Free Once Bitten by Stephen Leather

suggest that the moon has a direct affect on the incidence of abhorrent behaviour, but you ask any police desk sergeant and he'll tell you without a trace of hesitation that when the moon is full, the crazies come out to play. OK, so maybe they've been influenced by too many video nasties and it's not actually a physical reaction, just a Pavlovian-type response, see the moon and howl sort of thing, but the end result would be the same, wouldn't it? Me, I've done enough basic research to know that there is a statistically significant increase in criminality during the full moon. I've started retesting suspects who were first examined during the full moon, running them through the Beaverbrook Program a couple of weeks after their arrest and comparing the results. There's a difference. Not much, to be sure, the curves don't shift so that a criminally insane person becomes sane when the moon's on the wane, but there is an effect. Once I've got enough raw data I'll put together a paper for one of the less serious journals but I already know I'll come in for a lot of stick.
    Many people have a gut reaction about the moon, accepting without too much thought that they tend to get drunk easier when the moon is full or that they're more likely to get into an argument or a fight. There are lots of farmers around who reckon that crops grow better if you plant them when the moon is waning rather than waxing. It doesn't matter why, they just believe that it happens.
    There is a theory that says the effect of the moon on men is tidal, that it has the same pull on the water in our bodies as it does on the planet's oceans. Water accounts for more than eighty per cent of our bodies, so it's possible that the pull of the moon effects the concentration of the chemicals in the body and the reactions they undergo. Another theory reckons its something to do with the light from the moon, something like Seasonal Affective Disorder which is reckoned to effect about one person in a hundred, mainly women. SAD usually occurs between October and March and is reckoned to be a form of light starvation in people whose hormones can't adjust to the seasonal lack of light. Sufferers tend to get depressed, anxious, and sometimes violent, and they can be helped with a form of light therapy, sitting in front of a light box that gives out ultra- violet light, not enough to tan but five or six times what you'd get under normal domestic lighting. It works. So if lack of light can effect susceptible individuals, maybe moonlight can change others, in a different way, but a way in which we don't yet understand. Whatever the reason, the end result is the same.
    When the moon shines, the crazies come out to play.
    I left the precinct at about four o'clock in the morning, dog-tired and feeling dirty, mentally and physically. Someone had hung a garland of garlic around the aerial of my car. I threw it on the back seat. It wasn't funny anymore.
    The Release I guess I was so wrapped up in my work that I forgot about Terry Ferriman for a day or two. Peter Hardy hadn't called me back about the film star and I had a lot on my mind, what with Deborah's financial bombshell and all that, but it was mainly work that kept me occupied. Over the nights of the full moon my team and I worked pretty much around the clock, processing the alleged bad guys. I was on my way in after a hurried lunch with Rivron when De'Ath grabbed me by the arm in the squad room.
    “My man, your bird is about to fly,” he leered.
    “My bird?” I replied, totally confused as I usually was when talking to Black De'Ath.
    “Bird. Bat. Whatever. Ferriman, Terry. Ms. Alleged vampire of this parish.”
    “What, you're letting her go?”
    He grinned. “I thought that would brighten your day,” he said. “She came up with a brief, a real high-powered hot-shot lawyer, and she managed to get the bail down to six figures.”
    “That's still a hell of a lot of money, Samuel. For a girl living in a tiny apartment