style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I knew an army veteran once,’ he offered suddenly, ‘Used to get the heeby jeebies at the smell of oranges, and he couldn’t ever tell me why. Nice guy, though. He watched out for people.’
A little furrow of confusion made a wrinkle between Sharpe’s eyebrows.
‘All I mean is – I’ll be mindful and let you know when I have callers if I can, or as soon as they arrive. They can’t always let me know in advance. If that’ll help.’
‘Cheers, yeah.’ Sharpe, satisfied, changed the subject. ‘Well, you know I’m a GP. What do you do for a crust? You mentioned pigments.’
‘I’m an artist, but I work part-time at an art supplies factory for regular dosh. I’m a qualified chemist.’
‘Hence the pigment experiments?’
‘Hence, though mostly they’re for fun. If they’ll be a problem…’
‘No, that’s fine. Surprisingly, loud bangs aren’t my issue. Just unexpected midnight visitors, and only sometimes then.’ Sharpe shrugged. ‘Your visitors – are they… buyers… or…?’
‘I’m not a drug dealer, Dr Sharpe. Or a user. I make a living with pigment chemistry and my art. My work’s at the Dupre Gallery on Sutton Street, if you want proof.’
‘No, that’s all good. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘That’s fine. Not a stupid question, under the circumstances. You don’t know me. I could be a coke fiend.’
‘No, I could tell you’re not a user.’ Gabriel raised an inquiring eyebrow. ‘I’m a doctor,’ said Sharpe, ‘I know what to watch for.’
Gabriel wasn’t inclined to take that at face value but it wasn’t, for the moment, important. ‘My visitors seek my help on other matters.’
‘Oh-ho, I was right. You are intriguing. Care to tell me what kind of help and on what kind of matters?’
‘If I don’t care to, is the deal off?’
Sharpe grinned. ‘Hell, no. I won’t try to solve your mysteries if you leave mine alone too.’
‘Unlike the late Baxter?’
‘I wouldn’t call him late. He was still breathing, wasn’t he?’
‘And still had both kidneys, as far as I could tell.’
Sharpe grinned again. ‘Aye, he did. Surgery’s not my thing.’ The grin faltered and Sharpe retreated to the kitchen to flick on the kettle by the sink. ‘Tea?’
Gabriel watched the man’s back, the sudden hunching of the shoulders and wariness of stance. Maybe working patime at a community clinic was a sore point. Not surprising, if he’d been invalided out of the army on the grounds of PTSD. Sharpe didn’t show signs of permanent physical injury, like some of the people Gabriel knew from the streets. Trimboll, for instance, who limped badly and got sick at the smell of oranges and cried himself to sleep on hot nights, and had got himself stabbed one night protecting an old bloke from a pair of drunk arseholes.
‘I thought I’d get my things,’ was all he said, ‘Move in today. That is, if we have a deal.’
‘Oh. Right. Good. Well.’ Sharpe turned back to him, a set of keys in his hand. He dropped them into Gabriel’s outstretched palm. ‘Welcome to Flat Four, Ivy Gardens, Mr Dare.’
‘Call me Gabriel.’
‘Call me James.’
And that was that.
Chapter Three
James watched Gabriel Dare stride down the road in skinny jeans that accentuated the delicious length of his legs and a well-worn, black T-shirt sporting a rainbow flag. The man had radiated a faint aroma of shaving soap, tea and oil paints, which should not have smelled as good as it did.
James wondered how he had so suddenly lost one irritating flatmate and acquired a brand new, sexy as all hell substitute. A braw lad, Granda would have said. Tall and very lean (maybe a touch undernourished), hair dark and tousled, sharp cheekbones and a sensitive mouth; a graceful mover, with beautiful hands and green eyes that shone with quick intelligence. James had always liked his men tall, smart and a tad unpredictable.
Stop that now.
That was no longer possible. That was no longer his life.
And yet, he had a new lodger.
James vowed he could appreciate the lean work of art that was Gabriel Dare, but nothing else was ever going to happen. He’d keep those old impulses – nothing but dead echoes of a real life now – well under wraps. Wouldn’t do to frighten away his fortuitous new lodger, and it wasn’t as if anything could actually develop. James wasn’t sure what was physically possible any more, and surely you needed a soul to love. So, no. No future in that. Dinnae even think on it. Gabriel Dare was going to be a lovely-to-look-at lodger, and nothing more, ever.
A nothing-but-a-lodger who was moving in to the spare room in a few hours’ time.
James’s mouth tilted in a small, pleased smile. He caught himself doing it and stopped. When he looked down the road, Gabriel had vanished from sight.
I’m allowed a friend, though. Aren’t I? Maybe we could be that.
A friend. As though he hadn’t already withdrawn from everyone he knew. Civilian or army friends, how could any of them hope to understand who and what he’d become? He barely understood himself any more.
All fash and blether, Granda would have called it. Truth, Jamie, is you’re nae the first soldier tae come back aff yer heid.
Finally, annoyed with his own see-sawing thoughts, James spent the next few hours checking out Mr Bernetti’s story about the red- eyed wolf near his Barking Road flat.
The plain brown brick flat was situated above a mobile phone shop and a used furniture store, both closed up with roller doors painted respectively yellow and grey. The parking area in front smelled of engine oil and foot traffic. The scent emanating from the pie and mash shop two buildings down, mingled unpleasantly with the oil, traffic fumes, and the stale beer and worse smells from the pub on the next corner, and the dampness in the wind blowing north across Leamouth and the Thames.
The reek of London. He’d grown used to it again, and found comfort in its familiarity, even if it was so much more intense than it had been when he’d had merely human senses.
Unfortunately, steeped in all those other homely smells was confirmation that Mr Bernetti wasn’t entirely delusional. The footpath, three cars and the trunk of the plane tree by the road were pungent with werewolf – wild, predatory and unnatural.
James could detect no scent of blood though, human or otherwise. No killing had taken place here. Perhaps the wolf was simply passing through. James dismissed the idea of seeking out the assistance of another vampire. Selfish pricks, the lot of them, he’d so far found, mainly interested in prancing about pretending to be Byronesque princes in make-believe courts,
