The next morning, she reported to the Diogenes Club. Richard Jeperson was still in bed, though he was a warm man and everyone else in the building was a vampire. Their doorstep order was fifteen pints of blood and two of milk. Vanessa, one of Jeperson's Lovely Ladies, came to reception to see her. The tall girl's enviable hair was as red as Kate's but long, straight and untangled. Vanessa explained that the Chairman of the Ruling Cabal was sleeping off a psychedelic dream-quest. That sounded like taking a nap after a nice long rest but Kate admitted she wasn't attuned to the switched-on generation.

What would Mycroft Holmes or Charles Beauregard have made of Diogenes in the Age of Aquarius? Danny Dravot was a rare survivor of their era still in service. The thoroughly unlovely sergeant was off in Welsh wilds, supervising brutal training courses, which left Pall Mall to the Lovelies. As a reporter, Kate just about kept straight the international roster of cat-suited, karate-chopping vampire women: Whitney (American), Maureen (Irish), Louise-esperance (Barbadian), Lady Celia (English), Quelou (French), Zarana (Egyptian), Nezumi (Japanese) and Lorelei (German). Nezumi was her upstairs neighbour, the quiet Miss Mouse. Kate assumed that, when not undercover as fashion models or go-go dancers (this lot couldn't go undercover as school dinner ladies to save their lives), the Lovelies were abseiling out of helicopters to assault the mountaintop lairs of megalomaniac gazillionaires. This Monday, they were draped elegantly over the stuffed leather couches and armchairs where once were parked the substantial bottoms of unsociable Victorian clubmen. The fanged pussycats wore what looked like swimming costumes and didn't even pretend to read Go Girl or paint their nails; the Lovelies just awaited their master's bidding. Kate's Associate Member status meant she didn't qualify for Jeperson's entourage-cum-harem-cum-strikeforce. She didn't lose any sleep over that.

Vanessa passed her to Corri, another Lovely. The Club's archivist  -  a Playboy cartoon librarian in slit skirt and too-tight blouse  -  had a beehive hairdo fixed by crossed pencils, was drenched in ylang-ylang and fiddled with diamante eyeglasses worn on a long chain like an ornamental fan. Corri unsealed the file on Caleb Croft aka Charles Croydon aka Adrian Lockwood aka the Worst Vampire Who Ever Lived. A century or two into his potentially long life, Croft had a spotty record of cruelties B.D. and a considerably nastier sheet A.D. Kate knew all too well how he'd served the Crown while Dracula was wearing it. Kept on by Lord Ruthven after the Terror, he'd burrowed deep into the British Secret State, moving from one acronym to the next: MI5, MI6, CI5, GCHQ, WOOC(P). It was all the Circus: civil servants playing Cowboys and Indians at taxpayers' expense. With reorganisation of the intelligence services following the Second World War, Croft had even been up for membership of the Diogenes Club. A single black ball  -  Charles Beauregard, Kate would have bet anything  -  denied him. In the 1950s, he was designated 'C' at Universal Exports, then 'Mr Hunter' at the Section. The game stayed the same: handing down kill orders to laddish thugs who code-named themselves Sandbaggers or Scalphunters. Forced out of the Circus in the purge of the old guard prompted by Kim Philby's defection in 1963, Croft took up teaching. He grew his hair over his collar and wore foulards. At St Bartolph's, he was a popular lecturer.

Corri found a 1923 report by Edwin Winthrop, an old attachment of Kate's, on the subject of a conference held at Mildew Manor (what a name!) where Croft tried to play kingmaker and foist a new arch-vampire on the world. Winthrop wrote that Croft was at least self-aware enough to realise his countenance was not suited to public rule. He was by nature a behind-the-throne, corridors-of-power eminence grise, an enforcer of ruthless dictats. 'C' for Control. Not a King of the Cats, but a master of cat's paws. Was he also a rash murderer? Had he killed two girls over the weekend? In his new-born days, he had been that sort of monster, but he must have grown more restrained to last this long. Still, over the years, one weakened. If his inner beast was off the leash, he needed to be taken out and shot. The stake wasn't enough. He was a silver-bullet-to-the-brain case. That had been his favoured means of executing vampire dissidents. Sometimes, Kate forgot she was opposed to capital punishment.

Before leaving, Kate gave Vanessa a run-down of everything she knew about the victims and an update on B Division's progress. The Club kept abreast of the way the murders were reported. Ripples were tracked across the city. While Enoch Powell gave polite interviews on the wireless and television, Lorrimer Van Helsing held angry meetings in pub cellars. There was talk of demos and direct action. The Midnight Mess, a vampire restaurant in Richmond-Upon-Thames, suffered an after hours/mid-morning arson attack. Plainview Oil denied they employed Carol Thatcher or, indeed, anyone who serviced clients the way Carol did. Laura Bellows' parents sold her life story to the Mirror. Kate pitied the poor hack who'd have to write that, and reckoned the series would break down ten per cent life to ninety per cent death. Screaming murder headlines forced Harold Wilson, after weeks of holding out, to make a concession to a faction in his own party who were as prejudiced as Powell but less patrician about it. The Prime Minister announced a Royal Commission of Enquiry into 'the vampire problem' and plucked James Manfred, O.B.E.  -  a time-server at the Department of Administrative Affairs  -  to serve as Chairman. Depending on the fall-out, Manfred could expect a knighthood or early retirement after he turned in his findings.

Not unkindly, Vanessa asked Kate if she'd like anything from the Box of Tricks. A vinyl shoulder-bag with hidden compartments full of knock-out gas, grappling wire and skeleton keys pricked her fancy, but it was a shocking pink which didn't match her outfit and wasn't kind to her complexion.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***