It’s been a long time since I wrote a Galbraith & Pole book. I’ve been tied down with the next of my James Burke historical novels for almost a year, but it’s out there with beta readers now, so I’ve had time to think about my vampire policeman, Pole, and his human partner, Chief Inspector Galbraith.
I’m an old softie deep down, so I thought it would be nice to write a story for Valentine’s Day. It’s a bit darker than your usual Valentine tale, but then Pole is one of the Others, as the vampires call themselves, so what did you expect? And Pole being Pole, and me being me, there’s a lot of tango in it.
You don’t need to have read any of the Galbraith & Pole books to enjoy the story, though it would be nice if you had. (And if you have, and you haven’t left a review, could you please spread the Valentine love by reviewing them now.) There are buy links at the end of the post.
Enjoy!
Love, death, and tango.
It had been quiet week. Galbraith had taken the opportunity to spend an evening with Pole. It had been a while since he had sampled the vampire’s scotch and he thought he was overdue a companionable drink.
It had been an unusually cold February and he appreciated the cheerful warmth of a traditional open fire. It was a rare to find real flames flickering in a London flat these days and Galbraith enjoyed the novelty. There were advantages to a friend who had formed their habits of life hundreds of years ago and stayed with them when most people were more than happy with central heating.
He raised his glass. “Here’s to the cold weather. It keeps criminals home in the warm and gives us a quiet life.”
Pole returned his salute. “Life in what you still insist on thinking of as the supernatural world has been uneventful too. None of the Others have been taking illicit Mortal blood. No werewolves have been glimpsed prowling the Royal Parks. All is right with the world.” He gestured toward the leather bound volumes in his book case. “I may even take the opportunity to catch up on my reading.” He sipped at his whisky. “And it has been a while since I went out dancing.
“Ah, yes,” said Galbraith. “Tango.” He sat quietly for a while thinking about the dance. He’s been dancing more often since he had started going out with Jane Ellis. ‘Going out.’ It made him sound like a teenager and he hadn’t been a teenager for longer than he cared to think about. The idea made him chuckle.
Pole raised an eyebrow. “Something amusing?”
“I was thinking about tango.” Well, it was almost true. He hurried on before Pole asked anything else. His friend had an unnatural ability to know what he was thinking and he was not sure that he wanted to discuss his relationship with Ms Ellis. “How did you come to start dancing tango?”
Pole raised his glass but, instead of drinking, he sniffed it thoughtfully before setting it down untouched and leaning back in his armchair.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “Not that long in terms of my life, but more than half a century before you were born.”
Galbraith said nothing. His friend, he knew, would tell the story in his own time.
“It was 1913. They called it ‘the year of the tango’. The dance had just been introduced to Europe by rich Argentinians doing the Grand Tour.” Galbraith must have looked quizzical because Pole raised an admonitory finger. “Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world back then. Their rich young men went to all the best places and wherever they went they took this dance. Such a scandal!” He smiled and Galbraith imagined him all those years ago, enjoying watching this shocking new dance. “The Pope condemned it. The Queen refused to allow it to be danced in her presence. It was, according to the papers, lascivious and lewd, bodies pressed together, legs intertwined. It presaged, they said, the end of civilisation and all that was pure and decent. Of course I had to see it.”
Pole began to describe the scene. His voice seemed to grow deeper and Galbraith found himself feeling drowsy, sitting there by the fire, the whisky warming his veins. He had seen this trick of Pole’s before, so he was hardly surprised when the vampire’s voice seemed to fade and he was there, in 1913, watching a room full of young people dancing tango. He smelt cigarette smoke and perfume.
The men were in suits or dinner jackets, bow ties askew as they danced. Galbraith had expected to see girls in flapper dresses with bobbed hair but the women in his vision were wearing Edwardian clothes. The dresses were well below mid-calf but gave the impression of being more daring by having shorter tops worn over longer layers. Biased hems revealed ankles and some skirts were split creating opportunities for the dancers to allow glimpses of calves as they span around their partners, legs flashing out in what Galbraith thought must have been considered very daring dance steps at the time.
The men’s clothes were respectable blacks and whites, but the women seemed to sport an extraordinary amount of orange. Their fabrics were not only brightly coloured but lightweight, almost gossamer, adding to the sense that Victorian standards had been well and truly abandoned. Their hair was not bobbed but it was worn short, elaborately curved or waved. Respectable hats had been virtually abandoned but feathers, turbans and fascinators were all the rage – nothing that would get in the way of dancing cheek to cheek with their partners.
The room was lit by a chandelier and the light sparkled off jewelled broaches and rhinestones sewn to seams. A live band – violins, a piano, a double bass, and the concertina-like bandoneon – played on a platform at one side of the room and the floor was filled with couples dancing, if not lasciviously, definitely very close together. Galbraith could see why the Pope was not amused.
Even in that sea of bright young things, one girl stood out. She was petite with a dress a daring inch or two shorter than most, her lips painted in a brilliant vermillion cupid’s bow. Her hair was chestnut brown and her green eyes held more than a hint of mischief.
As Galbraith watched, an older man approached her, took her in his arms and whirled her away across the room. To his astonishment, he recognised Pole. The vampire seemed somehow more youthful, although he had changed his appearance hardly at all.
The scene flickered for a moment and was gone.
“Her name was Madelaine,” said Pole, “and I was very taken with her.”
“You were in love.”
Pole made a small, dismissive gesture with the hand that was not holding his glass.
“We Others do not love as Mortals love. It is not that we don’t have a soul, or that we do not feel things as you do. But we are, by our nature, different. We will not have children together. We cannot watch each other grow old. We will live, not for ever, but for a very, very long time. But we are trapped in the life we had when we became what we are. Mortals change as their bodies change. They grow thicker in the waist and thinner in the hair. They become less impulsive and more thoughtful. And, as they change, so they and their true love change together, growing into each other’s shape. That, I think, is what true love is for Mortals. And we can never have that. We are almost changeless. If I were to say to a lover that we will be together until we die, that’s an unimaginably long time to live, unchanged, unyielding, day after endless day.”
Galbraith attempted a sympathetic nod, but he was not convinced. He had seen the way Pole looked at her as they danced. The vampire’s insistence that he had not been in love was no more convincing than that of any young man helplessly infatuated with a beautiful girl.
“In any event,” said Pole, “a few weeks after I met Madelaine, I found myself with more pressing concerns at these tango parties.”
Galbraith nodded and waited. As ever, Pole would not be hurried with his story.
“Several young men died in what the police at the time referred to as ‘mysterious circumstances’. Unfortunately, to those who knew of the existence of the Others, and our arrangement to preserve peace between the Others and Mortals, the circumstances were anything but mysterious. They were what alarmists insist on calling ‘vampire attacks’. The bodies were found drained of blood. They were ‘respectable’ young men …” (Pole’s tone suggested that he did not think they were respectable at all.) “By which I mean that they had money and that their deaths could not therefore be ignored by the authorities. I was called in to investigate.”
Pole had no official status with the police in those days. Section S had yet to come into existence, but, he said, it was not difficult to discover that all that the men had in common – besides that they were men and had money – was that they enjoyed the new craze for tango.
“More than that, they frequented the same clubs where I danced with Madelaine. In these circumstances, I felt that it was no less than my duty to attend as many of the dances as I could – purely, of course, to let me keep an eye out for any unusual activity.”
Galbraith could not resist a smile. “And if that meant you spending more time with Madelaine, that was a burden you felt you had to bear.”
Pole’s glance, Galbraith felt, could fairly be described as ‘icy’.
“Indeed. In fact, Madelaine’s presence was helpful because it explained my frequent attendance.” Pole’s expression suggested that any ironic comments from Galbraith would not be appreciated.
“After a week or two, I was dancing almost every night, but I never saw anything suspicious. The deaths continued and arrangements were made for me to see the bodies. I recognised most of them from the dances I had attended. I had, of course, seen many deaths over the centuries, but there was something strangely disturbing about these. I would have danced alongside them one night and viewed their bodies in the morgue the next morning. In many cases, I had seen them dancing with Madelaine, mere hours before their deaths. It was hardly surprising. I would dance only two or three turns in the evening with her – more would have been considered improper – and she was a popular girl. Even so, it was unsettling.”
Again, Pole’s voice deepened and Galbraith was back in 1913. It was a different club. The crowd looked more monied. There were more diamonds and rubies in the elaborate brooches. Smartly dressed staff circulated with drinks. He saw Pole dancing with a tall, thin girl whose hair was held in place with a headband which sported a yellow feather. Pole himself was wearing a smart dinner jacket. Galbraith was sure that Pole would have explained it as an effort to be inconspicuous among the rich men showing off their fine tailoring, but Galbraith saw Madelaine glance in Pole’s direction with apparent approval and Galbraith suspected that Madelaine’s approval had featured in Pole’s choice of wardrobe.
The music ended and Pole escorted his partner back to her seat before looking about to catch Madelaine’s eye. He was too late, though. A plump man, rather older than most of the crowd, had already claimed her for the next dance. Frustrated, Pole strolled towards the bar, and settled himself with a drink while he watched the dancers.
Galbraith heard Pole’s voice, as if from a great distance. “You must remember that these were simpler times. There were fewer records kept. People lived in villages that they never left. If they took it in their heads to come to live in London, they had by today’s standards, a remarkable lack of documentation. And the Others were less organised than today. I recognised a few of them at the club, but there may well have been more who were unknown to me. I am no more able to recognise my fellows than you are, although we share some characteristics that are a bit of a giveaway if I spend time with them. In the bustle of a dance club, though, it is not at all obvious. Afterwards, I blamed myself. I felt I should have realised, although I really cannot say how.”
The scene shifted. The club was gone and Pole was in a white-tiled room, looking down at a body lying on a table, covered by a sheet. Someone drew back the revealing the face of the older man who had been dancing with Madelaine. The pallor of the skin told him all he needed to know, even before the pathologist had explained that death had been caused by massive blood loss.
The vision faded and Galbraith found himself back in Pole’s flat. His friend looked, even for him, unnaturally pale, and he was making serious inroads into his Scotch.
“I asked about how the body had been found. Usually they were at home, sometimes in a drawing room, sometimes in bed. There were never signs of a struggle. It seemed reasonable to assume that they had been killed by somebody they had had no suspicions of. The fact that some were found in bed rather suggested a woman might have been involved, although it can be dangerous to make assumptions about these things. This gentleman – his name, I recall, was Padmore – had been found in a hotel. He was not the first to have been discovered in such an establishment. Usually they were small places, not overly concerned about the respectability of their guests. The staff had either never seen anyone accompanying the victims or they considered it wiser to claim ignorance. Mr Padmore was an exception. When I visited the hotel, I was able to interview a bellboy who said that he had seen the deceased enter the hotel accompanied by a young woman. I naturally enquired what the young woman looked like but the bellboy said that, discretion being the watchword of the establishment, he had not taken a good look at her. All he could say was that she had chestnut hair and was very pretty.”
He looked, Galbraith thought, suddenly much older.
“I should have known then, but there were lots of pretty girls dancing tango in those days. It could have been any of them.”
Pole continued to go out dancing and kept a special eye out for girls with chestnut hair. “Madelaine noticed, of course, and teased me horribly, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. And then, one night, I was delayed – another case, involving an unfortunate incident in Soho, a place that well deserved its evil reputation in those days. Once I could get away, I decided to try to meet Madelaine anyway.” He took another pull at his Scotch. “She was leaving as I arrived. She was moving off away from the direction I was walking and she didn’t see me. She was hanging on the arm of a tall fellow I had noticed there the previous night: a silly looking sort of chap with a monocle.”
It had been over a hundred years ago, but Galbraith could still hear the jealous bitterness in his voice.
“I followed them. I told myself I was just doing my job, but I think I was angry and wanted to spy on her.” He paused, thinking back to that night. “They walked to a house in Fitzrovia and I watched them climb the front steps and vanish inside. After a few minutes I saw a light go on in an upper room. I confess it distressed me. In any case, there was nothing to be gained by staying there. I had lost any interest in dancing so I went home and worked for the night.”
There was a long silence. The two men sat there, watching the flames in the grate.
Eventually, Pole spoke again.
“The next evening, I received word of the latest death. A tall young man who lived in Fitzrovia. I asked if he wore a monocle and, of course, he did.”
Pole topped up his drink.
“I confronted her the next night. I asked if I could walk her home. I never had before, and she seemed really happy that I did then. When we arrived, I insisted on entering, although it was obviously beyond all the bounds of propriety. I felt, by then, that propriety could go hang.”
He took another drink before, with an almost visible effort, pressing on with the story.
“When I told her what I knew, she did not deny it. I had never told her of my condition, but she said she was not surprised. She had, she claimed, always felt a particular connection to me and she supposed that the fact that neither of us was Mortal explained it. She had been changed by somebody who had been killed shortly after, and she had made her own way in our world, without anybody to guide her. Without help, she gave in to her cravings. Now she was as dependent on fresh human blood as any addict is addicted to their drug of choice.”
Galbraith watched as he struggled with the memory of that night.
“I told her that I could help her. That I knew people who could control her behaviour. It was, as far as our kind was concerned, the beginning of the modern world. We had scientists, doctors and psychiatrists helping the Others away from their old ways into the position we have today where we can live quietly alongside Mortals. It’s a precarious balance but it lets us survive in a world that lacks the dark corners where we used to live. It can …” For a moment there was a flash of the usual urbane Pole, as he gestured around his flat. “It can be very comfortable.”
“We had a private hospital out in Surrey. It was quite an isolated spot in those days and there was a high wall to ensure privacy.”
Again, Galbraith found himself back in the past, watching Pole and Madelaine. They were walking in the grounds of a large house. It was a sunny day and banks of flowers made a brilliant showing in the garden but Madelaine seemed in no mood to enjoy it. She had lost weight and, in a respectable full-length skirt, she was barely recognisable as the vivacious young woman from the club. Her eyes were sunk in her face and she twitched nervously, her hands constantly pulling at her blouse. Pole was alongside her, talking gently. Galbraith could not hear what he was saying, but from time to time he would reach for her hand and she would take it for a minute or two, before snatching it away and once more fiddling with her clothes.
Pole’s voice filtered into the vision. “She found it hard there, away from the life she had built for herself in London, but I had no choice. She had to be kept locked away until she had learned to master her overpowering desire for blood. I visited as often as I could but I found there were increasing demands on my time. The international situation was deteriorating and the arrangement the Others had made with the Crown meant that I was often sent on missions into Europe as tensions built, and Britain and Germany started to spy out the land for the conflict we all knew was coming.”
The visions changed and Galbraith saw a kaleidoscope of images: Pole on a cross-channel steamer; an explosion in a munitions factory; Pole opening a safe in a darkened room.
“The irony was that it was such a beautiful summer. I even began to think that the treatment they were giving Madelaine might be starting to work. And then, suddenly we were at war.”
Galbraith saw Pole in uniform, his polished Sam Browne belt shining against the khaki jacket.
“I was officially a soldier but I spent little time in the trenches. I saw enough to realise how bad it was – almost as bad as our Civil War.” Pole’s face twitched. He never spoke of those days, but Galbraith knew that he had lived through the Civil War and the memory still haunted him. Now, though, Pole was remembering the more recent conflict. The images seemed to spill from Pole’s mind in an uncontrolled torrent. Galbraith saw the rats eating the bodies just out of reach in No Man’s Land. He heard the guns and the cries of the wounded. He smelt mud and blood and the stench of men crammed together with no proper latrines or ways to clean themselves. Then, mercifully, the visions stopped and he was back in Pole’s flat.
“My feelings for Madelaine seemed very petty in the midst of all that suffering and death. But, as soon as I could return to England on leave, I went to visit her again.”
Galbraith saw Pole, incongruous in his uniform, once again walking through the garden with Madelaine. It was Autumn and the leaves were turning brown. Madelaine did look better. She took his hand and smiled at him, but she was still painfully thin.
“They told me that I should spend time with her in her room. The psychiatrist there held very advanced views for the period.”
The vision continued and Galbraith was briefly concerned that he was playing the part of a voyeur in an intimate meeting, but he should not have been worried. Pole did remove the stiff Sam Browne belt and eventually discarded the jacket. What followed might have been considered risqué in 1914 but was, by 21st century standards, a very restrained display of affection.
“The hospital had been experimenting with alternatives to fresh blood and she had been finding it difficult to cope with these but, after we had sat together for a while, she said she felt so much better that she would try again to eat a plateful of the diet they were trying to wean her onto. I was happy that she was making the attempt, seemingly at least in part to please me. I went cheerfully to the kitchens and returned bearing a plate of some sort of blood meal. I admit I did not think it looked particularly appetising, but she made a valiant effort, eating about half of it. I left, convinced that I had been able to do some good.”
Pole was quiet for a while. It seemed to Galbraith that he was playing back in his head the scenes of that day but, if he was, these were not images that he was happy to share.
“I had almost reached the door when I felt that there was something wrong about the way my Sam Browne belt hung against my body. The holster was too light. I unbuttoned the flap and saw Madelaine’s hairbrush where my revolver should have been. She must have taken the weapon when she sent me to bring her the food.
I turned and ran back towards her room. I had almost reached it when I heard the shot.
She was lying on the bed, a coverlet across her body. One arm had fallen to the side. The other still held my revolver at her breast. She had shot herself through the heart. I could not see the wound but the blood was already soaking through the bedcover.”
There was a note, he said.
“It told me that she loved me but that she could not live with her condition. That I should go back to the war and forget about her. At the bottom, where she had signed her name, the ink was smudged as if a tear had dropped on it. Which, of course, is impossible, as we Others do not cry.”
Galbraith could think of nothing to say. The two friends sat in silence while they finished their drinks. When he got up to leave he thought, for a moment, that he glimpsed moisture in the vampire’s eyes, but then he told himself it was a trick of the light. Vampires, as Pole had said, do not cry.
He stepped out into the street, that February evening, and started home. He thought of Jane Ellis and Madelaine and lost chances and lost love. It was almost Valentine’s Day. He would ask her if she would go dancing with him.
The Galbraith and Pole books
There are three Galbraith & Pole books.
Something Wicked introduces Chief Inspector Pole when he assists Chief Inspector Galbraith in investigating the death of a peer of the realm and introduces him to tango. Vampires love tango, partly because it’s usually danced at night.
In Eat the Poor, Pole teams up with Galbraith again when a werewolf is roaming London. As the investigation moves to Westminster, politics starts to get bloody.
In Monsters in the Mist, the urbane Chief Inspector Pole and the very urban Galbraith are both out of their comfort zone investigating a savage killing on the hills of mid-Wales. Is it another werewolf, or something even more sinister?
I saw a picture somewhere on social media posted by an author who is writing their first vampire book. I can’t find it now, but it showed a couple (presumably vampires) in a dance hold.
It will be fun if someone else produces a vampire tale featuring dancers with, let’s say, specialist dietary requirements, but I hope, dear readers, that you won’t forget that you saw it here first. My ‘Galbraith & Pole’ series (three so far, but there will be more) started with Something Wicked which features murder, mystery and tango.
They say you should write about what you know and I’m putting together this blog post between Monday night’s tango and Wednesday night’s tango with a couple more evenings of tango planned for the weekend. It’s fair to say that the references to tango in the book are well researched.
The idea of tango-dancing vampires came on one of my many visits to Buenos Aires, a city almost as famous for its spectacular cemeteries as for the celebrated dance. You seem to see so many more people after dark then are around in the day and, first thing in the morning, it’s easy to believe that the weary, somnambulant creatures propping themselves up on public transport are related to the Undead.
Buenos Aires street scene. Note that the dancers stay in the shadows
Chief Inspector Pole is not your typical vampire. He’s urbane and sophisticated and has been known to cook with garlic just to make a point. But mess with him and you can see a more ruthless side to his character. Fortunately, he uses his powers for good – mostly.
If you haven’t read my Urban Fantasy books before, give Something Wicked a go. It’s just £2.99 on Kindle.
Amazon reviews
Here are some of the things people have said about it on Amazon:
If you enjoy light, amusing and elegant humour and would relish the thrills and chills of the supernatural kind, then Something Wicked is definitely for you.
Cleverly-conceived, well-written and excellently plotted
I shall never look at Brompton Cemetery in quite the same way again!
A really great read! Who knew a story about vampires, detectives and tango could be so entertaining?!
I’m not a big short-story writer but once I got the idea for this one, I couldn’t let it go. It features Galbraith and Pole and is set soon after they first met in Something Wicked. You can enjoy it even if you haven’t read Something Wicked but I’m giving the book away free today and tomorrow (Wednesday) if you want to.
It’s in the early days of Galbraith and Pole’s friendship, as they are feeling their way. For Galbraith, the idea of friendship with a vampire is something he is not entirely comfortable with but Christmas brings them closer together.
It’s an unashamedly schmaltzy story because it’s Christmas. And it’s got tango in because Pole (like me) loves the dance and the music.
I hope you enjoy it.
Merry Christmas.
THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
The pawn shop had one of those old fashioned bells that rang when a customer opened the door. The owner shuffled out of the back.
“Can I help you?” He spoke automatically before he recognised his customer. “Oh, Mr Galbraith. What brings you in here?”
“Afternoon, Sam. I didn’t expect you to be overjoyed to see me, but you could sound a bit more welcoming than that. It’s nearly Christmas.”
“You make me nervous, Mr Galbraith. I won’t tell a lie. I’ve been straight since – well, since you last ran me in, but you turn up and I wonder what a Chief Inspector is doing bothering the likes of me.”
Galbraith wandered over to the nearest of the display cases. It was the usual stuff: watches, some cheap jewellery, a few high-end mobile phones. “Maybe I’m just doing a bit of shopping, Sam.”
Sam said nothing.
“Fair enough.” Galbraith turned his attention to a pile of old vinyl records sat on the table. “I was just wondering if you’d heard anything about computers. A few seem to have gone missing from warehouses lately.”
“Not my thing, computers. Difficult to put a price on. Somebody shows up with a smart laptop in its box and all and then it turns out that they’ve changed the processor thingy. Looks fine, switches on and everything, but it’s a piece of junk. Been caught that way a couple of times. You can’t trust anybody these days. Too many crooks about.”
“Any particular crooks in mind, Sam?” He was looking through the records. The covers spoke of the bands of his youth: Oasis, Stone Roses, Blur, the Chemical Brothers.
Sam sniffed. Galbraith was a big man, generally easy going but able to exude an indefinable air of menace when he wanted. It was a useful ability in a police officer.
“Might have heard something,” Sam said. “Word is that the Bingham brothers have been offering a few laptops around.”
“Have they indeed?” Galbraith worked his way to the bottom of the pile where a few 78s sat incongruously alongside the shiny covers of the late 20th century. One of them seemed to be Spanish. ‘Yo no sé qué me han hecho tus ojos.’ Galbraith slipped it out of its paper sleeve. ‘Odeon Bs As’ it said on the label.
“That’s very helpful, Sam.” He was careful not to sound as if it was particularly useful, though he reckoned it was just the lead he had been looking for. He felt, in the circumstances, it would be only polite to buy something. He held up the disc. “What do you want for this?”
Sam sniffed. “Call it fifty quid,” he said.
“Call it twenty.”
“If I sell it you for that, will you bugger off and leave me alone?”
Galbraith took £50 from his wallet. “And miss the pleasure of your company,” he said.
The bell tinged behind him as he left.
* * *
It was the first Christmas after he had met Chief Inspector Pole. He had wondered if it would be appropriate to offer his new colleague a Christmas present. Did vampires even celebrate Christmas?
He decided that finding the record was a sign that a gift would be well received. An old record from Buenos Aires was likely to appeal to Pole, with his fascination with tango. Galbraith decided to wrap it up and take it with him the next evening when he was due to visit Pole and enjoy the Other’s taste in whisky.
Pole’s apartment was, as ever, a quiet retreat from the world. There was no sign that they were barely a fortnight off Christmas: no tree, no cards. Galbraith wondered if his garishly wrapped gift – all cartoon Santas and reindeer – had been misjudged, but Pole seemed delighted with the idea.
“I don’t think anybody has ever give me a Christmas gift before. I’m not entirely sure of the etiquette. Do I open it now or wait until the 25th?”
In the absence of any sign that Christmas Day was to be marked in any way in Pole’s home, Galbraith saw no reason for not opening the gift immediately.
Pole smiled, apparently delighted with the idea of opening his present. First, though, he set it carefully on the desk in the corner of the room, opened a drawer and took out what seemed to Galbraith a wicked looking dagger. Noticing his glance, Pole explained. “It’s an Italian stiletto. I took it from an assassin who was quite anxious not to see James II flee the country. I use it as a paper knife. It’s too pretty to throw away.”
It was pretty, though the narrow blade meant it was far from an ideal paper knife. Still, Galbraith thought, it was better that Pole use it for opening parcels than that he decided to stab people with it. There was obviously a story behind Pole’s acquisition of the blade but Galbraith refused to give him the satisfaction of asking about it.
Pole put the wrapping paper neatly aside and examined the record.
“Where on earth did you find this? It’s an original Gardel recording from 1931.”
He poured Galbraith another whisky and, telling him to wait, he hurried from the room, returning with an old wind-up record player complete with a huge horn to amplify the music. “No electronics to get in the way of the sound,” he proudly informed Galbraith.
It had never occurred to Galbraith that Pole might actually play the record but, after he had wound the machine up and lovingly wiped over the surface of the disc, they sat and listened to the crackly sound of the voice of the legendary Carlos Gardel.
“Can’t you feel him, reaching out to us across a hundred years?”
It was a tango tune in waltz time. “Canaro dedicated it to his lover, Ada Falcón. He writes about her eyes and the love he sees in them.”
Galbraith enjoyed listening to Pole talk about tango, although he had to admit that he did not share the true aficionado’s enthusiasm for these scratchy old recordings. He was just happy to see how much pleasure his gift had given to his friend.
They listened to the record several more times and drank a few more glasses of Scotch before Galbraith set off home, his friend’s thanks still ringing in his ears.
* * *
It was a while before Pole was in touch again. He rang Galbraith in his office at Kensington police station – the way he usually chose to get in touch.
“I just wanted to thank you again for the record. I was very touched.”
Galbraith made the usual polite noises of an Englishman uncertain how to respond to effusive gratitude.
“I’ve been trying to think of something I could offer in return.”
Galbraith made more polite noises. The words “no need” and “my pleasure” were in there somewhere but Pole simply ignored him.
“People do say that the best gifts are experiences. I thought I could offer you an experience that reflects the spirit of the season. Do you think you could call over in the evening the day after tomorrow? And bring your car? I thought we might take a run out into the country.”
The day after tomorrow, Galbraith realised, was Christmas Eve. It seemed an odd day to be calling on his friend but, when he came to think about it, it wasn’t as if he had any other plans. Christmas, for Galbraith, was a solitary celebration and the idea of seeing Pole on Christmas Eve appealed. So, two days later, he arrived in Chelsea to find Pole already dressed in coat and hat.
“We’d best be starting. We’ve a little way to go.”
Pole directed him west. Galbraith suggested that he put their destination into the sat nav but Pole insisted instead that they rely on his road atlas.
Pole opened the large hard-backed book he had been holding under his arm. Galbraith could not remember when he had last seen an old fashioned road atlas. He was surprised they still made them and he could only hope that this one was up-to-date enough to get them to their destination.
They headed out of town along the Great West Road. After a while, it seemed clear to Galbraith that it would have been more sensible for them to take the M4 but, when he suggested this to Pole, he said that he had been using the Great West Road since the main traffic had been stagecoaches and that by now he preferred the route.
A few miles short of Reading, they left the main road and headed south. Although they were less than an hour from London, they seem to be deep in the countryside and Galbraith struggled to navigate the tiny unlit roads.
“Pull off here.”
They were in a paved yard. Galbraith could just make out a house in the darkness.
“It’s owned by a colleague,” said Pole.
“One of the Others.”
“Indeed.”
“I thought you were more town dwellers.”
“We generally are. But Simon has decided to live in the country. He says the isolation means he is less exposed to temptation.”
Galbraith said nothing. He knew that part of Pole’s job was to discourage the Others from indulging in their natural appetite for blood. Some, Pole had explained, found it easier than others.
“He’s not at home. He likes to wander the countryside at night. But he’s happy for us to be here.”
Pole led the way along a track that ran from the yard past the side of the house and into a field beyond.
In the distance was what looked like a shed just visible against the starry sky.
“It’s a stable,” said Pole. “Simon is by way of being a hobby farmer. He says he finds the animals restful.”
In the darkness, Galbraith heard the clucking of chickens beside the path.
“Odd sort of farmer who leaves his birds out at night. He must lose a lot to foxes.”
Pole chuckled. “It would be a very brave fox that took chickens on this land.” He pointed towards the stable. “Such a lovely night. Look at that star.”
There was one star, low in the sky, brighter, it seemed than the others.
“It seems appropriate, doesn’t it? Following the star towards the stable.”
Galbraith could not remember when he was last out of the city on a clear night. He was astonished by the number of stars he could see. There was a quarter moon too. Even without his friend’s night vision, Galbraith had no problem in keeping to the path.
“And here we are.”
Pole opened the door and reached inside for a light switch.
Galbraith could hardly believe what he was looking at. Inside a bull – a big bull with a ring in its nose, looking for all the world like an illustration in a children’s storybook – stood alongside a donkey. Half a dozen sheep were curled up beside them on the straw.
“As I said, he’s a hobby farmer. There’s no sense to it, but Simon enjoys the look of the place, especially at this time of year.”
It did, Galbraith admitted to himself, look amazing: a sort of recreation of the traditional first Christmas. He found himself looking around, searching for a baby in a manger.
“It’s certainly a different way to see in Christmas.”
Pole smiled. “But there is more. Do you know the legend of Christmas?”
Galbraith looked puzzled and Pole explained. “The legend says that at midnight on Christmas Eve, the ox and the ass are given the power of speech.”
Galbraith vaguely remembered the story from his childhood but surely Pole had not brought him here because he believed it.
“You shouldn’t dismiss these legends out of hand. After all, I’m sure you didn’t believe the stories of immortal creatures that feast on blood until you met them.”
Galbraith admitted that was true, but the story of the animals talking seemed even more implausible.
“Why not listen and see what happens?”
Why not? It was pleasant in the stable, warm with the body heat of the animals and peaceful in the quiet of the winter night. Galbraith stood quietly listening but, apart from the shuffling of the donkey and the occasional sleepy bleat of a sheep, he heard nothing.
After a while there was a sound, but it came from outside the stable. Somewhere in the distance, church bells were ringing in Christmas Day.
“Did you hear anything?” Pole’s voice was deep, calm, reassuring. It was what Galbraith thought of as Pole’s ‘hypnotism’ voice, though Pole always denied that he hypnotised anybody. If he was trying to hypnotise Galbraith, it wasn’t succeeding. The animals remained obstinately dumb.
“Nothing,” said Galbraith. “Perhaps the Others are more sensitive than we Mortals.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Pole. “After all, we have been honing our skills for a few hundred years.” He turned towards the door. “I’m sorry it was a wasted trip.”
“Hardly wasted,” said Galbraith. “There’s something magical about a scene like this on Christmas Eve.”
Pole glanced back over his shoulder and smiled. “Magical. Yes, I think there is.”
He opened the door and, as he did so, Galbraith could have sworn that somebody in the stable wished him a Merry Christmas. “And a happy new year.”
There was something odd about the voice. Something not quite human.
Galbraith turned away from the door and looked back again towards the animals. The donkey and the bull stood placidly. There was no sign that either of them had spoken. The sheep twitched in their sleep.
He had imagined it. That or Pole was somehow playing games with his mind again.
The bull raised its head and looked at him. Its eye was like a deep brown pool, strangely gentle in that huge head. It seemed somehow very wise.
“We’d best he on our way,” said Pole.
Galbraith did not move. He was staring at the bull. It had long, soft eyelashes and he watched as its eyelid drooped.
He could have sworn that the creature was winking at him.
Pole turned off the light and they started back towards the car. Behind him Galbraith heard a soft laugh that was almost, but not quite, human.
“Merry Christmas,” said Pole.
Something Wicked
Chief Inspector Galbraith thinks he understands murder. But when he finds himself working with a vampire, there is more at stake than catching one killer. Can the case be solved before a 500 year truce breaks down?
It’s been a while since I have posted anything about tango, but somebody has asked me to re-post something I wrote years ago about dancing in social settings. It’s not about the dance itself, but about the social rules, the código as the Argentinians call them. I’ll be taking a quick tour of tango around the world, so it may interest non-dancers. If you think it’s not for you, normal service will be resumed on Friday.
As the tango dancers I know are getting excited about venturing out and once again tangoing with friends, we all have to remember how we went about the whole social side of getting a dance. Perhaps that’s why this topic has suddenly become something we are talking about again.
I have danced in London, Buenos Aires, Reykjavik, Paris, Lisbon, Cluj (Romania) and Istanbul, which may seem like a lot of places to non-dancers, but makes me considerably less well-travelled than serious aficionados. Everything that I say is based on that limited experience. In the end, it’s just my opinion, but what you have to remember is that the same goes for everyone else. I do get irritated by people who say that they know the only ‘correct’ way to behave at a milonga (a social dance). The right way to behave is how most other people behave and, if in doubt, in the way that will give most people a pleasant evening. For example, I’ve seen film of milongas in Finland where electronic signs say that men should ask women for this dance and, a little later, that women should ask men. As far as I know, that system is unique to Finland, but if I ever dance in Helsinki, that’s the system I will use.
Let me transport you to Buenos Aires a few years ago. (Places change, so the clubs may no longer be as I describe them.) It’s afternoon in a great barn of a place called the Nuevo Salon. The largely elderly clientele are dancing a traditional tanda – four dances one after the other. The music ends and couples leave the floor, returning to their tables. As the music for the interval (the cortina) plays, men rise to their feet and cross to women who stand to meet them. The next tango starts and, apparently approving of the music, more men stand and, as if by magic, their chosen partners rise to greet them.
Confiteria Ideal: Buenos Aires
How, in this huge hall, have the hundreds of men and women managed to sort out who is going to dance with whom? That is the magic of the cabeceo.
The cabeceo is the look that a man casts towards a woman to show that he would like to dance with her. The woman returns the look and the man approaches her. As he does so, she rises to her feet, he extends his hand and the couple take to the floor. It’s exotic and romantic and Europeans often insist that it’s the only way to invite a woman to dance.
Unfortunately, this simple view of the cabeceo is wrong in almost every particular. For a start, men (wise men who know the rules) don’t randomly cabeceo any woman they would like to dance with. They look for women who appear interested in dancing and, in Buenos Aires at least, the woman will signify her interest with the mirada (literally ‘glance’). This is a meeting of eyes, brief enough to be plausibly denied but bold enough to make it clear that a cabeceo would be favourably received.
The mirada/cabeceo duet can be enormous fun. I’m standing there, running my eyes along the followers sat (or, in London, more often stood) beside the floor and I catch a tiny flash of interest from a stranger’s face. I stop and return my gaze to her. There is a half-smile, the faintest flicker of an eye-brow and I walk toward her, extend my hand and there we are, no words spoken, holding each other as we dance. It is one of the smoothest and sexiest of social exchanges that doesn’t involve actual sex. If that’s how you expect to get your dances in London, though, you’ll spend a lot of time standing around waiting to strike lucky, for few women in London even know what a mirada is, let alone use it routinely. This, on its own, makes the cabeceo far from ideally suited to the London tango scene.
Dancing by the Seine: Paris
Back in the Nuevo Salon the men are offering their cabeceos and, if they read the signs correctly, they are being accepted. Here’s the second problem. Remember that in London the woman accepted with some tiny acknowledgement of the offer. But when I tried this in one famous Buenos Aires venue I was met with blank looks. Eventually a kind lady explained the rules. In this venue women did not acknowledge the cabeceo with anything so forward as even the tiniest of smiles. Rather they would glance away and then return your glance to check that you were still looking at them. That was it. Otherwise they would just keep their expression neutral with a look uncomfortably similar to that you would get if a woman was “blanking” you in London.
Mirada noted, cabeceo delivered and invitation accepted, you might think nothing else could go wrong. You’d be mistaken. More than once I have walked towards the woman I have invited and, milliseconds before she gets to her feet, the woman sitting directly behind her stands up. I’ve met some good dancers that way, but dealing with the embarrassment of the moment can be more than a trifle awkward.
Based on my experience, those enthusiasts who say that the cabeceo is simple and avoids misunderstandings and embarrassment have either been very lucky or have spent their lives dancing in a limited number of venues with lots of partners they know well. Of course the cabeceo works smoothly if leader and follower know each other. My wife and I can catch the shortest of glances across a crowded room and know that we want to dance together. But the whole point of the cabeceo is that it should allow you to dance with strangers. As I said earlier, when this works, it works really well. In some venues, it is normal not to ask your partner’s name. You meet as strangers, dance as intimates and part as strangers. I love it when this happens, but life is seldom as simple as that.
Lisbon
The legend of the mystical Argentine cabeceo has given rise to all sorts of stories that I can tell you from my own experience are just rubbish. Argentine women will not actively solicit dances, they say: one woman used to look out for me and half rise from her chair, smiling at me as the cortina started. The legend says that Argentinians will never offer a verbal invitation: not only has my wife been invited by men simply asking her, but I remember a woman approaching us as we sat together and asking Tammy if she could borrow her husband. The way that people invite each other varies from milonga to milonga: there is no straightforwardly ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ approach.
In the most rigidly formal milongas, men and women are seated by a hostess on opposite sides of the room. Experienced dancers, known to the hostess, will be sat at the front, next to the floor. Visiting gringos are likely to be in the corner at the back. You know as soon as you are seated exactly where you are in the pecking order. (I was once given a bad seat by a hostess I didn’t know and I smiled sweetly and said I thought there’d been a mistake. I was promptly promoted.) You will stay in the same seat all night. If you are a regular, you will be given the same seat whenever you arrive. Thus everyone knows where you are and women know in which direction to make their miradas. Similarly, you know where the women you want to cabeceo are going to be sitting. It’s a system that works well if you are familiar with the club and the etiquette. If you are a stranger, sat on your own in a poor seat surrounded by people you don’t know, it can make for a really miserable experience. It’s worth trying it once, in a spirit of anthropological enquiry, but it’s not for everyone.
The system requires a seat for everybody at the dance. In Argentina, clubs will always sacrifice floor space to fit in more tables and seating. During the cortinas the floor clears, so men and women have an uninterrupted view of each other. The lighting is good so that people can easily see the expressions of those sitting across the room. In these conditions, with everyone knowing the rules, the cabeceo can work quite well. Contrast the situation in London. There aren’t enough seats, so people constantly move as they are forced to play musical chairs. Men and women are mixed together – fine for conversation, but tricky if you want to catch the eye of someone sat three seats to the side of you. Because there aren’t enough chairs, the floor never entirely clears, so you can’t see the people opposite you. The women don’t mirada and, because they think they look sexier without their glasses, many of them can’t see your cabeceo anyway. (I wish I was making this up, but I’m not.) Plus, in London, dim lighting is the norm, so even if you have got your glasses on, seeing anybody’s expression is tricky. Under these circumstances, relying exclusively on the cabeceo is really rather silly. That’s even before you look at the cultural differences.
Tango Terra: London
In Spanish South America women’s social behaviour was strictly curtailed. A woman could not simply enter into conversation with a strange man. The cabeceo allowed men and women to agree to dance (and only to dance – they return to their separate seats) without breaking social taboos on talking to strangers. Yes, things are different nowadays – but that’s where the cabeceo started. In England, though, the free mingling of the sexes has a longer social pedigree. If you want to ask someone to dance, you can do just that. It’s true that you risk rejection – but a cabeceo can be rejected too (and the rejection is just as public even if slightly subtler). But the rejection of a verbal invitation can be tempered. (I’m told that “I’m sorry, my feet are tired,” is the socially approved phrase.) Confusion is, in any case, much more easily avoided.
I’m not making a special case for the British here. My first evening in Reykjavik every cabeceo I offered was ignored. I had just decided that the women were seriously unfriendly when an Icelander explained that Icelandic women will only respond to verbal invitations. “Go over and ask them,” she said. “They want to dance and are wondering why you are ignoring them.” So I braced myself, walked across the floor and asked a total stranger to dance. And she said, “Yes,” and she was lovely and I was able to enjoy the rest of my time on the Iceland tango scene.
So what does my experience tell me? It tells me that the rules are different in different places. They vary from club to club and city to city. Watch what others do and try to follow them. If you are new to a place and people offer advice, take it. Beyond that, do what works. Look for eye contact and, if you get any, then respond positively. Smile a lot. (I don’t speak Spanish, Icelandic or Turkish. I really smile a lot.) If you can’t make eye contact, talk to people. If there’s a language barrier, smile more. If you think you are embarrassing people, back off. Otherwise, do whatever works. You have come to dance. They have come to dance.
“You dancin’?”
“You asking?”
Game on.
A tango fantasy
During the past year opportunities to dance tango have been (to put it mildly) limited. I spent some of the time I should have been dancing writing a fantasy novel with a lot of tango in it. Most of my books are historical fiction, so a story about vampires in London was something different. My vampires are not your usual creatures of the night: they are (mostly) sophisticated and urbane and they are very, very fond of tango.
Something Wicked has been described as “a cleverly-conceived, well-written and excellently plotted novel about murder, policing, vampires, and Tango”. It was certainly fun to write and I hope you find it fun to read. You can buy it on Amazon in paperback (£5.99) or on Kindle (£2.99).
London readers may recognise Alexandra Wood and Guillermo Torrens on the cover.
More tango on my blog
If you are new to tango and have enjoyed this, you might like to read this post about why I spend so much of my time dancing – and why you should too: https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/tango/
