Necroscope

Shukshin ignored that, too. 'When I came in here a moment ago — the moment I stepped into this room — I knew you were here. I could almost taste your presence. You're powerful ESPers, both of you. Especially you,' he glared at Dragosani. 'There's a terrific, a monstrous talent in you. It… it hurts me!'

'Yes, Borowitz told me that,' Dragosani answered dryly. 'But we know about spotters, Shukshin, so stop stalling and get on with it.'

'I wasn't stalling. I was trying to explain about the man I'm going to kill — today!'

Dragosani and Batu exchanged glances. Batu looked down on the top of Shukshin's head and said: 'You were going to kill a British ESPer? Why? And who is he?'

'It was my way of getting back into Borowitz's good books,' Shukshin lied. 'The man's name is Harry Keogh. He is my stepson. He got his talent — whatever it is — from his mother. Sixteen years ago I killed her, too…' Shukshin continued to glare at Dragosani. 'She fascinated me — and she infuriated me! Is she the one you meant when you said I was 'probably' a murderer? No 'probably' about it. Oh, I killed her all right. Like all ESPers, she hurt me. Her talent drove me mad!'

'Never mind her,' snapped Dragosani. 'What about this Keogh?'

That's what I was trying to tell you. With you two, powerful as you are, still I had to actually enter the house to know you were here. But with Harry Keogh — '

'Yes?'

Shukshin shook his head. 'He's different. His talent is…vast! I know it is. You see, the bigger it is, the more it hurts. So I'm not only killing him for Borowitz but also for myself.'

Dragosani was interested. He could always finish this thing with Shukshin later; but if Harry Keogh was that powerful, he would like to know more about him. And in any case, if he was a member of the British E-Branch it would be like killing two birds with one stone. As his interest expanded he forgot to ask Shukshin the important question: was Keogh a member of the British E-Branch? And that was something the other wasn't going to volunteer.

'I think we might be able to accommodate you,' Dragosani finally said. 'It's always good when you can reach an understanding with old friends.' He put away his gun. 'When, exactly, were you going to kill this man, and how?'

And Shukshin told him.

After Shukshin had gone back to the house, Harry returned to his car and drove it to the foot of the hill in the direction of Bonnyrigg. Down there he parked again, off the road, then made his way on foot across a field to the river. Frozen over, the area was unfamiliar and made more so by the first feathers of snow where they drifted down from the leaden skies. Everything began to take on the soft, misty aspect of a winter painting.

Harry began to make his way upriver. His mother's resting place was up there somewhere, he couldn't say where exactly. That was one of the reasons he'd come

again to this place: to make sure he knew exactly where she was, that he could find her under any and all circumstances. Walking on the frozen water, he reached out his mind:

'Ma, can you hear me?'

She was there immediately. 'Harry, is that you? So close!' And at once her apprehension, her agony of fear for him: 'Harry! Is it… now?'

'It's now, Ma. But don't give me any more problems than I have already. I need your help, not arguments. I don't need anything to trouble my mind.'

'Oh, Harry, Harry! What can I say to you? How am I supposed to stop worrying about you? I'm your mother…'

'Then help me. Don't say anything, just be still. I want to see if I can find you, blind.'

'Blind? I don't — '

'Ma, please!'

She was silent, but her worry gnawed at him, in his head, like the pacing of a troubled loved one in a small room. He kept walking, closed his eyes and went to her. A hundred yards, maybe a little more, and he knew he was there. He stopped walking, opened his eyes. He stood in the curve of the overhanging bank, on the thick white ice which formed his mother's headstone. Her marker, and his marker, too. Now he knew he could always find her.

'I'm here, Ma.' He crouched down on the ice, scuffed away a thin layer of snow, looked at the heavy jack- handle in his gloved hand. That was the second reason he had come.

As he began to batter at the ice, she said: 'I see it all now, Harry. You've been lying to me, deceiving me,' she reproached him. 'You think there will be problems after all.'

'No I don't, Ma. I'm much stronger now, in many ^? ways. But if there is a problem… well, I'd be a fool not to cover all the possibilities.'

Here, close to the bank, the ice was a little thicker. Harry began to perspire, but soon he'd made a hole almost three feet across. He cleared as much as he could of the broken ice fragments from the hole and straightened up. Down there, the water swirled blackly. And under the water, under the cold silt and mud…

All done, now Harry must go, and quickly. No good to let his sweat grow cold on him. Also, it was beginning to snow a little heavier. It began to get dark as the early winter dusk came with the snow. He had time now for a brandy at the hotel, and then, then it would be time for his showdown with Viktor Shukshin.

'Harry,' his mother called after him one last time as he hurried back across the field to his car. 'Harry, I love you! Good luck, son…'

One hour later Dragosani and Batu stood behind a clump of young conifers on the river bank twenty-five or thirty yards upstream of Shukshin's house. They had been there for a little less than half an hour but already were beginning to feel the cold biting through their clothing. Batu had commenced a rhythmic swinging of his arms across his chest and Dragosani had just lit a cigarette when at last the yellow light above the door to Shukshin's courtyard snapped into life — his signal to them that the scene was now set for murder — and two figures came out into the evening.

In real time it was not yet night, but the winter darkness was almost that of night and but for the stars and a rising moon, visibility would be poor. The clouds, so dense only an hour ago, had now drifted away and no more snow had fallen; but to the east the sky was black with a heavy burden and what little wind there was came front that direction. It would yet snow tonight, and heavily. But for the moment the stars lit the scene with their cold, soft light and the rising moon made a silver ribbon of the winding river of ice.

As the figures from the house picked their way down to the river Dragosani took a last drag on his cigarette behind cupped hands, threw it down and ground it out beneath his heel; Batu stopped swinging his arms; they both stood like stone and watched the play unfold.

At the river's rim the two figures shrugged out of their overcoats and placed them on the bank, then adopted kneeling positions as they put on their skates. There was a little conversation, but it was low and the wind was in the wrong direction. Only snatches of talk drifted back to the hidden watchers. Shukshin's voice, dark and very deep, sounded openly aggressive to Dragosani and wolfish — like the growling of a great dog — and he wondered why Keogh didn't take fright or at least show something of suspicion; but no, the younger man's voice was flat and even, almost carefree, as the two glided out on to the ice and began to skate.

At first they went to and fro, almost side by side, but then the slighter figure took the lead. And moving with some skill he rapidly picked up speed to come skimming upriver towards the spot where the watchers were hiding. Dragosani and Batu crouched down a little then, but at the last moment before he drew level with them Keogh turned in a wide loop which took in the entire breadth of the river and headed back the other way.

Behind him, Shukshin had almost slowed to a halt as Keogh made his run. The older man was far less certain on the ice, seemed awkward and even clumsy by comparison; but as Keogh sped back towards him he now turned to skate in the same direction, but in such a way as to impede the faster man. Keogh leaned over in a slalom at such an angle that his skates threw up a sheet of snow and ice as he missed the other by inches, then threw himself over the other way at a similar angle to bring himself back on course. And a scant twelve inches away, his skates carved ice on the very rim of the sabotaged circle where fresh-formed ice barely held the central disc in place.

And Shukshin was so close on his heels that he, too, must swerve wildly, his arms windmilling, to avoid his own trap! 'Careful, Stepfather!' Keogh called back over his shoulder as he sped away. 'I almost collided with you then.'