Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates: and Other Tales from the Lost Years (10 page)

Attempting to stand up, Forester half-made it to his feet, staggered and sat down again. His forearms, in thumping down on the small table, caused a cluster of empty glasses—a one-pint glass and three shots—to jump and clatter, while a full pint glass slopped a little beer. Avoiding the splash, Harry jerked his chair back from the table. There had been enough accidents with liquid for one day.

“Damn!” said Forester, looking stupid, just as Jimmy Collins arrived with a pint beer glass in each hand.

“Er . . .” Jimmy mumbled, glancing from Harry to Forester and back again. “I mean . . . am I interrupting something?”

“Just give us a minute or two,” said Harry, accepting his beer. “The constable is advising me about something. When he’s done I’ll be right with you.”

Looking mystified, Jimmy shrugged and moved away, back to the bar. And Forester said, “I’m what? Advising you about something?
Huh!
I don’t recall shaying I’d—”

“—Just an excuse,” said Harry, cutting him off. “But if I can be frank too, it seems to me you’re still punishing yourself over something: probably over the Symonds girl? How first you lost her to Greg Miller, and then how both of you . . . well, lost her?” He drank a mouthful of beer before continuing: “Oh, and by the way, I don’t think you’re a hundred percent sure he killed her. No, not by any means.”

Propping himself in the corner and seeming to shrink down a little, Forester was silent for long seconds, then said, “If I was shober, I believe I’d give you another chance to dishplay your martial arts skills. And if I could get just one good shot at your nose, maybe it’d teach you to be jusht a bit more careful where you’re sticking it in future!”

“Listen,” said the Necroscope, undeterred. “I’ve seen some of Greg Miller’s evidence that suggests he may not be as mad or as bad as you think he is—or was. For instance: did you know that during World War II, there were—”

“—Several cases of people, including young girls, going missing
in and around Harden and Hazeldene?” Forester was starting to sober up. Sitting up straighter he slid his almost full glass to one side and began using beer mats to soak up some of the spillage. “You see, Harry,” he continued, “this is all old stuff that Miller’s lawyer dug up fifteen years ago.” He shook his head tiredly. “It didn’t convince anybody then and it won’t now.”

“Oh really?” said Harry. “Well, it helped to convince me!”

“Then you’re a fool!” said the other. “And anyway, who the hell are you, digging around in all this . . . this rubbish? Some kind of sensationalist reporter? A columnist for
UFO Monthly
or something?” Breathing deeply, and shaking his head to clear it, the constable made as if to stand again. Taking a chance, Harry reached across the table and applied pressure to Forester’s arm to keep him off balance and hold him in place if only for a few more moments. The man was an officer of the law, of course, but Harry knew people in London with a great deal more power—not to mention
Powers
—than any village policeman.

Perhaps at that moment—as he felt the Necroscope’s hand on his arm—suddenly, for the first time, Forester truly recognised Harry’s authority. At any rate he sat still, focussed his eyes more surely on Harry’s face, and said, “Okay, I’ll ask you just one more time: who or what the hell are you?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m not,” said Harry. “I’m not a reporter or columnist for any sensationalist magazine. But I do have connections in very high places, and I am interested in investigating injustices as or when I come across them. And yes, I do believe there has been a great injustice here. But unlike you I know I’m not infallible, and I admit that the story in its entirety eludes me. In fact I still don’t know the half of it, and I’ll be only too willing to listen to any logical argument, any genuine proof of Miller’s guilt that you might care to produce. So, if you’re still keen to knock me down, Jack, you can forget about giving me a bloody nose and simply prove me wrong.”

As Harry withdrew his hand, Forester relaxed and finally,
huskily said, “I’ve had this stuff bottled up in me for a long time. I really loved that girl, you know? She was truly wonderful, my first love, and if I had my way she’d have been my last and would still be here. Oh, sure,
I
loved Janet, but it didn’t work that way for her. Yes we were sweethearts for a while—at least I thought we were—but for her it was just kids’ stuff, not the real thing. I was more a friend than someone she wanted to stay with for life. So that when Miller came along . . . well, she thought
he
was the real thing, and the change came quickly.

“Harry, you could never understand what that was like for me. To be so deeply in love—me, a young policeman and friend of Janet’s father, having to watch him suffer because after his wife died Janet was all he had left and he could feel her slipping away—and me, having to comfort him but no one to comfort me, while they were out walking, talking, holding hands and . . . and doing God-only-knows what else, Janet and that bloody, that crazy Greg Miller!”

Harry nodded. “So Miller took your girl away from you. I’m sorry to sound so cold but that’s what it boils down to. And it hardly makes him a killer. As for him being psychotic: maybe he was—perhaps he still is—so why not tell me the whole story, from your point of view, and then let me make up my own mind?”

“The whole story?” The other repeated Harry, his forehead furrowed, frowning. “Step by step, d’you mean?” Half in denial, he shook his head.

“Any way you like,” said Harry.

“But isn’t your friend waiting for you?” Forester indicated Jimmy at the bar, where he sat enjoying his beer. “Young Collins the electrician, isn’t it?”

Again Harry nodded. “He’ll be okay. He won’t bother us.”

Forester slumped down again. “Very well—but we’ll do it my way. I won’t tell you the story the way Miller tells it, because I won’t have any truck with sheer fantasy! So this is how we’ll proceed. You show me your evidence—or what you
think
is evidence,
that tends to prove his innocence—and I’ll tell you my conclusions, how I’ve tried to rationalize these things over the years. And we’ll see how easily you can be shot down!”

“Agreed,” Harry answered. But after thinking it over for a moment, and when he tried to begin with: “First we should—”

“—Wait a moment!” Forester barked. “First
you
should know that . . . well, that I think this may be—I don’t know, how do they say?—therapeutic? Or cathartic? I mean . . . I’m not sure what you’ve got that no one else I ever knew has, but since you sat down I’ve found myself toying with the notion that perhaps I can talk to you. Maybe I just need to get all this stuff off my chest, I can’t say for sure. But don’t get me wrong, there’s no way you could ever convince me of Miller’s innocence. It’s more that I’m going along with this to clear my head, get rid of all the rubbish that’s accumulated in there. Which has to be better than continuously thinking about Janet and her father, poor old Arnold—unable to get it off my mind, the way he jumped—and keep finding myself sitting in my car, parked up there on Ellison’s Bank, looking down across the village . . . looking down at . . . at that . . . that
damned
old viaduct!” He paused and visibly shuddered.

Sensing, understanding, the constable’s meaning—that he, too, had considered jumping—the Necroscope could feel Forester’s fear. And staring hard at him, challenging him to meet his gaze, he said, “Oh, really? And you think Greg Miller is crazy? Jack, the way you’re feeling, what you’re suggesting, that has to be the real madness! I understand that you loved that girl, and I can
fully
understand how her disappearance might disturb the balance of her father’s mind—but you’re not her father! And you were a lot younger, stronger, then. Are you saying that this has been preying on your mind for all of fifteen years!?”

Yet again Forester sat up straighter. He took a long swig at his beer, a very deep breath, and looked about to get angry. But then, letting all the air out in a sigh, he said, “It isn’t all the time. But sometimes—up in the fields near Hazeldene, when I’m keeping an
eye on Miller—well, I’m not sure why, but sometimes up there I can get to feel very, you know, depressed and sick at heart? I mean, I can start feeling so low that I really don’t know why I’m alive, or why I would want to be. . . .”

Pausing to blink and rub at his eyes, and shaking his head as if to wake himself up, Forester finally continued, “But this is getting us nowhere and I shouldn’t have interrupted you. You were about to say . . . ?” He had deliberately changed the subject, and the Necroscope knew it. But he also knew that the constable was right and they were getting nowhere. For which reason:

“Okay,” he said, “let’s start again and revisit this World War II thing: these girls—and sometimes young couples—who disappeared during air-raid blackouts. You said Miller’s lawyer brought it up during the trial, and I know for a fact that Greg Miller himself has been at work gathering together a dossier of similar cases. But you spoke of such things as being worthless, no use at all as evidence. Now why was that?”

Forester nodded, and sounding a lot more rational replied, “Very well, let’s deal with that:

“You and me, Harry, we weren’t even born during World War II, and not for a long time after. Maybe we should consider ourselves lucky at that, because at the time a lot of less fortunate young fellows were reaching eighteen years of age and being drafted to go and fight der Führer. If you lived in a colliery, however, and had mining experience, you had a choice: you could always work down the mine, because coal mining was indispensable to the country’s war effort. Apart from which, and a handful of other protected trades, there was only—”

“—The armed forces,” said Harry.

“That’s right: the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force. It was your duty. But as in every war there were so-called ‘conscientious objectors,’ though often as not their main objection was to being cannon fodder! And who can blame them for that? But there were also those who—all excuses aside—simply cut and ran. Maybe it wasn’t always cowardice; perhaps some of them had what they considered
reasonable objections other than conscientious. Those who had young lovers, for instance: girlfriends, prospective wives . . . people they couldn’t bear to be parted from, who they felt the need to protect during dangerous times.

“And what better opportunity for the occasional young fellow to abscond, ‘presumed dead’—as often as not along with a special loved one—than during one of those German air-raids, eh? Oh, a terrible thing, to be blown to bits by a German bomb! And yes, people
did
get blown to bits and go missing in London! But here, in the north-east, the collieries? Why, you can count the casualties, meaning genuine,
proven
casualties, on one hand! Okay, Miller has his dossier of so-called ‘disappearances,’ but does he also have one for all the cases that the Redcaps had to deal with?”

“Redcaps?”

“The Military Police, Harry, who were stuck with the task of tracking down all the AWOLs and deserters. They worked hand in hand with local police authorities, and I’ve read plenty of their notes, reports, accounts in old ledgers. You want to know something? Up until seven or eight years ago—all those years later—men were
still
turning themselves in! Middle-aged fellows who ‘disappeared, presumed dead’ in 1942–’43, the middle of the war years. Sometimes they had wives, who ‘disappeared’ with them! As for how they got away with it for so long—well, who can say? They changed their names, kept moving from job to job, brought up families . . . you name it. But the point I’m making, the girls who ran off with these AWOLs or deserters under cover of German air-raids and/or in other circumstances: they weren’t killed by Miller’s bloody forest monster. They moved away, went underground, that’s all; they escaped from unhappy, unfortunate situations. Miller’s dossier and the ‘evidence’ that his lawyer produced: these things were just a bunch of red herrings thrown into the mix to confuse and deceive. . . .”

Listening to all this, remaining silent as he took it in, Harry found his faith in himself and his own beliefs beginning to falter; but he wasn’t about to give in. Eager to regain control, perhaps
too eager, and letting the words tumble from his mouth, he said, “Did you know that Miller has even traced similar cases back to Roman times?” But having blurted it out, he just as quickly realised how weak, even ridiculous, that statement must have sounded. And so:

“I mean . . .” He began again, more cautiously.

But Forester was slowly shaking his head, peering at the Necroscope curiously and with the suggestion of a wry, knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, and now who’s crazy?” he said. “What’s all this, Harry? Another of Miller’s ‘dossiers’? What, Roman times? Now we really are scraping the bottom of the barrel!”

Harry sighed and said, “Well, while I suppose you’ll find it risable, I’ve seen documents dating back to the second century A.D. showing how a centurion put great swaths of Hazeldene to the torch, set it ablaze, to stop a ‘forest demon’ stealing away young women from a nearby hamlet—which would just have to be Harden, of course.”

“You know,” Forester replied, “it’s true I’m just another son of a miner, born and bred right here in the north-east, but if there’s one subject I was good at in school it would have to be history. And the Romans—for all their achievements in the arts, empire building, warfare, their structuring of social and governmental systems—still they were probably as superstitious a so-called civilised people as ever existed. They stocked their religious or supernatural pantheons and demonologies with stolen and borrowed gods and devils from almost every race they encountered, and having been ambushed by ‘foreign demons’—the barbaric tribes of the period—in every thicket and copse they bulldozed their way through in France, Germany, Belgium, indeed the whole of Europe . . . well, it hardly surprises me they credited the existence of monsters in Britannic woodlands too! What you should remember, Harry: in those days forests were forests. Coast to coast and from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, there were dense, fearsome woodlands almost everywhere. What? Why, fifteen hundred or more years later we were still building our fighting ‘ships of oak’ from those very forests!
Huh!
”