Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

'We can't afford it? What "we", Harry?' And suddenly Darcy was very tense, waiting for Harry's answer.

'You, me, the world.'

'Is it that bad?'

'It could be. So I'm coming with you.'

Sandra looked at them both and said: 'So am I.'

Darcy shook his head. 'Not if it's like he thinks it might be, you're not.'

'But I'm a telepath!' she protested. 'I might be able to help with Trevor Jordan. He and I used to be able to read each other like books. He's my friend, too, remember?'

Harry took her arm. 'Didn't you hear what Darcy said? Trevor's a madman. His mind has gone.'

She pulled a face and tut-tutted. 'What does that mean, Harry? Minds don't just "go", you of all people should know that. It hasn't "gone" anywhere — just gone wrong, that's all. I might be able to look in there and see what's wrong.'

'We're wasting time,' Darcy was growing anxious. 'OK, so it's decided: we're all three going. How long will it take you to get ready?'

'I'm ready,' Harry answered at once. 'Five minutes to pack a few things.'

'I'll need to pick up my passport on our way through Edinburgh,' Sandra shrugged. 'That's all. Anything else I need I'll buy out there.'

'Right,' said Darcy. 'You phone a taxi, and I'll help Harry pack. If we have time I can always put HQ in the picture from the airport. So let's go.'

And in their graves the teeming dead relaxed a little — for the moment, anyway. Harry, because he thought he'd heard their massed sighing, gave a small shudder. It wasn't terror or dread or anything like that. It was just the frisson of knowing. But of course his friends — his living friends — knew nothing at all of that.

Unbeknown to the three, Nikolai Zharov was at Edinburgh Airport to see them off. He had also been across the river with a pair of KGB-issue nite-lite binoculars when Wellesley broke into Harry's house in Bonnyrig. And he'd seen what had left the garden to plod back to their riven plots in a cemetery half a mile away. He'd seen and known what they were, and still looked haggard from knowing it.

But that didn't stop Zharov coding a message and phoning it through to the KGB cell at the embassy. So that in a very short time indeed the Soviet intelligence agencies knew that Harry Keogh was en route to the Mediterranean.

It was 6:30 p.m. local time at Rhodes Airport when Manolis Papastamos met them off their flight; during the taxi ride into the historic town, he told them in his frenetic fashion all he knew of what had transpired. But seeing no connection, he made no mention of Jianni Lazarides.

'What of Ken Layard now?' Darcy wanted to know.

Papastamos was small, slender, all sinew and suntan and shiny-black, wavy hair. Handsome in a fashion, and usually full of zest, now he looked harassed and hagridden. 'I don't know what it is,' he gave a series of questioning, desperate shrugs, held out his hands palms up. 'I don't know, and blame myself because I don't know! But… they are not easy to understand, those two. Policemen? Strange policemen! They seemed to know so much — to be so sure of certain things — but never explained to me how they knew.'

'They're very special,' Darcy agreed. 'But what about Ken?'

'He couldn't swim, had a bump on his head. I dragged him out of the harbour onto some rocks, got the salt water out of him, went for help. Jordan was no use to me: he just sat on the mole under the old windmills babbling to himself. He was suddenly… crazy! And he's stayed that way. But Layard, he was OK, I swear it! Just a bump on the head. And now…'

'Now?' said Harry.

'Now they say he may die!' Papastamos looked like he might cry. 'I did all I could, I swear it!'

'Don't blame yourself, Manolis,' Darcy told him. 'Whatever happened wasn't your fault. But can we see him?'

'Of course, we go to the hospital now. You can see Trevor, too, if you wish it. But,' and again he shrugged, 'you won't get much out of that one. My God, I am so sorry!'

The hospital was off Papalouca, one of the New Town's main roads. It was a big, sprawling place with a frontage all of a hundred yards long. 'One section — a ward, clinic and dispensary — is reserved mainly for the treatment of the tourists,' Papastamos explained as their taxi took them in through the gates. 'It's not much in use now, but in July and August the work doesn't stop. The broken bones, bad sunburns, heatstroke, stings, cuts and bruises. Ken Layard has a room of his own.'

He told their driver to wait, led the way into a side wing where a receptionist sat in her booth clipping her fingernails. As soon as she saw Papastamos she sprang to her feet and spoke to him in breathless, very much subdued Greek. Papastamos at once gasped and went pale. 'My friends, you are too late,' he said. 'He is… dead!' He looked at Sandra, Darcy and Harry in turn, and shook his head. 'There is nothing I can say.'

They were too dumbstruck to answer for a moment, until Harry said: 'Can we see him anyway?'

Harry looked cool in a pale blue jacket, white shirt and slacks. He and the others had slept on the plane, catching up on a lot of lost sleep. And despite his travails of the night before, he seemed to have come through it better than them. His face was calm, resigned; unlike Sandra's and Darcy's, Papastamos saw no sorrow in it. And the Greek thought: A cold-blooded one, this Harry Keogh.

But he was wrong: it was simply that Harry had learned to view death differently. Ken Layard might be finished 'here' — finished physically, materially, in the corporeal world — but he wasn't all dead. Not all of him. Why, for all Harry knew Ken might be seeking him out right now, desperate to engage him in deadspeak. Except Harry was forbidden to hear him, and forbidden to answer even if he did.

'See him?' Papastamos answered. 'Of course you can. But the girl tells me that first the doctor wishes to see us. His office is this way.' And he led them down a cool corridor where the light came slanting in through high, narrow windows.

They found the doctor, a small bald man with thick-lensed spectacles perched on the end of his hook of a nose, in his tiny office room signing and stamping papers.

When Papastamos introduced them to him, Dr Sakellarakis was at once the soul of concern, displaying his very genuine dismay at the loss of their friend. Speaking half-decent English and shaking his head sadly, he told them:

"This bump on the Layard's head — I 'fraid is much more than the simple bump, gentlemen, lady. There is perhaps the damage inside? This is not certain until the autopsy, naturally, but I thinks this one is causing the death. The damage, the blood clot, something.' Again he shook his head, gave a sad shrug.

'Can we see him?' Harry asked again. And as the doctor led the way: 'When is the autopsy?'

Again the Greek's shrug. 'One days, two — as soon as it can be arranged. But soon. Until then I am having him removed to the morgue.'

'And when did he die — exactly?' Harry was relentless.

'Exactly? To the minute? Is not known. One hour, I thinks. About… ah, 1800 hours?'

'Six o'clock local time,' said Sandra. 'We were on the plane.'

'Does there have to be an autopsy?' Harry hated the thought of it; he knew the effect necromancy had on the dead, how much they feared it. Dragosani had been a necromancer, and oh how the dead had loathed and feared him! Of course, this wouldn't be the same; Layard would feel nothing at the hands of a pathologist, whose skills would be those of the surgeon as opposed to the torturer, but still Harry didn't like it.