keep him occupied. For of al men, the Necroscope had experience of the strange things of the world, and knew that some of them shouldn't be alowed to continue.
Finally: 'Okay, I'm convinced,' he said. 'Convinced that something needs sorting out, anyway. So how about the details?'
'We don't have any,' Darcy shook his head. 'Just a set of utterly senseless murders. On the one hand a couple of police officers already down in the ground, and a third in the morgue waiting to go. And on the other hand their friends, 'Colleagues and families mourning them, grief-stricken. And dead-centre, a yawning great gap called "motive" and "evidence". I mean, it's an old cliche, I know, Harry, but this time it's also a fact: we just don't have a clue.'
'But we do have somewhere to start,' said the Necroscope, grimly.
And in fact he had three somewheres ...
Sometimes I can take it, Jim Banks told Harry. / tend to sleep a lot, like I'm emotionally exhausted, you know? But it's when I'm
'awake' that it's rough. They try to comfort me ... I have that at least. But even so, it's hard. Oh, I know I had a long way to go and a tough road ahead. My life wasn't easy, and it wasn't about to get any easier, but it was a life!
Banks had been one hard copper; the Necroscope could sense the sob behind his unbodied voice, but Banks never once let it break through to the surface. Harry supposed he'd done most of his crying and cursing earlier on, when finally the dead - and his situation - had got through to him. The 'they' he had mentioned were the teeming dead, of course, the Great Majority of mankind who were there before him, 'laid to rest' in the cold, cold earth, or gone up in smoke into the sky.
Banks was of the former variety: buried in a north-London cemetery under a marker that gave his name, dates and a motto, and a sad farewell from his family. The motto was in Latin and said, Exemplo Ducemus. Harry wondered about that.
I was an MP, a Military Policeman, for twelve years, Banks explained. SIB: Special Investigation Branch. That's the Corps motto,
Exemplo Ducemus: By Example We Lead. Now, in this place, I'm just another follower -following all the poor bastards who beat me to it! Maybe I should have stuck to a simple Requiescat in Pace, eh?
Except, as Harry knew wel enough, the dead don't rest al that easy but find ways to occupy their incorporeal minds. Jim Banks's way would be to keep on doing what he'd done in life. A cop, currently he might easily be investigating his own murder, if only in his incorporeal mind. He would be investigating it, certainly - or at least trying to think it through - but just like his colleagues in the world of the living he didn't have much to go on. Only the fact that he'd been very close to something. Too close by far.
'But you'll tell me as much as you know?'
Not much to tell, Harry. A month ago I was the detective in charge of investigating a ring of car thieves. I got as far as a pub in the East End one night, and that was where my lead petered out. But after that until he got me, whoever he is-I don't know, it was ... weird! / had this feeling I'd been made, that someone had cottoned on to me. Yet I had no reason to feel like that! I hadn't even known I was that close to anything!
Scanning the ranks of old headstones, some leaning, Harry looked around. His gaze followed the tracks of wandering, white gravel pathways between dreary rows of markers, to a high stone boundary wall. Beyond the wall, a distant hill stood silhouetted against the smoky evening sky, where lights were just beginning to come on in a clump of darkly-huddled houses. The cemetery was located in a quiet backwater; well in keeping, distant traffic sounds hung faint as ghosts on the greasy air. It was a late February night, damp and miserable as only London ever gets to be. On the other hand, Harry had to admit that it was peaceful here. Well, to anyone else ...
But there was pain in the earth, the Necroscope knew, and in some of its inhabitants. Banks was one of them, and already Harry had made up his mind that Jim Banks must be avenged. For