Headhunter

high-heeled, ankle-strapped pumps and a sequined G-string. Her breasts were bare.

There were several speakers situated about the club and two above the stage, all of them playing canned soft rock — Olivia Newton-John growling about wanting to get physical.

While Macdonald and Lewis scanned the customers' faces looking for Matthew Paul Pitt or any of the other illustrious members in their memorized Rogues' Gallery, the stripper danced to the edge of the stage and squatted down in front of a solitary British sailor dressed in Navy blues. Spreading her legs wide, she pulled aside the G-string to expose herself completely. There were catcalls around the room. As the sailor stared at her genitals with his Adam's apple bobbing, the woman licked her lips. The sailor reached for a pair of glasses to get a better look, but the moment he put them on the stripper removed them from his nose. She began to wipe them slowly across her exposed crotch, pursing her lips and pouting an expression of innocence. Then she replaced the spectacles on the sailor's face and arched her back like a gymnast. Supporting her weight with her arms and her feet, she began thrusting her pelvis toward the man's face, pumping and rocking her hips as he continued to stare wide-eyed.

The hooting and laughing and whistling rose as the crowd in the room went wild. Then one drunk shouted above the din: 'Hey, lady, I'll sniff your bicycle seat anytime!'

Monica Macdonald sighed. How does any woman end up in a place like this? she thought.

'Seen enough?' Macdonald asked, leaning over to Lewis. Rusty Lewis nodded. He knocked back the rest of his beer, then the two of them left the table just as the woman on the stage ripped off the G-string.

Monica Macdonald liked to think that hers was an open mind. So she had started out on this strip-club crawl with a clinical attitude. Not once in her life had she had a Lesbian experience, unless of course you counted the time that her Uncle Harold while babysitting had tried to get both her and her fourteen-year-old sister into bed at once. At the age of eleven (even then destined to be a cop) Monica had turned Uncle Harold in to her mother. After that Uncle Harold stopped coming for Christmas dinner.

After watching thirty-two strippers expose themselves, Monica Macdonald was now convinced irrevocably that her DC had no AC to trot along beside it. So to keep from getting bored on this trip she had turned her attention to Lewis.

The man was entertaining.

For to start with, it was hard to believe that any man in his late twenties could possibly be this shy. When the first stripper had exposed her crotch Rusty Lewis had blushed as scarlet as his red serge dress uniform.

'Is that why they call you Rusty?' Monica had chided.

Lewis had turned a deeper scarlet and averted his eyes from the woman.

To be honest, Rusty Lewis was a rather pleasant change. Most of the men within the Force were closer in their attitude towards women to the views of Rabidowski and Scarlett. Most males liked both the authority and the power that came with the uniform. In the RCMP a shy man was a bit of a rarity.

'Let's check the barman,' Macdonald said, 'then let's get out of here.'

The liquor supply in Phantoms English Pub was thirty feet

from the dance floor. The barman was out of Yorkshire by way of London, large and beefy with a bulbous, red-veined nose. As they approached the counter he looked them up and down and said: 'I'm betting you two are fuzz.'

Lewis flashed the Regimental Shield.

Fishing out the picture of Matthew Paul Pitt, Macdonald placed it on the counter. 'Seen this one?' she asked.

The Englishman glanced at the photograph, then looked up. 'You looking for Jack the Lad?' he inquired.

'Just routine.'

'Coppers don't do nothing that's just routine, my lass.'

'Have you seen him?'

'Nope,' the barman said. 'But I seen a lot just like him.'

Macdonald looked at Lewis, and then back at the giant.

'You're looking for Jack, right? Jackie, our Headhunter?'

'You're correct,' Monica said. 'We're looking for him.'

'And you're checking out the dirty-raincoat brigade, eh? The lads who come into the pub just for the show. Cause if there's an orifice up there, these fellers'll be hanging on to the rail looking up into it. Well, there's lots of them here tonight but I ain't seen this bloke.'

The Yorkshireman tapped the picture then gave it back to Macdonald.

'If I was you, lass,' the barman said, 'I think I'd keep right on looking. Don't stop here. And don't stop with that picture.'

'Why's that?' Macdonald asked.

'Coz there's three dozen lads what come into this pub alone have the eyes or the mouth to do what this Jack's done.'

The Enfield

7:45 a.m.

'Robert, what in the world are you doing?'

Genevieve DeClercq stood in the doorway to the greenhouse and stared at the revolver in her husband's hand. The Superintendent looked up, then held up the Enfield.

'You mean this?' he asked. 'I was just taking a breather and reading about Wilfred Blake. This gun was his service revolver. It was found in the snow of the Rockies after he disappeared.'

Genevieve understood. She glanced at the library table and the open volume upon it. The book was Men Who Wore the Tunic. She knew then that her husband was searching for anything that would give him the strength to go on. Did he sleep at all? she wondered.

'Reinforcements?' she asked.

'I guess,' he said, and he gave her the weakest of smiles. His face looked drawn and tired.

'I'm afraid I've got a faculty conference this morning. The Deanship is coming open and the infighting is fierce. Will you be here for dinner? It's my turn to cook.'

'I don't think so, Genny. Tomorrow is the sweep. I'll be down at Headquarters until everything is ready. You'll see me when I get here.'

Tomorrow is your birthday, too,DeClercq's wife thought. She turned to go, then stopped in mid-stride and glanced back at the policeman. 'Do me a favor? Please,' she said. 'Take it easy on yourself.'

'I will,' he assured her. But his voice lacked conviction. Genevieve paused in the doorway as if she had something else to say, but in the end she said nothing and simply left the room. Several minutes later he heard her car drive away.

Alone in the greenhouse once again, Robert DeClercq stood listening to the rain on the glass roof. Thump… thump…thump. It sounded to him like the formal drum tattoo one hears at an RCMP funeral. He put Blake's Enfield down on the table and walked over to the greenhouse door to stare out at the angry sea. All the world before him stretched out dull and gray.

He thought about the Inspector. What sort of man had Blake really been? What had driven him on? No other member in the Force had left behind him such a strange, strange legacy. For within the formal version of history, the one which the RCMP records revealed, the Inspector was simply the finest detective that the Mounted Police had ever produced. His quota for stunning arrests had never been duplicated. It was said that his style of fighting in the British Army before joining the Force was awe-inspiring. The man literally knew no fear. His Victoria Cross had been recommended by the Queen herself.

Still, there had been rumors.

When DeClercq was doing research for Men Who Wore the Tunic, he had taken it upon himself to interview all the old-timers yet living from those early days of the Force. A number of them went back as far as the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.