more ways than one, now.’

An uneasy silence followed. He thought about changing the subject, but suddenly could not think of anything to say, because her admission of his suspicions had hit him hard, a hammer blow that thumped into his churning guts.

‘I’ve put you in a spot,’ he said at length, staring down at his plate of fried chicken which had now lost its flavour.

‘Maybe. But … but I wanted you to, John.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’m trying to work out how to leave Glyn Idle.’

‘Why don’t you just walk out? You still have your own place.’

‘It isn’t quite as easy as that. I’d have to sell my place to raise some cash, pay off the mortgage. I wouldn’t have a job if I left Glyn. There aren’t many jobs left in Knighton, not since these anarchists moved in. They’re bad for business, and most of the businesses in town are owned by English people.’

‘Move elsewhere, then?’

‘Jobs aren’t easy to find. Glyn only took me on so that …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘I see. So you’ll take the easy way out and stay with him.’

‘I don’t know.’

Mayo detested people who ‘didn’t know’. He made an exception of Gwenda because hers was a difficult decision. In a way she was prostituting herself and he tried not to think of it like that. Thousands of women would gladly change places with her because of the rewards. You couldn’t blame her for what she had done. He said, ‘Like I told you, I’m a cop, London based. I shall have to go back eventually or they’ll come and fetch me.’ He laughed nervously.

‘I like London. I spent a week’s holiday there once.’

‘Me, I prefer the country. Except when it’s teeming with anarchists and vampires.’

‘Between them they’ll make a ghost town of Knighton. Folks will be driven out.’

‘You thinking of selling your own place?’

‘Glyn wants me to put it up for sale now that I’ve moved in with him. I’ve fobbed him off – it’s the only scrap of independence I’ve got left.’ She swallowed. ‘I was thinking of going back there tonight. I can’t bear the thought of staying in Glyn’s house even with him not there …’

Their eyes met and he nodded slowly.

Mayo should have felt guilty. He didn’t. He’d gone with the flow; an opportunity had presented itself and he’d taken it.

In the darkness her naked body was comforting against his own. He hoped he would not regret it, that he wasn’t making a big mistake on the rebound. It did not have to go any further, he could walk right out, catch the first train back to London in the morning. He knew that he wouldn’t.

Outside an owl was hooting somewhere up in Ffrydd Wood. Owls were plentiful in this part of the country.

*

Libby Stewart was frightened. Very frightened. That stupid bloody fool Billy Quick, as if she hadn’t enough problems without him turning up here, trying to get cheap drugs. They were bound to have seen him, they missed nothing in this town.

Libby, like everybody else in Knighton, sensed the escalating terror, the claustrophobic, intensifying evil that was fast rising to a crescendo. She had slouched up to the phone box earlier, telephoned the hospital; Gareth might be discharged at the end of next week. Well, if that was the case, then they couldn’t stop around here. Next time the vampires would make no mistake. He had survived against all odds. Only Dr King’s fortunate arrival on the scene had saved her boyfriend’s life.

If she had had anywhere else to go, she would have gone. Tonight. But she didn’t have any alternative accommodation so she had no choice but to remain here on the Fronhir estate.

She cursed herself for opening the door to Billy. If she’d kept quiet, lain low in the living room, eventually he would have gone away. She wondered where he was right now; she didn’t bloody well care. They’d know, all right, and they would punish him. He might be dead already, just as Gareth was supposed to be. Libby shuddered at the thought, not that she gave a toss what happened to Billy. It was herself she was worried about.

She went round the house, checked that all the windows were fastened, the doors locked and bolted. She switched off all the lights, left only the glow from the streetlamps outside. No way was she going upstairs to bed, she was too bloody scared. She’d lie on the settee in the front room, listen to every sound outside the estate, drunks staggering home from the pubs, a fight perhaps – there was always a fight on Saturday nights. Then, sometime after dawn, she would fall into an exhausted doze. It was only after daylight that anybody was safe these days.

There did not appear to be much activity out there tonight, she thought, even after closing time. Folks had stayed at home, watching telly, even the hardened drinkers. Because of the fog.

No, because of the vampires.

Libby rolled herself a joint. It helped. Sitting here in the orange half-light was scary. It was cold, too. Gareth had switched the night storage heaters off for the summer, she had no idea how to turn them back on. And even if she had discovered how, she did not have enough electric tokens left for the meter.

She needed to consult a doctor about her nerves, she decided. Not Dr King, he could be a right bastard, she was certainly not one of his favourite patients. Maybe the doctor up at the top surgery would listen to her more sympathetically. She’d ask to be transferred to the other practice.

What was that? Libby started in the gloom, tried to listen over the pounding of her heart. She thought it sounded like running water, a leak perhaps. It came from outside, in the front garden. It was probably somebody having a piss, you often had somebody piss in your porch after the pubs closed. She thought the front-door glass creaked, as if it had been pushed. The putty was flaking away, the pane might fall in. Go away, Billy, I told you there’s no grass for you here.

If it was Billy.

Whoever it was, she tried to convince herself that it wasn’t anybody, they could not get in. Unless they broke the glass …

Glass shattered, shards smashed and tinkled on the hall floor. A key turned, a bolt grated.

Libby screamed. She drew her legs up beneath her as if there were mice running around the floor, curled herself into a tense ball on the end of the battered sofa. She stared into the shadows, invented shapes for her eyes to see, cringed from them.

The door through to the hallway was edging open, scuffing the frayed carpet. The loose hinges squeaked.

Who is it? It can’t be anybody because the doors and windows are locked. You can’t get in.

They could.

They stood just inside the room, two black silhouettes that might have been invisible in the shadows had it not been for their stark white faces, their lips stretching into leering smiles. Eyes seemed to glow as they fixed on the trembling figure on the settee.

They gave the impression of gliding into the room, silent movements that brought them close to where Libby Stewart cowered.

‘You’re a bad girl, Libby,’ one of them spoke in a husky whisper. ‘We thought you’d learned by Gareth’s mistakes. Apparently, you haven’t.’

‘I didn’t give him any, honest,’ Libby whined, her teeth chattering like castanets. ‘I swear I didn’t!’

‘Didn’t you?’ Mocking laughter. ‘We don’t believe you. Anyway, Billy’s dead, he’s lost all his blood.’

‘No!’

‘Oh, yes!’ A hand reached out, touched Libby’s arm. The fingers that gripped her, pinching her skin cruelly, were ice cold. She gasped, squealed in terror.

‘First, we want your body, Libby. We’re going to enjoy ourselves and we’d like to think that you might, too. Are you going to take your clothes off or do we have to rip them off you?’

Libby’s trembling fingers fumbled with the buttons of her dress. She heard her visitors grunting their impatience at her slowness. No, don’t touch me, I’ll manage. Now they were assisting her, making her shudder every time their fingers touched her flesh. Finally, she was lying there naked, shivering with cold and fear. What do you want of me? She had already guessed.

A death-cold hand eased her thighs apart. Her two uninvited guests laughed, they appeared to be able to see clearly in the half-light. Libby knew where they were looking.

‘I swear …’ Libby gulped, her words became lost in her throat. You dirty bleedin’ bitches.

‘You always swear.’ The vampires had peeled off their tight-fitting garments, their shapely unclothed bodies seeming to shiver with an ethereal luminosity. ‘In fact, your language is fucking foul, Libby!’

Libby cringed, squirmed as their sensuous arctic fingers smoothed their way over her body. They explored, felt, caressed places where she had never allowed another of her own sex to touch before. No other girl had ever wanted to. It wasn’t a question of morality, simply that the thought of a lesbian relationship was repugnant to her.

It’s no good, I can’t turn on.

She didn’t have to, they didn’t seem to notice, they were lusting for her in her terrified, unaroused state, her gasps of terror possibly mistaken for cries of ecstasy. Mouths like suction pads drew her flesh between ravenous lips, teeth bit sharply but gently.

‘We want your body, Libby.’ The petite dark-haired one raised her head from where her tongue had left a trail of freezing saliva akin to a slug’s nocturnal meanderings on Libby’s lower regions. ‘After that …’ her teeth showed momentarily, ‘you will be ours. Totally. You will be one of us.’

Chapter Twelve

Mayo had gone back into the darkness of a Welsh summer night. The balmy atmosphere was heavy with the scent of heather from the surrounding hillsides, a sweetness that wafted in the gentle breeze, belied the peace and tranquillity that seemed apparent all around him. Knighton was a time bomb waiting to explode. He knew that, and so did most other people. The only question remaining was when.

Had Glyn Idle not returned from Cardiff unexpectedly, then John Mayo might have postponed his hunt for the vampire girl who bore an uncanny likeness to Penny in favour of more pleasurable pursuits. One more night would have made little difference. But Gwenda returned to her lover, hopefully only temporarily, and he needed something to occupy his troubled mind – grief and love were not harmonious. Only when he knew for sure that Penny was at peace would he be able to make other plans. His motives were selfish, they had nothing to do with what was happening here. Only if the Department sent him in officially would that change.

No, he wasn’t in love with Gwenda; it was far too early for that, he tried again to convince himself. Friendship, companionship was all that he craved at this stage. When you had no family to turn to in your hour of need, you found somebody else. A mistake could have dire consequences, he accepted that. Last night had merely been a means of satisfying his physical needs, another form of therapy.

Now he was angry: with himself, with these murderous creatures of the night hours, and with those who sought to destroy a democracy under the guise of devolution. Mayo had been trained to regard terrorists as a natural enemy that must be destroyed at all times, at whatever cost, an indoctrination that would last a lifetime. The .38 was in the headband holster of his fedora. If necessary, he would not hesitate to kill. These fiends had impinged upon his bereavement, they had already scarred his grieving. They had a lot to answer for.

The fog which had blotted out the town and its surroundings last night was gone, just a faint haze remained on the hilltops as a reminder of what had been. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought for a moment that he detected a sour, iron-smelling stench in his flared nostrils – the odour of blood. It passed and he smelled the heather once more.

His flesh threatened to goose pimple, but he shrugged off the feeling. This was no time to be fanciful, but he must not ignore the warning. Often, in the past, it had saved his life. He must be alert, on his guard every passing second, for he did not doubt that death in its most terrible form was abroad again tonight.

He slipped into the shadows – he could not afford to be seen. He must watch and wait, they must come to him for he knew not where to search. In this town with its surrounding wild countryside there were a thousand different hiding places: the odds on flushing them out were stacked heavily against him.

A narrow lane led downhill beyond the church. Mayo lingered in a patch of shadow, listened. His acute hearing picked up the usual night sounds – distant vehicles, voices. A quarrel, probably outside one of the pubs. A fox barked on the wooded hillside beyond, a curlew was calling from the heather slopes. Somewhere an owl hooted. There was nothing untoward, nothing to arouse his suspicions at this stage.

He debated which direction to take, opted for the upper town again, followed the back streets until he emerged on to the main road by the Heritage Centre.

He resisted the temptation to check on Glyn Idle’s recently renovated house. The sight of a lighted upstairs window might be hurtful to him and he could not risk the distraction. He shut it out of his mind, became part of the night again, the deep shadows.

Something moved, he sensed rather than heard it, a wafting of the warm air, then a chill that tingled his scalp. His first thought was that it might be that young policeman again, but there were no footsteps that stopped when his did, no tangible pursuit. Nothing except a presence in the darkness that only one whose senses where tuned to such a degree of awareness would have noticed.

Somebody, or something, had picked up his trail. He was being hunted down with the silence of the flitting shadows around him. You neither heard nor saw anything until …

A pathway led off down to his right, a short cut on to the council estate. Mayo moved swiftly across a patch of street lighting, hugging the darkness afforded by an electricity control unit, a brick edifice protected by a steel mesh fence. A notice warned danger of death.

And that danger was suddenly very close for John Mayo. Too close. Whoever had been following him had narrowed the distance between them, was in the darkest of the shadows, less than ten yards away.

It was the stark whiteness of her features that gave her away: a skull that floated in the blackness, long straggling and matted hair like seaweed trailing in the depths of the ocean, wide nostrils sniffing the air as though she hunted by scent, slitted eyes as she peered, tried to see her prey. Lips pursed, then widened into a gloating smile as she picked him out.

Mayo experienced momentary relief because it wasn’t Penny. The girl – he could not see her figure because of the dark catsuit she wore – was attractive in a slovenly sort of way. Dark alleys suited her: in any other town or city she might have plied a different trade.

He smelled her, a whiff of body odours combined with cheap perfume, a tart in vampire’s clothing. Their eyes met, sizing each other up, waiting for the other to make the first move.

‘Hello, handsome.’ Libby Stewart’s voice was gruff, throaty. ‘Fancy meeting up with you.’

‘I could say the same.’ Mayo did not move. ‘Busy tonight?’

‘Na.’ Whatever they had done to her, the vampires had not destroyed her local accent. ‘I’ve got time for you.’

She moved into a patch of orange light and Mayo saw her figure, slightly overweight – her body would run to fat in a year or two. Dead or undead, she was on the downhill slope. ‘Want a joint?’

‘No.’

She seemed taken aback, maybe she thought that everybody accepted the offer of a free fix. ‘I got some of the hard stuff.’

‘I can tell that.’ Her eyes gave her away, even in the half-light. She was on crack, it had changed her personality. ‘How?’ She moved forward another step.

‘Experience.’ His raised hand tilted the fedora back on his head, stayed there, fingertips barely an inch from the butt of the .38 in its headband holster. ‘You’ve been following me.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Her eyes glazed, cleared again. ‘I’m in the mood, fella. I won’t charge you.’

‘Damn right, you won’t.’ Mayo’s feet moved apart, knees bent slightly, a half-crouch. ‘I’ve been looking for you, sister.’

It might have been a flicker of fear in those eyes. She glanced around, perhaps fearing a trap. ‘Just a little cuddle then, if you don’t want to …’

‘Keep back!’ She was barely a foot from him now, her body tensed in readiness to spring. Mayo remembered Ingram, and Billy Quick, how they had ended up. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask this vampire hussy, but he had to stay alive to do so. His raised arm crooked, he must defend his throat at all cost.

She moved with a suddenness that would have taken anybody else by surprise. Her mouth opened, twin fangs exposed, his neck was her target as she flung herself forward.

Mayo reacted with unbelievable speed. His spine arched from the waist, enabled him to lean back without losing his balance whilst his forearm took her in the throat … Her face, a mask of sheer malevolence, stopped within inches of his own; she heaved at the sudden pressure on her larynx, her blood-red lips, foaming with saliva, gave out a hiss that might have been the sound effects of a second-rate gothic movie; her eyes bulged like air bubbles about to burst.

She was held there for maybe two seconds, supported by her chin on her intended victim’s arm, forced to stand like a ballet dancer on points. Mayo could have taken her easily, thumped her in the stomach, had her writhing on the ground, winded and helpless. He regretted that he hadn’t hit her.

Somehow she slipped free but didn’t fall, grabbed for his groin as she went under him. His guts seemed to ball, explode, bent him double. In the same instant her arms went up and around his neck, dragged him down with her. Even as they hit the tarmac path he felt his fedora slide from his head, heard it hit the ground with a muffled metallic thud.

Christ, she had disarmed him as if she knew what he carried in his headgear! But his uppermost thought was to keep those teeth off his neck or else he would end up like Billy Quick that foggy night.

Her teeth snapped on the collar of his denim shirt, he felt the material shred. Blinded by pain, he elbowed at her, heard her gasp but she still held on. Christ, her breath was foul and her flesh was icy to his touch.

She quivered against him, he felt the sharpness of her nipples scrape him through their combined clothing. Whatever her intentions, she was fully aroused, a whore who hungered for his flesh and blood. He made up his mind that she wasn’t having either, kicked her shin hard.

She let out a howl, momentarily released her grip on him. Perhaps it was the pain from his testicles that slowed him for a second, but the blow intended for her jaw took her on the shoulder. It threw her back, hurt them both. Now she was circling him in the confined space of the alleyway between the rows of council houses, an infuriated she-beast determined not to be deprived of its kill. He could smell her strongly, a sexual odour that was tainted with the stench of an unwashed body.

He thought about his fallen hat, but to have looked for it would have been fatal. He dared not take his eyes off her.

‘Come on,’ she breathed, her expression maniacal now. ‘Come on!’

Mayo did not waste his breath on words; his eyes never left her. Several times she feinted, jeered at him as she darted away.

‘I … want … your … blood!’

‘No chance!’ He smiled. ‘There’s a few questions you’re going to have to answer.’

‘You’re a cop.’ She was breathing heavily now, her breasts rising and falling. ‘They said you might be.’

‘So I’m on the wanted list, eh?’

‘That’s right.’ Something glinted in her hand. With a start he realized that she had pulled a knife from somewhere, a back-up weapon if her teeth failed. He wished he knew where his fedora was right now.

Mayo’s reactions did not fail him: instinctively his arm deflected her lunge, his fingers closed over her forearm.

‘Fucking bastard!’ she screeched, beginning to struggle. It was only then that he became aware of the extent of her sheer physical strength. Wrestling, kicking, he somehow protected both his neck and his throbbing groin. Her back was against the mesh fence of the electricity building, yet she squirmed away, taking him with her. At all costs he had to hang on to that knife arm. Her teeth snapped shut half an inch from his neck, her fetid breath was nauseating. Her sexual odours almost had him retching.

Slowly but surely she was forcing the knife round – he saw the point of the stiletto blade edging towards him. It was a test of sheer muscle power, and he decided that the odds were about even – only his desperation to survive was keeping her at bay. Fleetingly, he thought of Penny. And Gwenda. It acted as a stimulant. Somehow he turned her hand, the blade reversed with it.

There was only one way he could go, there was no question of holding back. God Almighty!

Mayo felt the knife pierce her flesh just before she let out a scream that no mortal had any right to hear, the cry of a tortured soul rather than that of an injured body. She tensed, screamed again, and a jet of blood washed over his hand. And still she fought him.

His training taught him to turn his head, to avoid getting her blood in his eyes. Infected blood could mean death. His grip on her was slippery, he did not know how much longer he could restrain her. Something fell to the ground, clattered away. The knife was gone to join his gun: now her only weapon was her teeth, and she was in no state to inflict that awful vampire bite on him.

He lost all sense of time, had no idea how long they had been here; it seemed an eternity. His shirt was soaked, he felt the warm stickiness of her blood on his body. Surely she must weaken soon.

Damnation, would nobody come to investigate those screams? Apparently nobody around here was succumbing to curiosity: they believed in the old maxim that discretion was the better part of valour.

Face to face again, the deathly whiteness of her features had changed to a ghastly scarlet, she who had lusted for the blood of another was awash in her own. Her lips foamed scarlet, her fangs dripped sticky fluid. Her obscenities were gurgled whispers, she could not last much longer.

Then, somehow, she tore free of him, bounded away with unbelievable speed and agility. He started after her, up that alleyway towards the main road; a wounded beast of the chase, she would drop soon, lie kicking her death throes.

She didn’t. Once again she was that flitting shadow, except that this time he was the hunter and she the hunted. He saw a shape, lost it; saw it again. Beneath the street lighting there was a trail of blood. On down towards the church and then he lost her, it was too dark here to track her by her bloodstains.

Mayo stood in the shadow of the lychgate, once again listening to the night sounds. The pub revellers were gone to their beds, the traffic had thinned and that fox no longer barked. Only the owl still hooted, more urgently now as though it had become separated from its mate and was calling her to return to him.

Mayo sighed, was disappointed in himself. The vampire had got the better of him – it had been a close call. He cleaned his bloody fingers on a litterbug’s chip paper, remembered his missing fedora – to retrieve it was a priority.

The night had not been totally wasted: at least he knew the score now. These vampires were possessed with unbelievable strength – he would not underestimate his next adversary. For there would surely be one; they had him on their death list, had put their own price on his blood.

For Mayo this was now an assignment as surely as if he had been sent in here by Operation Werewolf. He had no choice, it was kill or be killed. And on his own hit list was the one behind all this, the mortal or supernatural being who had control over this army of the undead.

Mayo had long ago learned not to discard hunches, arid right now he had one. He had a feeling that there was a strong link between terrorism and vampirism. Defeat one and you defeated the other.

Just a hunch – he would keep it at the back of his mind. But in the meantime he would stick to facts.

He walked on back to look for his fedora.

Chapter Thirteen

The Keeper still got up at five every morning, summer and winter, just as he had done for the last seventy years. He saw no reason to change his habits. When time was running out on you there was no point in wasting it in bed. Bed, as he repeatedly told the occupants of the lounge bar down at the George and Dragon, was a waste of time unless you’d got a good woman in there with you, which he didn’t have these days; so once he had used up his quota of six hours sleep, he vacated it.

Back in the good old days a feller started work at six, but not these days, because the present generation were a bunch of lie-abeds. Lord above, Saturdays and Sundays most of them stopped under the sheets until bloomin’ dinner time! Worse, they resented a hard-working chap getting on with his jobs. Years ago Sid Knowles had had both the bowling green and the churchyard mown by breakfast time. Not any more, because folks complained about the noise of the old pre-war Atco; they didn’t even make mowers like that today, either! That newcomer Dean across the way had complained to the vicar last summer when Sid had cut the grass at seven in the morning. Seven o’clock, would you believe it? You should have got a good hour’s work done by that time. Still, it was a sign of the times … The Keeper wasn’t giving in to them, not bloomin’ likely, he just found a quieter job to do, got on with it.

That was what he planned to do this morning. The grass didn’t need mowing – this heatwave had scorched most of it up – but there was some scything needed doing around the graves. He could have all that done by eight, maybe before.

His day began with a cup of mahogany-coloured tea, the previous night’s suppertime brew reheated, and a Woodbine. That kept him going till bait time. ‘Bait’ was always two slices of bread and butter, another cuppa and a second Woodbine. He’d have that up at Mrs Jones’s – her privet hedge needed trimming again. Privet wanted clipping once a fortnight up until September if it was to look how it should.

He went out to the backyard, wheeled his old sit-up-and-beg bicycle out of the shed, and found his scythe. Scything was an art that was fast disappearing, chaps today didn’t know how to use one. It was a wonder they didn’t cut their blinkin’ feet off! He tittered to himself at the thought.

He made a sling for the scythe out of two lengths of red binder twine. Good stuff, binder string, he knew a guy who made baskets out of them. All these outsiders that had come to live in Knighton didn’t know anything about the old skills, just made out they did – townies who wanted country life the easy way.

He swung up on to his bicycle with an agility that made a mockery of his ninety-four years, wobbled for a second and then free-wheeled down the steep lane. He glanced up at the clock. It was accurate to the minute and so it chimin’ well ought to be, he’d only oiled and greased it last week. Those hippies had left their litter strewn around the base; on the way back he’d clear it up. No good leaving it to the council, they did even less now they were raking in their poll tax!

The street was deserted because half the shops had closed down; For Sale signs were the hallmark of the recession and these loonies that were doing their damnedest to drive the English out.

Metallic hammering came from down below on the community centre car park. Fairground people started work early and that was something the town could do without. Flamin’ crazy, everybody moving out and the fair moving in! Not content with the May Fair, the council had agreed for them to come back a second time. Greed, that was what it was, they weren’t getting the poll tax because shops were closing, so some bright spark got the idea of making an extra bob or two out of a second fair. And I ’opes it flippin’ well rains and nobody turns up, Sid thought.

He leaned his bike up against the wall by the lychgate, unslung his scythe. And if that silly blighter Dean complains again, I’ll cut his bloomin’ ’ead off for ’im!

He sharpened the blade with a whetstone, scraped as loud as he could, tried to will the bedroom window of the house lower down to open. It didn’t: the curtains remained closed. Ah, well, there was no point in stirring it.

The graveyard at the rear of the church was shaded from the early morning sunlight. Gloomy, a kind of half-light that was akin to dusk, so fresh and cool. Bees hummed in search of pollen, the air was sweet with the smell of a new day.

Sid Knowles breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly. He coughed – that was Woodbines, but if you reached ninety-four they didn’t do you much harm. All this non-smoking nonsense was faddy, a fashion like vegetarianism. He sniggered as he coughed, of all the businesses that hadn’t been forced to close in town, that health food shop by the clock tower seemed to be thriving. Folks were gullible, he sneered to himself. If anything new was advertised as being good for you, they paid over the odds for it. Like all this organic vegetable rubbish, that was as old as the hills. He, and his father before him, had used nothing but good old-fashioned muck in the garden because there weren’t any of these new-fangled chemicals about then even if you’d wanted to use them. Suddenly somebody started it all up again and folks thought that it was a new idea!

The health food shop had jumped on the bandwagon. Some chap in a crappy old blue van came from over Clun way, two or three times a week, to bring them veg; he was on the make, too. People said he was a writer or somethin’, kept a smallholding for his son to run, made the lad’s wages up out of what they could grow without using any chemicals, and folks queued to buy it.

That feller’d better watch it, too, Sid surmised. These Welsh Anarchists wouldn’t take kindly to being fed English produce; they’d probably burn the shop down or put a bomb under that writer’s van. Or both. That van was a bloomin’ disgrace, so rusted that the wing had to be wired on because there was nothing left to fit a new one to. And a second-hand door from the scrapyard that was green whilst everything else was blue. He parked it by the clock tower and the coppers never took a bit of notice.

Well, the Keeper decided, he’d better start work. It was one of those mornings when you could sit down on a bench, smoke a Woodbine, and surmise all sorts of things. He swung the scythe, brought it round in an even, unhurried, half-moon action. It cut a swathe as close as any rotary mower; back and forth, taking his time. He didn’t need those long-handled shears that the vicar had bought in the spring – they would take him all day to clip round the tombstones. As it was, he’d be clipping privet for Mrs …

Something caught his eye, stayed his rhythmic action, the blade pinged against the headstone. He stared, could not believe his eyes, and his sight was not failing yet. Over there, two rows down, a girl was lying naked over one of the gravestones!

Sid couldn’t see her head – the upper half of her body was hidden in a clump of long grass – just her legs, her thighs spread lewdly, displaying everything that was bad for an old man’s heart.

Flamin’ disgustin’, the Keeper lowered his scythe, leaned on the handle for support. Everybody knew what youngsters got up to, but in his day they’d had the decency to do it in the dark! You went in the fields or up in the woods, you showed some respect for the dead, didn’t go screwing on top of graves.

His gnarled hands were shaking, the scythe blade vibrated against the nearest headstone, a sort of metallic humming noise, but the girl appeared to be totally unaware of Sid’s presence. He squinted against a beam of sunlight that filtered down through the overhead branches, looked for a chap – there surely had to be one. There was no sight of anybody else in the vicinity.

Sid thought of something else, what the girl might have been doing if there wasn’t a man around to satisfy her. That was even bloomin’ worse. They always warned kids in his day what might happen to you if you went doing things like that.

She did not move, just lay there as though she was deliberately showing him what she’d got. The dirty little wench, she might have heard him coming, had deliberately exposed herself, wanting to shock him. Well, you little hussy, I’ve seen it all before. And better!

‘Oi, you!’ His voice came out as a whisper, shaky. ‘Get up off there, and put your knickers back on. Otherwise I’ll …’ He couldn’t think of a suitable threat on the spur of the moment.

She did not move, not so much as a twitch of one of her splayed legs. Sid’s mouth had gone very dry. Maybe it was a ruse to seduce him, some little tart going to demand a fiver not to tell the vicar that old Knowles had dipped his wick. Or … he paled at his latest thought, a trick whereby she would leap up and scream, cry rape.

‘It won’t work,’ he croaked, ‘not if you lay there until the gnats start germin’. If you don’t shift yourself, I’ll scythe your bloomin’ tuft for you, God help me, I will!’

She wasn’t going to stir, that much was evident to the old man. There were two options open to him: he could go and kick her shapely little arse or else he could fetch the vicar to shift her. Except that the Reverend Doyle wouldn’t be up yet, he was another of this modern generation of lie-abeds, didn’t rise before nine except for communion on Sundays.

‘Well, I can’t stand here all day lookin’ at your gruesome little quim.’ The Keeper took a step forward, halted. ‘I’ve got to get this finished afore bait time and I’m not hangin’ around for the likes of you, whoever you are!’

That was another point, who was she? There wasn’t any point in trying to guess, it could be one of a dozen girls that hung around the pubs at night. Or one of those hippy wenches … that was more like it, they reckoned that that filthy lot screwed all night and in the dark they couldn’t tell who they were having it off with ’cause they all smelled the same.

‘Right, let’s ’ave you up and away then, I’m done with playin’ guessin’ games.’ He walked forward, stepped over a grave, and used his heavy boot to part the undergrowth so that he could view the upper half of this girl who lay before him.

He lurched, almost lost his balance, dropped the scythe. A wave of dizziness hit him, and through his blurred vision, like a shimmering heat haze that was rapidly darkening. Libby Stewart’s gashed throat smiled up at him.

Chapter Fourteen

‘I killed her,’ Mayo said, and dropped the stiletto knife on the desk in front of him, ‘with this.’

‘No, you didn’t.’ Detective Inspector Glanville shook his head, smiled faintly. ‘You stabbed her in the neck with that, probably, only forensic tests will prove if it’s the first assault weapon, but right now I’ll take your word for it. She died from a slashed throat, the knife in question had a wide, flat blade.’

‘Then somehow she made it from Radnor Drive down to the cemetery with a severed artery, or to wherever they finished her off. Her strength was incredible, her stamina defies belief.’

‘She was high on drugs. The hard stuff.’

‘I guessed that. So she wasn’t a vampire?’

‘Vampire?’

‘Dressed in a black catsuit, features whitened, fangs like a panther.’

‘Not Libby. Normal as far as Libby Stewart can be normal.’ Glanville pushed a file across towards the other. ‘A slut, an addict, but nothing more sinister than that. See for yourself, if you don’t believe me. When they found her she was nude. Or rather, when the old guy found her.’

‘How is Knowles?’

‘We took him up to the hospital suffering from shock. Two hours later he discharged himself and was clipping hedges!’

‘That’s the Keeper, all right,’ Mayo grinned. ‘You reckon the Stewart girl is one of them or just a victim?’

‘I’d say she was killed for peddling drugs, as they tried to kill Ingram, the bloke she cohabits with. By the way, he’s due out of hospital soon, which poses a problem. They’ll finish him next time round.’

‘This is a bigger set-up than I thought at first.’ Mayo’s brow furrowed. ‘I was hoping to bring a vampire in tonight, then we’d’ve got something out of her. They’re on to me, according to what the girl said, they’ve sussed me out as a cop.’

‘Which means you’re on their hit list.’

‘No bad thing, but I’ll not underestimate the next vampire I grapple with. I guess they made Stewart go out to get me, tarted her up like one of them, coked her up. Then they killed her, removed all traces of her disguise, and left the corpse in the churchyard. So she wasn’t really one of them, just forced into it. She had fangs, though, tried to get them in my neck. Somewhere there’s a common denominator that’ll tie all this business together.’

‘What’re your plans, Sergeant?’

‘First, I’m going to talk to the Keeper. Then I’ll have to form a definite plan of action. Just going out into the town after dark hasn’t got me anywhere. Somewhere there’s a Mister Big; we need to find him otherwise he’ll just keep on recruiting his army, whether it’s the “undead” or anarchist bombers.’

‘Thanks for your help.’ Glanville stared down at the knife. ‘It’s official.’

‘Of course.’

‘She didn’t scare me, just gave me a bit of a start.’

Mayo knew that the Keeper would be in the George and Dragon around nine; it took more than a nude with a slashed throat to put the old boy off his pint.

‘You don’t believe in vampires, do you, Sid?’ he asked in a low voice. The lounge bar was crowded tonight, and out of consideration for the ‘eldest son’ the customers had refrained for asking him about his experience. The buzz of conversation was loud enough to mask a discreet interrogation by John Mayo.

‘Didn’t used to. At least, not after I found out about Father Christmas. There was a story my old grandad used to tell me, Mother got wild with him for scaring me. I thought when I growed up that it was told to young children to make them get down the bed at night, scare ’em off any larks they might’ve had in mind. I guess I was wrong but it’s taken me best part of ninety years to reach that conclusion.’ He paused, lit a cigarette. ‘All seems to be comin’ true these days, too much to be a coincidence.’

‘Care to tell me the story?’

‘Ain’t much story to it.’ The old man cupped a hand over his Woodbine, drew deeply on it. ‘Legend, probably, one o’ them that sounded too daft to put in the books. According to Grandad, and my memory’s as sharp as it was when he told me, those English-Welsh wars was pretty fierce, a lot got killed. Well, the Welsh dead won’t accept defeat, they’re lying there in their graves awaiting the call. And when the time comes they’ll rise up like that there Dracula chap and drive the English back over the border. Well, we’ve got the vampires, haven’t we, and these anarchists are settin’ fire to English-owned buildings. It’s like the dead ’ave got up out of their graves and are takin’ their revenge hundreds of years after they was killed.’

‘Maybe you’ve got a point.’ Mayo bought the other another pint. ‘Legend says what I’ve been thinking all along.’

Gwenda Llanbich was almost paralytic with terror, every nerve and muscle in her body was rigid. Her stomach cramped, she thought she might throw up. Beads of cold sweat oozed out of her pores, her dress clung to her slim figure. Only her brain still functioned – she thought that even that might shut off at any second and plunge her into blissful oblivion. And when that happened she would be at the mercy of the beast which confronted her with its cold stare, the expression of a psychopathic killer.

‘Well, what do you think of him?’ There was even a nervousness in Glyn Idle’s usually confident tone, an unsureness that only somebody who knew him well could detect. ‘His name’s Psycho, by the way.’

The brown and white dog stood motionless in the kitchen doorway, its gaze unwavering, as if deliberately denying human exit from the room, defying them to attempt to escape. You’re here and you’re not going anywhere, don’t even contemplate it.

It had last touched the scales at 73lb, the man who had sold it to Glyn on the previous day had boasted. Its last fight had lasted 5½ hours, he added, and it had never lost a contest, either against dog or badger. Why was he selling it? Well, the breed had had a lot of bad press, there were laws governing their keeping, there was a limit to how many you could keep in secret. Twenty years ago a prime specimen such as Psycho would fetch three and a half to four grand; now you could buy a good ’un for £100. At £75 Psycho was a bargain. And that was a one-off down payment for ensuring the safety of your house against intruders for the next seven or eight years, a fraction of the cost of a good burglar alarm.

An American pit bull terrier, Gwenda recognized it from pictures that had dominated the newspapers a year or so ago when there was a public outcry for the breed to be banned from Britain, those in existence destroyed. The most lethal killing machine in the world, the tabloids had dubbed it. Its jaws were capable of exerting a pressure in excess of 2,000lb. Trained to fight, trained to kill, whether its victim was man or beast was immaterial to this animal. Its jaws were more powerful even than those of a lion or a crocodile which relied on body weight for supremacy in combat. Once those jaws clamped on its prey there was no relenting.

‘Well?’

‘It’s horrible.’ Some movement had returned to her limbs, enough to enable her to edge closer to Glyn. He was the lesser of the two evils right now, at least he offered her some protection. If there was such a thing as protection from this evil creature which he had brought back from Cardiff. If it decided to attack, there was nothing capable of stopping its ferocious onslaught. You depended upon its uncertain temperament being favourable towards yourself. But there was always the chance that that canine time bomb might go off without warning.

‘He’s got used to me now. ’ Glyn’s fingers were as clammy as her own. ‘He knows that I’m his master.’

The dog growled warningly.

‘Good chap.’

The low rumble in its throat died away. It moved forward and Gwenda almost screamed. But it was only interested in its bowl of water. For now. It lapped thirstily; it hadn’t drunk throughout the two-hour car journey.

‘It’ll take time to get used to its surroundings,’ there was relief in Glyn Idle’s voice, ‘and us.’

‘Why … why did you buy it?’ Gwenda remembered something a friend had once told her, albeit jokingly, that people grew to be like the pets they kept. In a way there was already a similarity between this pit bull terrier and Glyn Idle: tenacity, ruthlessness. The only difference was that Glyn’s muscle had run to fat – the dog did not have an ounce of surplus flesh.

‘To keep the vampires and these anarchists off our backs.’ He glanced from Psycho to the window and back again. ‘Once this dog gets the measure of his boundaries nobody will get within fifty yards of this place.’

‘You could get into a lot of trouble for keeping a savage beast, Glyn.’

‘Nobody will know … until it’s too late!’ He laughed but it sounded hollow. ‘Neither vampires nor bombers are likely to complain to the police.’

‘He might … kill somebody.’

His expression of incredulity when he turned towards her was frightening, her first realization of the lengths to which he would go. ‘Vampires are already dead, and the only good anarchist is a dead one.’

Her trembling now was not solely due to the terrier’s presence.

‘Let’s leave him to it and fix ourselves a drink.’ He began edging backwards towards the door that went through to the hallway, taking her with him. Psycho watched their every move with unblinking eyes, but made no attempt to follow them. Only when the door was closed did Gwenda sigh with relief.

‘How did last night go, all peaceful?’ He poured whisky into two tumblers, reached for the soda syphon.

‘Yes.’ Damn it, she would never make a good liar. A perfectly casual question and her answer was loaded with guilt.

‘Sure?’ His eyes were searching her out, suspicious.

‘I stopped over at my place last night.’

‘What the hell for?’ Anger because she had not done as he had assumed, had not played true to form.

‘It’s less creepy when you’re all alone.’

‘Rubbish. You’d’ve been safer here.’

‘I was perfectly safe as it was. And, anyway, if they fire-bombed your office why shouldn’t they burn down your home?’

He scowled, shrugged off his show of petulance with an effort. ‘Well, in future you’ll have a personal bodyguard.’ He inclined his head towards the kitchen and she shuddered. ‘By the way, have you heard if they’ve arrested that nutter in the black fedora?’

Gwenda’s perspiration went hot then cold again. ‘I’ve no idea. Should they have?’

‘He’s an oddball, more than just a tourist. He gives me the creeps. I’d like to know more about him.’

She remembered the previous night, hoped that she was not blushing. ‘I’ve seen him around but I can’t say that I’ve taken much notice of him.’

‘He needs watching.’ Glyn finished his drink, poured himself another. ‘By the way, I think it might be advisable if you worked at home from now on. Here, I mean.’

Her stomach started to cramp again. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Safety reasons. They might have another go at the office, you never know. In fact, you don’t know what these maniacs might try next.’

‘I’d find it claustrophobic.’ She experienced a sense of desperation, a trapped feeling. ‘I like the atmosphere of the town.’

‘The town’s dying. Another few weeks and it’ll be like a morgue. And I can pick up anything we need.’

Their eyes met and suddenly she experienced more than a loathing for this man to whom she had given her body in return for the luxuries around her. There was no mistaking the implication of his words. You don’t leave this house without my permission; last night was your final throw.

‘I see.’ It sounded trite, small talk to cover up her inner feelings, her mounting terror. She remembered John Mayo, wished that he was here right now. But he wasn’t, and if he tried to find her …

Out in the kitchen the pit bull terrier growled menacingly.

‘Perhaps there’s somebody prowling about outside.’ She attempted to create a diversion to hide her obvious unease.

‘I wouldn’t think so.’ He crossed to the latticed window, peered out into the gathering dusk. ‘If there is, then the back door is still open. Psycho can get to them.’

‘Oh!’

‘Strange animals.’ His own nervousness of the dog seemed to have disappeared. ‘If they take to you, fine. If they don’t … I’d be very wary of him for a while, just to be on the safe side. You know, they’re just as likely to attack anybody trying to get out as they are somebody attempting to break in. You’d probably be all right but there’s no point in taking any unnecessary chances, is there?’

Gwenda fought against a sudden surge of panic. She had made up her mind earlier in the day to leave Glyn Idle. She had considered breaking the news to him, decided against it. Because she was a coward and he was persuasive. One way or another he would have talked her into staying. Now he seemed endowed with psychic anticipation, had forestalled her, brought that awful creature back to hold her here as surely as if he had barred the windows and locked the doors. As if he knew all about John Mayo, too, and was one jump ahead of his rival in the black fedora.

‘All right, I’ll stop at home,’ she answered weakly.

‘I knew you’d see sense. I’m going to let Psycho have the run of the grounds, just to make sure nobody mooches about outside when I’m not here.’ He smiled and she tried to come to terms with the fact that she was a prisoner.

Chapter Fifteen

The Keeper was not feeling at all well. As far as he could remember, the last time he had been ill was in 1940 when he had had shingles. He had not had so much as a cold since, not even in that bad winter of the flu epidemic. Baccy immunized you against germs; a couple of pints of mild and brown every night flushed out your system. Onions helped, too – raw, of course. His supper for the last fifty years had consisted of two slices of toast, spread thickly with butter and Bovril and an onion sliced on top of them. Kept you fit. Until now.

He had woken in the middle of the night with sharp pains in his chest – indigestion, probably. He always had fish and chips on a Saturday night, in addition to his supper. But they had never affected him before. He was shaking too, like he had the ague.

He pulled the cord above his head, blinked in the dazzling light from the unshaded bulb. His head throbbed. It was probably all due to a muscular reaction from using the big scythe, he decided. There had to come a time when your body rebelled against hard work. He had returned and finished scything the grass in the churchyard later that day after they had removed Libby Stewart’s body. The damned coppers had cordoned off the patch where it had been lying, forbidden him to go near it. Silly blighters, they might’ve found whatever they were looking for if they had let him cut the grass. Consequently, an unsightly mound of tall, seeded grass spoiled the look of the otherwise neatly kept cemetery. He’d go and finish the job tomorrow – after matins, otherwise somebody would be bitching about him working on the Sabbath.

The pains subsided after a while, left him feeling weak. The sight of Libby’s mutilated corpse wasn’t going to upset him. No way. It had been a shock: coming upon that would disturb anybody, particularly as it was her the little slag, with her legs wide like that. Who wanted to see Libby Stewart in the nude, except maybe those yobbos she hung around with? Gruesome, it was, and he wasn’t thinking of her throat!

Sid Knowles got up out of bed, made a cup of strong tea and smoked a Woodbine, made a mental note to have one fag less on the following day. Because of the cost, for no other reason.

He’d made a right fool of himself by fainting, the memory angered him. It was all very undignified being taken up to the hospital and having Dr King check him over like he was an ailing pensioner.

‘I’ve got work to do,’ the Keeper had grunted irritably.

‘Time you retired.’ There had been an on-going repartee between the two men for the past twenty years. King squinted at the dial on the blood pressure instrument. ‘You’ll go and kill yourself before you make the ton if you don’t ease up.’

They wanted to keep him in overnight but Sid wasn’t having any of that. He was home by three and, after a cup of tea, back down at the churchyard just after four, had the job finished by six. He was tasting the first of his two pints of brown and mild in the George and Dragon just after eight.

‘Got yourself all excited over Libby Stewart, Sid?’ Bar room banter found no place for sympathy. ‘You wanna watch one o’ them there vampires don’t leap up outa ’is grave and bite yer when you’re not lookin’!’ Laughter filled the crowded lounge bar, but there was an underlying tension, drinkers glancing towards the windows, maybe checking whether or not it was getting dark yet. Most of them intended being safely back in their homes by then.

‘I reckon’ that fella in the black hat’s got sommat to do with all this,’ somebody said in a low voice. ‘If ’e ain’t, then what’s ’e doin’ prowlin’ round the town after dark? They reckon ’e was out again last night, somebody seed ’im up West Street.’

Sid had no intention of sitting around the house all Sunday. He contemplated going for a walk up on Panpunton Hill but that was a bit of a waste of time, you might as well do something useful. A sudden thought struck him: he remembered a chance remark the town crier had made in the pub last night. That old clock tower door could do with a coat of paint sometime, Sid. Been in need of it for months but them loonies have sprayed some of their graffiti on it. Be nice if you could get it all tarted up by Monday, there’s some sort of fancy do taking place around the clock.’

Now that would be a nice steady job to occupy his time, book a couple of hours to the council. Sid made up his mind he’d paint the door on Sunday morning and went back to bed. Outside the dawn was just breaking. The pains in his chest were gone and he had stopped shaking. He’d be all right now.

He cycled down to the clock tower – he seldom walked where he could ride – glanced almost guiltily in the direction of the health centre. Dr King was known to rise early and mow his lawn; nobody complained about him. But there was no sign of the GP this morning; he had probably been on night duty and retired to bed. Sid propped his bicycle up against the plinth, extricated the paint can from the handlebars.

ENGLISH GO HOME. DEATH TO THE ENGLISH.

What a bloomin’ disgrace! Sid dabbed at the crude blue letters, intent on obliterating them first. Time they brought the flippin’ birch back, the rope, too, after what’d been goin’ on around here lately. Those dirty hippies were probably responsible for the graffiti, he decided, joining these Anarchists, never happy unless they were demonstrating or protesting about something. The Ban Everything Brigade – he chuckled at his joke. And we have to fork out to keep ’em in filthy idleness!

Now what the bloomin’ ’eck was all this about? A poster on the notice board caught his eye, turquoise paper with scarlet lettering that stood out amidst a host of torn and dog-eared jumble sale and society meeting notices.

OPEN DAY: BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY. IDLE ESTATES CORDIALLY INVITES EVERYBODY TO A WINE AND BUFFET MORNING, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. BY THE CLOCKTOWER. EVERYBODY WELCOME.

Free food and booze, but you could bet your Sunday boots there wouldn’t be any mild and brown; it would be all wine and that kind of fancy drink, the Keeper thought. Some sort of publicity, it would cost Idle an arm and a leg but that wouldn’t worry Glyn. Sales promotion, no-doubt, cheap homes for the Welsh and all that sort of stuff.

He went back to painting the peeling stable-type door that was the entrance to the tower. Now that the lettering was gone, he started systematically at the top. Good stuff this modern paint, he admitted grudgingly, it didn’t run and drip like the old-fashioned kind, you could work a lot faster, too.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ He grunted aloud, stared as his paint brush knocked against the heavy padlock. It clicked open, dangled by its clasp. ‘Strewth, the blighter’s unlocked!’

A sense of guilt, self-remonstration, had him glancing around. He had checked the clock a couple of weeks ago. In all probability he hadn’t closed the padlock properly. It was a bit temperamental, needed a squirt of oil. Or a new one. Blimey, the clock tower had been left open all that time. If those hippies had twigged they’d’ve been dossing inside it! Still, no harm done, nobody need ever know.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing, you silly old fart!’

The words, addressed to himself, coincided with the screech of tyres from the Land Rover, Dr King’s go-anywhere-in-an-emergency vehicle. The greying doctor had an expression of annoyance on his lived-in features. He did not tolerate fools gladly. Age was immaterial. Yet there was an underlying tone of admiration in his remonstration.

The Keeper almost dropped his can of paint. ‘I ’ad to get the graffiti off, might as well paint the bloomin’ door whilst I’m on, ’adn’t I?

‘Slipping up in your dotage, aren’t you, Keeper?’

‘Eh?’ Strewth, the old geezer was a sharp ’un, he hadn’t noticed the open padlock, had he?

‘Clock’s two minutes slow.’

‘It ain’t.’

‘It ay!’

‘Cor, blimey!’ Sid stepped back, pulled the gold pocket watch from inside his grubby overalls, a family heirloom, made in Hereford, that went back to his great-grandfather, checked it against the clock face up above, sighed his resignation. As usual, the doc hadn’t missed a trick. ‘Must be the bloomin’ starlings, they’re always roostin’ up there.’

The Land Rover’s engine revved, the tyres squealed as the vehicle shot away. Dr King was not one to waste time in idle banter. He had made his point, scored over his adversary. If Sid Knowles chose not to take his advice, that was his problem.

I’ll finish the painting, then I’ll fix the clock, and the flippin’ padlock. He resumed his painting with an urgency that defied the increasing morning heat.

The first of the hippies had arrived, a grimed youth wearing filthy brown denims, his greasy hair partly tied in a ponytail, the unfettered strands doing their best to hide a garish earring. A girl followed behind him propelling a pushchair with an unwashed child asleep in the seat and a dog of indeterminable species tied to the handle.

‘Moses, I think.’ The newcomer broke wind, proceeded to roll a cigarette. ‘Or Picasso reincarnated.’

‘The health food shop’s closed!’ There was a note of dismay in his companion’s voice as she stared across the street.

‘It’s Sunday,’ he sneered, ‘they’re probably in church.’

Something bounced metallically on the tarmac, clinked against the plinth. Sid Knowles checked his anger. It wasn’t any use remonstrating with this lot, all you could do was pick up their litter. The council wouldn’t do anything about it.

‘Mornin’, Keeper!’ It was the tall fellow, his name momentarily escaped Sid, he thought the other lived somewhere up on Radnor Drive. A moustache and broken teeth, fourteen stone of solid muscle. The type to …

‘Except for these friggin’ parasites.’ The Keeper inclined his head to where the hippies were engaged in low conversation, probably discussing himself.

‘Bloody vermin,’ the tall fellow grinned. ‘If they get bothering you, just tip me off.’

‘I’ll let you know.’ He dipped his brush again. The door might need a second coat, the paint was soaking right in; he wondered if the tin would run to two.

There, that would do for now, it would probably be dry in an hour, he might hang on and see if the remainder of the gloss would stretch to another coat. In the meantime he turned his attention to the padlock, found a can of oil in the bag on his bike. There wasn’t much wrong with the lock, just a bit stiff, nothing that a squirt of lubrication wouldn’t put right. All the same, he was sure he had snapped it shut last time – he was meticulous about such things.

Now for the clock: that shouldn’t have gone wrong. The only time it ever faltered was during heavy snow. It was probably the birds – their droppings had somehow got on the mechanism. Sid hesitated, glanced from his bike to the hippies. A couple more had joined the first arrivals and there was no way that he was leaving his bicycle unattended whilst they were around.

He pushed the door wide, whitened his fingertips on the paint, wiped them on his overalls. He dragged his bike through into the interior of the plinth, a place that reminded him of his kitchen at home. A chap could live in here – there were many that had to endure worse accommodation.

‘Moses is going to practise his stunt-riding.’ The hippy’s face floated on the warm breeze. ‘Bet you he’s going to ride round that ledge on top of the clock.’

Laughter followed but Sid ignored it. He scraped the door shut. And that was when he began to feel decidedly odd again.

It was gloomy in here, smelled musty, a stale dankness. No, it wouldn’t be a good place to live, really. Some of the small diamond-shaped panes were gone; if you peeped through one of them you had an unrestricted view right down to the bottom of the town. A vantage point, a place from which to see without being seen. See what? That was a point, Sid reflected, there was nothing to see in Knighton except damned hippies. Or vampires. He thought what an excellent place it would be to look for the latter after dark. He shivered, it was none of his business. Another frightening thought: it was the kind of place they might lie up in during the daylight hours. His eyes roved the cramped enclosure. Relief, because there wasn’t anybody else in here. Outside people were talking, laughing; they might have been in another world, a million miles away.

There were twinges in his chest, sharp pains that came and went. Dr King was right, he should have stayed at home, taken the day off. Not because it was Sunday, just for a rest. He lowered himself down on the cold concrete floor, sat with his back resting against the wall. A passing vehicle vibrated the stonework, started him shaking again.

He’d rest for a minute or two, then go and fix the clock. After that he really would go home.

There was another smell in here, one that he only just noticed, a whiff that came and went, a lingering odour that was foreign to the mustiness. Like a woman’s perfume, he thought, the place stinks like a boudoir. It could be that some of these wenches have discovered that the padlock wasn’t snapped shut, been bringing their boyfriends in here, he thought. Girls like Libby Stewart. Suppose there was another of ’em lying in here, in the nude, her throat cut! His mouth went dry at the thought, his gaze searching every nook and cranny, peering hard at a pile of rubbish in the corner. This place needed a damned good clean out, perhaps next week when he felt better he’d …

What’s that?

It was a small box of some kind lying on the floor beneath the window, coloured cardboard with lettering on it. It looked strangely out of place in here, not just another item of litter.

As he stared, his vision darkened perceptibly, it was like peering through a dirt-grimed window into the dusk of a misty evening. His head ached, his temples thumped in time with the pounding of his heart. His breath wheezed in his lungs and the pain in his chest stepped up a gear.

It would pass, he clung to that hope, just like it had in the night. But he was curious to know what it was that lay there on the floor. Nobody except himself came in here, so if there had been intruders then they must have left it behind. It might give him a clue to who had trespassed in here.

He stretched out a hand, winced at the pain generated by the effort. His outstretched fingers brushed against the box, closed over it, but he had to wait for the spasm in his chest to pass before he could lift up whatever it was.

As he’d thought, it was just a box. There was something printed on the grey sleeve – Maxell Epitaxial Videocassette 180. Of course, it was one of those video films, he’d seen them in the shop down the street – new-fangled, time-wasting so-called entertainment. So that was all it was. Sid was disappointed. He wasn’t even interested in sliding the cassette out of the sleeve to see what it was. He tossed it back on to the floor in disgust.

So some blighter had been in here, just as he’d suspected. Youngsters, a girl stinking of perfume, and her boyfriend. They’d gone to one of the places in town to hire a video and on the way back they’d noticed that the padlock on the door was undone. So they’d popped in. No real harm done … unless they’d been up the ladder messing about with the clock.

Sid sighed. In which case he’d better make the effort to get up there and see for himself.

He felt better, just weak, as he had in the night. Climbing the old fixed iron ladder was no problem so long as you took it steady. He stood up, had to support himself against the wall whilst a wave of dizziness passed. He checked that he had his screwdriver and spanners in his pocket, heard them clink. Just one last effort and then he’d go home, rest up for a bit.

Halfway up the ladder the giddiness returned, brought with it a wave of red-tinged darkness that had the Keeper clutching at the rungs with sweaty, bony hands, gasping aloud as he fought for his balance. He swayed precariously, somehow held on.

And suddenly he got the feeling that he was no longer alone, that there was somebody else up here with him in the towering blackness.

‘Who’s there?’ A frightened croak escaped his cracked lips; it was as if somebody had thumped him in the chest with a sledgehammer.

He heard mocking laughter that might have been inside his own pounding, roaring head. He looked up, saw the outline of a girl crouched on the platform above him, and had it not been for his breathlessness he would have screamed his terror aloud.

For there was no mistaking the naked silhouette and the bloodied features of Libby Stewart.

She shimmered in a scarlet haze like an avenging demon straight from hell. But it was not her full lips that smiled and mocked him, it was her slit throat, dripping fresh blood as it spoke.

‘You shouldn’t have come here, old man. Go on, look at me like you did before, get yourself a hard-on.’

He dragged his eyes from her mutilation, stared up into the dark recesses of her open thighs. Something warm and sticky dripped on to his hand, made him snatch it away and he almost lost his balance.

‘You found the box, but you didn’t look to see what was inside it, did you?’ Her laugh gurgled and bubbled, something splattered on to his upturned face. ‘You’d better go back and look, hadn’t you? Go on, then climb back up here and tell me what you found.’

He couldn’t move, his limbs appeared to have lost every vestige of movement; it was all he could do to remain on the ladder. It was so dark now that he was mercifully spared the sight of that foul obscenity that crouched above him.

‘Go on!’

‘I … I …’

The agony was unbearable, hit him with stunning force, tore at his fingers, wrenched them from their hold. He slipped, fell backwards, his frail body crunching and clanging on the old ladder, an inverted form that struggled weakly, held there by the heavy working boots that had somehow jammed between the rungs.

He twitched feebly, his sight gone as he lay suspended in a deep pit of stale-smelling blackness, braced himself for the fall that would not come. He heard her laughing somewhere, head her voice floating in the claustrophobic blackness.

‘You never looked inside the box, old man.’

Slowly, mercifully, oblivion numbed his mind as death eased the agony in his chest. But not even that could dislodge the boots that were jammed securely between the rungs of the ladder.

Outside a group of tourists had gathered to read the notice inviting them to eat and drink on the morrow, courtesy of Idle Estates.

Chapter Sixteen

That evening John Mayo gave full rein to his hunches. At the moment neither he nor the police were making any headway. Earlier in the day he had had a meeting with Glanville; the detective was under pressure from Chief Superintendent Greenleaf. The latter needed a scapegoat. If they had nothing positive by Wednesday then he was requesting the assistance of Scotland Yard, possibly MI5. After all, there was terrorist activity, there had been killings. They could not tolerate any more.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t involve you.’ Glanville had promised Mayo, ‘but I’m just hoping they might assign you off their own bat.’

‘They won’t until I report back for duty.’

‘And you’re not ready to do that yet?’

‘No, there’s something I have to find out for myself first.’

‘All right, I’ll accept that. But, Christ alive, they’re covering their tracks all right. That Stewart girl should have given us a lead – she’s not got brains, just a local hussy.’

‘They used her for a purpose, probably a stooge. And when she failed them they got rid of her and presented us with a red herring at the same time. She wasn’t a vampire, if there are such things, just somebody they set up. And, according to the news, there were two more English holiday homes burned down last night.’

‘Not on our patch.’ There was no mistaking the relief in the detective’s voice.

‘No, Carmarthen and Harlech. But it’s all part of the same set-up. What’s behind this big party that Idle’s throwing open to the world and his wife tomorrow?’

‘Publicity. He hopes to become an MP for Plaid Cymru – what better way than to provide homes for the Welsh?’

‘All right, but is it just panache?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘He’s big and powerful, according to reports, a nasty bit of work.’

‘What reports?’

‘Nothing that affects official investigations. Just something I heard.’

‘All right, but he’s clean as far as our enquiries go.’

Mayo was worried about Gwenda. The office by the clock tower had been open, there was no sign of her. He had checked her place, she wasn’t there either. So she had to be in Glyn Idle’s house, the Court. Maybe he’d check that out later, after dark.

It was nine when he entered the bar of the Red Lion. Heads turned, turned back. The man in the black fedora was getting to be a familiar sight around town – no longer was he a cause for undue interest.

He permitted himself a low alcohol lager, they didn’t stock Kaliber. People were edgy, they had every reason to be. The death toll was mounting.

It was ten when he stepped back out into the street. Downtown the fairground was a blaze of kaleidoscopic lights and blaring music. Unbelievably, the fair had been allowed to operate on a Sunday; doubtless Glyn Idle had used his influence, he was bent on creating a brave new world for the young this side of the border. The Church was out of favour, it was no ally of his, which again threatened to send tiny shivers up Mayo’s spine.

The fair seemed to draw him; he made no attempt to resist, the cacophony of music calling people like a Pied Piper. The balmy air was heavy with the smell of frying, fish and chips and hot dogs, permeated by the sickly sweet odour of candy floss.

The sideshows and rides extended to the full area of the community car park, avenues of gaudy tents on rough ground, youngsters seeming to have found the money to squander and take their chance of winning paltry prizes.

Air rifles thudded and pinged on steel targets. It cost you three quid to win a toy that you could have bought for less than a pound uptown. Mothers were keeping a strict watch on small children; adults were only here under juvenile pressure.

Mayo’s shrewd eyes observed from beneath the brim of his fedora. He saw faces, stored the features in his memory, discarded none.

The Himalaya was the main attraction, a switchback ride that churned up fish and chips and candyfloss if you didn’t have the stomach for it. The multi-coloured lights on cars and track tried to match the belt for speed: migraine material for those who suffered with the complaint. The queue stretched as far as the cattle market, masochists and first-timers who had no idea what lay in store for them. He mingled with the crowd, tried to ignore the screaming.

The ride slowed to a standstill, passengers alighted unsteadily; a child vomited. Others were clambering up into the vacant seats; the proprietors had no time for intervals, standing rides cost them money. And that was when Mayo saw the girl for whom he had been searching.

It was Penny.

Recognition, realization that the impossible had become possible, hit him with stunning force. He reeled, felt sick, prayed to the God he had worshipped as a child that He might destroy her there and then, that there might be an accident on the Himalaya.

The ride shuddered, jerked, started to move.

Stop, please stop!

There was no way it was going to halt. The lights seemed to merge the cars into one giant multi-coloured snake, a writhing monster boa constrictor that had suddenly swallowed its human prey, gorged on them as it twisted and turned: you heard them shrieking in the hades of its belly. Three minutes, maybe more or less, and then it would regurgitate them, a morass of unrecognizable humanity.

Mayo stood transfixed, gave up trying to pick her out as the machine hurtled on a crazy circuit, faster and faster.

And faster.

The passengers were shrieking, yelling. Screaming. Somebody had been sick, he smelled the nauseating odour, retched himself. Logic told his confused mind that he only had to stand close when they disembarked, that there was no other way she was going to leave that ride.

The music was louder, deafening. They had turned it up to try to drown the screams. He glanced behind him – the queue was growing, those at the front were pressed up against the barrier, jostling one another, fearing that they might be spared their nightmarish experience.

Faces came and went, it was impossible to identify the hurtling features, contorted with screams. Rising, dipping, twisting to right and left; upturned, hands gripping the safety rails, hair streaming.

Mayo’s shudders began, his whole body goose pimpled, it was as though flesh and blood had turned to ice. Pull yourself together.

Somehow he got himself under control, moved forward to mingle with the spectators. Once the ride stopped, passengers would alight wherever they finished, would disperse in all directions. No way must he lose her, he must confront her, plead for an explanation. Please don’t be undead, let there be another reason.

The Himalaya dipped sharply, shot upwards again. A handkerchief floated down like a child’s toy parachute, drifted away with the breeze. A yellow balloon bobbed in pursuit.

Surely time was up, the proprietors would not give them a bonus for their money.

Down, up again.

Stop!

It started to slow as if at his command, a grating and grinding, the lights distinguishable by their colours again. But not the faces. Heads bowed, hidden as if in shame at their terror, sick and dizzy. The crowd had pushed forward. Get off and let us on.

‘Stand back, please!’

A boy jumped off before it stopped, sprawled on the ground, picked himself up and ran. Others waited for the machine to screech to a halt.

Figures, unrecognizable silhouettes, some leaping down and running away, others holding on to the barrier whilst their sense of balance returned. A small boy was crying, holding on to his mother, a teenage girl was shrieking at her boyfriend because he had persuaded her to go on with him. Seats were emptying, filling almost immediately; the attendant stood back: they had paid, it was no longer his concern. He yelled up at some youths who had crammed in, three to a car.

Penny, where are you?

Multi-coloured silhouettes, shapes without names. Mayo pushed through the spectators, ignored abuse from an elderly woman when he trod on her foot. Get out of my way, you fools, you don’t understand?

‘Stop bloody pushin’, will yer!’

Then he saw her briefly. She balanced on the side, leaped down, began to walk away quickly in the direction of the sideshows. The crowd had swelled, drinkers from the pubs intent on spending the last of their money here and to hell with tomorrow.

‘Watch where you’re going, mister!’

Mayo pushed past an obese figure that stuffed its mouth ravenously from a chip bag, dodged a bunch of youths. She looked as though she was going towards the quoits stall, changed direction at the last minute and walked down a darkened alleyway between the rows. He cut down an adjacent one, muttered his relief when he saw her on the same row, going in the opposite direction.

He narrowed the distance between them, then slowed his pace. Calculated thinking was replacing emotion, logic where previously there had been near-panic. This is an assignment, he told himself. He must follow her without her being aware of his presence, see without being seen. Approaching her here was no good. Piss off, John, I don’t want to talk to you. Fuck off, else I’ll call the police and have you arrested for molesting me. She had had every opportunity to make contact on the last occasion, but she had fled instead. He must establish where she lived, plan again. That was Step One.

The screaming began again behind him, the mighty Himalaya was devouring another batch of victims. Music blared, tried to make itself heard over the din, a kind of theme tune to a movie in which you were an actor. For real.

Penny was heading towards the big hall but she would not be going inside because it was closed. She might go into the toilets. She didn’t. On past the smaller car park where the stock lorries parked on market days. The street was poorly lit, she was hurrying as though she was afraid of the dark.

Now she was out on the main road and he could see her clearly. From the rear. She wore a dark jogging suit that matched her short hair, white pumps on her feet. Turn back, let me see your face. He paused in the shadows in readiness but she did not look back. She turned left, headed out towards the adjacent council estates of Fronhir and Pontfaen. He had to drop back because the roadway was brightly lit, afraid that she might turn and see him, recognize him. But she never once glanced behind her, had no idea that she was being followed.

The idea that she might be a decoy crossed his mind. No, if that was the case she would have lured him into a trap the first time. And, anyway, if it was a set-up then he’d go for it – it was the only way to get to the bottom of all this. Instinctively he tilted the brim of his fedora, felt the reassurance of the weight inside. That time Penny had searched his bag, found the gun, she’d asked him why he carried it. He’d told her – in case he needed it. That was true right now.

He saw her stop in front of a house, and pressed himself into the cover of an overhanging untrimmed privet hedge. Again, she showed no sign of being suspicious, clicked the gate and walked down the path.

Mayo dared not delay, there was always the possibility that this was a ruse, that she did know she was being followed. She might walk around the house, leave by the back garden fence, throw him off her trail. He moved forward with the stealth of a hunting leopard, hugging the shadows until he was directly opposite the house.

A For Sale sign leaned precariously on the unmown front lawn. A semi-detached house, it was obviously one that had been purchased by the existing tenant, otherwise they would not have gone to the expense of a stone-cladded porch. Likewise they would not have been able to put the house on the market. The agents negotiating the sale were, predictably, Idle Estates.

Mayo wasted no time, moved silently down the flagged path. A light showed in the hallway as he eased the porch door open. His heart was thudding; for one brief second he considered turning back, walking away and leaving his beloved to her fate. No, whatever the outcome, he had to know for his own peace of mind. He owed it to Penny, too. Just one final meeting. It didn’t have to be any more than that.

He rapped on the door, fought to get his breathing under control. There was a pounding in his ears that went against all the rules.

He sensed, rather than heard, a movement somewhere in the house, a shuffling of feet in the kitchen. The hall light came on, he saw a silhouette through the opaque glass, a slim figure coming towards the door.

She hesitated, called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘John.’ He scarcely recognized his own hoarse whisper.

‘What do you want?’

‘I have to talk to you.’

She hesitated, as any girl might do when faced with the prospect of opening the door to a stranger after dark. Particularly in Knighton.

‘Just a minute.’ She fumbled with the latch, and he heard a bolt being withdrawn.

The door eased open about six inches, enough for him to see her features clearly. He froze, every nerve in his body tensed, his stomach balled.

It was Penny.

Chapter Seventeen

Dr King was anticipating a busy night. Maybe he should have let one of the younger doctors take over for the nocturnal duty – they had both offered. He had refused in his usual kindly but blunt manner because he wanted to see the job through. Job satisfaction, it was called; it began at medical college and ended with retirement. Before long he would be handing over to them, anyway, but tonight had to be his on a matter of principle.

Fights and injuries were a foregone conclusion on fair nights, there would be ugly wounds to stitch and dress, maybe even a trip to the casualty unit in Hereford. All so bloody unnecessary, not only allowing the fair an extra session but permitting them to open on a Sunday night. It was asking for trouble.

That fellow Idle was behind it all, it was part of his publicity drive: psyche up the yob element, promise them cheap homes and they would vote for him when the time came. He was pushing the English out his way, the anarchists were doing it theirs. Between them Knighton would become a ghost town because there would be no investment: kids didn’t have money to set up businesses.

The GP was glad that his retirement was close. He wouldn’t stop in Knighton, he’d sell up – to Idle Estates as everybody else was doing. Much of the property the estate agents bought for themselves, supposedly for resale. It stank of a monopoly.

Dr King’s current irritability was due to one patient, that stubborn old fool, Sid Knowles. The silly bugger ought to have known better than to go straight out odd-jobbing after an experience like he’d had. God forbid, finding a mutilated corpse was enough to give a forty-year-old a heart attack, never mind somebody of ninety-four. Sid’s stubbornness and senility had combined to make life just that little bit more trying for an overworked doctor.

He had advised the old man, and if the other chose to ignore that advice then most doctors would have washed their hands of him. Not Dr Mervyn King: he had a duty to his patient, he even secretly admired the Keeper. He would check up on the daft old bleeder.

‘I’ll be back shortly,’ he called up the stairs to his wife as he went out through the front door. He never told her where he was going, all part of patient confidentiality which he adhered to strictly; if he was needed then there was a radio in the Peugeot.

Well, the town clock was still two minutes slow so perhaps the Keeper had heeded his words, just been too proud to pack up and go home straightaway. King sat with the engine ticking over, watched a crowd of people walking down from the Narrows. It seemed that almost everybody from up the top end of town was fairbound. Silly buggers!

The door into the clock tower glistened white in the street lighting, shone with a dazzling newness that had not been apparent for some years. King sucked his lips, so Sid had stopped on to paint the door, maybe felt too tired afterwards to climb up and fix the clock. The GP glanced at his watch: there was time to take a ride round to the Keeper’s house, check that he was okay. He let out the clutch sharply, startled some loitering teenagers.

Sid Knowles’s house was in total darkness. Mervyn King debated whether or not to knock on the door. No, he decided that if the old man had gone to bed then to disturb him was counter-productive. He made a mental note to put him on his list of home calls for the next day.

It was at that moment that the call came through requesting his presence immediately down at the fairground. There had been an accident on the Himalaya, somebody was bleeding heavily.

Dr King’s speedometer needle flickered on 65 as he hurtled down past the clock tower, squealed his tyres on the bend, and sent up a cloud of dust as he slewed to a halt by the hot dog stall.

The police were already there, two cars with their beacons flashing; a uniformed officer was attempting to keep the growing crowd back. The ride was at a standstill, its coloured lights provided a bizarre setting.

King grabbed his bag, got out of the car. Whoever had authorized a Sunday fair had a lot to answer for.

Jeffrey had come over from Birmingham with his mates for a long weekend. It seemed an interesting and relatively cheap way to spend the Bank Holiday, and if they couldn’t find suitable digs then they’d sleep out in a park – it was warm enough these nights.

There had been a jokey sort of feature on vampires in the Evening Mail last Thursday; the writer obviously didn’t believe in the undead and had attempted to convince his readership of that. If anything, the piece had plugged tourism; folks paid a fortune to visit Dracula’s castle in Transylvania: Knighton was only a tenner’s worth of petrol away and there was no entrance fee.

Originally, it had been Jim’s idea that the four of them should go; the alternative was a day trip to Alton Towers. There wouldn’t be vampires, naturally, but you could still go and search for them; thousands went to Loch Ness on a monster hunt every year knowing that they wouldn’t see anything. It was a safe bet, and there was always the chance of picking up some Welsh birds for a one-night stand.

They had travelled up to Wales on the Friday night in Paul’s old Cortina estate, slept in the car the first night. Saturday they had mooched the town; there had been a scuffle with some hippies and Alan had got a bloody nose. Then everything had let rip, there was a body in the churchyard – which all made for a bonus.

The Brummies were thrown out of the Plough before ten on Sunday night, and the fairground seemed the obvious place to go. Jim and Paul were throwing up, they weren’t used to ale in quantity, and Alan had latched on to a bird. Which left Jeffrey on his own. The Himalaya was a sort of masochistic compensation, in the same way that when he was a boy his parents used to buy him a ‘stopping at home’ present when they didn’t want to take him on holiday with them.

Tall and gangly, Jeffrey was in no way good-looking; his nose was too long, his hair a nondescript mousy colour and never stayed where it was meant to; he wasn’t interested in clothes, wore anything that was serviceable. So he never had much luck with the girls except with those who couldn’t get the chaps they wanted, either.

His father had said on more than one occasion that a good shaking was what he wanted; in all innocence he had taken that advice and paid for a seat on the Himalaya. And he couldn’t believe his luck when a petite, dark-haired girl wearing a tracksuit slid into the seat beside him.

The ride was still filling up, it would be a couple of minutes before they were off. He glanced sideways. Cor, he wouldn’t mind a bit o’ that!

‘Hallo,’ She turned, smiled coyly, had to shout to make herself heard. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Jeffrey.’ He was embarrassed, even his name sounded unfashionable. ‘What’s yours?’

She said something but it was lost in the din of the fairground. It didn’t matter, anyway.

‘I’m scared.’ She leaned across, put her lips right up against his ear. ‘Really scared. Wish I hadn’t come but it’s too late now. Would you mind if I held on to you when we start?’

‘No … not at all,’ he swallowed. ‘In fact, I was hoping that somebody might let me hold on to them, too.’

‘That’s great,’ she giggled, ‘then we can hold on to each other, can’t we?’

‘Where do you come from?’ The question seemed irrelevant but was shouted with insistence in his ear. Answer me!

‘Brum.’ His reply was drowned in the roar of the motor accelerating for the take-off.

‘Where?’ She stretched over, put her ear up against his mouth. Its strong-smelling perfume made him feel heady. ‘Birmingham.’

She nodded to indicate that she had heard.

They jerked forward, started to roll. ‘Here we go.’ She leaned across as far as the roll bar would let her, slipped an arm around his neck, the other encircled his waist. Passengers were already beginning to scream in anticipation, the coloured lights were blinding, there was no hiding place even when you closed your eyes.

‘How are you feeling?’ Her slender fingers were rubbing his thigh, beginning to arouse him. He held on tightly, felt the blood rush to his head as they did the first loop. His breathing was speeding up in time with the Himalaya.

‘Ooooh!’ He groaned, closed his eyes. He had to be dreaming all this.

‘I want to kiss you.’ He sensed that rushing night air cooling his groin, her fingers starting to smooth over his stiffening flesh. ‘Please let me kiss you.’

‘All right.’ He had difficulty in adjusting his vision, the world was orbiting crazily, a many-coloured aurora borealis against which her head was silhouetted, her features in shadow. Upside down, rolling; he knew she was smiling even though he could not see her lips.

He turned his head, cricked his neck. Waited. Lower down his body she kept up the momentum, he couldn’t hold out much longer.

His lips awaited hers; they brushed lightly and her head ducked. The Himalaya started to roll again.

That was when he screamed, jerked and tried to flay his arms but she had him pinioned in his seat. The pain in his neck was excruciating, something pierced his flesh, sank deep and bit with unbelievable ferocity.

His struggles were futile, she had him trapped, the swaying of the car was to her advantage. She was biting and tearing at his neck, a ravenous she-beast devouring his flesh and blood. His T-shirt was saturated, clinging stickily to his sparse torso; he felt thick warm liquid trickling down to his waist, beginning to soak into his jeans.

He screamed in terror, but everybody was screaming. Her mouth was like a suction pad, her teeth razor-sharp and still biting. Jeffrey’s world was darkening, even the bright lights were dimming, his struggles grew more feeble. He sensed a familiar feeling lower down, one that had his thighs jerking and his sneakered feet drumming on the floor of the car, but those moments of ecstasy were swamped in a tidal wave of agony.

Then even the pain was numbed, as he began to slide into a deep, dark abyss. The screams of the other passengers, the roar of the Himalaya, the blinding lights began to fade. He sensed her relinquish her bite, extricate her hold; he felt her wipe her fingers on his trousers to cleanse them rather than to remove the evidence of her deed, contemptuous of him by the way she rubbed them.

Jeffrey’s head lolled back, she pulled it forward to hide his bleeding neck, made ready to disembark the moment the ride began to slow. Then there was firm ground beneath her feet and she was walking away into the fairground crowd, seeking to be well clear before they discovered the latest victim of vampirism.

Dr Mervyn King knelt to examine the blood-soaked figure laid out beneath the Himalaya, had to probe the neck until he found the wound. It was identical to those on Gareth Ingram and Billy Quick. He felt for the pulse: there was none.

‘He’s a stiff.’ He didn’t waste time with niceties. ‘You’d better get him down to the mortuary for identification and a PM. Dracula has hungered again, has feasted and is, hopefully, well satisfied for the night.’

‘Same as before?’ Glanville asked, knew what the answer would be.

‘Identical.’

‘Call up every available officer,’ the detective addressed Sergeant Davison. ‘Cordon off the fairground. Nobody goes home until they’ve been questioned.’

But, of course, the vampire killer would already be gone. Police procedures had to be followed, but all too often they were just a formality. House-to-house enquiries had fallen way behind the recent spate of killings. The vampires were having a field day and they knew it.

Ian Glanville wondered where Mayo was. Right now he could have used him.

Dr King carefully wiped the blood from his fingers, closed his bag and walked back towards his car. His job was done, there was nothing more he could do here. Maybe this would put a stop to the usual fair night brawls and he could get some sleep. It was an ill wind …

Chapter Eighteen

It wasn’t Penny.

A mixture of shock and sheer relief reduced Mayo’s usually lightning reactions to slow motion. The features that stared out through the gap in the door might have been those of his dead wife, or her identical twin. Even the hairstyle was the same, cut short and wavy. Only the expression differed, the sheer malevolence that could never have been Penny’s, dead or undead.

When she spoke the voice was harsh and nasal. ‘Piss off!’ Just in time his foot jammed in the doorway, preventing him from being shut out. His shoulder forced the door back, momentarily threw this girl, whoever she was, off balance.

‘We’ve got some talking to do.’ He squeezed inside. ‘There’s a lot of questions I’ve got to ask.’

‘I’ll … call the police.’ Her threat, her nervous glance towards the telephone on the wall, were unconvincing.

‘Go ahead,’ he smiled humourlessly. ‘Ask for Detective Inspector Glanville in person, tell him that you’ve got Sergeant Mayo with you and if he’s got five minutes to spare we’d be delighted to have his company. Tell him the subject under discussion is … vampires!’

She started visibly, seemed to wilt like an unwatered plant in the midday sun. ‘I knew you were a cop,’ she hissed. There was no doubt in Mayo’s mind now that this girl was not Penny. He also doubted her supposedly supernatural powers. She was scared. Damned scared.

‘I want to know what’s going on.’ He closed the door behind him with his foot and added, ‘Every last detail.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘All right. I’ll call the police, then.’

‘Wait!’ She was on the verge of panic. ‘Maybe, like you say, we should talk.’

He had not missed the sudden gleam of desperation in her eyes, a warning that enabled him to grab her wrist just as she pulled the knife from the fold in her baggy tracksuit, twisted her wrist until she cried out with pain. A stiletto, identical to the one that Libby Stewart had used, bounced on the linoleum.

‘Now we can talk.’ He kicked out, sent the weapon spinning through into the adjacent kitchen. ‘Maybe you’d like to see what I carry before we go any further?’

The fedora came off, a sweeping gesture of mock gallantry, and she found herself staring down the barrel of a Smith & Wesson .38 pistol.

‘I could make an awful mess of you with this.’ His tone was matter-of-fact, a chilling statement that was devoid of bluff, no vain threat which he would not carry out if the need arose. He was as ruthless a killer as herself, she was in no doubt of that. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lynnette.’

He nodded. It meant nothing to him, he did not even trouble to ask her second name. Both might be false, probably were. That was something that could be verified later: right now there were more important things he needed to know. ‘Let’s go and sit down in the other room, we might be quite some time. I see you’ve got blood on your clothes. Yours or somebody else’s?’

There was a hopelessness in her bowed figure now, a resignation to her fate in the way she lowered herself into an easy chair. Her features needed no whitening cosmetics to complete her vampire role.

‘Let’s start at the very beginning. ’ Mayo laid his pistol in his lap; from that position he could pick it up and guarantee the accuracy of his first shot in one second flat. ‘Tell me about these so-called vampires.’

‘They’re just like me.’ She dropped her head into her hands and for a moment appeared to fight back tears. ‘High on crack. We use these, by the way.’

She fumbled something from the pocket of her tunic, had his fingers resting momentarily on the pistol, tossed a small object across to him. He caught it deftly, weighed it in the palm of his hand, studied it in amazement: steel dentures with protruding fangs, designed to slip over a set of teeth. The points were honed to needle sharpness, bore traces of blood that were still damp and sticky.

‘You’ve killed recently.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Yes, some guy on the Himalaya, they’ve probably found him by now. Just a bloke I picked at random. So long as he was English, it didn’t matter a shit who he was.’

‘What’s behind it all?’ Mayo guessed but he needed confirmation of his suspicions in her own words.

‘It’s the only way we get crack. We’re just creating terror, I guess. It’s working.’

‘Drive the English out of Wales in an unprecedented terror campaign, eh? Novel, to say the least and, like you say, it’s scaring the shit out of everybody. But there’s a lot more to it than that.’

‘Drugs. Not just for us, we have to peddle ’em. Soft to begin with, then we wean ’em on to the hard stuff and we’ve got ’em for life.’

‘For as long as they live!’ Mayo snapped. ‘The Welsh army of the undead, lying in their graves for centuries just waiting for the call. And who calls them?’

‘No idea, and neither has anybody else.’

‘Who gives you your orders?’ He leaned forward. By Christ, he’d beat that out of her if he had to.

‘A guy who calls himself Dork. You’ve probably seen him around town, a hippy with a ponytail, he’s mostly to be found hanging around the clock tower.’

‘I know the guy. You live here?’

‘No, this place is just a hideaway if we need it. We doss on the peace convoy up at the Cantlin Stone, if you know where that is.’

He did, only too well. The memory was hurtful, like a rerun of an old film. Bitter nostalgia.

‘How do you get into town?’

‘Dork brings us. His old bus is parked up by the Garth.’

‘I want your Mister Big.’

‘I hope you get him. You can see what he’s done to us.’

‘Yeah. You start the fires, too, burn down English holiday homes and the like?’

She nodded and they both fell silent. He knew that she had spoken the truth, but he got the feeling that she was holding something back. Because she was terrified, not of himself but of the consequences if she told him. He waited.

‘Well?’

‘I don’t know for sure but … something terrible’s going to happen.’

‘Like what?’

‘I told you, I don’t know. Only Dork said that we all have to be clear of town by midday tomorrow. I can’t tell you any details because I don’t know. Only that Dork was scared and he doesn’t scare easy.’

Mayo sensed the shivers starting at the base of his spine, tensed as they ran their full course right up into his scalp. He waited for them to go away. Whatever it was she referred to, it was something more dangerous, infinitely more evil, than anything to which she had confessed.

‘I see.’ He deliberated whether or not to call Glanville. He decided not to, certainly not without more definite information. His pressing dilemma was what to do with Lynnette: it would be wasting time to have her taken into custody. His thoughts switched to Gwenda, where the hell was she? His priority was to find her, ensure that she was safe. Now that he had tracked down the vampire who resembled Penny, it eased his feeling of guilt. First, he would check out Glyn Idle’s place, that was the obvious starting point. As for Lynnette …

‘I’ll have to be going.’ He stood up, replaced the .38 in its headband holster, adjusted his fedora. ‘I’ve work to do.’

Lynnette was perplexed, uncertain of her own role, had expected him to arrest her, maybe call the police.

‘I …’

‘Perhaps you’d close and lock the door after me.’

‘Sure.’ She rose, turned away from him.

That was when he hit her, a sudden blow with the flat of his hand, one that embodied expertise rather than force, found its target with unerring accuracy at the base of her neck. She sagged, just a short expulsion of breath; unconsciousness was instant.

Mayo caught her, guided her limp body on to the settee, laid it out with all the reverence of a mortician, folded her hands across her breast. She might have just been asleep.

She would still be there in the morning, and when she aroused there would be no mark, no pain. It was easier, quicker, then calling Glanville and wasting time with explanations. In any case, Lynnette was only a cog in this huge wheel of terrorism and vampirism. He had to find the man behind it all and now he had a good idea of where to look.

There was an owl hooting as he stepped into the orange gloom of the night. It sounded closer than the distant wooded hillside.

Gwenda had only ever trusted somebody one hundred per cent; that trust had been betrayed. Now she trusted nobody, least of all Glyn Idle. She fought down the panic that knotted her intestines, felt physically sick.

There was no way that she could leave the Court with that devilish dog prowling the grounds. If she shut the outer doors of the house then she was still a prisoner. Whilst Glyn was upstairs she had lifted the phone off the hook, not to make a call but to check that it was working. Her worst fears were confirmed – there was no dialling tone.

What was going on, did he suspect that she planned to leave him? Even if he did, his actions were extreme – he could not hold her indefinitely. Another surge of panic merged into an uneasy relief. If he planned to kill her then he had no need to go to this extreme. So what was behind it all?

She heard his footsteps coming back downstairs, inwardly cringed.

‘All right, my darling?’ He stood in the doorway, clad only in a dressing gown.

‘I feel like a prisoner,’ she replied.

‘What rubbish.’ He crossed to her, slid a fleshy arm around her, ‘that’s absolute nonsense.’

‘Why can’t I leave here?’

‘Because of what’s happening in the town.’ It was just too glib, like a prepared speech. ‘They’ve attacked the office already, people have been killed. I’m not prepared to take any chances where you’re concerned.’

‘I’m prepared to take the risk.’

‘And die for it?’

‘What about tomorrow, the promotion party?’

‘You won’t be there, neither will I.’ His eyes flickered and he averted his gaze.

She tensed. ‘I thought that we were …’

‘Just staff. A few bottles of cheap plonk, some nibbles. We reserve our public appearances for champagne parties and the like. Tomorrow is just an incidental.’

She glanced at the clock on the wall: it was past midnight. ‘You’d better get some rest,’ he murmured, kissed the lobe of her ear.

‘There’s no point if I’m not going anywhere tomorrow.’

‘I have to go away for a while,’ he said. ‘Just a trip to Cardiff to tie up a few loose ends. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.’ She didn’t offer to accompany him – it was the last thing she wanted. The lesser of the two evils was staying here.

‘Psycho will make sure that nobody bothers you.’ Or that you don’t try to leave. ‘For God’s sake, don’t let your imagination run wild. All I’m trying to do is to protect you. There have been killings out there, these anarchists will stop at nothing.’

‘Couldn’t I just go down to the reception party at the clock tower?’

‘No!’ His mood changed instantly, and she almost cried out at the way his thick fingers squeezed her. ‘Whatever you do, keep away from there. It’s probably the most dangerous place in town!’

‘But why should it be more dangerous than anywhere else?’

‘It’s a prime terrorist target, to their way of thinking, anyway. I understand there’s been a threat, an anonymous phone call to the police. Of course,’ he tried to shrug it off, ‘it could be a hoax, but I’m not taking any chances.’

‘Why don’t you just cancel the party?’

‘That’s what the anarchists would like me to do.’

‘But if you’re providing cheap homes for Welsh people, then they’ve no reason to …’

‘They don’t want Plaid Cymru, they want terrorist rule. That is what it’s all about. Plaid Cymru is a threat to them, they wouldn’t have the support of the Welsh then. It’s a parallel with Ireland: the terrorists there are banking on taking over, but we don’t need the English in Wales, we don’t need a peace-keeping force. If … anything happens tomorrow, their rule of terror has begun. I have to risk it, I can’t afford not to go through with it, but I don’t want you there. Got it?’

It sounded convincing in a confused sort of way. She thought about the telephone again. It might just have been out of order. She would test it again tomorrow.

‘What time are you leaving tomorrow?’

‘I have to go tonight. Shortly.’

Outside Psycho was barking, a deep-throated sound that embodied hatred and viciousness, the desire to kill. It rose to a frenzied crescendo.

Gwenda paled, started to tremble violently. Glyn Idle’s features were ashen as he thrust her from him.

‘What … what is it, Glyn?’

‘The bloody dog, of course.’

Even as he spoke a shrill scream rent the night air, was cut off as suddenly as it had begun. Idle was fumbling in a cupboard, a mop clattered out on to the floor. He found what he was searching for, dragged it out, a single-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun. He clicked open the breech, saw that it was already loaded, primed in case of an emergency.

‘Glyn …’

‘Stay here.’ He closed the gun with a metallic clang. ‘Psycho’s done his job. Somebody’s prowling in the grounds and he’s got them. I’ll go see, but I don’t give much for their chances!’

Gwenda leaned up against the kitchen units, thought she might faint. She heard Idle’s footsteps crunching on the gravel drive, realized that the pit bull terrier was no longer barking and snarling. All was silent out there; whatever the outcome of the contest between man and dog, it was all over.

Chapter Nineteen

The man known as Dork crouched beneath the thick privet hedge on the Fronhir estate, his eyes fixed firmly on the house opposite where Lynnette sought refuge during the police hunt and cordoning-off the fairground. He was tense, angry, recognized only too well the silhouette of the man through the opaque glass of the front door. It was that fellow in the big hat again, the one who had been dogging them relentlessly these past few days. A weirdo, but he had to be a cop, there was no other explanation.

Their attempt to kill him had failed. Dork’s concern right now was what Lynnette was telling him. Not that she knew much, less than most of them, but if she grassed then there might be a dawn raid by the police on the Cantlin Stone encampment. At least she didn’t know the name of the man who controlled this set-up; none of them did except himself.

He pondered what to do, fingered the knife in the sheath on his belt. Maybe when that guy came out …

An owl hoot came from the other side of Pontfaen; Dork gave an answering call, waited, toyed with his ponytail. He craved a smoke, but it was too risky here. This man was dangerous.

Lynnette had done a good job, there was no denying that. She had joined the Himalaya, picked her victim and left him in a pool of blood with the vampire mark on his neck. She had slipped away before the police net closed.

Something else nagged Dork. The Boss had spoken of a mighty blow against the English tomorrow, had instructed that all the vampires should gather by the clock tower, mingling with the tourists whose greed would be lured to the ‘reception’ by the promise of free booze and food. Doubtless that old geezer’s corpse was going to be unveiled in some way: shock tactics. See, this is what happens to the English!

Dork had found the Keeper’s body dangling from the ladder when he’d gone to collect the latest cache of crack which had been left there for him. He had examined the scrawny neck but it was unmarked. A fortuitous death by natural causes, it would not be wasted. He had left the mark on the neck; it hadn’t bled because the old man had been dead too long, but they wouldn’t realize that. Not at first, anyway. He envisaged the screaming, hysterical crowd, tourists making for their cars, fleeing back over the border. A masterstroke that only the Boss himself could think up. Death was useful, however it occurred.

But this fellow in black had to be dealt with. Tonight.

Dork heard Susie coming, the privet leaves brushing her clothes as she hugged the shadows right up until she reached him.

‘He’s in there with her, the guy in black.’

‘Shit!’ She drew in her breath. ‘He’s bad medicine.’

‘Not for long.’ Dork grinned in the darkness, slid the knife out of its sheath.

‘Don’t be a fool, the town is crawling with cops. Look!’

Even as she spoke Dork saw the flashing blue light as a police car pulled into Fronhir, travelling slowly, its occupants scanning the estate in search of any suspicious, lurking figure. He pulled Susie deeper into the hedge with him. The car passed them, did a U-turn in the cul-de-sac, headed back towards the main road.

‘We can’t do him here, Dork.’ Susie was scared. ‘Remember what he did to Libby.’

‘I’m going to see the Boss.’

‘Is that wise, even if you know where he lives? Try phoning.’

‘I’ve thought of that.’ Dork welcomed the let-out but wasn’t giving his companion any credit for it. ‘Tell you what, Susie, you stop here, follow him if he leaves before I get back.’

‘All right.’ But I’m not going near him. I hope he doesn’t spot me.

Five minutes later Dork was back, shaking his head. ‘His phone’s not working, all I can get is the unobtainable tone. I’ll have to chance it, go myself. Look, follow that guy when he comes out …’

‘He’s coming now!’

They froze, saw the door open, the object of their attention step out into the street lighting, adjust his fedora as though he was embarking upon a stroll for the good of his health. Next moment he was gone, disappeared from view as though he had never existed, been a figment of their drug hallucinations.

‘Where the shit’s he gone?’ Dork went cold, licked his dry lips.

‘Shit knows.’ His companion grabbed his arm, her frightened grasp pinching the skin beneath his filthy denims.

‘We’d better go see Lynnette, she didn’t come out so she has to be still in there. We’ll find out what she’s told him.’ He tested the sharpness of his blade, laughed nervously. ‘Keep your eyes skinned for that guy.’

They found Lynnette lying on the settee, her eyes closed as though she slept. Dork shook her; she did not awaken.

‘What’s up with her, Dork?’ Susie glanced back at the door, remembered what had happened to Libby Stewart.

‘He’s given her something to put her out.’ He shook her again, more roughly. Her head lolled to one side, an arm draped limply to the floor, but her eyes did not open. ‘The fact that he’s left must mean he’s found out what he wanted to know …’

‘Then he knows about … us, the vampires!’

‘Most likely.’ The hippy’s face was contorted, a mask of rage. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her, I never did from the start, but I’m only given those they send up to us. I guess there’ll have to be a second vampire victim tonight, won’t there, Susie?’

‘What … whatever do you mean, Dork?’

‘Two in one night, by Christ that’ll scare the English shitless! And when they see that corpse in the clock tower tomorrow, there’ll be a mass exodus over the border. Go on, Susie, go to it!’

‘No!’

The knife blade was suddenly at her throat. ‘Or there might just be three vampire victims tonight, Susie!’

She was shaking, almost dropped the stainless steel dentures as she fumbled them over her own teeth.

‘Bite her hard and deep, Susie!’

Dork stood back and watched, saw how Susie knelt over the unconscious form beneath her, her mouth going down to the exposed neck. A sucking, slurping sound, the body twitched, its muscles jerked, but Lynnette did not waken. Then there was a gushing sound as a fountain of thick scarlet fluid jetted up the wall, treacled down it.

‘Good girl, Susie, you’re not a vampire virgin any longer!’ Dork laughed at his own joke, it sounded forced.

Susie’s face came round to face him, her features awash with her victim’s blood, she tried to scream but vomited instead. And that was when Dork took her, pulling her down to the floor with him, ripping at her clothes, holding the knife to her throat.

And only when he had satisfied his lust did the blade sink deep, cutting and slicing, opening up her slender throat so that for the second time within minutes blood spurted on the walls and ceiling, transformed the council house living room into an abattoir, the human meat left to bleed as if in preparation for a cannibalistic feast.

If Lynnette had grassed to the police, then it was a certain fact that Susie would not.

Dork leaned up against the wall to recover his strength. He needed to talk with the Boss, that in itself was a fearsome prospect. But there was no alternative, he had nobody else to turn to. The man in the black fedora must be killed without delay if this campaign against the English was to succeed.

Dork stepped out into the street-lit night, hurried with an urgency that bordered on panic.

Mayo stood back in the fringe of pine trees watching the Court. A large rambling house that had undergone extensive renovation, its gables stood out starkly against the night sky, silhouetted in the town street lighting. A high stone wall encompassed the grounds; the only entrance was the wrought iron gates that were heavily padlocked. Lights shone from the windows: obviously the occupants had not retired for the night even though it was after 2 a.m.

Entry was no problem to one of Mayo’s training, yet still he hesitated. Twice his acute hearing had picked up a movement on the other side of the wall, a heavy padding of feet that were certainly not human. It was conceivable that Glyn Idle had some form of security to protect his place. Mayo had to establish exactly what to enable him to deal with it. Guard dogs were no problem, whether Alsatian, Doberman or Rottweiler: the Department trained its agents in the silent despatch of any such canine adversary.

Suddenly he heard another movement, this time in the spinney behind him. He flattened his body against a massive tree trunk, knew that in the darkness he was virtually invisible.

Again, he waited.

Mayo scented the other before he saw him, an unwashed odour, the smell of filthy clothes that had been slept in, drifting downwind on the gentle summer breeze, souring the aroma in the pines. A brief silhouette, an untidy ponytail that swung from side to side, a lean figure that crouched as it moved from tree to tree. Dork, without a doubt.

Mayo held back, let him go. There was nothing to be gained by taking the hippy now. Far better to use him as fodder for whatever lay ahead.

Dork surveyed the wall, moved on, had obviously decided that the safest approach lay away from the entrance gates. His feet rustled the dry grasses; once he became entangled in a trailing briar and cursed beneath his breath as he bent to free himself.

Now they were at the rear of the Court, Mayo lying flat because the cover was sparse, an area where children from the estate came to play and had trodden the ground hard and flat. Dork was uneasy, seemed suspicious of what lay beyond the wall rather than the prospect that he might be followed.

He reached up, got a hold on the top of the wall, wriggled and jerked as he pulled himself up, crouched atop the crumbling stonework. Mayo was puzzled why, if the other sought to talk with Idle, he had not summoned him from the gates. Perhaps this place was forbidden to him, or else he would have been able to make himself heard up at the big house.

Whatever, the other was inside the grounds. There was a dull thud as he leaped down, lost his balance and sprawled headlong. Mayo would await the outcome of the other’s trespass before he followed; he was wary of that noise that had come from within, as though some animal prowled loose.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, like some telepathic warning, Mayo heard the growling, a deep-throated canine sound. Barking, then growling again.

And he heard Dork scream.

Whatever lay in wait on the other side had leaped on the intruder, borne him to the ground. There was the sound of heavy bodies thrashing, a struggle that ended as suddenly as it had begun, only a stentorian snuffling noise to be heard.

Mayo lay still. Surely that scream would have been heard up at the house. It had – there was the sound of approaching footsteps, a muttered ‘Jesus, God!’ Then, ‘Good boy, it’s all right,’ fear in the voice now as if the other was afraid that the animal might turn upon himself. Then the footsteps were retreating, hurrying. Whatever the newcomer had found, he had decided to leave well alone, had maybe gone for help.

Still Mayo did not move. It would be unwise to scale that wall, he would probably have to shoot the dog and thereby give away his presence. Far better to wait his chance, let the attack act as a diversion from his own movements.

Shortly afterwards he heard the sound of a car starting up, twin headlight beams sweeping the sky like anti-aircraft gunners searching for enemy planes. Mayo cursed, he was too far from the entrance gates to be able to intercept the vehicle. In the distance he heard the clang of metal; the car edged forward, its powerful engine idled, the gates were closed. Then the vehicle was revved, sped off into the night.

Sergeant John Mayo attempted to translate the night sounds into a sequence of events: Dork had been attacked by a dog. Somebody, presumably Glyn Idle, had been alerted by the noise, come to investigate and decided to leave well alone. The other had now left.

Either Idle had taken Gwenda with him or else she was still in the house. Mayo stood up, made a decision. The only way he was going to find out what was going on was to go over that wall.

He tensed, leaped up and secured a handhold on the rough stone, pulled himself up with the agility of a big cat embarking upon a nocturnal hunt.

Chapter Twenty

Gwenda remained in the kitchen, listening fearfully for any sound out there that might tell her what was happening. There was nothing: even that dreadful dog was silent. She braced herself in anticipation of a shot but there was none.

Ten minutes that seemed like an eternity, and then she heard Glyn’s heavy footfalls returning. He appeared in the doorway, still clutching his gun, was visibly shaken.

‘A prowler,’ he grunted, ‘Psycho got him. A hippy, probably one of these anarchists!’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘He killed him.’ He made an effort to pull himself together, tried to appear nonchalant, shrugged his shoulders. ‘But I have to go. We’ll sort all this out later. I don’t expect the police will be unduly bothered. Stay in the house, leave everything to me. Here,’ he leaned the shotgun up against the wall, ‘use that if you have to. It’s loaded.’

She found herself shying away from the weapon. She hated guns, always had. Nevertheless, if that dog showed up, she might just … She heard Glyn Idle start the car up, listened to its tyres crunching on the drive. Where was he going? You didn’t leave an intruder’s corpse lying in the grounds of your house merely because of a pressing business meeting, something to do with fire insurance. It was frightening, all the more so because the telephone wasn’t working.

Then she heard the shot, a single report somewhere out in the Court grounds that echoed and re-echoed up to the wooded hills beyond, slowly dying away. Then the silence rolled back.

She walked unsteadily across the room, picked up the gun. She had no idea of how to use it but suddenly its weight in her hands felt comforting. She kicked the door shut, turned the key. At least that brute couldn’t get to her now. Then she sat down at the table, laid the 12-gauge in front of her. There was nothing else she could do until daylight.

Mayo jumped down on the other side of the wall, landed almost silently. He paused, removed the .38 from its holster, began to move forward cautiously, walking on the balls of his feet. A step at a time, feeling the ground in front of him with each foot before putting his weight on it, carefully brushing aside any twig which might crack or rustle beneath his tread.

All around him were shrubs, mostly laurels and rhododendrons; he kept clear of them, as far as possible, preferring the half-light to the shadows where a killer guard dog might lie in ambush. He did not fear the brute, it could be dealt with easily; a confrontation was inevitable before long.

Then he saw it, came upon it in a clearing in the shrubbery where it crouched over a huddled, bloody shape that was unquestionably Dork. Mayo caught his breath: his worst fears were confirmed, it was an American pit bull terrier. It was engrossed in ripping out its victim’s throat, had almost decapitated the hippy, its brown and white body splashed with scarlet.

The dog turned, jaws agape, blood dripping from its powerful fangs. It stood erect, tensing, its powerful back legs about to springboard it into a leap that would have sent it hurtling at Mayo’s throat.

He killed it with a single shot, the force of the slug rolling it backwards, obliterating its horrific features. It twitched, then lay still.

The surrounding hills picked up the echo of the .38’s report, rolled it like thunder. Mayo did not spare the dog a second glance, broke into a run in the direction of the house, hit the drive and kept to the grass verge to deaden his footsteps. His only fear was what he might find inside the Court.

All the lights were on, illuminating the forecourt. There were no vehicles in sight, but he sensed that the house was not empty. The gun in his hand was an extension of his own body: it would react with the same lightning reflexes if the need arose. As in the case of the pit bull terrier, he would not hesitate to shoot if the occasion demanded.

He skirted the front, looked for the side entrance. A dilapidated sign pointed the way for tradesmen. He followed where it directed, saw the kitchen doorway. The handle clicked, rattled in his grasp, the door did not yield. It was locked.

‘Who is it?’ A voice that embodied fear, scarcely recognizable. ‘I’ve got a gun.’

Thank God! A sense of relief swept over him. ‘It’s John. John Mayo. You can open up.’

‘John!’ She stood framed in the light from the kitchen, a shotgun propped up against the doorpost, dishevelled, so that he thought for a fleeting moment that it might be a mirage, a trick played on him in retribution for allowing emotions to impinge upon an assignment.

‘Gwenda!’ He held her close, kissed her, felt the way that she trembled against him.

‘There’s a dog out there.’ Her frightened eyes stared beyond his shoulder, searched the darkness of the grounds.

‘He’s dead. Where’s Glyn Idle gone?’

‘To Cardiff. So he said, something to do with the fire insurance.’

‘He might’ve gone to Cardiff but I doubt very much whether it’s for that. Anyway, the sooner you’re away from here, the better.’

He took her hand, began to lead her down the driveway, was comforted by the way she leaned her weight against him.

‘Four in a night.’ Detective Inspector Ian Glanville’s usual equilibrium was clearly disturbed. ‘Four corpses in one night is pushing it a bit. Well, Idle will almost certainly be charged with keeping an unlicensed, unmuzzled pit bull terrier, and that’s just for starters!’

‘And you haven’t received a phone call from the Welsh Anarchists about something that’s due to happen tomorrow? Or rather, today.’ Mayo glanced out of the window – it was already full daylight. Bank Holiday Monday had begun.

‘Not a thing.’

Gwenda looked puzzled. ‘He definitely told me that the police had had a call. That was why I had to stop in his house. Maybe he was fearing another attack on his office.’

‘Something else we’ll have to ask him.’ The telephone rang, Glanville picked it up. ‘Okay, put him through.’ A pause, then, ‘Morning, Doctor. Oh, I see.’ He scribbled something on a jotter, ‘Yesterday morning you say, and hasn’t been seen since. You’ve checked his home? I see. All right, leave it with me.’

Glenville replaced the receiver, looked at Mayo. ‘The guy who mows the churchyard and maintains the clock has gone missing. The death toll could be five.’

‘Sid Knowles? The man they call the Keeper? I wouldn’t say he was typical vampire fodder but who can say?’ He stared at the steel fangs that lay on the desk in front of him. ‘I’ll check, if you like. It could be another link, but at the moment I’m more concerned about why Idle’s gone to Cardiff.’

‘I’ve checked out anything that might be related down there. There’s a Plaid Cymru rally. He’s standing as a candidate – that might be the reason. But, if so, why didn’t he tell Mrs Llanbich? He’d have no reason to lie, would he?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Gwenda said. ‘Just something that came into his head because he didn’t want to take me with him. I don’t know.’

‘We’ll ask the Cardiff police to try to find him. They can question him about the dog for a start.’ Glanville dismissed the matter with a deprecating wave, it probably wasn’t important. ‘Well, at least you’ve got to the bottom of this vampire business. All part of the terror campaign combined with a foil for drug-pushing. But why does Idle have to be behind it?’

‘Drive out the English, buy up their homes cheap, sell them to the Welsh. Money, plus the status of an MP when they vote him in. Then he’ll discredit the Anarchists, promise a law-and-order campaign, and underneath it all he’s making a fortune out of drugs.’

‘Except that we can’t prove any of that. This hippy guy, Dork, he could have been on his way to make Idle the fifth victim of the night, the sixth if anything’s happened to Knowles. If Dork had been going to the Court on legitimate business he wouldn’t have gone in over the wall, would he?’

‘Unless the rabble were forbidden to go to Idle’s house and Dork needed to see him urgently. The gates were locked – it was easier to climb the wall than the gates.’

‘Don’t forget, Mayo, the Welsh Anarchists fire-bombed the offices of Idle Estates.’

‘And didn’t make a very good job of it – the damage was minimal. Just to show everybody that Glyn Idle wasn’t on their side.’

‘This is all supposition, guesswork.’

‘Maybe, but at the moment we don’t have anything else. What worries me is why Idle told Gwenda there was a threat for today. The town will be packed with tourists, mostly English.’

‘You’re getting jumpy, Mayo.’

‘No, just cautious.’ Because my hunch is still very strong. ‘I’ll go and check on the Keeper. In the meantime, I’m going to book Gwenda in at the George and Dragon.’

They left the police station, walked slowly up the street in the early morning sunlight.

The fair had opened shortly after 10 a.m. They were not supposed to have started until eleven but nobody was likely to complain, and even if they did it would be after eleven before any attempt was made to stop them.

It was crazy: last night there had been a killing on the Himalaya, this morning people were queuing for rides. The police saw no reason to forbid it, the forensic experts had checked for any clues. And anyway, the girl supposedly responsible was dead along with those who had murdered her. Vampire casualties right now were ahead of their victims.

The music would not be at full volume just yet; that was tempting fate.

Tourists had been thronging the town for the past hour, car parking was becoming a problem. What better pastime for a Bank Holiday than to go vampire hunting? You could always leave before dark.

Two large trestle tables had been set up close to the plinth of the clock tower, crates of wine stacked near by, a teenage girl in a black and white apron was laying out the nibbles. Sandra was nervous – everybody seemed to be starting at her this morning, a ring of gawping sightseers and those dirty hippies sitting on the ledge of the plinth. They eyed the food hungrily, herself lustfully.

She wished that she had not accepted this job; she had agreed on the spur of the moment. At weekends she served in the restaurant at the Red Lion opposite, and that was when Mr Idle had asked her if she would mind looking after the tables for his promotion party. A fiver had been pressed into her hand – it would have been very difficult to have refused. She wondered why Glyn Idle’s secretary couldn’t have done it, it would have been done on her salary then. But money was of no consequence to the likes of Glyn Idle.

David, the barman, was supposed to be coming across to open the bottles. There was no sign of him yet. Sandra stood back, arched her spine to look at the clock. It was a quarter to twelve already. Hurry up, David, not that I’m bothered about the booze, it’s just that everybody’s looking at me.

You’d’ve thought that somebody would have shifted those hippies, there seemed to be more than ever of them today. Mostly girls. They sat there stoically, seemingly unaware of their surroundings and everybody around them. High on drugs, Sandra decided. Well, the police could have had them for that, surely. Except that right now the police had their hands full. Corpses were a daily occurrence. And those bloomin’ girls in their ragbag clothing reminded her of living corpses. Ugh!

Come on, David, where are you?

The road on three sides of the tower was packed, only the main street was kept clear of idlers by the passing traffic. The crowd was curious: surely nobody was actually handing out free glasses of wine? Maybe this was some strange, previously unheard of, Welsh custom. There had to be a catch somewhere. There did not appear to be, not at this stage, anyway.

Sandra filled soup bowls with crisps and peanuts, emptied a packet of Twiglets into a dish. The fair was really getting into full swing now, the music was almost deafening up here.

She checked the time again to try to hide her self-consciousness. Ten minutes to twelve. Hey, the clock was wrong, two minutes slow. Did it really matter?

Somebody was pushing their way through the crowd: it had to be David, leaving everything until the last minute, as usual.

‘Hi, David …’

It wasn’t the barman, it was that fellow in the black hat who had been hanging around town this last week. Sandra instinctively backed away a pace. Standing there in front of her he was awe-inspiring. Frightening, in an inexplicable way.

‘I’m sorry, I …’

‘I need to go in there.’ He stabbed a key in the direction of the door across which a table loaded with cartons was drawn. ‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Oh. I see.’ Sandra was taken aback, scanned the sea of faces in the hope that David might put in an appearance. But there was no sign of the part-time barman. ‘I’m afraid … all this stuff’s in the way.’

‘I’ll move it.’ Mayo stepped forward, lifted a carton. ‘I’m in rather a hurry.’ He looked up, saw that the clock read eight minutes to midday. And it was two minutes slow. ‘Somebody help me, please.’

Nobody came forward. Because it was none of their business. If this berk in the daft hat wanted to clear the table, that was his problem.

The boxes were light, mostly filled with packets of crisps and cocktail snacks. One tipped over, spilled its contents, but it went unheeded. Mayo worked with near desperation; he didn’t know why, there was no evidence to support his intuition, only that midday was the deadline which he had imposed upon himself, which could not possibly have anything at all to do with the missing Sid Knowles.

‘That’s fine, thanks.’ As he dragged the table clear of the doorway, it almost overbalanced on the sloping tarmac, the crowd had surged forward, giving him a fleeting sense of claustrophobia; he checked himself, they were none of his concern.

The key had to be forced into the padlock, it was stiff and unyielding. He exerted pressure. Christ Almighty! For a moment he thought that they might have given him the wrong key – beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Then it clicked and the hasp jumped upwards.

He pushed the door, it creaked back, stable-door fashion, the top half swinging. A stench of dampness assailed his nostrils, a musty odour which he tasted, and experienced the urge to spit it out. He sensed his audience crowding the doorway, peering into the gloomy interior.

His eyes roved the inside methodically: a clutter of junk, empty cartons, paint cans, litter on the floor. Sunlight shafted in through a couple of the broken tiny diamond panes, spotlighted something and held it. Look, Mayo, guess what that is.

Even as his gaze met the dull, inverted stare of the old man hanging on the ladder, somebody behind him screamed.

Chapter Twenty One

The corpse hung by its scuffed working boots, toes hooked over the rungs of the ladder, heels jammed. The shirt collar had been wrenched down, a button had burst off, exposing the ugly fang marks, a bite that had not bled because the flesh was already dead. The upturned greyish features asked ‘Why have they done this to me?’ The expression of terror in the dulled eyes had not faded.

Mayo turned, saw a youth, whose pot-bellied T-shirt overhung the waistband of his jeans, standing in the doorway, trying to peer round him. A stench of stale sweat exuded from the other’s body. Faces stared, weaved and dodged for a better view. Move over, let’s ’ave a look, mate.

‘Out!’ Mayo pushed him back against the others. ‘Get out. Everybody.’

They fell back, ghouls who might have congregated around a scene of motorway carnage but instead had found what they were seeking right here in the clock tower. A shout from the rear. ‘There’s a body in there. Somebody’s hung his fucking self in there!’

A ripple of fear – you felt it as well as hearing it, saw how they stepped back, total strangers clutching at one another, seeking safety in numbers. They were afraid, not of a corpse but of this man in dark clothing who threatened to vent his fury upon them.

Mayo slammed the door, the lower half swung back open. He propped a length of wood against it, a psychological barrier that would keep them at bay. Only then did he turn his attention to the Keeper, did a rapid mental post-mortem. The old guy had been climbing the ladder, had fallen; it might have been a heart attack, Doc King was worried on that score. Whatever the cause, Sid had died here alone, the ‘vampires’ had found him later. The bite was just sadism, added to the realism of their terror campaign, a fortuitous victim even though they had been deprived of the pleasure of killing him. God, they were bloody sick!

Mayo stepped back, and it was then that he spied the video cassette sleeve over by the window. That was the moment when his blood ran cold and those all-too-familiar goose pimples ran unchecked.

God, why hadn’t he guessed? It was the obvious. With hindsight. He picked it up, his fingers shook slightly as he pushed the flap, eased the cassette out enough to see the complex wiring attached to it. He had seen it all before, it was virtually identical to the others.

A Semtex bomb.

His instinct was to drop it and run. For one brief second he froze, mind and body locked in sheer terror; he stood there holding the bomb, staring at it in disbelief. Not just his own life was in danger but those of hundreds of tourists congregated around the tables outside. Then he was functioning again, an agent of Operation Werewolf who saw and understood: the Welsh Anarchists’ coup de grâce for the English, a devastating explosion that would reduce the top end of the town to a heap of rubble. Death and destruction would be widespread.

He knew now why those hippies had come to town. They were bomb-fodder, expendable. They were totally unaware that their Mister Big was about to destroy them. The vampires would disappear as suddenly as they had come: they had served their purpose. The evidence would be destroyed and the English would flee back over the border, there would be a site purchase, rebuilding, homes and businesses for a new generation, indoctrinated to look upon the English as their natural enemy. So bloody clever, and what the hell that the Idle Estates office would be destroyed too! And it would all be almost impossible to prove.

Mayo glanced at his watch. Three minutes to midday – the countdown had begun.

He remembered the time when he had accompanied Erickson, the Department’s bomb disposal expert, to defuse a device in a West End store. They had made it with seconds to spare. Erickson wasn’t around any more, the next time he didn’t beat the bomb: he had been the only casualty prior to a political party conference. He had died so that others might live.

Which was what Mayo had to do now.

Mayo had watched Erickson, his memory had retained the procedure. He just hoped that he hadn’t forgotten anything.

He walked to the door, opened it. Outside he saw a helmeted police officer telling the crowd to move back, asking what the hell was going on. If there was a body in there, then he’d see to it. It was the copper who had trailed Mayo that night.

‘Officer.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The policeman turned, came forward, his radio in his hand.

‘Officer, clear the area, get everybody down by the fairground. Everybody. Radio headquarters, tell them there’s an explosive device in here which may go off within minutes!’

The constable stared in disbelief, opened his mouth to say something but the words would not come.

‘Officer, clear the area. Immediately!’

‘Yes, sir.’ The other reacted, his features draining of colour. He did not once think to question the orders of the man in the black fedora.

Mayo went back into the clock tower, closed the doors behind him. He moved like an automaton, his fingers steady as he slid the cassette out of its casing, laid it on the narrow shelf beneath the window. He didn’t know if he could do it, Erickson had had years of training. Experience was a vital ingredient to success, determined whether you lived or died.

Outside he heard people shrieking, starting to panic, the sound of stampeding feet going downhill. Somebody screamed because they had fallen, been trampled. The policeman’s voice was drowned in the noise but it didn’t matter any more, the warning had been given.

It was two minutes to twelve.

‘The priority is to save lives’: the motto of Operation Werewolf. Mayo smiled to himself, he had carried out Charlie’s orders, his own life was of no consequence.

The Keeper’s dead eyes met his own. It was as if the old man saw and understood, the open mouth starting to scream in terror again. Mayo nodded an apology to him. Sorry it has to be this way, old man.

The device was identical to the one in the West End, thank God! First, you had to determine the circuit, the timing mechanism. When you’d worked them out you had to find a way to break them. The rectangular box came apart, there was no tape inside, just a mass of wiring, amateurish but deadly: touch the wrong one and you beat the clock. Sophistication was of no consequence once the charge was detonated. Mayo tried to determine which was the primary; he thought he knew.

‘The crowd’s cleared sir.’ The officer pushed open the top half of the door, he was shaking visibly. ‘I’ve radioed the station, there’ll be somebody up here in …’

‘Tell ’em to keep away, Constable.’ Mayo was intent on the wiring, did not look up. ‘You too. Run for your life, that’s an order.’

The order was obeyed because there was no point in the policeman staying. Mayo could have abandoned his task, fled with the other. He didn’t. Because of Penny, in a way. If he failed, then they would be together. If he won … His thoughts switched briefly to Gwenda. Heads you win, tails you lose. It was up to the gods.

The bomb was a botch-up, all right, amateur terrorism at its most deadly. Glyn Idle had a lot to answer for, which was another reason why Mayo was determined to live.

He was sweating because it was hot in here, like a huge old-fashioned bread oven. His delicate fingers traced the circuit; it came back on itself in a tangle of inseparable wires. He found himself beginning a countdown. Fourteen … thirteen … twelve …

He wasn’t going to make it.

Nine … eight … seven …

That was when he tore at the wiring, ripped them free. They came away, a tangled nest of artificial vipers, the snapped ends like venomous fangs poised to strike.

The countdown was finished, he glanced up at the dead man. Sorry, Keeper, I did my best in the time. He closed his eyes, prayed for Penny, that she might be at peace. And for Gwenda, that she might find happiness somewhere.

The silence was awful. Then the big clock began to chime. One … two … four … eight … ten … Mayo counted it all the way.

Twelve.

Whatever was meant to be was not. Mayo tossed the plastic casing to one side, heard it crack on the concrete floor. A sense of dizziness hit him, his vision was momentarily fogged; the Keeper seemed to be smiling, his lips miming words of congratulations.

You’ve done it, Mayo.

In some ways the euphoria was an anticlimax. Looking out down the empty street it was difficult to believe that this wasn’t an ordinary Bank Holiday when everybody had deserted the town for the fair. That there hadn’t really been anything wrong.

The Keeper said there had been. Just look at these vampire marks for a start.

John Mayo let himself out of the clock tower, shut both doors behind him in deference to the Keeper. He could see a mass of people down at the bottom of the street; two policemen were standing in the middle of the road. A red and white patrol car came round the corner, its blue light flashing, siren wailing.

Davison was at the wheel, Glanville beside him. They screeched to a halt just above the bank; they weren’t taking any chances, waited for Mayo to come to them.

‘It’s dead.’ Mayo adjusted his fedora, made no move to get in the car.

‘The explosives unit is on the way.’ There was grudging admiration in the detective’s tone. ‘I take it you fixed it?’

‘Luck and ignorance.’ Mayo straightened up. ‘I’ll be in the George if you need me.’

Because right now he needed Gwenda Llanbich more than anybody on this earth.

‘It was duff!’ Glanville said, maybe wishing he hadn’t had to spoil Mayo’s glory. But the other wasn’t the type to look for credit. He just did a job to the best of his ability.

Mayo stared in amazement.

‘Oh, sure, there was enough Semtex in that cassette to raze the clock tower and the Narrows with it,’ the detective explained. ‘It was the wiring that was at fault, a real Heath Robinson. Our bloke reckons they’d tried to wire it up to the clock mechanism but couldn’t get it to co-ordinate, so they’d fixed their own timing device. A damp squib, for want of a better expression. All the same, it could have been nasty. Want to tell me what you make of all this?’

Mayo told him.

‘We’ve no proof but we’ll talk to Idle. So far the Cardiff boys haven’t been able to pick him up. He wasn’t at the Plaid Cymru rally. We’ve checked all the insurance agents and brokers. Nobody down there was handling the fire for him. So what the hell did he go to Cardiff for? If he went to Cardiff!’

‘He’ll be back,’ Mayo said.

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Because even if his bomb didn’t go off, he’s in the clear. He didn’t destroy his vampires but he can always do that another time. The Anarchists will be blamed for the bomb attempt, they’ve been around for some time, that’s nothing new. You bet he’ll blow right back into town.’

‘We’ll have men watching his place tonight.’

‘No!’ Mayo leaned forward. ‘No way. One slip and you’ll lose him. Let him come, leave him to me.’

Glanville looked uneasy. The phone on the desk rang, he picked it up, said, ‘He’s here now, I’ll put him right on.’ He handed the receiver across to Mayo. ‘It’s for you.’

‘You want an assignment, Mayo?’ Charlie Wells’s quiet voice was unmistakable. ‘We heard you were in the area. It’s up to you. Otherwise we’ll send somebody down.’

‘I’ll take it,’ Mayo answered emotionlessly. ‘See you later in the week, Friday maybe.’

‘You finish the job first, don’t come back before.’

‘Like I said, I’ll see you Friday, Chief.’ Mayo heard the click of the receiver being replaced at the other end, the line went dead.

Glanville’s expression was almost one of relief.

‘It’s official,’ Mayo stood up, ‘and, like I said, you leave Idle to me.’

The detective watched him go. You had to hand it to any guy who defused a Semtex bomb by pulling out the wires. All of which boded ill for Glyn Idle and his Anarchists.

Chapter Twenty Two

‘Do you have to go?’ Gwenda picked at her beef in beer, looked pleadingly across the table at Mayo.

‘I haven’t said what I’m doing tonight, if anything,’ he smiled at her.

‘I know where you’re going.’ Her expression was challenging.

‘Maybe. And, there again, maybe not. That is something which you might have to learn to live with frequently, depending upon your decision,’ at which they both laughed. He added, ‘It goes with the job. It’s known as the Official Secrets Act.’

‘You could just leave it to the police. Isn’t defusing a bomb enough?’

‘It was a dud.’

‘You didn’t know that.’

‘No. But you forget one thing,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I am the police.’

‘You’re not doing it for … for any other reason, are you?’

‘Like what?’

‘Me, for instance. Revenge on Glyn?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. It wasn’t just for Gwenda, there were other reasons. Primarily because it was now an official assignment. When a job became official an agent learned to divorce himself from emotion. Almost, anyway. It wasn’t just for Gwenda, he had spoken the truth, but he could not forget what they had done to the Keeper. Or the hundreds whom they had intended to kill. In a place like Knighton it was impossible to become totally devoid of personal feelings.

Mayo was doing it because he owed it to the whole town, they had suffered enough.

The restaurant was full, both bar and lounge were crowded. Bomb scares, real, duds or hoaxes, were good for tourism. Carl was playing pool in the adjoining bar, maybe telling his mates that he’d loaned a vampire video to the guy who had defused the bomb.

The girl was playing the piano, struggling to hide a faulty key, probably a peg had fallen off inside. Another key was sticking, she had to lift it as she played. A bearded man came in from the lounge, brought her an orange juice. Mayo guessed he was her father just keeping an eye on her. Everybody was keeping a watchful eye on daughters and wives these nights.

The pianist was playing the Third Man theme for the second time that evening.

‘I’ll see you later.’ Mayo touched Gwenda’s hand as he got up from the table.

She squeezed her reply, didn’t say anything predictable like ‘be careful’. Because she knew that he would do whatever he had to do.

On the way out he left a pound tip on the top of the piano.

Outside in the street he turned to his right, took the narrow road that led between the pub and the bank, headed down toward the Cwm. In the far distance he heard an owl hoot twice. He hoped that it had feathers.

Glyn Idle arrived back at the Court at dusk, drove down the long drive on sidelights. He had heard on the car radio earlier that a bomb had been planted in Knighton but it had not gone off. It was disappointing, inconvenient, but not the end of the world. He was used to setbacks, had learned to overcome them throughout his life, which was why he had got where he had.

The lights were still on in the house – that was a relief. Doubtless Psycho still roamed the grounds, it was a daunting thought when you had been away. One was always wary of pit bull terriers, they were unpredictable. He parked as near to the front door as possible, quickened his step until he was inside the house.

Gwenda was missing, he had searched every room, called her. He thought about Dork’s body lying out there in the grounds: she surely would not have been foolish enough to try to run the gauntlet. No, the shotgun was still propped up in the kitchen, and she would surely have taken that to protect herself from the dog. Then where the hell was she?

He had an uneasy feeling that he was not alone. Surely Gwenda wasn’t hiding, there would be no point. Stupid girl, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to throw everything away at this stage, would she? Maybe he had played it wrong making her a virtual prisoner, but he dared not risk her going into town. As it turned out it wouldn’t have mattered.

He picked up the 12-gauge; he felt safer with a gun in his hands. Tomorrow he would try to explain Dork’s death to the police, make out that he had only just found him, the fellow must have been lying there all the time and he’d had no idea that there had even been an intruder in the grounds …

He thought he heard a movement outside. It might be Gwenda, gone for a late evening stroll, braving the dog.

‘Is that you?’ he called out through the partly open kitchen door.

There was no answer, just a faint scuffing of the gravel on the drive.

Idle thought about closing the door, locking it. No, it had to be Gwenda out there, it couldn’t be anybody else. His uneasy thoughts returned to Dork; what on earth was the fellow doing in the grounds, anyway? Obviously he had come here to break in – you couldn’t trust that type.

‘Gwenda?’ Glyn had intended to shout, but it came out as a hoarse whisper.

There was no answer. It made him angry. What the fuck was she up to? Was this some sort of stupid game she was playing, maybe deliberately trying to frighten him? Well, she wouldn’t succeed.

She had.

And then he saw the face at the window. Just a fleeting glimpse but enough to strike sheer terror into him. Deathly pale features, screwed up into a puppet-like caricature of hatred, the head seeming to float across his restricted field of vision, the hair long and matted, lips drawn back to expose the long sharp fangs.

A vampire!

The shotgun came up but the vision had already faded back into the darkness. One of those bloody hippies! Dork had put them up to burgling the Court, had revealed the identity of the man who fed their craving for drugs, gave them the role of blood-lusting creatures of the night. Not content with drugs and money, they had come here to rob him.

Fuck them, if that bomb had exploded they wouldn’t exist any more! A technical failure had spared them, but their survival was only temporary. Where the hell was Psycho? The dog should have had whoever was out there, added them to his tally. Idle cocked the gun.

Even as he made up his mind to step out onto the back porch, the kitchen door was kicked wide, bounced against the wall. And there, crowding the doorway, were half a dozen of these pseudo-undead, whores of the night in skintight black costumes, crazed by the deprivation of their craving, snarling their hatred.

‘Get back!’ Idle staggered to his feet, brought the 12-gauge to his shoulder.

The intruders appeared to be totally unaware of the threat which the gun presented, milling on the threshold, a cauldron of simmering evil that was about to boil over. They saw him and their eyes burned with lust and craving for the commodity without which they could not survive. Saliva strung from their lips and steel fangs, the stench of their unwashed bodies was nauseating.

Glyn Idle panicked at the peak of his terror, and pulled the trigger.

The blast was deafening in the confined space, the concentrated charge of birdshot cut a swathe through the oncoming bodies. Stark white was transformed instantly into scarlet – a faceless, crimson mulch spouted a fountain of blood up at the ceiling. Clothing was shredded to reveal polka dot obscenities, gaping abdominal wounds spilled out intestines like writhing reptiles, trailing on the floor.

Everything was in slow motion, but neither Idle’s brain nor the fingers that gripped the gun were capable of functioning to reload it. He swayed uncertainly, a mass murderer surveying his victims, unable to comprehend.

There were survivors. The dense shot pattern had cut through the centre of the throng, but those on either side had escaped unscathed. Between them their comrades sank to the floor, a head that was held only by a sinew rolled, stretched its mooring. Fingers were clamped over gushing wounds in a futile attempt to stem the flow of blood, a heap of twitching limbs were united in communal writhing. But nobody screamed.

There were three survivors, their stark white features spotted with the blood of the dead, seemingly unconcerned for their comrades, stepping over the fallen, arms outstretched, reaching for the one they had come here in search of.

The gun fell to the floor, was kicked aside. Slim fingers that had unbelievable strength, had been cooled to corpse temperature by ice packs in preparation for this night of lust and revenge, seized him, bore him back on to the table, spreadeagled him on its scrubbed pine surface. Only then did he begin to scream.

His attackers fell on him with a lust that had been fuelled by drugs, now boiled over with a craving for their starved addiction. His clothing was ripped, torn from his fleshy body, those same bloodied fingers scratched and squeezed, vented their fury on those areas which, under different circumstances, might have aroused other desires within their own fevered minds.

Three gaping mouths vied for places on the neck, their pressed bodies holding down his jerking frame as they bit deep with their steel fangs. They gulped and swallowed, thirsting for the pumping blood this time, rearing up when they had had their fill and allowing it to wash over them. One of them had a knife, a honed stiletto, and began to hack at the quivering, extended stomach, opening up deep wounds in her desperation to drain the body of its life’s blood. Crazed, she recalled the previous afternoon when her craving had taken her from her daytime hiding place to scour the town and its surrounds for Dork; how she had trespassed in these grounds and found him with his throat torn out, his canine killer lying dead close by. He had to be avenged, and even their dulled brains had realised that this was the place from which Dork received his orders, his supplies from which to feed them the substance that fired them, enabled them to live.

The kitchen was awash with blood, littered with mutilated, barely recognizable corpses. Only then did those who still lived go in search of the commodity which they needed most, impervious to everything that had gone before.

Mayo was surprised at Glyn Idle’s return in the evening – he had expected the other to sneak back into the Court some time during the early hours of the morning.

Mayo stepped back into the rhododendrons, could have touched the BMW as it passed him. He watched it pull up in front of the house, followed the other’s speedy walk up to the front door.

He could have taken him then, but he did not, for no other reason than curiosity: he wondered how Idle would react when he discovered that Gwenda was gone. There was no hurry, the night was young.

Idle searched the house, lights flicked on and off in every room, then the watcher heard him at the rear door, calling for Gwenda. And Psycho. Mayo smiled grimly to himself: neither would be returning. For very different reasons.

John Mayo’s acute senses warned him of a presence within the grounds. Roosting birds fluttered uneasily in the shrubs, twittered their respective alarm calls. A half-grown rabbit hopped across the driveway, hastened towards the cover of the bushes. An owl hooted; this time he knew that it was not of the feathered variety.

There was a rustling of leaves – he knew it was neither bird nor beast. He dropped into a crouch and slid the .38 out of its holster; he tensed, a powerful spring ready to uncoil, ready to shoot.

A silhouette passed a yard or so away, he caught its scent: female, unwashed. He knew it was one of the vampires even before it called. The answering hoot came from the rear of the Court.

Then it was moving on towards the house, treading the verge in order to muffle its footsteps. All went quiet again; Glyn Idle had gone back indoors. Mayo contemplated moving in closer, decided against it. He had no idea how many of these pseudo-vampires were at large; an encounter with them might alert Idle, lose the man in the black fedora his prey. For the moment he would watch and wait.

John Mayo came upright with the shot, its blast vibrating his muscles into action, propelling him forward at a crouching run, pistol at the ready as he went. Every shadow was an enemy, he would shoot to kill without hesitation.

Something was happening in the big kitchen, slithering sounds, feet slopping through a substance that was too thick for water. A groan. A scream that was undoubtedly Idle’s and died away almost as quickly as it had begun.

Mayo flattened himself against the rough stone wall, edged his way slowly around the corner. Light shafted out through a window. Another foot and he would have an unrestricted view of the room.

He saw, and almost threw up, such was the carnage that greeted his eyes. The kitchen ceiling dripped blood, rivulets of scarlet oozed down the walls, formed sticky puddles on the black floor. A heap of mutilated bodies were piled just inside the door, and atop the pine table there was a scene of vampirism being enacted that would never have been passed by a board of film censors.

Mayo turned his head away because there was no point in being a spectator to this act of cannibalism. The girls, three of them, were tearing at the neck flesh, blood spurting into their mouths.

He backed away, left them to their macabre repast. There was nothing to be gained by intervening; they had already killed and feasted. The police would pick them up in the planned dawn raid on the peace convoy up on the Cantlin Stone tomorrow. Mister Big was beyond help – any secrets which could not be unravelled by the forensic experts, he would take with him to his grave. A place in which, Mayo fervently hoped, the other might remain.

The agent moved back across to the rhododendrons. He had nothing to remain here for, but he stayed. Lights flicked on in all the rooms, were not extinguished. Obviously the killers were conducting a search of the premises, looking for a drug cache or money. Their thinking would not stretch to antiques or any form of valuable art. What they wanted was money to buy drugs with which to kill themselves. That was okay, society would be well rid of them; it was when they peddled white death that he hunted them down ruthlessly. But tonight they would harm nobody.

Two of them were outside in the driveway, silent shapes that ran, stopped, turned to watch. A third silhouette fled the doorway, and at that moment the Court exploded into an instant inferno.

It was as though a fireball had ignited in that kitchen of scarlet death, windows shattered and gushed mighty tongues of fire. Such was the ferocity of the blaze that Mayo was temporarily blinded, and even from that distance he felt the heat.

Against the glare, as he threw up a hand to shield his eyes, he saw the three of them fleeing, running and leaping, crashing their way through the bushes now that stealth was no longer a necessity. They would scale the wall, trek back to the encampment on the Cantlin Stone. At first light they would be arrested and charged.

Mayo walked back down the drive, climbed the entrance gates and headed towards town. On the way a hurtling fire engine passed him, followed by a police car. From the shadows he thought he recognized Detective Inspector Glanville in the passenger seat.

Frank Minton was a stickler for adhering to the licensing laws. Consequently he refused to charge John Mayo and Gwenda for their drinks in the deserted lounge bar. Carl was in the kitchen helping Emma clear up; the young lady who came to clean each morning would see to the rest.

‘There’s a fire somewhere.’ Frank eyed the man in black suspiciously; not that, for one moment, he thought the other might be involved, but there was a disaster of some kind each time he went out on the town. He was a Jonah. ‘The one from Llandod has just gone up, too. It could be the tyre dump again, kids’ve set it alight.’

‘Could be,’ Mayo agreed, then said, ‘If you could let me have my bill in the morning, I’m planning to leave tomorrow after lunch.’

Gwenda’s hand slipped into his, squeezed it gently. He knew not what the answer would be when he asked her if she was coming along. London would be a haven of tranquillity after Knighton.

‘I’ll tell the wife.’ Frank glanced back towards the half-open kitchen door. ‘She sees to that side.’ And that’ll make her day. ‘Carl will be disappointed,’ he added by way of an apology for his thoughts. ‘He’s really enjoyed having you around. You reckon that bomb business this morning was anything to do with these vampires?’

‘Who knows?’ Mayo sipped his Kaliber. ‘Maybe that’s something we’ll never know.’ Like what Glyn Idle went down to Cardiff for. ‘Me, I get a sort of feeling that it’s all over now. ’

‘I hope you’re right, Mister Mayo. Excuse me, I’ll just go and tell the missus that you’re going tomorrow.’

‘Is it really all over?’ Gwenda seized upon that moment when they were all alone to brush Mayo’s lips with her own.

‘I guess so.’ He kissed her. ‘For the Anarchists. For you and me, it’s just beginning.’

They headed towards the stairs.

Chapter Twenty Three

The early morning yoga instruction television programme was interrupted by a news flash. The newscaster’s expression was sombre; it usually was on such occasions. Rarely were there glad tidings of sufficient importance to warrant the disturbance of scheduled items.

‘Reports are just coming in of an explosion that occurred in Cardiff at approximately eight-thirty this morning at the English Language Department of the university. It has been confirmed that at least three students have died in the blast and several more have been injured by flying glass and debris. Fire and ambulance crews are arriving at the scene, and it is feared that there might be victims trapped beneath the rubble. Structural damage is said to be extensive. It is believed that the blast was caused by a bomb, but no specific details are available at the moment. We will bring you further news as soon as we have it.’

The yoga programme was returned to the screen.

[i] See The Black Fedora (book details)

The End

Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
I hope you enjoyed the read!.
Guy.

This ebook is the fifty-seventh book to be published as part of a project to convert Guy's entire back catalogue to ebook format. Beginning July 2010 it is expected to have all books available by the end of 2012.

The list of books so far published is :

1. Werewolf by Moonlight.

2. The Sucking Pit.

3. The Slime Beast.

4. Night of the Crabs.

5. The Truckers 1 - The Black Knights.

6. The Truckers 2 - Hi-Jack!.

7. Return of the Werewolf.

8. Bamboo Guerillas.

9. Killer Crabs.

10. Bats Out of Hell.

11. The Son of the Werewolf.

12. Locusts.

13. The Origin of the Crabs.

14. Caracal.

15. Thirst.

16. Deathbell.

17. Satan's Snowdrop.

18. Doomflight.

19. Warhead.

20. Manitou Doll.

21. Wolfcurse.

22. Crabs On The Rampage.

23. The Pluto Pact.

24. Entombed.

25. The Lurkers.

26. Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures.

27. Sabat 2: The Blood Merchants.

28. Sabat 3: Cannibal Cult.

29. Blood Circuit.

30. Accursed.

31. Sabat 4: The Druid Connection.

32. The Undead.

33. Crabs' Moon.

34. The Walking Dead.

35. Throwback.

36. The Wood.

37. The Neophyte.

38. Abomination.

39. Snakes.

40. Cannibals.

41. Alligators.

42. Bloodshow.

43. Thirst II: The Plague.

44. Demons.

45. Crabs: The Human Sacrifice.

46. Fiend.

47. The Island.

48. Mania.

49. The Master.

50. The Camp.

51. The Festering.

52. Phobia.

53. The Unseen.

54. Carnivore.

55. The Black Fedora.

56. The Resurrected.

57. The Knighton Vampires.

The next book will be :

58. Witch Spell.

"Yvonne Wheeler is a white witch who wants to put as much distance between her teenage daughter Bobbie and her ex-husband Alec, a devout Satanist. To achieve this, Bobbie is sent to Willington College in rural England. However, Alec dies, his powers become heightened from beyond the grave, and he starts to successfully influence his daughter: she starts a coven with the lesbian head girl as a staunch ally, and proceeds to kill off her prospective chief opponents. Alec also causes Yvonne's death, but, like him, she also becomes more powerful than he could possibly imagine."

Recently published (but not part of back catalogue conversion) :-

Night of the Werewolf

The Eighth Day.

Killer Crabs: The Return.

To view all ebooks currently available, including the one above, please follow the link below.
View Ebook Catalogue

Best regards,

Guy and all at Black Hill Books.