Unreal City: The Devil's Children, #1

By Tony Walker

In the dark streets of 1920s London, private detective Christian Le Cozh is the only one foolish (or desperate) enough to take on the a bizarre case from a man who claims his dead wife still lives.

 

But when a string of supernatural revelations lead him to the conclusion that the world is far more dangerous than he ever imagined, he's drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse that threatens to consume him. With the help of an Austrian professor and a grief-stricken woman socialite, Christian must unravel the truth behind the accusations and coincidences before he becomes the next victim in this tantalizing tale of noir, horror, and redemption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Walker
• Release date: Dec 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223658092

Book preview

Chapter 1

London March 1925

This a city only half recovered from the losses and anguish of the First World War. Museums are now opening again, but the Defence of the Realm Act is still in force. Haunted by the army of the young dead, London vibrates to the Cult of Youth. Faces turn from pain and memory and seek immediate pleasures in dance tunes and cocktail bars.

This is an age of technology; there are already gramophones and simple wirelesses, central heating and motor cars. Electric lighting is normal.

It is also a city of art, of ideas and images — of writing: T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, P G Wodehouse and J M Barrie. From across the Atlantic comes the influence of the New World: American movies, music, drinks and slang. Louise Brooks demonstrates the Charleston at the Café de Paris off Regent Street.

Despite a façade of church going, England is no longer a religious country. Congregations comprise those who seek security in tradition, those who hope that faith might give their loss meaning, and those who run from a fear of death. Fear of death haunts us all, but what if we did not have to die and lose everything? What if we could live forever?

Chapter 2

The Wasteland

What is that sound high in the air

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria

Vienna, London

Unreal

From The Wasteland, by T. S. Eliot, published December 1922.

Chapter 3

From the Times

VESEY,—on March 10th, at 93 Warwick Road, S.W.5., Margaret Amelia, dearly loved wife of Andrew Vesey and third daughter of the Right Honourable Sir H. Evelyn and the late Lady Amelia Fitzgerald. Service at 2:30pm on Monday at their private chapel at Highfield, Eastleigh, Hants. No flowers.

Chapter 4

Christian Le Cozh meets Mr. Vesey

I had had no work for twelve days, and the rent was due. I divided my time between sitting watching the street outside the window trying to will customers to come up the stairs and reading a copy of Le Quotidien I found at the station. The room was shabby, shabby as only offices around London’s King’s Cross Station can be—bare wooden floor, second hand desk, dirty metal wastepaper bin, also second hand. Straight in front of me was the door onto a landing I shared with moneylenders and dubious doctors. On its frosted glass pane, my name was still bright gold a year after I had painted it Christian Le Cozh. No matter how shabby it was, they still wanted rent for it, and that was money I didn’t have.

The office I’d had in Paris with Yves was nicer, but I was doing better at that time. My suit was brown and serviceable, my shoes less so — mainly because of the holes in the soles that let the water in from the ever—present London puddles. I was so broke that I’d given up my scummy apartment three streets away and was sleeping in the office on a fold away camp bed that was currently folded away. I didn’t know what other job I could do. I was thirty—five and had spent all my working life in either military intelligence or as a private detective.

I heard someone outside the door but tried not to get too excited. The corridor was busy; the moneylenders and quacks did a roaring trade. But this noise stopped and hesitated and then, with a silhouette visible through the frosted glass, it knocked on my door. 

A man with an educated voice asked for Mr Le Cozh. I jumped up, removing my shoes with their offensive soles from the desk at the same time as I swept the newspaper back and away into the dirty metal bin.

I hurried to the door and let him in.  

The man with the educated voice was tall and thin in an expensive suit with straight blonde hair, well groomed and well pressed, maybe forty years old.

Mr Le Cozh?

Yes. That’s me. Please sit down. I pulled the chair out for him.

Thank you.

I took his coat, which I hung on my listing coat stand. I think he almost stopped me, but he was far too polite and he let the coat go swinging until it settled down. Then he turned back to the seat. It was a mixture of his slurred voice and the wobble as he sat down that told me he was slightly drunk. I sat down opposite him, keen for his business. I hoped it was something nice and easy, like a divorce.

My name is Andrew Vesey, he said. I’ve a problem that I hope you can help me with.

I’ll try. You just explain the problem.

I got a pencil and a pad out just so that he would think that I was a serious operator. I am a serious operator and I don’t need to take notes, but appearances count.

You’re a private detective?

It said so in bright gold letters on the door he’d knocked on, but I kept my mouth under control and nodded with pencil poised. It could still be a divorce. 

Can I ask you a little of your background first, Mr Le Cozh?

I had a little monologue for clients when they asked this question. Erm, sure. My father’s Breton, my mother’s from Kansas, USA, hence the American accent in case you were about to ask. I was brought up in Finisterre, did a couple of things before the War and joined up in 1915. I ended up working in intelligence and then, after the war, started up as a private investigator in Paris with an old army buddy. In 1923, I set up on my own in London and here I am.

Vesey laughed as if I had amused him, but it was a nervous laugh. He seemed unduly on edge and kept running his hand through his blonde hair. Very interesting, he said like he wasn’t interested, then he stopped and studied his well—manicured fingernails. I wondered what the dramatic pause was for, but then I realised he was scared. I put the pencil down. Eventually, he looked up and smiled weakly. He said, I hope you don’t mind, Mr Le Cozh, but I picked your name out of the telephone directory because you sounded foreign. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m pleased that you are. 

This didn’t sound like a divorce case. I nodded and smiled.

He said, I think foreigners are more imaginative than English people, more used to unorthodox things.

I assumed he hadn’t travelled much. Still, Brittany is a land of legends and mystery. 

You see, Monsieur Le Cozh, I’ve recently lost my wife, Margaret.

I’m sorry. Okay, definitely not a divorce.

Thank you. But it’s rather worse than that. You may mock what I’m going to say, and indeed, before it happened, I would have mocked myself.

I let him talk. I needed his custom.

When I’ve said what I have to say, you’re free, of course, to take on the case or not, but I feel that you’re the right man from what you’ve said so far.

Given I hadn’t really said anything, he obviously felt the need to flatter, so it was not only not a divorce, but not straightforward either.

Monsieur Le Cozh, I know you might find my beliefs a little bizarre, but I’m convinced that my wife didn’t die naturally and that, horribly, she continues to live.

… continues to live… I thought: Perhaps he meant in a way that made sense, but that I hadn’t yet figured out.

He looked up with a thin smile. His eyes gleamed watery blue and bloodshot. 

My heart sank. I really needed work, but this guy was crazy. He was waiting for a reaction.

Okay, I said. Go on.

His suit was expensive looking and you forgive things from the rich you wouldn’t put up with from the poor. My hope of getting anything out of this was dwindling, but a faint flame flickered, just like a poor orphan child lost in the wilderness. I shrugged. Please, I mean it. I’d like to hear.

He talked like his jaw was oiled. My wife, Margaret, was a delightful woman and very bright. I was concerned she would become bored because my work took me away so often. I was delighted, therefore, when she took up writing poetry. I’ve never had much time to indulge any interest in the arts and I can’t say that I appreciated everything she wrote, but I could see she had some minor talent.

It’s good to have a talent. 

He continued like he’d never heard me. Neither did I complain when she frequented the houses of the arty set in Bloomsbury and such places. But then she met a Frenchman — all due respect to yourself and your nation, Le Cozh. But Henri Lazar struck me as a typical product of Parisian decadence. His poetry was both incomprehensible and repulsive. It did not please me when Margaret copied his style; I considered it beneath her to run after such an obvious gigolo type. 

I wondered where the hell he was going with this—what had this to do with me here today? 

But he kept on. I first noticed that Margaret’s health was failing shortly after she met Lazar. She became fuddled and forgetful. I suspected she was taking drugs. Sometimes she didn’t come home at all. It got so bad that I spoke to her father, Sir Evelyn Fitzgerald, who backed me completely, and took her to task. However, it availed us nothing and, after a short improvement, things got worse. Lazar came to the house frequently, according to the servants, when I was away or home late. Then after Christmas, we had a flaming row about it and I banned him from the house.

Her health deteriorated appallingly. I can’t fault the attention she got from Dr Roth. His credentials are excellent, but he couldn’t do much to help. Margaret got worse and worse. She became so pale and lost such an amount of weight. She was never fat, but in the end, she was only skin and bone. In the mornings should could hardly get up, but she still insisted on going to St John’s Wood nearly every evening to Lazar’s house.  

Then she died of acute anaemia, according to Roth and the coroner. God help me, that should be the end, but it isn’t.

Once again, he hesitated. He was shaking. He probably needed a drink. I gave him time. He swallowed and wrung his hands before working up the courage to speak again. The night after Margaret’s death, Sir Evelyn had left me to go home. It was late, perhaps two in the morning, and I was consoling myself with brandy. The servants were long in bed and the only noises were from the flames around the last coals and the ticking of the clock. Then I heard a rapping on the window. At first, I presumed it was a branch blown by the wind, but it was repeated too regularly. Thinking it was an intruder; I picked up the poker and went to the French Windows that open onto the garden. With my left hand, I threw back the curtains. I saw Margaret’s face pressed against the window, pale as it had been in the last days before she died. There was no life in her eyes. I thought I was hallucinating, but then looked at me and I knew she was real...

He looked me straight in the eyes. I swear to you she was there, but when I looked again—forced my eyes to look again—there was nothing—just the garden wall and the tree. I dropped the poker and ran out, but there was no one. I was terrified, but if it was her, I wanted to know how that could be. I went round to the front of the house and saw the figure of a man some fifty yards away. It looked like Lazar. He was tall and wearing a long, dark coat. I shouted at him, but he didn’t turn round. I wanted to follow him to find it if it was really him, but I’m afraid to admit my nerves failed me. I had to go back into the house. Not very bold of me, but there it is.

I put the pencil down. Are you sure it was this Henri Lazar you saw? On a dark night, it’s difficult to recognise people at that distance.

He put his hand to his forehead and said, No, I didn’t see his face, but Mr Le Cozh, I know Lazar was responsible for Margaret’s death.

But how did he kill her? You say the doctor said it was a natural death.

He seemed irritated. Then he smiled. I know it sounds like something out of a cheap novel, but I’m sure that he drank her blood and killed her. He has made her a vampire like himself.

I knew then I couldn’t take the case. As much as I needed the money, I wasn’t the kind of leech who would suck cash from someone who was so obviously mentally unwell.

He didn’t see my doubt because he sat forward and said, If you don’t consider me mad and are willing, I would like to employ you to investigate Lazar and prove what he is.

I don’t know. I’ve got a lot on at the moment.

He looked around the shabby office.

I shrugged. It’s not my kind of case.

He ran his hands even more nervously through his hair. He looked desperate for a whisky now. 

He said, I have no one else to turn to. I need your help.

I pushed back my chair and stood. 

His eyes were wild, imploring. I felt like such a heel. But I’d feel worse if just used him. Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Mr Vesey. Sorry I couldn’t help you out.

I stood and walked over to the door. He was still sitting. He turned his head and said, Please. I’ll pay you double your normal rate.

I paused and looked at him, my hand on the door handle. He could probably afford it.

Look, here’s twenty pounds. He fumbled in his jacket and pulled out an oxblood coloured leather wallet. He dragged the large white notes from inside it. It was a lot of money: it would pay the rent on this office for the next three months. But no. I wouldn’t take it.

He held out the money to me. It was almost undignified. I walked back to the desk and sat down without taking the money. Maybe I could actually help. If I thoroughly investigated the case and came up with no vampire, no murder, then that might help him get his head straight. It might even be healing. The money stared up at me. I said, What would you want me to do exactly?

He smiled in relief. Good. I think to start with just to observe Lazar’s house and note his comings and goings. You must learn his routines; when he goes out, where he goes, who he sees.

It sounded easy enough, just a regular surveillance job. They were my bread and butter, though the cheating spouses weren’t usually dead. It couldn’t hurt to watch this guy Lazar.then maybe Vesey would realise that he was just a bit confused about things.

Okay, I said. 

You’ll take the case? 

I nodded, feeling like a worm, but putting my hand on the big white banknotes to help me feel better.  

When can you start?

I’ll get to it right away.

Tonight?

I looked at the money again. It was pretty. I said, Sure. I don’t have any dinner engagements planned.

Listen, have you seen a doctor?

A doctor?

It’s just you seem… under a lot of strain. It’s understandable.

He said, I see Dr Roth.

Doctors have no compunctions about taking sick people’s money, even when the problem is all in the patient’s head. Like lawyers. That’s why they’re rich and I’m poor. I’ve got too many principles. I picked up the £20 and pushed it into my pocket.

He extended his hand for me to shake; his grip was weak and clammy. He got up, took his coat and went towards the door. He seemed very keen to get out, and I guessed he was going to his urgent appointment with Mr Whisky. I went to see him out. Just as he was at the door, he turned round and his mask slipped. He looked scared.

You see, Monsieur Le Cozh; she’s trying to punish me. I wasn’t particularly faithful to her during her life. That’s why she turned to Lazar, I suppose.

Then he turned and left, his footsteps echoing on the bare boards of our hall before he disappeared out of sight down the rickety stairs. He might be crazy, I thought, but in the end, he was also frightened.

Chapter 5

Wilhelm Oderburg learns of a death

I was sitting over a melange in the Café Central, reading the Neue Freie Presse, when Schröder suddenly said, I thought of you the other day. There was a pause while he dusted his lapels absentmindedly as if he didn't intend to continue the conversation.

This was his trick to get my curiosity going but I knew him so I waited and, at last, he gave in. Yes, I was having lunch with Friedrich from the Medical Faculty. Guessing some tedious gossip was forthcoming, I went back to my paper and he, realising he was losing my attention, said, We spoke of your interest in vampires.

A word triggers a memory: a picture of rain—washed blood on stone steps. Seeing he had me, he smiled.

I snorted. I’m still the butt of the department’s jokes, I see.

Well, the paper you wrote on vampire hysteria raised a few eyebrows. Rather a diversion for a philosopher. We all wondered what had prompted your sudden interest.

Various things happened. I frowned. Had he forgotten?

He continued, The Faculty received a letter from an old student, now a doctor in London. He has a patient who believes his wife was killed by a vampire.

I did not want him to see how his words gripped me.

Dr Roth believes that the man is insane of course. He treated the wife before she died but could do nothing to save her.

I put down my paper. Steadying my voice, I said, I would be interested in knowing more.

Planning a follow up article?

I ignored his sarcasm. I had to follow any clue. If I could be certain she was truly dead, then I could rest.

Schröder leaned forward and stirred the remains of his coffee. Tell me Wilhelm, do you really believe in vampires?

I paused then said, I am not sure what I believe. Since Liesl died, I have had ideas that do not sit with the normal worldview of an educated man in one of the most advanced cities in the world. If I said that I did believe, then I would be referred to Freud or one of his protégés and they would reduce it all to a psychosis caused by buried incestuous desire. It wasn’t that.

I sat, looking out of the window. With my eyes I saw a busy Vienna street, but in my mind I saw my daughter murdered on the steps outside the Kirche am Steinhof, above the mental hospital I’d consigned her to. Since then the real and the unreal had got mixed up and I could no longer separate them. Like the thing I’d seen there: the thing I never spoke of to anyone for fear it would return.

Schröder was watching me. No doubt, he thought me as odd as all my other colleagues did. Finally, I said, Do you have Dr Roth’s address in London?

I invariably went home straight from work. Many of my colleagues lingered at the cafes near the University but I always wanted to see Rosa. We were childhood sweethearts and I loved her the first time I saw her, though it took me five years to ask her out. For her part, even after all these years, she still seemed pleased to see me.

We’d moved to the new house in the Esslingasse, with its electric lighting, from our old place in the Zeltgasse two years previously. That house was much too big after Liesl died, but I still missed the gas lamps and the mirrors. The new place was functional and only a short tram ride from the University round the Schottenring.

Our old dog was sitting close to the fire warming himself. He’d been with us many years. He was a dog of no particular breed but I was fond of him. We called him ‘Wotan,’ which was a joke because he was small.

After dinner, Rosa said, By the way, that letter you were expecting from London arrived this morning.

It was strange that the subject of London had been raised twice in one day. I have come to believe in portents and I do not rule out the possibility that the Universe in some sense is talking to me, trying to point out routes of enquiry.

Rosa put down her book and went over to the writing desk next to the telephone. She looked tired, much older than her fifty years.

She said, I’m sorry I forgot. You know how absent minded I’m becoming, and I had such a headache this morning.

I took the letter and at the same time took her hand, which was thin and cold. I remembered how fresh and white it had been when she was a girl. I’d kissed it often then, and so much less in the past few years, not through a lack of love, but because time erodes small gestures of affection.

I stroked her pale cheek. You must look after yourself, Rosa—or else who is going to care for me when I’m old?

I was joking but she said, You’ll have to look after yourself when I’m gone Wilhelm.

What do you mean—when you’re gone!

She pinched my cheek and said, Nothing, you old fool. Then she sat down in her chair, still smiling, and picking up her book—Heine’s Travel Pictures. Rosa was romantic and romantics find the blindness of fate very hard to take and Liesl’s death had seemed so very meaningless.

I turned away and opened the letter, the paper crisp to the fingers as I tore it. It was from Professor Edmund White in London, a friend of mine from before the War, and it informed me that the Ottoman dagger I’d tracked down with so much effort was to be auctioned in London later that month.

The dagger had been in the possession of a wealthy Austrian family who’d fallen on hard times after the War and had been forced to sell their heirlooms. I’d first learned of it some months ago, while reading a document listing the spoil from noble Turkish prisoners of war after our soldiers captured land from them in Bosnia in the 1700s.

I’d instructed Edmund White to purchase the dagger without too much fuss and authorised him to spend much more than it was worth in order to be certain of securing it. I also told him that I was interested in learning of anyone else that wanted it—especially if they were prepared to pay over the odds. No doubt, he thought that all of this perhaps was just more of my madness, but I knew they would be looking for it too and buying the dagger was my way of flushing them out. They’d vanished since Liesl’s death and if I was to find her, I had to find them first.

Then, with what Schröder had told me still very much on my mind, I said, Rosa, would you like to make a trip to London?

She looked up from her reading, mildly irritated at being disturbed again. Why would I?

I may have a little business there, one or two things that I could usefully do, and it would be nice to see Edmund White again.

She lowered her book. Edmund is very nice, and so is Lily, but no. No, I couldn’t put up with the damp, the rain, and most of all the terrible food. They boil everything until it has no flavour at all. I lost weight last time I visited England.

She wasn’t much of a traveller, and I knew she was unlikely to change her mind once it was made up. I shrugged; I would have to go alone. They didn’t know who I was, or if they did, they had forgotten. They certainly didn’t know I was looking for them, reading the newspapers from all over Europe trying to uncover their trail; following up leads that had all led to nothing until, I came across the dagger. Up until now, it had been kept in the cabinet of an obscure nobleman. No one knew about it, but now, it was on the open market and I knew they would be unable to resist getting it and destroying it. They would try to do so subtly that no one would realise their involvement, using agents and dupes. That was always their way — to use the innocent to do their filthy work, and leave no trace.

But the letter from Edmund told me that my plan was progressing. I could leave it in his hands for now and so I returned to reading academic papers.

The evening was passed in companionable reading in the drawing room. Then I looked at the clock. It was my routine to walk the dog before bed. I put on my coat and hat and Wotan raised his head. I clipped his lead to his collar and took him out onto the linoleum—floored landing and down the modern stairs. His claws made a comforting clicking noise as we descended.

Outside, it was raining a cold sleety rain and I put up my collar and pulled down my hat. We didn’t walk for long. Wotan was old and walked a shorter distance every day. The centre of Vienna was depressing, the War and the end of the Empire had ruined so many people; the old world had come crashing down around our ears. On every street corner, it seemed there were people wrapped in threadbare blankets begging or standing without shoes in lines for soup from the mobile soup kitchens. Above them, showing through new paint, were the colours of the Habsburgs – yellow and black: everywhere their faded eagles.

I gave what change I had and was thankful for the food in my belly. After about two hundred metres, Wotan sat down on the wet street. I tried to make him budge but he was