By then Harry was home again, dialling 999. He got an emergency operator in Bonnyrig who put him through to the police station.
‘Police – how can we help ye?’ The voice was heavily accented.
There’s a car just burst into flames on the access road to the old estate behind Bonnyrig,’ Harry said, breathlessly, and passed on full details of the location. ‘And there’s a man there drinking from a hip flask and warming his hands on the fire.’
‘Who’s speaking, please?’ The voice was more authoritative now, alert and very official-sounding.
‘Can’t stop,’ said Harry. ‘Have to see if anyone’s hurt.’ He put the phone down.
From his upstairs bedroom window the Necroscope watched the fire steadily brightening, and ten minutes later saw the Bonnyrig fire-engine arrive along with its police escort. And for a little while there was the eerie wailing of sirens where blue- and orange-flashing lights clustered around the central leap of flames. Then the fire winked out and the sirens were silenced, and a little after that the police car drove off … with a passenger.
Harry would have been happy to know that the passenger was Paxton, furiously swearing his innocence and breathing whisky fumes all over the hard-faced officers. But he didn’t because by then he was fast alseep. Whether sleep at night was right or wrong for his character made no difference: Trevor Jordan’s advice had been sound . . .
In the morning the rising sun scorched Harry from his bed. Coming up beyond the river, it crept in through his window and seared a path across a twitching left hand which he dreamed was trapped in one of Hamish McCulloch’s kilns. Starting awake, he saw the room flooded with glowing yellow sunlight where he’d mistakenly left the curtains open.
He breakfasted on coffee – just coffee – and immediately proceeded to the cool cellar. He didn’t know how long he had left, so it might well be a case of now or never. And anyway he’d promised Trevor Jordan it would be today. Jordan’s and Penny’s urns were already down below, along with the chemicals Harry had taken from the Castle Ferenczy.
Trevor,’ he said as he weighed and mixed powders. ‘I went after Paxton last night … no, not seriously, but almost. All I did in the end was toss a spanner in his works, which should keep him out of our hair a while. I certainly don’t feel him near, but that could be because it’s morning and the sun is up. Can you tell me if he’s out there?’
The newsagent in Bonnyrig has just opened his shop and there’s a milkman doing his rounds, Jordan answered. Oh, and a lot of perfectly ordinary people in the village are having breakfast. But no sign of Paxton. It seems a pretty normal sort of morning to me.
‘Not exactly normal,’ Harry told him. ‘Not for you, anyway.’
I’ve been trying not to hope too hard, Jordan answered, his deadspeak shivery. Trying not to pray. I still keep thinking I’m dreaming. I mean, we actually do shut down and sleep sometimes. Did you know that?
The Necroscope nodded, finished with his powders and took up Jordan’s urn. ‘I was incorporeal myself one time, remember? I used to get tired as hell. Mental exhaustion is far worse than physical.’
For a while, as he carefully poured Jordan’s ashes, there was silence. Then: Harry, I’m too scared to talk!
‘Scared?’ Harry repeated the word almost automatically, concentrated on breaking the urn with a hammer and lying its pieces with the insides uppermost around the heap of mortal remains and chemical catalysts, so that anything clinging to them would get caught up in it when he spoke the words.
Scared, excited, you name it . . . but if I had guts I’d throw them up, I’m sure!
It was time. Trevor, you have to understand that if you’re not right … I mean – ‘
I know what you mean. I know.
‘OK.’ Harry nodded, and moistened his dry lips. ‘So here we go.’
The words of evocation came as easy as his mother tongue, and yet with a growl which denied his human heritage. He used his art with – pride? Certainly in the knowledge that it was a very uncommon thing, and that he was a most uncommon creature.