Shoplifting Vampires (1.0)

1.0

September 2026 - Hale’s Rest Police Station

September had come in wrong this year. This morning had been grey and miserably muggy, and when the sun came out from behind the clouds at midday, it shone cold. The interview room had a radiator that clanked and gave out no heat. DC Burke kept his coat on. I didn't need mine. He was poised and ready, though the eager, baby-faced rookie I remembered had been replaced by an older, thinner man with bags under his eyes. His eyes greeted mine for only a second before dropping back to his page. 

‘Sorry,’ he said, leaning backwards a little. ‘It’s just, I can’t get over it. You look exactly the same.’ He turned his notebook to the back and slid out a sleek photograph, still shiny as though it had been developed this morning. He pushed it over to me, shaking his head in disbelief.

I picked it up with one hand, wrinkling my nose. It was of me, taken back when it all began. 2017. It looked new, but smelled old, the scent of all the greasy fingertips that had touched it filling my nostrils like a crowd. Stale coffee and nicotine, clementine-scented hand cream, the sour salt of nerves. Dozens of people had held me in their hands, and not one of them had held on for long. In the photo, I was scowling and holding my middle finger up to the camera, wearing the same long black leather trench coat I had on now. I didn’t remember anyone taking it. ‘Where did you get this?’

DC Burke plucked it from my hands and slid it back into his notebook. ‘Back after it all happened, whatever it was, someone found an old camera in the woods and handed it in. No one claimed it, and it sat in the lost property box until last month, so I took it to be developed. That was the only thing on it. It’s what sparked my interest in that summer again.’

‘What did you say to the others? About why I’m here?’ I asked, shifting forward in my seat so my elbows were resting on the table. DC Burke shifted backwards. 

‘The other officers?’ DC Burke asked, looking very happy with himself, licking at his lips like a cat. ‘I told them you were coming in to give a statement about anti-social behaviour.’

'Oh, very funny, very clever,' I said dryly. 'Anti-social behaviour.’ The words tasted of lemon pith as they left my mouth, bitter and bright, taking me right back to that very first day of summer, nine years ago. ‘Did you write that on a form, or just enjoy saying it?'

Burke's smile held a second too long, then slipped back to something more serious. He picked up his pen and clicked it twice, because it gave his hand something to do. 

'So,' he said. 'From the beginning, then. In your own words.'

I took my time. I let the radiator clank twice in a row, and watched him not look at me.

'In my own words,' I agreed. 'But you don't interrupt. If you interrupt me, you don't get the answers you want.'

He nodded. He even meant it, I think. I’d had nearly a decade to rehearse this. I knew where to pause, which names to drop, what to hold back, and the moments DC Burke would want to interrupt. I had played that summer over and over so many times it had worn smooth in my brain, like sea glass. I closed my eyes and remembered that day, that first day. 

‘The first news we heard of the supermarket was when they began building it. It practically sprung up overnight, with no warning or anything. Not even one of those stupid pale yellow leaflets the council stick up on utility poles. Half the town was woken in the early hours by the construction work, which echoed in every direction across Hale’s Rest. It woke me up at six-thirty: the seemingly never-ending clanging, banging, and drilling. God, I was pissed. I didn’t want to be up that early, not in the summer holidays. My phone–’

‘And this was early August, right? Of 2017?’ DC Burke clarified.

I ignored him, taking the time to inhale through my nose. He had a curious smell about him. It was like he had woken up in pure fear, knowing I had agreed to meet him, but had pushed away the very human instinct that told him to get as far away from me as possible. He wanted the answers and feared what they might reveal about his beloved town. Fear that sits alone has a thin, sour note, like milk a day past turning. His fear had something warm folded into it. Hope, maybe, or stupidity. I have never found the two easy to tell apart. The smell of copper always gets in the way.

‘My phone,’ I continued, smiling slyly. ‘Had already been plagued with texts from everyone, with almost thirty from Spike alone. I didn’t answer them; I never did. They knew that if they really wanted to reach me, they needed to come to my window, preferably at night. No, I got up, got dressed, had some breakfast, put on my trademark leather jacket and sunglasses, and grabbed my bike. No way was a supermarket being built in this town - not without our permission and not right on top of our base.’ I pulled the syllables of our apart like taffy, staring DC Burke right in his dull grey eyes. ‘I had this grandiose superiority God complex back then, this belief that whatever I said was gospel, and whatever I said, happened. I genuinely thought that these builders would stop their construction if I just rocked up and told them to. It seemed to work on my teachers and my family, so why not on a bunch of dumb builders?’

‘What seemed to work?’ he questioned, his pen poised on his paper. 

‘If I told you all the important details right away, there’d be no art in my tale, would there?’ I batted my eyelashes at him. ‘Just let me tell it, please. And you can ask all the questions you want at the end. But I think you’ll find I’ll answer them sufficiently throughout.’

'Sorry,' Burke said, and the apologetic half-smile arrived a moment late. 'It's just that I've waited a long time to hear this, you know.’ I looked at his hairline. Nine years had been unkind to it. When he saw me looking, he covered it with his hand, embarrassed.  'Go on,'  he said quietly, and made himself pick the pen back up.

‘So,’ I continued. ‘I cycled over to the construction site, a cigarette in my mouth, thinking I was all cool and hard, and joined the crowd of residents who had formed around the construction site. Mrs Barnett was there, rollers still in her hair, swearing blindly at the site manager, who was trying to get her son – remember little Matty Barnett? – to climb down from the fence. Mr Lowe was there too, in his underpants, shaking his bony fists. You were there, as I remember; wasn’t that your first day as a PC?’

DC Burke nodded, lips pursed and uninterrupting.

‘And then big Old Matey turned up with his, well, old mates, and his skinny friend had that big mallet and was threatening to smash up the foundations they were laying, and you and PC Grover had to wrestle him away. It seemed as though everyone had woken up and chosen violence. They were all upset and confused and tired and overwhelmed or whatever, but me? I was just angry. That’s what I was all summer. Angry. I was the first one to throw rocks at the builders, like it was their fault. Then Spike and Rusty and Nails joined in, then everyone else, and as you know well, the police got further involved and carted us all off to the station. So, I guess that’s where it all began. That moment, that anger - it sparked something in me. And not just me. I think that’s the moment the whole goddamn town went mad.’

A long silence passed between us as DC Burke hurriedly jotted down notes into his battered notebook. ‘Well then,’ he said finally.  He took a deep breath, and as he exhaled, he looked me in the eyes like he was looking for a sign. ‘That’s certainly a dramatic start to this whole situation.’ 

‘Haven’t you met me?’ I laughed as I leaned over the desk toward him, wishing ever so badly I had a cigarette so I could tap the ash onto the table like every bad guy in every police interview scene, ever. If I’d had one, I’d have inhaled it before I spoke again. ‘I’m Rev Craily; everything I do is dramatic.’ 

Then I would have blown the smoke into that poor detective’s face and chuckled. 

‘It’s in my blood.’