Ritual Murder (10 page)

Jurnet groaned aloud.

“What is it, Ben?” the Superintendent inquired with concern. “Something hurting?”

“A bit.”

By the time Jurnet got to Bridge Street, to the front entrance into that no-man's-land where Joe Fisher stockpiled his wares, mist from the water meadows was drifting across the roadway, blurring the neat rows of artisans' dwellings on the other side of the street, which marched up to the humpbacked bridge over the river. The street lamps, rimmed in dull orange, cast a dim, religious light that was more disquieting than darkness.

The detective felt low-spirited. His ribs ached, the abrasions on his cheeks stung in the biting air. After dropping off the Superintendent at Headquarters he had intended to pop back to his flat, pick up a coat, have a drink, even open a tin or two, There were, he knew, a few cans of beans on the kitchen shelf, as well as some packets of a dehydrated chow mein to which, for a month of gastronomic lunacy, he had been unaccountably addicted. But now, the very thought of the Sino-chemical mess turned his stomach.

He did not go home.

He locked the car, crossed the pavement, and climbed the padlocked gate painfully, listening to his heart thudding against his damaged skeleton.

There was a light in the trailer. Jurnet was about to call out something reassuring when the door opened, a slight figure stood silhouetted at the top of the steps, and that voice, sweet and brainless and so unlike any other, inquired, “Joe?”

Almost, the detective wished he could say yes, just to make Millie Fisher happy. But a second later it seemed that Mr Ben could make Millie Fisher happy too: if not as happy as Joe, happy enough to be going on with.

“Mr Ben! Willie! It's Mr Ben!”

The boy appeared in the doorway as his mother ran down the steps and flung herself at the detective with her usual surfeit of joy. To Jurnet's customary feelings of guilt at her onslaught were added the pains of his hurt body. But when, looking down, he saw Willie, the little face upturned in expectation, he clenched his teeth and swung the child up on to his shoulder the way he always did.

“How's the big boy, then?”

“Mr Ben! Mr Ben!”

Joe Fisher, it appeared, had been and gone. He had brought gifts.

“Will yer take tea?” asked Millie, and this time Willie, jumping up and down with excitement, shouted, “You can, Mr Ben! We got a fast! A vacuum fast!”

Within seconds, Jurnet was seated on the bench, in front of him the “vacuum fast”, from which he was adjured to help himself.

“Joe filled it up,” Millie beamed, obviously convinced that no one but Joe could work the trick. “An' it stays hot an' hot an' hot!”

“Not for ever, barmy,” the boy corrected her. “Not more' n a week, I shouldn't think.” He turned to the detective with pride, “
An'
we got pastries!” He brought a cardboard box to the table and opened it to reveal some cakes somewhat the worse for wear. The child regarded them with passion, counted their number aloud, and inquired anxiously, “Would you like the chocolate one?”

“Just had my tea,” said Jurnet, “and I'm full up to here—” drawing a hand across his throat. “But I wouldn't say no to a cuppa, if there's one going.”

Joe Fisher had been gone some considerable time, Jurnet surmised, sipping his tea with every appearance of enjoyment out of the screw-cup on top of the flask. The tea was strong and sickeningly sweet. It was also lukewarm.

“Joe back soon?” he asked conversationally.

“He'll have to, won't he, when yer've drunk up the tea? Ter fill it up again.” Millie giggled at her own craftiness.

“You're expecting him back tonight, then?” Jurnet put the cup down. Another drop, and he'd bring up the lot.

“You ain't drinking!” Millie's beautiful eyes clouded over.

Jurnet said, “Waiting for it to cool off.” He took a deep breath, and swallowed all that remained in the cup.

Millie smiled beatifically.

“Now Joe'll come.”

“Well,” said Jurnet, who needed to vomit, “I must be getting along.”

“You c'n come to tea any time,” said Millie, “now we got a vacuum fast.”

As, a few minutes later, rid of the dreadful brew, he leaned, shaky but revived, against the nearest Nissen hut, he felt a tug at his trousers—Willie, his straw hair bright even in darkness, his upturned face heavy with importance.

“I know where Joe goes!”

“You've not been following him about?” Jurnet's fears for the boy's safety eclipsed any satisfaction he might have derived from the information. “You'll get yourself run over.”

The child drew himself up.

“I go to the chippie, don't I? An 'fer the milk an' the bread? I c'd go anywhere, if it weren't too long t' leave Ma.”

“That's what I mean.” Jurnet hastily retrieved his error. “You can't stay with your Ma if you're busy following your Pa all over the place.”

“I
weren't
following him! I jus' come out of the grocery an' I seen him on the other side o' the street. So I thought I'd ask him for 10p for a sucker. Ma'd said I could 'ave one if there was any change, on'y there weren't any. So I thought, Joe's rich, I‘ll ask him.”

“Who told you Joe was rich?”

The boy looked puzzled. Then, “He just
is
. So I waited till I could get across—” he looked at Jurnet severely. “I'm always
very
careful. On'y by then he was all the way up the street, an' I had to run after him—” The sentence petered out.

“Yes?” said Jurnet, encouragingly.

“I—” The little face creased and uncreased itself as the child struggled to convey feelings he could scarcely register, let alone put into words. The detective forced himself to stay silent, let the boy resolve his dilemma in his own way.

“Then,” said Willie, “I didn' feel like a sucker arter all.” He looked hard at Jurnet, daring a contradiction. “I often don't feel like one when I've just felt like one. He ' adn't seen me, so it didn't make no diff' rence.”

“Did you go on following him?”

“It weren't far. He went down a street, an' then he went inter a house.”

“Maybe he went to call on a friend.”

Willie made no attempt to hide his seorn.

“He's got a lot o' keys on the end of a chain in his trousers pocket. He took it out, an' he took one of the keys an' went in.” In case Jurnet still hadn't caught on, “He never knocked.”

“Do you know what street it was?”

Willie's face crinkled up again. This time it was a child crying.

“Yer know I can't read!”

At that, Jurnet swung the boy up on to his shoulders again, the pain in his ribs swallowed in a greater one.

“Know what, young feller-me-lad? We're going for a ride!”

“Ma—”

“The three of us! To show me that street. Think you can remember where it is?”

“Jest ' cause I bleeding can't read it,” Willie said savagely, “don't mean I don't know it!” After a moment he demanded, “What kind o' car?”

“Rover. New model.”

“Rover!” But the cares were never far away. “Ma—” Willie began again.

“Look—” said Jurnet, setting the child on his feet again, “we don't want Ma to bother her head, do we, with houses and keys and stuff like that. You sit in front and tell me quietly where to go, eh? And when we get to the house itself, if you recognize which one it is, just give me a tug of the trousers, like you did just now, OK? Only don't pull 'em off, will you? Out in the street without my trousers, a police officer! That'd be a fine thing!”

To huge laughter at the thought of Detective-Inspector Benjamin Jurnet caught driving in his underpants, they came back to Millie, and caught her up in their glee. A ride! A ride in a new model Rover!

Upon Jurnet's insistence that the two wrap up warmly, Willie, from under the trailer bench, brought out a fur coat of ambiguous pedigree which filled the detective's mouth with hairs as he gallantly helped Millie into it. Willie himself had a duffle, dirty but warm.

“Jes' wait till I tell Joe!” exclaimed Millie.

The two ran gaily ahead of him, finding their way between the scrapheaps like cats in the dark, Jurnet lumbering behind by torch-light. Their excited voices came to him from the other side of the fence.

“Purple!” That was Millie.

Willie shouted, “Blue, silly! Police cars are always blue!”

Jurnet, unable to discover where the two had made their exit, heaved himself over the gate again.

“It
is
blue, in't it, Mr Ben?” Willie settled himself into the front passenger seat. “I tell 'er, but she won't listen.”

“Purple!” cried Millie. Jurnet reflected that tomorrow, back at the police garage, the hairs on the back seat would require explanation.

He switched on the engine, put the car into gear, and pulled out from the kerb.

“You're both right,” he said. “Blue in daylight, and purple after lighting-up time. So you're both winners.”

“I told yer!” cried Millie, leaning forward and thumping her son on the shoulder.

Willie twisted round in his seat and shouted back triumphantly.

“An' I told
you
!”

Both winners!
Jurnet's hands tightened on the steering wheel. Softly to Willie, so that Millie should not hear, he said, “Going the right way, Squire, are we?”

The right way led down Bridge Street as far as Bridge Gate, then veered away from the Close to follow the high wall which enclosed the Bishop's garden. A little before the curving lane widened into a fine ceremonial space facing His Grace's front door, Willie spoke low, and pointed.

Jurnet turned right and, a few hundred yards on in response to a further direction, right again.

He knew where he was now; but drove on nevertheless, so that Willie could have the pleasure of pulling his trouser-leg as they passed Mrs Cossey's front door.

In the back, Millie stretched out her arms luxuriously.

“Wait till I tell Joe!”

Professor Pargeter had been in Birmingham. Detective-Inspector Benjamin Jurnet took it as a personal affront that Professor Pargeter had been in Birmingham at the time when, in Angleby Close, events were happening for which, in the Inspector's view, the Professor must bear a large portion of the responsibility.

It had not needed much inquiry to discover where the English Men had come by the knowledge of what had been done to the corpse of Arthur Cossey. Every one in Angleby who could spare forty minutes, and many who could not, made a point of tuning in to the Professor's weekly lunch-hour programme on local radio.

“Pargeting” as it was called, was a combination of chat show, history lesson, and stand-up comedy which was deservedly popular. You never knew what to expect from the Professor—only that, at the end, somehow, along with the gossip and the blue jokes, you could reckon on emerging better informed than you had imagined possible on subjects as diverse as Neolithic droveways and Mayan concepts of time. The Professor—people were always saying it—could get away with murder.

That day he had got off to a good start, opening with the husband-and-wife team starring in a Noel Coward season at the Theatre Royal, a couple so manically intent on burnishing their togetherness image as to be totally unaware that, under the gentle promptings of their interlocutor, their exchanges were becoming bitchier by the minute. As for the closing item, a plea for the preservation of a nineteenth-century lunatic asylum scheduled for demolition, it was impossible to decide whether the Professor were being serious, or guying over-enthusiastic conservationists.

Two good “Pargeting” pieces. Between, the Professor, having noted offhandedly that young Arthur Cossey, murdered in the cathedral, had been mutilated in precisely the same way as Little St Ulf before him—to wit, castrated, and scored from throat to navel with the interlaced triangles of the Star of David—had launched into a compelling five minutes on the fascination of magical signs in general.

“And now for an act of vandalism, perpetrated—would you believe it?—not by some of those disturbed adolescents for whom our hearts never stop bleeding, but by the wiseacres of our local Council—” and so on to the threatened asylum. Listeners were already wondering whether they were meant to grieve or rejoice over the impending fate of “this incomparable Romanesque escape into the East Anglian landscape” when the penny dropped, with all the thud of delayed shock.
What was that again about Arthur Cossey?

Immediately after the programme, which he always insisted on broadcasting live, the Professor had left for Birmingham to deliver a lecture at the University. Located there and brought to the telephone to receive Jurnet's call, he was cheerfully unrepentant.

“I bet Flossie's wetting his knickers!”

“I haven't spoken to the Dean.”

The Professor's booming laugh came over the wire.

“When you do, give him a kiss from me.”

His voice expressionless, Jurnet said, “A young American tourist was seriously injured and is still unconscious.”

There was a silence. Then the voice at the other end said, “Know something, Inspector? Play the clown long enough, it's the only bloody part you know how to.” There was another pause. Then, “I hope you don't think I planned that little hullabaloo?”

Jurnet ignored the question. He said, “I think we should have a talk, sir. Today, if at all possible.”

“I'll be back in Angleby by 8. Any time after that. I'm sure you know where I live. Inspector?”

“Sir?”

“If you think I had anything to do with the death of that child—”

After waiting, as it seemed to him, long enough, Jurnet asked again, “Sir?”