London Under Midnight Part 11

'Okay, Ben, where do we start?' Trajan emerged from the bathroom. He rubbed his face with a towel before dabbing it on the back of his head with a grimace. 'Still leaking,' he grunted as he studied the spot of crimson on the fabric.

'I always do too much research on my articles; it's the curse of living alone.' Outside dusk had fallen. 'Missing person stories are one of the evergreens of journalism. If news is quiet there'll always be a story about someone going out to buy a newspaper and never coming back.'

'It's no laughing matter.'

'I agree, but the hard, uncompromising truth is people vanish. It happens all the time. I wrote up a magazine article a couple of years ago about the body of a woman found in the Serpentine. She lay in the morgue for six months and n.o.body could identify the body. All the evidence the authorities had was her appearance, her clothes and what was in the pocket of her jacket. That was a key attached to a teddy bear fob and a piece of paper inside a plastic bag. On the paper were the words "My name is Susan Pierman. I have no relatives." '

'So the police had a name.' Trajan was impatient to begin the search. 'They could trace her through that.'

'And so you'd think, but n.o.body by that name had gone missing in the UK. She may have been from overseas, or it was an a.s.sumed name. This Susan Pierman is only one of thousands of people that go missing every year in this country.'

'Come on, there can't be that many?'

'No? Like I say, I'm a writer who lives alone. I do too much research for my own good. Listen, Trajan, we need more information before we start hunting April.'

'We must do something. The police treated me like I was reporting a lost hamster, not a human being.'

Ben sighed. 'That's another brutal fact. Unless it's a child that's missing or there's evidence of forced abduction, missing person cases are low priority. Just last year the Lambeth police division - that covers just a single borough - investigated more than two thousand cases where people had vanished. There are websites that specialize in identifying the remains of bodies found in England. Believe it or not, there are hundreds of cases - people found dead in rivers, ca.n.a.ls, supermarkets, city streets, hotels, you name it. Some have been murdered, some killed themselves, others died of natural causes, but the single factor that unifies them is that the police haven't a clue who they were. And day after day the morgues collect more and more corpses from the Thames, or munic.i.p.al parks or bus stations and n.o.body can put a name to them.'

Trajan's anger evaporated. He sat on the sofa digesting what Ben had told him. The expression of misery on the man's face touched Ben, and he began asking himself what was his motive for helping to find April. Was it for April's sake? Trajan's? Or did Ben cherish a secret hope that if he found her he could also steal her away from that blond-haired man who sat there grieving for his lost fiancee?

The bottom line was that Ben must do what he could. Whatever April decided after that was up to her; providing they could trace her, that is.

'OK,' Ben said. 'First things first. Nothing unusual happened in the days or weeks running up to the night April went missing and you were attacked?'

'Absolutely nothing.'

'No peculiar phone calls, or letters, or strangers hanging round the apartment block or where she worked?'

'No. And no ransom note made from diced newspaper. Don't you think I've gone through all that with the police?'

'At the moment, Trajan, we've nothing to go on. All we know is what you've told me. You walked beside the Thames. Someone attacked you. When you came round April was gone. There are no witnesses to confirm or deny what-'

'You think I'm lying?'

That sense of violence pervading London crackled in the air of the lounge. It was as if some unseen power tested London's population, trying to goad them into acts of random savagery.

Ben took a deep breath. 'I don't believe you're lying, but you know more than you're telling me.'

'Like what, for G.o.d's sake?' Trajan's face flushed.

'You can't remember what happened to you yet, buta' Ben tapped his own temple with his finger. 'It's locked in here. When you were sleeping you started shouting. I checked on you and I distinctly heard you say: "Why did you bite her?" '

'Bite her?' Confusion clouded his eyes.

'Did the individual who attacked you, Trajan, bite April?'

'I don't-' There was a searching quality to his eyes as if he looked into his own mind. 'I wanted to say, "Yes" but I don't know why. I still can't remember what happened.' He gave one of those painful shakes of his head. 'Sorry. All I can recall is something about a figure that was wrong in some way. A peculiarity I can't define.'

'How's your head now?' Ben asked.

'Good enough.'

'Then it's time we return to the scene of the crime.'

'Wait. Do you really believe I saw someone bite April?'

'I believe you know something. It's just a case of triggering your memory.'

'I hope to G.o.d you're right.'

They infiltrated the city as the darkness took hold. April Connor and her kind had emerged from the waters after their transformation into New-Life, driven by a hunger that overwhelmed all rational thought. They craved food. That need became nothing less than a burning madness. It must be satisfied at all costs.

Beside a railway track that ran through wasteland north of King's Cross, a man who was shooting vermin with a rifle found rats fleeing toward him from a derelict warehouse. There were dozens of them. He couldn't believe his luck as he burst their furry bodies with his gunshots. His luck changed when whatever had scared the rats sped from the doorway and seized him. As he saw the surviving rats flee into the shadows he thought to himself in surprise, Biting! The jaws of something no longer human ripped at his skin to release his hot blood.

In Chelsea, an architect dropped his car keys on the pavement just outside his mews home. When he picked them up he happened to glance down a drainage grate set at the edge of the road.

'h.e.l.lo, how did you get down there?' He looked down into a child's wide eyes that gazed up trustingly into his. 'Did someone put you down there?' asked the architect. He glanced round but there was n.o.body in sight to offer a hand, so he bent down to see the child better. What a world! Who 'd think of pus.h.i.+ng a child down through a manhole into a sewer? The child could have been wandering lost for hours.

The moment the man's face was close enough to the iron grille two things happened. Firstly, he saw several grey-faced figures below lit by the radiance of a street lamp. Two, the child's arms, that were slender enough to pa.s.s through the bars of the grate, reached out; its hands grabbed him by the hair and dragged his face downward to slam against the bars. 'Hey!' Their mouths couldn't reach the architect. Instead, one of the figures below drove a steel spike up between the bars and into his eye. Once they'd yanked it out the man's blood rained down on to the figures below who danced in the ruby cascade; as they danced they licked that liquid nourishment from each other's bodies.

The janitor responsible for locking up the swimming pool in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the hotel yelled into the phone, 'Listen to me. Someone's caught beneath the grid at the bottom of the poola no, I don't know how. All I can see is a pair of arms. They must be drowning down there. Get someone down here now!' He threw aside the phone then ran back to the pool. At this time of night it was deserted so this was the first time in the man's life he would be hailed a hero. He dived in fully clothed and swam down to where a pair of bare arms extended from the dislodged grille. Beneath that was the drainage conduit that would dump the pool's water into the sewers under the hotel. When the manager and the desk clerk made it down to the pool side, they would find the normally crystal-clear waters of the pool turned the colour of rust. Of the janitor there would be no sign.

On a houseboat moored to the riverbank a man searched for his wife who'd stepped out on deck just minutes ago to enjoy the cool night air. He scanned the dark waters. 'Sonia, where are you?' The only answer was the sucking noise the waves made as they lapped against the wharf.

Downriver, towards Tilbury Docks, a stream discharged water into the Thames. On the wall directly above the confluence of waters stood Jez Martine. Zipped into the pocket of his leather coat was the endeavor of his adult life; a home-recorded CD of his songs. Now at fifty years of age he was exhausted. The t.i.tle song of his alb.u.m said it all: 'This Man Is Used Up'. n.o.body had heard his compositions. The record companies weren't interested. Radio stations didn't even return his complimentary disks, never mind play them. Remember Vincent Van Gogh's self-sacrifice, he told himself, this is the route to immortality. Tonight he would throw himself into the river. When his body was pulled from the water in a day or two, the CD would be found, then the world would mourn the genius that it had lost. Jez Martine heard that death by drowning wasn't only painless, it was a euphoric experience. Oxygen deprivation engenders a sensation of sublime bliss.

Jez stared down into the river. Pale shapes swam there beneath the surface with all the predatory menace of sharks. Yet when something broke the surface it wasn't a shark's fin but a human face with blazing eyes. Those eyes fixed on him, waiting for him to take that lethal step forward. Jez fingered the hard shape of the compact disk in his pocket. Perhaps it might be worth trying the record companies one more time, he told himself, before hurrying away from the river in the direction of home.

London before midnight buzzed with life. Only some of it was the wrong kind of life. It was still hungry. The gang of muggers waited in the park for what should be easy victims - a girl with her companion; a slender guy with gold-tipped teeth. When they were close the five men pounced. The first move would be to beat the guy unconscious then rob the pair of them. It all happened in a blur. The robbers fell one by one, their throats torn, or faces ripped from their skulls. As one of the thugs lay dying the word 'ironic' escaped him. But as he lost consciousness the phrase 'a biter bit' drifted through his mind.

SIXTEEN.

April and Carter gorged on the blood of the would-be robbers. To human eyes the park would be a ma.s.s of indistinct shadows but for April the lights of the city beyond the trees illuminated the place in vivid multi-coloured hues. Here in a clearing in the bushes she saw the scene with perfect clarity. Deep inside her, a voice fainter than a whisper of dust falling in a tomb protested that this was a scene of utter horror. Oh no, April told herself, this is a slice of heaven dragged down to earth. For in the clearing lay the source of the most beautiful, nerve-tingling food in creation. The five men who'd made the fatal mistake of pouncing on them lay dead on the ground. Their bodies were a ma.s.s of bite marks inflicted during the attack. And now the aftermath of that short battle was a frenzy of feeding.

April inserted a finger into the torn neck of a muscular guy dressed in army surplus fatigues. With that finger she probed the dripping wound until she found what she needed. Oha those lovely ruby drips; she yearned to lick them from his skin, but there was something altogether richer and darker -and far more abundant. She craved more than drops, she l.u.s.ted after a whole reservoir of the man's lifeblood. That probing digit found the carotid artery deep in the neck. April's hunger gave her the strength to hook it with her finger, then draw it out through the wound; a pink tube that once formed the expressway from heart to brain. She moved with such speed the procedure appeared to be borne of years of practice. But this was her first timea her first, glorious, fulfilling, yearned-for time. Through her mind flashed memories of devouring that salty estuary water, but that had only been a subst.i.tute for this, the most precious fluid in the world. Her face darted down at the exposed artery; she bit through with an audible snick! As the man's heart had stopped beating there was no arterial spurt. No, this girl's going to have to work hard for her reward. The very molecules of her body blazed with the ferocious hunger. All that mattered in the universe right now was: Feed. Feed long and hard. So this is the beautiful moment of swallowing. She pushed the severed end of the artery into her mouth. Then she sucked hard. The moment of bliss was nothing less than a star exploding in her soul. Those famished molecules all seemed to give a heartfelt 'Ahhha' A unified sigh that magically spread even beyond the borders of her own body. It was as if she nourished a ravenous universe by the act of feeding. She sucked the blood from the man's body with so much power his face began to shrink. As she did so, memories raced through her mind. Of her as a teenager as she sucked on a plastic straw to drain the last of the milkshake out of a cup. This was similar. At first the blood spurted into her mouth from the severed vein in a flood of satisfying salt and flesh flavours. Then as it became depleted in the cadaver's veins she had to draw all the harder until her cheeks ached with the effort. Yet the flood of satisfaction was beyond anything she'd ever experienced before.

Then, finally, as the reservoir of lifeblood was exhausted, and the man's eyes sank into their sockets, she moved on to the next of her victims. This was a kid with a wide-open mouth that displayed rotted teeth; his eyes were wide gla.s.sy orbs in the darkness; the expression suggested his own death had come as an unexpected surprise and he still couldn't come to terms with it. She giggled; the bellyful of man-blood intoxicated her. It left her with a warm sense of well-being. The world had become a lovely place lit by delicious rose tints. As she worked on his throat to tease out the carotid artery she glanced across at Carter.

Carter luxuriated in gluttony, too. He'd chewed away the hand of a tattooed street bandit. Now he sucked on the open wrist veins with such bliss on his face, while both of his hands stroked the corpse arm from shoulder to forearm as he coaxed the blood along the veins. April giggled again as she watched him. Carter's milking that arm of blood, she told herself, like he's milking a cow. Maybe she should go along and ask for a taste? Tattoo boy's blood might be meatier than the one she worked on now. But then she gasped with surprise. She hadn't expected this. What an unexpected bonus!

The kid she was about to liberate of his precious red-stuff was still alive. Ye, G.o.ds, this is pleasure beyond imaginationa For a second she made kittenish cries of delight as the severed artery spurted blood into her face. The heat of it! Not to mention the sheer force of that jet of crimson hitting her face in a joyous explosion. After licking her lips she pressed her mouth against the wound to feed on that liquid glory. The kid kicked the gra.s.s with his heels, gurgled a little, clenched his fists in agony. That's all he could manage.

Once again the image of her as a teen returned. Of the times she sucked on the thick plastic straw of her shake. Slurping, gurgling; an exquisite experience. Now this. It was as if she'd waited her entire life for this moment. And now it was here she'd savour it for as long as she could.

April and Carter walked along the path by the ca.n.a.l. The cloud began to break; a thousand stars shone through. The pair were filled with such happiness that everything appeared wonderful. They pointed out the constellation of Orion reflected in the ca.n.a.l water. An airliner glided overhead, its navigation lights burned brilliantly, causing them to s.h.i.+eld their sensitive eyes.

'Imagine all those people on that plane.' Carter whooped. 'They'll all be asleep like this.' He pantomimed a sleeping man with his head to one side. 'Just imagine all those bare necks with those big, big pulses going da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.'

She laughed as she put her arm around him. They could have been a pair of lovers returning home after a party that left them exhilarated as much as intoxicated. At that moment they were so energized it seemed as if they were flying rather than walking. Nothing required effort. April laughed as she suddenly twirled round, her arms held out by her side.

Carter leapt on to a wall and crouched there as he made a play of balancing. 'Watch me, momma. I'm gonna surf these bricks all the way to Rio. There the people are so juicy it'll be like eating peaches.' The man was a relentless bundle of energy. He pounded his chest as if he was Tarzan. 'Peaches of the G.o.ds!'

April jumped up and grabbed his hands. 'Carter! We've found it, haven't we?'

'We've found happiness.'

'But we've discovered something amazing. This is a miracle.'

'Come fly with me!'

They jumped off the wall hand-in-hand. As they walked with that bouncing stride April rushed the words through her lips with that same energy. 'You know why so-called civilized people hate cannibalism?'

'Tell me, beautiful one.' He beamed those gold-tipped teeth at her.

'It's because it gives you power. When you drink someone's blood or eat their flesh it makes you so strong you feel as if you could lift a building into the air.'

'That's cool. I'm gonna go down to Westminster and throw Big Ben over the moon.'

She laughed as she experienced such rapture she thought she would burst. 'But now we've discovered the truth. We're like Edison, Madam Curie and Oppenheimer rolled into one. Listen, Carter. We'll make the world a better place. Just picture it. If everyone felt like this there'd be no wars. Everybody will be happy. Waita' She grabbed him by the arm as he tight-roped a narrow band of stone at the ca.n.a.l edge. 'Don't you feel it?'

'I feel everything's good.'

'But don't you feel as if you can never die? That you'll live forever?'

'Hmm.' He rubbed his stomach while laughing out loud. 'I feel it.'

'This is the happiest day of my life,' she declared. 'You and me, Carter, we've discovered eternal happiness and immortality.'

'That, my sweetheart, is what I call an achievement.'

April found herself skipping along the night-time path. The city lights were nothing less than a celebratory firework display, and above them the stars shone with their own happy glow.

'We can't keep this to ourselves, you know?' She linked arms with him. 'We've got to share it.'

'Who with?'

'The world.'

'How're we going to do that?'

'I know a guya'

'Hmm, feeling a touch of jealousy here.' He laughed as if every syllable she spoke was the wittiest line in the history of comedy.

'Idiot.' She patted his stomach. 'He's nice though.'

'You're not going to kiss him behind my back, are you?' He tried to mime outrage but burst into giggles.

'Once I thought he would kiss me.' She scrunched her shoulders with pleasure. 'I wouldn't have minded. I had a secret thing about him.'

'Oooh, s.e.xy thing?'

'Shha' She giggled again. 'Now, where was I?' She took a deep breath. 'This guy. He's called Ben Ashton, and he's a writer.'

'Wow. Comics? Books? Plays?'

'Stop distracting me, Carter.' She playfully slapped his stomach. 'Ben works for the magazines. Listen, this is what we'll doa' Her voice dropped to a whisper as if she didn't want to be overheard, even though the wasteland beside the ca.n.a.l was deserted. 'We'll find Ben Ashton and share our secret with him.'

'You're sure?'

'Sure, I'm sure.' She gave another tipsy laugh. 'Listen, Carter. We've discovered a secret. We can heal the world. Everyone can feel as strong and as happy as we do.'

Carter's face clouded. 'But it isn't always like this. Remember how much it hurt on the island?'

'But that's over. We know how to stop the hunger.'

'Human beings. Hmma' He smacked his lips.

'Ben can write our story for the press.' The thought thrilled her to the bone. 'We'll explain how everyone can live forever.'

'We'll win the n.o.bel Prize.'

'It's inevitable!' She kissed him on the cheek. 'Just look at us.' Her laughter rang out across the water. 'Haven't you noticed?'

'Noticed what? I'm having such a good time.'

'We're all covered in blood.'

This amused them so much it sent them into a renewed bout of giggles. Then as the starlight shone down they strolled away arm-in-arm into the night in search of Ben Ashton. They had the miracle of New-Life to share with the world.

SEVENTEEN.