Death of a God Page 5

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The little Welshman set off on his errand, happy to have something specific to do.

  ‘And make sure those screens go up at once,’ the Superintendent called after. ‘Such as they are. Round Thompsett’s stall as well. I’m assuming that by now that waxwork of Jesus is safely with Forensic, or if it isn’t, I want to know why.’ To Jurnet, with a friendliness as unexpected as it was welcome, and as chancy to put your trust in: ‘I’ll leave it to you, Ben, to pick out some PCs you reckon impervious to the charms of the grief-maddened maidens who, I suppose, will be converging on the spot in their millions once the news is known. We’ll be needing crash barriers too.’

  ‘Might be a good idea to get the other two crosses down right away as well. At least take away some of the drama.’

  ‘Absolutely right!’ But the Superintendent shook his head all the same. ‘You know as well as I, Ben, the Police can’t remove them just like that. Quite apart from the bishop excommunicating us with bell, book and candle, what that gorgon at Parks and Recreation might stir up by way of revenge I don’t care to think. The damn things are supposed to stay up till Easter.’

  ‘I didn’t know. Still, a crucifixion without Christ –’ Jurnet began reasonably.

  ‘Even more delicate! Think of all the theologians who’ve been praying for that very thing! No – we’ll have to pass this one to the Chief. Definitely a matter to be settled at the summit …’

  In the garden above the Market Place, the screens had gone up at last, obscuring the effigies of Lijah Starling and Johnny Flowerdew from the waist down. At least the plaid jockstrap and the baby-blue shorts were no longer in evidence, Jurnet thought thankfully. The centre cross was down, and with it its burden of death. Over by the kerb, two men were shutting the rear doors of the mortuary van.

  Absent, Loy Tanner was more than dead: null. Murdered, the last song sung, the pop star had been transformed into an intellectual exercise, a puzzle to be solved like it might be The Times crossword. No prizes offered for a correct solution, only a load of stick if you miffed it.

  Carrion.

  A brother.

  For a moment, heavy with the weight of their thoughts, the two detectives stared into the awful emptiness between the two remaining crosses. Then they turned and made their way uphill, back to Headquarters: side by side, but not speaking.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘One or more, that’s the question.’ The Superintendent leaned forward in his chair, his carefully tended hands moving fretfully among the photographs strewn about his desk, picking up here one print, there another, for a brief, dissatisfied glare before going on to the next, and the next. ‘Tanner looks light enough. All the same, no easy job to hold him in place while you get those cords tied and that belt cinched, all the time balanced on top of a ladder –’

  ‘I’ll go for one myself.’ Jurnet, standing with Sergeant Ellers at the further side of the desk, spoke with conviction. ‘Two would have made a neater job of it.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ The Superintendent was in one of his perverse moods – which Jurnet, making all due allowance, recognized as his superior’s personal reaction to violent death just as his, Jurnet’s, was anger. What the detective had never succeeded in discovering was the real target at which the perversity was directed – the murderer inconsiderate enough to leave no visiting card, or the subordinates too thick to recognize a clue even if it stuck them up the what’s-it with a meat skewer.

  Unless it was the corpse itself, the dumb bugger, knowing all, yet silent as the grave.

  The Superintendent went on with the same air of insult, ‘He, or they, had to get down that statue of Christ before they could string Tanner up in its place.’

  ‘Nothing to it,’ Jurnet proclaimed confidently. ‘The hands and feet weren’t really pierced. The nails were only for show. Each figure has rings at the back for hanging on to hooks which are fixed to both the horizontals and the verticals of the crosses. No more difficult than hanging up or taking down a curtain.’

  ‘Where’d you get that idea?’ The Superintendent went back to his irascible turning over of the police photographer’s handiwork. ‘I can’t find anything here that shows –’

  ‘Can’t you, sir?’ Jurnet’s tone was a little too innocent. ‘I must just have happened to notice it.’

  ‘Ben’s right,’ Sergeant Ellers confirmed, without batting an eyelid. ‘If you’d turned the Christ over at Nosey’s stall you’d have seen the rings sticking out of the back.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Glowering, the Superintendent latched on to another of Pinner’s shots. ‘This one shows several blurred impressions where a ladder stood, or rather, was shifted about. Metal. Got one at home just like it.’ Peering closely: ‘Fairly deep, all of them, so probably made before the frost set in and nothing to do with us.’ Jurnet and Ellers exchanged glances, the latter’s full of suppressed mirth. ‘For all we know, Mrs Parks and Recreation shins up there every day with a feather duster.’

  Taking evasive action, the little Welshman inquired, ‘Anything yet from Dr Colton?’

  ‘Time you knew better than to ask! Just as light doesn’t show up till it strikes something, so words don’t exist for the good doctor until they’re typed in triplicate, each copy on different coloured paper, for filing in three separate cubby-holes known only to himself and God.’ Relenting: ‘I did, however, after several abortive attempts to reach him by phone, elicit a return call, in which he finally admitted, if with considerable reluctance, that Tanner was indubitably dead, most probably as the result of several blows from a blunt instrument which was on the small side but fairly heavy. As to the time of death – as usual, he wants to have a word with the Meteorological Office, Old Moore’s Almanac and the man in the moon before committing himself.’

  Jack Ellers asked, ‘Is he suggesting Tanner was actually killed right there in the Market Place?’

  ‘I’m quite sure he’s doing nothing of the kind. All the indications are that he was killed elsewhere.’ The Superintendent sat back and his patrician features suddenly relaxed into a smile of great sweetness. At the sight Jurnet’s spirits lightened almost as much as if the smile had been intended for him.

  ‘What I like about Barney Colton,’ the Superintendent said with a confiding affection, ‘what I honour the man for, is that, whatever the pressure, he will never compromise his integrity with facile guesses, not even to get an importunate superintendent off his back. Time of death is devilishly difficult to ascertain, and nothing’s going to make Barney pretend it’s an exact science when it isn’t. For the moment, at least, we can usefully speculate only as to the time the body was placed on the cross.’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t there around eleven,’ said Jurnet, well aware of what he was starting. ‘There wasn’t anybody then, except a few cats on the prowl. Apart from anything else, the floodlighting doesn’t go off till 11.20. I can’t see a murderer, however barmy, deliberately choosing to crucify his victim in the full glare of the floodlights. He’d be bound to wait until they went off.’

  The Superintendent said coldly, ‘From what you say, you appear to have been about in the Market Place, Inspector.’

  ‘Yes, sir. My fiancée and I –’ Jurnet’s frown was occasioned less by being obliged once more to raise the curtain on what he did with himself in his own time than by the necessity of having to employ again that despised appellation – ‘fiancée and I stopped off there on the way back from the concert. We didn’t know about the crosses staying up till Easter, and she wanted to take a closer look at them. They were certainly all present and correct at that time.’

  Deciding he might as well get everything relevant off his chest once and for all, the detective continued, ‘She – my fiancée, that is –’ he stammered a little, fancying, quite without foundation, the Superintendent’s upper-crust face stiff with disdain – ‘she knows Tanner’s mother. Miriam –’ hanged if he was going to repeat the bloody word one more time! – ‘runs a knitwear-manufacturing
business, and the woman is one of her outworkers. She’ll need to be told.’

  ‘So she will.’ The Superintendent, unpredictable as ever, seemed suddenly to have recovered his good humour. ‘Every one will need to be told, or, if not, will want our guts for garters.’ His gaze wafted jovially from Jurnet to Sergeant Ellers and back again. ‘What we have on our hands, God help us, is not just another murder. We have a media event, something that’s going to sell record-breaking numbers of newspapers and keep television commentators in the style to which they are accustomed.’ Eyes bright with irony, he announced, ‘This is a solemn moment, gentlemen. We have become part of the great British right to know.’

  Allowing a moment for the awfulness to sink in, the Superintendent resumed.

  ‘There’ll have to be press conferences, of course –’

  ‘Dave Batterby –’ Jurnet interposed desperately, naming the detective-inspector whose ill-concealed ambitions to rise in his profession were the source of much discreet amusement in Angleby CID – ‘Dave’d be the one for that.’

  The Superintendent exclaimed, ‘That’s the first time, Ben, in all our years together, I’ve heard you actually ask for help! Wonders will never cease. But you disappoint me. Those romantic looks of yours on the box could do wonders for our corporate image. Still –’

  ‘Right up Dave’s street. He’d do fine.’

  ‘By which you mean –’ the Superintendent’s eyes twinkled – ‘as you don’t intend to tell him a damn thing anyway, he’ll be in a perfect position to keep the press informed with all it needs to know! Ah well! At least it will enable me to assure the Chief, scout’s honour, when he asks – as he’s bound to – that Detective-Inspector Jurnet, this time round, is definitely one of a team, not a CID Lone Ranger galloping off into the sunset regardless.’

  The phone rang, relieving Jurnet of the need either to concede or dispute an observation admittedly founded upon long experience. Control, asking for Mr Jurnet.

  The detective took the receiver and listened, while the Superintendent drummed his fingers on his desk a little louder than was convenient.

  Jurnet spoke into the mouthpiece, ‘Get it picked up and brought in for examination right away. Set it up, will you, Mary? And tell Hinchley he’s to stay where he is meantime, on the chance somebody turns up looking for it. Ta, love.’ Handing back the instrument: ‘The van they’ve found it on the Chepe. From the look of it, it appears to have been parked there for some hours.’

  ‘And what van is that?’ inquired the Superintendent, making a noble effort to control his irritation.

  ‘The one belonging to the group. A Datsun 1300. Jack and I happened to notice it yesterday in the Market Place. It’s pretty hard to miss, actually. White, with a rainbow painted on it you can see a mile off. Soon as we got back here I put out a call, asking patrols to keep a look out. I’d already ascertained it wasn’t parked back at the University, where you’d have expected it to be, overnight.’

  The Superintendent stated in flat tones, ‘There has to be something else special about it beside the rainbow.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We’d both of us noticed yesterday that it had a ladder in it.’

  ‘Ah!’ The Superintendent sat silent for a moment, contemplating his beautifully manicured fingernails. Then he said, as if the conversation had never been interrupted, ‘You realize it’s the post-mortem bit that’s going to grab the mesmerized attention of the world. Why should someone, having killed a man and put himself already into enough jeopardy, God knows, think it worth taking the additional risk inherent in fastening his victim’s corpse to a cross in a public place?’

  Sergeant Ellers ventured, ‘Not all that much risk, sir, if you think about it. Nor, if you know Angleby, all that public either. I reckon the Himalayas must be a hive of activity compared to the town centre at night. At least the Himalayas have got their Abominable Snowman, which is more than you can say for us.’

  ‘Death of a god,’ murmured Jurnet, the only one of the three present to have been at the concert the night before. Even so, the instant he said it, he wished he hadn’t, feeling daft and vulnerable.

  As for the Superintendent, he got up from his chair, giving no indication that he had heard. He crossed to the window, and stood looking out and down: a symbolic action only, any view of the remaining crosses being cut off by the wing of City Hall which housed the Registry Office. When he turned back towards the room, the man’s expression was one of grim humour.

  ‘Can you imagine what they must have said, over at Jerusalem CID all those years ago, when they found out what had happened? Happened afterwards, that is. The empty tomb, and all that. How in heaven’s name are you going to keep your statistics straight if the dead refuse to lie down? At least,’ the Superintendent concluded, ‘we must be grateful for small mercies. God or no god, this one’s not going to rise on the third day, if I have to sit on him myself!’

  Chapter Ten

  The sun was shining when Jurnet and Sergeant Ellers parked their car in Gallipoli Street and turned the corner into Sebastopol Terrace, a kindly sun that graced the mean little houses – built of a raw brick that more than a hundred years of English weather had not succeeded in mellowing – with a spurious, period charm. Even so, the sunlight could not disguise the terminal dilapidation – the sagging gutters, boarded-up windows, the bits of mosaic missing from the lengths of path up to the front doors. A gap-toothed vacancy between a derelict Number 14 and a Number 22 propped up with a wooden buttress which looked itself on the verge of collapse seemed to have become the rubbish dump of the neighbourhood.

  Only a number of estate agents’ boards flaunted like banners along the ramshackle fences promised better things. ‘This delightful bijou residence,’ one of them had the cheek to offer, ‘ripe for modernization.’

  ‘Ripe!’ Sergeant Ellers looked about him with narrowed eyes. ‘Family trouble,’ he pronounced, at the end of his inspection. ‘Either that, or lacking in the top storey. Say what you like, no mum in her right mind with a famous pop-singer son would be hanging out in a dump like this if the two of them were on speaking terms. Why, it’s the only bloody one in the whole Terrace left in occupation.’

  ‘What suits some people doesn’t suit others,’ Jurnet returned with some heat. ‘And you can leave Loy Tanner out of it. On what Miriam pays them they don’t have to live here if they don’t want to. You’ll have to go a long way to find an employer who pays her outworkers more than she does –’

  ‘Hold on!’ the other cried. ‘No insult intended to your Miriam intended! Only, honestly, can you understand it? Would you choose Sebastopol Terrace if you had the choice?’

  Carefully keeping the envy out of his voice, Jurnet said, ‘Miriam says they’re very happy here.’

  The bright red door of Number 12 was ajar. As Jurnet gingerly wielded its brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin, a woman’s voice, low-keyed and pleasant, called from inside: ‘Come on in! Coffee’s on the table!’

  It seemed an unlikely welcome to bearers of ill tidings. The two detectives, one after the other, stepped out of the sunlight into the tiny hall, no more than a passage really.

  This was a part of the job Jurnet could well have done without. He could have kicked himself for not, after all, bringing along a WPC to do the tea and sympathy bit, except that after what Miriam had told him about Mara Felsenstein it had seemed a kind of insult to proffer such phony comfort.

  It was not so much that the grief of kith and kin, informed out of the blue that their nearest and dearest had been savagely done to death, upset him unduly. Somebody had to tell them, Jurnet accepted that. Rather, it was the overwhelming sense of his own inadequacy which always, at the opening of a murder investigation, undermined his confidence of ever bringing it to a successful conclusion.

  At least, those who were thus incontinently bereaved mourned a real person. They had someone to remember. All Jurnet, the outsider, had to be going on with was a carcass, evil-smelling offal taking its reveng
e on the air it could no longer breathe by polluting it. Only when, by a laborious process of inquiry and elimination, he had eventually come himself to know the man or woman all the keening was in aid of, would he begin to understand the grieving; even – so close by then had the two of them become, the quick and the dead – to share it.

  In the meantime, as he murmured the conventional phrases of condolence, he seemed to be talking about someone else.

  There was no door to the front room which opened immediately out of the passage, only a curtain of some dark-brown stuff, looped back. Within was a room lit by a window at either end, the rear one giving on to a narrow strip of garden where a substantial wash, a regular spring-cleaning, bedspreads, covers, curtains, flapped on a line as if to advertise that even in such unpromising surroundings a decent cleanliness could still flourish unimpaired.

  Mrs Felsenstein, the houseproud housewife, Miriam’s paragon, sat at what Jurnet assumed to be a knitting machine, one of a pair facing each other, though at first glance (perhaps it was the way the knitter’s fingers moved, knowledgeably but with a loving concentration) they looked to the detective more like musical instruments: spinets possibly, or something else that stood upon spindly legs and, when played upon, emitted antique sounds that seemed to come from another planet.

  As the detectives entered, Mr Felsenstein came in from a back room and took his place at the second machine where, its ribbed lower edge held straight by some small pieces of plastic hooked into the fabric, a substantial length of knitting hung down from what one might call the keyboard, like music already played, waiting to be rolled up and put away. Not a spinet, Jurnet amended his earlier thought. More a pianola.