‘It’s OK.’ It was as much as Harry could bear. His voice was trembling, broken. ‘I know what then. You’ve said enough. I … I’ll go on what I have.’
Pamela was crying now, spilling out her poor mutilated soul, all of her defiance and resilience crushed and drained from her by the horror of what she’d forced herself to remember for the Necroscope.
He … he made my body ugly! she sobbed. He made holes in me! Before I was dead he was into me. And after I was dead I could still feel him grunting on me, hurting me. It’s not right that when you’re dead someone should still be able to hurt you, Harry.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ was all Harry could say to comfort her. But even saying it he knew it wasn’t, knew it wouldn’t be until he himself had put this thing right.
She took this from his deadspeak, understood his resolve, reinforced his anger with her own. Get him for me, Harry! Get that dog’s bastard for me!
‘And for myself,’ he told her. ‘For if I don’t I know he’ll always be there, clinging like slime to the walls of my mind. But, Pamela – ‘
Yes?
‘Simply killing this one won’t be enough. I mean, it’s just not enough! But if you’re willing, there’s a way you can help me. You’re strong, Pamela, in death just as you were in life. And what I have in mind … I believe it’s something you would enjoy even more than you did in life.’ He explained his meaning, and for a little while she was silent.
Then: I think I know now why the dead are afraid of you, Harry, she said, wonderingly. And: Is it true that you’re a vampire?
‘Yes . . . no!’ he said. ‘Not like that. Not yet, anyway. And not here. But somewhere else I will be – or may be -one day.’
Yes. He sensed her nod. I think you must be – or will be – for nothing human could ever think the thought you thought just then. Nothing entirely human, anyway.
‘But you’ll do it?’
Oh, yes, she answered him at last with a grim, emphatic deadspeak nod. Who or whatever you are, I’ll do anything you tell me, Harry Keogh, vampire, Necroscope. Anything, everything and whatever it takes to get even. Whatever you ask and whenever you ask it. Anything . . .
Harry nodded. ‘So be it,’ he said.
For the next thirty-odd hours the Necroscope was busy; not only him but E-Branch, too. And the next day, a warm evening in mid-May, the Minister Responsible caused the Branch emergency call-in system to be brought into play.
First, acting on disturbing information received from Geoffrey Paxton (concerning among other things the files Darcy Clarke had mailed to Harry Keogh), the Minister had relieved Clarke of all duties and placed him under what amounted to house arrest at Clarke’s own north London flat in Crouch End. Second, he must now attend the O-group briefing he’d called at E-Branch HQ. The espers would know, of course, that something big was in the offing: all available agents were to be present.
Paxton was there to meet the Minister on the ground floor. Even as they exchanged curt greetings Ben Trask, just back from a job, came in from the street through the swing doors. Trask looked drawn, even haggard. The Minister took him to one side where they conversed in lowered tones for a minute or two, and for once Paxton knew enough to keep his nose out. Then they all three took the elevator upstairs and went directly to the ops room.
The called-in agents were silent, seated, waiting for the Minister. He took the podium and his eyes swept the mainly ordinary-looking faces of the espers – Britain’s ESP-endowed mindspies – where they stared back at him. He knew them all from photographs in their files, but only Darcy Clarke and Ben Trask had ever met him. And Paxton, of course.
If Clarke had been here, perhaps he would have stood up as a sign of respect, and maybe the rest of them would have followed suit. Or there again maybe not. The trouble with this lot had always been that they thought they were special. But here the Minister knew he wasn’t fooling anybody, least of all himself. They were special, bloody special!