Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates: and Other Tales from the Lost Years Read Online Free PDF

grass verge. And again, with feeling: “
Ow!
” as he curled into a ball there.
    Sergeant!
Harry warned. But too late because his body—as of its own volition, but in fact of Sergeant’s—had spun like a top through a full three hundred and sixty degrees, his right leg extended and rising into a higher orbit. And once again his heel had come into crippling contact with soft flesh, this time in the form of Kevin’s nose.
    Blood and snot flew; as did the astonished, agonised thug, his arms windmilling as he landed on his backside in a drainage ditch between the verge and the hedge.
    With both thugs immobilised and sobbing their misery, just as quickly as that it appeared to be over. But—
    “Well now!” said a calm and mature, unfamiliar but plainly authoritative voice from behind the Necroscope, just as he felt himself beginning to relax. “And what have we here?”
    Harry turned to face a uniformed constable in shirt-sleeve order. Despite that he appeared to be in his late thirties, the neatly-clipped sideboards coming down under his policeman’s hat were prematurely grey; his eyes were also grey and perhaps more thana little cynical, as was his thin, tight-lipped mouth. Yet paradoxically, in a way that was hard-to-define, the aura given off by the man behind those eyes and that mouth seemed far less cynical than careworn and world-weary. Also—looking oddly out of place, as did the man himself—a pair of binoculars dangled from a leather strap worn around his neck.
    “Er, I—” Harry began, only to be cut off by the girl he had rescued from an embarrassing, even threatening situation:
    “This man helped us out when things were beginning to look bad,” she explained. “And as for these two—” she indicated the pair who were still on the ground, “—they were acting like . . . like
animals
! They well deserved what they got!”
    Her young man added: “I was . . . well, I was taken by surprise, else I might have been of some help. But—”
    “But as it happened,” the policeman cut him off, “I saw it all and this gent here—” he indicated Harry, “—didn’t appear to need any help, now did he?” Taking out his notebook, he then spoke to Harry. “Might I ask who you are, sir?”
    “My name is Keogh—Harry Keogh,” the Necroscope replied. “I’m from Edinburgh, staying with a friend in Harden.”
    The policeman made as if to write in his book, changed his mind, and tucked it away again in the shirt pocket that held his whistle. “You don’t have much of a Scottish accent,” he said.
    “I was brought up in these parts,” said Harry. “I attended school in Harden.” And after a moment’s pause: “Look, I’m sorry if I’m in the wrong here, but I heard the filthy language these two louts were using and it seemed to me that this young couple were in trouble. Also, when I approached, I too was threatened! So it appears to me your time would be better employed speaking to these thugs rather than the ones they were insulting.”
    The other smiled a tight smile. “No need to speak to these two,” he said. “I know them well enough. Work-shy hooligans, the pair of them; nothing they like better than causing trouble for decent, hardworking people.” He scowled at the thugs where they werebeginning to crawl away along the grass verge, then asked: “Do you want to bring charges, any of you?”
    Feeling relieved, Harry shook his head. “I’m not sure it’s necessary. I think they’ve learned a lesson.”
    And the young man asked, “What do you suggest, Constable?”
    The policeman chewed his lip, thought it over, and finally said, “I think you should let it go. Twenty years ago it’s possible I might have wheeled them down to the station and let them spend a night in the cells. They’d get out tomorrow each with a black eye, a fat lip, and a few bruises, and that would be that. Today, however, it doesn’t work like that. The do-gooders would be yelling about police