Ritual Murder (14 page)

Jurnet had parked his car round the corner from the pedestrian precinct, and the two walked the short distance from the Patisserie in silence. At the corner the Rabbi stopped and gazed unseeingly into a shop window full of the latest in gents' suitings. The contrast between Leo Schnellman's
ensemble
and the high fashion within would have been enough to make Jurnet smile. If he had felt like smiling.

The Rabbi's face, reflected darkly in the plate-glass, looked old and defeated.

He said broodingly, “There was a man called Ishmael ben Elisha, who was martyred in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, and who wrote a commentary on the Book of Exodus. It is called
Mechilta
, which means ‘Measure', and it is the measure of many things. What worries me are some words of Ishmael ben Elisha. Words which warn Israel not to treat the Almighty the way heathens treat their idolatrous images; praising them when something good happens, and cursing them when things don't turn out right. God, Ishmael ben Elisha points out, doesn't operate that way.
‘If I bring happiness upon you, give thanks: and when I bring suffering, give thanks also.'
” His voice suddenly harsh and despairing, the Rabbi said, “I am finding it very hard to give thanks.”

Jurnet unlocked the car and held the front passenger door open.

“I'll drive you home.” With as much conviction as he could muster, “Things'll look better in the morning.”

The Rabbi got in obediently. Jurnet had set the car in motion, reversing in the narrow lane to go back the way he had come, when the Rabbi suddenly cried out “No!” and opened the door without waiting for the detective to stop.

Jurnet jammed on the brakes and said severely, “That was a stupid thing to do.”

“Yes. I'm sorry. I have to go back.”

“What's up now?”

“Karl. He may not be afraid—but I am.” The fat, lumbering man swung his legs round, fumbled with his safety belt. “How do I get this thing undone?”

“Hang on,” Jurnet objected. “PC Hubbard's on duty. There'll be someone there right through to day-light.”

“Your police-constables can't follow them into their bedroom.”

“Neither can you,” the other pointed out reasonably. “Let me get you home, Rabbi. Mrs Weisinger won't let her husband do anything silly.”

“Love,” said the Rabbi, “as you yourself may have noticed, incorporates every other quality except judgment.” Having found the release point for the belt, he got his feet down on the ground at last and levered himself out of the car. “No need for you to wait, Ben.”

Jurnet said nothing, but parked the car once more straight with the kerb. He caught up with Leo Schnellman as he turned the corner again into Shire Street.

“What the—!”

Music sounded along the street, dimly-lit save where light spilled out from the Weisingers' wrecked shop-front. The two men could see the police-constable standing on the pavement, his face turned towards the interior, his mouth open.

Was it music, though? There was something odd about the sound; a jangling, not quite a tune, yet that tune vaguely familiar. And now somebody was singing, a woman, in a voice that was a ruin haunted by the ghost of a glorious past.

Leo Schnellman was murmuring something under his breath. Hebrew, Jurnet thought, though he could not be sure. The music grew louder, the woman's voice more confident. In the upper storeys along the street lights were appearing, curious faces at the windows. By the time the detective and the Rabbi reached the Patisserie the Weisingers had swung into full stride. Karl sat at the white-painted piano, his hands bouncing up and down the keyboard with energy and determination. His white gloves lay on the floor, tossed among the broken glass. One hand on his shoulder, his wife stood behind him, peering forward at the sheet music, part of the delicately nurtured lady's repertoire, open on the stand.

“
Picture you upon my knee—
” Lise Weisinger sang, tears, of which she appeared unaware, coursing down her cheeks. “
Tea for two and two for tea—
”

Her husband at the piano seemed to be watching what his dreadful claws were up to with the amused indulgence of a disinterested spectator.

“Me for you and you for me

Alone!”

On the
Titanic
, Jurnet reflected, watching from the shadows at once exalted and humbled, they had opted for a hymn tune. No one could say there wasn't a wide choice of music for a shipwreck.

Lise bent down and kissed the back of her husband's neck. Karl turned over the page and the two launched themselves into a spirited approximation of
Lazybones
. Infected by the prevailing joy PC Hubbard joined in the chorus in a resounding baritone. At an upper window someone clapped.

The Rabbi's face was radiant, and now Jurnet could hear the words.

“If I bring happiness upon you, give thanks: and when I bring suffering, give thanks also.”

As if by common consent, the two men turned away together, without making their presence known. Ensconced in the car again, driving back to the synagogue, Jurnet could not resist asking, “And if He brings suffering and happiness together at the same time, what then?”

“That's easy. Thank Him twice over.”

“I've been having a word with the Chief,” the Superintendent began urbanely. It was the opening move of a game Jurnet could have played blindfolded, so many times had the two of them played it together. “He says you'll have to have help. What do you think?”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

The Superintendent looked as though he could not believe his ears.

“You feeling all right, Ben?”

Jurnet, though not in humorous mood, permitted himself a smile. What he ought to have said, abiding by the rules, was, “I believe Sergeant Ellers and myself can cope, sir,”; from which point on the exchanges would develop gracefully towards a conclusion acceptable to all participants, the Chief Constable included. Jurnet, who hated to work with anyone beside Ellers, would agree to join forces with Inspector So-and-So and Inspector Such-and-Such; the union being postponed for a period long enough, with luck, to enable the Jurnet-Ellers team, unaided, to bring the investigation to a successful close.

Today, for all he cared, the Superintendent could put his murder where the monkey put his nuts.

“I said you should have taken sick leave.”

Jurnet, who knew that, in actual fact, he would howl blue murder if the Superintendent took him off the case, pulled himself together. “I'm OK, thanks. It wasn't the murder itself I was thinking about. More the attendant circumstances.”

The Superintendent got up from his chair and strolled over to the window. He pushed it open and let in the sound of birdsong.

“I know what you mean. Child killings are usually the simplest. Sex and domestic violence—and there you've got 99 percent of them. But not Arthur Cossey. He's a pebble, thrown into a pond and making ripples that spread wider and wider.” He came back to his desk and sat down again. “What I had in mind was this: to bring pebble and ripples, if I may mix my metaphors, under one umbrella, the handle of which will remain firmly in your hand. That should give at least the appearance, if not the reality, of a team at work. Which I trust—” the Superintendent finished with an air of demure mischief—“will prove satisfactory to both you and the Chief Constable.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Hale and Batterby are already dealing with the demo. You'll have to fill them in on this brick-throwing caper. By which I mean, have a jar with them from time to time. Even make use of their services, if you can bring yourself to do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get along with you!” the Superintendent exclaimed. “Don't take any longer than you have to.”

“No, sir,” replied Jurnet, repressing the urge to say more.
The bloody twit!
How long did he think he intended to take?

“By which I mean, I know you won't take a minute longer than you have to.”

One of the best, the Superintendent.

With the best will in the world, Mr Hewitt, who had been Arthur Cossey's form master, was not being very helpful.

“His friends?” repeating Jurnet's query. “D' you know, offhand, I can't think of a single boy—” He broke off, a rueful expression on his good-natured face. “I take it as a shocking reflection on my own performance. Hang it, it's my business to know who a boy's friends are!”

“Unless there aren't any.”

“Oh, come now! We may not be entirely a happy band of brothers, but there's a team spirit, a camaraderie.” Mr. Hewitt finished, a little forlornly, “He was, of course, a very quiet boy.”

“So everyone tells me. Bright, was he, at his school work?”

The schoolmaster pursed his lips.

“Difficult to say. Mediocre, so far as marks went, but one had the impression of a lively intelligence at work, if only he could be persuaded to use it. He was good at art, but hopeless at games—” Mr Hewitt's tone left no doubt as to which of the two activities he considered the more important—“and then, of course, there was the choir. Mr Amos always said we hadn't had a Song Scholar with a voice of that quality in years.” With dawning relief, “Mr Amos is the person you should be speaking to, really. His relationship with the choristers is, in the nature of things, so much more personal than is possible in the Cathedral School proper.”

Jurnet came out of the Cathedral School into the Upper Close, his ribs responding with a sympathetic twinge to the sight of the late battlefield. There seemed to be rather more visitors about than usual. The Dean and Chapter were on to a good thing, had they only the sense to take a lesson from history: 50p to see where the deed was done: two sainted little buggers for the price of one, half-price for children and senior citizens. Just let some old biddy cry out that her arthritis was cured, and they had it made.

The detective joined the thin stream of people filing into the nave, his face turned resolutely away from the memorial inscription in the corner by the door. The vergers moved about busily, looking, in their long gowns, as if they rolled on casters. At the bookstall Miss Hanks had as much business as she could handle.

A rumble sounded from the organ loft, followed by a fluting chord, and then another, heavy with authority. Taking the sounds as an invitation, Jurnet made his way along the north aisle, past the grey-boarded enclosure whose admonitory “Private” was now fortified with a corral of hurdles lashed together with lengths of chain. A large notice proclaimed uncompromisingly: NO ADMITTANCE.

The door to the organ loft was open. Jurnet went up the stairs as quietly as he could, hoping to find at the top the man he was looking for. Presumably there were others besides Mr Amos who came out of the woodwork from time to time to tootle on that oversize tin whistle.

As the detective came out on to the floor of the organ loft, Mr Amos swung round from the console.

“I'm afraid nobody's allowed—” He broke off, blinked with eyes slow to read just from the concentrated light over the keyboard. “You were with the Dean—”

“You've got a good memory.”

“No,” Mr Amos replied, with a simplicity that had Jurnet completely off-balance. “It's simply that you have a memorable face. Just the same—” he wagged a finger in reproof, as Jurnet could imagine him wagging it at his choristers—“the organ loft is strictly out of bounds to members of the public.”

“I don't know that I'd qualify as that, exactly. My name's Jurnet. Detective-Inspector Jurnet. I'm a police officer.”

“Oh dear!” said Mr Amos compassionately. “How awful for you!”

“There are worse fates.”

“I'm being silly,” Mr Amos declared. “It's my besetting sin. Do please stop me if I do it again. It always happens when I'm preoccupied.”

He half-turned back to the console, and ran a loving hand over the manuals. “Something's not quite right with the General Cancel. And I'm not all that happy about the Great Tomba either. And now—” as if giving his attention to some other mechanism not functioning as smoothly as one might wish—“you want to ask me some questions about that poor murdered child.”

“A few, sir, if you please. What I'd like to have from you first, though, is a bit about the choristers' Sunday routine. What time they have to turn up, and how it goes from then on.”

“That's easily told. Morning service starts at 11, and I require the choristers to be in the Song School, robed, by 10 sharp. We've never had any difficulty. The boys are often here early, either to play games in the cloister, or to do their prep. So far as I'm concerned, however, to rush hotfoot into the House of God at the last minute, and expect to sing Tallis or Aylward as they should be sung, is simply not on. There has to be an interval, however brief, between the Kingdom of Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“In that interval, what do you do?”

“We have a little under an hour, usually. The Song School is at the far end of the cloister. We have to allow sufficient time to organize ourselves into a crocodile, walk the length of the cloister to the door in the south transept, and take our places ready to process with the clergy to the altar and the choir-stalls. To make the most of such time as we do have, I generally begin with a few exercises to clear the throat and head. We may sing a few bars of an anthem or a canticle. Nothing set. A calm, relaxing time that always seems to end too soon.”

“What do you do—you yourself? See the choristers into the stalls, then nip up here to play the organ?”

“Gracious, no! The procession has to make a proper introit, so that everybody in the cathedral is made aware that something wonderful is about to happen. Once I've made sure the choir has assembled itself in proper order I leave them, and hurry here to play the procession in.”