... Tall, slim, slinky, yet natural with it. (The shape in Jakes's dead mind had been that of Lauren Bacal in that old Bogie movie where she says, 'You know how to whistle, don't you?') Maybe Eurasian? She could be, from the shape of her eyes: like almonds and very slightly tilted... And her hair, bouncing on her shoulders, seeming black as jet but grey in its sheen.
The ageless type ... Anything from nineteen to thirty-five ... But a looker, oh yes!
And now the reality. But still the Necroscope couldn't see her clearly enough, not in the dim light in the hallway inside the door. On the other hand, she could obviously see him.
'So, it's mah brave laddie in person,' she breathed, smiling at him wonderingly with her head on one side. 'Mah own wee man wi' no name.' Then she straightened up, and was still two inches shorter than Harry. 'And maybe no' so very wee at that! But I was beginning to think I'd never see you again! Come in, come in.'
The hallway or corridor was wide, high-ceilinged, carpeted. Low music came from somewhere up ahead; pop music, Harry thought, late '50s or early '60s. He quite enjoyed all that old stuff. The corridor seemed a long one; there were pictures on the walls, large tapestries in gilt frames; but there were no doors leading off to right or left. A peculiar set-up.
'I know what you're thinking,' B.J. said, leading the way. 'I thought so myself the first time I saw it - a fire hazard, right? Aye, well the authorities thought so, too. But in the event of fire - God forbid! - there are escape routes enough at the back and out into the garden. And we are on the ground floor, after all.'
'I wasn't thinking about fire,' Harry answered, not looking where he was going, and bumping into her where she paused at a fire door. And: 'Sorry,' he said, as she raised a querying, perhaps amused eyebrow. 'Clumsy of me ...'
'But you weren't so clumsy the last time we met,' she answered, with the hint of a frown in her voice. 'Indeed, I might even say greased lightning!' If she was fishing for some kind of reaction she didn't get it. Harry merely shrugged, and continued:
'No, I wasn't considering the fire risk. I was just wondering: why such a long corridor?'
They were standing very close together. He could smel her scented breath when she answered, 'Originaly it was an aley between the buildings to right and left. When the shop fagades were built at the front, the aley was roofed over to give safe access to the property at the rear - my place, now.' Her Edinburgh burr had almost disappeared, replaced by something Harry didn't quite recognize. 'Downstairs is B.J.'s,' she continued, turning from him and pushing through the door.
'Upstairs is my living area. And the garret... is my bedroom.'
Harry folowed her, commenting, 'When you answer a simple query, you realy do answer it in ful, don't you?'
And giving him that look again, 'Wel, at least one o' us does!' she replied, and a little of the brogue was back. Then, with a wave of her arm: 'B.J.'s,' she announced.
Inside was definitely beter than out. Shrugging out of his coat, which a prety girl in a not-quite-Playboy outfit took to the cloakroom, Harry looked the place over. There was a longish mahogany bar with access hatches at both ends, behind which two more girls served drinks - or would serve them, presumably, but at the moment there were only one or two customers. And at the far end of the room another girl sat near the juke-box, an original Wurlitzer by its looks, flipping the pages of a magazine.
'A "quiet" night,' Bonnie Jean commented wryly, as Harry perched himself awkwardly on one of too many empty bar-stools, and she went behind the bar to serve him. 'It's always the same when it's raining.' There were two other customers ('club members,' Harry reminded himself) at the bar, one at each end where they nursed their drinks and chated up the girls, and a group of three seated at a table in a corner close to a darts board. B.J.'s clients were al over forty, wel turned out, business types. Men with money, anyway. It looked like the taxi driver was right: this wouldn't be a cheap place to drink.
Harry continued to look the place over and decided: It's a converted hole-in-the-wal pub. And he