Ritual Murder (6 page)

“Seems I owe you an apology.”

“That's all right. You couldn't be expected to know.”

“Sorry just the same.”

“Know, I mean, what it means to be part of this.” A sweep of the torch indicated the dark bulk of the cathedral. “Even a very humble part, unimportant.”

“It's big all right,” Jurnet said inadequately.

“It's perfect! Not another cathedral to touch it! At Salisbury they put a few extra feet on the spire—” the verger's tone made it plain that he regarded the addition as un-Christian one-upmanship—“but that don't mean anything—”

“Can't see the point of a spire myself.” Jurnet meant it as a joke.

“For me,” Harbridge declared simply, “it's the holiest part of the whole building. Holier than the High Altar, even. A finger pointing to Heaven. When I was a lad at school they taught us that parallel lines meet in infinity, meaning, I suppose, never. The way I look at it, that there spire—” turning for a brief, confirmatory glance— “is parallel lines meeting in the here an' now, and the point where they meet is God.”

The verger smiled at the other's embarrassment.

“If you don't mind me saying, sir, you don't strike me as a religious man.”

Jurnet said, “I don't mind your saying it, at all.”

Only to find that he did, a little.

As he slowed down at the gate, a boy and a girl, closely intertwined, came through on the narrow footpath. They were none of his business either, and Jurnet could not have explained why he wound down the car window and called across, “Good evening!”

The pair came apart and stared at him, at first blankly, then in hostile recognition. The girl's face, in the light of the lantern that hung from the centre of the arch, was puffy and discoloured. Into the boy's, as Jurnet watched, came that blend of calculation and artlessness with which, as a police officer, he was only too familiar. They were the ones who really had you worried. The sinners without a sense of sin.

Detaching himself from the girl, the boy stepped into the road towards the car. Jurnet suddenly did not want to hear what he had to say. He set the car in motion, out of the Close, into the sleeping city. In the driving mirror he could see the two together again, in the middle of the carriageway. As if he guessed himself under observation, the boy put his arms round the girl and pressed his body impudently to hers.

Jurnet drove home to his empty flat.

When the bells began to chime for Sung Eucharist, Jurnet abandoned hope of Miriam's coming and came into the cathedral. He deliberately kept his eyes away from the inscription in the corner. He knew it by heart anyway.

The people filing into the cathedral out of the pale sunshine were of two clearly differentiated kinds. Most were sightseers, in jeans and anoraks, with cameras dangling from their shoulders. The rest were dressed in Sunday best, the older women—who formed a majority—hatted and gloved and carrying prayer books. Where the first category drifted along the nave with the uncertain air common to all transients through sacred buildings, these others made purposefully for the transepts where rows of chairs had been set out facing the altar positioned under the tower, at the crossing of the arms of the great cross which was the building itself.

The bells stopped. The choristers filed into the choir-stalls, white surplices over scarlet cassocks. On the nave side of the altar rails the onlookers strained forward like visitors to the Zoo waiting for the animals to be fed. What a bonus to see the mechanism working, as it might be a National Trust watermill with the wheel actually going round!

When the first organ notes zoomed into the air, they looked pleased; but the arrival of the officiating clergy, ceremonially robed and preceded by a golden cross brandished aloft like a banner, clearly disturbed some among them. A small man, dwarfed by a towering backpack, expressed noisy disapproval upon discovering that the service, being located bang in the middle of the floor space, frustrated, for its duration, a total perambulation of the cathedral; an obstruction, he appeared to think, on a par with a farmer putting a bull into a field for the purpose of blocking a foot-path, and as deserving of censure.

The choir began to sing, something splendid and celebratory but not, Jurnet thought, as soaring as the song he had heard in rehearsal. He craned his neck and saw that the Gentlemen of the Choir, the adult singers, six a side in the second row of the stalls and robust of figure and voice, were hard at it, underpinning the boyish trebles and holding them earthbound. Hard to tell at that distance, but the detective had the impression that the child choristers were one short of their full complement.

Jurnet could not see the Dean anywhere, and wondered whether, like the producer of any other theatrical piece, he was hovering somewhere in the wings, overseeing exits and entrances, biting his nails when someone missed a cue.

Not likely, he decided, after a while. In this performance all the actors were word-perfect. The spectacle proceeded with a magnificent self-confidence that left him, as one brought up to the hesitancies of lay preachers, awed and, against his will, envious.

But then, it was a production that had been running for a long time.

Suddenly uncomfortable at the thought that he, a Jew-to-be, might be deemed to be participating in a Christian rite, Jurnet retreated down the nave, reassured by the thought that it was hardly the place to run into any of Rabbi Schnellman's flock.

He had forgotten about Mosh Epperstein.

In track suit and plimsolls the archaeology student came loping down the aisle, away from the boarded enclosure. It was not a pace at which people customarily moved through houses of worship, and several of the sightseers looked at him curiously. It was a haste that jarred with the stately swell of the music, the invocation rolling down from the altar,
“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—”

Looking pale and ill, Epperstein broke into a run; and Jurnet, whose thought it was that the student had been back to the excavation to recover some cannabis cached there—either that, or the fellow was stoned already—set off in pursuit.

Just the same, such was the chemistry of the place, the detective could not bring himself actually to sprint after his quarry. When, at last, hurrying as best he could without giving the appearance of haste, he achieved the Close, Epperstein was nowhere to be seen. Stan Brent was lying on his side on the lawn chewing a blade of grass, and to all appearances in no way incommoded by a scramble of children playing some game in which his prostrate body served some essential purpose, boundary or goal.

Giving up the chase, the detective turned to go back into the cathedral.

The young man called over, “How much is it worth to say which way he went?”

Jurnet gave no sign of having heard; but his face felt hot as he made his way back through the little door into the north aisle.

“Bloody shit!” he muttered.

From the distant transept, some devotional Everest scaled at last, the entire building resounded with a triumphal
“Amen!”

Elizabeth Aste came towards him along the north aisle, prim and wanton by turn as she crossed the bands of sun and shadow in her transparent muslin shift.

The girl's face, he saw, was almost back to normal. The swelling had gone down. The purple bruise on the cheekbone she could easily have masked with make-up had she wanted to.

She was looking enormously pleased with herself. So pleased as to be willing to include even an interfering copper in her general satisfaction with the world.

“Good morning, Police Officer!” Barely suppressed laughter bubbled in her voice. “If you really are one, that is.”

“I really am. Detective-Inspector Jurnet.”

“Detective-Inspector—how grand! What on earth are you doing here on a Sunday?”

“It seems quite a popular day for being in a church,” Jurnet observed mildly. “I'm not on duty, if that's what you mean.”

“How stupid of me! I suppose I always assume policemen never stop being policemanly. You're late for the service.”

“So I hear. How about you? Are
you
working? Don't tell me they keep your nose to the grindstone seven days a week?” He hazarded experimentally, “I just passed young Epperstein in a hell of a hurry—”

“Epperstein?” she repeated vaguely, as if she were trying to put a face to the name. “I came by to pick up some slides.” She smiled as if she had said something amusing.

Jurnet said, “I'm glad I ran into you. I've been hoping for a guided tour of Little St Ulf's grave.”

“I'm only the photographer. Besides, there's nothing much to see so far, except a hole in the floor. You don't need a guide for that.”

“That only makes the interpretation all the more important. Anyway, I couldn't get in on my own, could I? Surely you keep it locked up?”

“In case somebody steals the hole? Even if we did, anyone who wanted to get in would only have to lean on the boards. They'd go down like a pack of cards.”

“Just the same,” Jurnet said, “I'd have thought … To keep out the nosey parkers, if nothing else—”

“There's a notice up, didn't you see? ‘Private', in capital letters. Nobody in a church ever opens a door marked ‘Private'. Scared stiff what they might find on the other side.”

“Just the same,” Jurnet said again. “There ought at least be a token padlock and chain. Some kid that can't read could fall down the hole and break his neck.”

“Then they could make him a saint like Little St Ulf couldn't they?” Looking past him, “Here's Professor Pargeter. Take it up with him.”

“My dear child!” Professor Pargeter cried, at the same time waving to a group of sightseers who had recognized him from the telly. In the few steps that separated him from the pair standing in the aisle he signed his name on a hymn book, the official guide to the cathedral, and a copy of
Penthouse
. “Working on Sunday!” he called across. “This is indeed conduct beyond the call of.” Taking in the girl's costume, “Unless the Dean's signed you up for a re-run of the Temptations of St Anthony.”

“You
are
awful! I just popped in for some slides.”

“Better pop out before the Bishop sees you, unless you want to be exorcized bell, book, and candle.”

“It sounds like fun.”

“Get along with you, hussy! Besides—” the voice shedding some of its jollity—“I saw the egregious Brent outside. And it doesn't do—does it?—to keep him waiting.”

“Don't be horrid, Pargy,” she pouted. “I can't think why you always have it in so for Stan.”

“I can't think either, unless it's because he's amoral, sadistic, and forty years younger than I am.” His eyes, blue as the girl's, narrowed. He put out a finger that did not quite touch her bruised cheek. “He hasn't been knocking you about again?”

The girl positively bloomed. Waiting, as usual, for his existence to be recognized, Jurnet could see the nipples lifting the thin muslin.

“You
are
silly! Anyone would think you were my father!” Tilting her face so that the bruise was even more visible, she kissed the Professor on the cheek. “I'll have those pictures you wanted ready in the morning.” Then, “Oh—this is a police officer. Chief Constable or something. He's investigating who killed Little St Ulf and he wants you to show him the dig.”

When she had gone, the two men took stock of each other. Here Jurnet had the advantage, being moderately fond of “Past Imperfect,” the programme which had made Professor Pargeter a TV personality and archaeology the biggest thing in spectator sports since all-in wrestling. The man stood up surprisingly well to being viewed in three dimensions. Large and tweedy, he looked powerful but unfrightening, whilst the arrogant cock to the handsome features was more than counterbalanced by a moustache that looked as if it had been stuck on for a joke.

As for the Professor, he said, “I was in the Judaean Hills couple of years ago. Place called Tel Ari. Kind of Mini-Masada where some Israelites held out against the Romans. Full of bodies looking just like you.”

Jurnet asked, startled, “How could you tell? Skeletons, weren't they?”

“Well? What d'you suppose you are, under that biodegradable flesh you're got up in? Chief Constable, Liz said. Some kind of joke?”

“Detective-Inspector actually. Detective-Inspector Jurnet.”

“What did I tell you?” said the Professor, with no particular surprise. “No need to ask what's
your
interest in Little St Ulf.”

“I'm not Jewish, if that's what you mean.”

“And I'm not a chap that makes fancy patterns in wet plaster for a living. It's not where you're going, it's where you've been that counts.”

The two walked towards the excavation, the Professor stopping several times to sign autographs and shake hands. The buzz of recognition grew, accompanied by a marked movement of people towards the north aisle.

Harbridge and another verger hurried up, clucking annoyance. The Professor, a finger to his lips, complained charmingly to his admirers, “You lovely people are going to get me slung out on my ear, do you know that?”

He shushed their laughter and made an amusing gesture of shooing them away; and although they did not go, they followed him no further, but stood watching his retreating back, chattering excitedly. Harbridge snapped, “Quiet, please! A service is in progress!”

“Try to give it a miss on Sundays as a rule,” the Professor remarked to Jurnet. “Only I've been away all week, filming on Hadrian's Wall. Thought I'd take a quiet look to see what the others have been up to while my back was turned.”

“Mr Epperstein was here too, earlier.”

“Was he, now? And Liz makes two. The helots are more conscientious than I'd given them credit for. Beginning to wonder why I hurried back.”