Death of a God

by S. T. Haymon

  He leaned over towards the puppet and pushed the tankard of beer forward invitingly.

  Jack Ellers said, ‘Might as well finish it up yourself before it goes flat.’

  ‘Do the little fellow out of his drink!’ the other exclaimed. ‘What you take me for? But I won’t say no to another, since you ask.’

  At a nod from his superior officer, the little Welshman went back to the bar.

  Punchy King observed moodily, ‘Meant to bring her luck, poor cow, that’s a laugh. All she’s got out of this Second Coming business, I suppose, is out of a job – unless she can bring herself to shack up with that mini-Frankenstein, Scarlett, heaven forbid.’

  The man demolished the second pint as thirstily as the first. Jurnet waited for the liquid to go down, and then said, ‘I’d be glad to know what you, Tanner and Queenie were talking about in her caravan, Wednesday night after the concert.’

  ‘I’d be glad to tell you if I could remember what the hell it was. Didn’t Queenie say?’

  The detective had no intention of letting on that Queenie King had been no more forthcoming than her pa.

  ‘Jest conversation,’ she had answered vaguely. ‘Like Gawd it’s cold, and when are you going to get this bloody place cleaned up. Jest conversation.’

  Jurnet said to the Punch and Judy man, ‘I’d like to have your own recollection.’

  ‘Jesus, I dunno. The weather, I suppose: how the gig went. If I’d known I was listening to famous last words I’d’ve paid more attention. Taken a cassette and made myself a million. As it was – I’ll tell you this, though –’ King sat up as straight as his round shoulders permitted – ‘there was somthing different, come to think about it. I’ve seen Loy often enough after gigs to know the way he was, usually – wrung-out like a pair of old drawers. To look at him you’d never guess the fans had just been shouting their heads off like he was a god.’

  ‘And Wednesday?’

  ‘Wednesday he was on a high, over the moon. First go off, I thought, oy, oy, what’s he been taking? But it didn’t take long to see it wasn’t a high at all: more a deep, as you might say. Something so filled him up, whatever it was, something deep down inside him, he didn’t seem hardly to listen to what Queenie and me were saying, such as it was.’

  ‘But he was the one who came to the caravan in the first place,’ Jurnet was quick to point out. ‘He must have had a reason.’

  Into the eyes of the Punch and Judy man had come the same sardonic twinkle which was fixed for ever in the eyes of the puppet at his side. He tapped the tip of his great nose with an index finger long and predatory.

  ‘Could be,’ he suggested blandly, ‘he wanted to say how grateful he was.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Back at Angleby, the air was as still as at Havenlea it had been turbulent. Heavy with a persistent burden of frost, it burned the face like ice-cold steel. In the Market Place, the fancy-goods stalls with their chicks and bunnies, their brightly coloured Easter eggs, looked ridiculous. Plainly, somebody hunting for the Santas and the holly sprigs had opened the wrong box.

  Just the same, driving in from the Ring Road, penetrating the city as if through the successive layers of an onion – first the new houses, then the leftovers from the ’twenties; suburbs Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian, and so into the medieval core – Jurnet found his spirits rising in proportion to the changes in architectural style. Partly this was because he could never re-enter his native city, back from a journey however brief, without feeling a frisson of love and pride; and partly because of the feeling that he had at last begun to get on terms with Loy Tanner.

  And to get on terms with Loy Tanner was to get on terms with his killer.

  The duty sergeant greeted the two detectives with, ‘Had a good paddle?’ And: ‘You’ve got visitors. Two. Been waiting best part of an hour. Mr Batterby spoke to them, but it seems only Detective-Inspector Jurnet will do. They’re foreigners,’ the duty sergeant said, speaking out of pity, not prejudice. ‘Got their names here, if I spelled ’ em right.’

  Jurnet looked over the man’s shoulder, and read in the log-book: Fatima Valdao. Luis Ferrol.

  ‘Did they say what it was about?’

  ‘Woman did the talking, what there was of it. Funny how some of those foreign women have a sort of downy skin, have you noticed? Don’t go for hair on a bird’s face myself as a general rule, but, somehow, it makes them look soft and cuddly, know what I mean? Can’t help wondering, eh, if they’re like that all over.’

  Jurnet said coldly – the duty sergeant was not one of his favourites – ‘Seems you wasted your time, all those package trips to the Costa Brava.’

  ‘All the birds on the Costa Brava come from Wigan. The joke of it was,’ the man went on, unputdownable, ‘one of the few things she did say more than once – that’s what it sounded like, anyway – was ‘‘virgin’’. You only had to take one look at her to see, whatever else she was, it couldn’t be that.’

  Jurnet made for the stairs. The duty sergeant, who sincerely believed there was no one on the Angleby force better liked than himself, looked after the tall, dark figure kindly, and remarked to Sergeant Ellers, about to follow, ‘Just up his street, eh? Valentino!’

  Miss Fatima Valdao had brought along another strip of her apron, together with a jar containing a gritty cream which smelled of the Mediterranean. On the whole it seemed easier to take off one’s jacket, roll up a shirt sleeve, than protest. With Jack Ellers looking on with benevolent approval, and the PCs down at the other end of the room shaking with silent laughter, the woman unwound the old bandage with her strong brown fingers.

  At sight of the wound, the little Welshman exclaimed with concern, ‘You could do with a couple of stitches in that.’

  ‘Is not a sweater with a hole,’ the woman observed scornfully. ‘Or I bring my needle and darning.’ She smeared the ointment liberally over the gash, and rebandaged the arm with a professional competence which, so far as Jurnet was concerned, compensated in some measure for the odour of ratatouille – or was it bouillabaisse? – spreading through the room. ‘Two, three day,’ Miss Valdao pronounced, lifting her skirt and wiping her hands unconcernedly on her slip, ‘and all gone.’

  Trusting she did not mean the arm, Jurnet rebuttoned his shirt sleeve, shrugged on his jacket. If the smell got too much for him, he thought, he could always scrape the stuff off, stick it between two bits of bread, and have it for lunch. But already a delicious feeling of ease was pervading the injured member, making him realize for the first time how much it had been hurting.

  ‘I must say it was very kind of you to come in and patch me up,’ he said in all sincerity. ‘I’m most grateful.’

  ‘Am come something else,’ the woman corrected him, brushing the thanks aside. ‘Am come for that someone is asking at Virgin about Mr Tanner, and –’ pushing forward her silent companion like a mother impatiently encouraging her child to do its party piece – ‘this foolish man is see, and says nothing.’

  Mr Luis Ferrol, a small man with a face which looked anything but foolish, said, in surprisingly good English, ‘The policeman asked who sees Loy Tanner on Wednesday night. I see him Tuesday, so is of no interest.’

  ‘Oh yes, it is!’ Jurnet contradicted, a sudden conviction that at last he was on to something tangible sharpening his tone. Sergeant Ellers unobtrusively got out notebook and pencil. ‘Take your time, Mr Ferrol. What I want you to do is tell us exactly what you saw, and when, as close as you can make it.’

  ‘I speak of Tuesday night,’ Luis Ferrol said severely, as if he had no great faith in either the intelligence or the accuracy of the Angleby police force. ‘Quite late, I think. I am on night duty and after eleven, about eleven and a quarter, perhaps, I go outside for a cigarette. Very strict ‘‘No Smoking’’ in the kitchen, except for the chef. One day,’ the man announced in a voice of dry precision, ‘I will be chef, and I too drop my cigarette ash on the canard à l’orange to show the fucking customers what I think of them.


  ‘From the kitchen,’ Luis Ferrol continued, back to his normal tone, ‘is door to the car-park, and I am standing there smoking – not long because is very cold – when white van comes and Loy Tanner comes out.’

  ‘There was enough light for you to recognize who it was?’

  ‘Not enough. At first I think only, crazy young man to be out, the night so cold, in only T-shirt and jeans, no sweater, no anorak. Then he goes to the door into hotel for visitors, where there is plenty light, and I see it is Loy Tanner; and I think to myself, that one, he has his money to keep him warm.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure it was him?’

  ‘I am sure, because he go into hotel and in one minute he is out again, and he come to me more near than you are now. I think he sees the red of my cigarette and know I am there, by kitchen door.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘In lobby of car-park entrance is a single lift which have notice to say ‘‘Annexe Only’’. So he come out again and ask me if lift is OK for taking him to room 317.’

  Jurnet’s heart leaped. ‘You’re sure you’ve got the right number?’

  ‘Sure. Is Fatima’s floor, how I know. Sometimes, when I have afternoon off, and Fatima is on duty but not busy, I go to see her in room 317.’ Mr Ferrol smiled confidingly, as one man to another. ‘I know 317 very well. You understand me? If 317 is taken, we go in 318 or 319 or whatever is empty. All good beds, but 317 best. Very good springs.’ Frowning: ‘In summer, with many tourists, sometimes all rooms are taken. All morning tourists sightsee. Afternoons they say their feet kill them, they rest on bed. By time they are ready to walk some more, I must be back in kitchen for preparing dinner. But this time of year, no problem.’

  Well, well, thought Jurnet, fascinated by this glimpse of the submerged underlife of a four-star hotel rising like scum to the surface. Still, not his business, thank goodness.

  ‘Did Tanner say anything else?’

  ‘Nothing. I tell him for 317 he must go through to the main hall, where is lift will take him to the third floor. He goes and does not say thank you.’

  Jurnet and Sergeant Ellers exchanged glances.

  Jurnet said, ‘Well, Mr Ferrol, I’m sure we’re very much obliged to you for your help with our inquiry. Just for the record, Detective-Sergeant Ellers will get what you have just told us typed out, and ask you to sign it when you have read it through and are satisfied that it is an accurate transcript. I’m sure you won’t mind waiting a few minutes longer.’

  ‘When you type what I tell about Fatima’s rooms, will you show the manager?’ The man did not sound bothered one way or the other.

  The detective answered easily, ‘I do my job, and leave him to get on with his.’ Turning to the woman, ‘And Miss Valdao – I hope I’ve got that right – thank you again for bringing Mr Ferrol along to see us.’

  ‘Nothing,’ the woman protested: took Jurnet’s hand and kissed it.

  Ferrol said, ‘You come to Virgin restaurant, I see everything is very nice for you.’

  Down at the other end of the room the young PCs were killing themselves.

  ‘Thanks very much.’ Jurnet retrieved his hand as soon as he decently could. ‘One thing’s for sure, though. After what you’ve just let on about the chef, I’ll know not to order the duck.’

  A slow, beatific smile suffused the sallow features of Luis Ferrol.

  ‘You want I should tell you what he does to the boeuf en croute?‘

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Do you know what Jews do when somebody dies?’ Lenny Bale demanded, when Jurnet and Jack Ellers, receiving no answer to their knock, and disregarding the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, entered room 320 with Fatima’s pass key. Second Coming’s manager evinced neither surprise nor displeasure at the intrusion. ‘They sit about on low chairs for a week, and all their friends come round as if they were paying a social call. They bring cakes, and smoked salmon sandwiches, make tea, tell jokes. They call it a shiva. I was taken to one once, and it was marvellous. It made you see how it’s possible to lose the one person who made life worth living and still go on loving God instead of cursing his guts.’

  ‘My information –’ Jurnet spoke with careful detachment, avoiding the sly, sideways glance of his subordinate – ‘is that it’s only done in the case of a close member of the family.’

  ‘And Loy, you mean, wasn’t even a second cousin three times removed? Only my bloody life, that’s all.’

  Bale swivelled round on the stool on which he was perched in front of the dressing table; readdressed himself to the task with which he had been occupied when the detectives came through the door. A mess of cosmetics littered the dressing-table top. A fair sample of them had found their way to his face.

  The man looked ghastly. The eyes were smudged about with purple shadow: improbable lashes, heavy with mascara, swept up and down in crazy arcs, depositing a stippling of sooty specks on to a skin powdered to a graveyard pallor. The mouth, deep crimson, was painted in a cupid’s bow.

  The man wore a sleeveless dress of purple lamé, slashed from hem to thigh and from neck to navel. Bracelets concealed some of the scars on the naked arms. Those that remained visible exactly matched the colour of the lamé.

  Lenny Bale said, ‘Did I tell you I offered to have a sex change, if it would make him feel differently towards me?’ He studied the travesty in the mirror with narrowed eyes, apparently not displeased with what he saw. Two large tears, filtering through the absurd lashes, compounded the ruin of the maquillage. ‘I’m sorry now I didn’t go ahead with it. I ought to’ve, even if Loy did fall about at the idea. ‘‘That titchy chipolata!’’ was what he said – that boy, you had to laugh! – ‘‘What difference could that make?’’’

  ‘Mr Bale,’ said Jurnet, reminding himself, with some effort, that there was a Jewish prayer which thanked God for the marvellous diversity of His creatures – ‘Will you please tell me exactly when on Tuesday Mr Brown of California telephoned you?’

  ‘Oh –’ intent on drawing an ebony line through his left eyebrow – ‘who can say exactly? Some time in the afternoon.’

  ‘But how is that possible? You were out at the University all day overseeing the preparations for the concert. My information is that it was getting on for dark before you broke up.’

  The man put his eyebrow pencil down.

  ‘You’re right! Now I think of it, the call came through as I was getting myself a shower before dinner.’

  ‘Between 7 and 8 p.m., would that be?’

  The other shrugged. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘How is it, then, it wasn’t far from midnight when you phoned the roadie to tell him of your sudden change of plan – that you had to be back in London next day?’

  ‘I was in two minds. I’d never missed a gig before except for illness. It took me that long to decide. Anyway, I don’t think it was as late as that.’

  ‘Mr Scarlett says it was.’

  ‘Mr Scarlett. You don’t have to believe every word that midget tells you.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘He knows his job, I’ll give him that. Only reason I keep him on. He affects me aesthetically. Still, I could give him the sun and the moon, and any harm he can do me, the shit, he’ll do it.’

  ‘Why should he do that?’

  ‘Jealousy. Jealous of me and Loy being so close.’ Bale swished the split skirt aside to show shapely limbs in spangled tights. ‘Jealous of anybody with a pair of gams to set the world on fire. Ask him, why don’t you?’

  ‘I just did.’

  Guido Scarlett was not in his caravan, the University deep in the peace of the Easter vacation. Eventually a gardener, raking the last of the old year’s rubbish from under the oak trees, had pointed downhill towards the little river which formed the University’s northern boundary.

  The detective’s shoes made little squelching noises and left tracks of a darker green on the sodden grass. The landscape had an air of unreality, the trees two-dimensional, a sc
ribble of smoke rising lazily from the chimney of a farmhouse on the further side of the stream up to a smoke-coloured sky. Winter; except that the still air was pierced like an arrow with birdsong and a springtime racket of rooks. Two swans moved silently with the current, the ripples widening behind them.

  Jurnet walked on, preoccupied, unseeing. The conviction that, if only he had the mother wit to recognize it, he already possessed enough knowledge to name the killer of Loy Tanner, tormented him with a hurt that was almost physical.

  Once he had looked up the word ‘clue’ in a dictionary. ‘That which guides or threads a way through a maze.’ All right for lexicographers, when every copper knew that, nine times out of ten, it was just the opposite: a will o’ the wisp luring you into the nearest bog with its delusive light.

  What would have happened to that Ancient Greek bloke back in the labyrinth if the wool, the clue, he’d been unwinding had suddenly broken off and he couldn’t find the end down there in the dark?

  Maybe he ought to ask Miriam for a ball of her knitting wool to practise on.

  As always, the thought, the mere name, of Miriam both lightened and intensified his mood. He looked about him and was suddenly astonished by the beauty of the scene: possessed by an unreasonable joy that even the sight of Guido Scarlett, down on his knees by the river, his face buried in his hands, could not entirely dispel.

  Jurnet said, in his jolly-rozzer voice, ‘Come along, now! Things can’t be as bad as all that.’

  The man crossed himself and got to his feet; such a small elevation that the detective was shocked afresh by the disparity of scale between limbs and torso, embarrassed by having to make the man look up to speak to him. Humiliation should be a punishment deserved, not the visitation of a pitiless god.

  ‘What you want?’

  ‘A few words, that’s all.’