the surface of a sucking swamp. On the other hand ... wel, duty and conscience didn't mix, not in his job.
Darcy's first duty was to the Branch (the swamp?), and he knew it. His conscience would have to take a back seat...
Maybe the Necroscope's atitude had been too casual after al, or he had been too sure of himself. So E-Branch couldn't discover the whereabouts of his wife and child ... so what? They didn't have the Mobius Continuum to work with. (Like a little kid refusing to let the other kids play with his bal - Nyahh! Nyahh!
Nyahh! Or too possessive and much too pleased with himself that he had a bal in the first place). But as the saying goes, what goes around comes around, and just like the little kid Harry had discovered that you can't play the game on your own. Especialy not hide-and-seek.
From his rambling old house outside Bonnyrig, he called Darcy Clarke and poured out his frustrations; but Darcy could only tell him what he already knew, (else E-Branch would have contacted him first): 'We haven't even the foggiest idea where they could be, Harry. It's like they've vanished off the face of the Earth!'
'A month, five weeks?' Harry looked at the telephone like he didn't believe what he was hearing. 'You've been on it for five weeks, and nothing? What, E-Branch, with your locators and your hunchmen, your seers and scryers and precogs? You haven't the foggiest idea?'
Which got Darcy's back up more than a little. 'What are you trying to say, Harry?' he snapped. 'That you don't think we're trying hard enough? That you don't believe we're looking for them, is that it? Well, start getting it together and believe this: that we have as much interest in the kid as you have - if not for the same reasons!'
And while Harry didn't much like that last, still he knew it must be true. Of course E-Branch wanted to find Harry Jr.
Just because his father had turned them down, that didn't mean the child would - when it was his turn! But maybe Darcy realized he'd said too much, and:
'Harry,' his tone of voice was more even now, 'I ... don't want to fight with you. I mean, Christ, we shouldn't be fighting! We are looking for them, you know we are. And I was wrong to fly off the handle like that. What I said ...
wasn't what I meant to say.'
'But you did say it,' Harry answered, and he was quieter, too. 'My son: the next E-Branch dupe! What, when he's fifteen, sixteen? And while you're waiting, you'l be stood off in the background watching him grow up, measuring his skills, letting him develop? Or will you step in before then, recruit him like I was recruited: by showing him all the world's evil, and telling him that with him on the team E-Branch will have the power to change al that? And what then, Darcy? Wil he be the one who ends up slopping out al of those mental sewers? Oh realy? Not if I can help it...'
'And not if / can help it, Harry!' Darcy's voice was pleading now. 'Look, you're not yourself or you wouldn't be talking like this. And I really didn't mean it the way it sounded. You want my word on it? You've got it: we'll never interfere with your son or his way of life. But Harry, the fact is that none of us will ever have anything to do with him, if we can't find him! and at the moment we can't.'
The Necroscope was silent for a while, then said, 'But you will keep trying?'
'Of course we will.'
'Well, thanks for that, at least.' And Harry put the 'phone down ...
Down by the river bank, where the water swirled and eddied in a small bight, Harry spoke to his Ma. It was the first time since the day he'd come up here almost three weeks ago, after selling off his flat in
Hartlepool, and the Necroscope's mother was beginning to feel neglected. But his mind had been troubled - oh, for a long time - and like any mother she'd sensed it. So despite that she could speak to him anywhere, any time, she hadn't intruded. And anyway, she knew how he liked to visit the people he talked to.
It was the middle of April, blustery but at least dry, and Harry was wearing his overcoat where he sat at the river's rim. But you