Death of a God (9 page)

‘Beauty! Cripes!' Simon Culliver opened his eyes youthfully wide. ‘Look, Lionel – I couldn't be more sorry it's been damaged – ancient artefact, and all that. But beauty! It's bloody hideous!'

‘If you say so.' It was obvious that the Professor of Archaeology couldn't have cared less what were the opinions of the Professor of Contemporary Institutions. Jurnet he eyed with a kindlier air. The detective's reaction to the statue had not been lost on him.

‘Can it be mended?' Jurnet asked.

‘Something can undoubtedly be done, and will: though it is galling beyond words that an object which has survived unharmed for four thousand years should be mutilated on the mindless whim of some retarded adolescent.'

Professor Culliver insisted, ‘I'll say it once more. The concert had nothing to do with it!' To Jurnet, turning on the boyishness as far as it would go: ‘I'm the one he's really getting at, Officer, because it was my idea to bring Second Coming to the Middlemass in the first place. Dear old Lionel – he thinks nothing's gone right with the world since we made the dreadful mistake of changing over from BC to AD.'

The severed head lay on the floor turned towards the detective.
Beautiful?
It depended what you meant by beauty. Ravishing, if you like. Ravenous. The size of that belly, it could have been her old man in there along with the baby, swallowed whole once the poor sucker had served his turn. Aloud, he said, ‘I must say it surprises me not to find such a unique object locked up in a glass case.'

‘Or here at all,' Professor Whinglass growled. ‘I couldn't agree more. The man who found her – an amateur but a person of wide knowledge – very properly turned her over to the Museum who, most magnanimously, decided it should go to the archaeological collection we're in process of setting up here at the University. You can imagine how gratified we were to be promised a piece of international importance. Only unfortunately Sir Cedric Middlemass saw it as well, and he, God help us, thought it would fit in splendidly with his own graven images. And, in this University, when Sir Cedric says jump, we all jump. If it had been the Venus de Milo instead of the one of Hob's Hole, and he'd fancied her in a bikini and grass skirt, a bikini and grass skirt it would have been.'

‘That shouldn't have affected giving the statue some physical protection.'

‘Sir Cedric,' the other explained drily, ‘lays particular stress on what he calls the tactile values, a credo which he appears to derive from a study of the shelves of his supermarkets. Though I imagine he might change his mind if the customers started toppling his stacks of instant coffee or rice crispies.'

‘I'm sure he would, sir,' agreed Jurnet, who was beginning to feel that a little academic bitchery went a long way. He greeted with relief the approach of Detective-Inspector Sidney Hale, long-faced and melancholy, his face, as ever, that of a man saddened by the world's ways, but never surprised by them.

Well, almost never. Even Sad Sid looked a little bemused by the Middlemass Collection.

Eager to get away, though in no way sorry to have kept his real clients waiting – when it came to interviewing people who, you never knew, might wind up as suspects in a murder investigation, a little angst never did anybody any harm, except those with something to hide – Jurnet made the introductions and put Sid in the picture in a verbal shorthand which, to their ill-disguised annoyance when it came to the point, left the two academics with little to add.

‘
Simon
Culliver,' the Professor of Contemporary Institutions was insisting winsomely, as the detective turned away.

The three who had been left waiting, Jurnet was quite pleased to note, were looking angry. Anger was a more amenable emotion than grief, part of the normal human in-flight baggage. Men and women spent the best part of their lives het up about something or other. Grief, on the other hand, took study, even talent. A ritual to be celebrated with a due regard to tradition and propriety. Like all skills, you couldn't expect to get it right first time.

‘Sorry to have had to mess you about –' he began.

‘Messed
us
about?' Queenie King protested shrilly. Her green quiff, unlacquered, hung down over her childish forehead, her pointed little face was stiff with malice. ‘What about the way you geezers messed up our caravans, then? Everything turned arse over tip –'

Jurnet, who had been present at the search and distinctly turned off by the slatternliness of the Dormobile which, it appeared, was the General Assistant's home from home, nevertheless returned placatingly, if with tongue pleasurably in cheek, ‘I'm sure you'll find everything put back exactly the way it was. We're very grateful to you – to you all – for your co-operation.'

‘Fat lot of choice we had!' the girl retorted, thrusting away the hand with which Guido Scarlett had touched her arm. The man's expression of loving commitment did not waver. ‘If Loy was here, you'd never dare!' She stopped abruptly, put a skinny hand to her mouth. ‘Oh Christ!' she wailed.

Johnny Flowerdew's anger was more complicated. His clown's face twisted into planes of impatient derision, he rested his lean length against the stubby flanks of a Mayan fertility god, and demanded, ‘How long before we can get moving? I hope you peelers understand we've a gig in Nottingham tonight, every ticket sold out weeks ago.' The voice was carriage trade. Definitely not another working-class boy breaking into the big time on the strength of four guitar chords and a double-jointed pelvis. ‘The boys drove up there with all the gear directly after the show. They'll be wondering if we haven't had an accident and are lying drenched in our gore somewhere along the A52.'

‘You'll have to get on to them, won't you, and explain just what kind of accident you
have
had – that is, if they haven't heard already, over the radio, or on TV. I'm afraid, Mr Flowerdew, you're going to have to put up with our company a while longer. There are questions that have to be asked, and we shall require you all down at Headquarters to answer them. As I know you're all at least as anxious as we are to apprehend Mr Tanner's killer, I'm sure we can rely on your full co-operation. In any event –' Jurnet cast his eyes over the young man deliberately, a long, speculative gaze – ‘can you and Mr Starling seriously be planning to put on a show, just the two of you?'

‘You mean, without Loy we're not worth the price of admission?' The other's face broke into a smile of unexpected appeal. ‘Flattering, I must say! If you'd ever heard Lijah drumming you'd know he could fill the Albert Hall on his own and still have half the population of the UK milling around outside screaming to be let in. All I do, admittedly with a little assistance from Moses, King David, and a few other ideas men from the same agency, is write the numbers. I'm dispensable,' the young man said likeably. ‘No illusions. It's just that I thought you ought to know it's going to cost you a packet if we have to cancel. If I know Lenny, he'll sue the police for every penny they've got.' Johnny Flowerdew finished, po-faced, ‘Just thought you'd want to be put in the picture.'

‘Ta very much. Do I know this Lenny? Your solicitor, is he?'

‘Christ! There's actually life on earth that hasn't heard of our Lenny! I don't believe it!'

Guido Scarlett interposed in the angry voice which was his normal mode of speech, ‘Stop arsing about, Johnny, will ya! He'll have us here all day!'

Jurnet nodded bland agreement. ‘Longer, I shouldn't be surprised.'

‘What I tell you?' The man came forward, rolling on the pitiable legs at which, Jurnet noted, the girl stared without pity. ‘Lenny Bale. Our manager. Puts the show on the road an' takes it apart again. Don't know why he ain't here 'cept he had to go up to London yesterday sudden an' must have got back late. Too late for the show, anyhow. First time he hasn't showed at one of our gigs since he had his tonsils out, three, four year ago. Having a bit of a lie-in, I shouldn't wonder, and hasn't turned on the news.' The roadie's dark face turned suddenly sallow and exhausted. ‘Loy gone!' he whispered hoarsely. ‘I still can't believe it!'

Johnny Flowerdew said, ‘You'll believe it tonight, Guido baby, when a whole twenty-four hours have gone by without anybody once calling you a frigging dwarf, a bandy runt, or a misconceived abortion, to name but a few –'

‘You –!' The other lunged forward, not, as was to be expected, fast enough for the guitarist, who moved aside with no appearance of haste. Scarlett's fist lammed into the belly of the Mayan god who rocked slightly on his pedestal but seemed otherwise unmoved. A trickle of blood from the roadie's abraded knuckles settled into the statue's sandstone navel, where it appeared quite at home. ‘Keep your filthy mouth shut!'

‘Not
my
mouth, man. I was only quoting.'

‘I can see we shall have plenty to talk about,' the detective observed, addressing his remark to all three impartially. ‘Where's he staying, then, this Lenny what's-his-name?'

‘The Virgin –' naming Angleby's most prestigious hotel, called after Queen Elizabeth I who had slept there on three separate occasions – with whom, if anyone, nosey parkers had still not given up trying to discover. The roadie burst out, ‘He's the one supposed to be looking after us! What's he doing, for Christ' sake, lying there dead to the world, an' Loy crucified like he was the Son of God?'

‘
I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine
–' Lijah Starling came into the Middlemass foyer carolling. His voice seemed literally to change the nature of the light coming through the great skylights, infusing the grey with a Caribbean glow. Unless it was just a coincidence and the sun was coming out anyway.

The detective could not remember ever seeing a man, of whatever colour, so handsome, so well-formed, and so – not unaware, for that would have been to label him simple-minded and the man was plainly no fool – but so dismissive of his natural advantages. Not one for pretence either, by the look of it. No anger, real or assumed. Positively no lamentations for a mate bizarrely done to death. None, even, of the conventional postures of regret one might well, in the circumstances, have thought it politic to display in the presence of a police officer.

Unless it was that Lijah Starling had chosen his own, unique way of celebrating the death of Loy Tanner.

At the sight of him Queenie King screeched and covered her face with her hands. Guido Scarlett cried out, ‘Jesus!' Johnny Flowerdew, eyes shining, came forward and grasped the drummer by both hands. Drew him to where Jurnet stood silent, wondering.

‘What d' you think of that, then?' Johnny Flowerdew demanded proudly, almost as if he had had a hand in it. ‘What d'you think of that?'

Lijah Starling himself said nothing. Waited, smiling.

His hair! Gone were the clattering braids, shorn off close to the skull with more enthusiasm than art. In places the skull was all but bare, the skin several shades lighter than the skin of the man's face. In others, sawn-off squiggles stood straight out from the head like a hybrid tea pruned rashly back to its last bud. For the rest, a springy frizz was divided by a criss-cross of canals where the hair had been drawn tight for plaiting.

Absurdly, Jurnet's first thought was that the man must be missing those jolly beads click-clacking companionably; and as if he had read the detective's mind, the black man stretched his neck, ran a hand luxuriously from nape to forehead, and announced with a smile of relief, ‘Man, that bloody racket was sending me round the bend!'

The guitarist asked, as if it were a matter of importance, ‘You didn't throw the hair away, Lij? You could have had it made into a necklace.'

‘Or a wreath,' Lijah Starling said. ‘In memory of our dear departed brother. What I did, man, I made a fire. Down by the river, under the trees. A funeral pyre. Very solemn. Very sacred. And I burnt them, one by one.' He paused and corrected himself. ‘All except one, that is. One of the gardeners nearly had a fit when he saw me scorching his pretty grass, so I gave him one, to show I was sorry. At first he just got madder, but when I pointed out that one of Lijah Starling's braids would fetch good money, he let me be, except to ask could I make it a couple, chummy, while I was about it!'

‘Old Caribbean custom?' Jurnet enquired carefully.

The noble structure of cheekbones and mouth dissolved in gargantuan laughter. ‘Old Caribbean bullshit!'

‘Then why?'

‘Because Loy's dead – why else? Snuffed it, copped it, gone to meet his Maker. Hosanna in the highest and the lowest! Because at last I'm free, man. I'm free!'

Jurnet did not think much of hotels. In his book they were not real places, their public spaces full of a spurious luxury, their private ones of a spurious living. The very air that pervaded those human pigeon lofts seemed to him ersatz, specifically designed to deprive the brain of oxygen and thereby encourage the fantasy that life itself was meant to be dispensed in predetermined packages like the little metallic containers of UHT milk on the tea/coffee-making trays, the parcelled-up marmalades and foil-wrapped butter pats on the breakfast tables: hell to open, and once you'd finally managed it, not worth the trouble anyway.

The receptionist at the Virgin desk, her regrets doled out with similarly meticulous portion control, said that Mr Bale had left instructions he was on no account to be disturbed. When the detective produced his card, she compressed her glossy lips into an expression of well-bred distaste, pressed a button under the desk with the finality of one unleashing the nuclear holocaust, and, washing her hands of the consequences, returned to filling a display stand with postcard views of an Angleby that looked no more real than the hotel itself.