Trask's fist hung in mid-air, shaking with its need to crash into Paxton's face. But as the Minister's words sank in, so he tossed the telepath away from him. And lurchingly, almost drunkenly, he went back to Clarke's crumpled, lifeless body.
The Minister said to Paxton, 'Get a doctor… and an ambulance.' Then he saw the look on Paxton's face.
The telepath had recovered both his wits and his nerve; he was cleaning his face with a large pocket handkerchief and shaking his head. His look said, think what you're saying, what you're doing. And out loud he said, 'We don't need a doctor or an ambulance, just an incinerator. Clarke's for burning, by us, right now. Right or wrong, we can't take any chances with him. He's for the fire just as soon as possible. And me, I'm for bathing. Trask, Cleary, I know how you must feel, but if I were you — '
'No, you don't know how we feel.' Ben Trask looked up at him, all emotion gone now from his face.
'Anyway,' Paxton continued, 'I'd bathe if I were you. And right now.'
The Minister indicated the door. 'Go on, then,' he told Paxton. 'Go and arrange… disposal. Do it now — and take a shower, too, if you feel it's necessary — then report back to me.'
And after the telepath had left the room, past the gaping espers where they crowded the corridor: 'Ben,' said the Minister, 'the killing has started. Right or wrong, like Paxton said, it's started. And we both know it has to go on. So from now on I want you in charge of this thing. I want you to run the entire show, until it's sorted out one way or the other.'
Trask stood up, leaned against the wall, looked at the Minister and thought: One way or the other? No, it can only be one way, for the other is unthinkable. Well, someone has to do it, and I'm as experienced as any of them. More than most. And at least if I'm running it I'll know that that idiot Paxton won't be doing any more damage.
In the old days it would have been Darcy, Ken Layard, Trevor Jordan and a handful of others. And Harry, of course. But this time they'd be hunting Harry himself, and that was different. And despite what Clarke had said, it looked as if they'd be hunting Jordan, too. And the girl, Penny Sanderson? Jesus, according to the file she was just a kid! But an undead kid.
'All right?' said the Minister.
And Trask sighed and answered with an almost imperceptible nod. Yes, it was all right. And Paxton could well have been right, too. If there had been something — anything at all — wrong with Darcy…
Trask looked at the girl, her bloodied hands and blouse. 'Shower,' he said, simply. 'And make a good job of it.' Then, when he and the Minister were alone, he said, 'When Darcy's been… burned, we have to scatter the ashes. Scatter them far and wide.' He gave a small shudder. 'For the fact is, Harry Keogh does things with ashes. And I really don't think I ever want to see Darcy again. Not on his feet, anyway.'
9:40 a.m.
Harry Keogh had just finished examining the personnel files at Frigis Express's Darlington depot when three things happened simultaneously. One: the depot clerk, whom Harry had lured from his tiny box of an office with a bogus telephone call, returned unexpectedly. Two: Harry felt a pang — almost a pain — of a sort he'd never experienced before, within his chest, as if someone had doused his heart with ice water. And three: the fading echo of an unrecognized cry bounced off his mind to ricochet into an unreachable metaphysical limbo of its own. And it seemed to the Necroscope that whatever its source, it was intended specifically for him: as if his name had been called from the gulf between life and death.
Deadspeak? But this had been different. Telepathy? Well, maybe. Or a cross between the two? That seemed more likely, and Harry remembered how his mother had described the feelings in her incorporeal heart when a pup called Paddy had been killed by a car on a Bonnyrig road.
So… had someone died? But who? And why had he cried out to Harry?
'Who the fuck are you?' demanded the burly, short-sleeved, red-headed clerk, as he herded Harry into the shadows of a dusty corner where the metal filing cabinet met the wall. He gaped at the former contents of the cabinet, now spilling across the floor.
Harry barely glanced at the man's suspicious, mottled face and said, 'Shh!'
'Shh!?' the other repeated him, disbelievingly. 'You'll get shh! breaking in here! Now what's the score?'
Harry was trying desperately to hang on to the diminishing ethereal echo of… a cry for help? Was that what it had been? 'Look,' he told the very untypical clerk, 'be quiet a minute, will you?' He tried to push by him.
'Why you — !' Blotches of angry red appeared on the man's jowly cheeks. 'A conman and thief, right? I recognize your voice. It was you on the 'phone — right. Well, you picked the wrong man this time, thief!' He grabbed Harry by the lapels and looked as if he was going to butt him in the face.
The Necroscope continued to concentrate on the cry, and at the same time reached out and caught his assailant by the throat. With one huge hand he held him at bay, choking, and with the other he reached up and took off his dark spectacles. The clerk saw his eyes and choked all the more, and commenced windmilling his arms as Harry shoved him effortlessly backwards, driving him across the floor. Finally the clerk's legs hit the edge of his desk and he sat down in a plastic paper tray, shattering it with his fat backside.
Still Harry held him, and still he listened for a repeat performance of the cry. But it was gone now, probably disappeared for ever.
Harry felt anger expanding inside him — felt frustrated, cheated — and his hand on the clerk's windpipe was like iron. His nails bit into the man's flesh as if it were putty, and Harry knew that if he wanted to he could crush his Adam's apple and tear his throat out all in one. What's more, the thing inside was urging him to do it, do it!
But he didn't. Instead he swept the clerk from the desk top and set him crashing down among the debris of his shattering chair and a wooden waste-paper basket.
'M-my… G-God!' The clerk coughed and spat and massaged his throat, and crawled dazedly into a corner where he turned and looked back fearfully at the spot where the blood-eyed, fanged, furious stranger had been standing. But of course the Necroscope was no longer there. No one was there.
And again the clerk gurgled, 'My God! My g-good G-God!'
Working from his list, alphabetically, Harry had already investigated three Frigis depots and installations: the vehicle depot at Alnwick, the slaughterhouse and meat dressing station in Bishop Auckland, and lastly the freezer complex in Darlington. So far he had copied the addresses of four possibles, all of them 'Johns' or 'Johnnies' and all drivers for the firm. Now, however, with the morning only halfway through, the weird mind-cry out of nowhere had disturbed him, damaged his resolve and destroyed his concentration; to such an extent that he took the Möbius route home to Bonnyrig, and from there contacted Trevor Jordan at the Castle on the Mount in Edinburgh.
Harry? Jordan came back at once, his telepathic 'voice' full of his relief that the Necroscope was in touch again. I tried to reach you but your mind-smog was too dense, and getting thicker all the time. Can you come and get me? I think I may have a lead.
Harry nodded, just as if he was speaking to someone directly in front of him and not ten miles away, and said, Do you know the Laird's Larder? It's a coffee shop up there just off the Royal Mile. Ask anyone and they'll direct you. I'll be there in five minutes. But Trevor, tell me: has anything peculiar happened? Have you felt anything strange? Do I need to be, well, more than usually careful how I move?