“Anton. But I thought you were Scottish.”

Jean shook his ginger curls proudly. “No…French. I’m from Nantes.”

“Are you studying here?”

“Just earning a bit of money.”

“Listen, why are you wearing that idiotic costume?” I asked. “There aren’t any customers anyway.”

Jean blushed-quickly, the way only redheads and albinos can.

“The boss put me on guard duty until the show opens up again. I’m just waiting…in case the police suddenly decide they want to check something. It’s a bit creepy here on your own. I feel calmer in the costume.”

“I almost crapped in my pants when I saw you,” I complained to him, knowing there’s nothing better for easing stress than that kind of low style. “But what were you afraid of?”

Jean gave me a surly glance and shrugged.

“It’s hard to say. That guy was killed here, so it’s like we’re to blame or something…but for what, for what? And he was Russian! You can never tell…Everyone knows what that can lead to…We started talking about it here, just joking at first. Then it got more serious. What if his father comes, or his brother, or a friend…and he kills all of us.”

“So that’s what you’re talking about,” I said brightly. “Well, let me assure you that blood vengeance isn’t really all that common in Russia. But the Scots have it too, by the way.”

“That’s just what I’m saying,” Jean agreed, missing the point. “It’s barbaric. Primitive! The twenty-first century, the civilized world-”

“And someone gets his throat cut,” I threw in. “What actually happened to Victor?”

The young guy glanced at me again. He took a drag on his cigarette and shook his head. “I think you’re lying. You’re not a friend of Victor’s. You’re from the Russian KGB. You’ve been sent to investigate the murder. Right?”

He really must have been overdoing it on those action movies. This was getting ridiculous.

“Jean, you know yourself,” I said in a low voice, “that I can’t answer that question.”

The Frenchman nodded very seriously. Then he carefully stubbed his cigarette out on the floor. “Let’s go, Mr. Russian. I’ll show you the place. Only don’t smoke anymore, there’s nothing but rags and cardboard here, perfect tinder for a blaze-whoosh!”

He pushed the door and, of course, it opened easily. Jean gave it a thoughtful look and shrugged. We walked through a few more rooms.

“There it is, the crappy Castle of the Vampires,” Jean said in a gloomy voice. He fumbled at the wall and flicked a switch. The light became a lot brighter.

Yes, darkness was appropriate here. Without it, the tourist attraction simply looked ludicrous. The River of Blood that people were supposed to sail across to the vampires was a long metal trough about three meters wide. The trough was full of water.

It wasn’t deep.

Maybe up to my knee.

The metal barge wasn’t actually floating on the water, of course. I rocked the side of the boat with my foot and realized that it was standing on rollers of some kind. And under the water I could see the cable that towed the boat from one “mooring” to the other. The total length of the trough was no more than fifteen meters. Halfway along its route the metal tub crept into a room that was separated off by heavy curtains (they were pulled back now). I saw an impressive-looking fan on the ceiling of the room. On one wall there was a crudely painted picture of a castle standing on a cliff.

I walked to the bow of the barge and glanced into the dark room. Yes, it was an idiotic sort of place to lose your life. Right…in five days any clues could have disappeared, but I could give it a try.

A glance through the Twilight was no help. I spotted weak traces of Others-Light Ones and Dark Ones-but that would have been the specialists from the Watches who had investigated the crime scene. There were no signs of a vampire trail. But I could sense emanations of death-and they were very clear, as if only an hour or two had elapsed, not five days. Oh, the boy had died a very bad death…

“Who does the sound effects?” I asked. “There must be some kind of gasping and groaning…terrifying howls? Your tourists don’t ride in total silence, do they?”

“It’s a recording,” Jean said sadly. “The speakers are over there, and over there…”

“And doesn’t anyone in here keep an eye on the tourists?” I asked. “What if someone feels unwell?”

“We watch them,” Jean admitted reluctantly. “You see that little hole in the wall across there? There’s always someone standing there and watching.”

“In the dark?”

“They use a night-vision device,” Jean said, embarrassed. “An ordinary video camera in night mode. You stand there and watch the screen…”

“Aha.” I nodded. “And what did you see when Victor was being killed?”

Either he was feeling calmer now, or he didn’t see any point in pretending, but he didn’t try to deny anything. He just asked, “What makes you so sure I was there?”

“Because you’re wearing a vampire costume. What if one of the customers is recording in night mode too? That’s what the makeup’s for, right? I think each one of you has his own role to play, and during the show you were wearing that costume and you were somewhere nearby.”

Jean nodded. “That’s right. I was there. Only I didn’t see anything, believe me. They all just sat there. Nobody attacked any of them, no one went anywhere near them.”

I didn’t bother to mention that you can’t catch a hungry vampire (and he would have to be very hungry to hunt as brazenly as this) on tape in night video mode. Night mode uses infrared, and a hungry vampire is no warmer than his environment. There might just be a few slight traces on the tape.

“Was everything being recorded?”

“Of course not. Why waste the tape?”

I squatted down and dipped my hand in the water. It was cold and musty. It looked as though nobody had bothered to change it…but then, if the investigation wasn’t over yet, that was only natural…

“What do you see?” Jean asked curiously.

I didn’t answer. I was looking at the water through closed eyes. Looking with the Twilight vision that pierces through reality to the essence of things.

The trough filled up with hazy crystal forms. There were crimson threads showing through the crystal, and an orange sludge swirling on the bottom of the trough.

There was human blood in the water.

A lot of blood.

About four liters.

That must be where the powerful emanations of death were coming from. Blood preserves its memory longer than anything else in the world.

If the police had only bothered to make a proper analysis of the water, they would have realized that all of Victor’s blood was simply drained into the channel. And there were no vampires involved in the crime.

But the police hadn’t been looking for vampires. And maybe they had carried out an analysis. If they hadn’t, it was only because they had no doubt what the result would be. A quick slash of a knife across the throat, and the blood glugs over the side of the boat. Only an Other could come up with the idiotic idea of looking for vampires in a tourist attraction!

“The case just opened up,” I muttered, getting up off my knees. “Dammit…”

Yes, it was a vicious killing. And the murderer certainly had a black sense of humor. Only, that was no concern of ours. Let the Edinburgh police conduct the investigation.

So just why had the boy been killed? A pretty stupid question. There are far more reasons for death than there are for life. He was a young guy, passionate and keen, his father was a businessman and a politician. He could have been killed for something that he’d done or for something his father was involved in or for no reason at all.

Yes, Gesar and Zabulon had both been caught out. They’d seen danger where it didn’t exist.

“Thanks for your help,” I said to Jean. “I’ll be going now.”

“So you are from the Russian police!” Jean exclaimed happily. “Did you spot anything?”