Death of a God

by S. T. Haymon

  ‘What’s this about ‘‘as I always did’’? Were you in the habit of providing accommodation for Mr King’s puppets?’

  ‘Not a crime, is it? Or should we have been charging VAT?’ The man heaved a sigh of exasperation. ‘Look – if you’d known Punchy you’d have known he was a funny bloke – and that’s the understatement of the year. You never knew what he’d say, or do next. Sometimes he was just going on somewhere from here – down to the quays, maybe, to screw a slag, and didn’t want to take Punch with him. Said it might put ideas into the little chap’s head. He’d ask me to take him and put him away, and he’d pick him up next time. Other times he’d come in and say Punch had misbehaved himself something dreadful, and would I shut the perisher up in the cupboard till he’d learnt once and for all who was master. It weren’t always the same Punch, you understand. He had any number of ’ em.’

  ‘We’re aware of that. I shall have to take this one along with me for examination.’

  The other looked mutinous. ‘Am I to get it back?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so – but not for me to say.’ Jurnet took out his pad. ‘I’ll give you a receipt.’

  ‘Stuff it.’ Reaching for the puppet and plunking it into the detective’s arms: ‘On second thoughts, stuff him as well, while you’re at it. Punchy hung out here much longer, he’d have had us all round the twist. From now on, nothing goes into that bloody cupboard that don’t come in a bottle.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Jurnet said, ‘so long as it isn’t a genie. We’ll have a couple of bitters, please. Halves.’

  By the time they got back to Havenlea HQ the air in Detective Chief Innspector Herring’s office had replenished itself, more or less. Space again, Jurnet was happy to note, to see out of the window and down to the quayside, where a middle-aged woman in a kaftan, over-painted and under-corseted, was exchanging pleasantries with a couple of bashful youths from the rural hinterland.

  The enormous man, seated in solitary modesty, welcomed back the two detectives with an unaffected pleasure which Jurnet found quite touching. ‘So long as you haven’t come to pick a bone with me for wasting valuable police time –’

  ‘A very useful meeting –’ Jurnet demurred, not to be outdone in politeness.

  ‘Don’t tell me! They’re very good fellows,’ the man, who obviously found it hard to think ill of anybody – anybody on the right side of the law, at any rate – earnestly assured his colleagues from Angleby. ‘God knows what the local drugs scene would be like without them. But I don’t have to tell you how it is when you go regional – regional anything. The organization takes over. You’re so busy taking an over-view it’s hard not to lose track of those little ants scurrying about at ground level.’

  ‘Or, even harder, the ones that aren’t scurrying any more, but are lying squashed flat on the pavement.’ The two men exchanged glances of perfect understanding. Jurnet continued, ‘So long as you don’t think we’re back to say, look what we’ve got and you missed. Jack and I stopped by at the Haven Hotel for a drink, and by the purest chance –’

  The little Welshman opened the carrier bag he had rescued from a litter bin, and hauled out its contents. Punch emerged smelling of Chinese takeaway, but as serene as ever.

  The Detective Chief Inspector reached across his desk for the puppet and took hold of it gently. He might have been receiving a baby. But then, thought Jurnet, with hands the size of hams you were either tender with everything you touched, or a complete disaster.

  ‘I’m growing quite fond of the little fellows,’ Herring confessed. Ending with a certain regret: ‘I suppose we’ll have to open him up, like the rest.’

  Punch stared impassively out of the window whilst Sergeant Ellers did things to his hump with a razor blade. Severing Punchy King’s fine stitching with careful labour: ‘He’d have made somebody a wonderful wife. My Rosie’d give her eye teeth to sew like that!’

  At last the opening was wide enough for the insertion of a hand. ‘Lot of that foam stuff we found in the others.’ The little Welshman scrabbled about, bringing out some flat padding and a handful of plastic nodules which spilled over the desk and on to the floor. ‘There’s something there! Let me make it a bit bigger –’

  A moment later, the Sergeant straightened up with what he had found: ten £50 notes secured with a wide manila band on which somebody had scribbled some figures.

  The three detectives studied the haul in silence. Then Jurnet said, ‘I can see we’re going to have to have another word with Mr Lenny Bale.’

  After Havenlea, Angleby was quiet: quieter than Jurnet could remember. Missing the liveliness of the resurrected seaside resort, the detective nevertheless approved of the silence engulfing the city. In Angleby, he reflected with a perverse satisfaction, it no longer being any business of his anyway, people knew what was due to a dead god. They knew how to conduct themselves on a Good Friday, unlike some he could mention …

  As they threaded the silent streets towards the city centre and Police Headquarters, he said as much to Jack Ellers, who hooted. ‘Decent respect! It’s because everyone’s gone where we’ve just come from, if they aren’t at Yarmouth or Cromer!’

  Within doors, Headquarters was kept on the go much as on any other day, break-ins and wife battering, as usual, largely replacing other business which had fallen off on account of the holiday. More than one conference at high level had been convened to discover why those particular forms of lawbreaking had become as traditional to Angleby over Easter as bunnies and Easter eggs. The break-ins were explicable, given that many people had gone away for the weekend leaving their property undefended; but for the extraordinary jump in the statistics of wives with black eyes, broken noses and worse, no reason had been deduced other than the rather unsatisfactory one that spring had sprung, the sap was rising, and what more natural than to take a swipe at the old woman?

  By evening, Jurnet, called in to lend a hand with the press of complainants, was ready to turn it in, aware that the day had been flatter, the toil less rewarding, by reason of the absence of his superior officer. The Superintendent had taken the day off. True, without him on the premises one breathed more easily. But equally, with him there, either invisible or a looming presence fraught with threat, life in Angleby CID acquired an extra dimension.

  Sergeant Ellers brought in a Lenny Bale looking much improved, wearing his grief with the same sharp attention he had paid to his clothes and his jewellery. He had been to the morning service in the cathedral, and it seemed to have done him as much good as a fix. It had been fabulous, he proclaimed: out of this world. He spoke as if he had discovered some new form of spectator sport out of which, with the right kind of hype, there was money to be made.

  Jurnet said coarsely, ‘Don’t go getting any ideas about those choirboys. Remember you’re out on bail.’

  ‘The nerve of that blue-arsed ape!’ was Bale’s rejoinder. ‘Equating me with some dirty old man in a dirty old mac! Indecent exposure! It’s humiliating! If he’d only contained himself for a few minutes, the randy twerp, he could have copped me on a charge worth pleading to.’

  He eyed the detective with a look of stern dissatisfaction.

  ‘Regular Sodom and Gomorrah you got down there by the river, anyone ever tell you? Did you hear they’ve remanded me for medical reports – me! Not that sweet little cherub who led me on, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, nor anything else either. He’s the one the shrinks need to talk to, they’d learn something. Fishing? Oh, he was out fishing all right!’

  Jurnet said, ‘We’ll look into it. In the meantime –’ he opened a drawer, took out the bundle of £50 notes and tossed them on to the desk top – ‘take a look at these. Don’t touch!’ – as the Second Coming manager stretched out a joyous hand to take possession. ‘Just tell me if you think you recognize them.’

  The detective saw no reason for letting on that Fingerprints had already confirmed the man’s prints on the wrapping, as well as those of King and Loy Tanner
.

  ‘Of course I recognize them! Those are my figures on the wrapper. I distinctly remember jotting them down to see how much of the £13,000 I still had to go. Where’s the rest?’

  ‘All in good time,’ returned Jurnet, less than frank. ‘If, when the inquiry is concluded, you can prove that you are the owner of these ones, they will be returned to you.’

  ‘Can’t you at least tell me where you found them?’ The man stammered a little, then asked, ‘Was it a woman, after all?’

  The detective picked up the wad of notes and returned them to the drawer, turning the key with deliberate ceremony.

  ‘You’ll have to contain your soul in patience.’

  When the man had gone, leaving behind a trace of perfume disturbingly reminiscent of something Miriam sometimes used Jurnet sat chewing on a ballpoint.

  ‘Seeing that Tanner left Queenie’s caravan ahead of her dad – everyone’s agreed on that and I can’t see what they have to gain by lying – it stands to reason Punchy must have met up with him again that night after he’d been to the Virgin and collected his £13,000. I can’t see how else Punchy could have come by that £500 –’

  Jack Ellers went to the heart of the matter. ‘Come by it how, that’s the question.’

  ‘Fair means or foul, eh? If Guido Scarlett heard alright, Tanner wasn’t at all receptive to the idea of forking out for that boat. But who knows? When they did meet up again, Punchy may have finally persuaded Loy to shave a bit off that £13,000 in his favour.’

  The little Welshman shook his head.

  ‘I don’t buy that. If it had been £10,000 say, or twenty – a fair round number – I might have, but not thirteen. It’s an odd sort of figure, as if it was the cost of one definite thing Tanner had in mind to use it for. Like the down payment of a house, say –’

  ‘Or,’ amplified Jurnet, an image of the sand heap outside the Red Shirt coming into his mind, ‘the cost of some building work.’ He considered further what the other had said. ‘I think you’re right, Jack – that Tanner asked Bale to get him £13,000 because £13,000 was the exact sum needed.’

  Jurnet unlocked the drawer and took out the notes again. He stared at them as if they could tell him something.

  ‘In which case –’ summing up – ‘how else could Punchy have come by this little lot, except by means of a blunt instrument?’

  ‘That still leaves that business of the corpse on the cross unaccounted for.’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me? Think about it. Exactly the kind of crazy caper you might expect from a nutter like King.’ Jurnet once more returned the notes to the drawer, slammed it shut. ‘The more I think about it, the better it fits.’ He pushed back his chair and stood, tall and morose. ‘Maddening!’ he pronounced, ‘not being able to get at the bugger, not even to ask him the time of day.’

  ‘If we can turn up the remaining £12,500, we won’t need to.’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know!’ Reaching for his coat, hanging from a peg on the wall, Jurnet announced, ‘I’m going out to eat.’

  ‘Isn’t today that Passover feast you were telling me about?’

  ‘Er – yes, that’s right,’ the other said, too quickly. The little Welshman, too practised not to notice, was too tender-hearted to let his doubts show. ‘Got to get over to the synagogue. They can’t start without me. Know what? We were slaves in Egypt, today we are free.’ Jurnet smiled bleakly. ‘Turn yourself into a Jew, Jack, you don’t just get yourself a new religion. You get a whole new set of ancestors thrown in.’

  ‘So long as it doesn’t include a mother-in-law!’

  Jurnet thought, I should be so lucky.

  Just to prove to himself that he didn’t give a damn one way or the other, he went to the new place in Shire Street, and, the sole customer in the pink, candle-lit ambience, ordered scampi and gammon, followed by something gooey with whipped cream. He ate fast, too fast for his digestion, fancying the waiters angry with him for being no more than one; tipped enough for four and went back to his car feeling – not for the first time nowadays when he ate forbidden food – that he had lost that round. It had long ago dawned on him that what he was engaged in was a contest rather than a conversion, one in which his opponent held all the aces, to say nothing of making up the rules as he went along.

  By the time Jurnet reached the quiet suburban street which housed the synagogue, the shellfish and the ham, with the dessert on the sidelines egging them on, were engaged in a life-and-death struggle which could have only one outcome. The detective drew up a little down the street from the modest, stuccoed building, hopped out fast and jettisoned the lot in a forsythia bush.

  One game to God.

  The sound of singing was coming from the synagogue hall – one of those happy Hebrew melodies that were still pierced through with melancholy, as if to celebrate the impermanence of joy. Jurnet stood on the opposite pavement listening, wondering why he had come. Or rather, knowing and not knowing.

  There was no window on to the street to which he could press his face like the Little Match Girl out of Hans Andersen; no possibility that Miriam, moved by some irresistible telepathic urge, would come out, see him standing there under the street lamp, and draw him back inside with both hands. All the same, he waited a little longer, if only to prove beyond doubt that miracles never happened; then shivering a little, for the night had become cold – walked back to the car and drove away.

  The thought of his empty home hateful to him, he drove to the Chepe, parked the car and went through the Fitz Alain Gate into the Cathedral Close, dark after the city streets, the lamps low-powered in their cast-iron lanterns. The enormous bulk of the cathedral, that great stone ship becalmed in the water meadows, loomed above him: no moon to catch the tips of the pinnacles, or strike a silver reflection off the golden weathercock which swung against the sky at the point of the steeple. All was in mourning for the dead God. Never a hint that anyone, not even the bishop, had to know the plot-line from past Easters, if nothing else: that, give it a couple of days, everything would be coming up roses.

  Only a couple of days, after all He’d been through! Jurnet felt a genuine pang. He had a sudden vision of God the father whipping the grave cloths off God the son with ‘Easter Sunday, lad! Time to get the show on the road!’ And God the son, poor bastard, hanging on to the covers with his mutilated hands, and pleading, ‘Just another ten minutes, Dad!’

  Confused as to where he belonged, and to whom, Jurnet thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned to go. One hand closed over something hard and metallic. He fished out Mrs Felsenstein’s tin and opened it, read the name Mara Tanner scratched on the inside of the lid; noted that, in its time in his custody, the stick of charcoal had fractured in several places and another pencil point had gone for a burton.

  He shut the tin, lowered it back into his pocket with elaborate care. Went back to the car, and drove to Sebastopol Terrace.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  The first thing he saw when he turned the car into the narrow cul-de-sac was Miriam’s red Golf parked outside Number 12.

  Miracles did happen, he thought for a wonderful moment before his habitual caution intervened to suggest a dozen alternative reasons for the car being where it was. Even so, he parked a little further up the street and approached the house with a stealthy step, just in case, behind the flimsy curtains which let the light through but prevented him seeing who was in the room, Miriam was there to be taken by surprise; just in case she would greet him with a kiss full on the lips. Just in case she would say cheerio to the Felsensteins and go with him lovingly, back to the synagogue and the singing.

  The woman who opened the door to his knock was a stranger. All he could make out of her, indistinct in the dim little hallway, was that she had on some long garment, housecoat or dressing-gown, and wore her hair spread loosely about her shoulders. Only when the extraordinarily brilliant whites of her eyes caught a reflection from the street lamp did he recognize Mara Felsenstein.

&
nbsp; Taken aback by her unwonted appearance, all his senses poised to call ‘Miriam!’, he stammered feebly something about it being unwise to answer the door to nocturnal visitors without first ascertaining –

  ‘I know!’ She cut the policemanly rebuke short with a contrite smile. ‘Leo’s always saying we must get a chain.’

  She brought him through to the living-room where, in the stronger light, he saw with astonishment that, dressed as she was, in a straight housecoat of some dark blue material with a slight sheen, and with her hair, damp from washing, curling in delicate tendrils about her ears, she looked still a girl, a girl worth looking at.

  Not that he had all that much attention to spare for her. Miriam was not there. Was she in the kitchen? Or upstairs in the bedroom, asking Mr Felsenstein how he was feeling?

  ‘The car!’ Mrs Felsenstein exclaimed. ‘You thought Miriam was here! I’m so sorry –’

  ‘I was coming here anyway,’ said Jurnet, sternly relegating his fantasies to their proper place, wherever that might be. ‘I just happened to notice –’

  ‘What a shame! She left – oh, it must have been an hour ago, at least. She’s really too good, and she makes so little of it, doesn’t she, she won’t take no for an answer. She brought some work round, and then she said that as she hadn’t any use for the car over the weekend, she proposed to leave it outside. She said it looked like being a fine Easter after all, and, if Leo was feeling up to it, why not take a drive out into the country? Go out each day, if we wanted to – she wouldn‘t be needing the car back till Tuesday.’