Death of a God (15 page)

Feeling a trifle foolish, Jurnet said curtly, ‘We want a few words with you.'

The mouth opened again. ‘What about?'

‘Loy Tanner. We are police officers investigating his murder.'

‘The best of British luck. What's it to me?'

‘We have reason to believe you were with your daughter in her caravan at the University of Angleby following on the concert given by Second Coming in the Middlemass Auditorium, and that, during part of the time at least, Loy Tanner was also in the caravan.'

‘That Queenie! Never knew when to keep her bloody mouth shut! What she say then, the silly mauther?'

‘I'd rather hear your version.'

‘It'll cost you. This bleeding sandstorm, I got a throat you could file your nails on.'

‘I don't mind buying you a pint.'

‘
Two
!' interjected Punch, in his nasal twang. The man's lips had not moved.
‘Whither he goest I goest, and where he drinkest, I drinkest also.'

‘Two it is!'

The man took his time clearing up. Jurnet and Jack Ellers, waiting at the rear of the tent, where the red and white stripes, divided from roof to beach, were tied crosswise like a child's pinafore, found themselves loaded with a number of cotton bags out of which poked, unnervingly alive, the heads of other actors in the unending saga of Mr Punch: Judy and the baby; the dog Toby and the crocodile; the butcher and the baker; the policeman, the judge; the hangman and his gallows. Even the string of sausages, cascading in a fluorescent purple out of its restraining reticule, seemed instinct with a life of its own.

Punchy King himself came out at last, carrying Punch and an old-fashioned work basket, its lid of quilted satin, powder blue. ‘Ripped his ruddy pants and had to stitch him up,' he explained affectionately. ‘Don't ask
me
what the little bugger's been up to – and
he's
not saying, that's certain.'

Punch, tucked snugly inside his creator's sheepskin coat, only the head showing, let out a great hoot.
‘He's a fine one to talk!'

Creator? Or was it the other way round, Jurnet wondered, as he unprotestingly helped to stow the bags, each on its labelled hook, in an elderly blue van parked at the kerb. Punchy King, the detective was interested to discover, even had a hump like his star performer. Well, almost. Years of bending, presumably, lest the top of his head be visible to his eagle-eyed young patrons, had set his back in a permanent curve.

Happy among his puppets, he seemed a contented soul: no sign of the violence which had made the family home such an unsuitable environment for young Queenie. At his direction they crossed the road to the Haven Hotel where they found a bar as big as a ballroom, empty save for a barman examining his teeth in a pocket mirror, and an elderly man staring stonily out to sea, an untouched glass of whisky on the table at his side.

Punchy King sat Punch in one of the dralon-covered chairs, arranging his hump comfortably. To Sergeant Ellers, on his way to get the drinks: ‘Four, remember!'

Jurnet said: ‘Tell me about the old days. You knew Loy Tanner before he made his name?'

‘Who d'you think made it for him? Hadn't been for me, there'd have been no first coming, let alone second!'

‘How was that, then?'

‘Why, there was him and that la-di-da what's-his-name, Johnny Flowerdew, doing the rounds of the places down by the quays for whatever they could pick up, which was strictly zilch. Could think themselves lucky if someone chucked over a fag between the two of 'em. That lot off the rigs, what they want is topless Mother Machree, not what Loy Tanner had to offer.'

‘And what was that?'

The little Welshman had come back with four foaming tankards. Before answering the detective's question, King set one of them carefully in front of Punch – ‘Cheers, me old darlin'! – and took a long pull at his own pint. Wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and said, ‘Blamed if I can put a word to it. To tell you the truth, nine times out of ten, soon as he got going, I had to run to the pisser or there'd be a nasty accident. Maybe that's how genius gets you – in the guts, I don't know. All I do know is, I reckon I knew star quality when I heard it. And I was right!'

‘So how did you help him?'

‘Put in a good word where it mattered. Winters, would you believe it, there's not all that much call for a Punch and Judy show on the beach. That's when I do my private engagements. Kids' parties and –' the man sniggered, unpleasingly – ‘not such kids' parties. Did it ever strike you, copper, there's all life in a Punch and Judy show? All life and a bit over!' King leaned over and put a loving arm round his puppet's shoulders.

‘The times we've had together, eh, chummy, you and me! I tell you –' raising his head as if challenging the two detectives to make something of it – ‘I got a Judy in black leather and chains'd make your eyeballs pop – but there! Got to mind my p's and q's, ha'nt I, when there's Little Boy Blues on the premises! What I meant to say was, I had an agent, see, in those days, and I told him, mark my words that pair o' kids definitely got something. Fix 'em up with a drummer, get 'em a couple of gigs an' you won't be sorry.' The man settled back in his seat and polished off the rest of the beer in one long swallow. ‘And he weren't, the clever little poofter.'

‘That wouldn't be Lenny Bale, by any chance?' Jurnet asked, thinking that he recognized the description.

‘Little Miss Clitoris – who else? Everyone made a packet out of Second Coming except yours truly.'

‘Tanner must have been very grateful to you.'

‘Loy grateful!' The man still smiled, but the resemblance to the puppet in the next seat had faded. Gone the air of jovial knavery. ‘Loy Tanner wouldn't give a thank you if he'd been nailed to that cross in Angleby Market Place for real and a platoon of Israeli parachutists dropped out of the skies and set him free.'

‘Oh ah. Still, he did give your daughter a job with the group –'

‘Who said? It was the roadie took her on. Fell for her like a ton of bricks, can you credit it? The little slut! You seen the way she keeps that caravan of hers? Bloody gippo'd know better.'

Struck by a sudden recollection, Jurnet asked, ‘Didn't I see a Punch among her things? A Punch just like this one here?'

The Punch and Judy man looked offended. The puppet, convulsed, as ever, by some secret amusement, preserved his outward composure unruffled.

King said, ‘I got fifteen Punches, if you want to know, every one unique. No Punch is just like any other Punch any more than one copper's just like any other monkey, whatever you might think to the contrary. They're all different. As you ask, I've got into the habit, every time I drop in on Queenie, I bring her a Punch for luck. Chop and change about. Not fair to leave 'em too long in that pigsty.'

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.'

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.'