Death of a God

by S. T. Haymon

  ‘Nothing I can tell you.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Jurnet shook his head in a friendly way. ‘For a start, you could tell me why you’re down here carrying on.’

  ‘Law against it, is there?’

  ‘Look,’ said Jurnet, keeping the smile in place, ‘there’s no call to be hostile. No one’s against you, so long as your conscience is clear.’

  ‘Not for you, neither.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, then – that is, if you meant what you said about loving Loy Tanner. If you did, you’d want to help us catch the bastard that did for him. But then, maybe, you were only kidding.’

  ‘What nobody understands,’ said Guido Scarlett, low at first, then louder, ‘was the honesty of him. The rest of you – oh, you got manners, some of you. You lean over backwards to be nice to the poor handicapped bugger whose own mum took one look at him and lit out with a chap come to the door selling life insurance.’ The man drew a trembling breath. ‘A little kid’ll call out, ‘‘Look at that funny man, Ma!’’ and his Ma hushes him up quick, because tha’s manners, in’t it? But that kid, let me tell you, he’s got more sense than all you well-bred shitheads put together. I am what I am!’ Guido Scarlett shouted. ‘Do I make myself clear? And that’s what Loy – Loy out of the whole world – took me for –’

  Jurnet interrupted tartly. ‘You are what you are all right, chum, which is a self-pitying bugger with a chip on his shoulder the size of a giant redwood. No wonder your legs are bandy, carrying that weight! So now, Mr Scarlett –’ with a complete change of tone – ‘if we’ve finished with the histrionics, suppose you tell me exactly what you did with yourself Wednesday night, after the ball was over.’

  There had been little enough to tell. Once the audience had gone, it had been the usual hassle. Take down the backdrop, disconnect the electrics, take a look that everything backstage had been left in decent order. Check that the lads hadn’t left anything behind. ‘Only extra job I had to do, Lenny not being there, was to settle up with the programme sellers and the usherettes. I’d brought along the money in case –’

  ‘How was that, then?’ the detective interrupted.

  ‘Phoned me the night before, didn’t he? Must have been nearly midnight – about having to go up to town on something special that’d come up. He’d try to be back for the gig, but if not, well, I knew what to do.’

  ‘Did he say what the business was in London?’

  ‘You must be joking. I’m only the roadie. Dust beneath the fucking chariot wheels.’

  ‘After the clearing up was done, what then?’

  ‘Helped Lijah with his drums, like I always do. We brought them out to the caravan. Johnny was there already, making cocoa – yuk! I said good-night, went and took a leak, and got myself to bed.’

  Jurnet said, ‘You haven’t mentioned Loy.’

  ‘No one ever went near Loy after a gig, and he never went near nobody.’

  ‘Does that mean I’m to take it he wasn’t visiting young Queenie in her van while you were eavesdropping outside?’

  ‘Who –’ the roadie broke off, and tried again. ‘What you buggering on about?’

  ‘Don’t mess me about. You were seen.’

  The man said, scowling, ‘She had her bloody pa in there. Tha’s all.’

  ‘That’s funny. She says, her pa says, Loy was in there with them.’

  ‘If Queenie says he was there, then he bloody was. Only, never known him do that before.’

  ‘Never known him get himself murdered before either. Never known him get himself crucified. Clearly, not a run of the mill night. As much as you did hear, what were Queenie and her dad talking about?’

  ‘Nothing much. The show. Sir bloody Middlemass’s bloody statues. The lousy weather at Havenlea –’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you didn’t join them. Why you had to hang around outside.’

  ‘That’s easy. Because Mr Punchy King Esquire don’t think I’m a suitable suitor for the hand of his daughter. Simple as that. Told me, if he caught me hanging round her one more time, he’d stuff me an’ put me in his Punch and Judy show, I’d just the legs for it.’

  Jurnet studied the man curiously.

  ‘You’re not one to be frightened off by that kind of talk.’

  The dark face looked, of a sudden, young and defenceless. ‘Queenie. She’s turned eighteen. Old enough to speak for herself.’

  ‘And she doesn’t care for you either?’

  ‘Who bloody expects her to care? Love’s for giving, not taking. When you’re made the way I’m made, copper, you’re ready to settle for a whole lot less than ‘‘care’’, believe me. You’re ready to settle for ‘‘tolerate’’, ‘‘put up with’’, ‘‘don’t actually kick me in the teeth’’. To look after her, look out for her –’ the yearning in the voice was painful to listen to – ‘that’d do me. That’d do me fine. And there’s times – you’ll think I’m making it up, but it’s true – when she’s glad to have me around. When she gives me a smile, I tell you, it’d melt the ice at the North Pole. And then –’ the voice hardened, the face locked itself into its familiar lines of savage pride – ‘along comes Daddy, king of the creeps, only interested in what he can get out of her, if she was in trouble wouldn’t give her a flea’s fart – but if the Prince of Wales came hammering at her door and Daddy said no, she’d scream through the keyhole and tell him to arse off home to Di.’

  ‘What would Daddy have said if it had been Loy Tanner?’

  The roadie burst out laughing: surprising, unforced merriment.

  ‘Do me a favour!’ he exclaimed. ‘Coppers! Questions, questions, and still they haven’t a clue!’

  Jurnet and Sergeant Ellers watched Lenny Bale brushing rose blusher along his cheekbones.

  Jurnet said, ‘One item of information I didn’t have to apply to Mr Scarlett for. On Tuesday night, at approximately 11.15, Loy Tanner asked one of the Virgin staff to direct him to room 317.’

  The man in the lamé dress leaned towards the dressing-table mirror. He raised his hands to his cheeks and spread the colour into two feverish discs. The result was to make him look even more ill than had the pallor it superseded.

  When he had finished, he clasped his hands in his lap, and said calmly, ‘Quite right.’

  ‘Why haven’t you mentioned this earlier?’

  With a flash of spangled tights Second Coming’s manager swung round on the dressing-table stool.

  ‘I also neglected to let you know how many times I went to the loo. Tuesday, for Christ’s sake! Loy was alive and singing like a lark on Wednesday night. I can call the entire house at the Middlemass Auditorium to say I hadn’t killed him. So what business is it of anyone but Loy and me what he was up to the night before?’

  ‘It is very much the business of this murder inquiry, as I’m sure, upon reflection, you will yourself agree. Half an hour later you used the link-up to his caravan to let your roadie know you were going up to London.’ The detective’s voice remained unemphatic. Only gradually, still with no apparent alteration of tone, did the steel begin to show through. ‘Since, without a far higher standard of proof than has so far been offered, I am not prepared to accept that a Mr Brown of California ever did telephone you, I’m forced to conclude it was Mr Tanner’s visit which precipitated the call to Scarlett announcing your sudden change of plan.’

  The other shrugged. ‘Think what you like. Can’t stop people thinking.’

  ‘Very true. So what I ask myself, having that kind of mind, is, first, could Tanner have dropped by at that late hour to go to bed with you? And I answer myself – considering how every one’s been at pains to let me know how he couldn’t bear to be touched – not very likely. I’ve heard nothing to make me wonder if perhaps he didn’t make an exception of you.’

  ‘Cruel! Cruel!’ Lenny Bale burst out, his voice high and vengeful. ‘It’s easy to see, Inspector, you’ve never been in love!’

  ‘Not your brand, certainly. More Loy Tanner’
s, by the sound of it. Much more likely, here on his home territory, he had a sweet little dolly bird waiting up for him.’

  Lenny Bale screamed. He threw himself about. He threw himself at Jurnet, fingers curved into talons.

  ‘Have to put in for danger money with this one,’ Jack Ellers complained some minutes later, as he hauled a bedraggled floozy from under the shower. The streaked face dripped make-up on to the expensive towel in which the little Welshman had thoughtfully enveloped the sopping figure.

  ‘Better go and get a wash yourself,’ he advised his superior officer. ‘There’s a scratch on your left cheek. Don’t hold back with the soap. If you think you ought to go and get your rabies jab right away, I’ll stay with the Queen of the May here till you get back.’

  ‘So long as it isn’t AIDS.’ Jurnet helped the Sergeant roll Second Coming’s manager on to the bed. He covered the ruin with the bedspread, not without charity. Even the slime at the bottom of the barrel was entitled to the respect due to its residual humanity.

  Lenny Bale sat up and said, without drama, ‘If I’d thought it could have been for a woman, I’d have killed him firs.’

  ‘What what could have been for?’ Jurnet asked.

  ‘The money. Thirteen thousand pounds.’

  Chapter Twenty

  When the story was told – or as much of it as Lenny Bale, still visibly shaken but with all his marbles back in place, was able or saw fit to impart – Jurnet said, ‘You left out the most important thing.’

  ‘I’m cold.’ The man snuggled deeper into the bed. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’ll spell it out for you. You tell us you leave Angleby Wednesday before the crack of dawn, you spend the day in London running rings round yourself to get together the £13,000 in cash Loy tells you he has to have in his hands by that night –’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Being who he was, you know as well as I do that if he wanted £13,000 all that bad, all he had to do was walk into the nearest bank at opening time and walk out with ten, twenty times as much, once he’d proved who he was.’

  ‘I told you he never used his own bread, if he could help it.’

  ‘But £13,000! Not quite in the same category, is it, as getting a sudden urge to pee when it’s your round coming up at the Goat and Compasses?’

  ‘Loy knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do for him.’

  ‘I believe you! £13,000! True love can’t come higher than that.’

  The detective walked over to the window. It looked out on to the courtyard where Loy Tanner had parked his van. The detective stood looking down, watched a Jag slide smoothly from its place and out of the gate like a sleek black seal. He turned, silhouetted against the light, and said flatly, ‘I smell blackmail.’

  ‘Crazy!’ Lenny Bale’s voice lacked conviction. He had begun to whimper.

  ‘What was Tanner proposing to do if you came back empty-handed? Go to the police and tell them his manager had been putting his hand in the till? Or call out a few of his old buddies from the quays at Havenlea to rough you up a bit?’ When there was no reply: ‘Look – I’m here to catch a murderer. I couldn’t care less about your squalid little fiddles, if that’s all they are. But I’ll tell you this. You say you managed to get the money together. We can check on that, and we will. You say Tanner called round after the concert and you handed it over –’

  The other nodded.

  ‘– which, so far as we know, makes you the last person to see Loy Tanner before he finally copped it for good and all. Apart from the killer, of course.’ After a pause: ‘Unless we’re talking about one and the same person.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ The other’s voice had strengthened. ‘I stood at that window both days, just as you did now, only the other room, and I watched him drive in and I saw him drive out again. Both times.’

  ‘So sure? At dead of night?’

  ‘You couldn’t mistake that white van. Besides, he was crucified, wasn’t he, for Christ’s sake! Where’d I ever get the nerve or the muscle to nail up a guy on a cross?’

  ‘Nailed, was he? Don’t underestimate yourself, Mr Bale. Over at Headquarters, ever since it happened, we’ve been crucifying volunteers round the clock, one after the other, to see if it could, or could not, be a one-man job; and, if it could be, does it take a young Hercules. And the answer is, no sweat, provided you take it easy and, like in the instruction books, proceed one step at a time. On the other hand, even in the event you’re no handyman, maybe you too had buddies over at Havenlea, ready to give a pal a hand in time of trouble?’

  Second Coming’s manager hoisted himself to a sitting position. At the renewed sight of the lamé dress, the fitful springs of Jurnet’s compassion dried up completely.

  The man exclaimed: ‘Maybes! Perhapses! Talk – that’s all it is. You don’t know who did it, so you pick on me. Because I loved Loy, because I tried to help him every way I could, this is what I get for it. Because I’m vulnerable –’

  Jurnet interposed cheerfully, ‘You’re that, all right.’

  ‘You can’t keep me here in Angleby unless you arrest me. And how are you going to do that, without a single piece of solid evidence to back it up with? I’ve got to get back to London –’

  ‘Nobody’s stopping you, Mr Bale. Just so long as we know where to get in touch.’

  ‘I –’ the voice faltered, the man dropped back against the pillows. With coy abandon, one of the dress straps slipped off the shoulder. Jurnet regarded it with a moody disgust. ‘As soon as I feel a little stronger –’

  ‘And the shiva’s over, eh?’ Jurnet straightened his back, took a deep breath. It was not enough. He felt an urgent need for some fresh air. On a sudden impulse, he picked up the man’s dressing gown from the foot of the bed, the cashmere luxurious in his hand, and threw it over the dressing-table mirror.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Lenny Bale sounded frightened.

  ‘Just another quaint old Hebrew custom. After a death they always cover up looking-glasses.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. Just that’s what they do, so I’m told.’

  There was certainly something creepy about the shrouded glass. On his way to the bedroom door, the detective relented.

  ‘Want me to take it down?’

  ‘No. Leave it.’

  Jurnet turned the car into Sebastopol Terrace and nearly reversed immediately back into Gallipoli Street. Miriam’s red Golf was parked outside number 12.

  The detective could not have said whether he was pleased or annoyed to find it there. Rather, taken aback: uncertain how best to deal with this overlapping of his two lives.

  As he watched, Miriam, loaded with a pile of sweater pieces, backs and fronts and sleeves all separate and swathed in polythene, emerged from the front door and made her way, carefully with her burden, down the narrow path to the gate. With her bronze hair, corduroy suit of a golden colour, and flaunting orange scarf, she looked like a sun of her own, standing in for that other one obstinately skulking behind the grey sky. Even at a distance Jurnet could feel her warmth, or so it seemed to him, and was suddenly racked with the painful joy of seeing her again.

  By contrast, Mara Felsenstein, standing in her doorway in a shapeless grey sweater and skirt, looked old enough to be Miriam’s mother. There was a droop to her shoulders, a dowdiness that seemed as much innate as due to her age or the cut of her clothes. When she saw Jurnet getting out of his car, a deeper shadow crossed her face, to be followed at once by a determined rearrangement of features which, with a little wishful thinking, might be taken for a smile.

  Not that man again! The detective could guess very well what must be in the woman’s mind. There were some mothers of murdered sons who could never stop talking, as if by keeping their violated children enmeshed in a net of words, they could keep them from slipping away for ever into the dark; and others who grudged every syllable. Once speak the word ‘death’ and it was unretractable.

&nb
sp; Only a few, a very few, faced their loss with the honesty it deserved.

  Miriam, stacking her knitwear in the back of the Golf, looked up with an ill-concealed flash of joy at Jurnet’s approach.

  ‘Hi!’

  ‘Hello.’

  With a significant little flick of the head towards number 12, Miriam murmured, ‘Go easy with her. She’s very near breaking point.’

  ‘Thank you for your confidence in me.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’ She made a little face, utterly delicious. Her packages stowed, she turned towards her lover – ex-lover?

  ‘How would you like to stand me dinner tonight?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what time I’ll be through.’

  ‘That’s no answer.’

  ‘I’ll try again.’ Against Jurnet’s will, and out of his control, resentment rose to the surface. ‘Dinner by all means, so long as you don’t object to three at table.’ She stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘That corpse with his skull bashed in – remember? My mate, my dear old pal. As you’ve so rightly pointed out, we go about everywhere together.’

  Mara Felsenstein led the way indoors. In the living-room-cum-workroom the knitting machines were covered, the grate empty, the ashes sloppily cleaned out. A cheap electric fire stood on the hearth, one bar on, scarcely enough to take the chill off the air. The whole room seemed to have lost the spruce appearance which had so impressed Jurnet on his first visit.

  Mara Felsenstein said, ‘I didn’t realize you knew Miss Courland.’

  ‘Miriam?’ The detective couldn’t bear to hear even her name mentioned so distantly in connection with himself. ‘Coppers get to know everybody in their patch sooner or later.’

  ‘How nice to know so many people! Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Me and the milkman, eh? I wouldn’t say no, if it isn’t too much trouble. You’re looking a bit done up.’

  The extraordinary eyes, only a little dulled, regarded Jurnet with a tired honesty. ‘Do I? I suppose I do. It’s funny. Inside – the me at the middle of myself, if you know what I mean – feels it has come to terms with what has happened. Accepted it. It’s the outside, the stupid shell you wouldn’t think, would you, had any feelings of its own apart from what your mind puts into it, that’s finding it hard to cope.’