Innocent Blood

by Graham Masterton

  The phone rang. Even before he answered it he knew it was Astrid. Maybe he was starting to develop that psychic sense that Nevile had talked about.

  ‘Frank? Are you OK?’

  ‘Sure, I’m fine.’

  ‘The funeral – it must have been terrible for you.’

  ‘Well, it was. But it’s all over now, and I guess it helped.’

  ‘How did Margot take it?’

  ‘Margot and me, we’re not really talking at the moment.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You really need someone to talk to at a time like this.’

  ‘I suppose I’m lucky, then. I have you.’

  ‘Do you want me to come round tonight? I won’t if you’d rather be alone.’

  ‘No, no. I’d like that. Come around ten thirty, we’ll have a couple of drinks together.’

  ‘Frank . . .’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘No, forget I ever said anything. I’ll see you later.’

  Frank turned back to the TV. At a media conference in Sacramento, the Governor of California, Gene Krupnik, had declared a state of emergency in the greater Los Angeles area, and was calling out the National Guard to set up security cordons around all the major studios. A bomb threat had been received by Sony and they had evacuated their lot ‘until further notice.’ Production on seven daytime soaps had been suspended and two new series – the gung-ho military drama Desert Force and the dark supernatural thriller Exorcists – had both been canceled, and the cancellation of other shows was ‘imminent.’

  The Governor said, ‘There are no two ways about it. War has been declared on America’s broadcasting industry, which means that war has been declared on our freedom of speech, which we hold more dear than life itself. Well, I can tell you this: violence will be met by determination. Terrorism will be met by steadfastness. We refuse to flinch. Whatever it takes, we are going to prevail.’

  The news channel immediately switched to pictures of the San Diego and the Pomona Freeways, which were jammed solid with SUVs trying to escape from the city.

  Nevile arrived just after six and Frank took him to the Alligator Bar on Sunset. They sat in the shadows in a semicircular booth, with the lights of Los Angeles glittering below them. The bar was conspicuously empty. It was a favorite haunt of some of Hollywood’s older celebrities, TV stars of the seventies and eighties, but not tonight. The pianist played a desultory version of the theme tune to Hill Street Blues, and kept stopping every now and then for a drink and a chat with one of the hostesses.

  Nevile had changed into a dark gray three-piece suit with a cream shirt and a red silk necktie. ‘I agreed to be guest of honor at a new art exhibition,’ he explained. ‘“Visions of the World Beyond.”’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Rodeo Drive, the Kleban Gallery, nine o’clock. Don’t ask. I know just what it’s going to be like and I’m beginning to regret it already. Most American artists seem to think that the “world beyond” looks like one of those episodes of Star Trek when Kirk and the crew go on shore leave. You know, all Greek pillars and orange skies and girls walking around in lime-green mini-dresses.’

  ‘You’re quite a cynic, for a psychic.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m just a realist. The world beyond looks exactly like the world of the living, except that everybody’s in stasis – the same as they were the day they passed over, for ever. If you die angry, you stay angry. Let that be a warning to you.’

  ‘Tell me about Danny. Or this spirit that pretended he was Danny.’

  Nevile sipped his Tom Collins. ‘When I spoke to Lynn Ashbee’s little girl, Kathy, there was no question at all that it was her. Young Kathy was shocked, and she was very faint, and she didn’t really understand what had happened to her, especially since she had suffered such massive physical trauma. The way you die has an enormous effect on you. If you pass over peacefully, your spirit adapts to death much more easily; you’re ready for it, you can accept it. But if it’s wham! – the way it was with Kathy and all of those other school-children – it can take you a long time before you adjust. Months, or even years.’

  ‘Did you see Kathy?’

  ‘I saw a dancing light, like a will o’ the wisp, and only for a few seconds. That’s all I would have expected to see, so soon after such a violent death. That’s why Danny’s appearance was such a surprise to me. Danny may not have passed over instantaneously, like Kathy and her classmates, but all the same he wasn’t really expecting to die, was he?

  ‘Yet there he was, and his image was almost as clear as if he were still alive. Not only that, he wasn’t bewildered or confused. Quite the opposite. He was full of resentment, and he was able to articulate that resentment very clearly. That’s why I’m ninety percent convinced that it wasn’t Danny, but another spirit trying to pass itself off as Danny.’

  ‘Can spirits do that? I mean, take on the shape of other spirits?’

  ‘Of course. A person’s spirit has no physical substance. It’s nothing but a highly charged collection of all the electrical impulses that made up their personality when they were alive. A spirit makes itself seen and heard by stimulating the synapses in your brain, so that you think you can see it and you think you can hear it, even though it’s invisible and it’s not making a sound. Why do you think there are no authenticated tapes of spirit voices, and no video recordings of ghosts – even though people swear that they’ve heard their dead mothers talking to them, and seen their dead lovers standing over their beds? What you saw outside the window was very vivid, but it was nothing more than a picture from your own memory.’

  ‘So how come you saw it, too?’

  ‘Because whoever this spirit is, it was able to conjure up Danny’s image in my brain, too, and Margot’s, and Lynn’s, so that we all witnessed what was more or less the same manifestation.’

  Frank finished his vodka and beckoned the hostess for another one. ‘What I want to know is, why would another spirit do that?’

  ‘I’m not at all sure. But spirits often make attempts to influence us, so that we can take care of unfinished business for them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, there are some things that spirits can do for themselves. If a man never got the chance to tell a woman that he loved her before he died, he might whisper it to her, inside her mind, or evoke a song or a smell that reminds her of him. He might even be able to appear to her, or give her the feeling that he was touching her. But spirits can’t hurt anybody. They can’t take revenge – not with their own hands, anyway.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. That’s why people shouldn’t ever be scared by ghosts. Spirits can sometimes make a room feel chilly, or make the lights appear to go dim, but that’s not because it really goes colder or darker; they’re just affecting our perception. They can move objects, sometimes, that’s elementary psychokinesis. But they certainly can’t strangle you or stab you or push you off a building. That’s because they can’t make your brain act against your own self-preservation. What they can do, however, is try to persuade some other living person to get their revenge by proxy.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I’ve done quite a lot of research into it – and there are several recorded instances where people have been killed and this seems to be the only plausible explanation. The most recent case I heard of was in New York two or three years ago when Antonio “Horseface” Agnelli was shot dead by one of his closest friends, George D’Auria.

  ‘In his defense, D’Auria said that he had met one of Horseface’s cousins, Bruno, in a restaurant in Brooklyn and that Cousin Bruno had tipped him off that Horseface had been having a passionate affair with his wife.

  ‘However it turned out at the Grand Jury hearing that Bruno had been expelled from the Agnelli family in 1994, and that his body had been found in 1997 in a burned-out car in Queens. So we have to ask ourselves, who did
George D’Auria meet in that restaurant, if anybody? The manager and the waiter swore blind that he had eaten alone.’

  The pianist started to play an even more careless interpretation of the theme from The Love Boat. Frank said, ‘I still don’t understand why a spirit should have appeared to me as Danny, and told me that he didn’t forgive me.’

  ‘Quite honestly, Frank, I don’t either. But it stirred up serious trouble for you, didn’t it, between you and Margot? And that graffiti all over her paintings – that must have been the last straw, as far as she was concerned.’

  ‘You think a spirit could have spoiled her paintings?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. As I say, spirits can’t hurt you directly, but many of them are capable of moving things, like pictures, or even furniture, and some spirits can fling things around.’

  Frank said, ‘I have a very bad feeling about this. I feel like I’m being led somewhere, but I don’t know where.’

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out. We ought to try another communication session – another séance. And before you say no, this one will be free of charge. I’ve been commissioned to write a new book about psychic detection and this will make a terrific chapter all on its own. It’s an extremely unusual case, Frank. It really is.’

  ‘OK . . . if you think it might help.’

  ‘More than anything else, I think it’s a sensible precaution. I don’t want to be alarmist, but it seems to me as if this spirit is intent on doing you some serious mischief.’

  Twelve

  Astrid knocked on his door just after eleven. As soon as he let her in she clung to him and held him tight, without saying anything. A young musician with a beaky nose and curly, shoulder-length hair came out of the room next door and winked at him. ‘Looks like you’re all right there, mate.’

  Frank said, ‘I’m OK, Astrid. Really, I’m OK.’ He disentangled himself from her arms and closed the door.

  ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you all day.’ She looked different – her hair was different, slicked back with gel, and she was wearing a white silk Spanish-style blouse and tight black satin pants, flared at the ankle.

  ‘I’m OK. The funeral was good for me.’

  ‘It didn’t upset you too much?’

  He shook his head. ‘We sang some of Danny’s favorite hymns and some of his friends said a few words about him and everybody cried. And it was good. It wasn’t closure. Closure’s going to take a long, long time. But at least it gave me the chance to say goodbye to him. And sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know why you had to say sorry.’

  ‘Because Danny still blames me, that’s why. Even if it wasn’t really my fault.’

  He went into the kitchen area and poured them both a vodka and tonic, with a slice of lime. Astrid sat cross-legged on the couch. ‘Nothing on television,’ she complained. ‘Nothing but bombs, bombs, bombs.’

  ‘Well, it’s getting serious,’ said Frank. ‘The whole industry’s in a state of total paralysis. They haven’t put Pigs on hold yet, but Mo reckons they’re going to make an announcement in the morning. Did you see that Hallmark have canceled Beltway? Disappointing ratings, that’s the excuse they gave. Actually it was doing pretty good. The only trouble was, the chief villain is a treacherous, lecherous, Middle-Eastern diplomat.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about the bombing. It scares me.’

  ‘I think it scares everybody, and with damn good reason.’

  ‘It’s never going to be the same again, is it? Hollywood?’

  He nodded. She was right, Hollywood had been changed forever. Not just the town itself, but the whole self-image of America that Hollywood had reflected in a million movies and television series. This wasn’t a fictitious threat from giant ants in the desert, or aliens with mile-long mother ships. This was a real threat that really killed people you knew, and it was everywhere and anywhere. You couldn’t escape it by walking out of the movie theater or switching it off.

  You could never mow your lawn again, or invite your family around for Thanksgiving, or drive along the coast with the sun in your eyes, in the absolute certainty that because you were in America, you were safe. Dar Tariki Tariqat had murdered much more than people. They had murdered certainty, and left its blood running into the gutters.

  Frank had ordered pepperoni pizza and they ate it, very messily, in bed.

  ‘What are you going to do about Margot?’ asked Astrid, sucking her fingers.

  ‘I don’t know what I can do. Give her some time to cool off, I guess.’

  ‘Do you think she will? Cool off, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t actually say that he didn’t care, either, but he nearly did, and he surprised himself because he meant it. If he had cared, he wouldn’t be sitting in bed with Astrid on the night of their only child’s funeral. But, he thought to himself, I’m the last person in the world that Margot wants to console her. Just like she said, she might be able to forgive me one day, but she could never forget, and how could she bear to stay married to me, if she was always going to blame me for Danny’s death?

  He looked at Astrid’s profile, limned by the light from the TV screen – her hooded eyes and sharp cheekbones and her sensual, slightly parted lips. He looked at her feet, her long toes with silver rings on every one of them. There was something elvish about her, a magical quality, as if she came from Middle Earth. He didn’t know if this relationship would develop into anything, but there was a strange sparkle about it that he had never known with Margot.

  ‘You were going to tell me something,’ he said.

  ‘Was I? What?’

  ‘I don’t know. You started to tell me on the phone but then you said you’d leave it till later.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I was going to ask you if you wanted to come away with me this weekend.’

  ‘Where did you have in mind?’

  ‘I have a friend who has a cottage in Rancho Santa Fe. It’s only an hour’s drive.’

  ‘And we could do what?’

  ‘Swim. Talk. Eat too many strawberries.’

  ‘Well . . . I probably won’t have any writing to do.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘Yes, OK. It’s a yes.’

  ‘Good. You can sing me “The Girl With the Left-Footed Limp.”’

  He tried to read her eyes. They were sparkling and alive, but he couldn’t decide if they were lit up with pleasure, or with something else altogether – the secret delight of a woman who has got exactly what she wants.

  They slept in each other’s arms, restlessly, all tangled up, but they didn’t make love. In the small hours of the morning, when it was just beginning to grow light, Frank was woken up by somebody talking. At first he thought there was somebody in the living room, but then he realized that it was Astrid.

  ‘Believe it . . . in your head. It’s the only path. Dark . . . I know it is. Dark! Can’t you hear the fountain? Go through the garden and never come back.’

  After a while she turned her back to him and started to breathe very deeply, as if she were trying to calm herself down. The sky outside grew lighter and lighter, and at last the sun came in, and lit up the bed. She opened her eyes and smiled at him.

  ‘I was dreaming,’ she said.

  Frank didn’t realize that he had overshot the entrance to Nevile’s house until he passed the Earth Mother Juice Stand by the side of the road. If you pass the Earth Mother Juice Stand, Nevile had told him, you’ve gone two hundred yards too far. He twisted around in his seat and backed his car up all the way.

  The driveway to Nevile’s house sloped steeply downhill between two dark yew hedges. He followed it around a tight left-hand curve until he reached a wide shingled area in front of the house, where a skinny teenager in a splashy Hawaiian shirt was waxing Nevile’s Mercedes. Frank didn’t have to ask if Nevile was home. The house was walled almost entirely in glass, so that Frank could see right through the living room to the deck at the rear, where Nevile was pacing up and
down with his cellphone.

  He went to the front door and pushed the bell. A dumpy Mexican woman in a flowery apron stopped chopping red capsicums in the kitchen and came waddling along the shiny hardwood hallway.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, as if she were surprised to see anybody standing outside.

  ‘Frank Bell. Nevile’s expecting me.’

  ‘Hokay. You come inside.’

  She showed him into the living room, which was furnished with low couches upholstered in natural linen and chrome-plated Italian chairs. A tall bronze statue of a naked woman stood in one corner, her hands covering her eyes. On the opposite wall hung an abstract painting of a scarlet triangle and a black square. It was titled Doubt.

  Nevile saw Frank through the window and beckoned him out on to the deck. The back of the house was built up on pilings and it commanded a precipitous view of Laurel Canyon, with trees and rooftops and bright-blue swimming-pools, and the hazy city sprawling in the distance. Nevile gestured to Frank to sit down.

  ‘Yes,’ he snapped, into his cellphone. ‘That’s all it’s giving me. I’ve tried, believe me, but you wouldn’t want me to fabricate evidence, would you? Even psychic evidence.’ He dropped the cellphone into the pocket of his blue-black Armani shirt. ‘Lieutenant Chessman again,’ he said to Frank. ‘He gave me what was left of the driver’s seat from the catering truck, the one they used to bomb The Garry Sherman Show. He wants to know if I got any feedback from it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘A couple of flashes, but they didn’t make any particular sense. One was somebody shouting; it sounded like an angry father telling off a child. The other was more like a dream . . . walking between two rows of cypress trees, with a full moon shining overhead.’

  ‘So what do you make out of that?’

  ‘Absolutely bugger all, so far. Both flashes obviously represent highly significant moments in the driver’s life, otherwise they wouldn’t have left such a strong resonance in his seat. It’s also likely that they’re both connected with his decision to act as a suicide bomber. But how, and why . . . well, your guess is as good as mine.’