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AQUARIUS
Chapter 1
Sunday ht say Church bells were pealing in Greenwich and Blackheath Merciless June A cloudless sky Blazing sun Shade hard to find
Like hts passed in seconds, days crawled for a week Her cheeks and the backs of her hands tingled with the beginnings of burns She ought to be senseless in her tightly curtained flat, cocooned under her continental quilt Ideally, she&039;d be in the Southern Hereen, as if coated with reflective paint She had a choice: oversize el cheapo sunglasses and cal turquoise blur or clear National Health specs and headache- focus Prescription shades, her idea of decadent luxury, cost what she ot through daylight with the holasses, tinted with felt-tip pen Those got trampled by a police horse outside the American Embassy The Guardian spiked her copy on the Grosvenor Square dele? Editors looked to her for that
This le So she could sell it
if the papers had room for a little murder Monday: Andy Warhol shot in New York Wednesday: Robert Kennedy killed in California Yesterday: Ja, arrested at Heathrow Airport Ongoing death tolls: Vietna on the Transylvania border American riot cops loaded for bear in Watts, Selround Gaain in Belfast
That was the week, that was
Twelve o, 1967 - the year of The Monkees The Summer of Love Kate had certainly been in love last suirl, or hadn&039;t been so far Now, 1968 - the Year of the Monkey The Su Season? She&039;d lost the taste of last year&039;s loves: a warernon Ford Neither trustworthy, both &039;trips&039; as the young were saying The young also said &039;never trust anyone over a hundred and thirty&039; She wasn&039;t that old Yet
It was coe of Aquarius The Pera The Revolution Flower Power Helter Skelter The Hallucination Generation Fear and Loathing The White Heat of Technology The Green Green Grass of Home
No more water the fire next ti! Burn, baby, burn!
Commercialisation Radicalisation Decimalisation
People who&039;d been excited or apprehensive were now elated or terrified It was no longer enough to report news Journalists had to anticipate, coeneral consu more for New Worlds than The Grauniad Michael Moorcock, the editor, encouraged her to chronicle the New Terror He reminded her of Frank Harris, her father-in-darkness, but was ahalf-decent out of her Along with the porny purple passages of Horatio Stubbs&039;s serial Harelipped in the Bed, her supposedly inflarant She was still waiting to be paid Mike was rattling out Seaton Begg paperbacks for rhino to plough back into the azine She needed fashion commissions froh, she&039;d have to ghost &039;confessions&039; to go between pin-ups in Bikini Girl or Wow Magazine &039;I Was a "Groupie Girl" for a Gore-Crazed Groover!&039; &039;House of Thwacks!&039; &039;Soho After Sunset!&039;
Squinting through Tizer-bottle specs, she acclilare She was in Greenwich, just outside Maryon Park Some students wanted to use the tennis courts They were kept back by blue-uniformed, tit-helmeted policemen
As soon as she saw fuzz, Kate realised she was dressed like a burglar: black pocketless fly-on-the-thigh trousers, horizontally striped black and orange t-shirt with a cartoon bee on the front, black plih to cover her hands, oversized black peaked cap with a po wasn&039;t labelled &039;SWAG&039;, but was cavernous enough to stash loot
She showed her press-card Fred Regent, a young plod she knew, let her pass Kate was expected A posh athlete co Woods, a haunt of highwaymen Then, Charlton Sandpits Now, the place was talish loved to keep tidy but would prefer people not use No litter, no dogs, no children, no vampires A familiar, alien place, like the abandoned suburbs, cracked launch-pads and drained swi pools JB Graham wrote about in New Worlds So quiet you wouldn&039;t know you were in a city
Keeping to the path, she passed the tennis courts and walked over a gentle hill The park was reen slat fences She saw people near the treeline A copper got in her way, gauntlet out in sign language for &039;stop in the name of the law&039; His hel a woman, mouthy, Irish, a leftie and a blood-drinker, she&039;d had her differences with the police Even before the Terror, peelers shoved her about Kate had been arrested as a suffragette and insurgent, as a rebel and rabble-rouser She&039;d ainst Vietnaarlic-sprayed She&039;d been interned without trial, locked up for her own protection and bound over to keep the peace
Hel else He wore B Division sleeve flashes He was a vah, Herrick,&039; said a plainclothes officer &039;You knoho she is&039;
The pig stepped aside like a robo- Herrick&039;s face, she could picture his expression Lips a straight line Eyes red flints No love lost
Press credentials wouldn&039;t get her into Maryon Park thiscall made that clear She was invited in her capacity as Associate Meenes Club Her shadowy capacity Funny how you could be an enemy of the state and a secret civil servant at the same time
She knew the OiC, Detective Superintendent Bellaver He had a doleful, surprisingly groovy moustache Most officers under hi super at B Division Old coppers&039; tales about the undead being not &039;creative&039; enough for high-level police ere still trotted out Your basic biterputs the wind up a scrote like a fang-flash and a speed-burst But when it comes to a whodunit, you want a livewas shite, but Kate was happy to leave that argument to vampire cops Bloodsuckers in blue did her few favours If anything, nosferatu filth tended to be bigger bastards than warm police just to prove they weren&039;t soft on their own kind
Detective Sergeant Griffin, a vampire, handed Bellaver a polystyrene cup of tea The swirly violet pattern of Griffin&039;s trendy Nehru jacket hurt her eyes Bellaver took a swig of brown liquid and made a face as if a tramp had pissed in it He looked like that most of the time, and no wonder
B Division was Scotland Yard&039;s unit for criht being called a &039;community&039; was one step from mandatory bat symbol armbands After that ca a Soviet crackdown on the liu, Central European undead had been arriving in Britain since spring Six weeks ago, the Tory MP Enoch Powell delivered an alarrants He invoked &039;rivers of blood&039; and not in any metaphorical sense Lord Ruthven threw him out of the Shadow Cabinet, which only rieved, resentful section of the war as any radical student and more prone to bursts of the old ultra-violence Enoch was too patrician and parlia Others were happy to carry fla - supposedly descended froh Kate knew Abraha children - ca exterly called &039;Drakky Bashing&039; Early s of short-haired thugs seldoations
&039;Enock is Rite&039; was scratched on her front door, above a crude cartoon of a bat with a stake through it The building&039;s other tenants were also vaan Delt, an artist se-armed apeshape &039;to irl whose nameplate was a kanji which ainst so rally and asked her out to a counter-deht it best to keep her head down rather than risk deportation In Eire, va-Dul to keep the Ghaeilge word in use Silver-toting priests strode about Dublin in a righteous fury which made Enoch seem vamp-symp
&039;Hello Katie,&039; said Bellaver &039;Sorry to keep you up after bed-time&039;
&039;What&039;s it all about, Alfie?&039;
&039;Nasty business Potentially political We&039;ve already seen off Peculiar Crimes Bryant and May want to bolt it onto their Leicester Square case It&039;s no surprise your lot want it too The Diogenes Bloody Club&039;
&039;My lot aren&039;t exactly mine&039;
As ever, the situation between her and the British Secret State was delicate
&039;I heard so about that They&039;ll never cut you loose&039;
&039;They nise It&039;s the Diogenes Happening now Next it&039;ll be the Diogenes Experience Mycroft Holmes would not have approved&039;