Joe Coffin [Season 4]

by Preston, Ken

  ‘There’s not much at all that would surprise me about that woman,’ Emma said.

  ‘Anyway, she’s been over here in the UK long enough that she is now considered an illegal immigrant and we should be deporting her.’

  ‘But you’re not?’

  ‘Not yet, no. I think I’d like to talk to her first, find out more about the vampires. But now that Coffin’s flounced off in a huff for some reason, I don’t know how we can get to her.’

  Emma took another sip of her coffee. Still too hot for her liking. ‘I should imagine she’s living at Angellicit with Joe.’ The small pang of jealousy she felt inside her stomach at saying those words took Emma by surprise. She took another sip of her coffee even though it was still too hot.

  ‘I know, but there’s no way Coffin’s letting me in there,’ Archer said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way you could get in there and talk to her is there, maybe arrange a meet?’

  ‘No, afraid not,’ Emma said. ‘Joe’s cut off all contact with me, I haven’t seen him since that morning at Angellicit.’

  Archer grimaced. ‘Thing is, we still know fuck all about these monsters. Some people from the CIDE tried taking one of the vampires we’ve still got in the mortuary, but nobody could figure out how to get in there and back out again without losing a couple of pints of blood.’

  ‘What’s CIDE?’

  ‘The Centre for Infectious Diseases and fuck knows what the E stands for. A bunch of these professor types came up from London to take a look.’ Archer rubbed his hand through his tousled hair and Emma couldn’t help but wonder if he was looking after himself. ‘I swear to God one of them looked no older than twelve.’

  ‘That’s you, that is, growing old.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘You look tired, are you getting enough sleep?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll look a lot better once I’ve had another of these,’ he said and held the coffee mug up.

  ‘I’ll make another one,’ Emma said, getting up. ‘Where are you staying at the moment?’

  ‘With Amrit and his family,’ Archer said. ‘They’ve got a granny annexe at the back of the house, fully self-contained, bathroom, kitchen, everything except the granny.’

  ‘You could always come back here, you know,’ Emma said.

  Archer twisted in his chair to face Emma at the kitchen counter, pouring ground coffee into the machine. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘No, I meant . . . I meant I could move out and you could have the house back.’

  Archer turned to face the table again. ‘No, I hate the thought of Lou homeless.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be homeless, I’d find somewhere.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Archer said. ‘It doesn’t sit right with me that she be anywhere else but here. This is her home.’

  ‘Okay,’ Emma said, switching the machine on.

  ‘The thing is,’ Archer said. ‘The thing is, I don’t see why I can’t move back in anyway. Doesn’t mean to say that we’re getting back together again, but can’t we share the same house for a while at least? It’s big enough.’

  Emma stood behind Archer and placed her hands on his shoulders. ‘No, it’s not big enough. Not for us two. You move back in here and we’d be at each other’s throats before the day was out.’

  Archer was twisting his empty coffee mug around and around in his hands. ‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Hey, did you find out who was—’

  Emma felt Archer’s shoulders stiffen at the sound of Mitch’s voice.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ she said, and closed her eyes.

  Mitch had entered the kitchen wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and showing off his lean physique. He had a tattoo on his right bicep, his unit number and logo inked in black.

  Archer stood up suddenly, knocking the back of the chair into Emma’s midriff.

  ‘Bloody hell, Emma, I’d started believing you when you said ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan wasn’t here.’

  ‘Hey, did he just call me dumb?’ Mitch said.

  ‘Ignore him,’ Emma said, rubbing at her stomach where the chair had hit her. ‘He’s just trying to be funny.’

  ‘Funny?’ Archer shouted, wheeling on Emma. ‘You think this is funny? All this time we’ve been sat down here and you’ve been lying to me, you think I find this funny?’

  ‘God, no, of course not,’ Emma said. ‘I wish I hadn’t lied to you, I don’t know what came over me, the lie just sort of popped out and then I couldn’t take it back.’

  ‘Is he in our bed?’ Archer screamed, pointing at Mitch. ‘Is he?’

  ‘Look, why don’t we all just calm down?’ Mitch said.

  ‘I’ll calm down when you’ve put some fucking clothes on and pissed off out of my house,’ Archer said.

  Emma saw Mitch’s muscles tensing, saw him take a step forward, his hands curling into fists by his side.

  ‘Go back upstairs, get dressed,’ she said.

  ‘Are you being serious?’ Mitch said and pointed at Archer. ‘You’re taking his side over mine?’

  Emma rolled her eyes. ‘Oh God, I’m not taking anybody’s side. But dealing with one sulky little boy at a time is about my limit, so why don’t you go upstairs and get dressed and I’ll talk to you later? Okay?’

  Mitch and Archer eyeballed each other for a few seconds longer. Mitch broke eye contact first and turned and left the room.

  ‘Dickhead,’ Archer muttered.

  ‘For fuck’s sake Nick, will you just grow up please?’ Emma said.

  ‘I don’t want him in this house,’ Archer said.

  ‘All right, all right, I won’t have him around again, I promise,’ Emma said. ‘As soon as he’s gone today, that’s it. But Nick, you can’t stop me seeing him, okay?’

  ‘How long have you known him, Emma?’ Archer said. ‘Did the two of you have something going on before?’

  Emma let her head fall back and said, ‘Oh God! Of course not. Don’t be such an idiot.’

  The coffee machine hissed as it finished spitting coffee into the mugs.

  ‘It’s just, you got together with him pretty quick after we split, you’ve got to admit that,’ Archer said.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Emma said. ‘We were encouraged by our counsellors to meet up and talk through what happened at Angellicit. It just kind of happened from there, really.’

  Archer sighed, rubbed his hands through his hair. ‘Bloody hell, Emma, what a fucking mess.’

  ‘You, me, or the situation in general?’ Emma said, trying for a smile to lighten the atmosphere a little.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Archer said, turning away and heading for the door. ‘Make sure lover boy is out of here this morning.’

  ‘Yes Sir, Detective Inspector Archer,’ Emma muttered as he slammed the door shut on his way out.

  there is no key

  Chitrita had spent the day watching television. The little girl, Tilly was her name, had switched the television on for her and showed her how to operate the remote to change the channels. At first, when the huge, dark, glassy window on the wall had bloomed into bright, noisy life, Chitrita had cowered against the opposite side of the room, hissing and spitting. She had almost leapt on the girl right then and ripped her apart, believing that this was a trick. But Chitrita soon calmed down as she realised the television was a window into other worlds and nothing more.

  The window calmed the little girl down, especially the noisy, colourful drawings that moved and spoke. She had been crying, her skinny little chest hitching up and down with loud sobs. The window on the wall seemed to hypnotise her.

  Chitrita soon grew bored with the cartoons and flicked through the channels. There was so much to see and hear, so much noise and sex and violence on the other side of this window. Was this what the world had become now?

  Chitrita thought it was wonderful.

  She lay on the sofa and laughed at the news reports of death and destruction, and then she switched channels and masturbated whilst watchin
g music videos.

  She watched TV all day, mimicking what she heard, learning to talk again.

  Chitrita kept the curtains closed. Not just to block out the daylight but to stay hidden too. Tilly’s parents lay on the living room floor leaking blood into the carpet. Sometimes Chitrita got down on the floor beside them and licked some more blood off them, but really their blood was growing sticky and tasteless now. She’d had her fill earlier, drinking until she thought she might throw up. But as the day drifted into evening, she grew hungrier again.

  Chitrita had taken off her ruined and ancient wedding dress and explored the house. She found the bathroom and showered. Afterwards she moved into the bedroom and sat naked on the bed whilst she explored the perfumes and makeup and nail varnishes. She put on lipstick and eyeshadow and puffed clouds of talcum powder over her face and chest, giggling at the feel of it.

  She rifled through the dresses in the walk-in wardrobe, throwing them aside until she found one that she liked. She slipped it over her head and smoothed it down against her flesh. The ivory dress hugged her figure, the neckline plunging to reveal the space between her breasts. Her arms were bare and the dress revealed her legs and thighs.

  It was perfect.

  Downstairs, Chitrita found Tilly lying on the floor with her mother. The woman had been dead for some hours now. Tilly was stroking her hair and crying softly.

  Chitrita knelt down and opened up Tilly’s throat with one smooth swipe of her fingernails.

  She leaned closer and caught the pulsing stream of arterial blood in her mouth. It ran down her chin and neck and over her new dress.

  When she had finished feeding, she stood and stretched and ran her fingers through her hair.

  It was night time once more.

  Chitrita heard a scratching at the windows. Dark shapes hovered outside, bumping up against the glass window pane.

  Bats.

  Chitrita had seen them early that morning, while it was still dark enough for her to be outside. She had seen them hovering over that silly little girl Leola as she talked to that man.

  Joe Coffin.

  It had amused Chitrita to see the bats attack Leola. Chitrita hadn’t even wished for it, and yet the bats seemed to know what she wanted.

  And now they were here again. Waiting for her.

  The others, the other vampires, they were waiting for her too. Calling to her. She could hear them as though they were in the room with her.

  And because of the window in the wall, she knew exactly where they were.

  * * *

  DS Amrit Choudhry wasn’t a happy man.

  There were several reasons for this. And most of them seemed to be related to Nick Archer.

  Choudhry had known it would be a bad idea to offer Archer the granny flat while he got himself sorted out with new accommodation. Either that or got back together with Emma. But he had offered it to him anyway, and now he was finding out what a bad idea it really had been.

  It wasn’t just that Choudhry was now the butt of jokes from his colleagues, or that Archer was on at him even more than before about work and progress on shifting the vampires out of the mortuary and off their hands.

  No, the worst part of it all was how his wife, Parvin, was dealing with having Archer living with them.

  She hated the man.

  Hated him with a passion.

  But then Parvin was a passionate woman, and it didn’t take much to provoke her. Choudhry was often at the wrong end of her sharp tongue and most of the time he had no idea what he had done, or not done, to deserve the verbal whipping. But then most of the time her anger faded away quickly and the slight, whatever it might have been, was forgotten.

  Not with Archer though.

  Whatever he had done or said, or not done or not said, Parvin was now holding a grudge.

  Which would have been all right if Parvin was directing all her anger and righteous fury at Archer. He was a grown man, he could look after himself. But no, with Archer, Parvin was sweetness and light. She fawned over him like a long-lost relative, a member of royalty even. And then as soon as he was out of the room her mask slipped and she began hissing and spitting curses at Choudhry for bringing that man into their house and family, and when was that mouse of a husband of hers going to man up and tell Archer to pack up and leave?

  Choudhry stretched, wincing at a crack in his spine. Seemed his aches and pains were growing more frequent with every passing day. Was that simply because he was getting older? Maybe he should buy himself a gym membership. All this sitting down at a desk, wasn’t doing him any good. That’s what police work mostly seemed to involve these days, sitting in front of a computer and exercising nothing but his fingers.

  Choudhry nudged the mouse and woke up the monitor.

  The new health and safety policy he was supposed to be reviewing reappeared on the screen. Pages and pages of turgid information. No wonder he had drifted off.

  ‘Hey, what was that?’ Lewis said from the pod next to him.

  ‘What was what?’ Choudhry said. He hated working within the confines of these three panels even if looking out of them meant all he had to do was stand up.

  ‘That,’ Lewis said, as something brushed past Choudhry’s head.

  Choudhry looked up, instinctively swiping at his head as though getting rid of a spider. He dropped his hand by his side as he looked up, not quite able to believe what he was seeing.

  ‘Is that a bat?’ he said.

  Another bat joined the one already fluttering just beneath the ceiling. They dived and swerved around each other, almost as though they were putting on a display.

  ‘How the hell did they get in here?’ someone said, as more officers drew near to look at the unexpected addition of wildlife to the station.

  ‘Oh shit!’ Lewis shouted.

  Choudhry stood up, forgetting the bats, forgetting the health and safety policy and his aches and pains.

  Forgetting Parvin and her irrational hatred of Nick Archer.

  A woman in a tight, figure hugging white dress was striding through the operations room. Her hair was wild and her face a mask of white, apart from dark shadows around her eyes, her scarlet lips, and the red blood splattered down her chin and neck and over the dress. Police officers were scattering before her advance, whilst others followed her at a distance.

  ‘She’s one of them!’ someone shouted, Choudhry wasn’t sure who.

  ‘Somebody call the Armed Response Vehicle!’ Choudhry yelled.

  The woman, the vampire, passed the cubicles and the desks, staring straight ahead as more bats flooded into the police station behind her.

  It seemed as though she knew exactly where she was going.

  And Choudhry thought he knew too.

  ‘She’s going for the others,’ he muttered. And then, louder, ‘She’s going to set the other vampires free!’

  Hamilton stepped in her way, shirt sleeves rolled up as though he was about to engage in a round of old fashioned fisticuffs. He hadn’t been downstairs, where they kept the vampires. He hadn’t seen them, seen what they were like.

  Hadn’t seen how utterly vicious and wild they could be.

  ‘Hamilton, out of the way!’ Choudhry yelled.

  The vampire lashed out at Hamilton. He lifted his hands in defence and the vampire gouged a series of jagged lines in his bare forearms. Hamilton cried out in pain as the blood began welling from the ragged slashes and dripping on the floor. He staggered, instinctively pulled his arms out of harm’s way and opened himself up for another attack.

  The vampire swiped at him with her claws and ripped the left side of his face away. Hamilton screamed and collapsed.

  The vampire stepped over him and continued on her way.

  Choudhry followed at a safe distance. He wasn’t sure why, or what he intended to do. They needed to wait for the Armed Response Vehicle to arrive, but even then Choudhry wasn’t sure they would be of much use. The vampires in the mortuary had been tazered and tranquilised wi
th no effect at all. Choudhry doubted guns would make much difference either.

  The vampire hissed at a female officer approaching her.

  ‘Kirstin, stay back,’ Choudhry said. ‘You saw what happened to Hamilton.’

  Kirstin glanced at Choudhry and back at the vampire. She was new, transferred from Stafford a couple of weeks ago. Still trying to find her place in the male-dominated hierarchy of the Birmingham station. Hair scraped back in a bun, severe, angular face, obviously kept in shape and took no shit off anybody.

  ‘We can’t let her set the others free,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want your face taking off too?’ Choudhry said.

  A small group had gathered around Hamilton. Choudhry wondered if they were trying to put his face back on. He had seen the long flap of skin hanging from Hamilton’s skull, exposing the red, glistening flesh beneath. He pushed the thought away.

  ‘The mortuary’s locked up,’ Choudhry said. ‘There’s no way she can get in there.’

  The vampire was moving on, twisting and turning, teeth bared at anyone who drew too close.

  She started down the steps toward the mortuary, head twisted around, keeping her attention focused on the threat behind her.

  Choudhry didn’t think they were much of a threat at all.

  ‘We need help,’ Kirstin said, walking beside Choudhry as they followed the vampire at a respectable distance.

  ‘The ARV is on its way,’ Choudhry said. ‘Not that I think they will do much good.’

  The vampire was at the bottom of the steps now, glancing in both directions as if unsure which way to go. She turned right, headed down the brightly lit corridor. A dark cloud of bats followed her.

  Choudhry and Kirstin walked down the steps, taking each one slowly and deliberately. Behind them was a crowd of uniformed officers and admin staff. Seemed like the entire station was following them.

  ‘You really believe in this vampire stuff?’ Kirstin said.

  ‘You haven’t been down to the mortuary yet, have you?’ Choudhry said.

  They had reached the bottom of the stairs now. The vampire was almost at the other end of the corridor. One more corner and she would be facing the mortuary door.