Death of a God

by S. T. Haymon

  Not that it was like that today. The quiet of the Market Place had been almost palpable: business poor, people talking in low voices, even the twittering budgies mum. Only the flower sellers, albeit a whit shamefacedly, could not disguise a certain satisfaction – understandable when even the roses of the day, if not the week, before, their stems flopping despite all that tight-wrapped polythene could do to arrest the decline, were going at a premium, so far did the demand outstrip supply.

  Where they were going was no mystery. Making his way uphill, back to Headquarters, Jurnet had seen the great tumulus of flowers long before he actually reached the garden where the crosses had stood. The detective was relieved to see that the other two crosses and their attendant effigies had been taken away.

  Calvary was never like that. Iris, roses, daffodils, tulips, piled up as if there were a grave beneath – as indeed there was, if one counted the daffodils; and an unending line of boys and girls with reddened eyes, a few weeping noisily, most of them shocked and silent, waiting to add their tribute to the rest. Even the photographers, darting about like water bugs on the skin of a pond, could not entirely devalue the real tears, the real sense of loss.

  As Jurnet watched, an older woman, obese and ungainly, came forward, purplish channels irrigating the make-up which plastered her nose and cheeks. Mrs Lark, Chair of the Parks and Recreation Committee, tenderly placed a single dark red rose on top of the fragrant heap and went away, back towards the City Hall, a pink tissue long past its prime held to her trembling lips.

  Who the hell was this Loy Tanner, so greatly mourned, and so very, very dead?

  Back in his seat behind the wide desk which put a proper distance between the star and the chorus line, the Superintendent fidgeted with the papers in front of him, then flung out off-handedly, ‘Preliminary report on that van of yours, Ben. Enough prints, inside and out, to send our lovely new computer into hysterics. Not a single one clear enough to be of any use. Nothing to suggest the vehicle was used to transport a body. Further examination, of course, may reveal something of value.’ He did not sound as if he would put any money on it.

  Jurnet said, ‘Early days.’

  The Superintendent was in no mood to be comforted. ‘No days are early where murder has been done.’ He scrabbled among his papers once more and selected one with scorn. ‘It appears that the University, with a faith in human nature granted only to academics and the mentally subnormal, took on, as a temporary guard on the performers’ caravans, a pensioned-off old retainer with – can you believe it? – an unpredictable sphincter muscle. In one of his rare surfacings from the jakes, this Argus-eyed Cerberus states that, some twenty or thirty minutes after the end of the concert, he saw Tanner leave the girl King’s caravan and go out of the paddock by the gate which leads to the standing normally used by vans bringing supplies to the University. A few moments later he heard a vehicle start up, and a scrunch of tyres on gravel.’ There was a pause before the Superintendent ended, ‘Assuming it was Tanner in the van, that would have meant he left by the back way, the tradesmen’s entrance. The way round to the front had been blocked off earlier in the evening for fear of gate-crashers.’

  Sid Hale, close to cheerfulness at finding things turning out as badly as he invariably expected, enquired hopefully, ‘And I suppose there was nobody on the back entrance either?’

  ‘Actually, there’s a lodge with a resident keeper whose job it is to monitor all comings and going in that direction. Except that yesterday – what ills infest the groves of Academe! – it seems the poor fellow had an ingrowing toenail and had retired to his bathroom for a soothing soak of the same. He says –’ rooting for the relevant note with the sick pleasure of de-scabbing a wound – ‘that he may have heard a vehicle leaving the University grounds, but then again, he may not. When his bath taps are turned full on, hot and cold together, they sound so uncommonly like a motor vehicle it’d be anybody’s guess to know if it was one or if it wasn’t.’

  Sergeant Ellers, taking evasive action, volunteered, ‘The Chepe, sir. Where the van was found parked. It’s bang opposite the Virgin. Their own car park’s such a hassle to get in and out of, especially when you’ve had a drink or two, a lot of people going into the hotel leave their cars on the Chepe instead. And the Virgin’s where Mr Bale’s staying, isn’t it?’

  ‘So it is, Jack. So it is.’

  ‘You have fight?’ the Portuguese chambermaid had demanded, with, for the first time, a light of interest in her eye. She had entered the room with her pass key, without knocking. ‘I hear smash. I come see if is fight.’ She surveyed the broken mirror with disappointment, the hairless nakedness of Lenny Bale with indifference. ‘You no have fight?’ she asked, the animation fading from her face.

  ‘Sorry not to oblige,’ Jurnet responded. ‘Seven years’ bad luck, that’s all. Have it put on Mr Bale’s bill, and fetch me a Band-aid, there’s a good girl.’ The detective held out a gashed forearm, blood trickling between his fingers.

  ‘Is nothing,’ the chambermaid pronounced, peering: but her eyes had brightened again. She lifted the hém of her white apron and unconcernedly tore off a wide strip along one side. With her strong brown fingers she bandaged the wound with a deftness Jurnet found altogether admirable, and said so.

  ‘In Spain one time I live three years with matador. Not very good matador.’

  Lenny Bale complained peevishly, ‘I can’t stand blood.’ He got back into bed and pulled the covers over his head. He began to cry, his body shaking, the brass bedstead tinkling prettily.

  The chambermaid left the room and returned a moment later with a dustpan and brush.

  Jurnet said, ‘Take my advice, leave it for the blokes who’ll have to come and fit a new one. I’m sure you can fix Mr Bale up with another room instead.’

  ‘Three doors down is nobody in.’

  ‘Then why don’t you move Mr Bale’s things in there? I’ll make it OK with the manager.’

  Obediently, without asking questions, the woman put her implements aside, opened the suitcase which stood on the luggage stand, and with stolid but sure-fingered efficiency packed it with the underpants and shirts from the drawers, the expensive toiletries out of the bathroom.

  ‘You see I put,’ she admonished the detective, picking up an ornate signet ring, several gold chains, and a watch that looked expensive enough to buy all the time in the world, and dropping them into a side pocket of the Vuitton suitcase.

  ‘I see you put,’ Jurnet confirmed with a smile. ‘I will also, when we arrive three doors down, see that you unput.’

  The woman opened the door of the clothes closet, removed the shoes at the bottom and stowed them away, then took out the jackets and slacks which hung above. The clothes over her arm, she paused in passing the bed. The crying, muffled by the bedclothes, sounded not entirely believable.

  ‘Qué bandalho!’ she pronounced disdainfully.

  Jurnet yanked off the blankets, not unkindly. ‘Time to go, Buster!’

  Lenny Bale came quietly. The detective draped his unresisting form in one of the blankets, and led him out into the corridor. Waiting to be told which way to go, the man let the covering slip to the floor, making no move to retrieve it. An American lady of mature years who happened to be passing, ran an experienced eye over what was on offer and exclaimed ‘Cute!’ before continuing unruffled on her way.

  In the new room Bale made straight for the bed as if bent on resuming threnody where it had been rudely cut off in mid-flow. Jurnet, one hand clamped on a scarred arm, called across to the chambermaid, busy settling the man’s clothes into their new home, ‘Got a dressing gown among that lot, señorita? Ah!’ – accepting a feather-light cashmere gown, and forcing unwilling arms into the sleeves – ‘just the job. Ta! Now –’ to Bale, brisk and businesslike – ‘no more wringing of hands and beating of breasts. Let’s hear all about it.’

  Lenny Bale slumped into a satin-upholstered armchair. ‘You came to tell me. I don’t know a bloody thing.’<
br />
  ‘That’s what they all say.’ Jurnet, changing over to his rural routine, returned heartily. ‘Till they get going. Then it’s all you can do to get them to belt up, there’s so much they want to get off their chests. For a start, did you see Loy last night?’

  ‘I did not! I had to spend the whole day in London – and I mean the whole bloody twenty-four hours. Couldn’t have been four in the morning when I started out –’

  ‘But you’d only just arrived in Angleby! Hardly seems worth the trouble of coming in the first place –’

  ‘Wasn’t to know, was I? Guy from LA passing through unexpectedly. Big wheel in video, biggest on the coast. Phoned the office from Heathrow and they put him on to me here. Had a proposition. Lot of money involved –’ Lenny Bale tightened his dressing-gown about him and knotted the girdle. It was obvious that the mere mention of money was a great energizer – almost, one might say with, in the circumstances, a particular aptness, a shot in the arm. ‘I couldn’t let a chance like that slip.’

  ‘The group must have been a bit put out.’

  The manager of Second Coming raised his head in unaffected astonishment. ‘Those punks? If it weren’t for me, they’d still be hanging about on street corners, trying to cadge a joint.’

  ‘I take the point. All the same, I suppose you did apprise them, of your change of plan?’

  ‘I phoned Guido, if that’s what you mean. I’d already had a day to iron out any snags. Anyway, I told him I’d be back by evening –’

  ‘But, in the event, you didn’t make it?’

  ‘I made the mistake of driving. I should have left the car in town and come back by train. By the time I got in I reckoned the concert must be about half through, but I was too tuckered out even to ring and ask how things were going. I took a couple of pills and went to bed.’

  ‘Hope your trip to London wasn’t wasted.’

  ‘Let’s say, the seed was sown.’ A tinge of grey had crept into the expensively suntanned complexion. ‘If that’s the lot, Officer, or even if it isn’t, I’ve got to get some more sleep –’

  ‘I shall need the name and address of the guy from LA.’

  ‘My office will know. The name’s Brown. Only you won’t find him home. He was on his way to Hong Kong.’

  ‘Came a long way round, didn’t he?’

  ‘Not if he wanted to see me. Now, if you’d kindly get the hell out of here –’

  ‘What about the others?’ the detective countered, with a touch of fatherly reproof. ‘They’re milling about, out there at the University, like sheep without their shepherd.’

  ‘Shit to that, and mind your own business.’

  ‘Oh, but I am,’ Jurnet objected, still doing the artless bit. ‘My business is to find out who killed Loy Tanner.’

  A sudden sob shook the slight frame. ‘Fat lot of good that’ll do him.’

  ‘None at all. But hopefully it won’t do any to the person or persons who killed him either.’

  ‘I want to go to bed!’ Lenny Bale put his fists in his eyes like a thwarted child. ‘I don’t want to think about it!’

  ‘Unfortunately, sir, it’ll still be there when you wake up. That’s the thing about death, it only gets deader.’ The detective waited a little. Then: ‘One other thing you might be able to throw some light on. That white van of yours, the one with the rainbow on it. It was found this morning parked on the Chepe. Could well have been there all night.’

  ‘The Chepe?’

  ‘Name we have for that open space across from the hotel. Acts as a kind of overflow car-park for the Virgin. What I was wondering was whether Loy might not have come by after the concert for some reason.’

  Lenny Bale received the suggestion with no apparent unease.

  ‘For none I can think of. If he did, it wasn’t to see me.’

  ‘To find out how your business deal had gone, I thought –’

  ‘If you think I’d ever discuss a business deal with Loy, you don’t know me – and you certainly don’t know him.’

  Jurnet protested mildly, ‘I’m doing my best.’

  ‘What I always say to them, it’s a matter of trust. Either you accept without question that I’m doing my best for you, or you get out – right? Did you know –’ the man demanded – ‘that Lijah Starling owns half a dozen streets in Brixton, to say nothing of a flat in Eaton Square and a villa outside Golfe Juan? All my doing, and he knows it. Johnny now, he’s county, so he’s gone into land. Thanks to me, he’s got a couple of sporting estates in North Norfolk with more pheasants than you could count in a lifetime. Neither of them would ever dream of handing over a penny without I say so. Trust, you see. Complete trust.’

  ‘And Loy?’

  The other shrugged. ‘Two-room dump back of King’s Cross, and a beach hut at Havenlea, rented by the season.’

  ‘How’s that? What did the lad do with his money?’

  ‘Don’t ask me! Numbered account in Switzerland, for all I know, or krugerrands under the bed. Fair enough.’ Bale’s face, which had for a moment crumpled itself into furrows of childish spite, reassumed its aspect of incredulous grief. ‘His money, to do what he liked with –’

  ‘Wonder who’ll come into it now he’s gone.’

  ‘Guido said something about an old ma –’

  ‘You’ve never met the lady yourself, then?’

  The other shook his head. ‘Not a chance. With Loy, everything was a secret. Ask him about his mother, he’d have sworn it was a virgin birth.’ With a sharp upward look from under the thick eyebrows: ‘Did you know he couldn’t bear to be touched physically? Touch his hand by accident and he’d jump like he’d been stung.’ The man brooded upon this last for a moment, then finished, ‘I’ll take a bet that’s why he chose the guitar – a good excuse to put a hunk of wood between himself and anybody trying to get close.’ Voice breaking: ‘Don’t you find that terribly sad, when the world’s so full of people longing to get close?’

  Lenny Bale sat down on the bed. ‘I really am very tired.’

  Jurnet looked at him carefully. Then: ‘Sleep,’ he said, pulling back the bedclothes.

  The detective went out of the room, disconcerted to find the Portuguese chambermaid following behind. He had quite forgotten her presence, so still had she stayed, quiet as a mouse.

  Outside in the corridor he closed the door gently, and turned to her. ‘Hope you’re not going to get into trouble over that apron on my account.’

  ‘Sod that apron,’ the chambermaid said surprisingly. She looked up searchingly into the detective’s face. ‘Who this Loy?’ she demanded.

  ‘Who indeed?’

  Jurnet went down to the ground floor, choosing the stairs in preference to the lift. He needed a short interval for thought. The Georgian staircase, swooping in graceful arcs from floor to floor, suited his purpose admirably.

  Arrived once more at the desk, he spoke to the receptionist’s back. ‘Anywhere here I can make a phone call?’

  The receptionist turned reluctantly. Her carefully constructed face was a shambles. Out of the ruins a young girl peered out upon a world in desolation.

  ‘I just heard it on the radio. Have you heard the news? They’ve murdered him, the swine!’

  Jurnet answered, ‘I did hear something about it.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jurnet found Johnny Flowerdew the hardest one to explain, to himself as well as his colleagues, as they foregathered in the Superintendent’s room. The Superintendent himself had not disguised his derision.

  ‘Hereditary enemies! The fellow’s been having you on. Unless it’s a publicity gimmick he’s trying to manipulate us into giving currency to?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jurnet persisted, in his mind’s eye a vision of that knowing face, the dark smudges of suffering under the eyes. ‘Hereditary’s what he said – but after he’d told me how it was, I couldn’t help thinking maybe heraldic expressed it better. Like those knights in armour in old tapestries, forever threatening the blo
kes opposite with their lances, but nobody actually hurting anybody.’

  ‘A game, is that what you’re saying?’ The Superintendent sounded mollified. Robert Tanner, the great Norfolk rebel, had been one of his childhood heroes, and the historical conceit pleased him. ‘Just so long as you’re not asking us to believe that Tanner’s Rebellion is still alive and kicking 450 years after the event!’

  Except that Johnny Flowerdew had asserted exactly that.

  The young man had straightened his back against the dubious ergonomics of the plastic chair, issue No. 3760/ 259/M/ black, eyes narrowed as he peered past Jurnet and the dull green walls, and the snazzy blinds with vertical slats which proclaimed to all and sundry that, whatever some might think, Angleby police had made it to the twentieth century. The eyes, light blue and set in the head with a disconcerting shallowness, looked all the way back to a time when a boy king had sat on the throne of Tudor England, and in Norfolk the common people were being pushed out by sheep.

  ‘It all began as a local, a family, quarrel, really. The Flowerdews and the Tanners were neighbours, connected by a whole network of marriages and shared business interests. But –’ courteously – ‘you know all about that.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure! Tell me.’

  ‘What a time it was!’ Johnny Flowerdew spoke as if he had been there. ‘A farming revolution was taking place, just like today. And just like today there were money mountains waiting to be picked up, fortunes to be made by the wide boys who weren’t queasy about turning peasants out to starve and fencing in the common lands where they’d been pasturing their cows since the year dot. Still, as my revered ancestor John Flowerdew undoubtedly said, more than once: there’s always a price to be paid for progress, so long as you make sure you aren’t the patsy who has to pay it.