The Lost Years Vol 1, page 12
part #9 of Necroscope Series
Clarke and Layard followed quietly behind Harry where he went from sliding drawer to drawer, examining labels. But when he stopped at a drawer marked ‘George Jakes’ they stepped back a little. Darcy admitted to still being queasy from the mess in Oxford Street, and Layard didn’t want to see stuff just for the sake of seeing it. But if Harry really needed them… ? He shook his head and let them leave, then slid open the drawer. And:
What’s new, Necroscope? said George Jakes, with a grin of horror on his face that he’d wear forever, or at least until’it rotted off. And before Harry could answer, but in a far quieter mode, as Jakes scanned his visitor’s stunned thoughts: Hey, is it that bad? Funny, ‘cos I can’t feel a thing! But I can remember it - and how! And seeing it in Technicolor doesn’t really help. So what say you switch it off now, Necroscope? I mean, I wjas never a one /or watching myself on Home videos, either, you know what I mean? By which time the humorous touch had disappeared entirely from Jakes’s voice. And Harry realized that the dead man had been looking at himself through his eyes.1
He quickly slid the drawer shut, groped for a steel chair to steady himself, sat down heavily in it and said, ‘George… I… What can I say? I’m sorry.’ It didn’t seem much, but what else could he say?
They were printed on his mind’s eye in all their gory details. But Darcy had been wrong: someone had done something of a job on the corpse, if only to make it bearable. The stitches were… less than cosmetic. Like a slipshod job on a torn hessian sack, Jakes’s corpse seemed to have been sewn together mainly to keep it together, to stop him falling open or even apart.
Harry deliberately put the picture out of mind - to keep it from Jakes’s mind - and took a deep breath. Then, remembering what Jim Banks had told him: ‘But at least you didn’t feel all of it, George,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t possibly have felt all of it.’
/ felt enough, Jakes answered. More than enough to put me down among the dead men! Obviously he wanted to forget it, but knew that he couldn’t, not for a little while. So: Let’s get on with it, Harry. I know what you want, so let’s get started…
I had no family, Qakes commenced his story). The only real friends I had, and few of them at that, were on the force. I’d been a cop man and boy, since I was eighteen until a couple of weeks ago when I turned forty. And much like you, Harry, I was the one who always got the nasty cases. It just seemed to turn out that way: rapists and murderers and arsonists, pimps, perverts and all the slime that walks the streets, they all seemed to head my way. Hence my reluctance to make more than a handful of friends, take a wife and raise a family. Being that close to all of the shit, I didn’t like the idea of contaminating others. Or… maybe it was a matter of trust. So many people out there seem bent on making it, even over the bodies of the rest of us, that I wasn’t willing to put myself in the firing line. I mean, I’d be the best sort of cop I knew how, sure, but I’d get along just fine on my own and not rely on anyone else. And I did.
And people - even other cops, unless they were close to me - didn’t mess with me. I had this reputation; I smoked too many cigarettes, and drank too much cheap whisky, maybe… but I got the job done. Especially if it was a job no one else wanted. And I was hard, for despite all my bad habits I kept my body in good nick. It would have to be one rough son of a bitch who put me down. And it was…
Normally I wouldn’t have fallen for it, but these weren’t normal times; I was feeling for Derek Stevens. I mean, one day there were two of us, and the next… he was gone! A lousy hit and run traffic accident, of all if only because He leaves no one to mourn after him when he’s gone. I suppose I was bitter, you know? And no way I could tie Derek’s or Jim Banks’s deaths together, or connect them to Jim’s work on the stolen car rackets.
But one thing for sure: warrant or no warrant, tomorrow I was into that East End garage. And nothing and no one was going to stop me! The trouble was, I thought these things while walking the street with my hands in my pockets and my fortieth cigarette sticking out of a corner of my mouth right there outside the garage, which I was looking at one last time before busting the place. And of course he was listening to me! I knew he was there, in my head, but figured it was just another symptom of the blues.
Well, you live and you learn, and then you die…
Before I left the place I saw a van rolling down the exit lane onto the road. There were two guys inside, and the van was giving out a blast of raw jungle-music, I mean like that calypso stuff that your namesake Harry Belafonte used to sing, but a hell of a lot wilder. Hey, I never got past Bill Haley, Little Richard and Fats Domino, so don’t ask me to be specific! But it was Caribbean Island stuff: Jamaica or somewhere like that, for sure. And so was the front seat passenger.
He was Rasta as they come, greasy dreadlocks and all, and his eyes were black as his plaited hair where they stared at me as the van shot by. Those dark eyes seemed to be saying, ‘We’ll be seein’ ya ‘gain, Honky!’ And they sure enough did!
The guy driving was younger by three or four years; he was white - well, a dirty pale - pimply, sort of loose around the mouth like some kind of idiot, and wore a crewcut. Yeah, Harry, I know. What do you think, I’ve been lying here doing nothing? I’ve had a word or two with Jim Banks, sure, and this guy would have to be Skippy. But I didn’t know that then. These guys were what? -Just a couple of yobs employed by the garage, as far as I was concerned. Yeah, a couple of yobs who were waiting for me in my flat when I got home.
Like I said, if I hadn’t been so down I might have sensed it, I might have known something didn’t smell right. But by the time I did smell it, it was too late.
My flat is on the ground floor and the other two tenants, upstairs, always work late. So the rest of the house was empty. It was -I don’t know - something-to-seven by the time I got home. Outside, the street lights were already on. But as I turned my key (which seemed to stick in the lock a little), opened the door, stepped inside and tried to switch on the lights…
… Suddenly I knew! But it was already too late.
There was a little light from a street lamp right outside the main door of the house, which shone in through chinks in my curtained windows. But I hadn’t been in there a minute before I knew they were there. Just a feeling, or a taste or smell; the fact that my lights were on the blink; and shadows where there shouldn’t be any.
I don’t know who or what hit me on the head. But the carpet was wet with my blood when I came to, and a spot behind my ear felt soft. I could only have been down a second or so, but as I stirred and tried to drag myself into a sitting position I heard this ugly voice say, ‘Tough bastard, isn’t he?’ in a broad Geordie accent. And another voice, deep and brown and guttural, and yet a voice in my head, saying:
‘Yeah. But you II be softer on the inside, won’t ya, boy?’
And when I opened my eyes to catch a glimpse of that face, which I knew went with the voice…
… It was Jim Banks’s wolf-face, of course, but the mad eyes staring out of the sockets were black and glinty as coal, and human… and inhuman! Then I was kicked over onto my back, and the thing seated itself astride my upper thighs and showed me its claw: five surgical knives set in a swarf-glove that he wore over his hand!
It was dark in my flat, as I’ve said; the only light came in through chinks in the curtains from the street lamp outside; but it wasn’t so dark I
couldn’t see this Skippy character over the crazy man’s shoulder; how pale his face looked, and how he couldn’t bear to look but must turn away!
And then the pain as that Thing ripped into me, and didn’t stop ripping…
But you’re right, Harry, Jakes sighed after a while, / didn’t feel all of it. You can only take so much, you know? And funny, the last thing I remember thinking before I passed out and woke up here, was: ‘Jesus, my flat’s going to look a real mess…!’
Then he was quiet again,, maybe turning it all over in his own mind. But as the Necroscope was about to say thanks, Jakes said: Oh, and there’s one other thing. It probably isn’t worth mentioning, but I’ll let you decide. There was this girl.
‘Girl?’ Harry repeated him.
She was outside the garage, just walking up and down the street. I saw her there twice, and again on the night… that this happened. He shrugged the last off, was finally done with it. She was a real looker. Tall, slim, slinky, yet natural with it. Maybe Eurasian? Could be, from the shape of her eyes: like almonds and very slightly tilted. And her hair, bouncing on her shoulders, seeming black as jet but grey in its sheen, with the light glancing off it. She was the ageless type, Harry. I mean, anything from nineteen to thirty-five. But a looker, oh yes!
He pictured her for the Necroscope, who agreed with him: yes, she was definitely a looker. ‘A customer, waiting for her car to be fixed?’
Could be, Jakes shrugged again, and fell silent.
The interview was over…
V
R.L. STEVENSON JAMIESON, AND HIS BROTHER…
Back at E-Branch HQ it should have been time to call it a day, or a night, but Darcy had mentioned some paperwork he must see to before going home. Likewise Ken Layard; he also had work to attend to. And so they had ridden up together with Harry in the elevator and accompanied him to his door. Or perhaps the paperwork was just an excuse because they had sensed that the night wasn’t quite over yet where the Necroscope was concerned.
The place was quiet. With the majority of esper personnel already checked out, the main corridor might easily be mistaken for any corridor in any better-class London hotel. But the Duty Officer had met the three out of the elevator, and as the Necroscope entered his room and made to close the door… suddenly it seemed he heard someone breathe his name! He immediately boiled over and, stepping back into the corridor, shouted, ‘Hey, look! If I’m involved, why not simply involve me? I mean, don’t talk about me, talk to me! What am I, a social leper?’
Layard had already entered his office; but Darcy and the Duty Officer, an esper by the name of John Grieve - a bespectacled, balding twig of a man in rolled up shirt-sleeves, grey slacks and slippers, with a clipped, precise, military or ‘old-school-tie’ sort of voice that Harry supposed might easily get him type-cast as an Inland Revenue Inspector, which he was anything but - were standing with their heads almost conspiratorially close together.
‘Well?’ he snapped, as they turned puzzled faces towards him.
‘Well what?’ Darcy was plainly annoyed. ‘We weren’t talking about you, Harry!’
‘Er, but we were about to.’ John Grieve was less certain and fidgeted with the lobe of his right ear. ‘Or if not about you, about your wife. And you’re perfectly correct: I should have included you. But I wanted Darcy’s opinion first.’
Now Darcy was looking at Grieve in the same puzzled fashion. ‘What? What’s going on?’
That’s what I was trying to tell you. It’s about Brenda.’ And quickly, before Darcy and the Necroscope could break into a bout of angry questioning: ‘We seem to have lost her - and the baby.’ In the Necroscope’s mind, Grieve’s dry, official, almost emotionless voice seemed to ring like an echo chamber; Darcy’s, too. Perhaps it was an irritating effect of the empty corridor and rooms, he thought, and put it aside if only for the moment. But Brenda and Little Harry, missing? That was something else!
‘Lost them?’ he repeated Grieve. ‘My wife and child? What do you mean, “lost” them?’ The phrase seemed too well-chosen, too final. Harry’s tired eyes were wide awake now, unblinking. ‘Have they… come to any harm?’ He grabbed the DO’s elbow.
Grieve looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘No, not that we know of. Now, do you want to let go of my arm so I can talk to you in what’s left of comfort?’
Harry gritted his teeth but released him. And waiting for Grieve to speak, he re-evaluated what he knew of the man. Grieve had two talents; one of them ‘dodgy,’ Branch parlance for an as yet undeveloped ESP ability, and the other very remarkable and possibly unique. His first gift was that of far-seeing: he was a human crystal ball. The only trouble was he had to know exactly where and what he was looking for, otherwise he could see nothing. His talent didn’t work at random but had to be directed: he had to have a definite target.
His second string made him doubly valuable. It could well prove to be a reflection of his first talent, but occasionally it was a godsend. Grieve was a telepath, but a mind-reader with a difference. Yet again he had to ‘aim’ his talent; he could only read a person’s mind when he was talking to him… but if he knew the person in question, that included when they were talking on the telephone! Using John Grieve, there was no need for mechanical scrambler devices. It was one reason why Darcy used him as frequently as possible in the role of Duty Officer.
But… had it been something of Grieve’s talent that the Necroscope had experienced just a moment ago? Was it even possible?
‘You weren’t talking about me?’ Harry frowned and licked his dry lips, his mind returning to that peculiar sensation he had felt when he’d entered his room: the feeling that his name had been whispered. And then there was the echo chamber effect, which was still present: as if his head were hollow - or as if it were… what, occupied? By someone else? Someone who was spying on his thoughts? ‘Were you thinking about me, then? And if so, would I be able to hear you thinking?’ Suddenly Brenda and the child had taken a back seat in Harry’s order of priorities. Or if not that exactly, then he’d seen the possibility of a connection with their disappearance and this new problem. A remote one (he hoped and prayed), but a possibility.
Again Harry gripped Grieve’s arm, then both of them, as he read the other’s negative stare. No, he wouldn’t have been able to hear Grieve thinking about him. And so: ‘John, I want you to read my mind,’ he snapped. ‘Go on in there and see what you can find. See who you can find! Do it now, as quickly as you can.’
Almost instinctively Grieve looked, and recoiled at once! He wrenched himself free of Harry, took a stumbling step backwards, said, ‘What…?’
‘Well?’ Harry caught up with him and held him against the wall of the corridor. ‘What did you see?’ (Perhaps not surprisingly, the echo had vanished now; the voices of everyone involved were remarkably clear and ordinary; there was no whisperer in the Necroscope’s mind).
Darcy was looking worriedly from Harry to Grieve and back again. ‘What on earth…?’ he began to say. But Grieve cut him short with:
Two of you?’ (This to Harry). ‘A moment ago, two of you. But now, only one. Only… you!’
Again Harry released him, and turned tremblingly away. He had been invaded, his mind broken into. Just like Banks, Stevens, and Jakes before him. For long moments there was an electric tension in the air, until finally:
‘Well, is someone going to explain?!’ Darcy shouted.
At which Harry took them into his room and listened while Grieve reported the details of Brenda’s and Little Harry’s disappearance. Grieve didn’t waste any time, but the Necroscope was now sensitive to every second ticking by. And as he listened to Grieve, he also found himself listening to - or for - something in his head. But it didn’t return. Or not yet, anyway.
‘She was shopping in Knightsbridge,’ Grieve started. ‘She had the baby with her. We had men on her, of course, three of the best. The same people who have watched out for her all the time she’s been here, Special Branch and good at their job. Not espers but the next best thing.’ He shook his head. ‘If it were anyone else, I’d suspect their report was a whitewash. But not these blokes. They know what they’re doing. And if they say she disappeared, she disappeared…
‘But not into the crowd, you understand, though certainly there were plenty of people on the streets. But she took young Harry into a baby outfitters, and left the minders waiting outside. Where they waited, and waited… and finally went in to see what was wrong. Well, there was no exit from the rear, but Brenda and the kid—’
‘—Were gone,’ Harry sounded much calmer now. ‘Yes, I get the picture. But what time was this?’
‘Five-thirty or thereabouts. You two had already left the H.Q. with Ken Layard. I didn’t want to cause a panic or divert you from what you were doing. There seemed every chance that we would pick Brenda up again. I mean, we’re not looking after her because she’s under threat or anything, but mainly because… well, because—’
‘—Because sometimes she doesn’t seem capable of looking after herself?’ Harry cut in again. ‘It’s okay, go ahead and say it. She has problems, I know.’ And to himself: Problems, Brenda? That’s saying the very least!
All those weeks, months of debriefing following the Bodescu case and Harry’s subsequent metempsychosis, his rehabitation of another’s body. Indeed his very being, when Brenda had thought him dead. Wouldn’t that be enough to… unnerve anyone? And gradually, during the course of all that debriefing, and Harry’s rehabilitation, it had become increasingly apparent that Brenda was in real trouble. But surely that was only to be expected, and might even have been anticipated.
For after all, Brenda had only recently become a mother; she’d still been recovering from an uncomfortable confinement and problematic birth, when for a while her doctor had thought he might lose her. Add to this the fact of her husband’s weird ‘talent,’ that he conversed with dead people, which Brenda had known about and which had preyed on her mind for months - and then the fact that her infant child seemed possessed of similar or even more frightening powers, so that even among the espers of E-Branch he was looked upon as something of a freak - and the fact that Harry was now (literally) a different person, one who was Harry, with all of his past, his memory and mannerisms, but living in a stranger’s body; the fact of the absolute terror Brenda had endured on the night when she came face to face with the monster Yulian Bodescu, whose like she couldn’t possibly have imagined even in her worst nightmares…
