By Midnight

by Mia James

  ‘Oh, Caro, what does it mean? Was Alix part of this? Was he killed because he knew about the myth?’

  ‘I’m sorry, honey, I wish I knew,’ said Caro. ‘Maybe they were trying to turn him, maybe he wanted out, who knows? But that isn’t all. Ten days before the so-called Goth Orgy, he had a meeting at Transparent Media.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because of this.’ She handed April another page. It was a copy of a news story from the music industry newspaper Music Week. The picture showed Alix Graves shaking hands with a man in a suit, with a caption reading ‘Graves plans to change the way Transparent sells music to the consumer’.

  April looked up. ‘So?’

  Caro smiled. ‘So Transparent Media is registered as a subsidiary of Agropharm. And who’s the chairman of Agropharm?’

  April gasped. ‘Of course! Nicholas Osbourne.’

  Caro nodded.

  ‘Davina’s daddy.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Caro was fuming. When they got to the refectory, Simon was sitting with the Faces and the rugby boys, laughing and joking like they’d been best friends for years. He waved to Caro and April, but didn’t make a move to come over to their table.

  ‘Has he been recruited?’ whispered April.

  ‘Either that or he’s just got really annoying overnight.’

  ‘But he is a maths genius, isn’t he? He’s exactly the sort of brainy kid they’d target,’ said April.

  Caro turned to her and there was anger in her face. ‘We’ve got to do something about this,’ she said. She looked down at her watch. ‘Come on.’ She jumped up and headed for the exit. ‘I’ve got an idea. I’ll tell you on the way.’ She pushed through the double doors and strode off.

  ‘Well? Are you going to tell me?’ asked April, trotting to keep up.

  ‘To my mind, the way to stop them is to go to the source, find out who’s behind Ravenwood, yes?’

  April nodded. ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Cut off the head, the snake will die,’ she said. ‘We might also flush out whoever killed your dad into the bargain.’

  April grabbed her arm and pulled her to a halt. ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’ she snapped.

  ‘What?’ said Caro, surprised at the anger on April’s face. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘What did you say? You said your stupid conspiracy is more important than my dad’s murder, that’s what!’

  ‘Eh? No, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Nothing __ and I mean nothing __ is more important than finding out who killed my dad, do you understand?’

  Caro gaped at her. ‘Yes, yes of course,’ she stammered, taken aback by the sudden fury. ‘I wasn’t saying it wasn’t important, honestly. But there is still a good chance that the Regent or whoever’s behind Ravenwood may well have ordered your dad’s murder, so we might crack both cases at once. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  April nodded. ‘Sorry, I guess I’m a bit sensitive at the moment.’

  Caro smiled. ‘It’s understandable after all you’ve been through.’

  ‘Okay,’ said April, taking a deep breath. ‘So where are we going?’

  ‘To the source. Hawk always goes out for his lunch - blood probably - so we just need to sneak past his secretary.’

  ‘Hang on,’ whispered April as they pushed through the double doors and along the corridor towards the front of the school. ‘You think Mr Sheldon is a vampire?’

  Caro stopped and looked at her seriously. ‘We have to assume everyone is now,’ she said. ‘Guilty until proven innocent and all that.’

  ‘Guilty of what, exactly?’

  April whirled around to find Miss Holden standing in the corridor, blocking their way.

  ‘Oh, we were just talking about—’ stammered April.

  ‘Boys,’ said Caro.

  Miss Holden sighed. ‘I’m not surprised. It would be too much to ask that you were discussing something constructive like schoolwork, something you could both do with paying more attention to.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Holden,’ said Caro, ‘sorry, Miss Holden,’ with just the slightest edge of sarcasm to her voice. Miss Holden simply stared at her until Caro looked away.

  ‘All right, Caro, you run along and chase boys or whatever it was you were doing - I want a word with April.’

  Caro looked as if she was going to say something more, but the teacher flashed her a warning look and she sloped off.

  ‘April. How are you?’ said Miss Holden when Caro had gone.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re sure? It’d only be natural if you were feeling a little fragile after, well, after everything that’s happened.’

  ‘No, I’m okay, honestly,’ said April, itching to get away.

  ‘All right, well, as I said to you the other day, I need to speak to you about something important.’

  Something about the look on the teacher’s face made April pause.

  ‘Is it about my dad?’

  Miss Holden smiled sadly. ‘In a way, yes. Can you stay behind after school today?’

  April looked at the floor and shook her head. ‘I told my mum I’d be straight home. She’s not very well at the moment.’

  She didn’t want to tell Miss Holden that she had arranged to go to Davina’s house after school; she knew she wouldn’t approve.

  ‘I understand.’ The teacher smiled. ‘How about you come in early tomorrow? Say in the form room at eight-thirty?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said April. She hurried after Caro. As she turned the corner towards Mr Sheldon’s office, Caro grabbed her and pulled her into a doorway.

  ‘Shhh!’ she hissed, pointing to the open door. ‘Listen.’

  Inside the office, they could hear laughing.

  ‘Oh, you’ll never believe what happened then …’ a woman was saying.

  ‘Hear that?’ whispered Caro. ‘Mrs Bagly, the secretary, loves to gossip on the phone. I’ve been sent to the headmaster’s office often enough to know. She’ll be talking in there all lunch break.’

  ‘So how are we supposed to get past?’

  Caro pointed to the door. ‘Mrs Bagly sits behind that door, but she has one of those high desks you can lean on, so if we keep low, she won’t see us. Then, once we’ve sneaked past the desk, we go around the corner and through the door into Sheldon’s office. Mrs Bagly can’t see the office itself from where she sits.’ Caro glanced at her watch. ‘I reckon we’ve got at least half an hour. Ready?’

  ‘What?’ spluttered April. ‘We can’t just walk straight into the headmaster’s office!’

  Caro looked up and down the corridor, then peeked around the corner.

  ‘Not walk,’ she whispered. ‘Crawl.’ She dropped down to her knees and shuffled towards the door.

  ‘Caro!’ hissed April, but Caro just motioned her onwards. Shaking her head, thankful she hadn’t chosen to wear a skirt today, April crawled after her. The secretary’s desk was to their right and had an elbow-height platform like a doctor’s reception, thus blocking Mrs Bagly’s view of the girls - unless she happened to stand up. They crawled across the outer office on their hands and knees and slipped inside the headmaster’s office. Caro closed the door very, very slowly, so that it wouldn’t attract Mrs Bagly’s attention. When it finally, softly, clicked to, they both breathed out.

  ‘This is crazy!’ whispered April.

  ‘Shhh!’ said Caro.

  April looked around; the office was just as impressive as it had been when she met DI Reece for the first time. Thinking about the police did nothing for her nerves, so she got to work, pulling open a filing cabinet, while Caro slid behind Mr Sheldon’s desk.

  ‘What are we looking for, anyway?’ hissed April.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Caro. ‘Something suspicious. Anything that tells us who’s behind the school.’

  April pulled out a file at random. ‘Hey, I’ve got Mr Andrews’ personnel file,’ she said.

  ‘Not exactly what we’re looking for.’ />
  ‘His CV is amazing,’ she hissed. ‘This guy could work anywhere. What’s he doing here?’

  ‘Maybe he likes blood,’ said Caro. ‘Now get searching.’

  Quickly, April felt swamped with information. She found financial spreadsheets and costings for replacing the windows in the science lab with some sort of tinted glass, she found the exam results of the chemistry department going back six years, even a budget for a skiing trip to Austria, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, just things relating to the running of a secondary school.

  ‘Anything on the computer?’

  ‘Nah, it’s all password-protected,’ said Caro, ‘and all these folders are locked … Hold up. Bingo!’

  April ran over. Caro had clicked on an email with an Agropharm logo at the bottom.

  ‘Where’d you find that?’

  ‘Mrs Bagly has her email account on here too and this was cc-ed to her. It was just there in the in tray. Yes!’ she said excitedly as she read it. ‘Listen to this: “It’s frustrating that the school is not producing enough candidates for our industry. I don’t have to tell you how high the stakes are. We need more results your end Robert, if you want to see any more funding for your expanding science lab.”’

  ‘Who’s it from?’ asked April.

  Caro’s eyes were wide. ‘Nicholas Osbourne!’ she hissed triumphantly. ‘Could he be the Regent?’

  A loud bout of coughing from the outer office made them both jump.

  ‘Move!’ whispered Caro urgently. ‘Get behind the door.’

  Out in the office, they heard Mr Sheldon’s voice. ‘Are you okay, lad? Do you want a drink of water?’

  The coughing seemed to get worse.

  ‘Mrs Bagly, can you give me a hand?’ said Mr Sheldon. ‘We’d better get him to the nurse.’

  April had to clamp her hand over Caro’s mouth to stop her from laughing out loud at their good fortune. She peeked around the door and, seeing the coast was clear, they ran out into the corridor.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  April saw him waiting for her as she crossed the square and cursed under her breath. I shouldn’t have stopped off at home, she thought, I should have gone straight to Davina’s. DI Reece was standing by her garden gate. More questions were the last thing she needed right now. Answers, that’s what I want.

  In particular, she wanted to know what their discoveries had meant. Could Nicholas Osbourne be the Vampire Regent? He certainly had all the power and influence you’d expect from someone in charge of a sinister conspiracy, and there were links to both Alix Graves and Ravenwood. Who was he expecting Hawk to ‘recruit’ for him? Was he choosing the brightest kids for the Regent to turn? April just didn’t know and that was what was so frustrating; she kept stumbling on little clues, whispy bits of information that disappeared as soon as you clutched at them, but nothing concrete, nothing she could rely on. And even if she did find absolute proof that Davina’s father was the Regent, what then? Tell the police? DI Reece was a nice man and pretty open-minded, considering, but honestly, who would believe such a crazy idea?

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said DI Reece, throwing his cigarette into the gutter. ‘Sorry to hang around in the street, but I didn’t want to come to the school again and there was no answer at the house.’

  ‘Have you got news on the case?’ she asked, without much hope.

  Reece shook his head. ‘Only in a roundabout way. We’ve had the full forensic report back.’ He nodded towards April’s yellow front door. ‘Do you want to go inside?’

  April shook her head. ‘I’d rather not if it’s okay with you, Mr Reece,’ she said, stifling a shiver. ‘I don’t really want to be talking about that stuff where … well, you know.’

  The detective nodded. ‘Understood. How about I buy you a coffee?’

  They walked to Americano in silence and settled into a booth at the back where they could talk in privacy.

  ‘I’ll cut to the chase, April,’ said Reece. ‘The report told us virtually nothing. No fingerprints, no fibres, nothing under the fingernails. To be frank, we don’t know who was in your house or how they got there and the only unusual thing the post-mortem revealed was, well …’ He hesitated. ‘It was rather unbelievable.’

  April could see it was something he would rather not tell her. The policeman looked decidedly uncomfortable.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The cause of death. It seems your father’s throat was torn out.’

  ‘Torn?’ she said, feeling bile rising.

  ‘Yes,’ said Reece, holding her gaze. ‘I realise this must be hard for you to hear, but according to the coroner, it was as if an animal had got hold of him.’

  April shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Are you saying it was an animal?’

  ‘No, I’m saying it was a human bite. They attacked him with their teeth.’

  April stifled a moan.

  ‘Biting cases are surprisingly common, I’m afraid, usually in drunken pub brawls where ears or even noses are torn off. Those nasty primeval urges are still with us, just under the surface.’

  ‘But to bite someone’s throat—’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Reece. ‘According to the coroner, it would take enormous strength. The jaws are the strongest muscles in the body, of course, but even so, the attacker would have to be extremely disturbed to do what he did, so we’re starting to think that we’re dealing with a lunatic.’

  ‘Why? I mean, why do you think that now?’

  The detective paused, running a finger along the rim of his coffee mug. ‘This is very sensitive information, April,’ he said, ‘but I’m trusting you with it because I think you need to know, for your own safety if nothing else.’

  April waited, screwing her hands into tight fists under the table.

  ‘All of the murders - Alix Graves, Isabelle Davis and your dad - all have identical causes of death.’

  April had to struggle to draw a breath. ‘They were all bitten? ’ she whispered.

  Reece nodded. ‘Yes. All of them.’

  April’s hand went to her throat. She had guessed as much, of course; there were vampires on the loose - for God’s sake, she had seen them with her own eyes, so it was only to be expected - but having a policeman spell it out to her was still a shock. Somehow, she had managed to stop herself thinking about it. She knew her dad had been killed, of course, but up until now, she had avoided thinking about how.

  ‘So what now?’ she asked, looking at him with pleading eyes. ‘Can you stop him?’

  ‘We’ll have your house watched, of course,’ he said. ‘We’re taking this extremely seriously.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ said April angrily. ‘Can you stop him?’

  Reece looked away. ‘I have to be honest - I don’t know. We’ll do everything we can, of course—’

  ‘Great,’ said April, glaring at him. ‘Just great. So that’s your plan? Watch the house and hope this maniac turns up to rip our throats out?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Reece firmly. ‘I will never let that happen. Never.’ But his face told a different story. There were dark rings under his eyes and the lines on his forehead looked more pronounced than the last time she had seen him.

  ‘We’ll catch him, April,’ he said. ‘And we’ll catch him the same way we catch every other criminal - through good, solid police work. It might not be as spectacular or as fast as we’d like, but it always gets results in the end.’

  ‘In the end?’ she snapped. ‘Do you think we can wait that long?’ She knew it wasn’t his fault, but she was frustrated and she was scared. She was jumping at every shadow, flinching each time the telephone rang. Gabriel had said he had the feeling he was being watched, led into a trap; April could feel it now too. There were eyes everywhere and she was convinced some of them were watching her.

  She fixed Reece with a probing stare. ‘Who could have done it, Mr Reece? Who could have killed my dad?’

  ‘Well, as I said, it
would take someone in a frenzy—’

  ‘No, I mean who had the opportunity to do it? Who are the suspects?’

  Reece put his cup down. ‘Can’t tell you that, April. It’s privileged information. I’ve already told you more than I should have.’

  ‘Exactly, so why not tell me this as well?’

  ‘The information in the coroner’s report related directly to your safety—’