Death of a God

by S. T. Haymon

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/sthaymon

  Contents

  S T Haymon

  Author’s note

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  PART TWO

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  PART THREE

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  S. T. Haymon

  Death of a God

  S T Haymon

  Sylvia Theresa Haymon was born in Norwich, and is best known for her eight crime fiction novels featuring the character Inspector Ben Jurnet. Haymon also wrote two non-fiction books for children, as well as two memoirs of her childhood in East Anglia.

  The Ben Jurnet series enjoyed success in both the UK and the US during Haymon’s lifetime: Ritual Murder (1982) won the prestigious CWA Silver Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association. Stately Homicide (1984), a skilful variation on the country house mystery, was praised by the New York Times as a ‘brilliantly crafted novel of detection … stylish serious fiction’, and favourably compared to the work of Dorothy L. Sayers.

  Author’s note

  Anyone who knows Norfolk will recognize that Norwich is the starting point for my city of Angleby. But only the starting point. The city and its inhabitants are the figments of my imagination; and no reference is made to any living person.

  S. T.H.

  PART ONE

  Question

  Chapter One

  The storm broke without warning. One moment the day was bright, brittle with the sunshine of early spring; the next, rain lanced down from clouds split by lightning into convulsions of angry air, thunder blundering about the sky like a drunken giant trying to find his way home in the dark. Fingers of wind tweaked tiles from roof tops, whirled desiccated bits of this and that, the detritus of winter, upward for a brief resurrection before the rain beat them back to earth again, doubly dead.

  The rain hit the ground at a sharp angle and turned the slope into a series of rivulets, now separating, now coalescing, as they found their way downhill. Amidst all the hullaballoo only the three crosses planted a little below the summit held their stillness and their silence, the three figures that hung upon them motionless and unaware. Water dripped from their soaked hair, their eyebrows, noses, chins; glistened on their contorted bodies and on their faces, two of them with eyeballs uprolled to heaven in agonized supplication or incredulous surprise (it was difficult to decide which), the third, the central one, chin sunk on bony chest, inscrutable, a shell from which the spirit had departed so thoroughly as to leave behind scarcely even the semblance of one-time life. A pigeon, thrown out of gear by the sudden change in the weather, landed clumsily on the horizontal of the central cross, a little above a pierced hand; found no comfort there and took off again, beating a laborious way towards better shelter. In the lightning flashes, hailstones which had impaled themselves on the crown of thorns which encircled the down-drooping head shone like pearls.

  Detective-Inspector Benjamin Jurnet, sheltering in the doorway of Mucho Macho, the menswear shop on the eastern side of Angleby Market Place, peered out at the downpour and observed sourly, ‘God save us from trendy bishops! Wouldn’t surprise me if His Grace and the blooming Parks and Recreation Committee hadn’t laid this on as well, the two of them between them. Wasn’t there a storm when it really happened?’ Quickly correcting himself, glad that neither Miriam nor Rabbi Schnellman was within earshot, ‘When it was supposed to have happened?’

  ‘In that case, boyo, compose yourself for a long wait.’ In his ripe, Welsh Chapel voice, Detective-Sergeant Jack Ellers, Jurnet’s companion and colleague, launched himself into an approximate quotation: ‘‘‘Now from the sixth hour there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour. The temple veil was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, the earth did quake and the rocks rent’’ – and that’s to say nothing of graves opening and giving up their dead.’ Finishing sunnily: ‘Not to worry, though. Not even God in all His glory’s going to open Angleby graves without a union card.’

  The rain had begun to ease, the giant lurching off to the north as if he had suddenly remembered it was the Norfolk coast he had been making for all along. Stall-holders in the Market Place emerged from their lairs and began taking off the covers they had hastily spread over their piles of fruit and veg, their sheets and pillow cases, video cassettes and girlie mags. They poked with broom handles at the striped awnings bellying with water. By the time the two detectives had crossed the street and ascended the main alleyway between the stalls, dodging the not always fortuitous cascades dislodged by the prodding brooms, a tentative sunbeam was brightening the gilded numbers on the City Hall clock.

  Jurnet’s opinion of authorities ecclesiastical and municipal alike was not improved by a closer view of the crosses on the hill. They had been inserted into one of the flower beds in the narrow strip of public garden which terminated the business part of the Market Place at its upper, western, end. Daffodils in pinched-looking bud clustered about their bases. The pigeon – was it the same one? – had returned to its former resting place on the central cross. It croo-crooed a little in a self-satisfied way, the pink and green on the back of its neck handsome in the strengthening light; probed about with its beak under one wing, and defecated on the arm of the crucified Christ.

  ‘Bugger off!’ Jurnet shouted, clapping his hands. The bird, inured to the much greater clatter of the market, regarded him beadily and did it again.

  Jack Ellers, referring, not too delicately, to the fact that his superior officer, albeit with no notable result to date, was studying to convert to Judaism, remarked cheekily, ‘Shouldn’t have thought, Ben, it was your pigeon any longer? Besides, in the Holy Land, if you think about it, it’d have been a lot worse than pigeons. Ravens or vultures, more likely.’

  ‘Don’t let on to the Bishop, for Christ’s sake, or he’ll be phoning the Zoo aviary before you know it!’ Impatient with his own ill humour: ‘And it’s nothing to do with religion, either. It’s simply – well, it’s a matter of taste,’ he finished lamely.

/>   ‘Darling, you are growing o-old, Silver threads among the gold –’ The little Welshman trilled a few bars and regarded his companion’s dark good looks with a blend of pity and amusement. ‘Comes to even the sexiest of us sooner or later.’

  ‘That’ll be enough of that, Sergeant!’ Jurnet returned his attention to the silent figures looming above him. Forcing his feelings into marketable, if makeshift, order: ‘All I meant is – if it was just somebody’s cock-eyed way of celebrating Easter I wouldn’t say a word. As you say, it’s none of my business any more. But you can bet your bottom dollar, however else they may or may not have looked on Calvary in whatever it was AD, none of ’em looked the spitting image of a bloody pop group that happens – just happens – to be playing the town this week!’

  ‘Not just any old pop group, laddie. One from Angleby! Return of the native son loaded down with gold and platinum discs to the simple Council log-cabin where it all began, with skiffle learnt at his Mammy’s knee. That’s the whole point, boyo, don’t you see?’ Hard to tell if Ellers were serious or still fooling. ‘It’s called making religion relevant to the young. Not their fault the Apostles, poor sods, hadn’t so much as a Jew’s harp between the lot of ’ em, even if Jesus did say to Peter, ‘‘Thou art my rock and roll,’’ or words to that effect. Personally, I think the Bishop’s on to something.’

  ‘Hm! Next thing you know, he’ll be chucking the organ out of the cathedral and plugging in a synthesizer.’

  ‘Do wonders for the collection, I’ll tell you that! Did you hear that his holiness is attending tonight in person? With purple hair, I shouldn’t wonder, now that bishops don’t go in for those ducky purple pinnies any more. His worship won’t be paying for his ticket himself, that’s for sure. What they’re changing hands for, you could pick up the crown jewels for less.’

  ‘Just as well I hadn’t planned to go. Miriam’s the one buys their albums day they come out. Keeps them over at her place, thank goodness, so I don’t have to suffer.’ Jurnet continued his gaze upward, deliberately concentrating his attention on the two outer figures of the trio. Since setting in motion the long-drawn-out process of conversion he found any encounter with Jesus, in whatever shape or form, an embarrassment, on a par with running into your old headmaster when you were out on the town with a bird on your arm in fishnet tights and a black leather mini.

  One of the outer figures – naked except for a plaid jockstrap – was of a black man, with a noble physique and strongly etched features which must have been even more striking when not distorted by the pangs of crucifixion. Water still dripped rhythmically from the coloured beads which ended each of his clustering braids. The second subsidiary figure was as tall, but of slighter build; white, a neat, efficient body topped by a face of equivocal charm. With him, even the terminal agony seemed under control, informed by an intelligence already detached from the suffering flesh. The full, sensual mouth was open in a silent scream which could just as easily have been a grin at the absurdity of his own predicament. Only a clown, it seemed to be proclaiming, with no respect for the fitness of things, could have allowed himself to be crucified in baby-blue boxer shorts with a pink stripe down the sides.

  Both figures were strongly modelled, every muscle and tendon made explicit: stomach sucked in, the flesh taut over the arching ribs. By contrast, the central figure was a mere sketch, arms and legs seeming a bit too long, hands and feet a bit too large; otherwise, only a hint of nipples, no discernible navel, a blank oval of face obscured by straight reddish hair falling to the shoulders.

  Could be, thought Jurnet, forcing himself to look, to make a judgement, it was this very lack of definition which made the image so compelling. Clever bugger, whoever had thought it up. Clever too, to have ducked out of making the Christ figure actually look like the third member of the pop group. Not even the Bishop could have stood for that. If it just so happened, drawing on your own imagination, you chose to fill in the blank with the features of Loy Tanner, the lead singer and darling of the charts, the responsibility was yours and nobody else’s.

  Only why, then, taking into account all that had been deliberately left out, had its maker fashioned a figure full frontal, not so much as a G-string, and equipped with a set of tools formidable enough to set any pagan fertility god drooling with envy?

  Chapter Two

  Jack Ellers exclaimed in the accents of a stage copper, ‘Hello, hello, hello! What have we here, then?’

  A small white van, driven too fast, had come hurtling round the corner into the roadway on the further side of the strip of garden. Abreast of the statuary, the driver slammed on the brakes and the vehicle slid, protesting, to a halt. Across the side of the van, a rainbow painted in psychedelic colours arched over the words, printed in Gothic black-letter: Second Coming.

  The man who emerged from the driver’s seat was a surprise and a discomfort. Not a dwarf exactly – too tall for that – but a grotesque, a massive torso set upon stumpy legs that moved as if in perpetual apology to the splendid body above. The face was dark and Italianate, the black hair curly and vigorous. The man wore an anorak over a shirt of bright checks, his Levis hacked short by a hand that had scorned to disguise its anger at the need for the alteration.

  As the two detectives watched, the man rumbled bow-legged to the rear of the van, unlocked the doors, and took out a metal ladder and a large, patterned beach towel, both of which – with no regard for the daffodils – he tossed over the low wall which closed off the garden from the street. Jurnet, on the point of lecturing him on this want of respect for municipal flora, bit back the words as he observed the effort with which the man himself painfully negotiated the insignificant obstacle.

  Once over, however, he propped the ladder against the cross where the black man hung, positioned the towel over his shoulder, and then scampered up the rungs with a surprising, simian ease, the grim face relaxing with the pleasure of, for once, doing something physical well. He took the towel in both hands and, bending forward, rubbed the braided hairdo energetically, the beads clicking like thrown dice, and then began a brisk towelling of the arms and chest, leaning dangerously out from the ladder to reach the parts furthest away.

  Alarmed for his safety, Jurnet stepped forward and grasped the uprights, placing a steadying foot on the bottom rung.

  So far from exhibiting gratitude, the man’s face darkened.

  ‘How is it some geezers never learn to mind their own bleeding business?’

  ‘It is my business, chummy. Detective-Inspector Jurnet, in case you’re interested. Someone give you permission, then, to muck up these flowers?’

  ‘Move off, man, will ya? You’re making me nervous. The Bishop give me permission, if you must know. Got it direct from God, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Jurnet shook his head.

  ‘Not in the Bishop’s power, chum, to give you permission or not, as the case may be. Not even, with all due respect, God’s. Property of Angleby Borough Council, paid for by the citizens of this fair city. My advice, if you doubt my word, come down from that ladder before you break your neck, go over to the Bishop’s Palace and stamp on some of His Lordship’s flowers and see how he likes it.’

  The sun had come out strongly again. A myriad of tiny rainbows glimmered in the drops which still bedewed the bodies of the crucified men. The sight seemed to excite the man on the ladder to a frenzy. ‘Jesus!’ He cast up his eyes despairingly at the bleached sky, and back again to Jurnet. ‘Stop me getting on with my job and we’ll bleeding sue you!’

  ‘Oh ah? Sue me for what, would that be?’

  ‘You’re the ones know the names. All I know is, stop me getting these three dried off proper and you’ll be lucky to leave the court with the shirt on your back. They cost a bleeding fortune. Jesus!’ The man wailed again as the sun seemed to grow brighter, to aim its shafts at his charges with brassy malice. ‘Look at that, for Christ’s sake!’ – pointing to a small, mottled swelling on the negro’s left thigh.

  Jurnet
tilted his head, took a look. ‘Nothing but a bit of roughness. Could be anything.’

  ‘Could be, you mean, because he’s been left out wet in the sun because some toffee-nosed dick won’t let me get him dried off proper! Or could be because the fucking Israelite what made the three of ’ em comes from some place it hasn’t rained since the Ark and hadn’t a clue what’d happen if they got wet and then dried quick by the sun. Ten minutes more of you holding me up and the whole bleeding bunch’ll look like they’ve broke out with leprosy.’

  ‘You don’t say!’ Jurnet repressed a sudden impish conviction that the Israelite in question had known more about the English climate than he had let on. Then, as a Jew-to-be, atoning: ‘Why didn’t you say so before? Any more towels in that van? We‘ll give you a hand.’

  ‘Queenie!’ the man called, and the passenger side of the van opened, letting out a blare of pop music and a girl. The girl was very young, wispily blonde. Except for a quiff of fluorescent emerald rising spikily above a childishly bulging forehead, there was nothing special about her. What was special was the something in the man’s voice when he called her name. Jurnet recognized that something – felt it reverberate deep down in his own throat as it did whenever he himself spoke, whenever he so much as thought, the name of Miriam.

  The girl came out sulkily, as if the something meant nothing to her apart from boredom and irritation. She listened to what the man had to say, reached back into the van, jeans stretched tight over meagre buttocks, and straightened up with two more beach towels in her arms. With a flashy ease that could have been intended as a deliberate taunt to one who had just accomplished the same manoeuvre with so much effort, she skipped over the low wall, and walked unconcernedly to the foot of the ladder, mauling more daffodils as she came; surrendered the towels without curiosity into the waiting arms of the two detectives, and turned to go back the way she had come.