Watson, Ian - Novel 10

by Deathhunter (v1. 1)

  ‘death stinks,’ read the screen.

  For a moment Jim wondered whether Nathan Weinberger could somehow be responsible.

  Hardly! Weinberger would have typed in, ‘dying people stink.* Weinberger had said that he saw Death out of the corner of his eye, not that he smelled it out of the side of his nose. Presumably Death itself was odourless.

  Jim queried the touch-pad.

  ‘no further record.’

  He cleared the screen. Naturally there was nothing about a pheromone of death; for the simple reason that there wasn’t one.

  Jim paced. After a while the vista of Egremont beyond the sharp leaves and blood flowers reminded him that he ought to visit the Peace Office — the Octagon, as they called it here — to register. His schedule for these first few days was flexible — apart from the Weinberger affair — to let him find his bearings and fit in chores like this.

  While he was down at the Octagon, perhaps he should ask a few discreet questions about Weinberger? Without, of course, implying that the House needed any advice . . .

  He decided to catch some lunch on the way there. A visit to the fabled Three Spires Restaurant, perhaps? No — he wanted to save that experience up.

  * * *

  After walking for fifteen minutes, he chose a small sandwich bar. Half a dozen pine stools lined the counter, and there were just two tables. A couple of middle-aged men sat at one of these, over beers, saying nothing at all to each other, which was perhaps their most intimate way of communicating. Four women were munching doughnuts and drinking coffee at the other. The bar itself was decorated with resort pennants. Either its owner was privileged to travel, which seemed unlikely, or else he was a collector of such ephemera. Perhaps he had simply bought the pennants as a job lot from some shop furnisher.

  Only two stools were vacant at the bar. Jim slipped in between a fat, bearded negro, and a bald old fellow with unusually large ears. Jim glanced at the old man, amused. As his frame had shrunk with age, so had his ears grown. His card must be coming up soon at the Census Office. Perhaps he had grown those ears to alert him to that moment, Jim thought whimsically.

  He ordered smoked ham on rye and a small beer from the lady of the house, who was wearing what she perhaps thought of as a smart chiffon and lace blouse; unfortunately it looked more like part of a nightdress.

  Inevitably, now that a guide had arrived, talk at the bar turned to the topic of the murder.

  The negro was first in.

  “So you’re a guide, eh? You didn’t do much guiding of that berserker up at the House yesterday.’’

  “We do our best,’’ said Jim evenly. “There was a time when an incident of that sort was so ordinary you wouldn’t even have mentioned it. What kind of world was that?’’

  “Oh, a world on the skids. I guess we’re just animals with brains too big for our own good. But now the animal trainers are in charge, right? So how did that nut get out of his cage?”

  Jim sipped beer.

  “He was the exception that proves the rule.’’

  The old fellow’s head swung round, as though operated by the crinkled dishes of his ears.

  “Do you know what that saying really means, guide? What it means is, that the exception tests the rule — to see if it’s okay, to see if it’s worth anything. Or if it’s just a phoney rule. That’s the real meaning — the old meaning — and I’m sticking by it. And when my time comes I’m sticking by what I know. Like, for instance, death is shit.”

  “Charlie,” said the nightdress lady sharply. “The work of the Houses is a blessing.”

  “If some people feel as Charlie does, it’s understandable,” said Jim.

  “Oh, you’re such an understanding lot up there! Understand a man to death, you will.”

  The negro laughed. “Well, nobody could ever understand you, Charlie! You belong in some other world.”

  “And they’ll make darn sure they send me there.”

  “They daren’t send you anywhere. Guiding you would be like trying to guide a bull through a china shop. By the ear!”

  “You’ve had one too many, Charlie,” said the lady.

  “I have not.” Charlie continued to sit defiantly, taking root in his stool.

  The negro nudged Jim in the ribs. “Anyway, apart from this old fossil we’re all on your side. It’s just that you let the side down a bit yesterday, hey? It’s like our best player missing the catch. The other side won that one: the old enemy of us all. The enemy of my kids. And yours.”

  “Right.” Jim bit into his sandwich.

  “But you guides don’t have kids, do you? You must get kind of lonely.”

  Still chewing, Jim said, “There are compensations. Friends.” (Such as Mike Mullen . . .?) “The sense that you’re healing the world. And bringing people peace and joy. Fulfilling them.”

  “How about lady guides?” asked Charlie wickedly. “I hope I get one of those. She’ll have to persuade me. . . quite touchingly. ”

  “You’re being disgusting,” said the nightdress lady. She leaned across the bar, squashing her breasts tight against the chiffon. “And you guides retire earlier than most other people — some of whom we could quite well do without! I think you’re saints.”

  “Thanks,” said Jim. He raised his glass to her. “We’re just people, as you see.”

  “And people like to have a drink. It’s so good to see you here.” She beamed. “Your next beer’s for free. You might say it’s on the House.”

  “And you’re very welcome up at the House, any time there’s a seminar,” said Jim chivalrously. “Even if we do only serve coffee.”

  “Yeah, we saw Barnes saying how we should go up there more often,” remarked the negro. “Is that what you’re doing in town? Delivering invitations?”

  “Me? I’m off to the Octagon, to register. I just arrived in Egremont yesterday.”

  The negro looked crestfallen. “And here’s me sounding off at you about what happened! Damn it all, I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

  “Jim.”

  “Mine’s Alec. I’ll buy the next one.”

  With four beers under his skin, Jim carried on to the Octagon.

  As he walked across the gravel courtyard towards the grand portico, he ran his hand through one of the standard bay trees, rattling the leaves, a few of which fell off. The marble statues watched him blankly.

  Along the architrave ran the gilded inscription: pax vobiscum — ‘Peace Be With You.’ Composing himself, he hoped that his face was not too flushed. He mounted the wide stone steps between the fluted pillars. Glass doors whispered apart.

  Registration only took a few moments. A white-uniformed woman handled it at the front desk. She had short black hair, except where she had trained long lacquered sweeps down past her cheekbones to her jaw, so that she seemed to be wearing an ancient Roman helmet.

  When she handed back Jim’s code-card, he said, “There’s one other thing. I’m the person who’s guiding Norman Harper’s murderer.”

  “You have my sympathy.”

  “Thanks. But apart from that I thought that someone from here might have checked into the man’s background ...”

  “Ah, you’re having difficulties?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “But you’d like to compare notes?”

  “Sort of. Well, not exactly compare — I can’t reveal anything about my client.”

  “We have our rules too, Mr Todhunter. Still, I’ll phone around.

  No, wait a minute: if I remember, Officer Bekker did some checking.”

  A few minutes later, a messenger was leading Jim up a wide, circling marble staircase and along a corridor to Bekker’s office.

  Bekker sat at his desk, which was partly data terminal, beneath a frosted glass window. He was checking a printout. A framed aerial blow-up of the Egremont valley hung on the wall, next to a large map studded with coloured pins.

  Jim identified himself.

  Bekker was about forty ye
ars old, with hair the colour of hay and a slight moustache. He had a small wart on one cheek. He looked vaguely familiar.

  “Wasn’t it you I gave the gun to?”

  “If you’re the same guy who gave it to me, then I’m the one. Do you want it back now?” Bekker grinned.

  “I wanted to know whether you’d visited Nathan Weinberger’s apartment.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you find anything . . . interesting?”

  “It depends what you mean by interesting. There wasn’t any cache of guns and bullets, which is what I was mainly looking for. But the furnishings were pretty weird. He’d built the craziest bed for himself: like a water-bed crossed with a four-poster. You’d have to see it for yourself! Instead of curtains and awnings, it had this gilded cage around it with a little door. He had five — count ’em, five — scene-screens stacked against the wall. What that must have cost! And electronic stuff, cameras, tools, some chemical equipment. But he hadn’t stolen any of it. Bought it all. Spent every penny that came in — so his credit balance was nearly nil. Good worker, though. But he kept to himself.”

  “What do you think he was up to, buying things like that?”

  “Think? I know. He was fixing up an electronic harem for himself. He was going to feed sex tapes into those screens, and he was going to lie there on his water bed peeping through that naughty harem grille. I didn’t find any tapes, but I did find a stack of nudie magazines. Quite a big stack. Which hardly concerns me, so long as he was peaceful — and I guess you couldn’t get more peaceful than that! But there were a couple of tiny little cameras too, for filming what went on on that bed — and I’m sure it wouldn’t be himself he was planning on filming. I’d say he was planning on luring little boys up there. Little girls too, maybe. In which case it would certainly have become my business. It’s a good thing the Hospital retired him; or we’d have had to do it. Me, I prefer a different sort of photography. ’ ’ Bekker waved at the blowup of the valley. “I took that picture myself.”

  “Very impressive.”

  “It’s got a whole lot of detail in it. There’s no blurring.”

  “And all that, er, electronic harem stuff is still in his apartment?”

  “Where else? Public Disposal sealed the apartment on the day he retired. It stays that way till he dies, then they clear it and reallocate.”

  “I just wondered if you’d removed anything — by way of evidence?”

  “Evidence of what? A plan for sexual entrapment of minors? That’s irrelevant now. Personally I think this courtesy of sealing somebody’s place and holding it in limbo for weeks on end is stupid. Kick it off the statute book, I say. It’s wasteful. It’s pointless. No one who retires is going to be returning to his old haunts.” “It’s important psychologically.”

  “Oh well, you know more about that than I do. Anyhow, I hope I’ve been some help. Now you know why he fired the gun. He had a sexual screw loose. Probably he couldn’t cut the mustard any longer. Then he lost control of his harem before he could even open it to the junior public. All he could fire off was a gun.”

  Jim got up to leave.

  “Thanks for your help, Mr Bekker.”

  “Give my best to Noel,” said Bekker, by way of goodbye. “Noel? Oh, you mean Resnick?”

  Bekker stared at Jim. “Didn’t Noel Resnick send you? Didn’t he suggest you see me?”

  “No, I just came. I had to register, you see, so I asked the officer downstairs ...”

  “Well, fancy that,” said Bekker. “What a subtle guide you must be — though I don’t presume to tread on your terrain!”

  “I’m sorry if I gave the wrong impression.”

  “Think nothing of it. Yes, an ideal guide for Mr Weinberger! Dark horses, both of you.”

  EIGHT

  When Jim called on Weinberger the next morning, it was obvious that the dying man did not intend to be the first to raise the matter of death pheromones or a cage for Death. So Jim did not rush in to these topics, either — and this seemed to please Weinberger. Perhaps it confirmed his opinion that Jim was just like all the others. Or maybe Weinberger thought that he had thrown Jim off the scent?

  After what Bekker had told him, Jim had his reservations about the genuineness of any plan to entrap Death. Weinberger would presume that the Peace Office had searched his apartment. His story about the intended use of the cage might be nothing more than a smokescreen, to hide his shame and guilt at the actual fetishistic, erotic purpose he had in mind.

  Yes indeed, fetishism and frustration might easily account for his pouring all his energy and money into building the ‘electronic harem Weinberger had become obsessed, fixated. Yet his fixation had little to do with death — except maybe with the little death of orgasm, something that had perhaps withered from his life except in certain specialised circumstances. If, indeed, it had ever blossomed much at all! He was rather an ugly man.

  “You must have been lonely these last ten years?” suggested Jim. “I mean, with all you had to do, and how much it must have cost and everything. It couldn’t have left much over for enjoyment.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I could afford a drink now and then.”

  “So you had drinking buddies?”

  “One or two.”

  “But no women friends.”

  “You mean no sex?” Weinberger laughed. “I’ve lived in a House. I know what a hotbed this place feels like now and then — to some people. But I’m a bit different. If I went to bed casually with a woman I’d half fall in love with her. I know it! I’m too damn sentimental that way. You mightn’t believe it, but it’s a fact. And how could I ever possibly let myself love anyone, knowing as I do that the most loving, kindest thing I could possibly do would be . . . kill her, unexpectedly?

  “To kill my love,” he repeated softly, “to cheat Death out of her.”

  ‘Sick,’ thought Jim. He kept the thought from registering on his face.

  Perhaps Weinberger’s vacuum flask dispenser actually contained sexual pheromones? Perhaps he thought that he could turn himself on thus, together with whoever else he could wheedle into his apartment! It was the modern version of drenching a bed with perfume . . .

  And yet. . . if Weinberger was telling the truth about his motive in building the cage, it would follow logically that anyone whom he really loved ought to die suddenly and unexpectedly. So, not having anyone to love, having indeed denied himself the chance, he had killed Norman Harper instead — the beloved of many people. Maybe that was the closest he could come to his wish.

  Anyone could own a pile of nudie magazines, if they had vowed themselves to celibacy. (But not to continence.)

  “I’ll reserve judgement on that one,” said Jim.

  “Take your time,” said Weinberger bitterly. “You can’t take mine — I haven’t any left to spare.”

  Early that Friday evening six staff members boarded an electric minibus to purr northwards through Egremont to Lake Tulane.

  Alice Huron drove. Noel Resnick sat next to her. Behind were Jim and Marta Bettijohn, Lama Ananda, and Mary-Ann Sczepanski, who had been Weinberger’s guide before the debacle.

  Mary-Ann wore girlish blond pigtails, though she looked to be in her early forties. Slim and trim and slight, and full of nervous energy, she was constantly looking this way and that as though this was her first glimpse of the town. All was a perpetual wonder to her, to be greeted with a quick smile — as, no doubt, she would greet death when her time came to retire. Maybe she was doing this to avoid concentrating on Jim, who had taken Over her role with

  Weinberger? He sensed no jealousy or resentment, though. But she wasn’t going to volunteer to mention Weinberger. It would be a breach of House etiquette. Yet breaches occurred, as Jim well knew — there had been a breach big enough to drive this minibus through the other day in Resnick’s office. Excused, no doubt, by the extraordinary circumstances.

  Perhaps Mary-Ann wasn’t very good at dealing with the extraordinary. So, inste
ad, she exalted the familiar. Weinberger had easily fooled her. Weinberger was way outside of her competence.

  And so Jim, too, admired the town.

  The sun was beginning to set when they arrived by the lake. Egremont in its valley was a bowl of shadow, criss-crossed by faint pearly beads of light, but the encircling hills remained brightly lit, with shadows sharp and black. A mercury river ran westward over the lake. A thousand semaphore signals from the crests of waves dazzled their eyes. Most of the yachts had already returned to their moorings and boathouses around the shore. The deep blue sky was whisped with high cirrus clouds — white in the east, thin veins of blood in the west. It was fair weather now, and the breeze was only moderate, yet a depression was moving in.

  Alice Huron steered the minibus along a cinder track to a chalet. Another minibus was already parked there. Jim recognized the operatic figure of Claudio Menotti amidst a small group of people whom he did not yet know, but soon would. Two attendants from the House had already fired the hibachi and loaded a log table with glasses and chilled wine bottles, under the bunchy spread of a Corsican pine. Junipers grew along the gravel shoreline.

  Soon Jim was being toasted by Noel Resnick, rather floridly.

  After the toast Resnick drew Jim aside, down through the junipers to the stony shore.

  “How’s it going, then?’’

  How was what going? Jim’s adjustment to Egremont after his life in the city? Or the Weinberger affair?

  Not one to fudge an issue — as he believed that Mary-Ann might well have fudged one previously, with all her sweet enthusiasm — Jim opted for the second interpretation.

  “I’m making good contact with Nathan. That part’s fine. But the man has some pretty fierce obsessions. He certainly isn’t going to bow out gracefully until he has a chance to work them through. He has to purge himself of the causes of the murder.”