sometimes, and I can't constantly refuse. I was always sure to find Opdijk there, and he always grabbed me. An uncle's friendly petting, but the bastard was feeling me up. I don't like to be felt up by slobs. It was good to see him jump and run and fall over. But I overdid it a bit. I nearly flew the plane into the Opdijk's house.'
'Do you have any idea who killed Opdijk and Mary Brewer and the other two, a man called Jones and another called Davidson?'
'I have an idea.'
'Would you tell me?'
'Shouldn't you find out for yourself? It must be interesting to find little clues here and there and try to piece them together. Why should I help you?'
De Gier reached for his empty glass and she refilled it. His teeth chattered again and he held his jaw.
'If you cooperate you may clear yourself. Now you are a suspect. So far we are just bumbling about, but the sheriff may call in the state police, who might use different methods. They wouldn't be hampered by local conditions.'
She smiled and he saw the tip of her tongue and her moist lips. 'Why should I want to clear myself, sergeant? I'm sure I couldn't be arrested and I'm sure nobody can be arrested. I am playing my game, which is watching your game, and the way you play it, you and the sheriff and your chief. And you can watch our game again. You've been taking part in it. It's all very involved and rather exciting, don't you think?'
Watching the bear in the circus, he thought, while the bear watches the audience.
Her head was close to his hand and he stroked her hair.
'Yes,' he said. 'The game is exciting. My chief thinks so too. He was so excited that he almost danced in the snow. He looked very funny. He has been trying to understand your gang. He likes its name, especially the/prefix bad. You say you like experimenting. Your membership in the gang must be an experiment. You study philosophy, don't you?' I
'Yes, but the books and the lectures are just words. If I attend all the lectures and do my utmost I'll get letters after my name, and perhaps one day I'll write something clever and my genius will be acknowledged. But that part of it is just silly. The true philosophers have always experimented. I was fortunate that I grew up with others whose minds were similar to mine. It's fashionable to be rebellious when you're young. Most American kids have a destructive period, but the fox always wanted to go further and he continued refusing to accept values that he hadn't tested. We became a gang and destroyed things for a while, material things, but the activity didn't get us anywhere. It was boring. The the fox said we should seek out gangs in a big city. He selected the biggest, New York, and we went down there for a few weeks.
'We were in our late teens and early twenties then. We found what we thought was the best part for our purposes, the Lower East Side. There were lots of gangs, most of them uniformed in some way. They didn't touch us, not even when we provoked them. The fox tried various methods. He used me as bait, but they just thought I was a prostitute. Finally Tom got us into the required trouble. He was a little drunk and he walked by himself and some Puerto Ricans mugged him. We got into the fight and the P.R.'s got help too. It was a true fight, with one corpse on their side and one on ours. The fox knifed a boy, a beautiful boy in dungarees and a black leather jacket. Gerard, a French Canadian from Jameson, caught a knife that had been thrown in his chest. He didn't see it coming. We left Gerard's body. We carried no identification, and his corpse wasn't there when we came back later. The police probably took it away. We all had a crisis then I think. We nearly gave up, and the fox stepped back and let us make up our minds. There were six of us left. Two gave up later on- they left the city and went out of state. I've lost contact with them. They married, got suburban homes in some city or other. They do the normal thing. Only the fox and Albert and Tom and I continued.'
'Gerard wasn't missed when you got back to Jameson?'
'No. His parents had got divorced and left. He hadn't been living with them. Nobody cared I think, and we didn't tell anyone what happened. We said he had stayed in New York.'
'But you are telling me-'
'Sure, why not?'
'Do you do everything the fox tells you to do?'
She laughed. 'No, sergeant. When we were in New York we ran out of money and he suggested I work in a porno studio. Some old man with a hairpiece and polished fingernails offered me two hundred dollars a day. The fox thought that was a splendid idea, but I refused.'
'And the money?'
'I telephoned my father and got a check and flew home. The others came back much later. Maybe they worked or robbed a bank. I never asked them how they got money. We are very secretive, even with each other. It's part of the game. Perhaps we aren't really a gang but just individuals linked in some strange formation. If I disagree with an experiment I don't take part in it. 'Gang' is a childish word, but we've been using it.'
'What's on the number plate of your car?'
'BMF ZERO.'
De Gier laughed as she got up and put more logs on the fire. She came back and stripped. De Gier still felt cold. She pulled him to his feet and helped him undress.
'Do you like me, sergeant?'
'Yes.'
'Most men do.'
'It must make your experiments easy.'
'Kiss me.'
The loveplay took a good while. He controlled himself to make it stretch, but he still felt part of the advertisement, and the orange label on the whiskey bottle stayed in his mind. The dragon hadn't released the princess. It had made the princess available, and not for the first time.
De Gier was lured into various postures and all the while Madelin was submissive, inviting, seemingly passive. But he knew that she granted him no initiatives and that he was taken through a preconceived program. A good program, with a good end.
'I'll show you where the bathroom is. We might take a shower.'
She let him go first and he went down again and dressed and sat near the fire, watching its glow hollow out the birch logs. Madelin returned a little later in a housecoat. She made coffee and they drank it on the settee.
'The sheriff tells me your father owns the shore strip on Cape Orca now.'
'Did he check with the town clerk?'
'Yes.'
'The records may not be up to date. When land is sold the title is transferred officially, but only when the new deed is registered. Land taxes have gone up lately. A new name on a deed usually alerts the assessor. It may be better to put off registration for a while.'
'But what if the previous owner sells the land again?'
'That's a risk, but not when the previous and new owners are friends, or trust each other.'
'So your father may have sold the land again and the town clerk doesn't know who the new owner is.'
'That might have happened.'
'Has it?'
She put a finger on his nose. 'It might have and he may not have told me. I'm the junior partner. He's the head of a rival gang, the Blue Crustaceans. His ideas differ from mine.'
'Do you like him?'
'I've fought him all my life.'
'Another experiment,' de Gier said. 'I see.'
She moved away from him. 'Don't sneer at experiments, sergeant. It's the only way we have to find out, to really find out. The reason that you are here tonight is because I saw something in you, in the way you played your flute. The fox did too. He's considering you as an honorary member.'
De Gier got up. 'Are you serious?'
She smiled. 'Yes. Are you leaving? Better be careful, it isn't safe outside. You can stay the night if you like.'
'I'll be careful.'
She caressed his arm and he waited patiently.
