Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (30 page)

Step away from the bar, Harry,
‘Sergeant’ Graham Lane told him.
This lad’s big and bold, but he’s getting old. What, forty-five?

And look at his gut: he drinks too much, and he’s had too much tonight, too. The next time he speaks to you, if he really means to
have a go, is when he’ll make his move. Let me take it from there …

Harry moved away from the bar into open space, heard B.J. saying: ‘Look, Big Jimmy, we were only talking. I’ve the right to talk to people in mah own place, have I no’?’

‘It’s the way he was lookin’ at ye, lass,’ Big Jimmy answered, speaking to her but narrowing his eyes at Harry. ‘I just dinnae like his attitude, his flashy answers!’ (Here it came):

‘You!’ Big Jimmy rasped, turning more fully to Harry. ‘So ye’re a live one, eh?’ And he started his swing. ‘Well, not for long, ye fucking
pipsqueak!’

Sergeant was right there in the Necroscope’s mind, directing him, almost controlling him. So Harry let him handle it his way.

The bar was on Harry’s right, and Big Jimmy moving along it from the left, still knocking aside bar stools. The man had swung with his right hand, a lumbering blow with lots of weight but nothing of speed. The Necroscope stepped forward
inside
the arc of the fist, caught Big Jimmy’s wrist in both hands, turned and bent forward from the waist. The big man’s impetus carried him forward; Harry’s back formed the fulcrum and his opponent’s arm the lever; he rose up, somersaulted,

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came crashing down on a table and reduced it to rubble. And Harry said:

Christ, Sergeant! I said no mess!

What mess?
The other answered.
Ifs over! He’s winded but that’s all. And maybe he’ll take it as a warning. Only a total moron would push it
any further. He’s seen how fast we are.

Wel, I hope you’re right,
Harry answered with feeling, as Big Jimmy got groggily to his feet.

‘Why, ye—’ The man took a stumbling step forward.

The Necroscope took a pace back, his arms lifting and extending forward as his hands commenced moving in an unmistakable karate weave. And cocking his head slightly on one side, warningly: ‘Don’t,’ he said. Simply that.

‘Huh!’ The other grunted, stopping dead in his tracks. ‘So ye’re a hard man, are ye?’

‘You really don’t want to find out,’ Harry told him.

And from behind the bar: ‘Ye’re
leaving,
Big Jimmy!’ B.J. snapped. ‘Right now, an’ ye’re no coming back!’

Big Jimmy looked at her through litle red pig-eyes, cast one more murderous glance at Harry, and grunted, Tuck ye’all, then!’ As he swung around and headed for the door, one of the girls was hot on his heels with his coat; and B.J. shouting after them:

‘Tear up his card! No one’s ever tae let that pig in here again!’ Her eyes stopped blazing and she looked at Harry, who was finishing his drink. And regaining a semblance of control, B.J. said: ‘Greased lightning, aye. Maybe ye’re right, and I should’nae have tae do with ye.’

Too late for that, B.J.’ he told her. ‘We’re already had “tae do,” as you wel know.’ He glanced round the room but no one was looking his way. They probably thought it best not to. One of the girls was clearing away the wrecked table. ‘We have to talk,’ Harry reminded B.J.

She pursed her lips, as if preparing to argue, but finaly said, Tonight, then, after we’ve closed. Midnight, right here. And now perhaps ye‘11

go? Ye’re no’ a member, after al. Ah’ve mah licence tae think about.’

And you should think a little more about your accent,
he thought,
which changes like the wind round Edinburgh Castle!

B.J. signalled for one of her girls to get his coat, then phoned for a taxi: ‘Just in case the Big Man’s waiting outside for ye …’ But he wasn’t, and neither was the little man with the camera. Harry didn’t need the taxi but took it anyway -as far as the town centre. .Then he took the Mobius route the rest of the way to Bonnyrig.

Back home he rummaged around until he found an incredibly ancient bottle of Scottish malt whisky that must have belonged to his stepfather. There was stil an inch or two of liquor in the bottom, and as he poured himself a large shot he couldn’t help but wonder what Alec Kyle would have thought of it. Oddly enough, he stil felt buoyed by the single

shot of cognac he’d had at B.J.’s! So what was he to make of that? A warning?

And:
I’ve really got to get this body in training,
Harry thought. With which he poured the contents of his glass - and the rest of the botle -away down the kitchen sink. Once you know your enemy, it’s easier to deal with him.

And that was the end of that…

But maybe he should have taken a drink if only to lighten up a little. Doom and gloom were back by the time he used the Mobius Continuum to return to B.J.’s, a little after midnight, and the miseries were on Harry as heavy as ever. Also, he was somewhat upset by al this unnecessary hopping about; if B.J. had realy wanted to talk to him, why hadn’t she simply taken him into her back room and
talked
to him? Or … had she needed the time to set him up?

Whichever, he was alert as never before as he stepped out of the Continuum across the street from B.J.’s in the dark doorway where he’d seen the little man with the camera. If anything he was early; two of B.J.’s girls were just geting into a taxi at the kerbside, and B.J. herself was seeing them off. She gave a wave from her doorway as the cab puled away, then moved back out of sight. And the iluminated sign blinked into darkness.

Harry conjured a door of his own, moved across the street, rang B.J.’s bel. She hadn’t had time to lock the door yet; he sensed movement, heard the ratle of a chain; the door swung open.

And seeing him: ‘Now how in al that’s …?’ she said, and frowned her puzzlement. ‘You weren’t here just a moment ago. I thought you weren’t coming.’

He shrugged. ‘I saw your girls leaving and waited. Didn’t want anyone to get the, er, wrong idea.’

‘Oh, realy?’ she raised an eyebrow. ‘Wel, maybe ye’d beter come in then, before someone sees you!’ And as he made to step across the threshold, ‘But Harry, you can believe me that they wouldn’t get the wrong idea. So let’s have it understood: this is strictly business. It’s not that I
want
you here, but that you want to be here, right?’

His turn to frown, where he paused with one foot over the threshold. ‘You invited me.’

‘No,’ she denied it.
‘You
insisted!’

‘Wel, I’m here anyway,’ he said.

‘And do you stil want to talk to me?’ (She half blocked his way).

‘If you’l let me in, yes!’

Smiling, she let him pass. And walking along the corridor while she finished locking the door, he wondered,
now what was that al about?

The lights were low in the bar room; Harry stood waiting, until B.J. came in from the corridor and turned them off altogether. Then he 154

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stood in total darkness, until a vertical crack of light expanded into an oblong as B.J. opened a recessed door behind the bar and passed through into the back room. And looking back at him, she said: ‘Well, are ye no’ coming?’ She was in and out of that accent of hers like a hungry budgie in its cage, hopping to and fro from swing to swing!

Harry let himself through the bar hatch and followed her into the back room, or one of them. It was a storage room with a door to one side and stairs ascending to B.J.’s private rooms overhead. Here the Necroscope hesitated … until from the foot of the stairs B.J. said: ‘I see more than enough of that bar of an evening. So if we must talk, let’s at least be comfortable.’

Following her up the lighted stairs, he admired her figure and the natural swing of her backside in her sheath skirt, which was slit up one side oriental style. B.J. was slim and shapely … and classy, yes. Or was it just Kyle’s body chemistry? Whichever, the Necroscope felt it; also their closeness: the fact that they were quite alone here. But (he was quick to reassure himself) it was all part of the search for Brenda.

This is where I live,’ she told him, stepping aside on a landing that opened directly into her living room. ‘Go on in.’ And as he stepped by her into the room: ‘Do have a seat, Harry Keogh,’ she said.

Before doing so he looked the room over, and was pleased with what he saw. For where the bar below was a mixture of different styles, this room was all B.J. - it perfectly reflected her image, or the image that he still had of her. It was tasteful, yet exciting, too.

It pleased the eye, and simultaneously satisfied the mind. Lacking pretension or ostentation, still it looked rich, looked real… like the woman herself?

The carpet was pile, patterned, and obviously wool. Harry could almost feel its warmth coming right through the soles of his shoes. The carpet’s pattern was … what, Turkish? Greek? But Mediterranean, anyway. As were the varnished pine ceiling beams that formed spokes from the centre of the ceiling, completing the wheel where they were joined up by curving members around the room’s perimeter. Thus the room had a circular or at least octagonal look, while in fact it was simply a square room. But actually there was nothing ‘simple’ about it.

The main lighting feature, a small round chandelier on an extending golden chain, depended from the hub of the pine ceiling-wheel; its crystal pendants served to contain the electric light from three egg-shaped bulbs, so that the whole piece was set glowing like a small soft sun. Its light was adequate, but could be supplemented by use of shaded wall lights, and by the reading lamp on its tall white stand near the circular central table.

The three inner walls were decorated with what looked like good quality old prints in modern frames, while in the comers narrow tapestry screens framed in bamboo added to the circular effect. In the exterior wall, a wide bay window and seat took up three-quarters of the

space and opened onto a balcony overlooking the garden; the Necroscope could see the gently mobile tops of trees or shrubbery out there, gleaming a lush green in the rain, and a night-dark hill in the distance (the Castle’s Rock, maybe, or Arthur’s Seat?) silhouetted against a lowering sky.

A light-tan leather lounger faced two matching easy chairs across the polished top of the pine table, and a pair of tall, narrow, crammed bookshelves filled the gaps between the framed prints along one wall. A television set at the foot of one of the screens that flanked the bay window could be viewed comfortably from the lounger, while a music centre on its stand occupied the space in front of the other screen. Behind all four of the screens small chests of drawers were barely visible; obviously Bonnie Jean kept her clutter in the drawers, well out of sight of visitors. She was one tidy lady.

To complete the picture, there was a rotating drinks cabinet on the open landing itself, where B.J. had paused, presumably to prepare drinks, and to inquire: ‘A Courvoisier?’

Harry almost replied in the affirmative, then remembered his vow against hard liquor and shook his head. ‘Thanks, no.’

‘What?’ she said. ‘And am I supposed to sit here drinking by mahself!’

‘Nothing hard,’ he answered. ‘I’m not one for hard liquor. Tonight was a one-off. If you hadn’t suggested cognac, I probably wouldn’t have thought of it. But look, since B.J. ‘s is a wine bar, why don’t you offer me a glass of wine?’

That seemed to please her. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I think I’m glad ye’re no’ a drinker. Hard drink will make a fool of a man - like Big Jimmy, for instance. It’ll put an idiot in your head and a braggart in your mouth, to think and speak for ye!’

The Necroscope was well able to appreciate that: the idea of other people in your head, speaking and acting for you. And it wasn’t too far-fetched, either, except his people were anything but idiots and usually told the truth!

‘As for the difference,’ B.J. went on …

‘… Eh?’ he felt obliged to cut in.

‘Between a pub and a wine bar,’ she smiled.

‘Oh!’

‘It’s the licence,’ she explained. ‘A pub’s hours are controlled, and its clients often aren’t! But my wine bar’s a club whose opening hours are satisfactory
to me …
within the law, you understand, and with clients that I can pick and choose.’

‘Like Big Jimmy?’ Harry sat on the lounger.

‘It was Big Jimmy’s first bad mistake,’ she answered, ‘and his last.’

‘You know,’ Harry said, ‘that was the first Jock “Jimmy” I ever met? I know everyone
calls
everyone Jimmy up here, but are there really that many Jameses?’

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She laughed, and explained: ‘It’s like “Johns” in London. Or “Bruces” in Australia. If you don’t know someone’s name, you call him Jimmy, that’s all. But Big Jimmy really was one.’

Harry grimaced, and agreed, ‘He was one, all right!’

Til tell ye something, though,’ she said, sitting in one of the easy chairs opposite him. ‘You’d best be careful how you use “Jock.” The Scots don’t much care for it.’

‘Oh, I can tell you know about them,’ Harry said. ‘Despite that you’re not one of them …?’

B.J. turned her face away and busied herself pouring wine, generally hiding her momentary confusion.

She had brought a silver tray bearing a crystal decanter, a bottle, and glasses, from the drinks cabinet. Now she poured a glass of red wine from the decanter and a glass of liebfraumilch from the bottle. Taking up the sweet white wine, she offered a toast: ‘Here’s to you, Harry Keogh.’ And the accent had quite disappeared.

Harry picked up his glass and looked at it. The glass was many-faceted; its contents were a light ruby red, but seemed misty. ‘The red’s for me?’ he queried. ‘But I thought red wine was supposed to give you a headache? What’s this, the “house” wine?’