Death of a God Page 9

  ‘Every now and again, men driven desperate by hunger would go out and pull down the odd hedge or two, for all the good that did. Well, one day some of these hedge-levellers paid a call on John Flowerdew who, being the bloke he was, bought them off by paying them to go and pull down a hedge belonging to his old pal, Robert Tanner, instead.

  ‘‘‘Old enemy’s’’ what I mean, of course. For reasons I don’t have to go into, those two had had their knives into each other for years. But it’s a funny thing –’ Carried away by the force of his own narration the young man jumped up, came over to the desk and bent towards the detective until each could feel the other’s breath on his face. ‘Up to that moment Robert Tanner had been in on the land-enclosing racket as much as any other wheeler-dealer. Then, suddenly – whether it was the sight of those poor tykes, bones showing through their skin, or simply a pigheaded determination to get his own back on that twister Flowerdew – it doesn’t do, does it, to assume that heroes invariably act from the highest motives? – from that day forward he’s a changed man, throwing in his lot with the peasants, and risking everything as the captain of an army of 30,000 men in armed revolt –’

  ‘And,’ interposed Jurnet, who had never had much use for heroes, win or lose, ‘ending up dangling from the ramparts of Angleby Castle, to say nothing of leading to a bloody death thousands of simple men who trusted him.’

  ‘That’s the amazing thing. Robert Tanner was nobody’s fool. He must have known from the beginning he hadn’t a hope in hell. John Flowerdew must have split his breeches laughing when he saw him hanging up there, the crows pecking out his eyes.’ Johnny Flowerdew laughed in his turn. ‘Funny, isn’t it, the way time twists everything arsy-versy? A paradox, ’pon my soul! There they are, those villainous Flowerdews back in the reign of Edward VI, taking the bread out of the mouths of the poor by planting the very hedges which today’s ecologicals throw themselves in front of bulldozers to preserve. So who’s to say who’s good and who’s bad? But when I pointed out as much to Loy, was he wild!’

  ‘Don’t tell me either of you took it seriously?’

  The other stayed quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘I didn’t. Not at first, at any rate. When the two of us first met – it was in some lousy pub in Havenlea – and found out what each other’s name was, I just thought, Flowerdew and Tanner, that’s a coincidence. But Loy, he took it in deadly earnest, right from the start. Being a Tanner meant a lot to him. It was our karma, was what he said – Tanner and Flowerdew, two opposing poles, light and dark, good and evil, programmed by fate to be at each other’s throats through all eternity –’ Johnny Flowerdew suddenly covered his face with a long, white hand. When he took it away, his eyes were still dry, but stricken.

  Jurnet said, ‘You never believed all that guff?’

  ‘I did and I didn’t. I don’t and I do.’ Desperately: ‘He devised roles for us to play, don’t you understand? For me and for Lijah, for Lenny, Guido, even that pinhead, Queenie. We might not have cared for his type-casting, but there we were, each with his own part no one could take away from us, ever. Now –’ the voice, dry like the eyes, held something akin to terror – ‘we shall have to find out who we are, all over again.’

  Jurnet had said, ‘I need to know what you did after the concert.’

  Johnny Flowerdew answered tiredly, ‘I didn’t do anything. I went back to the caravan, made myself some cocoa, and went to bed.’

  ‘Let’s take that a bit slower, do you mind? You returned to the caravan, you say, the one you share with Mr Starling, right? Was Mr Starling with you? And what about Loy?’

  The other shook his head.

  ‘No one ever knew where to find Loy after a gig. It was one of the unwritten rules – leave the boy wonder alone till he’s once again fit for civilized society. Way we all feel after a show as a matter of fact – though me, I go for a mug of hot cocoa. Short of a complete blood change, best thing I know to bring down the adrenalin level and get beat out of your system till next time. As for Lijah, he’s always the last one off the stage, letting down his own tension as he lets down his drums. Last night he and Guido came in just as the cocoa was boiling up. I told Guido there was plenty for three, but he didn’t fancy any. He helped Lijah stow the drums under the seat, then he said good-night and went off.’

  ‘Back to his own van, I suppose?’

  Johnny Flowerdew responded irritably, ‘I suppose. Am I my roadie’s keeper? Hold on, though.’ A moment’s hesitation; then, on a note of apology: ‘That’s not quite right. Lijah didn’t want any cocoa either, and there was this bloke the University had laid on as a bodyguard, ninety if he was a day, out there in the freezing cold. Don’t jump to any false conclusions.’ The young man stared poker-faced at his interlocutor. ‘I am not a caring person. I am, if anything, insensitive and bone-selfish. It was simply that I couldn’t stand pouring all that good cocoa down the sink. So I went outside and asked the poor old geezer if he could use a cup.’

  ‘Any trouble locating him?’

  ‘None at all. They’ve rigged up a couple of floods for us out there, and he was standing bang under one of them, as if he hoped it gave out a bit of warmth as well as light.’

  ‘He must’ve been glad of the cocoa.’

  ‘As it happens, he said he had a bad stomach and daren’t touch it. In fact, he looked so mangy I told him to call it a day, bugger off home. Which he did.’

  ‘Wasn’t he supposed to stay on duty till midnight?’

  ‘Oh, was he? Sorry I mentioned it, then. I wouldn’t want to get him into trouble.’

  ‘Not to worry. He was only taken on for while you were here.’

  ‘Where did they dig him up? Night like that, I doubt he’d have lasted out till twelve.’

  Jurnet smiled. ‘Not a caring person, eh? And, to get back to cases, what’s it got to do with Mr Scarlett? You saw something –’

  The other nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Guido. He was standing outside Queenie’s Dormobile. There was a sound of voices coming from inside – too far off to make out whose, so don’t ask – and he seemed to be listening. He could have seen me and the old fella easily if he’d happened to look our way. Next thing I knew, he was lumbering off into the dark between the Dormobile and Loy’s van. Could have gone to pee for all I know. Too cold for curiosity. I got myself back into the caravan quick as I could. Lijah was already snoring his head off.’

  ‘Could it possibly have been Loy in Queenie’s caravan?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her, won’t you?’ Johnny Flowerdew shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t think so, though. Sixty seconds of our Queenie’s artless prattle was enough to send Loy howling out into the wilderness.’ The young man let a little time pass before throwing off nonchalantly, ‘I did happen to see that ineffable pa of hers backstage before the show. With one of his little playmates, as usual.’

  Never one to stand on his dignity, Jurnet waited a moment, then grinned and said, ‘You are going to tell me, aren’t you?’

  Demurely: ‘I thought policemen knew everything.’

  ‘So we do, usually, by the time we’ve finished with the rack, the iron maiden, and the Chinese water torture. So tell me about Queenie’s pa.’

  The Superintendent said with some asperity, ‘That phone call of yours from the Virgin – did we really have to send Dave hotfoot up to London on the strength of it? I know he’s only too glad to seize any chance of checking up that the Yard’s still there, pending the glorious day he makes his triumphal entry as Chief Commissioner, the trumpets sounding. But do we have to feed the romantic fantasies of every DI on Angleby CID? Jack here would have done just as well.’

  The little Welshman nodded vigorous agreement. ‘I shouldn’t mind being Chief Commissioner either!’

  ‘Dave does have some useful contacts there,’ Jurnet returned placatingly, ‘and as he’ll have to clear it first, he seemed the obvious choice. Beside, I need Jack to chat up the Virgin staff – the late shift that came on this afternoon. Did
any of them see Tanner in the hotel last night? From what I’ve seen of them, ninety per cent at least aren’t English, and,–’ with an affectionate smile in his friend’s direction –‘being a bloody foreigner himself he’ll understand better than Dave how to get on terms with them.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ the Superintendent countered fretfully. ‘Except that the bloodhounds have been baying for an evening TV announcement, and there isn’t a hope Dave’ll be back in time.’

  ‘Incidentally, how was he on the morning show?’

  The two little curves at either side of the Superintendent’s mouth expanded briefly, as he answered, ‘Good enough to eat.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lijah Starling had kept on his hat, a sharp number in white straw with a polka-dotted ribbon: an Easter bonnet which – if it hardly went with the rest of his toilette – concealed the massacre of his hair very adequately.

  It was the only thing about him that looked happy. His dark suit and overcoat, conservative in cut, looked in mourning; the dark skin sallow and sad. Hard to visualize the magnificent body buried beneath those undertaker’s weeds.

  Affecting surprise, Jurnet said, ‘And I thought you were over the moon to be free at last.’

  ‘Freedom,’ the other returned listlessly, ‘is an over-rated state of being.’ This time, the detective’s surprise was unfeigned. Except for a slight North Country timbre, the man spoke standard English. Gone the velvet consonants, the liquid vowels of the West Indies. Gone, too, as he crossed the room to the seat Jurnet indicated, the lazy, hip-swinging walk that seemed a ballet danced to music just out of earshot. ‘Unless there’s more than one kind, and I was too much of a bloody fool to recognize the difference.’

  ‘You’ll have to spell that out for me in words of one syllable.’

  The noble figure slumped: slouched with his hands on his knees, the palms upturned as if deliberately to show off their pink undersides.

  Lijah Starling said, ‘He turned me into a black, that’s what he did.’ Reversing the hands so that the dark backs were again uppermost: ‘OK, God got there ahead of him, but Loy did it all over again, and this time made a proper job of it – turned me, in the country where I was born, into an alien, an object of guilt and suspicion.’

  The man leaned forward, anxious to make himself clear. ‘Oh, I’m under no illusion, Inspector. I know I’m not really a white man who has somehow found himself stuffed into a black man’s hide: but I’m no Little Black Sambo either. My father’s a doctor, my mother’s one of the best-known textile designers in the UK. They are people by virtue of their gifts and personalities, not their colour. I grew up in Harrogate – Harrogate! How English can you get? – and I got a good second in Natural Sciences at Cambridge.’ The man levered himself out of the chair, his size and power making the room even smaller. ‘OK, there were times, even in Harrogate, when they called you a bleeding wog – nobody needed to tell me the world wasn’t a Garden of Eden – but it wasn’t a white racist hell either –’ He broke off abruptly.

  ‘Nobody told you to go along with it.’

  ‘Oh yes, they did! The drums!’ With a grin of disarming candour: ‘Do I see you thinking, once a wog, always a wog?’ Lijah Starling carried on, even as Jurnet shook his head in disclaimer. ‘The thing is, I carry my particular jungle inside me, not on show for all the world to see. The drums! I feel them with every heartbeat, in every flutter of my pulse. And when we first got together, Loy and Johnny and I, and set up Second Coming, I knew we had to stay together, whatever the price, even if it was the death of us. We were great, the greatest.’

  Jurnet said, ‘I know. I was there last night.’

  ‘You were?’ The other showed his surprise. ‘In that case I don’t have to explain, do I, why I let Loy turn into that ethnic vaudeville act? I’d tell myself, never mind, when the time comes we can’t make great music together any more, that’ll be the time to make up for the degrading razzamatazz. I’ll kill the bastard. It was as simple as that.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ For a second the drummer seemed knocked off course, dazed with his own eloquence. Jurnet found himself wondering if the man had taken a little something to fortify himself for the interview – some speed, perhaps, or a snort of cocaine?

  Or had he prepared himself in another way: sat quietly in his caravan, drumsticks moving questingly among the drums clustered like children about his knees, memorizing what they had to say to him?

  Jurnet said, ‘I meant, did you kill Loy Tanner?’

  ‘Don’t talk balls! You say you heard us last night. Then you must know we still had a long way to go together.’

  ‘Yet at the same time you hated him.’

  ‘We all did,’ Lijah Starling agreed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Just as we all loved him, the bastard.’

  His voice suddenly sharp and unfriendly, Jurnet demanded, ‘Love him how? Sexually?’ The other sighed. ‘Love. Does it come with different centres, like chocolates? Hard or soft, sexual or spiritual, take your pick?’

  ‘Assorted, for all I care. You know damn well if you ever went to bed with your late partner.’

  ‘Oh that!’ The man actually laughed. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you yet about how Loy never let anybody touch him, if he could help it?’

  ‘Mr Bale said something –’

  ‘Mr Bale’s gay, I’m straight, what Johnny is not even Johnny knows. Yet we’d all have come running like dogs after a bitch if Loy’d so much as crooked his little finger. Guido would have left his Queenie without looking back, and as for Queenie –! Does that answer your question?’

  Lijah Starling leaned forward confidingly.

  ‘You want to know how we all loved Loy? I’ll tell you. Hopelessly.’

  Jack Ellers asked brightly, ‘Are we any nearer to fixing the time, then?’

  The Superintendent studied some pages of typescript spread out in front of him. Judging by the expression on his face, the examination gave him no pleasure.

  ‘Simple!’ he answered, looking up at the end of it. ‘You take the time Tanner was last seen alive, and the time Nosey Thompsett found him. We can then state with absolute certainty that the murdered man met his death some time between the two. The advances of forensic science leave one gasping.’

  Jurnet said soothingly, ‘At least Dr Colton hasn’t kept us long.’

  ‘Not a report, Ben. A sop to keep me quiet.’ Glaring at the uppermost page: ‘‘‘Post-mortem abrasions which could have been caused by bumping about on the floor of a vehicle. Star-shaped wound – blood – bone chips – extrusion of brain’’ – ye gods! If that was all we required of a PM we could do it ourselves.’ Addressing himself afresh to the police surgeon’s memo: ‘‘‘Weapon in doubt – small, heavy, some indentations on edge, not clear whether fortuitous or man-made. Possibly beach pebble, smoothed by wave action – perhaps paperweight or similar –’’’

  The Superintendent snorted.

  ‘Small, heavy, some indentations on edge – sounds more like one of the canteen’s steak-and-kidneys!’

  The duty sergeant had phoned through to say that the young lady at the reception desk had a letter with her which she insisted upon delivering in person into the hands of Detective-Inspector Benjamin Jurnet, and no other. The duty sergeant had not felt called upon to report the young lady’s exact words, which were, ‘I want that dark, dishy one who looks like he just stepped on a mess of dogshit.’

  The young PC who had escorted Queenie King up from the ground floor to the cubby-hole opening out of the incident room had eyed the girl with an envious admiration which had at first astonished Jurnet, and then touched the springs of his compassion. To a youngster in uniform, with a short back and sides, how liberatingly anarchic must seem green hair and clothes that looked as if they had been posthumously exhumed from the builder’s skip where they had crawled away to die. Maybe all that was needed to give the police a new lease of life was permission t
o wear a single earring dangling above the impeccable crispness of the official shirt.

  Ignoring an invitation to sit down, Queenie stuck the envelope under the detective’s nose, and warned belligerently, ‘If I don’t get a receipt, you don’t bleeding get it in the first place!’

  ‘I’ll have to open it to see what I’m giving a receipt for.’

  ‘Go on, then! It’s not stuck down.’ Unable to stay quiet while Jurnet extracted the single sheet from the envelope, the girl burst out with an air of childish pride at what she had found herself capable of, ‘Thirty guineas it cost me, true as I’m standing here. Hope yer hands are clean!’

  Jurnet read the brief paragraph, wondering what its signatory, the best-known gynaecologist in Angleby, had privately thought of the application made to him, to say nothing of the applicant. There couldn’t be all that many girls looking the way Queenie looked, to whom it would have occurred to seek medical confirmation that they were virgo intacta, let alone who would have been in any condition to procure it.

  The girl scanned the detective’s face, watching eagerly for signs of a reaction commensurate with such an expenditure of wealth for such a cause: and he did his best not to disappoint her.

  ‘Well, well!’ he exclaimed, endeavouring, without much success, to look both flabbergasted and congratulatory. But it seemed to be enough.

  The girl reddened with pleasure, smiled quite charmingly. She sat down, crossed her legs, and rested an elbow comfortably on Jurnet’s desk.

  ‘One girl travelling round with a bunch of fellows –’ she chattered away happily. ‘I knew what you’d be thinking, you lot – you don’t have to open your mouths, I can read you like a book! Must be a scrubber, it stands to reason – that was it, wasn’t it? Not that I blame you. How many girls you meet, my age, still haven’t had it off, not even once, let alone got a certificate to prove it?’