Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (17 page)

‘Struck in the right-hand rear, his car spun left, smashed through a makeshift “safety” barrier, and fell thirty feet onto electrified tracks …’

Darcy Clarke nodded. ‘We read about it in the papers. That would probably have been enough - falling like that and crashing down on that live rail - but the commuter train that piled into him two minutes later left no doubt. It was a miracle the train wasn’t derailed and there were no other injuries.’

Harry nodded. That was the extent of what Derek Stevens could tell me. And now I’m left with George Jakes. Or rather, with whatever is left of him!’

‘Harry,’ Darcy was very quiet, ‘I know you’ve seen some stuff, but the police have told us that this one is, you know, ugly.

Jakes didn’t have any family, so they didn’t pretty him up much. He’s … just as our mad friend left him three nights ago. But the police are finished with him now and he burns the day after tomorrow. Jakes was a “Green” and that’s how he wanted to go, cremated. He reckoned we’re short enough of space as it is, without filling the ground with dead meat - his words, Harry, not mine!

So his boss told me, anyway.’

Harry thought about it a moment, and said, ‘You’re right, Darcy, I’ve seen some stuff. The Chateau Bronnitsy … was full of it!

But thanks for the warning, anyway. I could probably contact Jakes from here, or from my room at E-Branch HQ, but that isn’t my way. See, in my book, respect works both ways: if you want it, you’ve got to give it. So I’ll go to see him anyway.’

And in a little while they were there …

No two dead people are alike, Harry knew that. Jim Banks had been hard, but not really. Derek Stevens had been hard-headed; he hadn’t wanted to admit defeat, wasn’t nearly ready to quit, even when the chips were all the way down. With them, maybe it was like a suit of clothes you wear to impress. They were just people underneath,
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wearing policemen on the outside. Well, and that was them. But George Jakes was something else. George had been
hard
hard. And he still was.

And he was soft, too, in places. Or as soft as his rigor mortis would allow. But on occasions like this, the Necroscope was adept at keeping his thoughts to himself …

Harry and his friends had been taken down into the Unnatural or Suspect Deaths room by a police pathologist in a white surgical smock -rather, it had started out white, but their guide had just finished an autopsy in another room.

Chatting to them in a friendly enough fashion, he cleaned his hands on the smock as he led the way, then stripped off his thin rubber gloves to let the trio into the locked, refrigerated morgue. And leaving them, he told them, ‘Drop the key into my room when you’re finished.’ Which was the only thing they actually heard. The rest of his patter had been drowned out, blurred to a mumble by the morbid aura of the place.

Clarke and Layard followed quietly behind Harry where he went from sliding drawer to drawer, examining labels. But when he stopped at a drawer marked ‘George Jakes’ they stepped back a little. Darcy admitted to still being queasy from the mess in Oxford Street, and Layard didn’t want to see stuff just for the sake of seeing it. But if Harry really needed them

… ? He shook his head and let them leave, then slid open the drawer. And:

What’s new, Necroscope?
said George Jakes, with a grin of horror on his face that he’d wear forever, or at least until’it rotted off. And before Harry could answer, but in a far quieter mode, as Jakes scanned his visitor’s stunned thoughts:
Hey, is it that bad? Funny, ‘cos I can’t
feel
a thing! But I
can
remember it - and how! And seeing it in
Technicolor doesn’t really help. So what say you switch it of now, Necroscope? I mean, I
wjas never a one /or
watching myself
on Home videos, either,
you know what I mean? By which
time the humorous touch had disappeared entirely from Jakes’s voice.

And Harry realized that the dead man had been looking at himself through his eyes.1

He quickly slid the drawer shut, groped for a steel chair to steady
himself,
sat down
heavily in it and said,
‘George

… I… What can I say? I’m sorry.’ It didn’t seem much, but what else
could
he say?

\teSpiXfcX\a\A\fe ta« ex ms, s\A, Yisrry co\M stSi see’As contents. They were printed on his mind’s eye in al their gory details. But Darcy had been wrong: someone
had
done something of a job on the corpse, if only to make it bearable. The stitches were … less than cosmetic. Like a slipshod job on a torn hessian sack, Jakes’s corpse seemed to have been sewn together mainly to
keep
it together, to stop him faling open or even apart.

Harry deliberately put the picture out of mind - to keep it from Jakes’s mind - and took a deep breath. Then, remembering what Jim Banks had told him: ‘But at least you didn’t feel all of it, George,’ he

said. ‘You couldn’t possibly have felt all of it.’

/
felt enough,
Jakes answered.
More than enough to put me down among the dead men!
Obviously he wanted to forget it, but knew that he couldn’t, not for a little while. So:
Let’s get on with it, Harry. I know what you want, so let’s get started …

I had no family,
Qakes commenced his story).
The only real friends I had, and few of them at that, were on the force. I’d been a cop
man and boy, since I was eighteen until a couple of weeks ago when I turned forty. And much like you, Harry, I was the one who
always got the nasty cases. It just seemed to turn out that way: rapists and murderers and arsonists, pimps, perverts and all the
slime that walks the streets, they all seemed to head my way. Hence my reluctance to make more than a handful of friends, take a
wife and raise a family. Being that close to all of the shit, I didn’t like the idea of contaminating others. Or … maybe it was a matter
of trust. So many people out there seem bent on making it, even over the bodies of the rest of us, that I wasn’t willing to put myself in
the firing line. I mean, I’d be the best sort of cop I knew how, sure, but I’d get along just fine on my own and not rely on anyone else.

And I did.

And people - even other cops, unless they were close to me - didn’t mess with me. I had this reputation; I smoked too many
cigarettes, and drank too much cheap whisky, maybe … but I got the job done. Especially if it was a job no one else wanted. And I
was hard, for despite all my bad habits I kept my body in good nick. It would have to be one rough son of a bitch who put me
down. And it was …

Normally I wouldn’t have fallen for it, but these weren’t normal times; I was feeling for Derek Stevens. I mean, one day there
were two of us, and the next… he was gone! A lousy hit and run traffic accident, of all

if only because He leaves no one to mourn after him when he’s gone. I
suppose I was bitter, you know? And no way I could tie
Derek’s or Jim Banks’s deaths together, or connect them to Jim’s work on the stolen car rackets.

But one thing for sure: warrant or no warrant, tomorrow I was into that East End garage. And nothing and no one was going to
stop me! The trouble was, I thought these things while walking the street with my hands in my pockets and my fortieth cigarette
sticking out of a corner of my mouth right there outside the garage, which I was looking at one last time before busting the place.

And of course
he
was listening to me! I knew he was there, in my head, but figured it was just another symptom of the blues.

Well, you live and you learn, and then you die …

Before I left the place I saw a van rolling down the exit lane onto the road. There were two guys inside, and the
van was giving out a blast of raw jungle-music, I mean like that calypso stuff that your namesake Harry Belafonte
used to sing, but a hell of a lot wilder. Hey, I never got

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past Bill Haley, Little Richard and Fats Domino, so don’t ask me to be specific! But it was Caribbean Island stuff:
Jamaica or somewhere like that, for sure. And so was the front seat passenger.

He was Rasta as they come, greasy dreadlocks and all, and his eyes were black as his plaited hair where they stared at me
as the van shot by. Those dark eyes seemed to be saying, ‘We’ll be seein’ ya ‘gain, Honky!’ And they sure enough did!

The guy driving was younger by three or four years; he was white - well, a dirty pale - pimply, sort of loose around the mouth
like some kind of idiot, and wore a crewcut. Yeah, Harry, I know. What do you think, I’ve been lying here doing
nothing? I’ve had a word or two with Jim Banks, sure, and this guy would have to be Skippy. But I didn’t know that
then. These guys were what? -Just a couple of yobs employed by the garage, as far as I was concerned. Yeah, a couple of yobs who were
waiting for me in my flat when I got home.

Like I said, if I hadn’t been so down I might have sensed it, I might have known something didn’t smell right. But
by the time I did smell it, it was too late.

My flat is on the ground floor and the other two tenants, upstairs, always work late. So the rest of the house was empty. It
was -1 don’t know - something-to-seven by the time I got home. Outside, the street lights were already on. But as I turned my key
(which seemed to stick in the lock a little), opened the door, stepped inside and
tried
to switch on the lights …

… Suddenly I knew! But it was already too late.

There was a little light from a street lamp right outside the main door of the house, which shone in through chinks in my curtained
windows. But I hadn’t been in there a minute before I knew they were there. Just a feeling, or a taste or smell; the fact that my lights were on the
blink; and shadows where there shouldn’t be any.

I don’t know who or what hit me on the head. But the carpet was wet with my blood when I came to, and a spot behind my
ear felt soft. I could only have been down a second or so, but as I stirred and tried to drag myself into a sitting position I
heard this ugly voice say, ‘Tough bastard, isn’t he?’ in a broad Geordie accent. And another voice, deep and brown and guttural,
and yet a voice
in my head,
saying:

‘Yeah. But you II be softer on the inside, won’t ya, boy?’

And when I opened my eyes to catch a glimpse of that face, which I knew went with the voice …

… It was Jim Banks’s wolf-face, of course, but the mad eyes staring out of the sockets were black and glinty as
coal, and human … and inhuman! Then I was kicked over onto my back, and the thing seated itself astride my upper thighs and showed
me its claw: five surgical knives set in a swarf-glove that he wore over his hand!

It was dark in my flat, as I’ve said; the only light came in through chinks in the curtains from the street lamp outside; but it
wasn’t so dark I

couldn’t see this Skippy character over the crazy man’s shoulder; how pale his face looked, and how he couldn’t
bear
to look but must turn
away!

And then the pain as that Thing ripped into me, and didn’t stop ripping…

But you’re right, Harry,
Jakes sighed after a while, /
didn’t feel all of it. You can only take so much, you know? And
funny, the last thing I remember thinking before I passed out and woke up here, was: ‘Jesus, my flat’s going to look a real mess . .

.!’

Then he was quiet again, maybe turning it al over in his own mind. But as the Necroscope was about to say thanks, Jakes said:
Oh, and there’s one other thing. It probably isn’t worth mentioning, but I’ll let you decide. There was this girl.

‘Girl?’ Harry repeated him.

She was outside the garage, just walking up and down the street. I saw her there twice, and again on the night… that this
happened.
He shrugged the last off, was finally done with it.
She was a real looker. Tall, slim, slinky, yet natural with
it. Maybe Eurasian? Could be, from the shape of her eyes: like almonds and very slightly tilted. And her hair, bouncing on her
shoulders, seeming black as jet but grey in its sheen, with the light glancing of it. She was the ageless type, Harry. I mean, anything from
nineteen to thirty-five. But a looker, oh yes!

He pictured her for the Necroscope, who agreed with him: yes, she was definitely a looker. ‘A customer, waiting for her car to be fixed?’

Could be,
Jakes shrugged again, and fell silent.

The interview was over …

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V

R.L. STEVENSON JAMIESON, AND HIS BROTHER …

Back at E-Branch HQ it should have been time to cal it a day, or a night, but Darcy had mentioned some paperwork he must see to before going home. Likewise Ken Layard; he also had work to attend to. And so they had ridden up together with Harry in the elevator and accompanied him to his door. Or perhaps the paperwork was just an excuse because they had sensed that the night wasn’t quite over yet where the Necroscope was concerned.