Dracula Cha Cha Cha

GIALLO POLIZIA



Inspector Silvestri talked in high, musical Italian to uniformed subordinates, directing their activities in the Piazza di Trevi. Speaking English to Kate, his voice was entirely different, deeper. Flat-toned, like a bad actor.



'You saw the assassin?' Silvestri asked. 'Il Boia Scarlatto?'



Il Boia Scarlatto  -  the Crimson Executioner.



In her mind, she still could. A face rippling in the pool.



'Only his reflection,' she admitted.



Silvestri noted that down. Despite the Roman summer, he wore the European detective's unofficial uniform, an off-white Maigret raincoat. He was a solid, middle-aged man.



'He had a reflection?'



'The man was not a vampire, Inspector.'



Two policemen lifted Kernassy's cloak out of the water like a hammock, holding his fragile remains in it. Minions from the coroner's office sifted with butterfly nets, scooping up stuff she supposed must be Malenka.



The Morlacchi gown had been spirited away, which irritated Silvestri. Some cop's fiancee or mistress had best not ask questions about the provenance of their birthday gift. Kate hoped it was cleaned and mended before presentation.



Merciless sun poured into the piazza. She had not expected the heat to be this bad. She didn't perspire  -  a trick of her altered body chemistry  -  but was thus all the more uncomfortable when the temperature rose much above the English norm. She was evolved to be a night creature.



Crowds of curiosity-seekers were roped back. The paparazzi who'd haunted Malenka were replaced by less frenetic, hungrier-looking crime reporters. On the Via San Vincenzo, angry carhorns honked. Despite the barriers, a lad on a Lambretta took a shortcut through the piazza, shooed on by gun-toting carabinieri.



The shadow Kate had found at one side of the fountain was shrinking. Her eyes hurt from the glare. She felt the tingle of sunlight on her face and hands, and knew she was going beet-red. Sun-scars sometimes took decades to heal. She'd planned to spend the day indoors like a proper vampire, and emerge after nightfall.



She looked around for Marcello. He was chatting easily with a couple of uniformed cops and some fellows she took to be reporters. They shared cigarettes and laughed. She recognised the professional callousness of those who trawl around where ghastly things have happened, pressmen as much as policemen. She was herself used to exchanging small talk over smokes while leaning against bullet-riddled, blood-patterned massacre walls.



What had Marcello told Silvestri? They clearly knew each other. The first thing the Inspector had done upon arriving was take the Italian reporter aside and listen intently to a lengthy explanation with illustrative gestures.



One of the coroner's men uttered a cry of disgust and fished out the dead, waterlogged cat. Everyone expressed sympathy for the poor thing. That suggested how vampires might stand in Rome. Dotted through the crowds like black scarecrows, nuns and priests glared disapproval at her. The Catholic Church was never going to be comfortable with her kind.



Kate guessed she was the favourite suspect. Marcello had come back to the piazza and found her alone with the remains of Count Kernassy and Malenka. He hadn't seen the killer, hadn't even heard his ridiculous laughter.



She'd retold her story three times and given a description to a police artist. They had worked up a sketch which looked embarrassingly like a comic strip villain, complete with mad grin. Next time, she'd be sure to be nearly killed by someone who could be taken seriously.



'Have you found the little girl?' she asked Silvestri. 'She looked sad, frightened. She saw the murderer.'



'Ah yes,' he said, affecting the need to jog his memory, flipping back his notes. 'The little girl who was weeping.'



'There couldn't have been many children on the streets. It was near dawn.'



'There are always children on the streets, Signorina. This is Rome.'



'She didn't look...'



What did she mean? She'd only seen the girl's face. No, the reflection of her face. Upside-down. She couldn't say what she had been wearing. She had an impression that the girl was not a ragged urchin, even that she came from wealth, old money. Why did she think that?



'Her hair,' she said, thinking aloud. 'It was long, clean. Well-groomed, looked after. It hung over one eye, like Veronica Lake's.'



Silvestri's mouth was fixed, but he smiled with his eyes.



'You observe,' he said.



'I'm a reporter. It's my job.'



His voice changed again, as he rattled off orders to his assistant, Sergeant Ginko. Kate caught a few words: ragazza  -  girl, lunghi capella  -  long hair, Veronica Lake  -  hubba-hubba.



They were taking her seriously now. Good.



'What else did you observe that you can report?'



She almost said something.



That upside-down face. Blonde tresses, sad-clown mouth, tears. The killer, dressed as an executioner  -  mask, bare chest, tights. A flash of killing red, sharp silver. Kernassy's skull, Malenka's eyes.



What's wrong with this picture?



'Go on,' Silvestri encouraged. 'Anything, even if you're not sure of it...'



'It's a puzzle,' she said. 'I keep trying to fit it all together. One of the pieces is wrong, but I don't know which. I'm sorry. It's as frustrating for me as it is for you. I have a sense of wrongness  -  some tiny detail. Something I saw, but can't put my finger on. I keep going over it.'



The Inspector was disappointed. He wrote his telephone number on a page of his notebook, tore it out, and offered it to her.



'If the puzzle fits together, you will call me?'



She took the number.



'Yes. Of course.'



Silvestri shut his notebook again. It was his favourite prop.



'You may go, Signorina Katharine Reed.'



She was a little surprised.



'You don't want to arrest me? On suspicion?'



Silvestri laughed.



'No. You have misunderstood. You arrived in Rome only last night, on the same flight as il conte and his "niece". That is confirmed by Alitalia. These were not the first killings.'



Even in the Roman sun, Kate felt a chill.



'Rome is not safe for vampiri,' Silvestri continued. 'They think themselves hunters of men, but here we have a man who thinks himself a hunter of them. This Boia Scarlatto has killed others, in ones and twos. Since the War. All elders.'



'Surely Malenka was a new-born. She seemed so... modern.'



Silvestri shook his head. 'She had her centuries.'



All elders. Why kill Kernassy and Malenka, but not Kate Reed?



There was no hard and fast age at which one became an elder. She supposed you had to survive your natural life expectancy, then live on at least another lifetime. After two centuries, you were getting there. Dracula was an elder, and Lord Ruthven, and Genevieve. Kate was ninety-six. If she'd stayed warm, she might still be alive.



Charles, ten years older, was.



Had the little girl scared off the Crimson Executioner? That didn't sound likely.



Silvestri ordered his men to lay down Kernassy's cape and looked at the body. The press photographed the scene with the famous fountain picturesquely blurred in the background. The Inspector put on a serious expression. Like Malenka, he gave the photographers different angles. He experimented with looks: contemplative, decisive, determined.



Reporters paid attention as Silvestri announced, 'I corpi presentano tracce di violenza supernatural,' and proceeded to rattle off a statement they all jotted down.



Century-old schoolgirl Italian knocked around the back of her head, tainted by profane Sicilian picked up in the war. She didn't have to understand every word to catch the policeman's drift. It was a scene-of-the-crime speech, the same the world over. Every effort was being made and every lead followed. An arrest was promised in the immediate but non-specific future. Kate had first heard the song at the site of one of the Jack the Ripper murders, performed by the artist who made it famous, Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard.



Of course, Jack was never arrested.



Kate wondered if she should tell Marcello the police thought her innocent. He'd been startled enough by the moment of discovery. Even through cool-baby shades, he registered shock and suspicion. She knew the impression would be hard to shift. To him, she might always be a bloodthirsty monster.



Damn. There was always something.



She chided herself. Two people were destroyed and she was worried about impressing a warm man who, she was sure, found her as attractive as a face-rub with a dead fish.



She hadn't disliked Gabor Kernassy. And Malenka was more ridiculous than anything else. They might have been shallow, but they were kinder to her than convention obliged them to be. Even Malenka was funny. Kate had planned to write about the circus around the starlet. She'd have made money from them. Considering murder as news, she still might.



They had been slaughtered in front of her.



A long-bladed silver knife had fetched off Kernassy's head and skewered Malenka's heart. The police found the thing in the fountain, washed clean. Silvestri made sure it didn't vanish along with Malenka's dress.



Kate knew she wouldn't let this go. She had a great deal to occupy her in this city, unfinished business of long standing. But this was now her business too.



Someone called her name.



For an instant, she thought it might be Marcello. But it was a woman.



Genevieve.



She was behind the rope barrier, wearing a white straw hat and sunglasses. She waved at Kate with another hat.



'They won't let me through,' Genevieve shrugged, smiling.



She looked so young.



Her sun-blonde hair shone. Her smile was almost a little girl's. Her old eyes were out of sight. She was genuinely pleased to see Kate.



She'd given the police the telephone number. Silvestri must have had someone make a call. That was considerate.



'I've been told I can go free,' Kate said. 'I'm innocent.'



'I doubt that, Kate.'



She spoke English with the ghost of a French accent.



They hugged over the rope, cheek-kissing. It wasn't quite comfortable, as if someone were between them.



Charles, of course.



They were only friends in that they triangulated on Charles, and perhaps il principe. So many complications ran between them all. Edwin Winthrop fit into the pattern, too. And Penelope.



'I've brought you a chapeau,' Genevieve said. 'I knew you wouldn't expect the sun. The English never do and in this one thing I assumed the Irish would not be different.'



The rope was lifted by a policeman. Kate ducked under and took the hat. It kept the worst of the light off her face. Kate looked at the backs of her hands. They were red.



'You must take care,' Genevieve said, 'or you'll go off like a firework. In this lovely climate, spontaneous combustion is a hazard.'