All Rotting Meat

by Maleham , Eve

  Father McCarthy nodded. ‘I’ll look…forward to your visit tomorrow,’ he said, his voice growing faint as he raised two fingers in a gesture of goodbye, his eyelids drooping down over his eyes.

  ‘Goodbye, uncle,’ Flynn McCarthy shouted from the doorway, turning back to see his uncle, before walking Poppy and Mitch out of the house. Iwona took down their address, smiled goodbye, and shut the door behind him. ‘Now,’ he said, turning to Poppy and Mitch, ‘what the blue fuck was that all about?’

  ‘We told you,’ Poppy said, ‘we were after a fresh perspective.’

  ‘Vampires,’ McCarthy said. ‘Bloody vampires. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, no wonder the Church wouldn’t let him back in; he’d lost his bloody mind by that point. And you believe that too?’

  Mitch laughed. ‘No, of course not, but we suspected that he did. Anyway,’ he said, going over to shake McCarthy’s hand, ‘thank you so much for today. You’ve been a massive help to us. I really can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘He killed a man because he thought he was a vampire,’ McCarthy said. ‘You know what? No more interviews – that’s it, now. He’s an old man, and he doesn’t need all this bother.’

  ‘What?’ Poppy startled. ‘No, you’ve got to. Please, just one more day.’

  ‘No,’ McCarthy said. ‘He doesn’t need you stirring that old mind of his, convincing him that vampires are real, and that he was right to kill a man. Go back to England, write your article, and leave him alone.’

  ‘I’m sorry that’s how you feel,’ Mitch said. ‘Is there anything we can do to change your mind? He seemed very excited to see us again.’

  ‘He’s a hundred-and-three, he doesn’t need excitement,’ McCarthy said. ‘Look, he’s a man in my care, and I won’t allow it.’

  ‘I understand,’ Mitch said, opening the car door for Poppy. ‘Again, we cannot thank you or your uncle enough.’

  He left McCarthy standing outside his uncle’s cottage as he drove back down onto the country lane.

  ‘So,’ he said, as the car sped up and thundered down the road, ‘now what?’

  ‘We just come back tomorrow anyway,’ Poppy said, winding the window down to let fresh, cool air flow into the car, a relief after sitting in the stuffy, hot house. ‘Worth a chance. Do you think he’s really the last person to know about any of that stuff?’

  ‘I highly doubt it,’ he said, ‘but I think that Father Rufus is as much of an insight into that world as we will get. I wish we still had our pet vampire to cross-reference what his account was though.’

  The car slowed down as they approached the village. They had a room booked in a hotel in Killarney for two nights. Despite everything, she was relieved to have this small break to catch their breath. They had a table booked at a restaurant with some very good reviews; they were going to drink some wine, and relax. She couldn’t help but feel that it would be the last time they got to be a normal couple for a while.

  She took out the bound stack of paper from her handbag and leafed through it. Most of it had been typewritten, and then photocopied, though parts towards the back were written by hand, with a few diagrams she couldn’t make sense of. She tore her eyes away from the page, feeling the onset of car sickness.

  ‘At a glance, this is interesting stuff,’ she said. ‘Hopefully it’ll be useful. At least, it should give us more of an understanding of how anti-vampire weapons were first developed. Our best case scenario is that we can use it to develop our own.’

  ‘It sounds like whatever the research was, it was horrific,’ Mitch said.

  ‘He said it went against their beliefs,’ Poppy said, ‘and we’re not religious.’

  ‘It could be black magic,’ Mitch said, ‘or blood magic.’

  ‘It could be,’ she said. ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  * * *

  The next morning, they set off from the hotel. The mist and rain had passed over during the night, and the day was bright and clear. Poppy stretched out her legs in the car; her joints never seemed to click anymore, so total comfort was always just out of reach. The landscape outside the car shifted to mountains as they drove back to Father McCarthy’s house.

  ‘What should we tell Iwona?’ Mitch said.

  ‘That we’re continuing with the interviews,’ Poppy said. ‘Father McCarthy wants to continue with them. He’s frail but he’s not an invalid. I get the impression that he doesn’t get too many guests, and he seemed to enjoy our visit.’

  ‘Yeah, it seems cruel,’ Mitch said. ‘He’s a hundred-and-three, who fucking cares if he gets excited?’

  As they drove past the village, Poppy looked on ahead at the streets and pavements for any sign of Flynn McCarthy. Her eyes narrowed as they drove past clusters of people, all of them in conversation.

  ‘I think something’s happened,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps it’s just Ireland on a Sunday,’ Mitch muttered.

  ‘It looks like something serious is going on,’ Poppy said, as they headed out of the village.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Mitch said, pressing down on the accelerator.

  ‘Mitch!’ Poppy said, as they rounded the final corner on the approach to the cottage. ‘Look! There’s smoke!’

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ Mitch said as they drove closer, waves of grey smoke drifting into the air. He slowed the car down to a crawl; two large, scarlet fire engines stood out brightly against the mountainous, brownish-green backdrop. Instead of seeing Father McCarthy’s cottage, they saw a still-smouldering pile of ash and debris, only part of the chimney stack remaining.

  ‘Keep driving,’ Poppy said, ‘and turn back to Killarney as soon as you can. We’ll check out of the hotel and take the next available flight back to London.’

  ‘Won’t it look more suspicious if we run?’ Mitch asked. ‘We were drinking at that pub last night and had breakfast in the hotel this morning. We have an alibi, and we were the only non-white people there – it’s not like the staff won’t remember us.’

  ‘How suspicious will it look, then, when they find out that amateur historians Scot and Heather Owen are actually detective Poppy and professional historian Mitchell Stone?’ she said. ‘Our last interaction with McCarthy was trying to talk our way back inside the house. It would look like we had committed theft, then burnt the house down to cover it up.’

  ‘Surely arson is a bigger crime than theft?’ Mitch said. ‘Especially if we killed someone doing it.’

  ‘I Rebirth did this,’ Poppy said. ‘If we could find about Father Rufus McCarthy then surely they could as well and they burned the house down to destroy anything which was a threat to them. Which also means Rebirth are in the area and it’s best if we leave immediately.’

  ‘At least we got his notebooks,’ Mitch said.

  ‘We’ve got part of them,’ Poppy said, ‘the rest of all his research is gone. Besides, I would have liked to hear what else he had to say.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Good Instincts About These Things

  ‘Hey, welcome back!’ Rosemary grinned, as Banes stepped forward into her office. Her eyes were completely ringed with thick, black eyeliner, her fingers covered in heavy, silver rings. ‘Glad to see that you’re feeling okay.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. His smile felt like plastic.

  ‘Next time, don’t party just so hard,’ she said with a wink. Cecilia had spread a story that he had briefly been incapacitated due to alcohol poisoning, and needed time away from Rebirth to recover. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. Have a seat.’

  He sat, casting his eyes around the office. The flesh on his arm was still tender, the burn mark still angry. Everything was where it should be.

  ‘Well,’ Rosemary said, her eyes bright, ‘I was thinking of putting this off for a few more days still, until you’re entirely better, but I think we’ve wasted enough time here. And I know it’s been ages since I said that you were going to be moving away from the boring paperwork, but today, I mean it. How do you feel about going
out in the field with me tonight?’

  Banes blinked. ‘Field work?’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Why? Because you’ve been working really hard, partying aside, and I think you’re ready for it. I mean, you were in the independent class, after all. Don’t you think you’re ready for it?’

  He nodded and licked his lips, his movements mechanical. ‘Yeah, I do. It’s just taken me slightly by surprise after the waiting.’

  Rosemary grinned. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’ll still be a pretty basic run today; some journalist is digging a little too deep. Paula Stockport. You’ve seen the file, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Banes said, ‘briefly. She’s a pretty good journalist, though, isn’t she?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it’ll be fine. Intelligence have listed what we need to do, and it’ll be totally easy. She lives alone; all we have to do is stage her suicide. She’ll be unconscious, we’ll flood her full of wine and pills, then let her drown in her bathroom. Have you done that before?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not exactly that.’

  ‘It’s easy,’ Rosemary said. ‘We break in while she’s asleep, and force her to take GHB, then we flood her system with sleeping pills, and let her drown in the bath. She lives in Dorking, so there’s a little bit of a drive.’

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘Surrey,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘C’mon.’

  ‘Wait, we’re going now?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  ‘I just thought there would be a little more preparation,’ Banes said, turning in his seat. Rosemary smirked.

  ‘This is easy stuff, Banes, I’m not throwing you in at the deep end, here. She’s a thirty-six-year-old woman, who lives alone with three cats, and is on antidepressants and antipsychotics. It’s not the most suspicious thing in the world if she kills herself.’

  ‘So what?’ Banes asked. ‘Half the country is on one of the two.’

  ‘It’s an easy case, man, don’t question it,’ Rosemary said. ‘A suicide is easier and cheaper for the authorities to deal with than a murder.’

  Rosemary lead him through the base and to a door, which lead out into a small, underground car park, containing relatively few cars. The chill brought back ghostly hands tugging at Banes’s back, and the bag over his head.

  Rosemary’s own car was parked towards the front; a small, purple hatchback.

  ‘My undercover car,’ she said, ‘only thing that beats it is a white van.’

  Banes got into the car, pushing down the rising, uncomfortable, squirming nervousness inside him. After he had been burnt, he had expected his role in Rebirth to be kept as redundant as possible. A flake of skin fell off his arm and onto the car seat; underneath was baby pink and tender.

  ‘So, is this sort of thing a regular job for us now?’ he said, as the car crawled away from Piccadilly.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I mean, at first, we just used to kill people and throw their bodies to the kitchen, but now, there’s a bigger importance placed upon setting up all of these accidents and suicides, so that the humans don’t get too suspicious. Of course, the conspiracy theory crazies never believe it, but no-one believes them either, so it works out.’

  ‘Are you worried about it looking suspicious, though?’ Banes asked. ‘If she’s told anyone else about this…’

  ‘Firstly, you’re fucking naïve if you think that she’s told anyone about this,’ Rosemary said. ‘Stockport works silently, and in the dark. Before that whole Alpha Dakota thing blew up, she was nearly fired – you know, unethical journalism, and all of that. Would have been a scandal if anyone outside the BBC knew how she got those sources. And it’s why she left immediately afterwards. She’s a fucking menace.’

  ‘We ought to turn her,’ Banes said.

  Rosemary laughed. ‘Perhaps we should have offered, or something. But what can you do, you know? She’s just one of those people who has to die.’

  They lapsed into silence as the car pulled away from London. Banes rummaged around in the glove compartment for snacks, and handed Rosemary strips of jerky as they hit the motorway. She handed him her phone to plug into the car, and Eighties rock filled the car.

  ‘How are you and your boyfriend, then?’ Rosemary asked over the sound of Siouxsie Sioux.

  ‘Kojo?’ he said, his eyes out on the dark road ahead of them. ‘Yeah, we’re good.’

  Someone had reported him to Rebirth. He knew that Kojo hadn’t been anywhere near his training, he knew that, but certainty didn’t arrive. For nearly three-hundred years, he had taken Kojo’s absolute presence for a trusted fact in life. Banes knew that the instant he distrusted Kojo, he couldn’t trust anyone, which caused his heart to sink to a depth that surprised him.

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘Really?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, pushing down the guilt of missed calls and excuses to stay away from Kojo at lunch. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Nope. Men are a disappointment. Perhaps I’ll switch to women, try my hand at being a dyke. Do you think I’ll be good at it?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Banes said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, you’re probably not going to elicit a good response when you refer to having a lesbian experience as ‘trying your hand at being a dyke.’’

  ‘Is that offensive now?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think there was ever a ‘now’ for it, either.’

  ‘They call themselves dykes all the time,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve got to understand that it’s different,’ he said. ‘You know what? Just forget it,’ he said, as Rosemary opened her mouth. ‘You’re going to rule the fucking world one day; call your sexual experiences whatever you want.’

  They reached Paula Stockport’s house just after one in the morning. Rosemary had killed the music shortly after arriving in Dorking, and drove past the house once. It was a respectable, redbrick detached house which stood someone secluded on the street, a few potted plants in the paved over front garden, the curtains shut with no light behind them.

  ‘We’re a bit early,’ she said, pulling into a dark corner one street away. ‘It’ll probably be a while before we can enter.’

  They sat silently waiting in the car, eating dried meats, before Rosemary pulled out a flask.

  ‘Blood and gin,’ she said, passing it to Banes, ‘something to warm your heart with.’

  Banes took a long sip, his veins igniting with energy as he drank. Rosemary pulled her hair into a ponytail and took a drink herself.

  ‘C’mon,’ she said, ‘put your gloves on; it’s time.’

  The street lights had turned off. Rosemary pulled a rucksack from the back seat, and they set off towards Stockport’s flat. The night’s air was pleasantly fresh against his skin, and smelled of an approaching spring. They walked in silence, their footsteps sounding thunderous on the dead street. It was going to be fine.

  They slipped into the back garden, a wild place of uncut grass and wayward hedges, with a crooked apple tree at the end of it. Roses had been freshly planted around the outside walls of the house. Rosemary glanced upwards to the bathroom window, which had been left a crack open. The light was off inside.

  ‘Right, shoes off,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t want to accidently leave any obvious footprints behind.’

  Banes nodded and tugged his feet out of his boots before they effortlessly leapt up from the garden and onto to the roof of the kitchen extension that stuck out, their feet almost silent, and crept in close to the side of the house. Rosemary made the jump up to the bathroom, smoothly pushing open the window and vaulting herself through. She pushed open the window as far as it could go, as Banes jumped up, gripping the window frame so that he wouldn’t fall through. Rosemary grinned in the darkness as he climbed down onto her bathroom floor.

  They paused, listening for any sign of her being awake, any faint hum of mu
sic or a vibrator, a page being turned, any typing at the computer, the gulp of something being drunk, and were met with nothing but the sounds of their own breath. He followed Rosemary as they crept into Stockport’s bedroom, their feet soft against the stripped-back wooden floor.

  Rosemary lightly pushed open the door; Paula was lying in bed in the middle of the room, her body wrapped in the sheets, and her breath low and constant. A pair of glowing, green eyes looked at them from the desk. The jingle of a bell sounded as the cat jumped down onto the floor. Banes lowered himself to meet it and stretched out his hand, which the cat sniffed before meowing loudly.

  Rosemary gave an impatient jerk of the head and opened the rucksack, taking out a plastic flask of water, and gestured to Banes. They slowly approached her bed, one of them on either side. With one hand, Rosemary pinched Paula’s nose shut. After a few seconds, her body gave a jerk, and her eyes flew open, her mouth drawing in air.

  Banes clasped hold of her shoulders and kept her steady, as Rosemary tipped the contents of the flask down her throat, and pulled her mouth firmly shut. The cat was hissing, its back arched. Paula’s eyes shot wide as she tried to lift her arms to claw at them, but Banes kept them held down, her legs wildly kicking against the mattress. The cat jumped up onto the bed and began biting his hands. Several minutes passed as they held Paula down, with Rosemary rolling her eyes, waiting for the drug to take effect.

  ‘Fucking finally,’ she hissed, as Paula’s fight was slowly extinguished, her body beginning to turn limp and soft between them, her eyes unfocused. ‘Bloody cat – you’ve not split any blood, have you?

  ‘Gloves caught it,’ Banes said, his eyes scanning the bed sheets.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘It could barely get through the leather,’ he said.

  ‘Good. C’mon, let’s make this quick.’

  Banes picked Paula up, whose body was next to lifeless, and carried her over his shoulder as Rosemary lead the way out towards the hallway. The bedroom door creaked open.