Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (19 page)

He knew the life-threads of Brenda and her baby at once; he seemed drawn to them - sucked at by their rush - as they emerged like bright blue meteors out of the past, and hurtled by him on course for the true future. The one a mature blue nucleus at the head of a trailing thread, its pathway through all the alternatives of time, and the other smaller, but brilliant with new life! This was them, or their temporal ‘echoes’ after entering the store, but what the Necroscope desired to discover was their course from here on.

Quickly reversing his direction of travel, Harry followed behind and gained on them; for he had the advantage of knowing that time is relative, and that in the metaphysical Mobius Continuum
will
is the single cause that brings effect. And indeed he willed himself to catch up with them, ‘just in time.’

Speeding behind them, intent on following wherever young Harry might take his mother, the Necroscope was witness to an effect that would baffle even him, and continue to do so for a period of seven long years - or ‘lost years,’

as much of that time would come to seem to him. For Harry had forgotten a very simple fact: that what
he
could do with the Continuum, his son could do in spades!

It was simply this: that in the space of a single moment of time Brenda and the infant Harry’s life-threads had come to an abrupt, totally unexpected, apparently violent end! Blinded by the sudden flash of twin bomb-bursts, Harry closed his eyes and sped on through what must surely be the debris of his family, scattered atoms of light occupying the ‘space’ where they had been. But then, looking back, he saw that their

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termination had been too complete, too uter; that in fact
nothing
remained of them. Not in this world, anyway—

—Or rather, not in this place?

And so perhaps Harry could be forgiven for believing that his son had simply moved his mother to some other, safer place in the mundane world, and that he would experience little difficulty in finding them and going to them later.

But later can be a long time, as the Necroscope would discover soon enough. And in his case it might even be years …

Back at the baby outfiters, the alarms were still going off. As Harry paused there to get his co-ordinates, so the telephone started ringing. For a moment he ignored it, then gave it some thought. For who would be trying to cal a baby store at this time of night? The answer seemed obvious.

Moving to the front of the store, Harry found the office, desk, and telephone, and lifted the later from its cradle. At the other end of the line, Darcy Clarke said:

‘Harry?’

‘Yes?’

‘Good, I’m glad I caught you! Look, don’t go to Trevor’s place. I spoke to him on the ‘phone and by now he’s on his way in. But, er, he told me to tell you that he wouldn’t - I mean, not under
any
circumstances - accompany you anywhere via
your
mode of travel. Is that understood?’

Harry grinned to himself however coldly, and nodded. ‘Yes, understood,’ he said. And: ‘Can you reach him in his car?’

‘Yes.’

Then tell him to go to this address and meet me there.’ He passed on the address of the East End garage. ‘And tell him to keep a low profile.’

‘Harry, is this wise?’ Darcy’s concern came over loud and clear. ‘Do you think you should be folowing this up? I mean, tonight?’

‘Probably not, but I didn’t start it.’

‘What about police or E-Branch back-up?’

‘Definitely not! Just Jordan, no back-up. In fact I want you to back off!’

For a moment there was silence, then Darcy asked, ‘Can I hear alarms ringing?’

‘Probably in more ways than one,’ Harry answered, and put the ‘phone down. And to himself:
Sirens, too!
Outside the shop, visible through the plate glass, a police car had screeched to a halt. Its siren was blaring and blue light rotating. A young policeman came to the window, held a hand over the peak of his cap and scanned the interior. He saw Harry walk out of the office, shrank to one side, began talking excitedly into his handset. Harry waved cheerily at him, then walked into the back of the store where it was still dark, conjured a Mobius door and took his departure.

Lawmen had irritated the Necroscope more than enough for one day. Time to let
them
do some explaining - and especialy after they’d broken into the store for no apparent reason …

Harry took the Mobius route to the East End, and stepped from his door into a thin, penetrating drizzle that filed the night with its misery and turned the cobbles to gleaming jet. Turning up his colar, Harry walked a quarter-mile to the rundown district where the garage was located, and from a nearby street looked the place over. The garage was prety much as Harry had heard it described.

Its supports and upper floors formed a concrete skeleton six storeys high; the sections making up the outer safety wals had been knocked out, so that the floors were like vast lintels supported on giant steel and concrete stanchions. In silhouete against the night sky, the place might be a towering 20th Century Stonehenge, or some surrealist sculptor’s ‘Ziggurat.’

Below, at ground level, the ramps at Harry’s end of the mainly derelict building had been removed, the entrance bricked up. But enclosed behind an eight-foot-high brick wal, a maintenance yard extended a further sixty feet or so beyond the end of the main structure. Ensuring that he wasn’t observed, Harry made a quick Mobius jump into the yard to have a look …

… And retreated in double quick time when he discovered warehouse doors standing open at the end of the main building, emiting a blaze of electric light and the sounds of human and mechanized activity. Also, the yard was ful of quality motors; he’d seen a handful of Porsches, even a Lotus! Obviously the people in the garage were working overtime, and the Necroscope knew what they were working on. He only hoped they wouldn’t be working too late, and that Trevor Jordan wasn’t going to take al night geting here.

For if the ‘werewolf were on duty, sooner or later he’d be bound to discover Harry lurking out here, which could only result in complications. But Sir Keenan Gormley had advised to fight fire with fire, and Harry’s answer to his unknown adversary’s telepathy was Trevor Jordan’s. Maybe Jordan could block the other out, giving the Necroscope the edge he needed. Which wasn’t to say that Harry didn’t already have an edge; he had a good many edges, and sharp ones at that, but he’d seen through the eyes of dead men what he was up against.

His plan was a simple one:

Get into the garage, check out some plates, engine block numbers and what have you, get out again and report the entire operation to the police. The Branch could pass on the information about the crazy wolfman, the murders he’d commited. And if there wasn’t enough real,
living
evidence against that one … maybe Harry could think up some

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other way to settle the score. Maybe even to the point where he’d offer himself up as bait.

But the law is the law; despite that the Necroscope might occasionally seem scathing of red-tape officialdom, he wouldn’t be playing the part of executioner just for the sake of it. He knew that the murdered men, especially Jim Banks and the other policemen, wouldn’t want it that way. Well, not if it could be avoided. But if it couldn’t—

—In that case, if there were no other way, then Sir Keenan Gormley’s law would apply. Then it would
have
to be Harry’s way. An eye for an eye …

Right now, however, deciding that his lone figure was too obvious standing there in the blurry, watered-down light of the street lamps, Harry made his way to an alley on the far side of the road and stepped into its shadows. No sooner had he done so than he realized that he hadn’t been alone in what he’d thought was an empty street. Looking out into the night, he saw a figure, female, walking in his direction but on the other side of the road, in the lee of the garage wall.

Despite that she wore flat black shoes, she looked tall and lithe. Her gloves were black, too, as was her trouser-suit.

Her hair was tied back in a pony-tail, and her manner was carefree as she swung a fancy black shopping bag, for all the world as if she were just returning from a jaunt to some fashionable outfitters for that special little item - and to hell with the rain! Harry couldn’t quite make out her features but found himself wishing that he could, for he felt sure she’d be a looker … At which he remembered what George Jakes had told him.

Could this be the same girl? She fitted Jakes’s picture, definitely. But if so, what would she be doing here now? Some sort of fancy lookout for the garage? It seemed likely.

But then, catching a glimpse of her dark, slanted almond eyes in a pale, heart-shaped face as the girl reached the wall of the maintenance yard and glanced across the street in his direction, the Necroscope drew back into the alley’s shadows.

And as his back met the wall - at that precise moment of time - a well-known voice spoke suddenly, sharply in his mind:
Harry? Thank goodness I’ve found you! My boy, you move so fast, it’s hard keeping track of you!
Sir Keenan had spoken to him at a moment of maximum concentration, when his nerves were at full stretch. So that there in the darkness Harry gasped and gave an involuntary start. The dead man felt it and said,
Oh, and what are you up to now? Why are you so jumpy?

Harry took a chance and glanced quickly round the corner. But the girl… was gone? But how? There were no other alleyways close by, and the street was a long one. Yet from what he could see it was deserted end to end. Even an Olympic sprinter couldn’t have disappeared at that speed! And it wasn’t likely she’d gone over that wall… was it?

Well?
Sir Keenan pressed him.
What’s going on?

Putting the problem of the girl aside to explain the more important details, Harry whispered: ‘So you see, while I was half-expecting some kind of mental intruder, I
wasn’t
expecting you!’ On the other hand, while he engaged in incorporeal conversation with Keenan Gormley, he wasn’t likely to be overheard and intruded upon by any living mind. Even a telepathic ‘werewolf can’t intercept the thoughts of the dead.

Sir Keenan, however, could hear his thoughts well enough, and told him:
Harry, you know that normally I wouldn’t bother you,
but I believe this to be important. Indeed, I think it’s what you’ve been looking for - the identity of the murderer!

Harry stiffened at once and said, ‘I think I already have it. Or if not an actual identity, a description at least. But it would be good to have confirmation, yes.’

It happened after you visited Banks, Stevens, and Jakes,
Sir Keenan told him.
Someone came forward.

‘A dead someone?’

Oh yes, a victim no less than the others. Yet if possible a worse
crime
than the others, for this was the murderer’s own brother!

The Necroscope sensed what would be the sad shake of Sir Keenan’s head. Then:
Harry, now I’d like to introduce you to R.L.

Stevenson Jamieson, and let him take it from there …

Harry had become adept at discerning good from bad almost from the initial ‘sound’ of a dead voice. And when this one spoke to him, at first tremulously, and then with growing confidence, he knew its owner for a good and honest man.

I reckon I was, yeah,
the other agreed, but not without a degree of modesty.
As best I knew how, anyways. But my brother …

wasn’t. Like I means, he
isn’t!
You want to hear our story, Necroscope? See, I think things is gone far enough. I has heard you
talking to others bout this thing, and even though I was a ways off and it weren’t me you talked to, still I felt how warm you was. So
I know why the dead ‘uns love you so. And God knows that should anything happen to you,
my
name and bones is cursed forever.

Well, I don’t want that! No way!
So …
does you have the time to hear me out, Necroscope?

And of course Harry nodded his confirmation …

’
/
keep it short,
(R.L. Stevenson began his story).
We were born in Haiti, Port-au-Prince. By we I means me and my
brother, A. C. Doyle Jamieson. And before you asks: yes, our Poppy was a hell of a reading man! We had a older sister,
too, Shelley. OrM. W. as we sometimes called her, ‘cos Wollstonecraft is a mite long-winded.

I was bom in ‘46 and Arthur Conan came seven years later. So you see, he was my little brother. But out there in the Antilles it was much the
same

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as here in England, or anywhere else in the world, I reckon: there’s a hell of a difference in sevenyears! What I mean is, I was brungup
respectful to folks, just like Shelley before me. But by the time Arthur Conan came along things was changing. For one
thing, Poppy was getting old. He weren’t much good at correcting anymore.

Ma died when Arthur Conan was born, and three years later Shelley got herself married and moved across to Jamaica. Which
left just me, ten years old, Poppy, and A. C. That didn’t help a lot neither, ‘cos there was no womenfolk to teach A. C.

his manners and put him right when he did wrong, just me and Poppy to do our best at spoiling him … which we
did. By then Poppy was really old; A. C. had been his last spurt, so to speak, if you take my meaning.

About Poppy. He had
obeah
blood in him; me too, a little, and A. C. a lot! You know the obi, Harry? Shoot, a