brief moments it wasn't as if Brenda and the baby were missing at all but simply that. . . that he was the lost one! And of course the genuine Harry Keogh, the original Harry, was lost.
That again: his body, gone. And piece by piece his entire world going, too. Was that why he had to find Brenda, in order to find himself? In which case his search was useless, for she would only deny him.
Fuck it... that was why she'd run away in the first place! Because he wasn't him!
She'd run, or been taken away. By the baby or by ... someone else?
The Russians? But he'd already been over that and it seemed very unlikely. So if not the Opposition, the much-ravaged Soviet E-Branch, then who?
As his sweat dried on him, so Harry's thoughts cleared and his mind seemed to sharpen and focus as he hadn't been able to focus it for quite some time. He went right back to square one: to that night at E-Branch HQ when he'd first been told that his wife was missing. At the time he had put aside the possibility that A.C. Doyle Jamieson - self-styled 'werewolf - could have been responsible for the double disappearance. But now?
The man had been into his mind, after all... but for how long? Harry had become his 'enemy' the moment he became involved with the dead police officers and took up their case. Had A. C. been 'listening' to him - to his thoughts and worries and problems - from that time on? In which case he would know about Brenda, Harry's one weakness. But surely if that were the case, ;/ he and his gang of car thieves were responsible for Brenda's disappearance, then right at the end when A.C. himself had come under fire, he would have used her as a threat, to stand Harry off. Yes, of course he would -but he hadn't. So ...
... So, damn it to hell, it was another blind alley!
After speaking to his Ma he'd come back to the house full of resolve, and now it was almost burned out of him again. But while his mind was sharp he must pursue the problem. It was so frustrating: to be equipped with his powers - the powers of a Necroscope - and no way to use them to solve his problem, except by trial and error.
He got up from the bed feeling stiff; this damned body of his, which wasn't nearly as flexible as it had used to be. Because it was a different one, naturally. Or unnaturally?
The light coming through fly-specked windows was grey as the day outside. He had been down only an hour or two. An hour or two wasted. Down and out. Wilting. Going to seed. Oh, really? And suddenly Harry was angry with himself. He had to shake himself out of it and get on with the search, get on with life. He was ten years older than he should be, sure, but he didn't have to settle for that, did he? His mind was still in shape, wasn't it? And the mind governs the body, doesn't it? Well then, he'd have to get the fucking body in shape, too!
He was dressed; he went out into his overgrown garden and did twenty furious press-ups, then felt ridiculous and sat hugging his knees in the deep grass and shivering from the difference in temperature between the house and the garden. And in a while he thought:
My Ma's right... I'll catch my death!
Death, yes.
Always a close companion of Harry's, death wasn't something he worried about. Not from a distance, anyway. Close up it would be different, of course. If ever death should attempt his stealthy (or sometimes abrupt!) approach, then like anyone else Harry would be galvanized - to life! But as for the idea of death and the dead themselves, he knew no fear.
Indeed, he had a thousand dead friends, but not one of them who could help him now, not this time. While among the living ... did he have any friends at all?
Well, some - like Darcy Clarke and his people - but even they weren't like the dead, because the dead were true friends and rarely demanded payment. As for the exceptions to the rule, the one or two monstrous members of the Great Majority who had demanded payment ... but they were in the Necroscope's past now and couldn't resurface. At least he prayed not.
It was a morbid train