Death of a God (27 page)

‘You come back here this minute, Darren!' his mother commanded; and Darren, for once obedient, dashed for the nearest steps, thankful to be delivered without loss of face.

Convenient to the scene of the crime, the bar at the Haven Hotel was doing sensational business. Enormous as the room was, it was packed wall to wall. At the sight of the crowd, Jurnet nearly retreated. He had been hoping for a quiet drink in a room as empty as on his earlier visit, with, given a bit of luck, occasion for a word with the barman – not enough to constitute a questioning, which would have been quite improper without prior clearance with Havenlea, but, well, a word.

Sergeant Ellers asked, ‘Shall we try somewhere else?'

‘Might as well.' Then: ‘Hold on a minute! What's that?'

The detectives painstakingly worked their way to the bar where two large-bosomed ladies of mature years were helping out the barman. One of these asked Jurnet, ‘What's yours, love?' and looked understandably put out when he ignored her, edging away along the counter to where the barman stood drawing a pint.

Jurnet pointed and said, ‘Where did that come from?'

Punch sat at his ease, high on one of the shelves at the back of the bar. Legs crossed, one hand affectionately cupping the great hook of his nose, he leaned nonchalantly against a cluster of Johnny Walkers, surveying the crowded room with a bright-eyed insolence. In the smoke-laden atmosphere of the place, Jurnet, for a ridiculous moment, had the impression that the puppet had favoured him with a nod.

The barman, too rushed for chat, rang up the money for the beer, and said offhandedly, before turning away to the next customer, ‘Another one of Punchy's.'

‘Just a minute!' The detective intervened with enough authority in his voice to bring the man back, face red with annoyance. ‘How and when did it come into your possession?'

‘Who the hell wants to know?'

Jurnet took out his ID card.

‘Christ! Not another one! What is this, a persecution? I already spoke to you lot. Told you everything I knew, which was strictly nix.'

The man was overdoing it. Jurnet took a chance, and said, ‘You never showed the police officer that.'

‘Yeah – well.' The man changed tone, became ingratiating. ‘Punchy only left it night before he was done in, didn't he? And when those other guys came round it completely slipped my mind. When Punchy give it me, I just stuck it in the cupboard, way I always did, and never gave it another thought. It was only this morning, looking for some extra space for the tonic waters, that I came on it, and thought to myself, now Punchy's gone, this here's what they call a conversation plece, and stuck it up where you see it now. Punchy's never coming back for it, poor sod, that's for sure.'

‘What's this about ‘‘as I always did''? Were you in the habit of providing accommodation for Mr King's puppets?'

‘Not a crime, is it? Or should we have been charging VAT?' The man heaved a sigh of exasperation. ‘Look – if you'd known Punchy you'd have known he was a funny bloke – and that's the understatement of the year. You never knew what he'd say, or do next. Sometimes he was just going on somewhere from here – down to the quays, maybe, to screw a slag, and didn't want to take Punch with him. Said it might put ideas into the little chap's head. He'd ask me to take him and put him away, and he'd pick him up next time. Other times he'd come in and say Punch had misbehaved himself something dreadful, and would I shut the perisher up in the cupboard till he'd learnt once and for all who was master. It weren't always the same Punch, you understand. He had any number of ' em.'

‘We're aware of that. I shall have to take this one along with me for examination.'

The other looked mutinous. ‘Am I to get it back?'

‘Shouldn't think so – but not for me to say.' Jurnet took out his pad. ‘I'll give you a receipt.'

‘Stuff it.' Reaching for the puppet and plunking it into the detective's arms: ‘On second thoughts, stuff him as well, while you're at it. Punchy hung out here much longer, he'd have had us all round the twist. From now on, nothing goes into that bloody cupboard that don't come in a bottle.'

‘Good thinking,' Jurnet said, ‘so long as it isn't a genie. We'll have a couple of bitters, please. Halves.'

By the time they got back to Havenlea HQ the air in Detective Chief Innspector Herring's office had replenished itself, more or less. Space again, Jurnet was happy to note, to see out of the window and down to the quayside, where a middle-aged woman in a kaftan, over-painted and under-corseted, was exchanging pleasantries with a couple of bashful youths from the rural hinterland.

The enormous man, seated in solitary modesty, welcomed back the two detectives with an unaffected pleasure which Jurnet found quite touching. ‘So long as you haven't come to pick a bone with me for wasting valuable police time –'

‘A very useful meeting –' Jurnet demurred, not to be outdone in politeness.

‘Don't tell me! They're very good fellows,' the man, who obviously found it hard to think ill of anybody – anybody on the right side of the law, at any rate – earnestly assured his colleagues from Angleby. ‘God knows what the local drugs scene would be like without them. But I don't have to tell you how it is when you go regional – regional anything. The organization takes over. You're so busy taking an over-view it's hard not to lose track of those little ants scurrying about at ground level.'

‘Or, even harder, the ones that aren't scurrying any more, but are lying squashed flat on the pavement.' The two men exchanged glances of perfect understanding. Jurnet continued, ‘So long as you don't think we're back to say, look what we've got and you missed. Jack and I stopped by at the Haven Hotel for a drink, and by the purest chance –'

The little Welshman opened the carrier bag he had rescued from a litter bin, and hauled out its contents. Punch emerged smelling of Chinese takeaway, but as serene as ever.

The Detective Chief Inspector reached across his desk for the puppet and took hold of it gently. He might have been receiving a baby. But then, thought Jurnet, with hands the size of hams you were either tender with everything you touched, or a complete disaster.

‘I'm growing quite fond of the little fellows,' Herring confessed. Ending with a certain regret: ‘I suppose we'll have to open him up, like the rest.'

Punch stared impassively out of the window whilst Sergeant Ellers did things to his hump with a razor blade. Severing Punchy King's fine stitching with careful labour: ‘He'd have made somebody a wonderful wife. My Rosie'd give her eye teeth to sew like that!'

At last the opening was wide enough for the insertion of a hand. ‘Lot of that foam stuff we found in the others.' The little Welshman scrabbled about, bringing out some flat padding and a handful of plastic nodules which spilled over the desk and on to the floor. ‘There's something there! Let me make it a bit bigger –'

A moment later, the Sergeant straightened up with what he had found: ten £50 notes secured with a wide manila band on which somebody had scribbled some figures.

The three detectives studied the haul in silence. Then Jurnet said, ‘I can see we're going to have to have another word with Mr Lenny Bale.'

After Havenlea, Angleby was quiet: quieter than Jurnet could remember. Missing the liveliness of the resurrected seaside resort, the detective nevertheless approved of the silence engulfing the city. In Angleby, he reflected with a perverse satisfaction, it no longer being any business of his anyway, people knew what was due to a dead god. They knew how to conduct themselves on a Good Friday, unlike some he could mention …

As they threaded the silent streets towards the city centre and Police Headquarters, he said as much to Jack Ellers, who hooted. ‘Decent respect! It's because everyone's gone where we've just come from, if they aren't at Yarmouth or Cromer!'

Within doors, Headquarters was kept on the go much as on any other day, break-ins and wife battering, as usual, largely replacing other business which had fallen off on account of the holiday. More than one conference at high level had been convened to discover why those particular forms of lawbreaking had become as traditional to Angleby over Easter as bunnies and Easter eggs. The break-ins were explicable, given that many people had gone away for the weekend leaving their property undefended; but for the extraordinary jump in the statistics of wives with black eyes, broken noses and worse, no reason had been deduced other than the rather unsatisfactory one that spring had sprung, the sap was rising, and what more natural than to take a swipe at the old woman?

By evening, Jurnet, called in to lend a hand with the press of complainants, was ready to turn it in, aware that the day had been flatter, the toil less rewarding, by reason of the absence of his superior officer. The Superintendent had taken the day off. True, without him on the premises one breathed more easily. But equally, with him there, either invisible or a looming presence fraught with threat, life in Angleby CID acquired an extra dimension.

Sergeant Ellers brought in a Lenny Bale looking much improved, wearing his grief with the same sharp attention he had paid to his clothes and his jewellery. He had been to the morning service in the cathedral, and it seemed to have done him as much good as a fix. It had been fabulous, he proclaimed: out of this world. He spoke as if he had discovered some new form of spectator sport out of which, with the right kind of hype, there was money to be made.

Jurnet said coarsely, ‘Don't go getting any ideas about those choirboys. Remember you're out on bail.'

‘The nerve of that blue-arsed ape!' was Bale's rejoinder. ‘Equating me with some dirty old man in a dirty old mac! Indecent exposure! It's humiliating! If he'd only contained himself for a few minutes, the randy twerp, he could have copped me on a charge worth pleading to.'

He eyed the detective with a look of stern dissatisfaction.

‘Regular Sodom and Gomorrah you got down there by the river, anyone ever tell you? Did you hear they've remanded me for medical reports – me! Not that sweet little cherub who led me on, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, nor anything else either. He's the one the shrinks need to talk to, they'd learn something. Fishing? Oh, he was out fishing all right!'

Jurnet said, ‘We'll look into it. In the meantime –' he opened a drawer, took out the bundle of £50 notes and tossed them on to the desk top – ‘take a look at these. Don't touch!' – as the Second Coming manager stretched out a joyous hand to take possession. ‘Just tell me if you think you recognize them.'

The detective saw no reason for letting on that Fingerprints had already confirmed the man's prints on the wrapping, as well as those of King and Loy Tanner.

‘Of course I recognize them! Those are my figures on the wrapper. I distinctly remember jotting them down to see how much of the £13,000 I still had to go. Where's the rest?'

‘All in good time,' returned Jurnet, less than frank. ‘If, when the inquiry is concluded, you can prove that you are the owner of these ones, they will be returned to you.'

‘Can't you at least tell me where you found them?' The man stammered a little, then asked, ‘Was it a woman, after all?'

The detective picked up the wad of notes and returned them to the drawer, turning the key with deliberate ceremony.

‘You'll have to contain your soul in patience.'

When the man had gone, leaving behind a trace of perfume disturbingly reminiscent of something Miriam sometimes used Jurnet sat chewing on a ballpoint.

‘Seeing that Tanner left Queenie's caravan ahead of her dad – everyone's agreed on that and I can't see what they have to gain by lying – it stands to reason Punchy must have met up with him again that night after he'd been to the Virgin and collected his £13,000. I can't see how else Punchy could have come by that £500 –'

Jack Ellers went to the heart of the matter. ‘Come by it
how
, that's the question.'

‘Fair means or foul, eh? If Guido Scarlett heard alright, Tanner wasn't at all receptive to the idea of forking out for that boat. But who knows? When they did meet up again, Punchy may have finally persuaded Loy to shave a bit off that £13,000 in his favour.'

The little Welshman shook his head.

‘I don't buy that. If it had been £10,000 say, or twenty – a fair round number – I might have, but not thirteen. It's an odd sort of figure, as if it was the cost of one definite thing Tanner had in mind to use it for. Like the down payment of a house, say –'

‘Or,' amplified Jurnet, an image of the sand heap outside the Red Shirt coming into his mind, ‘the cost of some building work.' He considered further what the other had said. ‘I think you're right, Jack – that Tanner asked Bale to get him £13,000 because £13,000 was the exact sum needed.'

Jurnet unlocked the drawer and took out the notes again. He stared at them as if they could tell him something.

‘In which case –' summing up – ‘how else could Punchy have come by this little lot, except by means of a blunt instrument?'

‘That still leaves that business of the corpse on the cross unaccounted for.'

‘Are you asking me or telling me? Think about it. Exactly the kind of crazy caper you might expect from a nutter like King.' Jurnet once more returned the notes to the drawer, slammed it shut. ‘The more I think about it, the better it fits.' He pushed back his chair and stood, tall and morose. ‘Maddening!' he pronounced, ‘not being able to get at the bugger, not even to ask him the time of day.'

‘If we can turn up the remaining £12,500, we won't need to.'

‘Hell, I don't know!' Reaching for his coat, hanging from a peg on the wall, Jurnet announced, ‘I'm going out to eat.'