the ground, had invaded his mind in order to sway Dragosani to its will.
Also, he knew the mind-spies of E-Branch were capable of just such mental eavesdropping. Telepathy was real, not just an idea out of fantasy or a figment of wild imagination. Why, his own thoughts on the subject, on this occasion, were a form of the selfsame talent; which was something else that Banks overheard, of course.
So I was right, he' said in a while. Call it by some other fancy name if you like, but what you're doing right now is the same sort of thing.
'Well, not exactly,' Harry answered, with a shake of his head. 'As far as I know there are only two of us who can talk to the dead. The other one is ... my son! The talent seems to have passed down to him from me. And plainly we are not spying on you! You know I'm here and you're not obliged to talk to me or even suffer my presence. True telepathy, on the other hand, is mental communication between the living ...' And sometimes the undead? Which was a thought he also kept back; pointless to further complicate matters.
'Also,' he went on, 'telepathy doesn't have to be intrusive; it can provide genuine two-way communication. I have certain friends who mind-spy, yes - for the protection of society, our way of life, just as you through your work protected those same ideals - but the way these friends of mine describe their skills, they aren't in any way this sinister thing that you experienced.'
No, because that was intrusive! Banks declared emphatically. And more than that, it was also frightening. If it hadn't finished when it did, the way it did -1 don't know -1 think I might well have gone crazy. Hah! Instead I went... dead! But at first, 1 really was starting to believe that I was suffering from some sort of persecution complex! I thought it was al in my head! I mean literally! It was only afterwards, recently, that I saw it as something else.
'As what, then?'
As ... a distraction! Banks answered.
'Someone was deliberately crowding your mind, in order to distract you from your investigations? Is that what you're saying?'
Like an irritating smokescreen, yes, Banks was convinced. But I fought it, pushed on, kept coming. And since he couldn't frighten me of, finally he -
' - He killed you off.'
Yes. But even at the end he was helped by this telepathic trick of his. I mean, he knew when I was going to come for him, and where from! And so he beat me to it...
'So what did you find out about him? This fellow with the scorpion tattoo, I mean?'
Harry sensed Banks's nod. As I'd suspected, he had lots of previous. But all petty stuf. He'd done time up north, plenty of it, all short term. But I did get something useful: Skippy was on a year's probation, but they'd let him move down to London to take a job in his cousin's garage in the East End. Some sort of cock-eyed rehabilitation programme: see if giving him a decent job would straighten him out. I mean, Jesus, Harry!
This shifs 'therapy' was to do face-lifts on stolen cars!
The paint under his fingernails?' Harry lifted a querying eyebrow. 'It was all coming together for you.'
Too true!
'So what next?'
Next? Have a look inside that garage, what else? It was the bottom floor of a condemned municipal car park. The upper storeys had been made safe, reduced to a towering metal skeleton, but the ground floor and basement had been converted into workshops, inspection pits, paint bays and what have you. All the gear: your typical auto-repairs garage on a grand scale. I figured most of the work would be legitimate, a front for the real earner: the conversion of stolen cars. But it would have to be a superfast turnaround.
Tea-leaf a posh motor, give it a quick face-lift, and ship it out. Ten to twelve hours maximum, most of it at night, after hours.
'And did you check it out? And is that what got you ...?'
... No. I didn't have time. Just thinking about doing it, and getting ready to set the thing up, is what got me killed! Because he, the gang's -what, mindspy? - wasn't about to let it go that far. He was on me all the way, and it happened the night before I would have taken out a search warrant.
'And before you