She knew what he meant: that he’d reached the end of the road, that there was nowhere else he could look.
That’s right,’ he said, turning away from the riverbank, ‘nowhere else to look, and not much purpose to it anyway. Not much purpose to anything any more . . .’
Head down, he bumped into someone who at once took his arm to steady him. At first Harry didn’t recognize the man, but recognition quickly followed. ‘Darcy? Darcy Clarke?’ Harry began to smile, only to feel the smile turning sour on his face. ‘Oh, yes – Darcy Clarke,’ he said, more slowly this time. ‘And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. I thought I’d already made it clear to you people, I’m through with all of that.’
Clarke studied his face, a face he’d known well from the old days, when it had belonged to someone else. There were more lines than there used to be, and there was also something more of character. Not that Alec Kyle had been without character, but Harry’s had gradually imprinted itself on the flesh. Also, there was weariness in that face, and signs that there’d been a lot of pain, too.
‘Harry,’ Clarke said, ‘did I hear you telling yourself just now that there’s no purpose to anything? Is that how you’re feeling?’
Harry glanced at him sharply. ‘How long were you spying on me?’
Clarke was taken aback. ‘I was standing there by the wall,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t spying, Harry. But … I didn’t want to disturb you, that’s all. I mean,’ he nodded toward the river, ‘this is where your mother is, isn’t it?’
Harry suddenly felt defensive. He looked away, then looked back and nodded. He had nothing to fear from this man. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she’s here. It was my mother I was talking to.’
Without thinking, Clarke glanced quickly all about. ‘You were talking to – ?’ Then he looked once more at the quiet flowing river and his expression changed. In a lowered voice, he said: ‘Of course, I’d almost forgotten.’
‘Had you?’ Harry was quick off the mark. ‘You mean that isn’t what you came to see me about?’ Then he relented a little. ‘OK, come on back to the house. We can talk as we go.’
As they made their way through brittle gorse and wild bramble, Clarke unobtrusively studied the Necroscope. Not only did Harry seem a little vacant, abstracted, but his style in general seemed to have suffered. He wore an open-necked shirt under a baggy grey pullover, thin grey trousers, scuffed shoes on his feet. It was the attire of someone who didn’t much care. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold,’ Clarke told him, with genuine concern. The E-Branch head forced a smile. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you? We’ll soon be into November . . .’
They walked along the riverbank toward the large Victorian house brooding there behind its high stone garden wall. The house had once belonged to Harry’s mother, then to his stepfather, and now it had come down naturally to Harry. ‘Time’s not something I worry about a lot,’ Harry eventually answered. ‘When I feel it’s getting colder I’ll put more clothes on.’
‘But it doesn’t matter much, right?’ said Clarke. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much purpose to it. Or to anything. Which means you haven’t found them yet. I’m sorry, Harry.’
Now it was Harry’s turn to study Clarke.
The head of E-Branch had been chosen for that job because after Harry he was the obvious candidate. Clarke’s talent guaranteed continuity. He was what they called a ‘deflector’, the opposite of accident-prone. He could walk through a minefield and come out of it unscathed. And if he did step on one it would turn out to be a dud. His talent protected him, and that was all it did.
But it would ensure that he’d always be there, that nothing and no one would ever take him out, as two heads before him had been taken out. Darcy Clarke would die one day for sure – all men do – but it would be old age that got him.
But to look at Clarke without knowing this … no one would ever have guessed he was in charge of anything, and certainly not the most secret branch of the Secret Service. Harry thought: he’s probably the most perfectly nondescript man! Middle-height (about five-eight or -nine), mousey-haired, with something of a slight stoop and a tiny paunch, but not overweight either: he was just about middle-range in every way. And in another five or six years he’d be just about middle-aged, too!