Pervasive Vampire Myth #4: They cannot cross running water. This is not true. They can cross running water, and can actually do it so fast they don’t sink. The origin of this myth is complicated, but it comes down to their territorial nature. Their very territorial nature. There is no collective noun for a group of vampires, but ‘Bloodbath’ is the top-runner for the post. They are fiercely individualistic and have very strictly defined territories. Historically, these territories have been marked by rivers, so if you were being pursued by a vampire, crossing a river might take you into another’s territory, if you were lucky.
The relationships between different vampires are governed by a very old and very strict set of protocols. No vampire who does not want to start a war will enter another’s territory without an invitation from their counterpart. A misunderstanding based on this protocol has spawned Pervasive Vampire Myth #2, which is also very very not true.
Park Life
Sunday, March 13th, 8:42 AM
A jogger discovered the corpse in the Phoenix Park just after dawn. The body had been thoroughly and violently dismembered, then dragged back away from the road to its concealment in a copse of trees. But the killer had been sloppy, and had left one severed foot lying in the grass, in full view of anyone passing on the nearby path.
I suspect the Office of Special Investigations was called in mostly due to proximity. From the site of the attack, I could see the roof of our department building peeking through the trees. McGinnis from the Scene Team was with me and knelt to examine the severed foot. He gently tapped it, rolling it over to examine the underside, before he drew an evidence bag from the satchel he wore over his bunny suit and looked up to me for permission to proceed.
“Oh, go ahead,” I said and followed the blood trail behind the trees as he delicately lifted it into the bag and sealed it.
Surrounded by a grove of elm trees, I found a small clearing. The grass had been flattened down in many places and large parts of it were splashed with blood. There was a surprising amount for such a small victim. Anatomy was never my area of expertise but, from what I could tell, most of the rest of the body was there. An unidentifiable organ hung from a tree-branch near my head and I had to stop before I accidentally stepped on a severed leg. My weight would have crushed it like a dry twig.
“Jesus,” said McGinnis behind me.
“It’s a dead deer,” I reminded him. “If you want to work next to the Phoenix Park, you’re going to see a lot of them.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “But it’s so… graphic.”
“You’d see worse in a butcher’s shop.”
“What butchers’ shops do you go to?”
“Only the finest artisanal organically-sourcing chainsaw-wielding psychopaths.” I stepped over the mess at my feet and walked to the centre of the clearing. I began counting visible body parts. “Sometimes, some idiot will run over a deer and then panic and hide the body. Though how you’d do this much damage to a deer with anything less than a bulldozer, I have no idea.”
McGinnis knelt and examined the leg I had almost stepped on. “This looks crushed. Chewed on,” he said.
“Wasn’t me. I had breakfast before coming out.”
He lifted it in one gloved hand and turned the end carefully in the morning light. “Yeah, something cracked into the marrow.”
“Pack of dogs, then. Probably still in the park. We’ll call the Animal Welfare Unit. Hopefully, they can find the owners and hit them with something serious and heavy.”
“This must have been a big dog,” said McGinnis, examining the sheared-off end of the bone. “This was one clean bite. See?” He pointed at something. “No secondary shear-lines.”
“Oh no. No no no no no.” I had a terrible sinking feeling. I spun on the spot, trying to identify all the deer parts I could see.
“Wild animal? In the park? Something escaped from the zoo?”
“I hope so. I really hope so. I would give my left eye to be attacked by a lion right now.” My suspicions were forming into certainties by the moment. “I don’t see any whole organs. It’s all limbs and gristle and scraps.”
McGinnis stood and peered about too. “Seems so. What does that mean?”
“Find a heart or a lung or a liver or something. Please.”
We spent the next five minutes gathering each sticky animal part we could find and arranging them on a plastic sheet that McGinnis had spread on the grass. When we were done, we had a Frankenstein’s Monster of an assemblage before us.
“Probably a male, by the size of it,” McGinnis said.
“Which would explain why we couldn’t find the head.”
McGinnis looked at me, puzzled.
“They would have taken that as a trophy,” I explained, making one of those ‘Antlers’ gestures with my hands.
McGinnis looked confused. “What kind of wild animal takes trophies?”
“The kind that turns back into people and goes home before dawn. Jaw pressure enough to shear bone like butter, internal organs all consumed, and bones cracked for marrow? And trophy-keeping seals the deal. We’ve got a bad case of werewolves.”
I turned to check if the roof of the department was still visible. It took some crouching and ducking and the moving of branches, but I could just see the slate roof and stone chimneys almost hidden among the trees that backed onto our offices.
“This was either a really unfortunate coincidence, or territorial marking. The kill site and the place they stopped to consume their prey were both within visible range of Sir Arthur’s official residence. If they knew, that’s a provocation; a challenge.”
“Shit.”
“Bag everything and file it as normal. With any luck, Sir Arthur’s asleep and we have nine or ten hours until he finds out about this.”
McGinnis knelt and began lifting each body part into a separate evidence bag.
“On second thoughts,” I said, “bag everything and file it slowly. If it’s noon before you get back to the department, that would be great.”
McGinnis smiled up at me and nodded. “You’re the boss.”
I’d already been looking at a week of solid overtime. The spectre of a werewolf pack acting the maggot was the cherry on top of the icing on the cake that was Saint Patrick’s week in Dublin city.
Arrivals
Sunday, March 13th, 1:21 PM
Dublin Airport on the weekend before Saint Patrick’s day was like someone had taken a large and busy anthill, turned it upside-down, dropped it on top of a larger and busier anthill, and then put a barely competent semi-state company in charge of the entire thing.
I threaded my way through the milling crowds, occasionally lifting up onto my toes to locate and follow a sign pointing one way or another. I’m fairly certain I walked in at least two circles before I found the security offices where a bored-looking bearded officer sat behind a glass partition. I pressed my Garda ID to it.
“Victor Grey. Garda National Immigration Bureau. You guys called me about a visitor.”
The security officer peered at the ID. I watched his lips as he read each word in turn. Eventually, he seemed satisfied and reached for a phone.
Several minutes later, I was being ushered through the tunnels below the terminal - which were only marginally less chaotic than the concourse upstairs - by a customs officer in a knitted jumper, a pencil skirt and a tired expression. “We saw he was flagged by your department, so we did a thorough search of his baggage and detained him for you. We didn’t find any contraband, and he is an EU citizen, so…” She trailed off, presumably hoping I would green-light his release there and then.
“I understand you’re swamped at the moment, and thanks for your cooperation in this,” I said, mimicking my best Micheál Doran smile. “I just need to speak to him regarding an outstanding case, then he’ll be free to proceed.”
The phoney smile seemed to work because she smiled back at me.
“Though I would appreciate the chance to inspect his luggage before I chat with him,” I added. “Could that be arranged?”
She stopped so suddenly I took two steps before I realised she had been left behind. Then she swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees and set off back down the corridor. “This way, then,” she said like an impatient schoolteacher. I hurried to follow.
I expected to find Michel Rossier waiting in a small square room under a single flickering fluorescent light. Instead, he sat on a large sofa in what I gathered was the waiting room for family or visiting officials. He had an untouched cup of coffee cooling on the table before him, and seemed thoroughly bored when I entered.
He wore a tweed coat over a stylish waistcoat, shirt and tie. His clothes were very well tailored and fit his slim form well. His hair was short and shaved in strategic places. He gave the impression of a Premier-league football player posing for the cover of a mens’ fashion magazine.
“Bonjour, Michel,” I tried. “Je m’appelle Victor Grey.” It was about there that my extensive French ran out. “Parlez-vous, uhm, English?”
“A little” he replied, cautiously.
“Ah, excellent. Do you mind if we speak English? Or I can have a translator here in a few hours?”
“I do not mind. But I am not sure what is the purpose this has. I am a citizen of France, though I live in Switzerland. I have the free transit.”
“Of course you do.” I took a chair and pulled it closer to the low table. “But I’ll come clean. I don’t actually work for immigration.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“In December, you applied for a transit visa from my department, so you could come here and ‘hunt’. The visa was denied. I know this because I denied it.”
He sat up slowly and looked about, as if to check we were alone. “You work with the Offices of Special… C'est quoi le mot... Enquêtes?”
“‘Investigations’? Yes, that’s us. Imagine our surprise when you arrived anyway.”
Several emotions flickered over his face, almost too fast for me to track. “Well, I am not here to hunt,” he said with a wide smile, “you blocked that. I am here for the holidays. To see your fête and to drink your beer.”
“And so if I check your luggage, I won’t find any hunting gear?”
“I was a policeman for six years, Monsieur… Grey? Est-ce? I know you first check the luggage and then you come speak to me. And I know you found no weapons for the hunting.”
“Touché. I did check, yes, and found no weapons. No silver bullets or wooden stakes or iron nails. But I did find a large flask of water in your checked bag. And something tells me it’s not Evian.”
He chuckled. “And what do you think it is?”
“Holy water. You’re a big game hunter? Came here to kill a vampire?”
“There is no ‘holy’ water.”
“You’re right about that. But there are powerful spells and enchantments that can be placed in ordinary water. Untraceable and undetectable, but painful or even lethal to certain people.”
“They are not people,” he said in a tone he had not used until now. “They are abominations.”
“They are citizens with rights, and until they break a law…”
“They break nature’s law, Monsieur Grey. They should be exterminated or imprisoned.”
I let out a low whistle. “Harsh.”
“They are creatures of evil. In Switzerland, we treat them as such.”
I had done some research on him before denying his transit visa. I knew he had left the French police force a few years earlier under a cloud before moving to Switzerland. A few missing pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
“Monsieur Rossier, I cannot deny you entry into Ireland. Nor can I confiscate the contents of your luggage which you declared and which passed inspection.”
He stood, “Then I can go?”
“You can. But before you go picking a fight with any vampires, please consider the possibility that some unscrupulous bastard might have emptied the entire flask and refilled it from the tap.”
Off the Books
Sunday, March 13th, 9:32 PM
I met Finlay that night for our weekly check-in at my flat. Or rather, the pub that my flat sat underneath. The pub had been built in the 1940s and an enterprising architect had decided to maximise space by building an extensive basement floor, accessed by a spiral staircase. But by the 1970s, Dublin had fire regulations that frowned upon things like spiral staircases to packed basement floors. The landlord at the time simply decided to seal up the staircase, add a new entrance to the basement and remodel it as a separate apartment. The pub above continued for another few decades before the building lost its long battle with damp and mould. Luckily, it was rising damp that began at street level, so the apartment below was mostly spared.
I had managed to unseal the spiral staircase a few years ago, and had full access to the empty building above. I’d never found a use for it before, but an off-the-books investigation demanded a clandestine meeting place, even if it was just for thematic reasons. And as I was no longer the only person in my flat on a regular basis, I needed somewhere else to store anything I didn’t want to answer questions about.
Finlay knocked and I let him in. There were no lights on this floor, but I had found a cache of pub candles and set them out. “Very cosy,” he said, looking about.
“Thanks. Nobody saw you come here?”
“Nobody I noticed.”
“Grand. Anyone around the office asking questions?”
“Well, Cormac knows I’m doing something tonight, not work-related, but he doesn’t know what.”
This surprised me. “When were you speaking to Cormac?”
“Last night, we saw a movie.”
“You’re friends outside of work? I didn’t know that.”
“It’s…” he waved a hand as he sought for the right word, “new,” he finished. "We haven't named it yet."
Realisation hit me. “Oh, you and C- Oh wow. Right. Well, congrats then, I guess.”
“Thanks, I guess,” he replied with a grin. Then he pointed at the files I had piled on the bar. “Any progress on that?”
“Not as much as I’d like.” I lifted the hatch and walked behind the bar. “Trolls he sentenced,” I said, placing my hand down on a large pile. “I’ve extended it to close Clan members of recent convictions. Proxy revenge.”
“So the fathers and sons of people he sent away?”
“And brothers and cousins and grandsons and mothers and sisters and more cousins, yeah. Basically anyone who might have a grudge.”
“That’s a lot of names. How you working it?”
“Slowly. I’m running through court transcripts and comments made to investigators before the trial. I’ve also carefully reached out to any contacts I know I can trust, asking them to keep an ear out. But I’m also checking social media presence and postings.”
Finlay raised an eyebrow sceptically. “You think they’re going to publicly tweet their plan to kill the Magistrate?”
“No cop ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average criminal, to paraphrase someone smarter than me.”
“Very true. Did you know the Old Man is on Instagram?”
The left-turn in the conversation took me by surprise, and I took a moment to recover. “He- what?”
“Yeah. The Chief took me down with him a month or so back. One of those tablets he uses for ‘research’,” and Finlay made air-quotes there, “was unlocked and open to Instagram. He locked it pretty quick, but I saw it. Pretty sure the Chief saw it too.” Finlay was grinning.
“He is actually doing research, you know,” I said, but even I could tell I sounded defensive. “A complete catalogue of the history of the magical world. I’m sure there’s resources to be found on Instagram. Universities use it.”
“If you say so,” said Finlay, while still grinning.
“Anyway,” I said to change the subject, “How’d you work out with the list I gave you?”
“All clean, as far as I could tell. If they haven’t all retired from a life of crime, they seem to be keeping their heads down. There was one in Sligo, ehhh…” He pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and flipped a few pages.
“Gormley?”
“Yeah. He seems to have dropped off the map completely since he got out.”
“Probably not one we have to worry about.” I had done some research into Gormley. He was a Blue Clan troll from Sligo who’d beaten a Brown to death in a drunken brawl about sixteen years previously. Blues and Browns shared the West of Ireland in an uneasy truce, so it wouldn’t be surprising if one Clan or the other had made him disappear, one way or the other, after his release.
Finlay took a deep breath as if steeling himself for something. “There’s some more we need to look into,” he said.
It took a second for his implication to register. “The Reds? My uncle?”
“And your dad.”
“My dad?”
“He’s erratic. Unstable. He’s called the office a number of times.”
“He’s a drunk. He hasn’t been more than five miles from his house in a decade.”
“Because the town he lives in straddles the Shannon. It’s the perfect place to live if you’re worried about his Lordship coming after you.”
It was sound, albeit uncomfortable, logic. “Maybe I should look into it?” I said after a moment.
“Lookit, I know this is your area of expertise, but you’re also a bit, like, close to it. Let me look into things, and if I find anything suspicious, I’ll bring it to you for your expert opinion.”
“Alright,” I said after some consideration, “Now time gentleman, please. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” I lifted the hatch on the bar and indicated the door.
“Oh, early start tomorrow, yeah. Hitting those door fuckers.” Finlay gathered his things and added “Should be fun.”
“If we can nail them down this time."
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