Chapter 2
Jim drove the hired Vauxhall through the leafy suburbs of Oxford. It had been a number of years since he had spent any meaningful length of time in the city, and he knew that even now it would be no more than a fleeting visit in a life full of fleeting visits, never stopping, always moving on. He sometimes wondered if he should give retirement another try, but, he knew himself well enough to realise that he would be bored within a week.
'You're being very quiet,' Shannon's voice interrupted his thoughts, 'is everything ok?'
'I'm fine.' She didn't look convinced. He pulled up outside an average looking 1930's semi, with a neat garden and a three year old Volkswagen Golf in the drive. 'Anyway, we're here.'
'So who does Lydia Pearson think that we are? All she knows is that her husband was killed in a helicopter crash whilst working for an oil company.' Jim sighed.
'When we join the IMF, we know that or loved ones will never be privy to the work that we do, that we have to live a double life. It's unfair to them, but to know would also put them in terrible danger. So, we make a choice, to live a lie, or to live alone.'
'And all of us have chosen to live alone.' She said softly.
'Tom Copperfield didn't. He had a wife and child. Now, she's a widow, and his son is without a father. It's too high a price to pay.' Shannon touched his hand briefly, and he smiled. 'We can't bring Robert Pearson back to his wife, but let's hope we can find her son.'
They rang the door bell, and the door was opened almost immediately by the woman Jim recognised from the disc. If anything, she seemed smaller and more fragile now, her jeans and green jumper hanging off her small frame, her hair dull and unwashed. When she saw them, her face fell.
'I'm sorry, I thought you might be someone else.'
'Mrs Pearson? My name is Professor Leonard Gibbs, from University College. This is my assistant Valerie. May we come in?' She nodded, and led them through to a sitting room at the rear of the house, overlooking a tidy, well maintained garden. As she sunk unto her chair, her fingers began to pick absently at the front of her sweater. When she realised what she was doing she stopped and gave a small, wry smile.
'I never understood why people smoked, but now I think I do. How can I help you professor? Please tell me you have some news about Marcus?'
'I'm afraid not Mrs Pearson.'
'Lydia, please. '
'Lydia then. We're simply here to see if we can help, a pastoral duty if you will. Tell me about Marcus. I understand he was in his third year?' She nodded.
'Yes, he was loving it, looking forward to completing his degree and then moving on to getting teaching qualifications.'
'How did he find living away from home?' Shannon asked.
'He was homesick at first, but he after a while he loved London, took to it like a duck to water. I wanted him to go away to college, to spread his wings a little, and he did.'
'What about girlfriends or boyfriends?'
'No-one serious. He brought a girl home last Christmas, but I think it fizzled out.' Jim caught Shannon's eye.
'Lydia, would you mind if I looked in Marcus's room? She asked, 'I promise I won't take anything.'
'Anything that will help find him.'
Marcus's room looked out over the road, and, as soon as Shannon walked in, she realised that they would find nothing there to help them. There were a few childhood books in the bookcase, the Hardy Boys, Willard Price's Adventure series, and even a few Biggles books that may very well have been his father's. A couple of dog eared Star Wars posters hung on the wall, and a moth eaten teddy bear, one ear missing sat on the bed, but there was no essence of the young man that had lived there. If Marcus had left his mark, it was at his digs in London, not in his childhood home. She sat on the bed, looking round, just to give Jim time to talk to Marcus's mum alone
After Shannon had gone upstairs, Lydia Pearson turned to Jim, her eyes shrewd. 'Professor Gibbs, if that's who you really are, please don't think I'm stupid. I know that Robert didn't work for an oil company, I think I always knew. The generous pension I get each month isn't just because he made some good investments.'
'Then you know that I can't comment on that.' She nodded.
'I know. I've spent my life not asking too many questions. I'm very thankful for your continued interest in us, but I need you to understand one thing – I'm relying on you to find my son. My husband died serving the greater good, and I'm proud of him every day, as he would have been proud of Marcus. But I can't lose him too. Please bring him home.'
'Well the University was a bust.' Grumbled Max, as he and Nicholas hailed a cab to take them to Marcus's student digs. Traffic was appalling as befitted one of the busiest cities in the world, and Nicholas grinned to himself as he saw his friend begin to tap his foot impatiently. Patience was not Max's strong point.
'I disagree. We've found out that Marcus was a good student, popular with his peers, got his assignments in on time, played in a band and spent too much of his grant money on beer and cigarettes. In short, he's unlikely to have run away.'
'Let's face it though mate, we really knew that anyway. The Secretary wouldn't have dragged us half way across the world if he thought for one minute Marcus had gone off of his own accord.' They sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts. After a while, Max said: 'Do you ever think about it? The whole family thing?'
'I'd be lying if I said it had never crossed my mind.' Nicholas admitted. 'But I couldn't lie to someone I loved like that...What about you?' For a moment he thought Max was going to take the question seriously, but in the end he just gave his normal Cheshire Cat grin.
'No way, I like playing the field too much!'
'Yeah, right.'
The cab drew up outside a Victorian terrace house, its peeling paintwork identical to all the others in the row. A couple of bikes were chained up in the tiny forecourt, and a jolly roger hung in the downstairs bay window. The front door was unlocked, and as they walked in they were hit with a smell that seemed to be a mixture of fried food, sweat and pot smoke. ' Definitely student digs.' Nicholas rolled his eyes.
Marcus's room was on the first floor, and it took Max less than a minute to pick the lock. To say that it was a typical student flat was an understatement - there were unwashed dishes in the sink, some of which seemed to be producing previously unknown lifeforms, clothes strewn all over the floor, the bed unmade and books as far as the eye could see. Nicholas reached for the book on the nightstand, a dog eared copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula that Marcus had started to annotate.
'Good taste in reading matter.' He scanned the bookshelves, seeing more Stoker, Polidori's Vampyr, a couple of Anne Rice novels, and various books in screenwriting. Maybe Marcus had other dreams than just being a teacher. The walls were plastered in posters, from Max Shrek's Nosferatu, through The Lost Boys to Tim Burton's Batman. His taste in bands was represented too, with the Damned vying for space with Bauhaus and The Cult. In the corner, an old electric guitar had pride of place.
'He's in to some pretty weird shit.' Max snorted, picking up a Siouxsie and the Banshees cassette from the floor before he stood on it.
'He's a Goth Max, not a weirdo.'
'Same difference buddy. All this vampire crap really isn't my sort of thing.'
'I never would have guessed.' Nicholas smiled to himself, putting the book back where he found it. A red ring binder contained reams of closely handwritten notes lay on the floor next to the bed. 'Looks like his thesis is on the 'tradition of the vampire in literature.' Seems to be going well.' Max was searching under the bed, and suddenly laughed, pulling out a stash of porn mags and a box of condoms.
'Bet his mother never found these!' Carrying on looking through Marcus's papers, Nicholas expected Max to make another sarcastic comment, but when he turned, his friend looked serious. 'I guess he never expected a couple of strangers to be going through his stuff.'
'You can apologise to him when we get him back.' Opening a black covered exercise book, he continued. 'I think I've found something.' Marcus had been using the notebook as a diary, not for his thoughts and feelings, but to note down lectures, nights out, gigs with the band. Flicking back a few months, Nicholas noticed that the initials BC began to appear, infrequently to start with, but after a while with increasing regularity. 'What do you reckon, new girlfriend?'
'I don't think so.' Max held up a flyer, showing a black rose, dripping with scarlet blood. 'All it says is the Bathory Club, and gives a phone number.'
'Then let's ask Grant what he can find out about this Bathory Club.'
'So, Grant,' asked Jim sometime later when they all convened back at the apartment, 'what did you find out about Marcus? Anything untoward?'
'Nope, if anything, it seems pretty straightforward. He's got two bank accounts, one current that his student grant is paid into, along with an allowance from his mother, and a savings account which shows a balance of £850. His most regular outgoings are his rent, the convenience store on the corner and Waterstones booksellers. Neither of the accounts has been touched since he went missing.'
'What about medical records, or problems with the police?'
'None and none. Last time he visited the Doctor it was for antibiotics for a throat infection, and as far as I can find out he's never visited a police station, even on a school trip. He's a good kid.'
'Nicholas, Max? Please tell me that you've something of interest to report.'
'Actually, we have.' Nicholas outlined their discoveries (or lack of them) at the university, and the flat before Max handed over the flyer for the Bathory Club.
'Come on then Sherlock, what can you tell me about this?' Grant grinned, his finger already tapping away at the computer keys.
'Give me a couple of minutes and you'll have chapter and verse.' Max snorted, but Grant didn't rise to the bait. 'Here we go...Right, it looks as though the club is named after Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess born in 1560. Allegedly one of the most prolific female serial killers in history, although she was never actually convicted of a crime, she was implicated in the death of at least 80 women. In 1610 she was bricked up in a set of rooms in Csejte Catle, which is now in Czechoslovakia where she remained for four years until her death. Elizabeth Bathory was nicknamed the Blood Queen, and many believed her to be a vampire.'
'It would certainly fit with Marcus's love of all things Gothic.'
'What about the actual club though?' asked Shannon, 'Do you have any information about that?'
'I have information about almost anything.' He prodded a couple of keys impatiently, 'It just has to think about things sometimes. Ok, The Bathory Club is quite unusual, on the one hand it's a gothic themed nightclub, and on the other a private members club, where, although men can be invited as guests, the only people allowed to be official members are women.'
'I'm liking it already,' Shannon grinned, sipping her coffee, and reading over Grant's shoulder. 'It's owned by a woman called Katherine Russell, who made a great deal of money in the city.' The screen showed a slightly built woman, probably in her sixties, with iron grey hair in a pixie cut. She was wearing a black suit that gave her the air of dressing up in her mother's clothes. ' It also has a gimmick, the Bathory Club will open in a part of the city that is due for redevelopment, where it will develop cult status for a while, only to close down and re-open elsewhere. So far, clubs have taken place in Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol and Plymouth. The London club is based in an old Victorian public house, the Railway Arms in Limehouse'
'Wait a minute,' Grant rifled through the paperwork he had previously printed off. 'That sounds familiar...Yeah, there we go, the last withdrawal from Marcus's bank account was at 11pm on the Friday night before he disappeared from an ATM in Limehouse.'
