The Lost Years Vol 1, page 20
part #9 of Necroscope Series
Then, in his- office, Darcy had asked: ‘What next? Is there anything else I should do? I’m having breakfast with Harry tomorrow morning.’
Anderson had shrugged. ‘He’ll probably seem a little confused, reluctant. Whatever this big secret of Keogh’s is, all of your E-Branch agents presumably know about it. It’s simply that you’re keeping it from the outside world, right?’
That’s right,’ Darcy had nodded his agreement. ‘We know about it, and Harry knows we know—’
‘—Hence the confusion,’ Anderson had finished for him. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t test it: don’t even bring it up. Or if you must, then have someone else test it. Some “stranger?” But well away from this place.’
And Darcy had seen the sense in that. ‘And is that all? Nothing else I should know?’
Anderson had looked at him, pursed his full lips, said: ‘He’s no longer one of yours?’
‘That’s right. He’s moving on. He has things to do. But why do you ask? Is it important?’
Again Anderson’s shrug. ‘There may be - I don’t know - side effects?’ But before Darcy could show his alarm: ‘I mean, I’ve been into his mind - or not into it, but I have opened it up a little. In some people the mind is like a door with rusty hinges. And as I told you, Harry’s door was damned near welded shut! So I… applied a little oil. You see, it’s not simply the drugs and my eyes and my voice, Darcy - it’s also my mind. No, I’m not an esper like you and yours, but I’m special in my own way just the same. I mean, I can put certain people under just by snapping my fingers! But Harry wasn’t one of them. He was difficult. Except now that I’ve oiled his hinges, so to speak, well, he could be easier the next time.’
The next time?’
‘If someone did get hold of Keogh, it’s possible - just possible, mind you - that they’d be able to get into his mind as “easily” as I seemed to.’
They could undo what you’ve done?’
‘Ah, no, I didn’t say that!’ Anderson had held up a cautionary finger. ‘What I’ve done is done, and as far as I know only I can break it. But the rest of Harry’s mind might now be more accessible. He might more readily give in to hypnotic suggestion. However, that’s a pretty big might. I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’
But in fact Darcy Clarke hadn’t stopped worrying about it ever since, for close on five weeks. It was a terrible idea, a fearful concept: to have someone break into a man’s id - into him - without his knowing it; to weaken him in ways he wasn’t even aware of, then leave the doors of his mind flapping helplessly to and fro in the wind of some future mental intrusion!
Not that it was really as bad as all that, Darcy told himself, returning to the present. He was simply over-dramatizing again, that’s all. It wasn’t as if the Necroscope was likely to come up against another hypnotist, now was it?
But still, it wasn’t the sort of thing Darcy Clarke himself would ever want to happen to him. Not likely! And of course, it couldn’t ever happen to him, not as long as his guardian angel talent was watching over him.
On one of the last two counts Darcy was quite wrong, and on the other he wasn’t quite right. But then, he wasn’t a precog.
Which was perhaps just as well…
That same night Harry took the Mobius route into the heart of Edinburgh and hailed a taxi. It was raining and he didn’t want to walk -and anyway he wouldn’t know where to go, for B.J.‘s wasn’t in the book. But his taxi driver should know it.
‘B.J.‘s,’ he told the man, who turned, looked back at him, and shook his head sadly.
There’s a lot cheaper places tae get pissed, Chief, if ye must,’ he said. ‘But the booze in they damn wine bars costs a pretty penny, aye!’ He was a ‘canny Scot,’ obviously.
Thanks for the advice,’ Harry told him, ‘but B.J.‘s will do.’
‘As ye say,’ the other shrugged. ‘Ah expec’ it’s the young lassies, aye.’ And they headed for B.J.‘s.
The Necroscope quickly got himself lost as the taxi turned right off Princes Street into a maze of alleys, and the looming grey bulk of Edinburgh Castle, his principal landmark, vanished into a rain-blurred sky, behind the complex and merging silhouettes of shiny rooftops and arching causeways. The echoing canyon walls of bleakly uninteresting, almost subterranean streets and alleys sped by on both sides, and between squealing, nerve-rending swipes of the windscreen blades Harry could look ahead and see a pale glow of city lights reflected on the undersides of lowering clouds.
Time seemed suspended… he might even have dozed a little in the musty-smelling back seat. But eventually:
‘B.J.‘s,’ the driver grunted, bringing his taxi to a halt in a narrow street of three-storey buildings whose shop-front fagades were built onto or extended from the old brickwork of a gently curving Victorian terrace.
Harry shook himself awake, climbed stiffly out of the taxi and paid the fare, then turned up his collar and looked up and down the street. And as the taxi pulled away he saw that the area was more than a little rundown and shabby, and hardly the place he’d thought it would be. It scarcely matched up to B.J. or what he’d imagined of her. But just what had he imagined of her? What sort of place had he envisioned? A low, Moorish dive - but one with style - on the fringe of some Moroccan Kasbah, like a Rick’s Cafe and Casino, magically transported from pre-war Casablanca? What, to Edinburgh? Oh, there were dives here, certainly - likewise in London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Leicester; and in Berlin, Moscow, Nicosia, New York, Paris, almost anywhere - but as for style… that was about as far as it went.
Harry had no idea where he was, his physical geographical location, but he did know he’d never have any trouble finding it again. He had instinctively absorbed the feel of the place - its aura, its ‘co-ordinates’ -into his metaphysical mind. From this time forward, using the Mobius Continuum, he would always be able to come here.
The rain came squalling slantwise; the street was almost deserted; it was too late for run-of-the-mill shops, and only one late-nighter was lit at the far end of the street. A Chinese takeaway was open maybe half-way down, also a pub opposite the restaurant, letting out a little orange light from incongruous ‘antique’ bull’s-eye windows. But where was B.J.‘s?
For a moment the Necroscope thought his driver had simply dumped him at The End Of The Known World, until he spotted the illuminated sign, no bigger or brighter than a cinema’s ‘Exit’ sign, over a shaded door set back from the pavement between a shoe shop on the one hand and a fish-and-chip bar with a ‘For Sale’ sign in the whitewashed windows on the other. The illuminated sign was in dull blue neon and simply said, ‘B.J.‘s.’
Harry moved into the shadow between the two shops, making for the door. But as he did so, he sensed movement across the street. Turning his head, he was barely in time to witness the brief electric glare of a camera’s flash from a dark shop doorway directly opposite. Now what the hell… ? Someone taking a picture of him, outside B.J.‘s? But who could have known he’d be coming here? He hadn’t known himself until this afternoon! And he certainly hadn’t told anyone.
He turned towards the street and made as if to cross… and a slight, bent figure came scurrying out of the shop doorway, heading down the street towards the pub. Bird-bright eyes under a wide-brimmed hat glanced back at Harry, as the figure made off in a slap, slap, slap of leather on wet paving slabs.
Harry wanted to get a better look at this one. Fixing the orange glow of the pub’s small-pane windows in the eye of his mind, he quickly stepped back into the shadows and conjured a Mobius door… and a moment later stepped out of the shadows of the pub into the street, and headed back towards B.J.‘s.
The mysterious figure in the raincoat and wide-brimmed hat came almost at a run, saw the Necroscope at the last moment and very nearly collided with him. As the man swerved aside, Harry caught at his arms as if to steady him, and so came eye-to-eye with him, however briefly. Briefly, yes, because even as Harry stared at him, so the small man displayed a surprising strength and wiriness, wrenched himself furiously free and made off down the street again. And this time Harry let him go, all five feet four or five of him, watching him disappear out of sight down a side alley…
Harry felt fairly certain he’d never seen the man before, and therefore that the stranger didn’t know and couldn’t possibly have recognized him. As for Harry’s use of the Mobius Continuum: the stranger would never believe that the man in front of B.J.‘s was the same one he’d bumped into on the street just a moment later! So, nothing much for Harry to concern himself over there. But… what was it all about? Was it some kind of threat, something to worry over? Or was it simpler than that?
Maybe Darcy Clarke had decided to have Harry watched - or watched over - for his own good. But if that was the case, how had Darcy known he’d be going to B.J.‘s?
Maybe the explanation was even simpler:
Like, someone was watching B.J.‘s for his own reasons. Or perhaps a private detective for someone else’s reasons? Or the police? What if B.J.‘s was a front for something else? And what kind of a girl - or woman - was this Bonnie Jean anyway, that she should go around shooting at men with a crossbow? But that last was a question Harry had asked himself many times before. It was one of the several reasons he was here: to find out if there was any connection between B.J. and Brenda’s disappearance.
Walking thoughtfully back to B.J.‘s in the rain, he considered the face he’d seen, or that glimpse of a face, before the - what, observer? - had wrenched himself free. That face on the little man, that startled face, that had decided Harry against any further action at this point. It wasn’t that he’d felt afraid of the little man, just… surprised? Startled? Even as startled as the small observer himself? But by what?
There are looks and there are looks, and the little man had had one of those looks. Like a cornered rat. And everyone knows that it’s best not to corner a rat. Such a look, on the face of the little man, had been enough to stall Harry - on this occasion, anyway. But if there should be a next time - then he might want to know more.
Approaching B.J.‘s, he pictured that face again: that wrinkled old face with its rheumy, runny eyes. At a distance he’d thought of them as ‘bright bird eyes,’ but seen close-up they weren’t. Those oh-so-strange three-cornered eyes that one second looked grey and the next shone dull silver, like an animal’s at night… and the next turned grey again; or maybe it was a trick of the street lights. And the long, heavily veined nose, flanged at the tip; and the too-wide, loose-lipped mouth in its thrusting, aggressive jaws. And overall, the grey, aged aspect of the face generally.
Just a glimpse, yes, and not necessarily accurate. But it had been sufficient to give him pause…
Letting the picture gradually fade in the eye of his mind, the Necroscope was satisfied (but not pleased) that he wouldn’t easily forget it. Indeed he might just ask B.J. about it. About its owner, anyway. For if she was aware of the little man - if she’d ever seen him -she’d certainly know who Harry was talking about.
It was just one of the several questions he had for her. As for the questions she might have for him… well, he’d do his best to avoid them.
So he told himself, anyway…
The door was heavy and banded with metal, and equipped with a buzzer, a peephole, and a speaker grille. Harry buzzed, detected slight movements within, and felt himself observed. Eventually a female voice asked:
‘Are you a member, sir? If so, hold up your card. If not, state your business.’ Obviously one of the club’s ‘young lassies,’ Harry thought.
‘I’m not a member,’ he answered. ‘I was invited - by Bonnie Jean.’
There was silence for a long moment, then:“Wait.’
Harry seemed to wait an inordinately long time, but when the door finally opened it was B. J. herself who stood holding it open for him. And again Harry wasn’t certain what he’d been expecting. He had met her before, yes, but a lot had been happening at the time. Funny, but the best picture he had of her was the one George Jakes had given him:
A real looker… Tall, slim, slinky, yet natural with it. (The shape in Jakes’s dead mind had been that of Lauren Bacall in that old Bogie movie where she says, ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you?’) Maybe Eurasian? She 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. The ageless type… Anything from nineteen to thirty-five… But a looker, oh yes!
And now the reality. But still the Necroscope couldn’t see her clearly enough, not in the dim light in the hallway inside the door. On the other hand, she could obviously see him.
‘So, it’s mah brave laddie in person,’ she breathed, smiling at him wonderingly with her head on one side. ‘Mah own wee man wi’ no name.’ Then she straightened up, and was still two inches shorter than Harry. ‘And maybe no’ so very wee at that! But I was beginning to think I’d never see you again! Come in, come in.’
The hallway or corridor was wide, high-ceilinged, carpeted. Low music came from somewhere up ahead; pop music, Harry thought, late ‘50s or early ‘60s. He quite enjoyed all that old stuff. The corridor seemed a long one; there were pictures on the walls, large tapestries in gilt frames; but there were no doors leading off to right or left. A peculiar set-up.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ B.J. said, leading the way. ‘I thought so myself the first time I saw it - a fire hazard, right? Aye, well the authorities thought so, too. But in the event of fire - God forbid! - there are escape routes enough at the back and out into the garden. And we are on the ground floor, after all.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about fire,’ Harry answered, not looking where he was going, and bumping into her where she paused at a fire door. And: ‘Sorry,’ he said, as she raised a querying, perhaps amused eyebrow. ‘Clumsy of me…’
‘But you weren’t so clumsy the last time we met,’ she answered, with the hint of a frown in her voice. ‘Indeed, I might even say greased lightning!’ If she was fishing for some kind of reaction she didn’t get it. Harry merely shrugged, and continued:
‘No, I wasn’t considering the fire risk. I was just wondering: why such a long corridor?’
They were standing very close together. He could smell her scented breath when she answered, ‘Originally it was an alley between the buildings to right and left. When the shop fagades were built at the front, the alley was roofed over to give safe access to the property at the rear - my place, now.’ Her Edinburgh burr had almost disappeared, replaced by something Harry didn’t quite recognize. ‘Downstairs is B.J.‘s,’ she continued, turning from him and pushing through the door. ‘Upstairs is my living area. And the garret… is my bedroom.’
Harry followed her, commenting, ‘When you answer a simple query, you really do answer it in full, don’t you?’
And giving him that look again, ‘Well, at least one o’ us does!’ she replied, and a little of the brogue was back. Then, with a wave of her arm: ‘B.J.‘s,’ she announced.
Inside was definitely better than out. Shrugging out of his coat, which a pretty girl in a not-quite-Playboy outfit took to the cloakroom, Harry looked the place over. There was a longish mahogany bar with access hatches at both ends, behind which two more girls served drinks - or would serve them, presumably, but at the moment there were only one or two customers. And at the far end of the room another girl sat near the juke-box, an original Wurlitzer by its looks, flipping the pages of a magazine.
‘A “quiet” night,’ Bonnie Jean commented wryly, as Harry perched himself awkwardly on one of too many empty bar-stools, and she went behind the bar to serve him. ‘It’s always the same when it’s raining.’ There were two other customers (‘club members,’ Harry reminded himself) at the bar, one at each end where they nursed their drinks and chatted up the girls, and a group of three seated at a table in a corner close to a darts board. B.J.‘s clients were all over forty, well turned out, business types. Men with money, anyway. It looked like the taxi driver was right: this wouldn’t be a cheap place to drink.
Harry continued to look the place over and decided: It’s a converted hole-in-the-wall pub. And he was right. B.J.‘s had been a fairly standard if poorly-frequented public house at one time. The ancient pumps were still in place behind the bar, and the oak ceiling beams were dark-stained from genuine fire smoke. The open fireplace itself was still there, big enough to take a small table, but the flue had been sealed when central heating replaced the warmth of a real fire.
That fireplace isn’t Victorian!’ he said: an awkward seeming statement - almost an accusation! But he was still finding his way, getting used to the place. And to B.J. To her presence. Or to his presence in her place.
She took pity on him and didn’t smile, but answered what he now saw as a dumb comment with a reasoned reply. ‘You’re right. This place isn’t Victorian. It goes back a lot further - two or three hundred years at least. Remember, it’s set back from the “modern” stuff, the terrace that fronts onto the street. Twenty years ago it got annexed to all of that almost by mistake, when they started to convert the whole street on this side into some kind o’ shopping arcade! But the builder went broke and it all fell through. And a good thing, too, for this old building was here first. More recently it was a pub, but too out of the way. When I bought it I couldn’t afford to modernize it, and now I’m glad.’
And before he could make another stupid comment (what the hell was it about this girl that so tangled his tongue, Harry wondered?) she went on: This was once a huge living room. Why, it took up most of the ground floor! Now it’s split in two by the wall behind this bar. Back there is a storage room, an original kitchen, modern toilets, and access to the garden. And the stairs.’
‘What’s the difference?’ said Harry.
‘Eh?’ She cocked her head, and he admired the angle of her jaw, but found that he couldn’t look at her. It was disconcerting. He wanted to look at her but couldn’t. It was as though he was a schoolboy again - his first fumbling approach to Brenda?
