Ritual Murder Page 2

  “Ah—Miss Aste! Hard at it, as usual?”

  “I was just popping out for a smoke, actually.”

  “Haven’t I persuaded you to give it up yet?” The Dean’s voice had taken on a playful note which Jurnet uncharitably guessed he reserved for nubile females, especially those shaped the way Miss Aste was shaped. That he made no move to introduce his companion occasioned Jurnet no surprise. As a policeman he was used to being treated, even by the most law-abiding citizens, as an un-person, in whose company it was vaguely shaming to be seen. As a man he was used, as well, to the look the girl directed at him. He had lived too long with his looks not to know they attracted women. And long enough to know that, more often than not, as the women came to know him better, the attraction dissolved into a resentful disappointment that he was not the man he appeared to be. Not much use looking like a Sheikh of Araby all set to fling a girl across your saddle bow and gallop off with her into the sunset, when what you actually had in mind was a three-bedroomed semi with built-in mortgage. Even Miriam, at times, turned from him in sudden exasperation, as if he had promised more than he intended to perform.

  The Dean, head cocked to one side, inquired winsomely, “Do I hear the Professor?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Only Mosh. I think he said something about looking in this afternoon. Mosh’ll know.”

  She hesitated a moment, then, rebuffed by the professional blankness which Jurnet had pulled down over his face like a steel shutter, she turned abruptly and walked quickly towards the West Door.

  Dr Carver gazed after her with a smile not entirely accounted for by the swing of her neat little behind.

  He spoke and all was revealed. “Lord Sydringham’s daughter. Delightful child.” He pulled open the door in the hoarding and projected the upper part of his body inside. “Is Professor Pargeter expected?”

  The answer, if there was one, was lost, to Jurnet at least. The detective had a glimpse of a wooden table, a jumble of implements, and a young man with an Afro hair-do powdered with dust sitting with his feet dangling in a hole in the paving, smoking. At that moment a joyful reverberation rolled through the enormous building like the incoming tide. Mr Amos had found his way to the organ loft.

  Immediately young voices sweet to the point of paining were lifted up in praise. Jurnet watched the anger reddening the Dean’s neck, and the way, just short of insolence, the young man, without getting up, stubbed out his cigarette on an ancient tombstone set into the floor.

  The thunderous surge from the organ loft gave way to wanton ripples, among which the boys’ voices played like sunlight glinting off water. The Dean, straightening his body, stepped back inside the aisle, shutting the door with a violence that shook the whole makeshift structure.

  “I cannot for the life of me understand,” he exclaimed, adjusting his coat with little, irritated gestures, “why he has to bring the boys into the cathedral to rehearse. You would hardly think we possess a Song School where such caterwaulings can take place in decent obscurity!”

  Jurnet observed, with careful offhandedness, “I thought it sounded all right, myself.” Changing the subject, “What are they digging up in there, then?”

  “Smoking in the cathedral, did you see that?” Two annoyances at once evidently stretched the Dean’s Christian charity to its limits. “I warned Professor Pargeter, but he insisted. His star student, he said, and specializing in the city’s medieval Jewry.” He looked sharply at Jurnet as if a thought had just that minute occurred to him. “Natural enough,” he continued, his voice, with some effort, recovering its affable calm, “for one by name Moses Epperstein. But not here, in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. And certainly not excavating the tomb of Little St Ulf.”

  Chapter Three

  The cathedral was filling up: knots of tourists moving diffidently, unsure of the correct posture in a stately home belonging to God of all people, and tending to congregate round the bookstall where money could be spent, something they were familiar with. Miss Hanks, rushed off her feet, dropped a handful of change when the Dean appeared unexpectedly at her side of the counter to reclaim the aerosol.

  He did not help to retrieve the scattered money, and Jurnet, waiting a little apart, noted that neither Miss Hanks nor the crowding customers expected him to. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Amply rewarded by his smile, they genuflected with a will, pouncing on the coins with little cries of alleluia. It was the nearest thing to worship the detective had seen so far.

  “Bit off your patch, Inspector,” commented a voice at his back.

  Jurnet looked over his shoulder, then swivelled round. “I could say the same of you.”

  He eyed the burly figure in front of him. Joe Fisher looked as though he spent a lot on his clothes, every penny of it wasted. The brute flesh and muscle would not be denied. He was kitted out in suede car-coat and expensive cords, and Jurnet had a mind to run him in for indecent exposure.

  He wondered fleetingly what kind of look the man would rate from that delightful child, the daughter of Lord Sydringham.

  “Hoping to flog a few bits of the True Cross that fell off the back of a lorry?” he asked coarsely.

  Joe Fisher looked hurt.

  “No need to go on like that, Mr Jurnet. Just ’cause I’m under an obligation to you don’t give you the right to chuck insults about like they was confetti!”

  “You’re not under any obligation to me. Get Millie and young Willie a proper roof over their heads and I’ll call you Lord Fisher T. Fish if it’ll make you feel better. You’ve got more on your bloody back this minute than that beat-up trailer of yours is worth lock, stock, and barrel.” Jurnet looked at the trendy gear with a wearied distaste. “You know they’re out to get an order to tow you off that scrap-heap?”

  “Never! Millie likes it there! So does the kid, down by the river.”

  “Millie doesn’t know any better. And as for Willie and the river—”

  “All right! So you pulled him out when he could’ a drowned! How many times I got to say ta?”

  “No times. Just get them moved, that’s all. Before they take young Willie into care.”

  “They never would! It’d break Millie’s heart.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  The Dean, the crowd at the bookstall parting to let him through like the Red Sea for the Israelites, arrived smiling at Jurnet’s side, proffering the bag containing the aerosol. The smile vanished as Joe Fisher moved a step forward and took hold of a handful of sacramental skirt.

  “You, mate! Where they keep Little St Ulf, then?”

  On the steps that led up to the West Door, Jurnet turned and looked back down the length of the cathedral.

  Impressive, he gave you that: but not his cup of tea. Not for a boy brought up to Chapel twice on Sunday and Sunday School in between. Not for Miriam’s lover—Miriam’s husband if ever the Children of Israel opened their close-packed ranks and let him in. Mr Amos was still playing the organ, but the magic had gone out of it. A musical belly-ache.

  The choristers had stopped singing. Had the kid with the cheeky face retrieved his gum from under the seat? The thought made Jurnet feel friendlier. Friendlier to the Dean, friendlier to the God who inhabited the Godforsaken hole. Poor bastard, could be He had no choice. Had His name down for a council house and was still waiting.

  The Dean had shaken hands in a professionally cordial farewell.

  “I’m sure, Inspector, we can leave the matter in your capable hands.” Meaning nothing would be done and a good thing too.

  “We’ll do our best, sir.” Meaning ditto.

  Feeling bloody-minded at the other’s ready collusion in his own inadequacy, Jurnet added, “Please don’t have the writing removed till I give the word.”

  “Oh dear! Is that really necessary?”

  “It would be best not to.”

  “If you say so.”

  The Dean sighed, turned to go. Over his shoulder he asked negligently, “It was Inspe
ctor Jurnet, wasn’t it? J-U-R-N-E-T?”

  “J-U-R-N-E-T.”

  On the steps that led up to the West Door Jurnet grinned to himself. Trust the Dean to know his local history if anybody did!

  The detective moved gratefully towards the open air. The great central door that, banded with iron, looked made to keep out besieging armies rather than afford ingress to worshippers, was shut. Following the sign, Jurnet made for the modest exit in the north aisle.

  He was almost there when some letters cut into a wall plaque in the shadowed corner where aisle and door met caught his eye. It was not the first time he had noticed how alert that eye was to pick out the name Miriam.

  Miriam my wyf,

  Joy of my lyf,

  Heav’n so swete,

  Without her was not complete.

  God I must not dispraies,

  Who has sadden’d my daies.

  Wyf, forget not me,

  With whom thou once didst sport right merrily.

  Miriam,

  Wyf to Robert Coslane,

  Saddler of this citie.

  An. Dom. 1537.

  Jurnet’s first impulse was to reach into his pocket for his notebook. Then, he decided, no. Born and bred in Angleby and never once set foot in the cathedral: this she had to see.

  “‘Miriam my wyf, joy of my lyf,’” he repeated softly, and went out, into the spring.

  How delightful the air felt after the chill inside! Jurnet stood for a moment, face uplifted to the sun, eyes closed.

  When he opened them he saw that the young man he had left asleep on the grass was awake, sitting up, and listening with every appearance of disgruntlement to what Elizabeth Aste, on her knees at his side, was saying.

  The girl’s pose of prayer was apt, thought Jurnet, for she seemed to be imploring a favor or, perhaps, begging forgiveness. Apt but surprising. He would not have taken her, with that upper-crust self-assurance she wore like a second skin, for someone either to beg or plead.

  But then, if he were to believe those slushy novels Miriam left lying about the flat, not even those whose blood ran blue as the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race were impervious to the pangs of love.

  Now, across the width of lawn, he could see that the girl was crying, or pretending to; a performance which seemed to irritate the young man beyond endurance. He jumped to his feet, picked up the windcheater he had been using as a pillow, and strolled away towards the FitzAlain Gate, the garment slung over one shoulder, hips moving in a little swagger that had Jurnet muttering, “Cocky bastard!”

  The girl ran after him, grasped his free arm. Whereupon the young man pulled himself free and hit her hard across the face.

  Jurnet, used as he was to covering space without waste of time when the occasion called for it, was nevertheless surprised to find the young man on the same spot towards which he had projected himself before the flailing arm had well found its target. Red hair bright in the sunlight, the man turned on the detective a look of no more than bored incuriosity. There was no apprehension of danger, no remorse for an unthinking act. A cool customer.

  Elizabeth Aste had her hands to her face, covering mouth and nose.

  Jurnet said, “I’m a police officer. What’s going on here?”

  The girl dropped her hands. Out of her bruised and bleeding mouth emerged, but still in the accents of Roedean, “Piss off and mind your own bloody business!”

  At the mouth of the alley which led through to where he had left his car, Jurnet hesitated, then passed it by, choosing instead to continue along the narrow way which led down to the river. This was the part of the Close where he felt least uncomfortable. Here, the houses were smaller, and a bit ramshackle. A congenial seediness hung about the area, mingling at nightfall with the mists that rose off the river. Jurnet had a theory, for which he had no evidence at all, that this was where the Dean and Chapter exiled sinners and those who were found to be doctrinally impure.

  Trust a copper to feel at home in such company!

  Where the houses ended the water meadows began, playing-fields where Cathedrans charged about in blue-and-red shorts merging almost imperceptibly with grazings whose resident cows played in black-and-white. Jurnet stepped briskly down to the little staithe where centuries ago the stones that made up the cathedral had arrived from distant Normandy, and turned aside on to a path which bordered the river. The cabin cruisers moored alongside the further bank still had a closed-up, winter look.

  A quarter of a mile on, the path ended abruptly in a tangle of bramble and barbed-wire that Jurnet, who had been that way before, had little trouble in negotiating. On the further side lay a dreary complex of vandalized Nissen huts and one-storied brick buildings which, in the war, had served some purpose long since forgotten. It was, in fact, because no one could be found willing to admit responsibility for the mess, and so for the cost of clearing it up, that year by year more sheets of corrugated-iron dissolved into rust, thistles and cow parsley and rose-bay willow-herb cracked ever wider the crevasses in the concrete standings, and generations of pigeons from the Close bore away unmolested the asbestos felting of the roofs to line their nests.

  Every spring since the war the Angleby Argus had printed letters protesting against the eyesore down by the river; to which, every spring, the Town Clerk replied, referring the problem to Whitehall, where, the forms observed, it lay decently buried until spring once more set the civic sap rising.

  The sole beneficiary of this bureaucratic cock-up—with the doubtful exception of the pigeons, ignorant as they were of the perils of asbestosis—was Joe Fisher. The car bodies and disembowelled refrigerators heaped high on parts of the site were not funeral piles left behind by its aboriginal inhabitants, whoever they might have been. They were part of Joe’s stock-in-trade, for scrap-metal dealing was one of the many ways in which he made his dubious livelihood.

  The trailer jacked up on old railway sleepers was not part of the scrap metal, although, by the look of it, it could well have been.

  As Jurnet came through the hedge he heard a shrill “Coo-ee!” There was a brief silence, and then a high, sweet voice, smudged at the edges but full of suppressed glee, called out, “I see yer! I see yer!”

  Jurnet stood still as a slight figure in a torn, ankle-length dress of flowered cotton backed into the space between two of the huts.

  “Willie! You c’n come out, then! I see yer!”

  Jurnet moved out of the shadow of the hedge into full sunlight, where the girl—or was it a woman?—could see him clearly should she happen to look his way. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten Millie Fisher.

  He had forgotten that nothing frightened Millie Fisher. She turned and caught sight of him: stared unafraid with the beautiful grey eyes that seemed the eyes of a blind person until such time as the slow brain had made sense of the image conveyed to it. Then they came alive, sparkled with pleasure.

  “Mr Ben!” She rushed towards him, turning her head to shout as she came, “Willie! It’s Mr Ben!”

  Not much taller than a child, she threw her arms round the detective’s hips, crowing with delight. “Did yer come to see me, Mr Ben? Did yer?”

  “I came to see you.”

  A small boy appeared from behind a water tank. Millie sped towards him over the broken concrete.

  “Mr Ben’s come to see me, Willie! What yer think o’ that, then.”

  The boy, who was about seven years old and as fair as Millie was dark, smiled at her kindly. Paternally.

  “I spec’ he’s come to see both of us.” He nodded at Jurnet as to an equal, and turned back to his mother. “An’ it’s no good your sayin’ you c’n see me when yer can’t see me. I know when you c’n see me an’ when yer can’t.”

  “Yes, Willie,” she said meekly. Then her face, so soft and pretty and unfinished, brightened. “I did almos’ see yer, though! I’d’a seen yer in a minute, wouldn’t I?”

  “Were yer goin’ t’ look back o’ the tank, then?”

  The light f
aded. “I don’t know, Willie—”

  The boy relented; smiled Millie’s smile, thought Jurnet, who, unnoticed, had drawn nearer. Millie Fisher’s smile. In Joe Fisher’s face.

  “I spec’ you were. You always do, sooner or later.”

  Jurnet clinched the matter.

  “She was just going to, when I came along and interrupted.”

  Millie’s smile burst out in all its glory. The detective, taking avoiding action before she could be on him again, like an over-demonstrative puppy, swung the boy, yelling with delight, up in his arms. Somewhere on the way up Willie shed his years and his cares, arriving on Jurnet’s shoulders a laughing child.

  “How’s the big boy, then?”

  “Mr Ben! Mr Ben!”

  Inside, the trailer was dirtier, even, than Jurnet remembered it. He touched a wall and grimaced. The whole place was coated with the fallout of God knew what nauseous fry-ups.

  None the less, when Millie, bursting with pride in her role of hostess, invited him to take a seat, he complied unhesitatingly, with a ceremoniousness fully equal to the queenly gesture with which she indicated the filthy bench. Grandly, out of some uncharted hoard of memory, she inquired, “Will yer take tea?” But before Jurnet could answer Willie interposed angrily, “Joe took the gas bit, din’ he? Don’t be daft!” There were tears in his eyes as he explained to the guest in the house, “He won’t let her light the ring, an’ he won’t let me! He takes the bit with him every bleeding time he goes out. I c’d make tea, an’ beans, an’ everything, if he’d let me.”

  Jurnet, secretly glad of Joe Fisher’s foresight, said placatingly, “That bottled gas is tricky stuff. Dead scared of it myself.” Carefully casual, he added, “Dad in dinnertime, then, to fix you both up something hot?”

  The boy looked down and made no answer. Millie sat back and said comfortably, scratching her armpit through a convenient hole, “Joe’ll be back. Joe.” The monosyllable seemed to please her so much she said it again, for its sheer music. “Joe.”