Death of a God (20 page)

‘No, sir,' the other agreed with a sunny smile artfully calculated to send the bugger up the wall. Of such small revenges was happiness made. ‘It takes a little while to get the threads sorted out.'

‘Threads?' the Superintendent echoed sourly. ‘We aren't sewing the Bayeux Tapestry.' He got up from his chair at the wide desk which made explicit his apartness from the underlings, and went over to the window. ‘You seen the latest, out there in the garden?'

‘I saw the flowers.'

‘Then you haven't seen anything. A lying-in-state, I tell you, lacking only the body of the dear departed. They've got a youngster of doubtful sex at each corner, got up all in white and standing with bowed head over a reversed guitar. That besotted Mrs Skylark has even had the floodlights turned on.'

‘Sounds a bit theatrical.'

‘A travesty! No doubt, if this weather gets any colder, we'll have a crucifixion on ice. Mountebanks!' exclaimed the Superintednent, finding relief in the small explosion of syllables. ‘At least, whatever else it was when they crucified the real Christ, it wasn't sick. It was part of the everyday pattern of events, the normal Roman way of getting rid of troublemakers.'

Still irate at the limits of his authority: ‘In the old days, too, in a city of this size, they turned away travelling players and similar trash – wouldn't so much as let them through the gates. Here in Angleby today, God help us, we not only let them in with hosannas, we welcome them to our seat of higher learning, so-called. Wonder they didn't confer honorary degrees on the three of them while they were about it!'

In the interests of fair play, Jurnet felt constrained to point out, ‘We don't know that it was actually one of the group who –'

‘How right you are!' the other returned, in a voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘The extent of our ignorance is positively mind-blowing. We still don't even know where the murder was committed – no reports of screams in the night, or blood seeping through the ceiling. Nothing as to what happened to Tanner's clothes; nothing in the van except a few lengths of cord which, mercifully, the road manager was able to account for. We have no idea how far Mr Tanner toured in his role of
corpus delicti
. Colton, that eager beaver, tells us the post-mortem abrasions on the body could just as well be due to a mile and a half over the potholes of an unmade-up road as forty on a dual carriageway. We're still not sure whether we're looking for a lone killer or a conspiracy. And, central to all, we still haven't a clue as to why, with the whole planet in which to dispose of the carcass, our murderer-stroke-murderers made the bizarre choice they did. Exhibitionism, religious mania – or what?'

The Superintendent drew an exasperated breath, pressed his back hard against the back of his chair, and suddenly favoured his subordinate with a smile of astonishing sweetness.

‘Get along with you to the Nelson, Ben. It's been a long day.'

Disarmed by the smile, as ever, Jurnet ventured rashly, ‘Chap today wanted to know how anyone could think him capable of man-handling a dead body up on to a cross, he hadn't the physique for it. I told him we were working on that one – had an experiment going with a corps of volunteers, round the clock, to find out if in fact it could be done single-handed.'

The Superintendent burst out laughing, exceeding the detective's expectations. He was a man who seldom laughed aloud. Even more surprising was. ‘That's the first sensible idea I've heard today! Where can we set it up.'

‘I didn't really mean –'

‘Then you should have! Let's see –' The Superintendent got up from his chair again, this time to perch himself on the edge of his desk, a liberty he seldom took with that formidable emblem of office, and an infallible pointer to good humour. ‘The cross is over at the lab. There's that courtyard with the rose bushes we could use to set it up in – no!' pulling himself up short. ‘All those windows! Can't you imagine what a meal the media'd make of it, if it leaked out? Or – God forbid – they sneaked in a camera-man?'

He reviewed the options, solved the problem with characteristic dispatch.

‘That barn of a place where they play badminton. Only skylights there, and we could fix some blinds, if we're scared of helicopters!' The man looked as gleeful as an urchin planning mischief. ‘None of your volunteers, though. We've got to keep this strictly under wraps. If anything leaked out, the Chief'd have conniptions and we'd all be out on our ears. You and me, Jack and Sid Hale – what do you think? Not Dave Batterby. He couldn't resist the chance of getting himself on the front page, even if he had to play Judas Iscariot to do it.'

Jurnet was not sure what to think. Playing safe: ‘Who are we going to practise on? Where are we going to find someone as long and skinny as Tanner was?'

The Superintendent did not answer. The mischievous grin grew wider. He reached across the desk for the telephone, and lifted the receiver.

‘Put me through to Dr Colton, would you?'

On the way down to the car-park Jurnet paused, cocked his head to listen, and changed direction – back to the main hall and thence out into the Market Place. Night had settled down on the city, brooding it without love. Under its chill wings most of the traders had packed it in for the day: only here and there a sad, Asian face still waited for the last purchaser of a brass tray or a cut-price toilet roll.

Above, in the little garden, the floodlights gleamed on the young heads, the thin young necks, bent in homage over the mound of flowers. How still the youngsters stood, thought the detective, despite their thin clothes and the piercing cold. Still as a stone. Never a shiver.

But then they had the beat to keep them warm.

The beat had penetrated Police Headquarters; faintly, but enough to drum Jurnet out into the Market Place and across the road to where Lijah Starling, in a black kaftan splashed with yellow, on his head a round African cap woven with gold and silver threads, sat among his drums celebrating the life and the death of his lost leader.

Polished ebony in the floodlights, the drummer sat with eyes half-closed, sleeves thrown back to reveal his powerful arms moving with deceptive ease. The message of the drums filled the available space, banged against the sky. It bounced off the surrounding buildings, scooping bewildered pigeons off the ledges where they had already settled down for the night. Crowds gathered quickly, belated workers hurrying home to their evening meal and their tellies, but drawn to stand rooted to the cold cobbles, listening.

‘
Go back to Africa
!' Jurnet growled under his breath. Yet he stayed. He stayed until the sound died away and Lijah Starling sat quietly, his hands clasped in his lap.

A guitar sounded, fragile after what had preceded it, and Johnny Flowerdew walked into the circle of light, strumming as he came.

The voice that came out of the white, mocking face was not the voice of Loy Tanner, but it was not the voice of Johnny Flowerdew either. Either the cold, or the occasion, or the hovering spirit of the lead singer of Second Coming had transformed it. Or else the drums had prepared the way, programmed the listeners to hear more than was there to be heard.

Whichever it was, they listened, and they wept.

How sweet the light,
How dark the night:
Sorrow is better than laughter.
A time to weep,
A time to sleep,
Whatever may come after:

A cruel whisper of wind had begun to circle the Market Place. Automatically, without any lessening of attention, the listeners drew scarves tighter across throats, fiddled for the top buttons of overcoats. Out of this diffuse, unthinking movement a flash of white caught the corner of Jurnet's eye. Taller than most who stood there, he looked over the heads of the crowd and saw Miriam in the act of pulling the shawl collar of her new white coat high over her bare head.

That she had not seen him the detective was practically sure. All her attention was held by Johnny Flowerdew and his bitter-sweet threnody.

The silver cord is loosed,
The golden bowl is broken.

The final song is sung,
The final word is spoken.

A low moan rose from the crowd, heaven-sent backing for a number bound to make it to the charts. Jurnet worked at his cynicism, without much success; conscious all the time of the white coat away on his right. Conscious of the song Johnny Flowerdew was still singing.

Johnny Flowerdew sang:

We have come to the end of the world.
The beginning is less than the end.
The curtain is down, the flag is furled.
Oh, my friend! Oh, my friend!

Jurnet drove on to the forecourt of his block of flats with the feeling that it had been a long time since he had last seen home. For once he was glad to find that nothing had changed, the black polythene bags poised at the entrance as immutable and imperious as the stone lions and unicorns that graced statelier residences. To his one regret, though, there was no sign of the black cat.

A pity. At the deli where he had stopped off for the makings of his evening meal – baked beans, an expiring salad, and a wedge of blueberry cheesecake – he had picked up six tins of catfood, each of a different brand in case the cat was a choosy eater.

Lacking Miriam on the other side of his front door, he was surprised at this sense of homecoming: but there it was. For once he was glad she had stubbornly refused his pleas to get the flat decorated; to instruct him in the mysteries of deep-freezes and micro-ovens so that he could provide a setting worthier of her. Even a three-piece suite and wall-to-wall carpeting, it seemed, had to wait upon his becoming a Jew.

For tonight, at least, he was grateful to have nothing about his domestic ambiance which required living up to. Tonight, if never again, the slow-simmered underwear on the stairs smelled positively piquant, as if someone had added a soupçon of French knickers. On the landing, to complete his felicity, the cat sat waiting.

The animal did not run to meet him: rose and arched itself indolently, rasping its paws through the tatty bit of coconut matting outside the flat door. The detective, absurdly elated, was fishing in his pocket for his key when the door across the landing opened. Mrs Petherton must have been listening for him.

‘I thought you were never coming!' she exclaimed, in the waspish way she had on days when her pension was not quite due and the hombre at the Hacienda Bar was proving less than simpatico. ‘I told it to go away I don't know how many times, but it just stared at me as if
I
was the one who had no business here. Naturally, I couldn't bring myself to touch it, nasty, flea-ridden thing!' At the sight of Jurnet taking out his key, she let out a dainty scream. ‘You're never going to let it inside!'

The detective answered kindly, wishing that he had some gin in the house to help a neighbour over a bad patch. ‘If it looks like it's needed, I'll get some flea powder first thing in the morning, I promise you. Either way, you don't have to worry. I've never heard that cats' fleas go for anybody or anything but cats.'

‘How can you be so sure? You're not a vet. And what about my fur jacket? I'm sorry, Mr Jurnet' – in her present mood, she did not sound at all sorry – ‘if you don't get rid of that disgusting creature this minute, I'll call the police!'

‘Oh dear!' said Jurnet. ‘And I was hoping, since I'm on my own tonight, you'd keep me company over a glass of sherry. I'm sorry we're out of spirits.'

‘
Sweet
sherry?' the other inquired sharply.

‘Medium sweet.'

Medium appeased, Mrs Petherton allowed herself to cross the detective's threshold once the cat and its putative fleas had been safely locked in the kitchen. She drank three schooners of sherry and would have drunk a fourth if there had been more in the bottle. Having no cheese straws to offer, the detective proffered the cheesecake, which Mrs Petherton found acceptable, to the last crumb. The little woman was plainly even more skint than usual at the end of the week.

It wasn't much of a sacrifice for Jurnet to suggest she do him a favour; take his salad back to her own flat to consume later. He'd only bought it because Miriam had brainwashed him into believing that lettuce was essential to good health, sound teeth, and a successful sex life. For all he knew to the contrary, you couldn't become a Jew without it.

When Mrs Petherton had gone back to her flat, soothed with wine, Jurnet went into the kitchen to feed the cat.

After opening three different tins of catfood, only to have each rejected in turn, he gave in: opened the baked beans and watched them disappear down the cat's gullet with lightning speed. For himself, he uncovered another tin of sardines in the cupboard; ate them without appetite whilst the cat, pausing in a vigorous toilette which must surely have spelt annihilation to any fleas in the vicinity, regarded him with something approaching incredulity.

Not pity, certainly. And quite right. Anyone who didn't have the nous to hang on to his own beans deserved what was coming to him.

Cats, for example, would have known better than to answer the phone. Nothing but doom ever came through the telephone. The only good news was a wrong number.

When Jurnet picked up the receiver, Miriam began immediately, ‘I ran into Cecily Gordon in the street, and as she's in charge of all the organizing, I thought it only right to let her know about the Seder as soon as possible.'

‘Let her know what about it?'

‘That you won't be coming, of course.'

‘Shan't I?' Jurnet asked. Cats, he thought, having been stupid enough to pick up the phone in the first place, would, at that juncture, have had the sense to put it back on the hook. Either that, or throw it out of the window. ‘It's the first I've heard of it.'