maybe a day or so before, during, or after. But it must be said that the victims were no great loss to humanity ... nor of any special benefit to us! In fact, and to be frank about it, they are mainly of the criminal element.
'Ganglanders?' Harry wasn't surprised. There had always been gang wars in London and there always would be, mainly for territory. 'From the East End?'
In almost every instance, yes. But what a close-mouthed bunch, Harry! Honour among thieves and all that rubbish! And of course there was nothing they could do about their lot anyway. Ah, but that's all changed now that you are on the case!
You're the Necroscope; which is to say you're not 'Filth,' not the law! With you, they don't consider themselves informants; it's not like 'grassing" in the normal sense of the word.
'How good is their information?' Harry was eager now. For the fact was that he didn't have a lot to go on.
I'm afraid there's not that much I can tell you, the dead man answered. And most of it is conjectural anyway. But surely anything is better than nothing?
Harry gave a mental nod. Tel me, then,' he said, 'and let me be the judge of it.'
The murders had al happened during the last three years, al of them around the time of the ful moon, but not so many that the police would necessarily make the connection; there'd been a good many killings in that time-frame. Indeed the only thing that might have connected them lay in their uniformly unsolved status ...
In that, and in the fact that the last three murders (prior to those of the police officers) had been commited by a thing half-man, half-wolf, or by someone in the guise of such a creature. Which would seem to indicate that the maniac had only recently adopted his werewolf role. This last, however, the use of the wolf mask, was something that other living investigators couldn't possibly know; only the victims had seen their atacker's face. The victims, and now Harry Keogh, Necroscope ...
It was the horrific nature of these last three murders - their modus operandi - along with those of Jim Banks, Stevens and Jakes, of course, that had finaly alerted the authorities to what they now erroneously categorized as a series of serial killings. That these atrocities were the work of a lunatic was hardly in question, but 'serial' killings? Sir Keenan Gormley and the Great Majority doubted it.
Harry had been right: the initial series of seemingly unconnected murders had been territorial. A homicidal member of a gang of car-thieves had begun taking out members of encroaching gangs one by one, almost systematically. But after a while, following his first half-dozen killings, maybe he'd started to enjoy it! Maybe he'd sensed his power, the advantage that his weird talent gave him, his ability to get into an enemy's mind and pre-empt his every move. A grudge against the police? Well, maybe. The urge to permanently remove any persistent adversary - very definitely!
An esoteric talent plus a diseased and generally criminal mind, equals gruesome murder. Lycanthropy: not merely a concept of fantastic fiction but a mania, a recognized and accepted psychiatric phenomenon. The madman's need to tear his victims to pieces like a wild animal, and his bloodlust at the full of the moon, when the lunar orb tugs at the fluid of his brain no less insistently than it lures the great oceans. His anguished howling when innermost passions are finaly vented in acts of furious mayhem!
The madness of a rabid animal, then, in combination with the warped cunning of an habitual criminal. That was what the Necroscope was up against. And as yet he was still no closer to learning the murderer's identity ...
'So what do you suggest?' he asked Sir Keenan Gormley, as the car sped him ever closer to the Muswell Hill cemetery and his second liaison.
'Eh?' Darcy Clarke glanced at Harry out of the corner of his eye. 'Did you say something?'
Harry gave a slight start, and muttered. 'Er, just talking ... to myself.' He knew how the espers of E-Branch looked upon his talent, that even with their knowledge of parapsychology, still they found it disquieting. Settling deeper into his seat and switching to a mental mode, he said:
Sir?
And Keenan Gormley chuckling in his mind: What do I suggest? Wel, for one thing, if I were you I wouldn't let myself stray too far from that one! Darcy Clarke has