‘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?
Watchers, you mean? The Branch? (A mental shake of the other’s head). Not that I’ve detected. Maybe a tentative touch now and then, but nothing you could nail down.
Nothing concentrated anyway. If they have people up here, then they’re too good for me. And I’m pretty damn good!
No static? Paxton, maybe?
I don’t feel any static. Distantly, maybe, but nothing local. As for Paxton: I’m sure I’d be able to pick him up twenty miles away. And you?
Just an … experience, Harry answered. In Darlington.
Darlington? (The Necroscope could almost see the other’s eyebrows going up.) Now there’s a coincidence! And did you find any Johnnies in Darlington?
Harry was intrigued. Two, he replied. And one of them a real-life ‘Johnny’. That’s how he spells his name, anyway: Johnny Courtney. The other is called John Found.