Death of a God (30 page)

He went up and down the street, poking about in hedges, looking over railings and fences. A man who must have been watching him for some time came out of a house and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. When Jurnet explained that he was looking for a dead cat, the man exclaimed, ‘Now I've heard everything!' and went back indoors.

Jurnet returned to his flat, treading the landing quietly for fear of waking Mrs Petherton. Replete with beans, the little woman had fallen asleep on the sofa, and he had gone through to her bedroom, found blankets, and tucked her fragile form in cosily. Tomorrow, he supposed with sinking heart, he would, as a matter of duty, have to alert the social services. What would they do? Get her off the booze for a start. No more Happy Hours in the Hacienda Wine Bar. Put her in a home for the elderly and confused, where they would be ever so kind, but never let her take her gramophone.

The first thing he did when he got indoors was to go into the bathroom and shut the window. Enough was enough.

He put away the Harrods bag, undressed and took a shower. Mara, he thought, soaping the flesh that had clothed their passion, rinsing the passion away with the soap: a strange and lovely name.

It seemed a long time ago.

It seemed to have nothing to do with Miriam.

He wished that he had known the cat's name.

Who was it had said love was for giving, not taking?

He went to bed, twisted and turned, sleep eluding him. Found himself reliving, not that coupling on the Felsenstein's couch, but one in which he had not even participated: Loy Tanner in Annie Falcone's bed, and the girl Francesca standing at the door with her mouth open.

Conscious of his own freshly laundered cleanliness, the black hair damp on the pillow, he spared a disparaging thought for the reddish locks which had hung dankly to the dead pop singer's shoulders. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would go over the picture file once again, refresh his memory of what the shit had looked like. Not the pictures of Tanner dead, but the
Argus
shots of Tanner triumphant. It would be interesting, to say the least, to see whether screwing his mum gave you a new perspective on Loy Tanner.

Sliding deeper towards sleep, Jurnet could have sworn he heard Mrs Petherton's gramophone start up again, not in the next-door flat, though – in his own. In the very room where he was lying.

‘I'll see you again,
Whenever spring breaks through again.
Time may lie heavy betwee – twee – twee –'

On the edge of oblivion he suddenly knew that Mrs Petherton had something very important indeed to tell him. For a second, he sat up in bed, hugging the knowledge to him as if it were a favourite teddy bear without which he'd never settle: then fell over the edge and forgot all about it.

Next morning, last thing before he left the flat, Jurnet opened the bathroom window dreading what might come in but feeling he could face it. The day outside was wild and gusty, empty crisp packets bowling along the pavements. The sensation that everything out there was on the move made Jurnet feel vigorous and optimistic. A day for new beginnings.

To his astonishment and relief – bracing himself as he had been to plumb the depths of self-disgust – the only pangs of conscience which assailed him related to the cat; a regret, he accepted, which would haunt him as long as he lived. That he had been unfaithful to Miriam scarcely troubled him – but then, whatever a superficial reading of the events of the night before might suggest, he had not, in any essential meaning of the word, been unfathful to Miriam. You might as well assert that by going to the South Pole you were being unfaithful to the North one.

Jurnet wrinkled his nose at the absurdity of his thought. Who did he think he was kidding? That must be the kind of guff all faithless lovers fed into their personal computers to get themselves in the clear.
Mea culpa
. Metaphorically, over his cornflakes and cup of instant, he beat his breast, calling himself all the right names – a lecher, a swine, a dirty old man.

A waste of time. He still did not feel guilty, only great.

Mrs Petherton was on the move too. When the detective came out of his front door he found her there, on the landing, trying to coax a clapped-out shopping trolley to attempt the stairs.

‘It used to be so good.' She regarded the reluctant piece of junk, which was stuffed with soiled, chrysanthemum-patterned slip-covers, with the slightly dazed surprise which seemed to be her characteristic response to a world in which nothing was as good as it used to be. ‘It used to be
very
good.'

She made no reference to the previous night, unless the slip-covers were themselves a reference. Perhaps the rumbustiousness of the weather had got to her too: perhaps there was something to be said for baked beans, after all.

Jurnet carried the trolley downstairs for her. Outside the front door, the little woman thanked him prettily; then said quickly, keeping her face turned a little away so that what Jurnet saw under the pale blue cloche hat, only a little shabby, was a tender curve of cheek which seemed to belong to an earlier self that hung on regardless, ‘Silly me! I thought I'd run out, and do you know? When I looked in my pension book I had two weeks not even used!'

Jurnet said carefully, meaning, don't blow it all on gin, love, for God's sake: ‘One does have to budget these days.'

‘One does.' She nodded seriously, meaning, Jurnet feared, gin first and then manage as best you can on what's left over, assuming anything to be left over. ‘Today it's the slip-covers' turn. I'm taking them to the launderette. They've got a little soiled, and it
is
spring.'

‘Can't I drop you off with them? Save you trundling that thing along the street.'

‘How kind! Only I have to go to the Post Office first – you have to pay in advance, you know – and that's in the other direction.'

‘Why don't I take the covers in for you, then, and get them started? You can settle up with me later. That way, you won't have so long to wait.'

‘Oh, I never mind waiting,' Mrs Petherton said. ‘I spend a lot of time waiting. And waiting in the launderette is very pleasant and soothing. I often think the world would be a better place if only everybody would take time off to sit and watch the washing going round.'

As she spoke, something stirred in Jurnet's consciousness; rose and promptly dropped back into the primeval ooze. Still, something must have remained in suspension because, when he finally reached the launderette, having persuaded Mrs Petherton to do as he suggested, instead of clearing off to work as he undoubtedly should have done, he slumped into a chair and, eyes fixed on the window in the machine door as if it were a spyhole into a secret kingdom, waited for the washing to go round.

He was feeling a little uncomfortable. The girl who looked after the washing machines had been embarrassingly ready to get the covers loaded for him, to add the detergent, perform any other little service she could think of for the tall, dark and handsome male fate had sent along to the launderette that morning together with the usual raggle-taggle of old age pensioners and mums with sticky young.

Jurnet, who had lived long enough to know the effect of his looks on the young and simple-minded, had – out of kindness, not vanity: he hated the outward, delusive foreignness of himself, inwardly so English, so Norfolk – given her one of his Mark 2 smiles, only slightly smouldering. However, when the girl, neat and bright in her fresh green overall, saw the state the slip covers were in, her expression changed to a point where even the Mark 4 smile, unashamedly sexy, was useless to retrieve the situation. At his weak disclaimer, ‘Actually, they're not mine,' the girl's lip had curled disdainfully, and she had slammed off, blonde hair swinging.

Feeling disloyal to Mrs Petherton who, poor soul, deserved better, he waited for the washing to go round and soothe his ruffled ego as the little woman had promised it would. The effect was quite the opposite. The chrysanthemums were rust-coloured and yellow on a dark green background, and the colours jangled his eyes, his thought processes. He shut his eyes to get away from them; concentrated on the woman next to him telling her neighbour on the further side how to make a bread pudding what
was
a bread pudding; on the modish electronic
ting!
of the cash register, the clink of milk bottles, and the comfortable, village voice of the girl in the green overall, ‘Just the one pint today, please.'

He got up and blundered outside, into the windy air. Christ, it was cold! Yet a cold spring day, not a cold winter day. The world coming alive, and he, Ben Jurnet, with it.

Deeply ashamed of the exultation which possessed every atom of his being, he ran back to the car, unlocked it, and got in.

Got on to Control and gave the appropriate directions.

They came into the forest as into another country, not a friendly one. True, there were no candy-striped barriers, no floodlights, observation posts nor men in uniforms demanding passports; but there might as well have been.

Without warning, the placid, farmyard Norfolk of small villages clustered about the parish church like chicks about a hen, had yielded to a parade ground where trees marched in regiments to the horizon, closing in the road, closing out the rest of the world, the sky the sole escape.

Driving, Sergeant Ellers shuddered with exaggerated Celtic sensibility. ‘Time we drew lots, boys, to see who gets chucked out first if the wolves attack.' High up in the sky two fighters from the American air-base a few miles to the south, sprang across the gap between the trees, leaving behind fraying vapour trails. ‘Vultures as well!' exclaimed the little Welshman. ‘It's as good as being on telly.'

The intention was good, as Jurnet, in the front passenger seat, acknowledged with a sideways smile; but it was clear from the driving mirror that Blaker and Nye, the young constables, were in no mood for jokes. They sat in the rear of the car looking stiff and stupid: no one more urban than your provincial townee, his precarious sophistication threatened by the wilderness only minutes from the city centre.

The detective took another look at the map spread out on his knees.

‘I make it the third drove road along, on the left. A shade under two miles. The local lads and the bloke from the Forestry Commission are in a roadmenders' lay-by couple of hundred yards this side.'

‘Oh ah. Wonder how long His Nibs'll take.'

‘Depends how long it took him at the University.' Jurnet leaned forward and peered through the windscreen. ‘Time to keep your eyes peeled.'

It was easy enough to find the lay-by: harder to find parking space behind the mini-mountains of aggregate. Two vehicles were already occupying all that was available.

The Superintendent, looking military in his Burberry, came up to the car before Ellers had brought it to a halt, and demanded, ‘What kept you?'

Jurnet looked at his superior officer in astonishment. ‘We didn't see you pass us –'

‘For the very good reason that we didn't. We came the shorter way.'

Jurnet did not think it worth his while to point out that the map over which the two had pored together had shown no alternative route short of swinging in a wide arc round the perimeter of the air-base, thereby adding a good fifteen miles to the journey. If the Superintendent said there was a shorter route, then there was one, even if – as, given the circumstances, seemed probable – it had involved a cross-country dash under the noses of NATO transports lifting off for Europe.

If Blaker and Nye looked a bit off, it was as nothing to the dishevelment of the Superintendent's passengers. Even Sid Hale, who rose each morning in the confident expectation of Doomsday, and retired each night a little put out to find it had been put off yet again, looked in a state of shock.

‘The important thing is, I was able, as you suggested, to get hold of the Professor,' the Superintendent went on. The Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Angleby, his complexion pastier than his morning muesli, nodded unhappily at Jurnet. ‘And I am relieved to tell you –' the voice, perfectly modulated, contrived nevertheless to infuse the surrounding air with the threat of what might have happened, had it turned out otherwise – ‘that, according to Mr Flotman, the Forestry Commission man they've laid on for us, our journey is not in vain. You would appear –' the admission seemed to be wrung from him with positive physical hurt: in no way, despite the extravagance of its terms, could it be taken for a compliment – ‘to have made the right deduction from that combination of evidence and intuition which is so uniquely your own. They're here.'

Mr Flotman, a young man in a knitted cap topped with a red pompom, and glowing with good health to the point of offensiveness, led the little party to the beginning of the drove. He seemed to be having difficulty not to regard his secondment to police duties as a great lark.

‘A bit churned up,' he announced, cheerfully sloshing about in the puddles in his high-laced boots. Of their own lot, Jurnet noted that, as was to be expected, only the Superintendent had thought to come kitted out with wellies. ‘We've been working this compartment best part of the week, moving out some Scots pine, grand stuff. Up to nine o'clock this morning we had hurdles strung across here, hopefully to discourage any of the travelling fraternity with ideas of picking up a bit of timber on the very cheap – so I can guarantee that these are brand-new, or as near as makes no difference.'

The Superintendent bent over the tracks indicated. They were deeply incised in the mud, emerging fainter but unmistakable higher up the slope, a double trail that surmounted its gentle rise and disappeared out of sight down the further side.

‘Couldn't be one of yours, I suppose?'

The Forestry Commission man shook his head.