Death of a God Read online

  Jurnet said: ‘Mind the flowers, love,’ – an admonition to which she made no answer other than to grind her dirty white track shoes even more remorselessly into the wet earth.

  Back at the van, the passenger door re-opened, the music came tumbling out again. The girl stood on the pavement, one hand on the door handle, swaying to the guitars and the insistent drums. Singing along with them in a child’s voice, piercing and off-key:

  ‘Behold thou art fair, my beloved, behold thou art fair.

  Spun gold thy hair,

  Thy lips a thread of scarlet, mouth most sweet.

  How beautiful thy feet,

  Jewels the joints of thy thighs,

  And thine eyes,

  Like doves soft and grey,

  Mirrors of the day,

  Fair as the moon, bright as the sun, and as fine.

  I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’

  ‘She one of your group, then?’ Sergeant Ellers inquired, drying the feet of the Christ figure with a tender regard for the spaces between the large, splayed toes.

  ‘Queenie?’ Again Jurnet, doggedly working his way up towards the baby-bluer boxer shorts, registered the tone, the something. The man on the ladder paused in his work, his head a little to one side, listening. He smiled lovingly, his face transformed but not foolish. ‘That’d get us in the charts, I don’t think! Queenie’s our –’ he hesitated, as if seeking the right word, and came out primly with: ‘our general assistant.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  The smile disappeared. The ladder teetered alarmingly. ‘What you mean, nice?’

  ‘Touchy, aren’t you? Nice. What I say. Just making conversation. You better look out up there, you’ll be ending up in the Norfolk and Angleby in plaster.’ The little Welshman stood back to admire his handiwork. ‘Kneecap’s as high as I can go, unless you got another ladder with you.’ And to Jurnet, mischievously: ‘You’re the beanpole, Ben. OK if I leave the working parts to you?’

  Jurnet did not deign to reply. The whole business had begun to give him a disagreeable feeling. What the hell had prompted him to act the Boy Scout – perform a mitzvah, as Rabbi Schnellman would put it, a good deed that was always, at the same time and by definition, a religious duty? Down below in the market some of the traders had come out from their stalls and were gazing up at the two detectives’ efforts with undisguised amusement. Suppose some influential member of the Angleby Jewish community, suppose the Rabbi himself, should happen to come by? A fine religious duty for a trainee Jew to be out on the Market Place for all to see, drying off Christ’s balls before they blistered in the sun!

  The thought had no sooner lodged in Jurnet’s mind than, being the man he was, he had persuaded the owner of the ladder to descend from it and pass it over to him, as being the one out of the three of them best fitted by nature to reach every furthest crevice of the three pendent bodies. Concentrating his attention upon the still damp surfaces as areas to be dried and nothing more, he worked onward and upward, towelling the outsize genitalia of the middle figure, the terrible eyeballs of the other two; gently dislodging the last of the wet from the crown of thorns. Sergeant Ellers held the ladder still, the short-legged man watching with no noticeable appreciation of what was being done for him: occasionally shouting up brusque reminders like, ‘Behind both ears, for Pete’s sake!’ and ‘That left armpit, man – I could wash my socks in it!’

  Out on the pavement, beyond the low wall, the girl was still singing.

  ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, a seal upon thine

  arm.

  Nothing can do us harm.

  I suck thy breasts, I breathe thy breath,

  Our love is stronger far than death.

  Our limbs like leafy boughs entwine.

  I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’

  Chapter Three

  Headquarters, that haven from the hurly-burly, that retreat among brothers who – even those who were in a position to slap you down and frequently did – were always on your side when it came to the crunch, seemed doubly welcoming to Jurnet as he and Ellers came out of the ambiguous sunlight into the no-nonsense of fluorescent strips that bathed one and all in the same dispassionate light. Even the little Welshman’s: ‘Fine thing if the Super was looking out of the window and saw us,’ could not defuse this feeling of wellbeing.

  ‘Even if it was in his line of vision – which it isn’t, as you well know – helping distressed citizenry’s the answer to that, Sergeant. What His Nibs is always on about.’

  ‘Distressed? That bugger? Didn’t even say ta. And I’d thought two complimentary tickets at least.’

  Jurnet regarded his chubby subordinate with genuine surprise. ‘Don’t tell me you, the pride of the eisteddfod, would actually choose to spend an entire evening being deafened by that aural pollution, even for free?’

  ‘There you go again, showing your age! Life on this planet didn’t come to an end with the Beatles, boyo, nor the Stones neither. Not that, if Shorty George back there had come across with the goods, I’d have felt able to squander them on myself. Flogged ’ em – reluctantly, mind you – and with the proceeds bought a mink for Rosie, a Jag for me, and laid up the rest for the twilight of my days.’

  ‘Crazy!’ commented Jurnet, making for the stairs. ‘Don’t know about you, I think I’ve earned myself a cup of char –’ Reminding himself, not too seriously, on the way down to the canteen, to ask the Rabbi if it was OK, mitzvah-wise, to reward yourself for something it was your plain religious duty to have done anyway.

  The long, low room was crowded to overflowing, resonating with a cheerful noise that Jurnet absorbed with satisfaction, lowering himself into it as into the comfort of a hot bath. It was the real thing too, the Lord be praised. None of that tense mock-merriment such as preceded a match between Angleby United and one of the League big-shots – which was to say an advertised encounter with alien invaders arriving decked out in knuckledusters and broken-off bottle-necks in the club colours.

  Not that demos were much better. These days, it seemed, you couldn’t even take to the streets in aid of endangered woodlice without it all ending in tears and bloody noses, chiefly those of the police. As it was, PC Blaker, who rose respectfully from his egg and beans at the table to which the two detectives brought their brimming cups, and had to be urged hospitably to resume his place, could not conceal his gratification at being detailed for crowd control outside the University.

  ‘The hall there only holds 1,700, and that was sold out the day they put the tickets on sale. There’ll be thousands coming along just to stand outside. Wanting to be part of it, the only way they can.’

  ‘Can’t see why you’re so cock-a-hoop.’ Jurnet helped himself generously to the white sugar Miriam wouldn’t have in the house, and leaned back comfortably. ‘Could be hairy. Like the Bacchantes in those Greek myths. Thousands of screaming dollies ready to stop at nothing to tear limb from limb the phantom lover they’ve been having it off with in their technicolour dreams and at last is there in the flesh – the mind boggles. Better you than me.’

  ‘Oh no, sir!’ The young constable’s face, rosy with earnestness, was also a little pitying. ‘That was in the old days of inhibitions and frustrations.’ He studied the two faces across the table, as if to decipher therein the signs of stress which must surely disfigure a generation come to maturity before the sexual revolution. ‘Nowadays, when they can have a lay any time they fancy, they’re not bothered. And with Second Coming it’s not like that, anyway. It’s not just pop, see. It’s a whole lot more’n that.’

  ‘Oh ah? They sound pretty old hat to me, these days of keyboards and players who can actually tell one note from another. Two guitars and a set of drums – the Beatles minus one.’

  ‘Oh no, sir!’ PC Blaker exclaimed again, growing even rosier. ‘There’s never been anything like Second Coming, and never will be. Messianic’s what they call it. The way all their songs come out of the Bible, for one thing. And
the way they make you think, not just about booze and boobs and all that, but –’ petering out in a stammer of embarrassment – ‘about what life’s all about –’

  ‘Christ, laddie!’ Sergeant Ellers said. ‘You make it sound like a prayer meeting in the Welsh valleys.’

  ‘Oh no!’ The other looked quite shocked. ‘If you only listened to one of their albums – really listened to it – you’d understand better than I can say. Tonight, for instance, it’ll be a piece of cake. You’ll see. The kids outside’ll just be standing quietly, not so much as the smell of trouble. All they want is to see him, actually see him live. That’ll be enough to make it worthwhile.’

  ‘Him? There’s three of them, aren’t there?’

  The young man answered in a tone which, for all his awe of his superiors, imperfectly concealed what he thought of such a foolish question.

  ‘Loy, sir. Loy Tanner. My Auntie Sandra’, he added, aglow with pride at being the purveyor of such information, ‘knows a lady whose sister-in-law used to live in the same street as Loy’s mum. Only she won’t say where it is. Somewhere over Gallipoli Street way, my Auntie thinks, except she won’t say – the lady, that is. Says people have a right to their privacy.’

  ‘That’s a real lady! Only –’ the detective frowned, finished the last of his tea, and thoughtfully spooned up the sweet mush remaining in the bottom of the cup – ‘it’s funny, if she’s living down there, the media haven’t sniffed her out. With all due respect to your lady snout, you’d expect a pop star’s mum to hang out a bit up-market from Gallipoli Street.’

  ‘That’s what she says,’ PC Blaker insisted, crestfallen but sticking to his guns.

  Jack Ellers, taking pity, interposed soothingly, ‘Could be someone else of the same name. Goodness knows we’re not short of Tanners in Angleby. Look in the phone book, they’re ten a penny. On the other hand, could be that Loy Tanner’s only a stage name. Most of those pop stars seem to be Joe Muck or Siddy Piffalovitch in real life.’

  ‘He is Loy Tanner!’ The young policeman’s eyes had become suspiciously bright. ‘His great-great-grandfather – or however many greats it was, I don’t know how many – was the Tanner, the famous one in the history books. The one they hung from the top of the castle all those years ago.’

  ‘Was he indeed?’ said Jurnet, getting up from the table. ‘Not to worry, son. They don’t do that any more, even to pop singers.’

  The ground floor was crowded with young constables, eager as if they were waiting for the coaches to arrive to take them on a police outing. Some one was whistling a tune which Jurnet recognized as the one the green-quiffed girl had sung, holding on to the van door, swaying, lost in her dream. The detective’s face lost its expression of contentment as his mouth twisted a little at the corners. ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’ Whoever could lay down the law with that degree of certainty hadn’t met Miriam.

  Sergeant Ellers, practised at recognizing the signs of incipient melancholy in his superior officer, said, ‘We must be crackers, haunting the place even when we’re off duty, especially a day like this, strictly for the kiddies. Rosie’ll think I’ve got my eye on some nubile WPC, can’t bear to let her out of my sight.’

  ‘Oh ah.’

  The little Welshman persisted. ‘Look – if Miriam’s off somewhere on business, why don’t you join me and the missus for supper? It’s osso bucco – and Rosie always says the sight of your lovely Latin kisser across the table lends the finishing touch when she cooks Italian. So what do you say?’

  ‘Not tonight.’ Jurnet roused himself enough to recognize the oblique reference to the fact that, though carefully behind his back, the boys at Headquarters were prone to refer to him as Valentino. ‘Ta all the same. Miriam’s not off anywhere. I don’t know what gave you the idea. Went up to London for some trade show or something, but she’ll be back by now and expecting me –’

  ‘In that case, why not make it the two of you? You’re not planning an evening of culture at the University, so you tell me, and after a hard day’s graft Miriam can’t be feeling all that like cooking –’

  Such delicacy, thought Jurnet, the mouth untwisting a little in grateful appreciation, from one who knew as well as he did himself Miriam’s approach to – or rather, bellicose recoil from – the culinary arts: a male conspiracy to keep women from fulfilling their God-given potential.

  He smiled at the chubby little man, not afraid to let his affection show. ‘Another time, OK?’

  The two had cleared a way for themselves almost to the door when the duty sergeant, burrowing through the pack, called across the backs and shoulders which still barred his way, ‘Mr Jurnet! Ben! Hold on! Got something for you!’

  Arrived at his goal, the man straightened his tunic and smiled indulgently at the high-spirited youngsters all about him.

  ‘You’d think it was Christmas instead of nearly Easter! Someone hang up a bunch of mistletoe, I shouldn’t care to answer for the consequences.’ Handing over an envelope, small and flat, without superscription: ‘Bloke handed it in just after eleven. I got the exact time logged, if you need it. Foreigner, by the way he spoke. Peaky. Looked like a puff of wind would blow him away. Said it had to be given into your hands personal. Made quite a song and dance about it.’

  ‘Foreigner, eh?’ Jack Ellers leaned over for a better look. ‘If it’s a bomb, not enough jelly there to take off more’n a finger or a nose.’

  ‘Not worth bothering about,’ Jurnet agreed, reaching into a pocket for his penknife. He selected a small blade, slit the envelope open and took out its contents.

  For a moment the three stood staring down at what lay revealed. Then the duty sergeant said with a laugh that was only slightly soured with envy, ‘Somebody up there must love you, and no mistake.’

  The two bits of green pasteboard took up little room in the detective’s hand.

  Two tickets for Second Coming in Concert at 8.30 p.m. at the University.

  Chapter Four

  Jurnet parked his car as directed in the walled enclosure which was all that remained of the ancient manor upon whose site Angleby had seen fit to raise the concrete ziggurats of its university. The enclosure had once been a kitchen garden. Old nails still protruding from the eroded bricks showed where espaliered apricocks had once ripened under Tudor suns. Under the chill March moon the meticulously aligned cars looked like rows of some weird vegetable, of the marrow family it might be, laid out to ripen off in the alien light. Miriam got out of the front passenger seat and waited for Jurnet to lock up, her breath steaming, the white coat she had bought that day in London wrapped close about her body in generous, expensive folds.

  Jurnet came round the car and kissed her with passion, even though she had got him out on a night cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, let alone those of a plastic god hanging on a cross in the Market Place. Their combined breaths ascended the frosty air like a cloud of incense until she pulled away in laughing protest: ‘We’ll be late!’

  ‘Have you got the tickets?’ she had demanded earlier, when he had hardly got his key out of the flat door. ‘Mara said she’d get Leo to drop them off. I meant to tell you this morning and then, in all the rush, it went clean out of my head.’

  He had shut the door, pocketed his key, taken off his coat and hung it on the gimcrack stand that was all the furnishing of the shabby little hall. In the even shabbier living-room the table was still piled high with the patterns and fashion magazines among which, at breakfast time, he had contrived to find room for his mug of instant and piece of toast. No smell – not even of the dehydrated chemical messes which, reconstituted according to the directions on the packet, turned themselves, when heated by Miriam’s unwilling ministrations, into hydrated chemical messes – drifted in from the kitchen.

  ‘Well?’ she had urged. Even tight with impatience, her mouth, Jurnet noted with pleasure, could not disguise its lovely, generous curve, at once so revealing and so misleading. He sat down in a lumpy a
rmchair and began to unlace his shoes.

  ‘Who’s Mara? Who’s Leo when he’s at home?’

  ‘You don’t listen to me. Mara’s one of my knitters, of course, the one I’m always praising to the skies. Leo’s her husband – Leo Felsenstein. He works for me too, when he’s feeling up to it. For God’s sake,’ she cried, ‘did you get the tickets or didn’t you? If you did, you’ll have to put those shoes straight back on again, if we’re going to have time to eat.’

  ‘Actually,’ announced the detective, fishing the tickets out of his pocket and holding them out for Miriam’s eager fingers to snatch at, ‘I was just going to slip into my sequinned Hush Puppies, get out my medallion, and give myself a quick heliotrope rinse. I wouldn’t want to let you down with the beautiful people.’

  ‘Moron!’ she murmured, appeased, scanning the tickets absorbedly. Satisfied they were what they appeared to be, she bent down and kissed him lightly on the top of his head, her mind on other things.

  ‘Beautiful people! You talk like a dinosaur! And you a copper with your finger, supposedly, on the pulse of the masses! You simply haven’t a clue what gives today, have you?’

  ‘Enough to know those tickets are changing hands for a king’s ransom. So what did you have to do to get your hands on these two? Flog ’em a couple of sweaters at cost price? Take out a second mortgage? Sacrifice your maidenhead?’

  Miriam said, ‘You left out fellatio. I tried them all, actually – but no dice. Then, just by the merest chance – you could have knocked me down with a feather – Mara and I were talking, and suddenly, out of the blue, just for something to say, no more than that, I said something about Second Coming and how much I’d have liked to have heard them live at the University, only getting tickets was out of the question, when she came out quite casually with the fact that Loy Tanner was her son.’

  Jurnet hooted. ‘You mean he’s really – what was it? – Loy Felsenstein, not the descendant of our local hero! Well! Well!’