I smiled suggestively and shook my head.

Jean sighed.

“I’ll show you out, Anton.”

Not far from the Dungeons I found a nice little pub called the Corncrake and Pennant. Three small adjoining rooms, dark walls and ceilings, old lamps, glass mugs for the beer, pictures in frames, knickknacks on the walls. A bar with ten beer pumps and a vast array of bottles-there were at least fifty sorts of whisky. It was everything that the phrase “a Scottish pub” brings to mind, and exactly what the foreign tourist expects when he hears that phrase.

Remembering what Semyon had said, I ordered haggis and soup of the day. And I took a pint of Guinness from the woman behind the bar, who was large and well-built with muscular arms from constantly working the beer pumps. I walked through to the end room, the smallest, where I found a free table. A group of Japanese were having lunch at the next table over. And there was a plump, elderly man with a mustache who looked like a local drinking beer at another table. He looked rather dejected, like a Muscovite who has accidentally found himself in Red Square. There was music coming from somewhere too. Fortunately it was melodic and not too loud.

The soup turned out to be simple meat broth with croutons, and the haggis was nothing more than the local answer to liver sausage. But I drank the soup and ate the haggis, along with the fries that came with it, and felt that I had fulfilled my obligations as a tourist.

I liked the beer best. As I was finishing off the mug, I phoned home and had a chat with Svetlana. I told her I wouldn’t have to stay away for very long, because everything had been resolved very quickly.

I got myself another pint of beer before calling the head of the Edinburgh Night Watch. I found Foma Lermont’s number in the phone book and dialed.

“Hello, how can I help you?” someone answered politely after the phone had rung a couple of times. The interesting thing was that he answered in Russian.

“Good afternoon, Thomas,” I said, deciding not to use the Russian name Foma after all. “My name is Anton Gorodetsky, I’m a colleague of yours from Moscow. Gesar asked me to give you his warmest greetings.”

It all sounded very much like a bad spy story. I pulled a wry face at the thought.

“Hello, Anton, I’ve been waiting for your call. How was your flight?”

“Great. I’m staying in a very nice little hotel. It’s a bit dark, but it is right in the center. I’ve had a stroll around the Old Town and some of the surroundings.” I was getting carried away; it seemed highly amusing to speak in Aesopian language. “Could we get together?”

“Of course, Anton, I’ll just come over. Or perhaps you might join me? I have a nice cozy spot here.”

I raised my eyes and looked at the elderly gentleman sitting by the window. A high forehead, pointed chin, intelligent and ironic eyes. The gentleman put a mobile phone away in his pocket and gestured toward his table.

Yes, he and Gesar had a lot in common, all right. Not in the way they looked, but in the way they behaved. Thomas Lermont was probably just as good as Gesar at putting his subordinates in their place.

I picked up my glass and joined the head of Edinburgh ’s Night Watch at his table.

“Call me Foma,” he said. “I’ll enjoy remembering Gesar.”

“Have you known him for long?”

“Yes. Gesar has older friends, but I don’t… I’ve heard a lot about you, Anton.”

I let that pass. There was nothing I could say. I hadn’t heard of the head of the Edinburgh Night Watch before yesterday.

“You’ve been talking to Bruce. What do you make of our vampire Master?”

I paused to formulate my impression precisely. “Spiteful, unhappy, ironic. But they’re all spiteful, unhappy, and ironic. Of course, he didn’t kill Victor.”

“You put pressure on him,” he said, not asking, but stating.

“Yes, that was just the way it worked out. He doesn’t know anything.”

“No need to make excuses,” said Lermont, taking a sip of his beer. “It worked out just fine. His own vanity will make sure that he keeps quiet, and we have the information…All right, what did you see in the Dungeons of Scotland?”

“Scary stories for children. The show’s closed, but I managed to speak to one of the actors. And take a look at the crime scene.”

“Well?” Lermont asked keenly. “So what did you find out, Anton?”

I’d learned a lot from all those years dealing with Gesar. Nowadays I could tell when the boss’s hand was poised to swat down a young magician who had overreached himself.

“The River of Blood where Victor’s throat was cut”-I glanced at the impassive Lermont and corrected myself-“where Victor was killed…There’s blood in the water. A lot of human blood. It doesn’t look as if it was a vampire who sucked the boy’s blood out. Someone opened his artery and held him while his blood spilled out into the trench. But we need an analysis of the water. We could bring in the police, they could do a DNA analysis…”

“Oh, what great faith you have in technology,” Foma said with a frown. “It’s Victor’s blood in the trench. We checked the very first day. Simple similitude magic, no more than fifth-level Power required.”

But I wasn’t about to give in. Dealing with Gesar had also taught me the art of wriggling out of things.

“It’s no help to us, but the police ought to be given the idea too. Let them know that the blood was drained into the trench, and that will put an end to any rumors about vampires.”

“The police here are good,” Foma said calmly. “They checked everything too, and they’re conducting an investigation. But putting an end to stupid rumors is none of their business. Who takes any notice of the yellow press?”

I felt encouraged. I had gone straight to the right conclusions after all.

“I don’t think any more intervention will be required from us,” I said. “Murder is evil, but let people fight their own evil themselves. It’s a pity about the boy, of course, but…”

Foma nodded once or twice and took another sip of beer. Then he said, “Yes, a pity about the boy… But Anton, what are we going to do about the bite?”

“What bite?”

Foma leaned forward across the table and whispered, “It wasn’t a knife wound on Victor’s neck, Anton. There’s absolutely no doubt that the marks were left by a vampire’s fangs. Now, that’s an unfortunate problem, isn’t it?”

I felt my ears burning.

“Is that definite?”

“Ab-so-lute-ly. Just how would a hit man know so much about the way a vampire’s fang is structured and how it works? The lateral grooves, the tapping point, Dracula’s Fissure, the corkscrew twist on entry…”

By this time my entire face was blazing red. I could see the classroom where I had once been taught, and my teacher Polina Vasilievna with her pointer, and the huge rubber model on the desk: a pointed, twisted object like a corkscrew and a white fiberglass board with black letters: VAMPIRE’S RIGHT CANINE (OPERATIONAL) TOOTH. MODEL, SCALE 25:1. It had been a working model at one stage; when a button was pressed, it elongated and began to rotate. But the electric motor had burned out long ago, and nobody had taken the trouble to repair it, so the fang was permanently frozen in a position between concealed and operational.

“I was too hasty with my conclusions,” I admitted. “It’s my fault, Mr. Lermont.”

“It’s nobody’s fault, you simply didn’t want any Others to be involved,” Foma said generously. “If you’d familiarized yourself with the results of the autopsy, you’d have realized your version was wrong. So now what do you say?”

“If the vampire was very hungry and he sucked the man dry”-I frowned-“he could have puked it up afterward. But not all the blood. Were there any traces of anesthetic serum in the water?”

“No, there weren’t,” Foma said with a nod of approval. “But then, that doesn’t mean anything. The vampire could have been in such a hurry that he didn’t bother with the anesthetic.”