Eat the poor galbraith a.., p.6
Eat the Poor (Galbraith & Pole Book 2), page 6
That was, Galbraith accepted, worrying. He tended to think of the Others as effectively invulnerable but rip out their hearts and they would be as dead as anything else.
“So what do you hope for?”
“Oh, you know,” said Pole, airily, “clues.”
“Would you care to be a little more specific?”
“Well …” Pole leaned forward, all trace of levity gone. “I’m thinking that this creature is based in the general vicinity of Richmond Park. Deer have been taken there every now and then for years. Then last month, for the first time, as far as we know, it moves out of the park – but only just out, to Roehampton. The next event is much further east at World’s End. I think it’s unlikely that he travelled from Richmond to Chelsea in lupine form – and if he was human, he was presumably wearing clothes. So when he transformed from human to wolf, he must either have taken his clothes off and put them away safely or he tore them off as he transformed and left the rags. In neither case is it likely that a wolf headed back across London with its clothes under its arm. So I want to get to the scene in time to find those clothes. If we can, it gives us real evidence that we are looking at a lycanthrope. Plus the clothes will offer the sort of physical evidence that might help identify our man.”
“Or woman.”
“Possibly. I appreciate that we must avoid sexist assumptions.”
Galbraith decided to let that remark go.
“I can ring round stations in West London and ask them to keep a look out and let me know if anything comes up. There’ll be no extra patrols though.” He gave a wry grin. “Bailey says he’s spent the last week explaining our manning and overtime levels to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Frontline Policing. I think it's his way of making sure I never ask for any extra patrols ever again.”
“Well the Others will keep their eyes peeled too and one useful thing about Section S being tucked away in Counter Terrorism is that we have ready access to the CCTV network.”
“Happy days, then.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to the next full moon.”
* * *
In the end they didn't have a wait for the full moon. The third victim was found three days earlier than that. An anonymous phone call had reported a body in the bin area on the Abbots Estate in Pimlico.
It was 1.00 am so Galbraith had, reasonably enough, been at home. His request to be informed as soon as anything happened had been honoured. The station had even sent a car to collect him. They had blue-lighted to the scene but he was still unsurprised to find Pole there ahead of him. The vampire, presumably, had already been awake.
“Did any of your –” Galbraith paused, conscious that he might be overheard. “—associates spot anything.”
Pole shook his head. “Alas no, Chief Inspector. And I understand that your more conventional colleagues spotted nothing either.”
Galbraith shook his head. “No. It’s a bloody good thing that some local citizen decided to do his civic duty and call it in. Otherwise the body could have been there until the bin men turned up. It's been a fair while since there were foot patrols on the Abbots Estate.” He grimaced. “We’d best take a look.”
They walked over to the bin area, tucked away at the foot of a block of flats, the scene illuminated by the strobing blue lights of a couple of police cars.
“If we’re trying to find bits of clothing, we’ll need a decent perimeter and some bodies out doing the searching. I’ll make a start on organising that.” Another car arrived and the police surgeon clambered out. Since Covid, the man had made a serious effort to lose more weight, but he still wheezed as he plodded his way to the body. Galbraith nodded towards him and said to Pole, “While I do that, see what you can get out of him.”
Pole gave the slightest inclination of his head and turned away. Galbraith realised it was the first time he had ever ordered the man from Section S to do anything. After so long feeling like an assistant to his older colleague (several centuries older, Galbraith reminded himself) it was a refreshing change.
Organising the uniforms for the crime scene took a while. Galbraith was out of his area and had to make his peace with the local inspector, who was happy enough to send the men he asked for but unhappy to see their overtime charged to his budget.
“Counter Terrorism is paying.” Galbraith hoped that Pole could tap into Section S’s resources to come good on that promise or he was in trouble. An estate that hadn’t seen a foot patrol for months was about to be overrun with police officers. Galbraith thought of the budget reports on Bailey’s desk and winced. Tonight’s effort was going to be paid for by a whole heap of minor crimes passing uninvestigated.
Pole left the police surgeon prodding cheerfully at the corpse and returned to Galbraith.
“I hope I didn’t hear you spending my budget, Chief Inspector.”
“Your hearing is very acute.”
For a moment, Galbraith thought Pole was going to pursue the issue but then he gave a half-shrug and gestured in the direction of the corpse. “Rigor has barely set in, which puts the time of death around 11.00. He started with a lot of technical stuff about the cause of death but I could see for myself that the throat has been ripped open. It’s almost beginning to seem like a pattern.”
“Is this one homeless?”
“Identifying the corpse and digging up the details is more your area than mine, Chief Inspector. But taking a quick look, I’d hazard not. He seems clean, well shaven, and generally a step up from the last two bodies – but quite a small step. The residents on this estate are often living in somewhat straitened circumstances.”
“You mean they’re poor.” He looked up at the tower blocks. “It’s similar to Roehampton and World’s End. Estate with tower blocks. Individual apparently indigent or poor.”
Pole raised a hand to interrupt Galbraith’s flow. “I hope I am not giving the impression that because they are poor, they do not matter. All were some mother’s son. All must have been loved once, even if they are loved no more.”
“Er, yes.” Galbraith felt uncomfortable being lectured by a vampire on the respect he should accord to the victims. He did admit to himself that Pole was right though.
“We’ll find out more about him in time. For now all we can say is that the body had its throat torn out and was dumped with the rubbish. I’m going to hazard a guess that the killer doesn’t care that someone loved him once.”
“Indeed.” Pole’s voice was dry. “There's the beginning of a geographical pattern too – starting at Richmond Park and moving progressively eastward."
There was silence while the two policemen tried to decide whether this was significant or not. Finally Galbraith spoke. “Let's try and see if we can find the clothing you predicted. That should at least give us an idea of whether or not we're on the right track.”
A police van had turned up with half a dozen constables in it and Galbraith was soon directing them to seal off the whole area with yellow crime scene tape.
“What exactly are we after, sir?” The sergeant was young (though all sergeants seemed young to Galbraith these days) but he gave the impression of somebody who was very much on the ball.
"Clothing, sergeant: discarded clothing. It may be a neatly folded outfit or just torn scraps of cloth, but whatever it is we need it recovering and bagging. I want to know about anything else unusual but most of all I want to know whether we can find any clothing anywhere near the crime."
Galbraith realised that the uniformed officer wouldn't have seen the body yet.
"Don’t worry about the victim’s clothes. They are on what's left of the victim. We're looking for something that doesn't belong here."
The sergeant looked confused – as well he might, though Galbraith – but nodded and headed off to the newly arrived constables who were soon systematically working their way through the area.
Galbraith looked at his watch. 2.30 am. He yawned. Pole, of course, was wide awake.
“I thought I might call it a night. If they find anything, we can follow it up tomorrow.”
“As you wish, Chief Inspector. I think I will wait a little, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself.” Galbraith knew he sounded ungracious. Let’s face it, he thought, he was being ungracious. It wasn’t Pole’s fault that he lived on a different sleep cycle to Galbraith.
He yawned again. And, gracious or not, he needed to get home.
He remembered that he had been driven over in a police car. His own car was outside his flat.
He looked about to see if there was anyone who might drive him back, but everybody was busy about the tasks that he had set them. He could hardly justify taking a man away to be his personal taxi service. Damn! That meant an Uber, and at this time of night he could expect a long wait.
He had just got his phone out to call a cab when a commotion near where the body had been dumped caught his attention. He put the phone back in his pocket and accepted that it was going to be a while before he got back to his bed.
One of the searchers was triumphantly holding up a raggedy piece of fabric. Other police officers were crowding round. Even after all his years with the force, Galbraith was always astonished by policemen’s apparently primal need to group together whenever new evidence was turned up.
Pole was heading towards the centre of the crowd, which parted as if he were re-enacting Moses’ trick with the Red Sea. Indeed, Galbraith thought, there was something almost Old Testament Patriarchal about Pole. His antique suit, his posture (which somehow made him seem taller than the Met Police’s finest), the piercing eyes – all made Galbraith feel that, for once, Pole looked like what he was: an ancient creature from beyond our imagination and equipped with powers and knowledge the humans around him could never possess.
Pole reached out his hand imperiously and the scrap of fabric was handed over to him. He held it up to catch what light there was from nearby streetlamps and sniffed at it before starting back towards Galbraith while the sergeant ordered his men back to work.
Galbraith held up an evidence bag but Pole didn’t immediately release the cloth.
“It’s from a white shirt. Good quality. Whoever wore it was, I imagine, well-off. And…” He put the fabric to his nose and sniffed again. “Not quite human.”
“You can tell?”
“Oh yes.” Pole smiled, allowing a glimpse of very white teeth. “We are, in the end, predators. I know what a human should smell like and this is not a human.”
“Any chance it’s one of yours?” Galbraith was sure he knew what the answer would be, but he felt he still had to ask.
Pole’s voice was cold. “No chance at all, Chief Inspector.”
They had moved away from the others as they spoke, instinctively – it seemed to Galbraith – seeking the shadows.
“So you’re confident it’s a –”
“Werewolf. Yes, I am.”
“And, if you’re right about the shirt, it’s a man. Probably rather a successful man.”
“Indeed. Forensics might be able to tell you the size of the shirt, which will give us a useful indication of the size of the man. And there's always the possibility we will find more bits of clothing.”
A shout behind them proved Pole right just as he was speaking. This time the scraps (there were several) were from trousers.
“Good quality again,” said Pole, with the confidence of a man who had been (albeit rather a long time ago, judging from the state of his suit) on first name terms with his tailor. “Slim, I’d say, even without a forensic laboratory’s assistance.”
“What do you think’s happened to the rest of his clothes?”
Pole pursed his lips. "Difficult to say. It may well be that some of his clothing was still clinging to his body when he made his way home – or wherever he went from here. Some of it will have been taken by animals.”
“Animals?”
“Certainly, Chief Inspector. This may look like a concrete jungle but there are plenty of creatures that will have been attracted by the smell of blood. Foxes, obviously, but also smaller creatures like rats. And we mustn’t forget domestic pets: dogs and cats may well be interested in blood-soaked clothing – although the smell of werewolf might put some of them off."
"There's no blood on the stuff we found."
"Precisely, Chief Inspector. But there will have been blood – a great deal of it, judging from the wound. Hence bloodied clothing. Yet we have not seen any bloodied clothing, hence my suggestion that animals may have taken it away.” He stopped, apparently struck by a new thought. “Could you ask your men to keep an eye out for shoes as well?”
The regular order of things, Galbraith thought, had been restored. He was, once again, Pole’s junior with the man from Section S effortlessly back in charge.
Galbraith could not say that he minded. In this strange world of supernatural beings, Pole’s knowledge was invaluable.
The shoes never did turn up and, sometime around four in the morning, Galbraith finally made his way to bed.
“I'll see you this evening,” Pole had said, bidding him farewell. “And we can toast our success to date.”
* * *
Galbraith didn’t meet Pole that evening. The forensic report had not yet turned up and, after a night without sleep, he decided that catching up on rest was more important. They would meet the next night and discuss progress then.
By the next night, though, there had been another death.
CHAPTER 6: In which our heroes investigate a fourth killing
Pole wasted no time on the niceties of polite conversation. “This one’s different.” His tone was grim.
“Different how?”
They were in a police car, siren wailing as it fought its way through the early evening traffic towards Vauxhall. One of Pole’s watchers had called in the death at 6.45. Galbraith had still been in his office when Pole had rung him to say he needed to get to Vauxhall as quickly as he could. “Pick me up on your way,” he had demanded peremptorily and hung up.
Hence the police car.
“It’s too early in the evening.”
“We’ve only had three and the only one where we have an approximate time of death was a couple of nights ago. What makes you say this one is too early?”
“It’s barely dark. We know from accounts of the howling at World’s End that the killing there was well after dark. Pimlico was about 11.00 pm. Roehampton may have been earlier, but we were working on the idea that he was hunting near his home territory, as it were, of Richmond Park. Which brings me to the second thing that is worrying me.”
Galbraith said nothing. Pole would expound his theory whether he spoke or not.
“It’s too far away. For years, as far as we know, this creature confined itself to Richmond Park. A couple of months ago it kills for the first time outside the park. We can put it down as a fluke, an accident, a momentary aberration. But then there is the killing at World’s End. That’s significantly farther from the park and constitutes a worrying trend – and a trend confirmed by the killing in Pimlico. Now, though, we have a death in Vauxhall. Pimlico and Vauxhall are separated by the river but are geographically adjacent. We cannot speak of a cluster of just two deaths, but this rather suggests to me that the creature has shifted, or is shifting, the base of its operations from Richmond to somewhere in the centre of town: somewhere with a notable absence of deer and rather a lot of humans.”
They were heading towards Vauxhall Bridge, traffic pulling over at the sound of their siren.
Galbraith said, “It’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? Two cases hardly prove anything and I’m not sure you have a valid point with the timing.”
“Trust me on this. After 500 years one develops an instinct.”
Galbraith nodded. He had a policeman’s respect for “copper’s nose”.
The car was slowing now, pulling up behind two other police cars and an ambulance.
“Tower block again,” said Galbraith. “He’s consistent in that at least.”
Pole nodded towards the ambulance. “I don’t know why that’s here. My source says he was very definitely dead.”
“Routine. Somebody must have seen the body and dialled 999. An ambulance will have come out automatically.” A couple of policemen were standing next to a man who was sitting on a low wall obviously very shaken. “That will be the guy who called it in. I don’t suppose your source has stuck around to be interviewed?”
Pole shook his head. “He told me all that there was to know over the phone. 6.30; body dumped by bins; no sign of the killer. There was rather an odd smell, though. He’s going to see if he can track it down. We’re not very hopeful. We are particularly aware of odours but we’re not bloodhounds.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
Pole gave Galbraith a glance that suggested he was having doubts about his colleague’s sanity.
“Police dogs,” Galbraith explained. “If the murder was recent, we can get dogs on the scent. We just need a rag of clothing.”
He strode off to get a search started.
A police van arrived and more officers joined those already peering behind bins and fanning out around the tower block. A sign above the doors proclaimed ‘Bannerman House’. As Galbraith returned, leaving a sergeant to pass on his orders, Pole gestured at the name of the flats. “It could be a military reference, I suppose. It’s unlikely to be named for the vassal of one of the later shoguns. The best bet is that it’s for Charles Bannerman who scored a century in the very first Test Match. We’re close to the Oval, so that would make sense.”
“Cricket fan, are you?” asked Galbraith.
“Hardly. I’m not really in a position to spend the long summer evenings sipping Pimms in a deckchair and listening to the thwack of leather on willow. No, my interest in Bannerman centred on his later life. He drank, you know, and gambled. It made him vulnerable to blackmail. By the time he played on the first official tour of England in 1878, he was accepting money from a foreign power. I pretend to be discreet, but I am sure you will understand that it could only have been Prussia. Anyway, his celebrity gave him access to a particular Royal Personage and he was able to obtain letters which, had they made their way to Prussia, could have been a source of embarrassment to the British government. I was asked to ensure that the papers were returned to the Royal Personage and I did so. Mr Bannerman was never allowed to represent his country again. It was quite sad, really.”
