Sure that his shock was still registering, Trask made an effort to cover his embarrassment. 'Well ... Mrs Wills doesn't look very cold,' he said. And speaking directly to the cleaning lady, 'Mr Chung was telling me how this room always feels too cold. How do you find it?'
Mrs Wills was a short, rather stout, fiftyish Londoner. Not especially bright, she was a hard worker and had a heart of gold. She was the only permanent member of staff who was in no way 'talented', and in all her fifteen
years' service to the Branch she had never had the slightest idea what it was all about, except that its simple rules were for obeying and its people not for talking about. Indeed, Mrs Wills had been chosen for her singular lack of curiosity. Now her face lit up ruddily as she beamed first at Trask, then Chung: two of the gentlemen 'what she did for'.
Finally Trask's question got through to her. 'What, Mr 'Arry's room, sir? Cold, did yer say? Can't say I've noticed it meself. But the 'eating's working, all right!'
Concerned, she followed them in. At the back there was a recess with a sliding door, containing a wash basin, shower, and toilet. In front ... just a small overnight bedroom, maybe four paces by five, from the days when the top floor, too, had belonged to the hotel. The floor space along one wall was occupied by an obsolete computer console, with a chair and space below for the operator's feet, plus a second swivel chair and ample work surface. In a corner, a small wardrobe stood open; it was equipped with coat hangers, and shelving to one side.
Chung nodded to indicate the wardrobe's interior. 'Some of Harry's things,' he told Trask. 'A shirt of his, trousers and a jacket. A bit mothy by now, I should think. Plus a few other bits and pieces on the top shelf there. The other items were left behind -' (he glanced out of the corner of his eye at Mrs Wills, who had found a speck of dust to wipe from the computer console),'- by people we lost from time to time. I kept them .. . because I didn't like to destroy them. As a locator, I'd used them all in my time. Stuff belonging to Darcy Clarke, Ken Layard, Trev Jordan. These things formed my link with them in the field . ..'
As Chung talked Trask was looking into the wardrobe, but he wasn't seeing. Rather, he was feeling. And Chung was right: the room was cold. Or if not cold,empty. Despite the computer console, the wardrobe and its contents, it felt like an empty space, as if nothing was here. Not even Trask, Chung, and Mrs Wills. Trask felt like an echo of himself in this room, like a shadow. He felt if he stood here just a little while longer he might fade into the walls and disappear forever. The place was psychically charged, definitely. And the cold wasn't physical but metaphysical, psychological ... supernatural? Whichever, Trask shivered anyway.
Mrs Wills had finished with her dusting. 'There we are,' she said, drawing Trask back into himself. 'All spick-'n-span again. As my Jim's always saying, "Meg me love, whatever yer do, just be sure yer keeps 'Arry's room spick-'n-span." That's what my Jim always says.'
As she turned away Trask's jaw fell open and he glanced at Chung. Then she'd gone back out into the corridor, and the two espers were after her in a moment. 'Er, Mrs Wills.' Trask caught her by the elbow. 'Did you and, er, Jim - I mean, did you know Harry, then?'
Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes went wide. 'Oh, my! Was I talking about Jim again? Oh, dear, I am sorry, sir! I mean, after all these years, yer'd think I'd let it be, now wouldn't yer?'
Trask raised his eyebrows, looked mystified, waited.
'See,' she said, 'my Jim was a talker. Lord, Jim could talk! Of a night before we'd go ter sleep, he'd just talk and talk and talk! About all and everything, and nothing very much. I used ter tell him, "Jim Wills, yer'll likely talk yerself ter death one day!" And bless him, he did. A heart attack, anyway. But ... well ... yer see, I was so used ter Jim's voice, that sometimes I 'ears it even now! And even if I never did know Mr 'Arry, whoever he is, it seems my Jim must 'ave known him, or 'eard of him, anyway. Truth is, my Jim says an 'ell of a lot of 'em knows - or knew - 'Arry Keogh.'
That did it. There may be plenty of Harrys in the world, but by Trask's reckoning there could only be one Harry Keogh. The Necroscope's second name had never been mentioned - or it shouldn't have been -in front of Mrs Wills. Her knowledge of his Christian name was easy to explain: she'd been reading it five days a week, plainly visible on the plaque on the door. But his surname? Trask glanced at Chung.
David Chung was thinking much the same thing as his boss. Through Harry, the espers of E-Branch had learned that death is not the end but a transition to incorporeality, immobility. The flesh may be weak and corruptible, but mind and will go beyond that. People, when they die, do not accompany their bodies into dissolution but become one with the Great Majority; and merging into a sort of limbo - a darkness where thought is the all - the minds of the teeming dead occupy themselves naturally with whatever was their passion in life. Great artists continue to visualize magnificent canvases, pictures they can never paint; architects plan faultless, world-spanning cities they can never build; scientists follow through the research they weren't able to complete in life, whose benefits can never be passed on to the living.
And Jim Wills, the cleaning lady's husband? In life he'd just overflowed with words; and the one he'd loved to talk to most of all ... had been his wife. Was it so strange? And how many other lonely people 'hear' their absent loved ones talking to them, Trask wondered? But out loud he only said, 'What else has Jim told you, Mrs Wills?'