Death of a God (3 page)

‘Oh no, sir!' The young constable's face, rosy with earnestness, was also a little pitying. ‘That was in the old days of inhibitions and frustrations.' He studied the two faces across the table, as if to decipher therein the signs of stress which must surely disfigure a generation come to maturity before the sexual revolution. ‘Nowadays, when they can have a lay any time they fancy, they're not bothered. And with Second Coming it's not like that, anyway. It's not just pop, see. It's a whole lot more'n that.'

‘Oh ah? They sound pretty old hat to me, these days of keyboards and players who can actually tell one note from another. Two guitars and a set of drums – the Beatles minus one.'

‘Oh no, sir!' PC Blaker exclaimed again, growing even rosier. ‘There's never been anything like Second Coming, and never will be. Messianic's what they call it. The way all their songs come out of the Bible, for one thing. And the way they make you think, not just about booze and boobs and all that, but –' petering out in a stammer of embarrassment – ‘about what life's all about –'

‘Christ, laddie!' Sergeant Ellers said. ‘You make it sound like a prayer meeting in the Welsh valleys.'

‘Oh no!' The other looked quite shocked. ‘If you only listened to one of their albums – really listened to it – you'd understand better than I can say. Tonight, for instance, it'll be a piece of cake. You'll see. The kids outside'll just be standing quietly, not so much as the smell of trouble. All they want is to see him, actually see him live. That'll be enough to make it worthwhile.'

‘Him? There's three of them, aren't there?'

The young man answered in a tone which, for all his awe of his superiors, imperfectly concealed what he thought of such a foolish question.

‘Loy, sir. Loy Tanner. My Auntie Sandra', he added, aglow with pride at being the purveyor of such information, ‘knows a lady whose sister-in-law used to live in the same street as Loy's mum. Only she won't say where it is. Somewhere over Gallipoli Street way, my Auntie thinks, except she won't say – the lady, that is. Says people have a right to their privacy.'

‘That's a real lady! Only –' the detective frowned, finished the last of his tea, and thoughtfully spooned up the sweet mush remaining in the bottom of the cup – ‘it's funny, if she's living down there, the media haven't sniffed her out. With all due respect to your lady snout, you'd expect a pop star's mum to hang out a bit up-market from Gallipoli Street.'

‘That's what she says,' PC Blaker insisted, crestfallen but sticking to his guns.

Jack Ellers, taking pity, interposed soothingly, ‘Could be someone else of the same name. Goodness knows we're not short of Tanners in Angleby. Look in the phone book, they're ten a penny. On the other hand, could be that Loy Tanner's only a stage name. Most of those pop stars seem to be Joe Muck or Siddy Piffalovitch in real life.'

‘He
is
Loy Tanner!' The young policeman's eyes had become suspiciously bright. ‘His great-great-grandfather – or however many greats it was, I don't know how many – was
the
Tanner, the famous one in the history books. The one they hung from the top of the castle all those years ago.'

‘Was he indeed?' said Jurnet, getting up from the table. ‘Not to worry, son. They don't do that any more, even to pop singers.'

The ground floor was crowded with young constables, eager as if they were waiting for the coaches to arrive to take them on a police outing. Some one was whistling a tune which Jurnet recognized as the one the green-quiffed girl had sung, holding on to the van door, swaying, lost in her dream. The detective's face lost its expression of contentment as his mouth twisted a little at the corners.
‘I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine.'
Whoever could lay down the law with that degree of certainty hadn't met Miriam.

Sergeant Ellers, practised at recognizing the signs of incipient melancholy in his superior officer, said, ‘We must be crackers, haunting the place even when we're off duty, especially a day like this, strictly for the kiddies. Rosie'll think I've got my eye on some nubile WPC, can't bear to let her out of my sight.'

‘Oh ah.'

The little Welshman persisted. ‘Look – if Miriam's off somewhere on business, why don't you join me and the missus for supper? It's osso bucco – and Rosie always says the sight of your lovely Latin kisser across the table lends the finishing touch when she cooks Italian. So what do you say?'

‘Not tonight.' Jurnet roused himself enough to recognize the oblique reference to the fact that, though carefully behind his back, the boys at Headquarters were prone to refer to him as Valentino. ‘Ta all the same. Miriam's not off anywhere. I don't know what gave you the idea. Went up to London for some trade show or something, but she'll be back by now and expecting me –'

‘In that case, why not make it the two of you? You're not planning an evening of culture at the University, so you tell me, and after a hard day's graft Miriam can't be feeling all that like cooking –'

Such delicacy, thought Jurnet, the mouth untwisting a little in grateful appreciation, from one who knew as well as he did himself Miriam's approach to – or rather, bellicose recoil from – the culinary arts: a male conspiracy to keep women from fulfilling their God-given potential.

He smiled at the chubby little man, not afraid to let his affection show. ‘Another time, OK?'

The two had cleared a way for themselves almost to the door when the duty sergeant, burrowing through the pack, called across the backs and shoulders which still barred his way, ‘Mr Jurnet! Ben! Hold on! Got something for you!'

Arrived at his goal, the man straightened his tunic and smiled indulgently at the high-spirited youngsters all about him.

‘You'd think it was Christmas instead of nearly Easter! Someone hang up a bunch of mistletoe, I shouldn't care to answer for the consequences.' Handing over an envelope, small and flat, without superscription: ‘Bloke handed it in just after eleven. I got the exact time logged, if you need it. Foreigner, by the way he spoke. Peaky. Looked like a puff of wind would blow him away. Said it had to be given into your hands personal. Made quite a song and dance about it.'

‘Foreigner, eh?' Jack Ellers leaned over for a better look. ‘If it's a bomb, not enough jelly there to take off more'n a finger or a nose.'

‘Not worth bothering about,' Jurnet agreed, reaching into a pocket for his penknife. He selected a small blade, slit the envelope open and took out its contents.

For a moment the three stood staring down at what lay revealed. Then the duty sergeant said with a laugh that was only slightly soured with envy, ‘Somebody up there must love you, and no mistake.'

The two bits of green pasteboard took up little room in the detective's hand.

Two tickets for Second Coming in Concert at 8.30 p.m. at the University.

Jurnet parked his car as directed in the walled enclosure which was all that remained of the ancient manor upon whose site Angleby had seen fit to raise the concrete ziggurats of its university. The enclosure had once been a kitchen garden. Old nails still protruding from the eroded bricks showed where espaliered apricocks had once ripened under Tudor suns. Under the chill March moon the meticulously aligned cars looked like rows of some weird vegetable, of the marrow family it might be, laid out to ripen off in the alien light. Miriam got out of the front passenger seat and waited for Jurnet to lock up, her breath steaming, the white coat she had bought that day in London wrapped close about her body in generous, expensive folds.

Jurnet came round the car and kissed her with passion, even though she
had
got him out on a night cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, let alone those of a plastic god hanging on a cross in the Market Place. Their combined breaths ascended the frosty air like a cloud of incense until she pulled away in laughing protest: ‘We'll be late!'

‘Have you got the tickets?' she had demanded earlier, when he had hardly got his key out of the flat door. ‘Mara said she'd get Leo to drop them off. I meant to tell you this morning and then, in all the rush, it went clean out of my head.'

He had shut the door, pocketed his key, taken off his coat and hung it on the gimcrack stand that was all the furnishing of the shabby little hall. In the even shabbier living-room the table was still piled high with the patterns and fashion magazines among which, at breakfast time, he had contrived to find room for his mug of instant and piece of toast. No smell – not even of the dehydrated chemical messes which, reconstituted according to the directions on the packet, turned themselves, when heated by Miriam's unwilling ministrations, into hydrated chemical messes – drifted in from the kitchen.

‘Well?' she had urged. Even tight with impatience, her mouth, Jurnet noted with pleasure, could not disguise its lovely, generous curve, at once so revealing and so misleading. He sat down in a lumpy armchair and began to unlace his shoes.

‘Who's Mara? Who's Leo when he's at home?'

‘You don't listen to me. Mara's one of my knitters, of course, the one I'm always praising to the skies. Leo's her husband – Leo Felsenstein. He works for me too, when he's feeling up to it. For God's sake,' she cried, ‘did you get the tickets or didn't you? If you did, you'll have to put those shoes straight back on again, if we're going to have time to eat.'

‘Actually,' announced the detective, fishing the tickets out of his pocket and holding them out for Miriam's eager fingers to snatch at, ‘I was just going to slip into my sequinned Hush Puppies, get out my medallion, and give myself a quick heliotrope rinse. I wouldn't want to let you down with the beautiful people.'

‘Moron!' she murmured, appeased, scanning the tickets absorbedly. Satisfied they were what they appeared to be, she bent down and kissed him lightly on the top of his head, her mind on other things.

‘Beautiful people! You talk like a dinosaur! And you a copper with your finger, supposedly, on the pulse of the masses! You simply haven't a clue what gives today, have you?'

‘Enough to know those tickets are changing hands for a king's ransom. So what did you have to do to get your hands on these two? Flog 'em a couple of sweaters at cost price? Take out a second mortgage? Sacrifice your maidenhead?'

Miriam said, ‘You left out fellatio. I tried them all, actually – but no dice. Then, just by the merest chance – you could have knocked me down with a feather – Mara and I were talking, and suddenly, out of the blue, just for something to say, no more than that, I said something about Second Coming and how much I'd have liked to have heard them live at the University, only getting tickets was out of the question, when she came out quite casually with the fact that Loy Tanner was her son.'

Jurnet hooted. ‘You mean he's really – what was it? – Loy Felsenstein, not the descendant of our local hero! Well! Well!'

‘I don't mean anything of the sort. He's Mara's son, not Leo's. Tanner was her maiden name. She also told me that Leo was the only husband she'd ever had.'

‘I see. My apologies to Loy boy for having slanderously accused him of being born in holy wedlock. They lynch people nowadays for less. Did Mrs F. also confide in you how come she lives in Gallipoli Street, knitting sweaters for a female slave-driver, when her son must be a millionaire several times over?'

‘How did you know about Gallipoli Street? Sebastopol Terrace, to be accurate, but the same little two-down-two-ups. And she did, as a matter of fact. Confide.' Miriam's dark brown eyes, large and, as a rule, rather melancholy, brightened with pleasure. ‘I felt quite honoured. I don't think she can have let on to anyone else, or the papers would have got on to it and never let her alone. What she said was, it's completely her own decision, living where and how she does. Apparently Loy's forever trying to get her to accept money from him, but she always says no. Not because she's proud, or because she's got anything against money as such, but because she's afraid of what might happen if she says yes. She said she's had some bad times in her life, so she knows how precious happiness is – how hard to get, how hard to hold on to.

‘Like hanging on to one of the lifeboats after a shipwreck, is how she described it, with, all the time, the people who've managed to get seats inside the boat hammering on your knuckles to make you let go in case the extra weight overturns the lot of you into the sea. She says she and Leo are very happy the way they are, and she doesn't want to take any chances by making things different, the way more money would be bound to. She says they have everything they need, and it may surprise you to know that they actually enjoy working for me. That was how the tickets came up. Since I'd said I was a fan of Second Coming, would I care to accept a couple of tickets for the concert as a mark of their joint appreciation of a lovely boss? Apparently Loy was insisting on sending round tickets for the two of them, only she thought the crowds would be too much for Leo, and even if she felt like going herself – which, actually, she didn't – she didn't fancy leaving him on his own for the whole evening.' Miriam broke off, then added soberly, ‘She's a remarkable woman. Made me feel like a materialistic heel. If I had a son rolling in the lolly, I wouldn't say no to a chunk of it.'

Jurnet commented, ‘When the time comes, we'll have to break it gently to the little fellow that his mummy's a gold-digger.' He felt around for his shoes, and levered his knackered feet into them, feeling a small surge of regret at being, like them, caged up again for the night. ‘Just hang on to those seats, that's all.'

Miriam looked at him, surprised. ‘I'm standing here with the tickets right in my hand.'