Deadspawn

The Necroscope was jaded - or thought he was - by life, death, everything. He believed he needed motivation. Before leaving her he asked if she'd mind if he looked at her. She told him that if it were anyone else she couldn't care less, because she wouldn't even know they were looking, not any longer. But with Harry she would know, because he was the Necroscope. She was just a shy kid.

'Hey!' he protested, but gently, 'I'm no voyeur!'

It wasn't... if he hadn't... if I was unmarked, then I don't think I'd mind, she said.

'Penny, you're lovely,' Harry told her. 'And me? After all's said and done, I'm only human. But believe me I'm not putting you down when I tell you that right now I'm not interested in that side of things. It's because you're marked that I want to see you. I need to feel angry. And now that I know you, I know that to see what he did would make me feel angry.'

Then I'll just have to pretend you're my doctor, she said.

Harry very gently took the rubber sheet off her pale, young body, looked at her, and tremblingly put the sheet back again.

Is it bad? She fought down a sob. It's such a shame. Mum always said I could be a model.

'So you could,' he told her. 'You were very beautiful.'

But not now? And though she kept from actually sobbing, he could feel her despair brimming over. But in a little while she said: Harry? Did it make you angry?

He felt a growl rising in his throat, suppressed it, and before he left her said, 'Oh yes. Yes, it did.'

Darcy Clarke was still outside the door with the plain-clothes man. Looking washed out, Harry joined them and closed the door after him. 'I've left the sheet off her face,' he said. And then, speaking specifically to - and glaring at - the officer: 'Don't cover her face!'

The other raised an indifferent eyebrow and shrugged. 'Who, me?' he said, his accent nasal, Glaswegian, less than sympathetic. 'Ah had nothing tae do wi' it, Chief. It's just that when they're dead 'uns, people usually cover them up!'

Harry turned swiftly towards him, eyes widening and nostrils flaring in his pale, grimacing face, and Darcy Clarke's instinct took over. The Necroscope was suddenly dangerous and Clarke's weird talent knew it. There was a terrible anger in him, which he needed to take out on someone. But Clarke knew that it wasn't directed at him, wasn't directed at anyone but simply required an outlet.

Quickly forcing himself between Harry and the special-duty officer, he grabbed the Necroscope's arms. 'It's OK, Harry,' he said, urgently. 'It's OK. It's just that these people see things like this all the time. It doesn't affect them so much. They get used to it.'

Harry got a grip of himself, but not without an effort of will. He looked at Clarke and growled, They don't see things like that all the time! No one's ever going to "get used" to the idea that someone - something - could do that to a girl!' And then, seeing Clarke's bewildered expression: 'I'll explain later.'

He turned his gaze across Clarke's shoulder, and in a tone more nearly civil now - more civilized? - asked the officer, 'Do you have a notebook?'

Mystified - not knowing what was going on, just trying to do his job - the other said, 'Aye,' and groped in his pocket. He scribbled quickly as Harry fired Penny's name, address and family details at him. Following which, and looking even more mystified: 'You're sure about these details, sir?'

Harry nodded. 'Just be sure to pass on what I said, right? I don't want anyone to cover her face over. Penny always hated having her face covered.'

'You knew the young lady, then?'

'No,' said Harry. 'But I know her now.'

They left the officer muttering into his walkie-talkie and scratching his head, and went up into the courtyard and the fresh air. As they moved into sunlight Harry put on his dark glasses and turned up the collar of his coat. And Clarke said to him: 'You got something else, right?'

Harry nodded, but in the next moment: 'Never mind what I got - what have you got? Do you have any idea what you're dealing with?'

Clarke threw up his hands. 'Only that he's a serial killer, and that he's weird.'

'But you know what he does?'

Clarke nodded. 'Yes. We know it's sexual. A sort of sex, anyway. A sick sort of sex.'

'Sicker than you think.' Harry shivered. 'Dragosani's kind of sickness.'

That pulled Clarke up short. 'What?'

'A necromancer,' Harry told him. 'A murderer, and a necromancer. And in a way worse than Dragosani, because this one's a necrophiliac, too!'

Clarke somehow succeeded in grimacing and looking blank at the same time. Then: 'Refresh my mind,' he said. 'I know I should be getting something, but I'm not.'

Harry thought about it for a few moments before answering, but in the end there was no way to tell it other than the way it was. 'Dragosani tore open the bodies of dead men for information,' he finally said. 'That was his "talent", just like you have yours and I have mine. Necromancy. It was his job when he worked for Gregor Borowitz and Soviet E-Branch at the Chateau Bronnitsy: to "examine" the corpses of his country's enemies. He could read their passions in the mucus of their eyes, tear the truths of their lives right out of their steaming tripes, tune in on the whispering of their stiffening brains and sniff their smallest secrets in the gases of their swollen guts!'

Clarke held up a hand in protest. 'Christ, Harry - I know all that!'

The Necroscope nodded. 'But you don't know what it's like to be dead, and that's why you're not getting it. It's because you can't imagine what I'm talking about. You know what I do and accept it because you know it for a fact, but deep inside yourself you still think it's just too way out to think about. So you don't. And I don't blame you. Now listen.

'I know I always protested I was different from Dragosani, but in certain ways he and I were alike. Even now I don't like admitting it, but it's true. I mean, you know what the bastard did to Keenan Gormley - the mess he made of him - but only I know what Gormley thought about it!'

And now Clarke got it. He snatched air in a great gasp and felt the short hairs stiffen at the back of his neck as an irrepressible shudder wracked his body. And: 'Jesus, you're right!' he breathed. 'I just don't think about it - because I don't want to think about it! But in fact Keenan knew! He felt everything Dragosani did to him!'

'Right,' Harry was relentless. 'Torture is the necromancer's principal tool. The dead feel the necromancer working on them just like they hear me talking to them. Except unlike the living, there's nothing they can do about it, not even scream. Not and be heard, anyway. And Penny Sanderson?'

Clarke went pale in a moment. 'She could feel - ?'

'Everything,' Harry growled. 'And that bastard, whoever he is, knew it! So you see while rape is one thing, and bad enough when it's done to the living, and while necrophilia is something else, an outrage carried out upon the unfeeling dead, what he does hits new lows. He tortures his victims alive, then tortures them dead - and he knows while he's doing it that they can feel it! He uses a knife with a curved blade, like a tool for scooping earth when you're planting bulbs. It's razor-sharp and... and he doesn't use it for scooping earth.'

It had been Clarke's intention to stop at the guardroom and speak to the policemen there. But now, pale as a ghost, he reeled to the castle's low wall. Clutching its masonry for support, he gulped at the gusting air and fought down the bile he felt rising from the churning of his guts.