Vikram Mehta had aged by a decade in two weeks. The first time he’d come to Fros’s office, he’d had the runover look every person with a normally developed emotional capacity had when they’d suffered a tragedy. Now, after the dust had settled, he had the look of one who is simply waiting for life to be over already but cannot be bothered to actively help it be over. Only the spark of relentlessness in his eye ruined the overall impression. Mr. Mehta was not done.
“Why did the police get to this man before your people?” he was asking right now in no uncertain tones and definitely no uncertain smells. Mr. Mehta was feeling substantial annoyance.
Fros sighed for the first time in fifteen minutes. She’d picked the Camden option on her menu that weekend, and had enjoyed a hearty meal – a woman, for a change, but a woman she would gladly feed on again. Murder through neglect of the elderly was an underappreciated side of the evil that lurked in the human soul, if anyone asked Fros.
Having a big meal was good but it was the only good thing in her life right now. Four of what Fros would never publicly call her closest friends – well, three plus Rio – were out there hunting potential vampires and she had no way of helping them in case something unexpected happened. She had to stay here and pretend no one was hunting potential vampires. This state of affairs was not conducive to peace of mind, to put it mildly and Fros was in no mood to put things mildly.
On top of this, the Damani case was currently going nowhere. The police had made an arrest, Mehta had called on Sunday demanding a meeting, and now he was sitting here waiting for his demand to be responded to, while Fros wondered what Bobby Musgrave was doing and whether Jules’s intuition had hit bull’s eye again or there was still some mercy left in the universe and Fros’s suspicions of a vampire conspiracy would be dispelled.
“Ms. Kirova? Why did the police get to this man before your people?”
“They didn’t,” Fros said and enjoyed Mehta’s startled look. “We interviewed Stewart Martin last week. He just didn’t confess to us. In fact, he said nothing of substance to us, but we were following up on everyone who was in any kind of a relationship with your daughter’s family.”
“But you didn’t know he owed Alok ten thousand pounds,” Mehta pressed, leaning forward slightly, regaining some colour in his sunken cheeks, courtesy of righteous indignation.
“No, we didn’t,” Fros agreed. “That was a stroke of luck for the police. We would have got to that information, they simply got there first.”
“That’s not what I’m paying you for, I’m paying you to get there before the police.”
Sensing another sigh coming, Fros bit her lip for a second. It didn’t help.
“Mr. Mehta, if you’re unhappy with our work, you’re free to take your business elsewhere. We will submit all the information we have collected so far and gladly share it with your next investigators.”
Mehta backpedalled. He blinked a few times in quick succession and leaned back into his chair, the indignant smell of burning paper subsiding.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you appear to assume we will always beat the police. We won’t. We don’t. Sometimes we actually help the police and the police helps us. It’s not like the movies.”
“Okay,” Mehta said, the fire gone out of him. “I apologise. I simply wanted to find the person who killed my child and took her daughter. Have you had any success in that respect?”
It was with a great force of will that Fros resisted gritting her teeth, for fear she might lose one or two. Fang in Fang was failing its client with unusual consistency. On a side note, while she spoke to Mehta, her four closest friends could already be dead or about to be turned into vampires. She almost stifled a shiver.
“Not yet,” she said. “Martin swears he didn’t touch the girl and I believe he is telling the truth. In fact,” Fros added, come what may, “I don’t believe he’s the killer. I believe he is either lying for psychological reasons or he is being told to lie.”
“By whom?” Mehta was leaning forward again with a spark in his eye, eager like a hound before the start of the hunt.
“The killer, maybe. Or someone interested in us never finding out who did it.”
The elderly man in her visitor chair inclined his head and frowned.
“This sounds like some sort of a conspiracy.”
“I know it sounds this way. It doesn’t need to be,” Fros said. “I’m due to receive some more information on the case by Wednesday and I will call you then. Meanwhile, I myself will look into Stewart Martin and do some follow-up interviews.”
After Mehta left, Fros opened the report Bobby had sent over by email on Sunday, after Tom’s call. There was nothing revealing in it, not a single suggestion Alok’s partner could be the man who killed him and his wife, and took his daughter.
Fros grabbed her bag from the back of her chair and strode out of her office and the building, trying to focus on the case she had to crack for the sake of her self-respect and not the fact that Jules, Rio, Tal, and Tony could be facing undead horrors.
It took her less than three hours to crack the Stewart Martin part of it.
“He tried to get better, he really tried,” Stella Martin said and sniffed. “And Alok was so great. He helped him so much.”
Fros sipped from the cup of pale tea Stella Martin had made her, waiting for the emotions to subside.
“When did Alok last lend your husband money?” she asked when the sniffs abated.
“I don’t know. He only told me after he lost the money.” Stella blew her nose, crumpled the tissue and squeezed it in her hand. “All that online betting should be banned, you know? It shouldn’t be so easy for people with problems like Stu to get access to gambling.”
“I can’t disagree,” Fros said and set the tea down. “Mrs. Martin, do you believe your husband is a killer?”
The start was genuine. The eye-widening wasn’t a role. And smells never lied. The moment Fros asked her question the room filled with the stench of mouldy mushrooms.
“No,” Stella Martin said, straightening up, the urge to sniff gone. “My husband is a compulsive gambler and a liar but he’s not a killer.”
“Why do you think he confessed, then?” Fros continued more calmly.
“Stu tends to buckle under stress. I know, you’ll ask what’s he doing in corporate law, then, but he doesn’t have this problem with his work. He only has it with emotional stress. When I first caught him lying about the gambling he made up such silly lies a child would see through. It’s his defence mechanism or something like that,” the woman explained in the apologetic tones of a mother explaining the irrational behaviour of her child.
“So you’re telling me Mr. Martin told the police he had killed Alok and Vinita because he was embarrassed they had learned about his gambling debts?”
Stella Martin smiled feebly.
“I know how it sounds. The police were here on Saturday, they turned the house upside down and they found nothing because there was nothing to find. And I know that this sounds lame and unconvincing but my husband wouldn’t kill his friend for money. He knew he had a problem, he tried to deal with it, he didn’t always succeed but he tried. Our lawyer says we’ve got a very good chance of winning in court. He may have had a motive but he had nothing else.”
He’d had an opportunity and means were easy to come by once you made up your mind, Fros thought, but it would have been impolite to share that thought with Stella. This, however, was not the case with the idea that popped in her mind a second later.
“Would it be possible for me to see your husband? We like to be thorough in our work.”
Stella Martin hesitated for a moment but then nodded.
“I don’t see how it can do any harm. You’re interested in finding the real killer, aren’t you?”
“Yes, we are.” And besides, it wouldn’t do Fang in Fang’s reputation any good if word got out that the police were better at catching the bad guys than her detectives.
“I’m going to see him tomorrow morning. You could come along, if you like.”
She didn’t want Fros to meet with her husband alone – a surprising discovery but only for a moment until her brain caught up with her nose. Stella Martin was a jealous woman. She didn’t want young blond women meeting with her husband tête-à-tête, even in jail. Swallowing a grin, Fros nodded gratefully.
“Thank you.”
Her phone buzzed with a text while she was driving back to the office, planning to review every single piece of information the Damani investigation had generated to date. There had to be something, some clue that she could follow. If that failed, she was staking out for Shankar Damani and that was that.
Def vamp. All good. Call me.
Fros pulled smoothly over by the curb. She turned on her hazard lights. She took the phone off the holder and unlocked the screen. She stared at the text. Its contents did not change.
Def vamp. All good. Call me.
The message made zero sense and Fros spent ten whole seconds considering whether Jules had known this when she’d written it. Def vamp did not go with all good. It never did. There were no exceptions. Def vamp was all bad, as far as Fros was concerned and she was really concerned now. She tapped Jules’s number.
“Hey boss,” a voice dripping smugness said with inappropriate cheer.
“How did you know he was definitely a vampire?” Fros asked. She then bit her lip to prevent herself from adding Did he mention Peter? The idea that every vampire in this part of the world knew Peter Granger was ridiculous. So was the idea that Peter had anything to do with all these disappearances. She had to stop thinking about that. About him.
“Well, for one thing, Massimo has beautiful hazel eyes only the hazel part is really tiny because he’s got these huge pupils. And it is a sunny day today in Milan,” Jules said. “For another thing, as we were about to leave I tripped and had to lean on his hand and my silver rings accidentally touched his skin. He winced. Visibly.”
“Maybe he’s got arthritis,” Fros murmured.
“Maybe, but when I suggested lunch he embraced the idea enthusiastically and mentioned that he had a brilliant new investment idea that he would only share with special clients and he believed I was such a client.” Jules’s cover story had her as manager of an investment fund, which actually existed. Orca Capital had been set up six months earlier by Fang in Fang’s chief financial officer against the feeble protests of the agency’s CEO and acting president as an investment vehicle with the stated purpose of ‘We can’t just leave all the money we make lying around doing nothing.’
“And that says vampire how exactly?” Fros glanced at the rearview mirror as someone leaned on the horn. People didn’t care about emergencies these days. The world was a selfish place. Fros flipped the horn-blower the bird as he passed by.
“I don’t know yet but his eyes were shining when he said it. He looked like a man who’s just discovered God or sex,” Jules said. “And he’s way too old to be discovering either at this age.”
“How old?”
“About forty-five, I think, or he may be fifty but very well maintained. Anyway, we’re having lunch tomorrow. I’ll call you after that.”
“Ask him about his disappearance,” Fros said grimly, trying to ignore the Ask him about Peter flag that an apparently unkillable part of her was waving behind her eyes.
“Of course I will,” Jules said.
“And wear a lot of silver,” Fros added even more grimly before hanging up and driving off. Her hopes that all this was just paranoia were shattered. They’d been weak enough to begin with. But now they were gone forever, leaving a gaping hole of fear for her friends, suspicions about what the end game was and no small amount of annoyance and frustration. She wasn’t an active part of the investigation. If she had been, the investigation would have been much shorter – she would meet the disappearees, she’d smell them, she’d establish vampirism in seconds. But she had chosen the murder investigation. The normal investigation. And she was going nowhere with it.
Two dead. A girl missing. A man who had confessed to the murders because he owed one of the victims money. Another man, whom the same victim supported financially. And a third man who said the other victim was really dedicated to her job. Plus a few dozen colleagues and acquaintances, none of whom had made a lasting impression of any sort.
Of the three men who had made an impression, the first two had a clear motive for the murders and for both that motive was financial. Stewart Martin had owed Alok Damani money. Shankar Damani had needed – and received – money that Alok had. Jasper had had no direct motive for murder as far as Fros could see but what he had said about Vinita and her career had stuck in her head, earning him a place in her lineup of persons of interest.
Motive on its own, however, was not enough. Money was not normally the kind of motive that made you slit people’s throats in a fit of rage. There were quicker, much less messy ways to kill people for money, especially if you were the one owing that money.
It was really difficult to square debtor Stewart and brother-dependent Shankar with throat-slitting. Blood spillage was for crimes of passion, spur-of-the-moment murders, and not carefully planned executions aiming to cancel a debt or secure long-term financial support from a dead sibling. Then again, blood spillage could work well in calculated murders made to look like crimes of passion.
Tapping on the wheel, Fros parked in the underground lot at the office building, which she had reached without noticing, deep in thought. After she turned the engine off, she stayed in her seat, still tapping. Crime of passion. Spur-of-the-moment murder. Or someone setting it all up to look like a spur-of-the-moment thing. For no discernible reason, apparently.
Then again, it could be a good old sin. Envy, perhaps. The Damanis were doing really well for themselves. There were bound to be people envious of their success. Or why not lust? Both were attractive. They may have broken a few hearts along the way. Someone’s wound may have festered, even if no one had mentioned anything to that effect at all during the interviews, including the closest friends of the family.
Pride was a favourite with biblical scholars. Pride could take so many forms. Pride could motivate Shankar for murder well and good. Only, if smell was any indication, it hadn’t. Or, Fros told herself and her heart rate picked up, he did it and he doesn’t see it as a murder.
Fros punched the wheel, got out of the car, locked it and strode off to the Fang in Fang office, swearing to herself she would solve this case if it killed her. Figuratively. Jules and the others would have to wait.
Apparently, Shankar Damani had caught the activist bug in high school and by the time he’d gone to university, the condition had become chronic. Oil platforms, shale gas, nuclear – if it was old-style energy, he had at some point protested against it. At the Brexit referendum he had voted Remain because, in his own words, EU regulators were better at enforcing environmental protection rules. Why Tom would ask about Brexit was a mystery for Fros but the answer did provide insight into the thinking of the man, so maybe that was the purpose.
The thought that she was singling out Shankar because she didn’t like the sort of person he was passed through Fros’s mind, was granted access and now sat in the back and kept quiet while she combed through the interview records and the background information the researchers had collected on Alok Damani’s younger brother.
All in all, he was a classic failure. Good grades in school, probably pushed by the parents, and mediocre performance at university, where he had, unsurprisingly, studied some degree with the word environmental in it, whose full title Fros had instantly forgotten.
Three attempts at starting a job, first at an environmental nonprofit, where he had lasted six months, then at his brother’s law firm – no doubt a job secured by Alok himself – and finally at a news website focused on climate and the environment.
He’d made it through almost a year at Alok’s firm as an office assistant and had spent two whole years at the news website before leaving to strike out on his own. His blog was doing decently, with a few thousand visitors every day, a portion of whom contributed financially to its existence, but judging by the living conditions of Shankar, the contributions weren’t generous enough for a comfortable living standard. Either that or he was saving for a mansion – or didn’t care about comfort.
Fros closed the file and rubbed the bridge of her nose. There was nothing to suggest Shankar harboured any bad feelings towards his brother or his wife. There was no record of violence although he seemed to follow a rather radical line of environmentalism with zero fossil fuels and a hundred-percent electrification and green energy.
Her teacup was empty. With a huff, Fros stood up and her knees cracked like gunshots. She’d sat in her chair for three hours straight, poring over Shankar Damani’s records, looking for something, anything she could grab and follow. And in these three hours nobody had come in to disturb her with a question or an urgent matter that needed attending to. Having Jules out of the office for a while had turned out to be an excellent idea, except for the life threatening part.
Fros got to the door and was reaching out to open it when her phone buzzed from the desk. After a brief debate over whether to leave it and see who needs her later, and after cursing herself for not setting up different ring tones for different contacts, she went back to her desk. It was probably Tal with more good vampire news. The name on the screen, however, surprised her.
“Yes?” she said in lieu of polite conversation openings.
“Hi,” Jasper said, apparently oblivious to her tone. “I was wondering if you’d like to come to dinner tonight. Or tomorrow night. I’m flexible. Just dinner,” he said as she drew in a breath to refuse. “All very civil.”
Fros found her mouth was trying to smile and put an end to it. Now was not the time for smiles. But maybe a dinner wasn’t such a bad idea. Especially dinner with a person of interest who could tell her more about one of the Damanis.
“Okay,” she said. “Civil dinner sounds nice. Let’s do tomorrow night.” If she was going to crack this case, she was not wasting another minute. Perhaps Jasper hadn’t told her all he knew about the Damanis.
“I’ll cook,” Jasper informed her. “You’re welcome to help if you like. If not, I’ll expect you around seven.”
“I’ll see you then,” Fros said and hung up before he could say anything else that would make her feel warm inside again. She was already feeling warm inside and it was ridiculous. This was a work engagement and nothing but a work engagement.
Once she’d found the person who’d murdered Vinita and Alok Damani and once she’d found their daughter – the thought that the child was most likely dead already was not welcome in her head – she could relax and maybe help with dinner some day. But not now. And what the hell was taking Tal so long to call?
As if summoned by her question, Tal’s name flashed on the screen Fros was staring at and the phone began to buzz again.
“I was just wondering what was taking you so long,” she snapped to mask the tonne of relief that had just splashed all over her. For someone who did not like to get attached to people Fros was doing remarkably well in getting attached to people. But Tal was all Peter’s fault, she had established, as if that made worrying about him more fun.
“I had to tell Tony about vampires,” Tal said.
“What?” If words were sharp implements, this one would have stabbed Tal in the ear.
“I had to,” he repeated. “We went to that appointment together. And when I tested the doctor she stiffened so visibly Tony started asking questions.”
“Right,” Fros said and made a face. “So, she’s a vampire. Great. Continue.”
“Well,” Tall said and paused in a way very familiar to Fros.
“Are you smoking?” she demanded. “Please tell me you’re not smoking, Tal.”
He took an audible drag.
“Yes, I am smoking and intend to continue smoking until we get back home. I’m not sure about then, either. Fros, there’s something brewing here, Jules was right. I didn’t believe her because she likes melodrama and mystery but two confirmations in a day? That’s not good.”
“It’s not. And neither is your smoking,” Fros said. Now she was craving a cigarette, too. “Tell me about Tony.”
“Well, he actually wasn’t that surprised. He said he’d always suspected there was something more than meets the eye, and I’m quoting.” Tal paused again and Fros felt like slapping him. “He was a bit excited. He’s been asking even more questions.”
“And did you answer them?” she inquired.
“Within reason. I didn’t tell him about Peter, if that’s what you mean. I mean, I didn’t tell him that Peter’s a vampire. I thought it might be awkward when he comes back.” Pause. “If he comes back, that is.”
“When he comes back,” Fros echoed. Then she cleared her throat and asked “Did you tell him about me?”
Tal was outrage itself.
“Of course not. What do you take me for, a complete idiot? No, we just discussed vampires and what they might want with all these people. Tony said it must be a secret society.”
Fros felt her eyebrows almost detach from her skin.
“He said what now?”
“A secret society,” Tal repeated with a shockingly serious voice. Normally, the suggestion of a secret society or an occult club or anything like that would have unleashed the monster of sarcasm but not now. Now, Tal was being serious and thoughtful. It was frightening to hear.
Fros waited. Vampires were secretive creatures. A secret society would be in order, though without the theatrics secret societies were associated with in the common mind.
“Doctor Pfeifer suggested I try finding meaning in my life by getting in touch with people who already have meaning in their lives. For a first session, I thought this was a bit unprofessional. She also gave me a bunch of leaflets. I didn’t even know people still printed leaflets. And we’re supposed to be trying to save the planet,” Tal finished with a hint of bitterness.
“Were any of them interesting?” Two tests, two hits. This was an unusual rate of success for an idea that had sounded like something out of a TV show script when she had suggested it.
“I haven’t looked at them properly yet. I wanted to call you first. We’ll go through them on the way to Germany. The flight’s in two hours so I have to go now.”
“Wait,” Fros said and almost reached out to grab him. “What did she say when you touched her with the silver? Did she suspect anything?”
“You mean, are we in danger? I don’t think so. She was busy pretending she wasn’t hurt and I was busy drowning her in words. I told her this was a special ring that was passed on by grandfather to grandson in our family for generations and I apologised for it being cold.”
“It doesn’t sound convincing, Tal. You could do better than that.”
“She looked convinced enough. Besides, we’re leaving. She wouldn’t have time to do anything.”
Except follow their scent and drink their blood.
“I suggest you leave sooner rather than later for the airport.”
“Okay, fine, if it makes you feel better. I’ll call you from Lossburg, all right? Are you eating well?” The last part was said with the kind of low, hushed voice people reserve for awkward questions.
“Yes, I am, thank you. Now go. I want you at that airport as soon as possible.”
Tal huffed, successfully conveying by sound alone the message that he was rolling his eyes at her anxieties, and hung up.
Fros stared at the screen of her phone until a sharp pain in her thumb started her. She glanced at the appendage. She’d gnawed through the cuticle and it was now bleeding.