Conversation · The Deserter

"Three weeks ago, when the rich hag came in on her galley. Her honour guard came in tow."

Joyce... he means Joyce again.

"This is the so-called soucriant again, right? Joyce?"

"Wrinkled up whore," he nods.

"Khm..." (Cough.) "Moving on -- the victim arrives some time after her..."

"They moved into a deserted apartment above the roundabout." He nods toward the city. "Radio equipment out for all to see -- reactionary radio playing. Sloppy and drunk."

"I've seen their kind during the Landing. Those Occidental and Mesque falangues weren't conscripts -- boys, like us. They were wights. All they know is to destroy and hurt."

"Got it."

"Herding the strikebreakers like that -- I kept an eye on them." He stares inland, then back at you.

"Wights?"

"Barely alive. They like to kill while they're on their drugs. After the landing, in the burning years I would take shots at them, end them. The worst ones. If I had a bullet to spare."

"I could see they've returned now. To show their real face -- the face they don't dare show their bourgeois voters back on Mundi, with their families and polyester clothes..."

"Whore. Good strong word. I use it often myself."

"Yes," he nods enthusiastically. "Old-fashioned."

"What is it with these whores and pederasts... aren't you a communist?"

"Lax sexual morals are a bourgeois ploy," he gargles a spit ball. "As to pederasty, the Party legalized it in '04. My Party, not your liberal masters." He spits it out on the dying coals.

"So don't you sermonize me, you racist shithole." He adds. "It's still bourgeois when the bourgeois does it. Fiddling with their sexual organs..."

Some strange glandular process takes place in him at the thought. Like yeast rising...

An anger too, in addition to loneliness.

"Khm," the lieutenant coughs.

"Let's talk about something else for now."

He draws shallow breaths.

"You mean the Wild Pines representative again, right?"

Joyce... he means Joyce.

"Rich hag?"

"Let's talk about something else for now."

He draws shallow breaths.

"And by that you mean the representative of the harbour company?"

"Wrinkled up whore," he nods.

"By that you mean Joyce Messier, the Wild Pines rep?"

That must be the representative of the Harbour company, who came in on her boat.

"Them fucking..." He looks at the charred wood. "I didn't like that."

"So you were jealous?"

"Jealousy is a reactionary concept. I didn't like the reaver enjoying himself -- drugged out, soothed in the arms of a young woman. I wanted him to die so he could not enjoy life anymore."

For him to stop reacting to stimuli, to be broken off from the world. Cordoned into darkness.

"And I wanted her to see his head explode," he nods. "That too. She should know better than to hold a child murderer between her thighs. I knew he'd be there for one more second, writhing..."

"That's all it takes for the bullet to reach his head." He squints. "Now that I think of it, I wasn't aiming for his mouth. I wanted his brains to spill out on her... but..." he shrugs, "you can't have everything."

Her body sweating from the drugs, slick from cerebral haemorrhage.

This man has seen past her, like you did.

And now he longs to see her covered in blood.

To punish her.

How does he know those minute details about her body?

It quickly comes to you.

"Ever see her through a window, on a roof?"

"Like that too, yes," he nods. "Bending like a bow against the glass..."

"Mhm," he smacks his lips. "Bending like a bow against the glass..."

"You've been through the secret route behind the Whirling-in-Rags." (Move on.)

"I've been through all of Martinaise -- every nook and cranny."

"And that too."

"Yes, that too." He shakes his head, almost in awe. "The things they did in that little room. What she'd do to feel good..." He explains: "Funny, the way light works..."

"You turn it on inside and it gets so dark out you can't see a man looking in. I learned that in the Twenties when they were still hunting me. I've seen people do some shit, but..." He keeps shaking his head.

Those two took the cake.

You hear the familiar scribble of the lieutenant's pen. A quick glance at you...

One more loose end down. We're doing this, detective.

... then at the man. "How did you get in there? The hidden pinball workshop?"

"I can just walk in there now, after a good wash -- I told you they think I'm an antisocial. Closing hour is a good time. The kitchen's empty."

"You had to open the steel door in the kitchen? How?"

"I got that open a long time ago. Some bourgeois game-merchant lived there -- I don't know... fifteen years ago? He left spare keys all over and I took one. Then I saw her turn the light on one night in my scope..." He points toward the Whirling-in-Rags.

And he found use for it -- a spare key, like the one hanging behind the Union box window.

"One more thing -- the flowers, Mr. Dros. The dried flowers that were on the roof."