long moments there was an electric tension in the air, until finaly:
'Well, is someone going to explain?!' Darcy shouted.
At which Harry took them into his room and listened while Grieve reported the details of Brenda's and Little Harry's disappearance. Grieve didn't waste any time, but the Necroscope was now sensitive to every second ticking by. And as he listened to Grieve, he also found himself listening to - or for - something in his head. But it didn't return. Or not yet, anyway.
'She was shopping in Knightsbridge,' Grieve started. 'She had the baby with her. We had men on her, of course, three of the best. The same people who have watched out for her all the time she's been here, Special Branch and good at their job. Not espers but the next best thing.' He shook his head. 'If it were anyone else, I'd suspect their report was a whitewash. But not these blokes. They know what they're doing. And if they say she disappeared, she disappeared .. .
'But not into the crowd, you understand, though certainly there were plenty of people on the streets. But she took young Harry into a baby outfitters, and left the minders waiting outside. Where they waited, and waited ... and finally went in to see what was wrong. Well, there was no exit from the rear, but Brenda and the kid - '
' - Were gone,' Harry sounded much calmer now. 'Yes, I get the picture. But what time was this?'
'Five-thirty or thereabouts. You two had already left the H.Q. with Ken Layard. I didn't want to cause a panic or divert you from what you were doing. There seemed every chance that we would pick Brenda up again. I mean, we're not looking after her because she's under threat or anything, but mainly because ... well, because - '
' - Because sometimes she doesn't seem capable of looking after herself?' Harry cut in again. 'It's okay, go ahead and say it. She has problems, I know.' And to himself: Problems, Brenda? That's saying the very least!
All those weeks, months of debriefing following the Bodescu case and Harry's subsequent metempsychosis, his rehabitation of another's body. Indeed his very being, when Brenda had thought him dead. Wouldn't that be enough to ... unnerve anyone? And gradually, during the course of all that debriefing, and Harry's rehabilitation, it had become increasingly apparent that Brenda was in real trouble. But surely that was only to be expected, and might even have been anticipated.
For after all, Brenda had only recently become a mother; she'd still been recovering from an uncomfortable confinement and problematic birth, when for a while her doctor had thought he might lose her. Add to this the fact of her husband's weird 'talent,' that he conversed with dead people, which Brenda had known about and which had preyed on her mind for months - and then the fact that her infant child seemed possessed of similar or even more frightening powers, so that even among the espers of E-Branch he was looked upon as something of a freak - and the fact that Harry was now (literally) a different person, one who was Harry, with all of his past, his memory and mannerisms, but living in a stranger's body; the fact of the absolute terror Brenda had endured on the night when she came face to face with the monster Yulian Bodescu, whose like she couldn't possibly have imagined even in her worst nightmares ...
Little wonder her mind had started to give way under the strain. On top of which she hated London and couldn't possibly return to Hartle-pool in the north-east; her old flat would be poison to her and full of monstrous memories. For it was there that the Bodescu creature had attacked her, attempting to destroy both herself and her child!
Thus, as her mental connections with the real world were eroded, Brenda's visits to various specialists and psychiatric clinics had increased. Until now . . . what had happened here? Had she decided that enough was enough? Or was it the work of some outside agency? Or could it be that the baby himself...?
'Anyway,' Grieve continued, glad to be off the hook, 'it didn't work out like I thought it would and they're still missing. We have as many Branch agents on it as we can spare. They're out there in the City right now, doing whatever they can.'
His words drew the Necroscope back to earth. The address of the