“Pick your cliché,” said Wax dryly. “The fact is, Slocock, I couldn’t sell Lambourne’s master plan to the PM even if I wanted to. He just wouldn’t wear it. He’s a man of high moral fibre and a statesman well aware of his standing on the international stage.”
“The Prime Minister can be made to see sense. Anyone can.” Slocock’s expression tightened. “It just takes the right application of pressure.”
“Oh, and is that how you’re intending to make
me
see sense?” Wax sat back in his chair, folding his arms. “You can try.”
“It needn’t have come to this, Maurice. Let’s be clear about that. You’ve brought this on yourself.”
“What’s it going to be? Bribery? I know Lambourne’s pockets are deep. I’d be curious to see how deep—not that I
can
be bought, at any price.”
“No, you can’t. I’m not even going to waste my time waving money about.”
“Blackmail, then. Yes?”
“Afraid so.”
“You have nothing on me. No one does.”
Slocock had to admit, Wax had a hell of a poker face. The man could bluff for England.
The trouble was, everybody had some sort of secret they didn’t want the world to know. There wasn’t a person alive you couldn’t get dirt on if you looked hard enough and dug deep enough. Nathaniel Lambourne had the resources and the wherewithal to winkle out the ugly truths and bring them squirming into the light. He’d prepared a dossier on Wax months ago. It was part of an arsenal of precision-targeted blackmail weapons aimed at all of the nation’s great and good, which he stockpiled in case of need. The contents of the Wax file had been delivered to Slocock’s door that very morning by courier in a card envelope. Slocock now produced the envelope and fished out a four-gigabyte memory stick from within.
“It seems,” he said, “that Maurice Wax, Member of Parliament for Washington and Sunderland West, has a very seamy side to his life.”
Wax’s naturally grey complexion greyed just a fraction further.
“I’ve watched the footage myself.” Slocock winced. “Fair put me off my breakfast, I can tell you.”
“There’s nothing,” Wax said. “Nothing on there.”
“Really? Then you wouldn’t mind me running off a copy and sending it to the
Daily Mail
.”
“You’re lying. This is a barefaced bluff.”
“How do you know I’m lying?
“Because...”
“Because there aren’t video cameras at Mistress Sterne’s Parlour of Correction just round the corner from Tooting Broadway? Well, none that you know of. But Mistress Sterne, a.k.a. Nadine Blevins, is not a stupid woman. She takes covert film of all her clients, especially the high-profile ones. Insurance policy; you’re not going to get prosecuted if you have images of girls tying up and whipping high court judges and top-ranking cops safely stored on a hard drive in a lockup somewhere. It’s how she’s managed to survive several busts for pandering and keeping a house of ill repute. And you, Maurice, are a regular visitor to her rather bijou terraced property, so there are plenty of shots of you here in all sorts of compromising positions.” He waggled the memory stick. “Gimp masks and ball gags and butt plugs—oh my.”
Now Wax’s face had taken on a ghastly sheen of desperation.
“What would the lovely Anthea say?” Slocock went on. “And young Philip, and little Sandra.”
“Shauna,” Wax said numbly.
“Shauna. How do you think they would react seeing your saggy white behind on
Newsnight
? Bit of a shock, I’d have thought. Hubby, daddy, seemed such an upright man, but all along, this fetish, this perversion he was harbouring. Your ‘vampire’ session is a particular delight. I can see the media having a field day with that. Young ladies dressed up in thigh boots and batwing capes, fake plastic fangs, even faker Transylvania accents... Not to mention the riding crops. The riding crops! Surname like yours, the headlines write themselves. What on earth possessed you, Maurice?”
Wax buried his face in his hands. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, he looked up over his fingertips at Slocock.
“You use prostitutes on a regular basis,” he said. “You take cocaine. You understand—a man has needs.”
“Oh, I’m not criticising. Definitely not. That would be hypocritical. The difference between us is that I don’t pretend to be anything other than what I am. You do. You make a big thing out of being a family man, a faithful husband, the perfect father. And I’m sure you are. But with that comes certain expectations, most of which involve staying away from places where they handcuff you to steel frames and twist leather thongs tightly around your privates. It’s a question of degrees of honesty. I make no bones about my bad habits, and that’s why I get away with it. If you’d tried the same approach, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Mind you, with your proclivities you probably wouldn’t be an MP in the first place, but that’s another story.”
“It’s not fair,” Wax lamented. “It’s just not fair.”
“No, it’s not, Maurice, old chap. But it is politics, and that’s the donkey we’re all riding. So, to recap. This is how it’s going to go. You think Lambourne has come up with an ingenious method for handling the Sunless, putting them out of harm’s way. You’ll recommend to the Prime Minister that Lambourne is given full government backing to pursue his project and bring it to fruition. In a couple of days’ time, you’ll announce the scheme to the world at a press conference, with its architect standing right beside you. You’ll spin it so that it looks like an act of extreme benevolence, which shouldn’t be difficult, since it does. It is. And that, my friend, will ensure that this memory stick does not stray from my safekeeping. It’s not much to ask, is it, in exchange for your life and career staying on track? You might even, if you do this right, emerge as a national hero.”
Wax sighed, heavily, bleakly.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” said Slocock.
Popping the memory stick back into the envelope, he exited the Cabinet minister’s office.
Job done. Lambourne would be happy.
In fact, the memory stick was blank. The information about what Wax got up to at Mistress Sterne’s Parlour of Correction had been contained on a two-page printout enclosed in the envelope, the text drawn from private testimony provided by Mistress Sterne herself. She did not video her clients, unless they requested it specifically so that they might have a keepsake of the occasion, but she was prepared to furnish details of their preferences and peccadilloes to anyone who wanted to know, as long as the price was right (six figures would usually cover it).
The stick had been a prop, a conjuror’s wand, nothing more. The rest was embellishment and misdirection.
Wax had been successfully blagged, and Slocock had every reason to feel pleased with himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Redlaw rose early—three in the afternoon. He opened the curtains and raised the blackout blinds, screwing up his eyes against the slanting spring sunshine. With age, his vision seemed to be getting more sensitive to bright light. Or maybe it was the job, the owl hours, perpetual estrangement from the sun.
He took the Tube to HQ and spent an hour at his desk, researching. It was drudge work—chasing up facts, filling in background detail, checking, cross-referencing. He’d not done the like since his time as a policeman, an eternity ago. For a shady, results were more or less immediate. You didn’t have to painstakingly build a case against a Sunless. You didn’t have to satisfy the criteria for a warrant. There wasn’t much, where vampires were concerned, that couldn’t be resolved on the spot with a stake or a Fraxinus round.
His efforts proved fruitful. By the end of the hour he had established a framework of knowledge which, if flimsy, nevertheless supported his suspicions. Armed with this, he took a patrol car from the pool and drove out to Park Royal where, in a huge warehouse on an industrial estate, could be found BovPlas Logistics’ London distribution depot.
The site supervisor was a man named Nigel Hutchings. He was politely obstructive at first, but a bit of arm-twisting by Redlaw soon had him being politely compliant instead.
“This,” Hutchings said, giving Redlaw a tour of the premises, “is where we load the trucks with their consignments of CG.”
“CG?”
“Short for crimson gold. It’s our euphemism. We’re not squeamish about the blood itself, so much as its end use. Calling it CG helps. That way it sounds like an inorganic chemical or some such.”
Forklifts fetched pallets of blood pouches from room-sized refrigerators and slid them into the backs of waiting trucks. The place was frenetic and loud: workers shouting, diesel engines idling, vehicles moving about with intricate mechanical choreography.
“You’ve caught us at our most manic.” Hutchings kept tugging at one corner of a bushy moustache. Redlaw noted the nervous tic. Here was someone who did not thrive on stress. “During this and the next hour, until the trucks head out, we’re like chefs at a restaurant, rushing about trying to get the dishes ready on time.”
“Not that much of a stretch as metaphors go,” Redlaw observed.
“I suppose not.”
“And where does the blood—excuse me, the CG—come from?”
“Cows.”
Obtuse little beggar
. “I’m aware of that. What I mean is, where’s it stored prior to coming here?”
“The hub facility up near Watford. The CG is shipped there from slaughterhouses all over the country, pouched up and parcelled back out to depots in thirty-seven locations. We, of course, are the largest of those.” Said with pride. “London’s where the ’Lesses want to be, isn’t it? Some emigrate to the northern cities, some even to the countryside, but London’s like a magnet to them, a Mecca. Why is that, I wonder?”
“Do I look like an expert?”
The BovPlas supervisor gave an impertinent frown. “If not you, then who?”
“I round Sunless up and corral them and make sure they stay corralled,” Redlaw said. “Doesn’t mean I have any special insight into their psychology. But if I had to guess, I’d say cities are like planets. The larger they are, the greater their pull. Why does anybody come to London? Because there’s so much of it. It’s inescapable. And the numbers of Sunless in the capital keep going up because so many are there already. They cluster, like with like. It reassures them. That answer your question?”
“Adequately.”
“So here’s one in return. Were you, Mr Hutchings, aware that of the bloodlust riots that have occurred since the New Year, not one has taken place in an SRA that hasn’t had its supplies from BovPlas? Not a single one.”
Hutchings was taken aback, but only momentarily. “Well, that’s not what you’d call surprising, is it, Captain Redlaw? Name me an SRA that
isn’t
supplied by BovPlas.”
“I can name you several. The one in the Gorbals, Glasgow, for instance. The one in Cardiff’s Billy Banks. BovPlas’s network of distribution covers most of England, does it not?”
“All apart from the West Country and the remoter parts of Northumbria and the Lake District. Small independent firms have the contracts there, catering to tiny communities of Sunless, some of them no more than five or six strong. It isn’t economical for us to supply on that sort of scale.”
“And there are no records of riots in those regions or, indeed, anywhere outside England. In other words, anywhere not served by BovPlas. You have to admit, that’s something of a coincidence, isn’t it? At the very least.”
“On the contrary. We furnish every SRA in this land, one or two excepted, with product. What about the ones covered by our distribution network where there’ve been no riots? What about those, eh? You’re misusing the data, if I may say so, Captain Redlaw. If there’s some sort of link between our CG and these disturbances, as you seem to be implying, surely it would be universal? The fact is, BovPlas works hard to help keep Sunless pacified. The CG is there to disincentivise them from aggressive and potentially lethal behaviour. It’s not logical for us to give them something that would aggravate them. I’d say, in fact, that that would be the very definition of counterproductive. Bad for business.”
Hutchings was pulling on his moustache quite agitatedly now, like a milkmaid pumping an udder.
“Two of my drivers have died,” he went on. “I sent them out there. I signed their order manifests, and therefore their death warrants. I have that on my conscience. And you have the nerve to come here and suggest that I was in some way responsible?”
“Not you. BovPlas. The blood.”
“Ridiculous! What’s worse, this whole affair has got my workforce all riled up and militant. I’ve had drivers phoning in sick. I’ve had ’em demanding pay rises—danger money—and threatening to go on strike if they don’t get them. Insurance premiums are through the roof. I’m trying my damnedest to keep things on an even keel, but it’s not easy. And now I’ve got the Night Brigade accusing me of—”
Just then one of the forklifts collided head-on with a loading dock at speed. Its burden of blood pouches was knocked off onto the floor, slithering in all directions. Many of them popped on impact, and a smooth slick of blood started spreading around the forklift’s tyres.
“For the love of—!” Hutchings exclaimed. “Look at that. Just look. This is what I’m having to contend with, Captain Redlaw. Everyone’s got the jitters. Now we’re going to have to shut operations down for who knows how long while the biohazard team get in there and mop up. Oh joy. I need to oversee this, so you’ll just have to make your own way out. Sorry if I haven’t been helpful. No, I take that back. I
have
been helpful. Your accusations against BovPlas are completely unfounded. Bordering on slanderous.”