The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories

by Teresa Solana

  When we hit the road, that damned August sun was so blistering I had to rush back into the bar to avoid disintegrating. I used the excuse that my back was hurting, and Sebastià, who’s a real ace, offered to drive me home in his jeep. Once I was home, I immediately went to the crypt to rest because I was smouldering all over. In the jeep I’d noticed my right hand had begun to smell scorched, so I took a painkiller before going to sleep. I also decided it was high time to install air conditioning in the crypt: I’m well aware it’s most inelegant to be sleeping nude in the coffin.

  I had nightmares all day. I was out of sorts. I was upset an unknown vampire was sucking my friend’s blood, and decided I must do something. Killing vampires is no easy task, but I was clear that was what I had to do.

  The first challenge would be breaking in by day and catching them all asleep. The second would be finding the stake for killing vampires; I’d no idea where I’d left it. I was forced to give the crypt a thorough clean, which took a couple of days because you can’t imagine the junk that piles up over nine centuries. Finally, the stake surfaced in a corner next to the skeleton of my great-great-grandfather, covered in fungi and cobwebs. I cleaned it up and put it in a sports bag, next to the iron sword for decapitation. After transfixing vampires through the heart with a stake, you have the option of beheading them. There’s been a lot of theoretical debate on the subject, but, as these vampires were from elsewhere and unfamiliar with our customs, I thought it better to err on the side of excess. When in doubt, go the whole hog. The sword was rusty and weighed a ton.

  I chose a cloudy afternoon when it looked like rain to put my plan into action. I knew they had a maid, because Sebastià had told me, and also that she wasn’t a vampire because the Sorribeses were sucking her blood too. I knocked on the door politely and the maid almost fainted. Sebastià and the other locals were used to my pallor (I’d explained it away one day by claiming that I’d used an anti-acne lotion as a teenager and had never recovered my dark skin), but people who have never seen me before are sometimes frightened by me. As the maid didn’t seem to want to let me in, and looked as if she’d ring the police, I decided hypnosis was my only course of action.

  I’d not hypnotized anyone for years. Initially it was an effort, because the girl was hysterical and unfocused, but I succeeded after a few seconds and was able to enter the villa. Hypnosis is supposedly one of the skills that we vampires enjoy, but some are more skilled than others. In my case it’s not easy, as I’ve been cross-eyed since birth, but on this occasion my powers worked. Once I had the maid under control, I questioned her and she revealed that everyone except her, who had to do the ironing, took an afternoon nap. That was all I needed to know.

  Stressed out at the idea of killing vampires, I started to look for the cellar, where I imagined the Sorribeses asleep in their coffins, but however much I searched, I couldn’t find a door down to any crypt. I questioned the maid again and was shocked by what I learned.

  The house didn’t have a cellar and the family slept in bedrooms on the top floor. O tempora! O mores! Something totally unexpected! However, stranger things have been known. I took a deep breath and headed up the stairs, determined to carry out my plan. I opened the door of a very beguiling bedroom papered in a Laura Ashley floral pattern and immediately felt a shiver of pleasure run down my spine. The air conditioning was full on, and it was like an icebox inside despite the heat in the street. It was exactly the powerful piece of technology I needed in my crypt; I took a mental note of the brand and continued my inspection.

  A middle-aged vampire was asleep in the bed, naked under a sheet: she gave me a real thrill. Rather reluctantly, I opened my bag and took out the stake and the sword. As I was surprised that she was sleeping in a bed and not in a coffin, I wanted to check she was one of us, so before starting on my task I lifted the sheet and touched her breast. She was indeed ice-cold. I stuck the stake through her heart before she could wake up, and then beheaded her. A deft, professional blow. Her head rolled across the floor, under the dressing table, and came to rest next to her slippers, which is where I left it spurting blood. I assumed the vampire must have had a feast before falling asleep, because the room was soon splattered in red and we vampires only bleed when digesting. The two youngsters were no problem either, but their room smelled pleasantly of strange herbs that put me on a high and made me want to laugh: while I was sticking the stake into Sorribes I did laugh, and the fool woke up. In fact, his screams rather dampened my spirits. Luckily, that was it.

  The Sorribes vampires were history. Sebastià could stop worrying now. I retrieved my stake and sword and returned to my crypt, feeling as pleased as Punch at a job well done. The sight of so much blood had given me an appetite, and I decided to celebrate my feats with a couple of hens and a small lamb. As I was exhausted, I went off to rest in my comfortable coffin, wondering how I’d manage to slip in an electricity cable unnoticed and install air conditioning. That evening I dreamed of that lady vampire’s breasts and at ten woke up with a hard-on.

  The following morning Sebastià dropped by, and he didn’t look too happy. I was still wearing the bloodstained shirt, but as Sebastià is red-green colour-blind, I decided to let it slide.

  “What’s new, Sebastià? Anything the matter?” I asked, knowing there’d been at least one change in town.

  “For God’s sake, haven’t you heard about the disaster at the Sorribes mansion?” he replied, obviously distressed.

  “No …”

  “Butchery, old boy! Real butchery! They’ve dispatched a contingent of police from Barcelona. The TV people are here as well! I’ve just popped by to tell you to watch out because there’s a madman around.”

  “A madman?” I asked, taken aback.

  “A very dangerous madman. Yesterday someone broke into the Sorribes villa and stabbed the lot of them. Chopped their heads off as well. The four of them: husband, wife and two kids. This morning the postman found the maid in a state of shock and discovered the corpses.” He added in a worried voice, “This is a psychopath at work!”

  “But he was a vampire …” I replied warily.

  “Vampire or not, this was barbaric!” countered Sebastià indignantly.

  “You said he was sucking your blood …”

  “Yes … But they’ve been done in so brutally!” He went on, thinking aloud. “I expect it’s one of those gangs from Eastern Europe …”

  “I’m at a loss for words. You’ve chilled me to the bone. If you pricked me now, you’d not get a drop of blood out of me!”

  “I know how you feel. In a case like this, you don’t know what to say. Poor family! If you’d seen them …”

  I was really confused. I thought Sebastià would be pleased I’d destroyed that colony of bloodsucking vampires, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Something had gone wrong.

  “Keep a watch out,” he shouted as he left. “Keep your eyes peeled. And change that shirt, for Christ’s sake. It’s a mess!”

  *

  It’s obvious I’m getting past it: there’s no way I can understand these mortals. I’ve probably spent too long roaming this benighted world and the time has come to bid farewell. Basically, it’s only fun being immortal if, in fact, you’re not, and I’ve felt a little out of place for a couple of centuries amid so much modernity. What’s the fun in being a vampire if people aren’t frightened any more and the categorical imperative doesn’t allow you to go around chomping on necks? What’s the point in being immortal if you can’t enjoy a bottle of Dom Pérignon or go to the Botafumeiro and have a proper shellfish blowout? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself of late, and I can find no answers. Perhaps the bottom line is that being a vampire isn’t so wonderful. It’s obvious I really got my wires crossed over the Sorribeses. I don’t mean that Savall ought to organize a homage to me or name a street after me (though I don’t see why not), but frankly I was expecting a different reaction. At the very least, I thought that Sebastià would be thrilled to bits.


  At any rate, I did what a vampire had to do, and my conscience is clear. And isn’t that what it’s really all about? As my mother used to tell customers who couldn’t get it up, at the end of the day, it’s the thought that counts.

  CONNECTIONS

  A second note to readers:

  Barcelona, the city where I was born and where I have lived for most of my life, is the setting for nearly all the stories in Connections. And Barcelona is also the city to which all the characters belong, even in stories which are partly set in other areas of Catalonia. In this sense, Connections is a noirish mosaic that shows off different fragments of the city, its inhabitants and history. An ironic gaze drives most of these stories, built around one or two criminal acts with characters who generally don’t belong to the city’s underworld but live in the well-off or working-class neighbourhoods where violence goes hand in glove with intrigue and subterfuge.

  Although the stories in Connections are independent, some characters and situations are related, whether obviously or obliquely. You must read carefully to identify the connections between one narrative and the others – and you don’t have to read them in order to solve the puzzle. Reader, I am issuing you a challenge: spot the connections, the detail or character that makes each story a piece of this mosaic.

  Flesh-Coloured People

  Hey now, I don’t know if they were Chinese. You bet, they were Oriental, of course they were … But I’m not at all sure whether they were Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Thai or Japanese. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t pay that much attention. I was shitting my pants at the sight of that pistol! In any case, it was my bad luck that thieves had decided to attack the place I’d gone to buy condoms. As if there weren’t half a dozen other pharmacies in Sarrià …! And luckily I hadn’t got around to asking for the condoms, so when Daddy asked me what I was doing in that particular pharmacy (it wasn’t where we usually go to buy our medicines), I was able to cover up by saying I needed some ibuprofen because my period was due and I’d got stomach cramps. (Daddy likes to think he’s cool, but when he hears the word “period” he goes all funny.)

  It really was a stroke of luck that they called Daddy, because if it had been Mummy she would have remembered my period was a week away and given me the third degree. And not because buying condoms is a problem – quite the contrary, though I’m shy of mentioning the subject to Daddy, and poor Mummy is such a bore. To start with, she’d have congratulated me for being such a responsible young woman (well, we’ve been talking about them ever since I was twelve!), and you bet she’d have taken the opportunity to lecture me about not letting any boy bully or mistreat me, that I mustn’t do anything I don’t want to, etc. etc. Fuck, as if I was going to let any bastard lay his hands on me or tell me who I can go out with or what I should wear! What the hell does she think? That because I’m sixteen I don’t have a mind of my own? And, wait for it, then she’d have segued to the boyfriend question and wanted to know what I was intending to do with the condoms (as if that wasn’t obvious) and we’d have been at it all day. And, quite frankly, I don’t want to tell her I fancy Biel and was planning how I’d lay him tonight after the Beyoncé concert. (You talk about this kind of thing with your mates, not with your mother, for heaven’s sake. Why doesn’t she ever get that?)

  In any case, after what happened in the pharmacy, I might as well forget the concert. Shit, after all the effort it took to squeeze the cash out of the parents for my ticket, and now it looks like I won’t be able to go … Why can’t the mossos wait until tomorrow to take a statement and show me the photos? But obviously, as I wasn’t injured and they say I’m psychologically unharmed, they asked Daddy’s permission to take me to the police station … and who knows when we’ll finish! The pharmacist was lucky; she was so hysterical the ambulance guys gave her a pill to calm her down and in the end sent her home. I reckon at the very least she’d had an anxiety attack, because the poor dear couldn’t stop crying and shaking … On the other hand, yours truly didn’t shed a tear, even though I’m the kind that sobs her heart out at any romantic, Titanic kind of film. Who’d have thought it! One of the policewomen noticed how I was upset because I hadn’t cried, and told me not to worry, that if I didn’t react it didn’t mean I was an unfeeling psychopath (well, she didn’t exactly say that, but I understood what she was hinting at), but that I was simply still in a state of shock. Hell, you’re not kidding! I’d never been held up at gunpoint before or seen anyone die (in real life, that is), let alone like that. Bang-bang, a couple of shots and you’re on your way to the other side. You’ll soon see when I put the photos on Instagram that I took before the police arrived (of the dead man, I mean, not the thieves). Oh, now I really regret not daring to take a selfie … (I don’t suppose it’s a crime to put photos of a dead man out there?) Or perhaps it is? Anyway, I’d better ask around. I don’t want to get into some other pile of shit.

  The policeman who’s busy showing me photos of criminals from their files tries to act nice and offers me a Coca-Cola. Will it look bad if I take out my mobile and take a quick peek? What with one thing and another, I’ve not checked my messages for some time, and, besides, I really ought to tell Claudia and Martina that most likely I won’t be able to go to the concert because a guy’s been killed at a chemist’s and now I’m in a police station trying to identify the thieves. I reckon it’s a waste of time and that the mossos shouldn’t have any high hopes because it all happened so quickly and I registered fuck all. When I saw that they were about to shoot that guy, my legs caved and I shut my eyes; I was sure they’d do me and the chemist in so as not to leave any witnesses. That makes sense, doesn’t it? As you see, despite all my worst fears, the thieves didn’t kill us. After shooting, they turned tail and not only didn’t take any drugs from the shelves, but didn’t even look to see if there was cash in the till. I don’t get it. The poor fellow they shot didn’t even open his mouth! He looked like a foreigner (I’d say he was English, because I heard the “Oh my God!” he let out when he fell to the ground), but he didn’t try to act the hero or anything like that. In fact, the thieves started shooting at him before they asked us for our money, as if they’d only come for him. Who knows, perhaps they got scared. But it all seems very strange, I mean the fact that they didn’t steal anything from the pharmacy and spared our lives. Don’t those guys watch any films or TV or anything? Everyone knows that when you charge into a shop to commit a robbery, you cover your faces so eyewitnesses can’t identify you, especially if you shoot one of them. (If the bastards had thought to wear masks, I wouldn’t be here now looking at photos and would still have time to go home and change and get to the concert on time.)

  Obviously, if it depends on me, the mossos will be hard-pressed to identify those killers. OK, so I am Chinese and was born in Beijing, but, you know, all Chinese look the same to me. As I was brought up in Sarrià, the only Orientals I’m used to seeing (apart from tourists) are the ones who run the bazaar near my secondary school, the one that used to be called the One-Euro Shop, and the family that now runs Manel’s bar (I’m not sure whether they are Chinese or Korean). What I’m saying is that I may look as Oriental as you like, but my name is Eulàlia Gasull i Balasch and I’ve lived here almost all my life – in other words, the fact that the criminals and I belong to the same race is no help at all in this case. (Come to think of it, Mummy told me it’s racist to talk about “race”. Hell, what did she tell me you ought to say? Ethnics? Ethnic group? I don’t remember.) Besides, I didn’t understand a single word they said; however Chinese I might look, I don’t understand any Chinese. I don’t even know how to say “hello”, even though, a couple of years ago, on the pretext that I was born in China, Mummy insisted I should learn Mandarin and signed up a private tutor (who, by the way, wasn’t Chinese but one of her colleagues at uni). Good God, what a complicated language it is! I lasted a couple of weeks (though my teacher was brilliant), and that was only to keep up appearances. The fact is, I prefer sciences and have
enough on my plate trying to pick up a smattering of English to want to bother tackling a language as fiendishly difficult as Mandarin.

  I may have been born in China, but I have nothing in common with China. But you try telling Mummy that. I don’t even have Chinese friends. Not a single one. And not because I’ve anything against them, right? As I said, at the end of the day the Chinese or Orientals I have bumped into and know by sight (like the ones in the shop or the bar) aren’t my age and aren’t chatty either. All my friends (both boys and girls) are locals (I mean they’re not adopted), so I’m not used to seeing Oriental faces. It’s hardly my fault if I can’t distinguish one Oriental from another, now, is it? Hell, they all look the same to me! I’m not sure, perhaps if my parents had sent me to a state school it would have been easier for me to relate to people of my race (or ethnic group), but they decided to send me to a Catalan progressive school where the only foreigners were a half-Dutch girl who wasn’t even in my class and a Scottish boy who was incredibly freckled and ginger-haired. There were no Chinese (or Korean, Vietnamese, etc.) pupils; I don’t know whether that was because the school was too expensive or because hardly any Orientals lived in Sarrià.

  If the mossos are expecting me to identify the attackers because I happen to be from an Oriental race (or ethnic group), they’ll be in for a long wait. And it’s lucky that Mummy won’t be back until later tonight (she works at the uni and had to go to Madrid today as an external examiner) because, knowing her, she’d already have blasted the police, accusing them of being racist and a lot more besides. And, frankly, the last thing I need right now is one of Mummy’s little tantrums. She’s no joke when she gets wound up. And it doesn’t take much. You know, it’s not that I don’t agree that there are racists galore, but she’s got her radar on full all the time, and doesn’t miss a single opportunity. Fuck, you’d think she belonged to the far left … She’s so bloody politically correct that, when she’s around, everybody has to watch out they don’t put a foot wrong, and even then she’ll find something to grouse about. And it’s not as if Daddy and me don’t tell her to give us a break, that there’s no need to be on our case all the time. Not long ago she hit the roof because she heard me say I’d been to eat at a Jap with my girlfriends. A Jap! You know, we don’t mean anything wrong by that (in fact, if we were racist, we wouldn’t go to eat in their restaurants now, would we?). Not to mention the Pakis, another word that’s banned at home because Mummy says it shows contempt. What are we supposed to call the Pakis, given that “Pakistanis” is such a long word to use that nobody bothers? She even reckons it’s racist to say flesh is flesh-coloured, for Christ’s sake! She says you should say “beige”, because flesh can be many colours (for example, she says black people aren’t “flesh-coloured”). Well, maybe she’s right in this case, but I reckon it’s treading a fine line … Besides, beige is brown rather than flesh-white, I reckon. And, according to the dictionary (I consulted one once, out of curiosity), beige is a “yellowy grey”, while everyone knows that flesh-coloured means a light brownish pink. If I’ve ever had to paint something flesh-coloured, I knew what it meant: you take a light brown and add a touch of pink. (If you take grey and add yellow, you don’t get “flesh-coloured”, you get the colour of summer diarrhoea.)