Death of a God (29 page)

‘I just wondered if your son had ever mentioned him to you.' Jurnet evaded the question. ‘Mr King's daughter works for Second Coming, and he and Loy had certainly met.'

The woman got up with a neat, economical movement and set her cocoa mug down on the mantelpiece. The glow from the electric fire penetrated the fabric of her housecoat, outlining the legs beneath, well-shaped but on the heavy side. She stood looking down at the detective with a troubled gaze.

‘Please don't think I'm badgering you,' she said, a little breathless. ‘I'm sure it must take an awful lot of time to put all the clues together. More than our linkers! Only, it's so hard on Leo, this limbo, the way everything drags on. It makes me so afraid for him –'

‘Not easy for you either, I'm sure of that.' Jurnet did not need to simulate sympathy. ‘I wouldn't want you to think that over at Headquarters we aren't only too well aware of the strain you're both under. The best I can say is, we aren't hanging about, I can assure you of that.'

‘I didn't mean –' Mrs Felsenstein rearranged her thoughts, and began again. ‘It's only, with time passing, doesn't it get harder, less likely you'll ever find out who did it?'

‘We're nowhere near that point as yet.' Jurnet got up from the couch, handed over his cocoa mug. ‘Delicious!' he pronounced, almost meaning it. Mrs Felsenstein turned away to set the mug on the mantelpiece next to its fellow, the detective drifting back across the room to the knitting machine and the piece of fabric patterned with sheep, one after the other.

The woman joined him there and said, ‘Another row and then there's a repeat, same as the others but with one black sheep among all the white ones. Miriam says it's one of our best numbers.'

Jurnet laughed.

‘Be truer to life to have all the sheep black and just the one white one. Not such a good seller, though.' He looked down at the woman. Even away from the fire, he thought, she looks young tonight.

He said, ‘I want you to believe that we're making progress. We've been listening to what people have had to say, and even more, if you follow me, listening to what they haven't.'

‘You mean they've been lying?'

‘Not necessarily. I mean that everybody has secrets – everybody, you and me included, if you don't mind me saying so. Sometimes they are secrets we can hardly bear to reveal to ourselves, let alone to others; and sometimes they are secrets we long to share, even though, sometimes, we know the sharing will get us into bad trouble.'

Jurnet said, ‘I believe profoundly that whoever killed your son, like any other undiscovered murderer, finds the burden of the knowledge of what he has done almost impossible to bear, alone. Yet how, knowing the consequences, can he come out with it? That's his problem, and ours too. That being so, we have to move on to the facts, to the mistakes he has made.'

‘Supposing he hasn't made any?'

‘Impossible!' the detective stated with confidence. ‘He may think he hasn't, but he has; because, underneath it all, don't you see, subconsciously, that's what he wants – to be found out. All the time he goes about painstakingly covering up his tracks, deep inside he wants passionately to be rid of that intolerable load which is wearing him down. That's why, invariably, he leaves clues that are unknown to his conscious self, sometimes little slips so silly even we, the police, pass them over, don't recognize them for what they are; but clues that, sooner or later, have to lead us to him and him to us, his pursuers who are also his only rescuers.'

‘You make it sound like a Greek tragedy.'

‘I wouldn't know about that. What I haven't mentioned yet, though, is the third side of the triangle.'

‘What is that?'

‘Not what: who. The victim. Where does he fit into the picture? Because he has to, or there isn't one. That's why a police officer investigating a murder has to spend so much time asking nosey questions about what kind of bloke was he; reading other people's letters, going through old school reports or the files of old newspapers.

‘Your son – forgive me – was killed by a blow on the back of his head. He couldn't have seen the arm raised or the weapon descending, or he would have ducked, tried to dodge. There would have been a struggle, and there's no evidence of anything like that. But I have a crazy theory –' Jurnet went suddenly bright red at what he had already revealed of himself, and at what he proposed to reveal further; yet, under the almost mesmeric scrutiny of those wonderful eyes, the whites so pure, the pupils so brilliant, could not, or did not choose to, stop – ‘that every murder victim, even if death comes in the dark or while he's asleep knows the identity of his murderer.'

Mrs Felsenstein whispered ‘Poor Loy!' and covered her face with her hands.

Jurnet, furious with himself, said awkwardly, ‘There I go, rattling on. It must have been the cocoa.'

‘No, no! I'm very grateful –'

‘Don't know what for.' The detective settled his coat on his shoulders. ‘I must be getting along.'

The other took her hands away from her face. ‘Thank you again for bringing back my tin.'

‘My pleasure.' The detective took a few steps towards the door; turned as if remembering his manners, and shook hands. Inquired: ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?'

‘There is one thing,' Mara Felsenstein said. With thumb and forefinger she took hold of the zip fastener at her neck; pulled on it in a sweeping gesture that split the edges of her housecoat apart like a dehiscing seed-pod, revealing the naked fruit beneath.

‘If you don't mind, that is. You can go to bed with me.'

Jurnet drove home through the dark Good Friday night. The city was very quiet. Lucky for him, the detective thought, none of his tribe were on the prowl with their little bags ready to be blown into.

‘Cocoa!'
he could hear their incredulous laughter. ‘Tell us another!'

It had been wonderful beyond words, beyond wonder. Beyond guilt, beyond regret that it had happened. He drove homeward, filled with gratitude and a measureless joy that it had happened to him.

‘Was I all right?' she had asked tremulously, when at last, on the bumpy old couch, they had drawn apart from each other, not too far apart.

She had sounded like a virgin, she the mother of a grown son. She had made love like a virgin, assuming there to be such a thing as a virgin without timidity, possessed of perfect discretion, and a delicate and instinctive knowledge of all that there was to be savoured in the coming together of a man and a woman. There had been a freshness, a radiance – Jurnet had to stop the car, draw in to the side of the road and sit quietly for a little, until the world returned to its accustomed orbit.

‘When can we do this again?' he had demanded, transported; yet scarcely surprised when she had answered, with a loving finality that left no room for contradiction: ‘Never!'

Jurnet swung the car round into the entrance of the block of flats, enjoying, in his new-found awareness of the possibilities of existence, every movement of the car and of his own body mastering it. He parked, as usual, next to the resident rubbish, switching off the ignition and sitting still in the driving seat for a moment longer, neither thinking nor feeling, simply being.

Even so, ecstasy – if that was what it was – was a perishable quantity, short-lived as a spark. It was replaced by knowledge he could not stifle, nor pretend it was not so.

Coming into the driveway, the headlights, describing their turning arc, had briefly illuminated something.

Something.

Jurnet got out of the car, shut the door, and walked back to the street. In the gutter, slammed against the kerb where some passing vehicle had hurled it, lay the body of the cat. Its black coat was sticky and repellent, the left side of its face laid open in a grin of such manic ferocity that the detective's eyes shut of their own volition.

What did you do with a dead cat beside light a candle to its memory, do penance for the rest of your days because you had got home so late that it had got tired of waiting; and, watching for you, for you alone, had forgotten for one fatal instant the street sense programmed into it from kittenhood?

Load it into one of the black plastic bags to await the dustman? Leave it where it was, for the street cleaners to clear away? Fling it over the hedge into somebody else's garden and let them worry about it?

Jurnet went up to his flat, looked up the number of a vet and dialled it.
‘Mr Harvey Chance,'
the recorded message replied with a certain standoffishness,
‘is not available at the moment except for emergencies, in which case he may be reached at Angleby 37462. Surgery hours are 9 to 10.30 a.m. daily except Sundays. If you have any message, first give your name, address, and telephone number. Speak when the signal tone ceases. Thank you.'

When the signal tone ceased, Jurnet did not give his name, address and telephone number. He said, ‘My cat is dead. It was run over because I was too busy screwing to get back home and feed it. It was black, and it liked baked beans. I did not know its name. Thank
you
.'

He got the dialling tone again and phoned Dr Colton at his private address.

‘That'll be all right,' said the doctor, when he heard what Detective-Inspector Jurnet wanted. ‘Leave it outside the back door and I'll see one of the mortuary attendants deals with it first thing in the morning.' Despite the lateness of the hour, his voice was unexpectedly gentle. For once, he did not ask for any forms to be filled in.

Jurnet put the phone back and went into the kitchen. He fished about in the cupboard under the sink, and found a carrier bag with ‘Harrods' printed on it. It pleased him to have found such an upmarket winding sheet. Across the landing, Mrs Petherton's gramophone had begun its evening recital: ‘
Love is the sweetest thing
–'. Reminded of a job undone, the detective picked up the carton of beans, what was left of them.

He crossed to Mrs Petherton's door and rang the bell. He had to wait a long time. When Mrs Petherton finally appeared, she looked at him with glazed eyes, and said in a haughty voice, ‘I never purchase anything at the door.'

‘Not selling – giving!' Jurnet put on his jolly voice, plunked the carton down in the passage, and, with a hand firmly gripped under the woman's elbow, propelled her back to the living-room.

It was a long time since he had been invited in, and the squalor of what had been a bravely bright little place appalled him. The gramophone shone immaculate on its special rug, everything else looked as if it hadn't been touched for months. On the little tables and whatnots, thinner areas of dust among the thicker areas traced the bases of china crinoline ladies and the china gentlemen who had bent over their hands; now, no doubt, performing their elaborate courtesies on the shelves of the friendly bric-à-brac dealer. The grate was full of gin bottles, several of them broken. On the floral covers that swathed the sofa and the armchair, the chrysanthemums were greasy as from some unidentified blight. Mrs Petherton looked stoned and ill.

And hungry.

‘Got a tin opener?' Jurnet asked, still doing the cheery bit.

He settled the little woman on the least awful part of the sofa, and went into the kitchen, which was, for a wonder, fairly clean, probably because such little use had been made of its modest facilities. He put some coins in the meter, went back to the hallway for the carton, found an opener and a spoon; opened two tins of the beans and set them to heat in a saucepan on the stove.

‘I hope you like beans –' back in the living-room. ‘A couple of bowls like this and we'll have you entering for the marathon.'

The little woman sat exactly as he had left her, the faded blue eyes that must once have been so pretty now fixed on the detective's face in bemused conjecture, now sliding away as if the problem he presented was too difficult to be contemplated. ‘Love is the Sweetest Thing' had long ago declined into a leaden
thump, thump, thump
. Jurnet went across to the gramophone and silenced it.

He brought a little table up to the sofa and placed the hot bowl of beans on it.

‘A mat!' Mrs Petherton commanded imperiously. ‘A table mat! You'll ruin the polish!'

‘No damage done.' Jurnet snatched up the bowl with exaggerated haste. The table top was already deeply scored with a pattern of interlacing rings, an artefact of years of solitary tippling. He found a mat doing nothing on the mantelshelf and set the bowl back in place again.

Mrs Petherton began to eat, first delicately, like the cat, and then with an appetite painful to watch. Just the same, Jurnet steeled himself to stay and watch it. The dead cat in the gutter wasn't going anywhere. It had, though.

Gone somewhere.

When, eventually, Jurnet came down, carrying the Harrods bag, the body had disappeared. Only some tags of fur and tissue, and a dark stain where the skull had cracked against the kerbstone, were there to convince the detective he had not dreamed it all.

He went along the street a little, on the chance some other vehicle had nudged the corpse to a new resting place: but nothing. Bizarre possibilities crowded Jurnet's tired mind. A fox slinking into town had carried it off for its cubs. Some bright little Fascist slob, full of the joy of spring, was even at that moment nailing the dead cat to a ducky little cross, to be left outside Rabbi Schnellman's door for him to find first thing in the morning.

Anything to blot out the possibility that the cat might be alive, after all; that he, Jurnet, had not merely been criminally late for its supper, but, repelled by its ugly death, as he had supposed it, had abandoned it without mercy or proper examination, leaving it to drag itself off painfully in search of succour or, at least, a softer place in which to die.