Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (7 page)

 
          
“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 years 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.”

 
          
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, instead, 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.”

 
          
This
was, perhaps, an optimistic assessment.

 
          
“Could
you be a bit more specific?”

 
          
“Not
at this stage, if you don’t mind. I might still be getting a partial picture. 1
might distort his view of things if I tried to put it into words so soon. Pd
certainly
distort
my own view of him.”
“Quite right, Jim.
But he hasn’t got
much
time left. He mustn’t . . . simply die.”

 
          
“Unredeemed?
Don’t
worry,
we’ve got several weeks — and with
someone really listening to his point of view ...”

 
          
“And
playing along with it? He’ll hang on?”

 
          
“I’m
sure he will.”

 
          
“Is
it wise to play along with major delusions?”

 
          
“Sometimes
we play along with the delusion of an afterlife,” said Jim.

 
          
“That
isn’t
his
delusion ... is it?”

 
          
“It
might be involved.
Pm not sure yet.”

 
          
“A
dying person must face the truth of death.”

 
          
“But
to resist Nathan’s delusions at this stage would be to alienate him. It would
harden his shell. He’d retreat.” And at that very moment Jim made up his mind
about Weinberger’s abandoned deathtrap. The cage had never been intended as a
sexual playpen at all. It was precisely what Weinberger said it was. And Jim
made up his mind, too, about what he would do with it.

 
          
“I’m
going to play along with Weinberger all the way. By doing that he’ll realize
that the way leads nowhere. He’ll turn aside, on to the true path.”

 
          
“I
really hope so. I hope he can appear in public, a little before the end, as ...
a changed person.” Resnick waggled his fingers. “We’d be discreet. He wouldn’t
be traumatised or set back. It’s because of what he
did,
and the echoes he set up — do you see? I know it’s unusual. But if some clients
can share their death experience in seminars, well, we’ll hold a small public
ceremony, of reconciliation, eh? In effect, he’ll
become
Norman Harper. He’ll take
Norman
’s place. That’ll cancel out the tragedy.”

 
          
“We’re
still some way off that happy day.”

 
          
“Okay,
Jim, handle it any way you like. You have
carte
blanche
from me. Just
get
Weinberger there. This is important.
Norman
was a major figure, and for him to be
cheated of his death by somebody in our care ...”

 
          
Resnick
waved his hand, emphasizing a whole lake of importance. The mercury river had
withdrawn into the sun, which was about to slip behind a hill. Looking across
the lake, Jim thought of the intense feeling of identification, of oceanic
unity, which he had experienced when he drowned. Once, in Gracchus during their
mimicry of the death encounter, he had recaptured that blissful feeling.

 
          
‘Shall
I really help Nathan build a cage for Death?* he wondered. There was an odd and
slightly ugly fascination in the notion. It was an absurdity, rather as though
a modern chemist should decide to build alchemical apparatus to transmute lead
into gold. It was the direct opposite of everything the Houses stood for.

 
          
‘When
Nathan catches nothing in it, obviously we’ll be home and dry. Still . . .

 
          
‘I’m
treading on eggs,’ he thought. And, for some perverse reason — perhaps because
Resnick was so fatuously and
politically
anxious
to conclude this sorry episode serenely — ‘I want to.’

 
          
‘They
robbed
meoi
something too,’ thought
Jim. ‘They robbed me of the chance of navigating the
Ocean
of
Unity
, when Mike Mullen imitated death all too
well in Gracchus, and genuinely died . . .’

 
          
Should
he convey Officer Bekker’s greetings to
Resnick
?

 
          
“I’d
like you to take on a few other cases,” went on Resnick, before Jim had time to
decide. “There’s a young kid — she’s just eleven — who was transferred from the
Hospital yesterday. They diagnosed leukaemia.
The white
blood-crab.
Needs sympathy, but she’s well-adjusted.”