It turned out that Adine King was Harry's solicitor. She'd been involved in his case from the start and had been with him during all the initial police interviews. We got talking, I turned on the charm, and I ended up taking her to dinner that very night at an Italian restaurant in Soho.
I don't know if you'd ever have called it a match made in heaven. We got on well enough, but we were hardly well suited. She was a well-educated member of the legal profession with a well-to-do stockbroker for a father (her mother had died when she was young) and a sister who was high up in some government department. I was still a career soldier – and not exactly a high-ranking one either – on a soldier's wage. But somehow the relationship grew. I think that at the time we were both looking for someone to settle down with. She was thirty-two and about a year earlier had come out of a long-term relationship with a City lawyer who was meant to have been 'the one', but hadn't been. Her job didn't exactly throw up many potential suitors, and her biological clock was ticking. She wanted to start a family, and I guess I was in the right place at the right time. I also liked the idea of the pitter-patter of tiny feet running around the place. Why not? I come from a big family, I didn't want to grow old alone, and I didn't meet that many eligible women in my job either.
So we got engaged. Her old man was mortified. Her sister, who was married to a director of some hotshot company dealing with internet security, was equally gobsmacked, and neither of them was backwards in telling her so. But of course this just served to spur Adine on. Like a lot of people, she didn't like being told what to do, or who she should be seeing, and we just grew closer. She wanted me to move in to her flashy apartment in Muswell Hill, and she also wanted me to leave the army.
The thing was, at the time I was in love. I'd been a soldier for fifteen years and I'd come into some money too, the result of an aunt dying, so I figured now was the time to make a break. I'd always been interested in cars, so I put all my money into buying a BMW franchise, supplemented by some cash from the bank and even Adine's reluctant (although loaded) father.
And the rest should have been history, but life, of course, never works that simply. I did leave the army and I did move in with her, and at first things went well, but it wasn't long before they began to go downhill. We were both working long hours – me learning how to run a business from scratch (something the army gives you no preparation for), she trying to establish herself in her profession. We were trying for a baby as well, but that wasn't proving very successful either.
The truth is, by the time we got married – on one of those two-week deals in Barbados, with only a few close family present – our best days were already behind us. I was hoping the honeymoon might turn things round and signal some sort of improvement. After all, it's difficult to have too much of a bad time when the sun's shining and the palm trees are shimmering in a gentle tropical breeze. But somehow we managed it, spending most of the trip arguing. I can't even remember what it was we argued about. It was just niggling little disagreements, the kind couples have when each partner realizes that he or she's with the wrong person.
We limped along for another six months, but the faultlines in our relationship – work pressures and the failure to conceive – kept growing, and one day, after yet another explosive argument that had come out of nowhere and drained both of us, she asked me, very calmly but very firmly, to leave.
For some reason, even then her request came as a shock. You see, a small part of me still hoped that somehow we could make it work, that the stresses would fade with time, that she'd fall pregnant and everything would be OK again.
In the end, when it came to it, I didn't want to go, and I asked her to reconsider. But Adine had made up her mind. 'I don't love you any more,' she said quietly. She'd never said that before, even during our worst arguments, and I knew from the resigned tone in her voice that she meant it.
And that was that. Full of regret for what might have been, and wondering if there was anything I could have done differently, I packed my bags and left the flat that afternoon. I never went back.
We kept in touch, though, and through our break-up and subsequent divorce our relationship remained amicable. I think that, in the long run, parting was the right choice for both of us, because our bond just wasn't strong enough, but occasionally I do regret the fact that in the interim Adine hasn't had the family she wanted so much, and that I haven't either.
I haven't seen her for close to six months, but as soon as I was booked in here, I knew who I was going to put my one phone call through to. She's always been a damn good lawyer, and that's exactly what I need. Well, that's not quite right. I need a miracle, but in the absence of one, she'll have to do.
The cell door's unlocked, and I'm told by a bored-looking uniformed cop with dyed black hair that my brief's arrived. I get up from the bunk and follow the cop and his equally bored-looking colleague through a set of featureless and largely empty corridors that remind me of a hospital. I guess if I worked in surroundings like this, I wouldn't be full of the joys of spring either.
Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of security round here, but then there doesn't really need to be. I'm in the holding area beneath the main part of the station, and there's no way out except through a series of electronically operated doors that eventually take you into the station proper, and straight into the arms of God knows how many other cops. Once you're down here, there really is no way out.
We reach a door, and the cop with the dyed hair knocks twice, opening it at the same time. 'Your client,' he announces curtly, then moves aside to let me through.
Adine stands up from behind a table as the door closes behind me. She's wearing a black cocktail dress with a very light cashmere cardigan of the same colour over it. Her hair's loose and longer than the last time I saw her, reaching down to her shoulders, and she's got her contacts in rather than her glasses, a look that shows off the contrast between her jet-black eyebrows and the pale translucent blue of her eyes. In short, she looks stunning. I find it difficult not to fall in love with her all over again.
'Well, it looks like you've really done it this time, Tyler,' she says with a weary sigh that seems to last for several seconds, immediately shattering the illusion.
'Hello, Adine. Nice to see you again too.'
'I had to leave a meal in the Ivy for this, you know.' She gestures towards the room's only other chair. 'I'm only doing this because I'd feel guilty if I didn't help.'
I sit down, noticing that she's wearing scarlet varnish on her fingernails. It must have been a hot date. She never wore it for me. Amazingly, even after everything else, I feel the vague stirrings of jealousy.
'You're in a lot of trouble,' she states with numbing honesty.
'I know.'
'You'd better tell me what happened.'
So I do, for the third time today, only this time I start from the beginning and I don't leave anything out, except for my theory that Alannah is the Vampire, because, for all that I'm convinced by it, that's all it is, a theory, with nothing to back it up. I don't need to muddy the waters any more than they've been muddied already.