Death of a God

by S. T. Haymon

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Jurnet said, ‘So, of your own knowledge, you’ve no idea what happened between the two of them down here at the bridge?’

  The bridge. The detective put both hands on the parapet, feeling the ancient bricks powdery to the touch. Here the girl had stood, her hands on the brickwork as his were now.

  Francesca’s mother turned on him fiercely. ‘I know everything that happened! First, he put his arms round her as if he was going to make everything all right between them. Then he tipped her over the wall into the river.’

  ‘Have you any evidence for saying that?’

  ‘I knew that’s what you’d say! Once a copper, always a copper! Evidence isn’t just a thread on the carpet, Mr bloody Ben Sherlock Holmes, or why the clock stopped at 10.53, not 10.54. It’s what people are, what goes on in their heads and in their hearts. They brought in Accidental Death at the inquest because they hadn’t a clue what Loy was really like, and because they were too innocent to conceive that a child that age might want to take her own life. But look at this brickwork, the height of it, and remember, she was such a little thing. How could she possibly have tipped herself over accidentally? Never! I’ve already made it clear that what Loy told the coroner about them having made a date to meet here was a lie. So why should you believe anything else he said?’

  ‘You surely don’t want me to believe she did it on purpose?’ The detective’s voice was gentle.

  ‘By God, Ben Jurnet, you’re thick! What I’m giving you is the evidence of a mother who knew her child like an open book. A true religious. They wanted her to become a nun. She could no more have killed herself, committed that mortal sin, than she could have walked down the street with no clothes on. When I went over to Loy’s, a couple of days after, his mother said she was sorry, I couldn’t see him because he was lying down, still sore from the bruises on his chest. Do you know how he got those bruises? Not from trying to save Francesca, let me tell you! From her trying desperately to stop him from drowning her! And when he couldn’t get her to stay under, he banged her head against the arches, to finish her off for good and all.’

  ‘Mrs Felsenstein thought you’d come to thank him.’

  ‘I’d have thanked him all right! She was a nice woman, I took to her. How she ever got a son like that I’ll never know. She wouldn’t have been so nice, though, if she’d known what I had in my handbag – I had a job fishing out one large enough to take it – the dagger Joe’s ancestor used when he was fighting for Garibaldi. The only reason I didn’t push my way up to Loy’s room and let him have it then and there was because she spoke so sweetly about Francesca, and I suddenly saw that killing the shit wasn’t going to bring her back. When I left, I went straight to St Joseph’s and lit one of the biggest size candles to Our Lady, and I promised her a new altar cloth for her chapel, new candlesticks and the best crêche money could buy, if only she’d make sure Loy Tanner got what was coming to him. This morning,’ she finished with satisfaction, ‘I told Father Mullen to go ahead and order them.’

  Jurnet said: ‘Let’s forget about evidence for the moment, Annie. You must see I’ve got to have a reason why. You and the boy go to bed together, OK – or not OK, as the case may be. Your daughter finds out, poor kid. It must have been a terible shock – but, for Christ’s sake, in what way does it add up to murder?’

  The woman looked at the detective with a kind of contemptuous affection.

  ‘I’d expected better of you, I really had! By now, other people besides me must have spoken to you about Loy, you must be beginning to get at least an idea what kind of person he was. He couldn’t bear that Francesca had seen him and me screwing. He knew that in her eyes he was perfect, she worshipped him like a god, and he couldn’t bear to let her go on living, knowing the truth about him. It offended his vanity. He couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘If what you say is true, I wonder he didn’t go for you as well.’

  ‘I thought about it a bit, but as I didn’t much care, just then, whether I lived or died, it didn’t bother me. As a matter of fact, we’d just then finished the restaurant extension – the same as we’re putting back at last. It was all ready for the grand opening when there was a fire, and it burned down to the ground. I’d taken some pills and the first thing I knew, I was on a ladder slung over a fireman’s shoulder. It was arson all right, they never found out who.’

  Annie Falcone shivered. Under the mask of make-up the molecules of her skin seemed to have rearranged themselves into a pattern that was corrugated, old.

  ‘Don’t think I’m trying to get out of my own responsibility for what happened; or that, being a Catholic, I’ve been to confession, performed my penance, and that’s the end of it till next time. I may have been absolved by the Church, but, by God, I haven’t absolved myself. I don’t suppose I ever will.

  ‘Some nights when I can’t sleep in spite of the pills, I get up, put a coat over my nightie, and come down here just as I am, to this very step we’re standing on, and I kneel down and pray for forgiveness. That time of night, there’s hardly any traffic. These little nooks and crannies are full of shadows, and Francesca seems very near. A car did stop one time and a man got out and came to have a look; but when he saw me, bare-legged and in my fluffy slippers, he took fright, hopped back into his car and drove off.

  ‘Another time, I came down here and found a wino sprawled out on the step; a down-and-out, young but already a ruin, stinking to high heaven.’ An expression of defiance, almost of pride, came over her face. ‘I let him have me, there on the pavement. It seemed a fitter punishment than any number of Hail Marys.’ Managing something of her earlier humour. ‘Imagine if one of your police cars had come along. What they would have thought! What the wino made of it, God only knows.’

  Jurnet could not disguise that he was moved. ‘A beautiful dream, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  The woman looked at him kindly, but shook her head. ‘I doubt it. More likely, just one more humiliation to add to all the others. The poor bugger could hardly get it up.’

  They walked back to Bergate, away from the chill of the river; together, but carefully apart, even though Annie wrung her ankles over more than once on the cobbled pavement. When it happened, the detective did not proffer a helping hand, nor did the woman seem to expect one. On Yarrow Bridge they had been close, too close. It was a relief once more to put space between them.

  They left the gentle ghost of Francesca Falcone and made their way uphill.

  Jurnet said, ‘Don’t take this wrong. Did Loy ever give you any money!’

  ‘I ought to slap your face,’ Annie Falcone returned without rancour. The molecules had reverted to their previous arrangement. She could once more have passed for forty. ‘In those days, he didn’t have two pennies to rub together. If anything, it was all the other way round.’

  ‘Have you ever had anything from him, either gift or loan, since he came into the money?’

  ‘Do you think I’d take a brass farthing after what I’ve just told you?’

  It was, as Jurnet duly noted, scarcely an answer.

  ‘What about recently, very recently? For instance, just before he copped it?’

  His companion looked at him in sorrowful disappointment. ‘I’ve been talking to a wall.’

  She stopped in her tracks, and stood surveying the Red Shirt across the street, freshly painted and prosperous-looking. On the signboard a curly-haired Italian type, bleeding through several gaping holes in his red shirt, pressed on indomitably, waving a tattered flag.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ she observed, ‘how they both came from the blood of heroes – Francesca from one of the men who fought with Garibaldi, Loy from Robert Tanner. You’d think, if anything, it should have given them some kind of special protection, instead of the reverse.’

  The pile of sand was still blocking the pavement. Abreast of it, Annie Falcone stopped again and said, ‘I know, really, there isn’t anything you can do. In fact, now that Loy’s dead and can
’t do any more mischief, I’m not sure there’s anything I want you to do. It’s been done for me. It’s just that I felt I had to let somebody know what he was really like.’

  ‘What you’ve told me has been very helpful.’

  ‘In helping you find the murderer, you mean?’ The other nodded. ‘In that case, I’m sorry I said anything. Unless, perhaps, after what I’ve said, if you do catch him, you’ll let him off more lightly.’ The woman brooded on this for a moment, then asked, looking up into the detective’s dark Mediterranean face as if there were some answer to be found there, ‘when you solve a mystery, is it really the way it is in detective stories, all the loose ends tied up like a well-wrapped parcel?’

  ‘Nothing’s ever that simple.’

  She said unwillingly, as if until then she had held the words back, but could hold them back no longer, ‘That bedroom door, for instance. I can’t get it out of my mind. I was always so careful about making sure it was locked and bolted. If I left it to Loy I was always on at him, had he seen to the door, was the door locked, until he’d tell me to stop nagging, for Christ’s sake, and get on with it. That afternoon, I know I asked him, three times at least, whether the door was locked, and each time he said that it was. He said it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I say to myself, supposing he left it unlocked deliberately, wanting – in fact, willing – Francesca to find us there?’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I can’t think – except for the reason he did everything. Out of a terrible destructiveness that was in him. For the hateful, mischief of it.’

  Jurnet thought about what she had said. ‘You realize what you’ve just set up? A totally different ball game.’

  ‘Not altogether different. The same ending.’

  ‘He couldn’t possibly have known that the music teacher was going to be taken ill.’

  ‘Couldn’t he?’ Under the make-up, Annie Falcone had gone very pale. ‘They crucified Jesus. He was God. He died for us. With Loy it was the other way round. He wanted people to die for him, after he’d ground them up small and spat them out. How do you know, when they hung him on that cross, they weren’t crucifying the Devil?’

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Sid Hale was waiting for him when he got back to Headquarters, with him a man in a suede car-coat, a plaid scarf, and a Roman haircut – give or take a bit of decline and fall in the way of a bald spot obstinately resistant to cover-up combing. Hale looked his usual, disillusioned self, only Jurnet, who knew the man well, recognizing the ironic amusement buried deep in the mournful eyes. As for the Professor of Contemporary Institutions, his expression was one of deep shame improbably compounded with a childish self-congratulation.

  ‘Looks like our business at the University’s begun to overlap,’ was Sid Hale’s greeting. ‘You’ve met Mr Culliver, I think?’

  The Professor, who had twitched with annoyance at not being accorded his title, put out his hand; then, thinking better of it, put it behind his back as if he feared Jurnet might have his cane handy.

  ‘Well!’ Hale said. ‘I was looking, actually, for the Archaeology man, to have a few words about the Hob’s Hole Venus incident, only they told me he wasn’t expected in today, so I asked for Mr Culliver here instead. He’d been seen on the premises, I was told, but where? Somebody eventually said he thought he’d seen the Professor going towards the paddock where the caravans were parked. It seemed unlikely, but still, as I was already there … Suffice it to say I strolled over in that direction and discovered him in the act of breaking and entering into Loy Tanner’s caravan.’

  ‘Oh, I say!’ objected the Professor. ‘Not entering. I barely had my foot on the lowest step.’ His pride in his achievement overcoming every other consideration: ‘You know, it actually is true, what they say about credit cards. I tried the Barclaycard first and it didn’t budge, but the American Express Gold slipped in as smoothly as butter.’

  Jurnet observed gravely, ‘It pays to go up-market Now, would you care to tell me, sir, the object of this piece of research?’

  ‘All I wanted was to get back the book I lent him.’

  ‘And what book was that –’

  ‘One of my own, as a matter of fact.’ The Professor of Contemporary Institutions coloured becomingly. ‘The Eschatology of Pop.’

  ‘Oh ah. And is that the way you normally repossess yourself of books you’ve lent to people who don’t return them?’

  The Professor threw Sid Hale a discontented glance. ‘I’d have been in and out in two shakes if he hadn’t happened to come along, just at that moment. It isn’t as if I was going to do anything except take back what was mine.’

  Sid Hale lifted a large book from the nearest desk. ‘It was there all right. All 620 pages of it.’

  ‘It’s a large subject,’ the Professor conceded complacently. His brow clouded over, his voice became petulant. ‘You’re complaining to me. I’m the one should be complaining to you. I’m the one that’s been robbed.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘Did you find some money on Loy Tanner when you found him? Because if you did, it’s mine. There was £150 in notes in that book when I handed it over to him after the concert. I’ve a right to know what happened to it.’

  ‘What did you give him the money for?’

  The question, the stern tone in which it was uttered, caught the Professor off balance. The man squared his shoulders, making a decision. ‘He never came up with them so I can’t see there’s anything you can do to me. I asked him to get me some drugs.’

  Jurnet and Hale exchanged glances.

  ‘What kind of drugs?’ Jurnet demanded. ‘Cannabis? Heroin? Cocaine? LSD?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Simon Culliver returned, impatient of this attention to petty detail. ‘I left it to him. Whatever they’re going in for these days, is what I said.’

  ‘They?’

  Irritably: ‘My students. You don’t suppose I’m fool enough to take drugs on my own account? I just needed to sample whatever they were taking.’

  Jurnet made no attempt to disguise his scepticism. ‘I must say, it seems conduct beyond the call of duty.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The Professor of Contemporary Institutions sighed, and suddenly looked his age. ‘But then you see, Inspector, it wasn’t a matter of duty, but of love. I happen to love my students, unwashed, unmannerly and unaware as they mostly are. And I feel – I’ve felt for some time – that I am failing them.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In every way. Can you imagine a teacher of English Literature, let us say, who can lecture only in Sanskrit, and whose class, in turn, can respond only in a secret language of their own?’ The Professor ran a despairing hand through his hair, rendering the bald spot explicit. ‘As you know, I occupy the Chair of Contemporary Institutions in the University – a contradiction in terms, if ever there was one, since institutions, of their very nature, cannot be contemporary. They need time and patience to develop and come to maturity, and today there isn’t time and certainly no patience. Notwithstanding, my courses are always over-subscribed because young people are attracted by those two words. They think they sound, God help us, relevant. And when at last the penny drops and they begin to understand what a con it all is, I’m the one they blame for misleading them.

  ‘And that’s why –’ the man looked at Jurnet, fancying, quite mistakenly, that he perceived a dawning sympathy – ‘I thought that if I could bridge the gap, not just learn to speak their jargon but tune in to their wavelength – for example, since so many of them seem to go in for it, find out for myself what it’s like to be high on drugs – I could be of some real service instead of remaining – in their own words, I need hardly say – the silly old nit who likes to pretend he’s one of the boys –’

  ‘Silly old nit sums it up precisely, sir.’ Jurnet’s words were a cold douche, drowning the Professor of Contemporary Institutions’ pitiful little moment of truth. In defence, the man resumed his motley,
smoothed his expensive hairdo back into place, sucked in his stomach, brought his dimple out into the light of day.

  ‘Are you going to charge me?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Boost your standing with the young ’ uns no end, I dare say.’ Jurnet was stubbornly unco-operative. ‘We’ll see. In the meantime, and before you leave the building, we shall require a statement from you, setting out what you have just told us, together with anything further which may come to mind as you go along. Incidentally, I can tell you that no sum of £150 has been recovered. If it should come to light, and you can prove your ownership, it will be returned to you in due course.’

  ‘Seven twenty-pound notes, and one ten.’

  ‘Put that into your statement with the rest. Did Tanner tell you who he intended passing the money to?’

  ‘I never asked, and he never said. To tell you the truth – whatever you may think, Inspector, after today – I’m a law abiding bloke by nature and I felt a bit diffident about asking.’

  ‘I see.’ Jurnet paused, himself a bit diffident about asking. Then: ‘That book of yours, Professor – Eschatology – what is that?’

  ‘It means the study of last things.’ The Professor of Contemporary Institutions picked up his magnum opus with loving hands.

  ‘The study of last things,’ the detective repeated. ‘Seems a lot of paper to say pop is the end.’

  ‘Foreshadowings of the Apocalypse –’ the proud author seemed not to have heard the intervention – ‘not just in the words and music, you understand, the philosophy and the body language of the performers, but in the total ambiance: everything from the design of record sleeves to the psychosomatic motivation of the disco – the volume of noise, the strobe lights, the deliberate fostering of disorientation. I can claim in all modesty to have written the definitive work on the subject. It’s a good read,’ he promised boyishly, ‘even if I says it as shouldn’t. I’ll be happy to lend it to you, Inspector, and promise not to turn up at your address with my American Express card in my hand if you’re late in returning it.’