Ritual Murder

by S. T. Haymon

  The detective watched Christopher tugging at his mother’s hand as they moved towards the road.

  “You’ll have to do my things perfectly, as I’m to sing solo. Even my shoe buckles, though nobody could possibly see them, could they? Mr Amos says he has to see his face in them. And I’m to go to him after school on Friday for extra practice, so don’t worry if I’m late, and Mr Amos says he’ll see me home—though why can’t I go home myself? I’m tired of being met as if I was still in kindergarten. Clive Langford’s mother’s letting him bike to school again, so why can’t I? Is there anything in the car I can eat? I’m starving!”

  The torrent flowed on. Before Mrs Drue could attempt an answer to any part of it, the boy shouted, “The policeman! He’s the one I told you about. Do you want to speak to him? He is a policeman even though he doesn’t look a bit like one, does he? Hello, policeman!”

  “Hello, young fellow!” Jurnet came forward to where, in the fading light, the widely-spaced eyes could pass judgment on him. “How are you getting along, then?”

  “I’m going to sing solo!” The exuberance burst out afresh. “If you come to Service Sunday after next you can hear me. I’ll be the one sings highest. Arthur used to do it, but now he isn’t alive any more Mr Amos says it’s to be me. It was between me and Clive Langford. Mr Amos says Clive’s voice is stronger, but mine’s sweeter—” The boy stopped short, his face suddenly aflame. There was something both charming and touching in the way he hung his head, looked upward through the forward-falling curls. “I didn’t really ought to be glad, did I?” Mrs Drue put a reassuring arm round the sturdy young body. “It’s like being glad Arthur’s dead, and I’m not, I’m not!”

  “Of course you aren’t, darling.” His mother’s voice was warm and comforting. “It doesn’t mean you can’t be pleased about the solo just the same.” She passed her hand over the boy’s hair again. “There’s a Milky Way in the car. It’s not locked. Just so long as it won’t spoil your tea. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “It won’t spoil my tea, or my supper, or my breakfast!” the boy sang out, and ran off to a Volvo parked a little further along the way. “Ta-ta, policeman! Or my elevenses!”

  “Lock the door!” Mrs Drue called after him. She looked hesitantly at the detective. “As a matter of fact, I wanted to have a word with you, Mr—Mr—”

  “Jurnet. Detective-Inspector Jurnet.”

  “Well then.” She acknowledged the introduction with a brisk little nod. “My husband—we—” Not much good at aggression, she subsided into a question, “Is it right, Inspector, is it even legal, to question a child without his parents’ prior knowledge?”

  “If I had been questioning him,” Jurnet returned, not without some disingenuousness, his conscience being not all that clear on the subject, “it would certainly not have been all right. As it was, all we did was pass the time of day. No note taken, nothing like that. At Mr Amos’s suggestion, as a matter of fact.”

  “Mr Amos,” she said dismissively, “never sees any wrong in anyone.”

  “I hope you don’t see any in me, for wanting to find out who killed Arthur Cossey.”

  “Oh dear!” Mrs Drue exclaimed. “Now you’ve put me in the wrong, when all I meant was—” The woman studied the detective’s face; decided she liked what she saw. “I’m sure it was all right, really. I only hope Christopher was able to help.”

  “I was trying to find out how Arthur Cosseys friends saw him. What I found out was that he didn’t have any.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me.” She spoke without sentimentality. “Children who look the way he looked aren’t usually the ones who are popular.”

  “I gather he very much wanted to be friends with your young ’un.”

  “Oh,” she said, with an honesty Jurnet had already perceived to be characteristic of her, “Christopher’s lucky. He’s the type of child who makes friends easily, and with whom everyone wants to be friends, even when he drives them mad with his winning ways.” She smiled, and added, “That last is so I shouldn’t sound too much like a besotted mum.”

  “I’m quite sure you aren’t that. Did Christopher ever speak to you about Arthur?”

  “Only that he was a drip and he wished he wouldn’t keep bothering him. I could have wished him to be kinder, but that’s how children are, isn’t it? Being sorry for someone’s a poor basis for friendship anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “Besides,” Mrs Drue went on, a delicate blush tinting her pale cheeks, “it was a bit embarrassing. Mrs Cossey works for some people I know, and—well, it was difficult. I was afraid, if Christopher snubbed Arthur, she’d think it was us being snobbish—or, if he did make friends with him, that we were being condescending. Either way we couldn’t win. So I never made an issue of it. Just the same, I suggested to Christopher more than once that he ask him back from school for tea. But he always said airily, ‘Some other time!’—and now it’s too late.”

  For a moment the death of a child lay between them, the coldness of it, the terrible waste. Then the woman spoke urgently, the colour gone from her face. “Please, please, hurry up and find out who did it. I’m afraid. Every mother in Angleby’s afraid, so long as there’s a man going about who could—” She shivered and left the sentence unfinished. “Having to call for a boy Christopher’s age! If it goes on much longer he’s going to become frightened too, and that’s what’s so awful. Goodness knows there’s little enough time anyhow to be a child and enjoy the world without fear.”

  Jurnet, who remembered his own childhood as a valley of shadows from which he had escaped with amazed gratitude for his deliverance, said, “That youngster of yours has too much going for him for you to need to worry. Sunday after next may be the first, it won’t be the last time he’s going to land the solo part, not by a long chalk.”

  “Has Christopher told you?” The jolly voice of Mr Amos rang out behind them. “He’s to sing the solo in the Monteverdi.” Wrapped round with an old college scarf whose fringed ends reached nearly to the ground, the Vice-Organist shook Mrs Drue by the hand, and greeted the detective with apparently equal pleasure. “The Inspector! Are things going well, my dear sir? I hope and pray things are going well.”

  “Our inquiries are proceeding,” Jurnet replied, feeling a right clot.

  “Excellent!” exclaimed Mr Amos. The evening breeze stirred his meagre hair. “Though what on earth shall we do with the murderer once you have caught him?”

  “Lock him up, I should hope,” Jurnet returned grimly, “where he can’t do any more harm.”

  “You talk of his body,” rejoined the other. “I meant his immortal soul. Will our faith, I ask myself, be strong enough to love him as the receptacle of the Divine Spirit, despite the terrible thing he has done?”

  “Speaking for myself,” said Jurnet, “the answer is no. If you’ll excuse me—” this to Mrs Drue—“I must be getting along.”

  “He thinks me silly,” Mr Amos announced sadly. “And of course he is quite right. Even after what has happened to Arthur, I still find it all but impossible to believe in the reality of evil. My dear Mrs Drue—” he took the woman’s hand again, cradled it between his own that, strong and stubby-fingered, did not seem the hands of a musician—“whatever must you think of such a silly-billy presuming to instruct your son?”

  Christopher’s mother withdrew her hand with a smile.

  “As you’ve given him a solo to sing, you have my permission to be as silly as you please.”

  “How kind! Especially as I fear you are bound to be disappointed with the result. Christopher’s voice isn’t a patch on what Arthur’s was.”

  She was a very gracious woman. She said, “To his mother it will sound sweeter than nightingales.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  At a tall house set in a waste of builders’ rubble, Mr Amos said good night, and Jurnet continued on his way to the river, still worrying about whatever it was that eluded him. Worried too, at another level, about a Vice-
Organist of Angleby Cathedral who did not believe in the reality of evil and who therefore, it followed, might not feel himself constrained by the moral considerations that kept men with less faith in God’s allpervading goodness from going off the rails.

  But would Mr Amos have killed the boy with the sweetest voice in the choir?

  The river, by day so soothing to the spirit, by night compounded Jurnet’s uncertainties. A fragile cage of mist encased the solitary lamp on the footpath; and the tarpaulined boats, moving fretfully at their moorings, made small noises of frustration as the water moved past them, whispering.

  Beyond the prefabs and the scrapheaps, the trailer light shone invitingly. But for once, when Jurnet mounted the steps, calling out as usual to forestall alarm, no Millie came rushing forth in ecstasy.

  The detective pushed the door open to discover Joe Fisher in the bosom of his family, and Millie in the bosom of Joe Fisher. Willie sat glum and as far away from the two as it was possible to get in that enclosed space.

  The man, bundled up in a stained robe of terry-towelling—donned, Jurnet guessed, to protect his underlying finery—greeted the visitor with evident relief. Millie murmured blissfully, “Joe’s here!” and Willie began to cry, tears too large for the small face to accommodate.

  “What’s this, then?” Jurnet edged himself past the lovers. “Here’s a fine welcome for an old pal!”

  Achieving his goal, he lifted the boy on to his lap.

  “That kid—” Joe Fisher said, “he don’t know what he wants.”

  “Hush!” soothed the detective, rocking the child to and fro. He had a sudden picture of Mrs Drue stroking her son’s hair. “What a carry-on!” Glaring at the boy’s father, “He had any tea?”

  “Joe bought us Chinese.” Millie raised her head proudly. She kissed her husband full on the lips. “Didn’t you bring us Chinese, Joe?”

  “Now then!” the man admonished. “You’re making the Inspector blush. Chinese it was, £5.79 of it, straight off the sampan.” He pushed the small, ripe body to one side, and stood up. “Time I was hitting the road.” And to Jurnet, “I’d be glad of a few words outside, squire.”

  Millie began to wail, “Don’t go, Joe!” Jurnet lifted Willie from his lap, disengaged the child’s arms with great gentleness, and whispered in his ear, “Back in a jiffy!” He joined Joe Fisher outside the caravan, not sorry, after the fetor within, to breathe again the cool evening air where curlicues of mist dangled like streamers at a ghostly carnival.

  Joe Fisher removed his outer garment to reveal a natty sports jacket, with shirt and slacks to tone. Then he announced, “I want to give you some money.”

  “One more word,” warned Jurnet, “and I’ll have you down at the station, Millie or no Millie.” He began to walk away.

  “Not what you think, Mr Jurnet!” The man’s hand clamped on the detective’s arm like a band of iron. “When did I ever try to sweeten you? I’d need my head examined!”

  “Take your hand off my arm or I’ll have you for assault!”

  Joe Fisher released his grip. The detective, his lips a thin line of anger, strode away towards the river.

  “Have a heart, Mr Jurnet!” the man cried, hurrying after. “Give a chap a chance!” Jurnet stopped, but kept his face averted. “Thing is—I got t’ be away on business, an’ I can’t hardly ask Millie to go into the bank an’ cash herself a cheque, now can I? Any more ’n I can trust a kid Willie’s age with a handful of ponies. You always make out you’re so fond of ’em, is it any wonder I thought—”

  Jurnet turned round. “Handful of ponies? Planning a world cruise, are you?”

  “Don’t be like that!” the other protested. “You’re the one always on at me to take better care of ’em, and then when I try to do it, look what happens! All it is, there’s this house to be cleared other side of Ely—”

  “Nothing to stop you getting to Ely and back in a day easy.”

  “There’s good stuff there. Fetch a right old price in London. I reckon to take it on to a friend I got works the Portobello Road market—”

  “So? That needn’t make it more than another day, all told. What’s the sudden need of an hon. treasurer for a couple of days?” Grabbing the man by the lapels, “Not thinking of shedding your responsibilities, Joe, are you, by any chance? Skipping it, with or without Mrs Cossey? Because if you are, I’ll have you brought back, I promise you, if it’s from the wilds of Patagonia, and if I have to do it myself!”

  The man tried to back away, found himself held fast.

  “You’re a fine one to be talking about assault!” Jurnet let him go, contemptuously. “An’ as fer Sandra, she don’t even know I’m going.” Joe Fisher straightened his crumpled lapels with tender hands. “You got a dirty mind, Mr Jurnet, tha’s what you got.”

  Jurnet asked quietly, “Then who are you running away from?”

  “Don’t be daft!” Even to himself the disclaimer must have sounded unconvincing, for the man suddenly changed tone and tempo, the words tumbling over each other in his haste to set the record straight. “Do I look like a hit-man, I ask you! Me and my polonies!” Spreading out fingers which indeed justified the metaphor. “Handle a gob of jelly with that lot an’ I’d be a headless wonder afore you could say penny for the guy. But think they want to know?” Joe Fisher went on bitterly. “All because, couple o’ nights ago, in the Lord Nelson, I happened to say, jest making sociable conversation over a few jars, that, if you arst my opinion, the whole bleeding bundle of faggots ought to be blown to smithereens. Me! What couldn’t even blow a smithereen to smithereens!”

  “Now I see!” Jurnet exclaimed, light dawning. “We’re talking about that attack on the League of Patriots—that’s it, isn’t it? Do I gather that you’re denying you threw that petrol bomb through their window?”

  “Don’t you start on me too, Mr Jurnet! When I get my hands on the joker what passed on my innocent words—” Joe Fisher stopped, and began again, disarmingly. “What I’m saying is, if they come after me here, it’s not on’y me that’ll suffer. It’ll be Millie an’ the kid, right? An’ as fer Sandra, she’d do her nut if that bunch of oicks turned up and started turning her place over. I ’aven’t the heart to let it happen. I got ter get out!”

  Jurnet looked past him at the mounds of junk that made up Millie’s Garden of Eden. In the thickening mist some rusting refrigerators shone virginal and mysterious.

  In the flat voice that told his intimates when he was deeply moved, he said, “Know what, Joe? You’re a louse. You’ve got the money. You could have bought Millie a house years ago, and put in someone to look after her—”

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried? I even spoke to Sandra about taking on the job—took her to see a bungalow I got out of the Argus. Bathroom an’ two lavs, with low flush. Fit for a king! But she turned it down flat. Couldn’t let down that Holy Joe of hers in the Close, would you believe it?” Joe Fisher thrust his face close to the detective’s. “Millie’s happy here, in’t that right? An’ Willie—that kid’s got a head on him like a man o’ forty. He’ll keep me in my old age yet.”

  Jurnet observed with satisfaction, “He hates the sight of you.”

  “On’y natural, in’t it?” The man chuckled indulgently. “My ol’ man, I’d’a cheerfully drowned him in his bath for a Mars bar, on’y he never took one.” He tugged at his jacket pocket, and brought out a wad of ten-pound notes. “Fer Willie’s sake—“ he pleaded.

  “Put them away, or I’ll chuck them in the river and you after.”

  “I been frank wi’ you, Mr Jurnet. I’m desperate. You tell me what t’ do.”

  “Ask the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.”

  “Mr Jurnet!” There was hurt and reproof in the man’s voice. When he spoke again, after a measurable pause, there was something else that the detective was unable to put a name to. “In that case, I got no alternative, have I? I’m givin’ myself up.“

  “So you did throw that bomb!”

  “Don’t talk daft!
” Joe Fisher said. “I told you about that. I’m givin’ myself up for the murder of Arthur Cossey.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  “Well, Ben, what do you think?” The Superintendent, wearing evening clothes, sat back in his chair looking beautiful.

  Jurnet, without being aware that he was doing so, glowered at his immaculately turned-out superior officer. Nothing could have convinced him, tired and unkempt as he was, that the Superintendent hadn’t got himself up like that on purpose; one more skirmish in the undeclared war that was, in some way he had never quite been able to fathom, a mutual declaration of love.

  He answered the question. “Hard to say. I’m sure his first thought was to find somewhere safe to hole up—and where safer than the nick? Then, too, he wanted to make sure the League of Patriots wouldn’t go gunning for him either down at the scrapyard or over at Mrs Cossey’s. Once they knew he was out of reach, where they couldn’t touch him, the heat was off, for the time being at least.”

  “The news-flash only said that a man was helping with inquiries.”

  Jurnet said, “I had to keep to the usual form. What I’ve done, though, is have a word with a couple of blokes who, by now, will have spread it round town, and in the Lord Nelson and the Cock and Crow in Farriersgate in particular, that the man we‘re holding is none other than Joe.”

  The Superintendent considered.

  “I suppose that is all that needs to be done?”

  Jurnet’s hostility evaporated. One thing about the Super: you could count on him to say the right thing at the right time.

  “I’ve sent Hinchley and Bly down to Bridge Street, just in case; and a chap to Mrs Cossey’s, on the chance the Patriots know Joe lodges there. PC Blaker’s off duty, but he tells me he intends to be down on the staithe anyway tonight, birdwatching. Seems a long-eared owl’s been seen down there, and he’s offered to keep an eye out on the side. Actually, I reckon it needs eight to ten men to cover the Fisher place properly, what with the river one side and the playing-fields at the back—”