'But one night, nearly eight weeks ago, it caught up with you, right?' He felt that with her he could get right to it.
Her assumed indifference fell away from her at once. That wasn't why it happened, she said. I didn't fetch him on. And anyway he didn't want me… like that.
'It was just an assumption,' Harry told her, quickly. 'I meant no offence, and I'm not eager to bring back hurtful memories. But it's hard to see how I can track this bloke down if no one is able to tell me about him.'
Oh, I'd like to see him get his, Harry, she answered. And I'll help you any way I can. I just hope I can remember enough, that's all.
'You won't know until you try.'
Where do you want me to start?
'First show me how you were, or how you thought you were,' he said. For he knew well enough that the dead retain pictures of themselves as they were in life, and he wanted to try and draw some sort of comparison with Penny Sanderson. In short, he wondered if his necromancer quarry followed a pattern.
From her mind he immediately got back a picture of a tall, dark-eyed, leggy brunette in a mini-skirt, with slightly loose breasts unsupported under a blue silk blouse, and a shapely backside. But there was nothing of character in the picture, her picture, nothing to suggest quality of mind or personality; it was all sensual or outright sexual. Which didn't fit with his first impressions.
So? How was I?
'Very attractive,' he told her. 'But I think you're selling yourself short.'
Often, she agreed, but without her customary laugh. Then she sighed, and that was something Harry was used to in the dead. It was the realization of a time and a thing done and finished with, which could never return. But she brightened up at once. And here am I actually talking to a man, and for once not wondering what he's got in his pants. In the front, and in the back-pocket.
'Was it always like that, for money?'
And sometimes for fun. I've told you, I was nympho. Do you want to get on now?
Harry was embarrassed. She'd given him a stock answer, had obviously heard that question before, often. 'Was I prying?'
It's OK, she answered. All men wonder about it, about what goes on in a pro's mind. But suddenly her deadspeak was very cold. All men except that one, anyway. He doesn't have to wonder, for he can always find out for himself, afterwards, when they're dead.
And with that the Necroscope was sure she'd give him all she could. 'Tell me about it,' he said.
And she did…
It was a Friday night and I went to the dance. Being freelance, my time was my own. I didn't need a pimp touting for me, taking my money and bringing his friends round for freebies. But the dance was in town and I lived quite a few miles out. After the midnight hour taxis are expensive; Cinders needed her coach home.
That was OK; there are always a handful of likely lads who'll buzz a girl home on the chance of a grope. And if I liked the guy and if he wasn't too pushy, maybe he could get more than a grope. A ride for a ride, as the saying goes.
On this occasion I picked the wrong one: no, not our man, but an armful all the same. Once I was in the car his polite, concerned attitude went right out the window. He didn't know what I was, thought I was just a straight kid but easy meat. He could hardly drive for drooling and wanted to stop in every layby and back alley. I was wearing expensive clothes and didn't want them ripped up. And anyway I didn't like him.
He said he knew a place just off the motorway, and before I could tell him I didn't need it he took the fly-on for Edinburgh. In a layby under some trees he made his move, and got my knee in his soft bits for his trouble! When he could drive again he did, but left me stranded there.
There was a service station a quarter-mile up the motorway. I went there and had a coffee. I wasn't shaken up or anything, just dehydrated. Too many gin-and-its at the Palace.
But sitting there in this little booth I was joined by a driver. That was how I saw him: a driver. A long-distance man shaking off his weariness with a mug of coffee.
Don't ask me what he looked like; the place was three-quarters empty and they'd turned the lights low to keep the bills down, and there was still a lot of gin in me. I spoke to him but I didn't really look at him, you know? Anyway, he didn't seem a bad sort and he wasn't pushy. When he finished his coffee and made to stand up, I asked him which way he was heading.
'Where do you want to go?' he said. His voice was soft, not unfriendly.
I told him where I lived and he said he knew it. 'Your luck's in,' he told me. 'I go past it on the motorway. About five miles from here? There's a flyoff where I can drop you. A couple of hundred yards and you'll be at your door. Can't take you any closer than that, I'm afraid, because my miles and fuel are monitored. Anyway, it's up to you. Maybe you'd feel safer calling a taxi?'
But I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
We left the cafeteria and went out into the lorry park. He was cool and calm, in no hurry. I felt perfectly safe with him. In fact I didn't give it a thought. His vehicle was one of these big articulated jobs, which we approached from the side and the rear. The headlights of a passing car as it flashed by on the motorway lit it up in a swath of light. The lorry had ice-blue panels with white lettering saying: frigis express. I remember it well because the white paint had peeled off one leg of the 'X' making it look like eypress.
But at the back of the lorry my driver paused and looked at me, and said: 'I just have to make sure this door is secure.'
I stood beside him as he unlocked and slid up this roller door across the full width of the truck. A blast of ice-cold air came out, which made me shiver as it turned to a cloud of mist. Inside… there seemed to be rows of things hanging in there, but it was dark and I couldn't see what they were. He reached inside with both hands and did something, then looked over his shoulder and said, 'It's OK.' And I think it was then I realized that I hadn't seen him smile. Not once.
He indicated we should go to the cab, and as he started to pull the door down again I turned away from him. That was when he grabbed me from behind. One arm went round my neck and the other hand held something over my face. Of course I gasped for air — and got chloroform!
I kicked and struggled, but that only makes you gasp all the more! And then I passed out…
When I came to I was lying — or slithering about — on a patch of ice: that's what it felt like, anyway. There was a smell but I couldn't quite make out what it was. I was much too cold; all my senses were numb from the cold. And I felt dizzy and nauseous from the chloroform.
Then I remembered everything and knew I was in the back of the truck, slipping and slithering when he applied his brakes or accelerated. And of course I also knew I was in trouble, in fact dead trouble. Whatever my driver wanted, he was going to get it. And then there was a fair chance that he'd kill me. I'd seen his truck; I could more or less describe him, if not now, certainly later; it was odds on I was a goner.
I propped myself in one corner of the dark refrigerator (I suppose that's what it was: a large mobile fridge, a freezer truck) and tried to get some warmth back into my body. I hugged myself, blew on my hands, beat my arms about. But I was weak from the cold and the after-effect of the chloroform. I didn't have the strength of a kitten.
Then, after — oh, I don't know how long, maybe fifteen minutes — there was a bumpy patch and I heard his airbrakes go on. To this day I don't know where we were, for I never did see the outside again. The truck stopped; in a little while the door rolled up and it was dark outside; a dark figure clambered up panting into the rear of the trailer. He pulled the door shut again and put on a dim interior light, just a single bulb under a grille in the ceiling. And then he came for me.