By Thursday, Fros was tasting victory although whether it was indeed a victory remained an open question frequently debated by her and herself in the privacy of her head while she did background checks on all relatives and acquaintances of the Damanis.
Occasionally, the thought that if she won she’d never find Peter made its presence known sneakily but Fros ignored it. One thing had nothing to do with the other. But that wasn’t the end of Fros’s unwelcome thought trouble because another thought that made its presence known even though it was most unwelcome was the thought of Jasper Collins. That one wasn’t even strictly a thought. It was a string of images and that made it all the worse. Fros ignored those, too.
“So you’re saying that nobody in that hotel noticed if there was anything wrong with the family?” she said into her phone and glared at the tiny black bug laboriously climbing across her desk. How the creature had got inside was beyond her.
“That’s, um, that’s what they said when I talked to them,” the man at the other end of the line said and gulped so loudly Fros heard it clear as a bell. His name was Martin and he had been with the agency for a year. He was terrified of Fros even though she had never been anything but nice to him. Until today, Fros had commended that. It meant he had better instincts than most. Today, his discomfort was getting on her nerves.
“And you talked to everyone?” she pressed, eyes still fixed on the tiny bug, which had stopped in the middle of the desk, wondering where to go from there. Just like she was.
“Well, I didn’t talk with every single maid in the place, no, but I talked to all the receptionists, the maid responsible for their floor, the restaurant staff, except the chef, and the manager.” Martin said all this in a long string of words and cut off abruptly to take a breath. “The chef never left the kitchen that night.” His voice dated suggest he saw no point in questioning the staff of a hotel in Southern England the Damanis had stayed at for a week, a month ago.
Fros chewed on her lower lip. The police hadn’t found anything yet. Fang in Fang also hadn’t found anything yet. There was no murder weapon and no apparent motive. The only thing the police were fairly certain about, and Fros agreed, was that the victims had quite likely known their killer.
There were no signs of a break-in and there wasn’t any door-to-door activity on the Damanis’ street. That was the version that the police was following and Fros saw no reason to try and be original. Neither Damani was important enough for an assassination. Unless they had enemies in their past – far back in their past.
“Here’s what I want you to do next,” she told Martin. “I want you to look into the Damanis’ past. High school friends, crushes, anything. Teachers, clubs, whatever you can find. Call Mr. Mehta, he’ll probably help you start. I’ll expect a report by Tuesday.”
A pregnant pause was the initial response to the order.
“Okay,” Martin said eventually, disappointment dripping heavy off the word.
“Good,” Fros said and hung up. What was it with boys and their urge to chase criminals across moonlit roofs? Detective work was mostly sitting and waiting or doing boring stuff like looking into a victim’s high school friends. Moonlit roof chases were a rarity.
“Oh, well,” Fros muttered and blew the bug off the desk before turning her attention to the contents of the Damani file again. Just because she hadn’t found a possible lead during the first two thorough combings through the documents didn’t mean something won’t pop out the third time. But it would hardly pop out if the phone kept ringing, which was exactly what the phone did a minute later.
“Hello?” she asked suspiciously. The number that was calling meant nothing to her.
“I’m in my house,” a low voice, unwelcome in its familiarity, said.
“Excuse me?” Fros responded while her heart rate pretended she was on a running track. “Who is this?” It sounded genuine to her own ears.
A chuckle came from the phone.
“Okay, then. This is Jasper. I would very much like to see you. As soon as possible,” he added after a pause that did exactly what it was meant to do – make Fros very warm inside.
Her legs were already braced for the quick walk to the parking garage.
“I’m afraid I’m busy,” she said, crossing said legs. “I’ve tonnes of work to do, all urgent.”
“Right,” Jasper said, the scoff veiled so thinly it showed through. “Okay then. Some other time.”
“Some other time,” Fros agreed, wincing as she realised she was squeezing her legs so hard it hurt. “Bye.”
Jasper hung up without another word and Fros was suddenly overwhelmed by guilt. The guilt immediately brought on the anger because she had done absolutely nothing wrong, and the anger made her bring her fist on the desk, hard enough to feel pain in the knuckle of her pinky.
She rubbed the knuckle vigorously as the refrain that she hadn’t done anything wrong kept running on a loop in her head. Jasper was nobody to her. He was an interviewee who hadn’t been much help. So, they’d had sex. It happened. It meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.
It was physiology, pure and simple. The right man at the right time. And place. Plus she wasn’t exactly in a committed relationship. She wasn’t in a relationship at all. To be in a relationship with someone it helps to know he is alive. She didn’t have that luxury. When the knock on the door took her out of the loop Fros discovered she was holding her phone, ready to call Jasper back. She dropped the phone as if it was on fire. Whoever was outside knocked again, more insistently.
“Come in.”
Tony’s generous face popped in a fraction of a second later followed by his equally generous body. These days, Tony’s previous dairy smell – the by-product of numerous anxieties – was replaced by a much more bearable scent of freshly ironed laundry. These days Tony was mostly curious instead of anxious.
“Hey, Tony. What can I do for you?”
“Hi Fros.” He had a file in his hand. A slim red paper file that he now pressed to his chest as he walked in. “Tom had asked me to do a bit of a search in German media about missing people and he told me to report directly to you by the end of this week. On paper.” A sour trace of worry coloured Tony’s new and improved smell.
“That’s right,” Fros said, all moral qualms momentarily forgotten. “Did you find anything?” It was a pointless question but she had to ask it to keep the illusion that she hadn’t stumbled on something big and foul-smelling going for a moment longer. Then the moment ended.
Tony beamed.
“Oh, yes, I did. I definitely found something,” he said and placed the file on the desk. Then he stood waiting, exuding tangy impatience.
Fros resisted the urge to swallow nervously and opened the file. It contained a single sheet of paper with a list of names followed by a set of dates next to each and a location. There were six names in total.
Anneliese Geiger – March 11-15, Lucerne
Andreas Neller – February 27-March 4, Lossburg/Frankfurt
Eleonora Schernikau – March 7-13, Basel
Hilda Pfeifer – March 8-19, Vienna
Jesper Kreitling – March 2-7, Berlin
Markus Boeck – March 17-22, Dresden
“Why the two locations for Andreas Neller?” Fros asked.
Tony leaned over her desk, the image and scent of helpfulness.
“Lossburg is where he disappeared. Frankfurt, where he lives, is where he returned, according to the reports.”
“You did save the reports, didn’t you?”
Tony beamed and pulled out a flash drive that he proceeded to place on the desk.
“It’s all here. Encrypted. Tom said this is top secret.”
“Well, it’s early days and we don’t want everyone to know about it, yes.”
“I understand,” Tony said with a nod and it was now that Fros saw the red rims around his eyes. He had been abusing his screen time. “I only went three months back. Do you want me to go further?”
“Have you slept this week at all?”
“I’m fine, Fros, really. I wanted to help and Tom said it was urgent. I’ll sleep in over the weekend. So, do you need me to check last year?”
There was no point. Fros had no idea why she was sure there was no point but she was, or rather, she had an idea but she didn’t want to have it and it was within her powers to refuse to acknowledge said idea.
“No, thank you. That’s more than enough for now. You did a really great job, Tony.”
Tony nodded again and turned to leave. He hadn’t even hinted at asking what she needed all that information for. Jules could learn a lot about discretion from her office mate.
“Tony?” Fros called.
“Yes?”
“Do you by any chance remember what any of these people do? Did any of the reports mention it?”
Tony turned and started counting on his fingers.
“Let me see, the lady from Vienna was, I mean is, a psychotherapist. Gestalt, I believe. The man who went missing in Lossburg is, I think, an investment banker or a broker, something like this, and the lady from Basel is a professor at the university there. I can’t remember the subject but I can check. The other three… Oh, yes, the lady from Lucerne is an artist, sort of famous in her area. The men from Berlin and Dresden were, I mean are… one is a first violin with the Berlin Philharmonic and the other is a journalist.”
Fros was staring at him. When Tony finished, he pretended to wipe his forehead in a fake “Phew!” gesture and smiled at her.
“I got them all,” he said in case she had temporarily gone out of commission.
“You did get them all,” Fros agreed. “You have remarkable memory, Tony.”
“Oh, no, that’s not it. I just read so many things about these people I must’ve remembered the most important parts.”
“Well,” Fros said and took the flash drive. “Thank you again. We might need you again for this case, if you don’t mind. Would that be okay?”
The smell answered her question before the mouth burst out with “Of course! It would be my pleasure. Just let me know what you need from me.”
“It could be dangerous.”
Tony shrugged.
“More dangerous than finding your embezzling business partner with his belly cut out? I doubt it.”
Tony’s former – and late – business partner had become one of Tom’s targets but not because of the embezzlement. Tom had killed William Silverman because, besides skimming client accounts, he and his wife had turned their house maid into little more than a slave, keeping her children as collateral in a shed in their garden. Sometimes people disgusted Fros. They also baffled her because all this required effort that the Silvermans could have spared themselves by just paying the woman a regular salary. Instead, they had gone to the trouble of enslaving her and had ended up dead and carved courtesy of Tom Evans, your friendly local vigilante killer.
“It could actually be more dangerous than this,” Fros said and for a moment thought how pleasantly ironic it would be to pair off Tony with Tom if things got to a point where some of them needed to go to Europe. When things got to that point, her ever-watchful brain corrected.
“I don’t mind, really. I live a dull life.”
“Is that why you started trading crypto?” She couldn’t help it. Tom and Jules had told her the story.
Tony flushed.
“I got swept away. It was insane. But no more,” he said and straightened his back. “I’m done with crypto.”
“Okay, Tony,” Fros said and put the flash drive she had been holding for several minutes now into its designated slot in her laptop. “I’ll see you later.”
“You’re joking, right? You have to be because this cannot be serious.”
Fros sighed on the inside but kept her face calm and friendly even though she felt like grabbing him by the hair and dragging him to the airport herself. Why he insisted on keeping up the pretence of not wanting to go was a mystery.
“It’s serious and it’s urgent,” she said. “And we need you because you know a lot more about vampires than the other three.” And he wasn’t exactly busy with work these days. Jules had told her this confidentially.
“No,” Tal repeated and crossed his arms for emphasis.
This time Fros sighed on the outside as she got up. There was always more than one way to do something, after all.
“Okay. I can’t say I’m surprised but I am a bit disappointed.”
“Oh, please.” Tal stopped short of rolling his eyes but only just. “Do you really have nothing better to do at that agency than tour Europe in search for what you think are vampires because there’s a vampire conspiracy and you want to bring it down?”
Fros straightened her back and looked him in the eye. Just before she fired her best verbal shot her nose caught something under Tal’s habitual olfactory print of generalised defiance – the rotting almonds of fear infused the sharp pine sap aura Tal normally carried around. He could not have picked a worse moment to be afraid. So she fired the shot.
“I do have better things to do,” she said. “But I thought it could help me find Peter. Bye, Tal.”
She turned to grab the doorknob and started counting as she turned it. She got to seven before Tal gave up.
“Wait.”
She waited but did not turn. There was such a thing as basic decency and it wasn’t her turn to demonstrate some.
“Yes?” she said when Tal appeared at the door of his stuffy living room. There was also such a thing as rudimentary sadism and Fros occasionally let herself indulge.
“What’s this about Peter?” he asked with suspicion as clear as crystal but not as clear as the smell of wet cement that rose in the air. Tal was feeling uneasy. Tal had doubts about things. Tal, Fros realised with a start, had his own suspicions about the situation and they were not unlike her own.
“Peter disappears and two months later people also start disappearing and then reappearing,” she said. The momentary flare of his nostrils confirmed what had just dawned on her. “I’m not saying there is a link but I am saying it’s worth checking if there is one. And trying to find out what happened to these people because this must be the most unusual string of kidnappings ever.”
“And you need me why, again?” Tal was not giving up the act and it made Fros lament the existence of good manners, which prevented her from grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and shaking him until his brain settled right.
“Because you might be able to spot a vampire before the others do. Because you’re good at getting to the bottom of things and that will be useful. Because you know about music and art even if you don’t talk about it. And because I can’t let Julianne go alone because Tom will be with Tony. You will be keeping Jules safe.”
Tal gave her a long unblinking look down his nose as though he was waiting to see when her patience would crack. It didn’t.
“How did you know about the music and the art?”
“You always have classical music on, Tal, even in your silly car, and the only decorations in your flat are reproductions of paintings some of which even I’ve heard about. It wasn’t that hard.”
“I see. All right,” he said and dropped the act like a paper mask. His back straightened and he rubbed his hands together like a tall, skinny villain. “What’s the plan?”
Fros left Tal’s half an hour later with a much lighter heart than when she’d come. Tal had also got where she was – certain there was a link between the weird disappearances of seemingly random people and Peter. His conviction was easy to dismiss on emotional, filial grounds but Fros’s own conviction of that link was harder to shake off as purely emotional, or so she told herself.
For now, Fros couldn’t produce any rational basis on which she held that belief, even if someone put a knife to her throat. And yet, that architect, Kasper, had gone missing for several days and when he’d reappeared he’d been turned into a vampire. And yet, other people had disappeared, too. The simplest explanation was that vampires were expanding their ranks. It sounded like something out of a straight-to-TV movie, but so had her mother’s plot to exterminate all vampires. Maybe someone was in payback mode targeting humans. And Peter had become a part of this after his surrender, as Fros thought about it, to the vampire co-plotter of her mother. If, that is, he was still alive. It was either that or hope was tricking her into non-existent links between events.
When she got to the office, Fros stormed in as usual, planning to go through all the reports about the disappearances in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland once again and then again until she found the link or established with certainty there was none. There was no progress on the Damani case and the best way to improve the chances of such progress taking place later was to completely ignore it for a while.
“Fros!” Rio, the youngest member of the Fang in Fang team, almost blocked her way as she marched by the reception desk to her office. He had a file in his hand. This one was green.
“Hi Rio. What’s up?”
He glanced around the cafeteria that doubled as a common workspace. There were only two people typing on their laptops there and neither was paying attention to them, at least visibly. Rio leaned closer to Fros.
“I found something,” he half-whispered and glanced around. He couldn’t have done better if he’d rehearsed it but his quite genuine smell of soft cheese said he hadn’t rehearsed anything. Rio was being genuinely, if mildly, paranoid.
“Okay, come with me to my office and we’ll talk about it.”
Rio drew back and the smell of dairy disappeared as if cut off.
“Um,” he said. “About that…”
“Yes?”
Embarrassment heated up the space around them and the file went up like a shield.
“There’s a man there,” Rio said with a tone that admitted failure and humbly asked for the harshest punishment. “He came in about an hour ago and said he was a client but I couldn’t find him in the database, and he said it wasn’t finalised yet and that’s why he’d come to meet you. I told him there was no record of an appointment but he said there must be and insisted on waiting for you in your office. I didn’t want to bother you or Jules, so I let him in. He said his name was Jasper something.”
Chest heaving with the vocal exertion, he fell silent and waited, his whole body braced up for a blow.
“Collins,” Fros said with a second’s delay. “His name’s Jasper Collins. Okay, Rio, thanks for the update. May I have the file?”
“Is it okay that I let him in your office?” Like Martin, Rio had pretty good instincts. His conscious brain likely wasn’t aware of it, but his body knew that Fros was dangerous.
“No problem at all, Rio, don’t worry about it,” she said with calm she didn’t feel. “I’ll call you later about the file.”
Rio nodded and returned to his station at the reception desk, relief and doubts that she’d forgiven him fighting for dominance in his aromatic aura.
Fros continued to her office at a measured pace, breathing more slowly than she felt like, trying to force the unwelcome hormones to go back home. They refused.
“What are you doing here?” It was the go-to opening line of space owners who found uninvited guests in their space. Fros saw no immediate need to be original.
“I have a job for you.” Jasper was, as expected, completely unfazed by the subpar welcome.
“What job?” Fros still stood at the door instead of going around the visitor chair, currently occupied by a potential suspect in a murder case who incidentally happened to be quite talented in certain intimate areas, and taking her own chair. That would have required her to approach him.
As it turned out, it wasn’t up to her because in the space of a blink Jasper was out of his chair and inches from her in one extended smooth movement. His hands wrapped around her waist and slid down and his chest pressed into hers, forcing Fros backwards until her shoulder blades met the door.
“Whatever you want,” he murmured.
“You should not come here,” she said later – much later than she should have allowed all this to continue.
“Well, you didn’t want to come to my place, so…” Jasper was buttoning up his shirt as though he did this every day and, Fros allowed with distaste, there was a good chance he did. Except he lacked the distinct smell of promiscuity. Those who did things like that every day – or on a regular basis, at least – smelled of wet leaves and wet grass. Fros had wondered about the wet element and had found no explanation. Her nose did what it did. It didn’t supply the whys of it. And the fans of casual sex smelled of wet vegetation. Jasper Collins smelled of bitter almonds in caramel: his one dominant emotion was a lust for life and all in it.
“This doesn’t mean you can just show up here and… do what you did.” Fros finally rounded the desk and sat in her chair.
Jasper smiled and Fros winced inside. As far as smiles went, Jasper could win awards.
“I seem to recall you participated actively.”
“That’s not the point,” she said, wondering what the point was, other than the fact that despite Peter’s latest disappearance she felt like she was in a relationship, which was at best on hold and at worst over.
Jasper tightened his necktie, fixed it in place and leaned over Fros’s desk, propping his hands on the surface like a cop about to start questioning her about where she was on the night of February 11th.
“What is the point, then?”
A thought burst onto the scene of her mind then, sparing her from answering the question. Since he was here anyway she could indeed do some work and not think about what the point she was trying to make was.
“Why did you and Asha break up?”
Jasper drew back slightly. Even someone as arrogant as he was couldn’t take such a topic-changing punch with no reaction whatsoever. His smell changed, too. The caramelised almonds, already weaker today than last time, had now almost disappeared under the weight of what Fros always thought of as fresh hay drying under the sun. Jasper was a man rather pleased with himself and his choices.
“Is this really what you want to ask me?” he said.
“Yes. Why did you and your wife break up?”
The aroma of freshly baked bread joined the fresh hay. Jasper may be a killer or at least capable of becoming one more easily than most other people, but he was also apparently capable of affection. Not a sociopath, then. Fros ticked off the item on her mental checklist.
“I cheated on her,” Jasper said with as much enthusiasm as a man being offered wood chips for breakfast. “Satisfied?”
“No. Why did you cheat on her?”
Jasper should have been getting agitated already but he wasn’t. Fros used a moment when he looked away to sniff the air. There was no trace of the minty scent of annoyance, no dairy hint of anxiety and no bitter streak of fear. What there was, instead, was a surprising note of fresh seaweed sprinkled with pepper mixing with Jasper’s caramelised almond scent. He was upset and he was hopeful. For what, Fros could only guess.
Jasper rubbed his face in the classic tell of people feeling acute embarrassment all over the world. He wasn’t feeling it but he was acting it. It was the emotion that fitted the situation. Perhaps he was, after all, a sociopath – with an expanded emotional capacity.
“Because I was stupid and I couldn’t resist,” he said. “And then I couldn’t resist again and it went too far, and Asha found out. Now are you satisfied?” It sounded more like a statement than a question.
“No. Who did you cheat on her with?”
Jasper stilled and narrowed his eyes. His smell aura became sweeter – the sickly sweet of uncertainty. It was Fros’s least favourite olfactory clue because she could never be sure what the person radiating the smell was uncertain about. The irony was appreciated but unwelcome.
“You think I had something to do with Vinita’s death, don’t you?” Jasper said. “You think I killed my ex-wife’s sister and her husband?”
This was one of the things Fros had been thinking but she wasn’t about to start sharing.
“Did you?”
“Of course not!” His arms flew in the air and then fell by his sides. “And I did not cheat on Asha with her sister. Good God, what do you take me for? It was an intern from the firm. Her name was Sarah Underwood and she got a contract at, I think, NoiseMedia. I don’t remember her address but I’m sure if you want to find her you could do that with a name.”
Silence dropped over them like a glob of peanut butter and sucked the air out of the room.
“Okay,” Fros said eventually. “Thank you for being honest.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll see you,” he said dryly and turned to go.
“Wait.” Fros stood and walked up to him. “You do understand it is my job to ask uncomfortable questions, don’t you?”
He did not grace her with a response beyond a grim look.
“And you served yourself on a platter, if we’re being honest, coming here just like that,” Fros noted.
“I wanted to see you,” Jasper declared curtly.
“Well, it kind of felt like you wanted a bit more than that.”
He suddenly grinned and followed up by sliding an arm around her waist.
“I always want more.”
“That’s good to know,” Fros said, putting a hand on his chest, ready for her close-up, debating whether to listen to her intuition and be nice to keep him talking. “So, I’m busy this week but—”
Someone started knocking on the door and did not stop until she didn’t let go of Jasper and walked over to unlock it.
The words What, is and it lined up to be said with a dose of annoyance but Jules’s face stopped them in Fros’s throat.
“We need to talk. Right now.”
Jules only glanced at Jasper for the briefest of moments before pinning her meaningful eyes on Fros. The lack of curiosity was a sobering shock. Fros turned to relay the message but Jasper had already got it.
“See you,” he said and headed out, nodding in passing to Jules who completely ignored him, too busy staring at Fros, eager to start talking. Whatever her news was, it was really serious.
“What is it?” Fros finally said after the door closed behind Jasper’s back. The slight sense of loss had to be some sort of post-coital hormone side effect. Fros shook it off.
“It’s just happened again,” Jules said. “I was checking Italian media and I found a couple of possibles but then I saw a report about a woman who disappeared while she was at a conference in Florence. Two days ago. She was reported missing because she didn’t show up for work yesterday morning. No sign of her anywhere. Nobody knows anything. She went to dinner with colleagues and then headed home. Where she lived alone.
“Maybe it’s something more ordinary, like a murder,” Fros said.
“Or maybe it isn’t,” Jules said. “And I have a feeling it isn’t. We need to get moving, Fros. I’ve got two cases in Italy, Tony has half a dozen from the German-speaking countries and Rio’s got three in France.”
“He does? He didn’t mention anything when I came in today.”
Jules suddenly acquired a subtle blush.
“Well,” she told the room at large, “He saw you were with a client and didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Oh. Right.”
“So, about this so-called client. I’m listening,” Jules The Cunning said and crossed her arms.
There was no way out of this.
I enjoy fiction which is why I like to create conspiracy theories.