I got up from the armchair and sat down on the sofa next to her. I patted her gently on the back and tried to sound reassuring.
"From what I can gather, they don’t know exactly when or how he died yet. I think we should wait to hear what the coroner or the police say before we jump to any conclusions. I’m sure he was there for a long time and that there was absolutely nothing, nothing, that you or anyone else could do - especially if his injuries were as severe as I’ve heard they were." Carole appeared to brighten up a little with that. She shuffled in her seat to better sit upright, and rubbed away the tears with the sleeve of her fleece jacket. "Not that I know what happened to him of course," I added.
So far, I knew little about how the body in the car park had been killed. Before I instigated a full-scale monster hunt, or more likely just got whipped up into an anxiety attack, I needed to make sure that this was actually the result of a vampire attack. After all, I’m sure that of all the millions of people who have been murdered and beaten up, the vast majority were not victims of vampires or anything else that goes bump in the night. I didn’t want to upset Carol unnecessarily, but I did want to at least know what she knew.
"It didn’t look like anything I’d seen before Sophie." Carol continued. "It was as if someone had scooped out a big chunk of his throat. Blood was bubbling up through the wound - it was everywhere. I don’t know how it could have been done. I had a quick scan of the car to see if I could see anything – you know, something mechanical with the car, or a weapon in it that could have caused it – I didn’t want to get injured myself - but there was nothing. He must have been savaged by something, maybe a dog, but I don’t see how a dog would have got out of the car. Do you think that there's a wild dog out running about there? Perhaps it was a person, Sophie, a serial killer, they'd have taken the weapon with them, wouldn't they?"
The blood drained from my face. Yeah, they would take their weapons with them... their own sodding fangs. Carol didn’t notice my pallor as she was too busy petting her dog and reassuring him that she didn’t mean "a lovely little doggy like Buster would have killed the nice man." When she turned back to me, I feigned normalcy and thankfully she seemed to believe it. She was still probably in shock and completely oblivious to the mixed shades of white and green I was convinced I had to be turning. My head was spinning and I felt bile bubble up from my stomach.
"I’m sure the police will get to the bottom of it," I used the calmest tone I could muster. "After all, how would a wild dog get into a locked car? I expect he was injured somehow and was trying to make his way to the hospital or something. Maybe it happened nearby and this was the nearest safe place he could find to stop."
My words seemed to give Carol some comfort as she lifted another sandwich and continued eating. Half talking to me and half to Buster, she hoped that the man died quickly and that the police would identify him soon. It would be awful if it was a friend or relative or someone in the development, not that she recognised him. I agreed, not knowing if dying somewhere unfamiliar and surrounded by strangers was better than being killed on your doorstep. I hoped I’d never have to find out.
I told Carol to take her time finishing the sandwiches, but that she should come over to my place if she needed anything.Apparently Roy had also made the same offer, which she very much appreciated.
In the meantime, I advised her to keep the windows and doors to her ground floor flat locked and not to let anyone in she didn’t know, just in case. I told her that it was because there may be some press interest or people poking around the estate for gossip. It would best to ignore them and not encourage them.
It was true that being the first on the scene, journalists or the type of crazy who loves the macabre, might seek her out in an attempt to find out the gory details. But that wasn’t the only reason – that wasn’t the only reason at all. Psychopath or vampire, they weren't going to hurt anyone on my watch.
CHAPTER 17
I locked the door to my flat and slid the bolts at the top and bottom for extra security. Having decided that the body in the car park could quite possibly be the result of a vampire attack, I decided to try getting hold of Mickey one last time. He may not be interested in me, but I felt certain that he’d want to know about the possibility of another vampire attack, wherever it might be and whether it involved me or not. My heart sank when all I heard was the dead dial tone. There wasn’t even so much as a voicemail.
I knew that Mickey had returned to Ireland, so I shouldn't have been surprised that he'd ditched his pay as you go mobile phone. It would have been useless back in Ireland. Deciding that another email would be my only option, I switched on my laptop and sat at the dining table to prepare my composition. It had taken a few attempts before I settled on being straight to the point.
"Mickey, it’s been a while since we’ve spoken, but this is important. Someone has been killed here - right outside my flat – could be a vampire. I’m scared. I don’t know how big this is and I don’t know who knows. There’s a lot of police around. Not sure what to do. Please get in touch – I’ve tried your mobile, but it’s dead. Email or phone –whatever’s best. Sophie"
I clicked send without any regret and doubting, though hopeful, that I would get a reply.
There wasn’t anybody I could talk to about this, not without them thinking I needed psychiatric help. Mum loved me, but there was no way she was even going to believe this. Her first instinct would be to care for me, to get me help, and I wouldn’t blame her. Even I thought I was crazy a lot of the time. At a push, I suppose I could have rung Maggie, but she’d been through enough in her life. If she was managing to feign normalcy through all this, then it wasn’t my place to stop that for her.
Aiming to secure a degree of sanity for myself, I decided to ring my Mum and give her the official story of the man murdered on my doorstep, which was essentially nothing other than a dead body was found in a car in my car park. At least I could share some of what was going on in my life, and that might offer some comfort.
As I expected, she was spending a few hours working in the children’s wear shop she owned in Bethel. She worked around twenty hours a week there, partly to save on staffing costs, but mostly because she enjoyed the company.She also owned a hardware shop, though she rarely spent time in it, and a nearby newsagent where she had set up a small office in the back storeroom.
It only took three rings before Shirley, the only full-time employee, answered and handed the phone over to my Mum. The first question which Mum always asked if I called during the day was if I was okay. It was usually followed up by asking if I was at work. She knew how hectic my job was and I rarely got to stop for breath, let alone for a leisurely chat. I explained that I’d woken up with a cracking migraine, which had now passed. I assured her that I was feeling much better and that I’d be back at work in the morning, and no there is definitely nothing to worry about.
"I do have some gossip though," I added." You’ll never believe it. The police were around here this morning - a man was found dead in a car downstairs. They think he died sometime during the night, well, killed actually. It's all over the news." I tried to sound light-hearted and excited.
"Oh no, are you okay?" she asked, panic in her voice. It's not every day that you hear that a murder has taken place on your child's doorstep. "Did you see anything? You said killed, are you sure? Could it have been a heart attack or...?"
Mum left the sentence hanging. There could have been so many possible explanations for the onset of death that it didn’t make much sense to list all of them - she expected to fill in the gaps. We were very similar and could usually finish each other’s sentences anyway.
"We don’t know. They’ve taken the body away, so I guess we’ll find out at some point. Carol, you remember Carol, she found him."
"Carol? Carol with the dog?"
"Yes, that’s right. She was coming back from walking it and found the body in the driver’s seat of a car parked by hers. Apparently, he didn’t
look too clever – like he’d been attacked." I decided not to mention the fact that he’d had this throat torn out. I doubted Mum would think "ooh vampire," but she may think "ooh, psycho running around my daughter’s neighbourhood". Leaving out the gory details made more sense.
"I don’t know why you stay up there," she said, frustrated and concerned. "Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just come back here? What’s the point of being stuck up there with strangers, renting a house when you don't have to? You could move back here, you'd find work no problems at all. I’ve plenty of room, or we could free up one of the houses for you if you'd rather not live with your old Mam. We may have our own brand of thugs and weirdoes like the next place, but I’ve never found a dead body on my front step."
It was a fair point, which I couldn’t really argue with. In the years following my graduation, Mum had never directly asked me to move back home. This comment was the closest she’d ever gotten to ask me outright. She didn’t want to be responsible for dictating my life's path and she was genuinely happy that I’d stretched my wings and gone off to find my own way. She wanted me to make my own decisions and do what I wanted out of my life. At the same time, she would be more than delighted to have me move back to Bethesda or somewhere close by. The same went for the business; she never assumed that I would either want or choose to get involved with any aspect of it, whether that was a not unreasonable rental property portfolio or the shops.
"I have been thinking a lot about that lately," I divulged, testing the water.
"Really?" she blurted out, failing to conceal the excitement.
"Yeah, I mean it’s been great here, but I feel like I’m at a bit of a crossroads or something. I’ve got a nice life here, but I don’t know if I want to be here forever. Long term I don’t see a future here for me." It was true, although it was a feeling that had only developed in the past few months.
"What’s wrong?" she asked suspiciously. I’d never said anything like that before, so to start weighing up the big life picture now concerned her.
"Nothing," I replied, hoping that I sounded convincing. "It’s just that people have all moved on, doing their own things, it’s just not the same anymore. The only thing to really keep me here is work and I could get a job anywhere, maybe even get a transfer, I don’t know. It’s just an idea that I’ve been toying with."
"Well, you know that I’d love it, but give it some thought and see what how you feel after a while. Shall I come up to see you this weekend? It’s been a while since I’ve been up to you and I miss my little furry baby." She meant Charlie; she’d become quite attached to him. I’d taken him back to Bethesda during the previous Christmas to save on the cat sitting fees and she’d taken a complete shine to him. He hadn't liked the journey, but he'd made himself quite at home, particularly at the foot of her bed. If he wanted to get into bed with you, it was pretty difficult to say no, the big lump of cuteness that he is.
While it would have been nice to have seen my Mum so soon after my last visit, I didn’t want her anywhere near Coventry. If there really were vampires running around the place, biting people in the neck, I’d much rather she steered clear of them. That wasn’t to say that they weren’t about everywhere, including my hometown, but I didn’t know that for sure and what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me or her.
I cobbled together an excuse about having plans for the weekend, but promised her that I’d look at my diary and sort out a weekend for her to visit soon. In reality, though, I was not going to deliver on any such commitment. I was going to get out of there as quickly as I could. If there were vampires around here, they weren’t going to see my arse for dust.
The following day saw me go into work with a new sense of purpose. I’d slept surprisingly well the night before, albeit with every window and door locked and two dining chairs propped behind my front door as a makeshift barricade. It took me a while to get out of the house in the morning, but it was worth it for a good night’s sleep. I was the first into the office and was greeted only by the cleaner. It was the first time in a long while that I'd been the first one in and I admit that since the trip to Antwerp, I’d been feeling less than enthusiastic about my job.
But that morning I felt different, I was energised. I nursed a large latte at my desk, not because I’d need the extra caffeine hit which I had come to rely on, but because it tasted good and I thought I deserved a treat. What was the reason for this new found verve? I could have attributed it solely to an uninterrupted night’s sleep, and although that probably helped that wasn’t it. I think it was probably down to a very big decision I’d made the evening before.
Somewhere between speaking to my Mum and finishing off the frozen pizza that I’d cooked for dinner, I’d decided that I was definitely going to move back home to Bethel, and specifically to the village of Bethesda.
It had been a moment of pure clarity - the need to make a decision, to take control of my life, to identify the one course of action that I was capable of taking which might actually make feel happy, less unhappy at least.
There was nothing to keep me away anymore. I didn’t hate my job, but I definitely didn’t like it either. Yes, I had a few good friends, but they weren’t great friends. Despite Tracy’s best efforts to entertain me and the fun that we had together (vampire attacks aside), I don’t think that our friendship particularly enriched my life enough to give up everything else. It simply made no sense to stay there anymore. There’s no doubt that someone being murdered on my doorstep contributed to my reasoning, but in hindsight, I’d have probably come to the same conclusion eventually.
"You’re in early," observed the first of my colleagues to arrive.
"Yep," I agreed, slurping down the coffee and soy milk concoction. I smiled sweetly, enjoying the fact that I actually felt quite cheery for a change. She looked at the clock on the wall but said nothing. It was 7.30am.
Tracy was the next one in, whose first words were to ask if I felt any better. I told her I felt great which seemed to surprise her. I obviously hadn’t been acting "great" for a long time.
By the time, I’d gone through my emails from the previous three days and flagged up the candidates I needed to contact immediately, my manager arrived. She hadn't enough time to hang up her coat before I asked if I could speak to her. There was a mild look of panic on her face, followed by a pained grin and a nod in the direction of the small interview room. Branch Managers rarely got their own office, usually sitting in the open plan space with the rest of us, desperately trying to fill jobs and earn as much commission as possible. Her basic salary wouldn’t have been much more than mine; the biggest difference would have been that she had a company car, a cut of my commission and probably more stress than she could handle. I used to envy her, I didn’t anymore.
I closed the door to the interview room behind me and took a seat opposite her. My back was practically pushed into the glass wall separating it from the next interview space. I wondered if she consciously picked the smallest room to try and end the conversation sooner. Usually, when someone asked "for a minute" it was to complain, resign or both. I couldn’t stand the look of sheer panic on her face for very long. I don’t think the grin I had plastered on my face helped. I was going for cheery - to her I probably just looked manic.
"Don’t worry," I chirped, "It’s nothing bad. Well, I don’t think so anyway, it’s just that I’m going to be leaving, I haven’t got an exact date yet and of course I’ll keep you informed, but I wanted to let you know as soon as I knew."
She didn’t say anything; she just sat staring at me. I wasn’t sure if she was going to cry, get up and walk out, or catapult herself across the desk at me. In the hope that she was merely giving me her ‘active listening’ face, I kept talking. I explained that this was nothing to do with my work but that I’d decided to move back home to be closer to family that I felt that being there had run its course for me. I told her that my Mum was on her own, with a lot of work to do with the family businesses, and I f
elt like it was time to go back and take on some of that burden.
I imagined that this must be what it feels like breaking up with a really passive- aggressive partner - endlessly providing reasons as to why it won't work, trying to pre-empt their next move, resenting them for their subtle physical cues of disappointment. She stared at me blankly while chewing the inside of her mouth.
"Well, you’ll need to decide when you’re going. I’ll have to replace you," she stated coldly after a long pause.
I was a little put off by her response. There was no "sorry to hear you’re going, I’ll see what I can do to find you something in an office nearby, I’ll put in a recommendation." It wasn’t that I expected her to throw her arms around me and cry, but as one of the biggest fee earners in the office, I did expect her to feel something other than inconvenience. I decided to wrap the conversation up by telling her that she should accept our conversation as my official one month’s notice. If I could stay on longer to help her, then I might, depending on the circumstances and the timing. I had originally intended to say that I definitely would stay, at least until she found a replacement, but given her attitude, I thought ‘stuff her’.
I’d never resigned before, but I’d coached enough people through it as part of my job, so I told her that she’d have it in writing by the end of the day and I’d ensure that I’d nailed down all my open vacancies for her. That would be no mean feat given that mine were at the senior end of the market, usually involving lengthy selection processes and even longer notice periods. All in all though, I felt I was fair.
Tracy collared me as soon as I got out of the door, dragging me into the tea point to interrogate me. I gave a potted summary of the conversation I'd just had and she burst into tears, throwing her arms around me, which I wasn't expecting at all. I found myself patting her on the back and murmuring some appropriately comforting words. I assured her that I’d be there for at least a month as I’d need to work my notice and give notice on my flat.
Sophie Morgan (Book 1): Relative Strangers (A Modern Vampire Story) Page 17
