for once, but their slanted eyes were still ful of the action that had been, and that they'd seen. One of them - their leader? - was lowering a camera. Harry couldn't help wondering what he'd been photographing, and why ...
Amazingly, Darcy's car looked like it might still drive, however dangerously. The senior lawmen seemed uncertain about it, but before they could advise Darcy against it he'd bundled the Necroscope and Trevor Jordan inside and driven off. On the way to E-Branch HQ, he said, 'It seems we should never underestimate you, Harry. I don't know what you did, or how you did it, but I do know it was you.'
And Jordan said, 'My telepathy seems like a toy by comparison!'
'We al played our parts,' Harry shrugged. 'We've worked together before, and it's starting to look like we make a good team.' But before they could misinterpret that, and perhaps his future intentions, he added: 'Wel, this time it worked out, at least.'
Darcy made a derisory noise in his nose. 'But sometimes I feel like such a ... such a bloody coward, that's all!'
'I shouldn't if I were you,' Jordan told him. 'Oh, it was Harry who saved the day, right enough, but was it al him? How do you know he wasn't prompted by that guardian angel of yours, Darcy, taking care of you as always?'
Which gave them al something to think about on their way home ...
Back in Darcy's office, after he and Harry had cleaned up and things were quieter, the Head of E-Branch took up the conversation with Harry where it had been interrupted by the Minister Responsible's cal for help:
'Harry, we know that we can't overload you. By that I mean we know you could give us the solution to every unsolved murder there's ever been, certainly to the ones where the victims knew their murderer. Except - '
' - Where they know their murderers, you mean,' Harry cut in, correcting him.
And Darcy knew he was right. For Harry was the Necroscope and talked to dead men. To him, when a man died, he didn't just stop. His body stopped, yes, but his mind went on. And Harry's talent gave him access to such incorporeal minds. Any ordinary policeman must find clues, discover evidence to bring a kiler to justice. But Harry could have it 'straight from the horse's mouth', as it were. To him the dead weren't, wel, departed - not al the way - but moved aside. As if they were in another room, where he could speak to them across the threshold of his amazing talent. He could simply ask a victim who had done it!
... Or perhaps not so simply. No, definitely not simply. This thing he had was almost unique; it would still be unique, if Harry Jr hadn't come along. Which was the problem in a nutshell: how do you use a unique talent to best effect? For example, you surely wouldn't employ Albert Einstein as an accountant! And what of the Necroscope, Harry Keogh? In a world where brutal murders and terrorist atrocities were now 'commonplace' crimes (God help us), Harry might easily find them his life's work! Was that why he had been born into this world and time? His only reason for being? Was that all? Darcy thought not.
'What I'm saying,' he continued, 'is that you - we, the Branch - can't be expected to do the work of the police. Well, not all of their work. We do some: a lot of big-time crime, or the occasional case that's so abhorrent someone has to be made to pay for it. Or sometimes an "urgent" job, like today's thing in Oxford Street. But in the main we're spies . . . mindspies. It isn't so much individuals we protect as the country, our way of life - "western civilization," if you like - from forces that oppose it. But I know you've heard all of this before, and from someone far more eloquent... "
Harry nodded, knowing that Darcy meant Sir Keenan Gormley, first Head of E-Branch, who had recruited him into the service.
By coincidence, that had been just such a case. Abhorrent, yes, to say the least... for Boris Dragosani had butchered him! But without Sir Keenan, without having spoken to his remains, Harry might never have gone on to his discovery of the Mobius Continuum, and to his re-discovery of life, in the brain-dead body of Alec Kyle. Except he must stop thinking of it