Ritual Murder (20 page)

Which must have unwittingly touched a chord, for Stan Brent said, with a wistfulness which, except for what had preceded it, would have convinced his hearers utterly, “Maybe I am at that. It's watching that blasted river. All that water flowing past and you high and dry on the bank, not going anywhere.”

As he spoke, the cabin cruiser came slowly into sight again, as PC Blaker had prophesied. Passing the staithe, the elderly man at the wheel waved shyly, and the woman looked up from her knitting and smiled, as at old friends. Both of them examined the red-haired young man, the addition to the group, with the same inoffensive curiosity they had earlier directed at the three police officers; and again, the woman let her work drop into her lap while she leaned over to speak to her husband.

“Look at that!” Stan Brent exclaimed. “Enough to make you throw up! Beautiful little boat, could cut through the water like a knife, going five miles an hour with a couple of geriatrics!”

“Knots,” PC Blaker, red with earnestness, corrected him. “Boats go in knots, not miles.”

“You don't say! And you can get knotted too, mate.”

It was suddenly all so young, so schoolboyish, that Jurnet, against his will, nearly laughed aloud. He remarked, “If you're that fond of boats you could always join the Navy.”

Stan Brent said, “I went on a training cruise on the
Winston Churchill
. I was sick as a dog the whole week.”

“So was Nelson, and it didn't stop him winning the Battle of Trafalgar.”

The young man stood watching the cruiser diminishing in the distance. When he spoke again, the yearning was still there; but all the innocence had gone out of his voice.

“I'll tell you this much—when I go to sea it'll be as the bloody admiral, not swabbing the decks like some bleeding char.”

“Oh ah,” observed Jurnet, not sorry to be back on the old footing. “Works out a bit pricy that way. Unless, of course, you've got plans to marry into the aristocracy.”

“Considering it.” With a last look downstream, Brent turned away from the river. “Look out for the announcement in
The Times
.”

As he passed Jurnet by, the detective took him suddenly by the wrist, sliding the anorak sleeve up the bared arm. The skin was firm, unbroken. Jurnet let the arm drop.

Stan Brent said, “Sorry to disappoint.”

“A syringe isn't the only way.”

“Not for me.” The young man spoke in a way that carried conviction. “Filling your body full of dirt like it was a dustbin.” He shook down the sleeve. “Drugs just aren't my scene.”

“I heard different.”

“Then you heard wrong.” There was no heat in the disclaimer. “The effing Efferstein, I suppose. In trouble himself, tries to get out of it by shopping his mates.”

“Can't say I got the impression Mr Epperstein counted you among his inner circle. What's more, so far as I know, he has made no specific allegations of any kind against you.”

“He'd better not! Why don't you ask him how he tried to get me hooked? Pressing the stuff on me for free—let me roll you a reefer, old pal. Try a snifter of snow, does wonders for the liver. That's the way pushers work, in case you didn't know. Get you curious, try it for a laugh, and before you know what's hit you they've got themselves another customer. Nice little operation Mr Mosh Eff's got going. I don't suppose he told you about that, either.”

“We'd be glad to hear from you.”

“Split on a friend? Not cricket, by Gad!” Grinning hugely, “Especially as it's all a load of cock and bullshit anyway.”

“Oh ah? You and Miss Aste have a game on, have you? Which can tell the biggest whopper?”

“Liz? I'm not in her class.” Brent moved away, towards the Lower Close. “I'll tell her you were asking after her.”

Jurnet let him go a little way. Was it that swagger of hips that made him call out then, “You never told us what you've got in that knapsack.”

“Thought you were never going to ask.” The young man turned back at once, and slipped the knapsack straps from off his shoulders.

“I never said take it off,” Jurnet snapped, angry with himself, and aware of Ellers and young Blaker watching. You could hardly demand of others standards you fell short of yourself. “That path seems on the short side for a hike, that's all.”

“Small walk, large knapsack. My God, Watson, if that isn't suspicious I don't know what is!” Stan Brent burst out laughing. “How many miles d'you have to cover, Officer, before it stops being suspicious behaviour and becomes healthy exercise?” He hoisted the knapsack back into place between his shoulderblades. “Since you've been such a gent—I've been shopping, and a carrier bag just isn't me. So, there's some Coke, a couple of bags of crisps, a box of those nasty little cheeses with the silver paper you can never get off—oh, and some baked beans. You're welcome to look. You're welcome to a packet of crisps, if you want. I can't say fairer than that.”

“No thanks.”

“Can't say I blame you. They're prawn. Taste like sick. Actually I'm a salt-and-vinegar man, but the prawn were 2p off. Of course, when I marry into the aristocracy—” Stan Brent finished with a broad smile—“I'll send out the butler.”

Jurnet sat on the leather pouffe, drinking tea angrily out of the dainty china that was part of the late Mrs Schnellman's immortality. Having driven with all haste to let the Rabbi know that a request had just that afternoon been received from a consortium of Jewish and other organizations for permission to hold a demonstration and a march through the city, it was disconcerting, to say the least, to learn that Leo Schnellman had in fact been approached some days earlier to serve on the committee planning the event.

“You mean, you've known about it all the time, and never said a word? As if we haven't got enough on our plates, here in Angleby as it is, you want to bring in coachloads of outsiders to stir up more trouble!” The detective jumped up and returned his cup and saucer to the table with a thump and a rattle of teaspoon that had the Rabbi rising agitatedly from his chair. “They're OK. No harm done.” Jurnet calmed down, and his host sank back in relief.

The detective went on, unrepentant however, “And it's not because I'm a copper, either. Like anybody else with his brains the right way round I'm fed up to here with do-gooders who think they've a God-given right to snarl up the traffic, inconvenience citizens going about their lawful business, and leave behind a ton of litter to be paid for out of the rates—to say nothing of damage to property and to people, the police included, likely as not.”

Unperturbed by the outburst, the Rabbi inquired goodhumouredly, “Am I to take this, Inspector, as official notice that our request is turned down?”

“Only wish it were! Let's hope the Chief has as much sense as me. Blessed ego-trips! By the time they're actually out on the streets and marching you need a microscope to make out who it is that's demonstrating for what—Neo-Nazis, Reds, or Old-Age Pensions for One-Parent Cats. The minute they start chanting those moronic slogans like a lot of ventriloquist's dummies, they all sound like
Sieg Heil
to me, whatever they're saying. I must say, Rabbi—” the detective finished, a little dismayed by his own vehemence—“I never expected to see you taking part in one of those jamborees.”

“Strictly as a backroom boy,” Leo Schnellman assured his guest. The Rabbi leaned back in his chair, taking in the lean height, the dark good looks of the man. “Believe me, Ben, if I looked half as good as you do, I'd be out there, slogans and all, leading the parade. But what kind of advertisement for racial tolerance d' you think I'd make, a fat slob like me, the prototype of the cartoon Semite? You might as well expect to sell ladies' tights using a picture of a bowlegged octogenarian with varicose veins! Even tolerance has its limits. One mustn't expect too much of people, too soon.”

“You couldn't look worse than some of the types that are bound to be turning up,” responded Jurnet, only partly appeased. “The nuts and the weirdos, all the slimy things that normally stay quiet under their stones—”

“Nothing,” Leo Schnellman pointed out crisply, “that wasn't there already. You think Angleby was a Garden of Eden before all this happened? As a policeman you know it wasn't. As a minister of religion I know it wasn't. Indeed, so long as you won't pass it on that I said so, I'll go so far as to say I have my doubts there ever
was
a Garden of Eden. Without evil I find it hard to conceive a purpose to Creation. If there are no choices to be made, we are nothing.”

Jurnet said wearily, “You'll have to excuse me, Rabbi. I'm not feeling up to such high-toned metaphysics. Or low-toned ones either. I'm sorry if I went off the deep end. All I can think of, these days, is Arthur Cossey, and how I'd give my eye-teeth to get my hands on the bastard who killed him.”

“You must have some suspicions.”

“Too many! Arthur was a nasty bit of goods. Young as he was, he'd made enough enemies to last a lifetime—which, come to think of it, is exactly what they did.”

“You've spoken to them all?”

“All I could find, anyhow.”

The Rabbi said calmly, as one resolving a difficulty, “One of them will have lied to you.”

“I'd be surprised if the whole darn shoot hadn't.”

“In that case, you must look for the truth you have overlooked.” The man heaved himself out of his chair. He stood looking down at the detective with the encouraging air of a schoolmaster for a pupil who needed to try just that little bit harder. “Think about it. It will come to you. And now I'm going to make you a hot, fresh cup.”

He was still in the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

“I'll get it,” Jurnet called, and went downstairs to let in Mosh Epperstein.

When he saw who it was, the detective almost left the house then and there. Instead, he turned his back on the new arrival without a greeting, ran upstairs and said to his host, “Thanks just the same, Rabbi, but I've got to be getting along.”

“Unclean! Unclean!” The archaeology student came into the room. He looked thinner than ever, the dark eyes sunken in their sockets.

Leo Schnellman put the tray down on the table, and handed Jurnet his tea. “You aren't going to waste it.”

“Give it to him instead.”

“Now, Ben, don't be childish. Would it surprise you to know that when I looked out and saw you parking the car I telephoned Mosh to come over?”

“Nothing about you would surprise me, Rabbi,” said Jurnet, obstinately ignoring the proffered beverage. “That doesn't mean that, just because you tell me to, I've got to sit down and make polite conversation with a man who's out on bail on a serious charge.”

The Rabbi opened his eyes wide.

“Who said anything about polite conversation? Mosh wants to tell you what he was really doing in the cathedral the morning Arthur Cossey was killed, that's all.”

After the Rabbi had fetched a cup for his second visitor, Jurnet demanded impatiently, “Well? I'm waiting. What
were
you doing in the cathedral? What time was it, Sunday, you went there?”

The archaeology student took a sip of the hot liquid, then set the cup and saucer down on the table. “I didn't. I went Saturday. I was there all night.”

“All night! That needs a bit of explaining.”

“That's what I'm here for, just like the Rabbi says. It's very simple, really.” The young man's voice sounded near extinction. “Liz asked me to stay. She often has night-long sessions, up there in the triforium, with Stan Brent. Fancied a change, I suppose, or maybe she'd had a row with lover boy and wanted to show him he wasn't the only fish in the sea. Liz says it turns her on to screw in such holy surroundings.”

Jurnet said, “You're having me on.”

“Ask her yourself.”

“I mean, the cathedral. There are vergers who make sure the place is empty before they lock up for the night.”

“That's just where you're wrong, then. That place is like a park at closing time—the keepers go round the main paths, but they can't look under every bush, there're too many of 'em. The ground floor's easy enough, but upstairs—”

“How do you mean?”

“Don't tell me you haven't noticed it isn't a bungalow! In a way, the way it's built, it's a building within a building. The outer walls form a sort of shell, and inside there's another wall altogether, except that it's pierced through with arches. Marvellous how they figured it out, all those years ago. Between the two, on every level, there's a walk, a gallery, an arcade—a tribune, a triforium, if you want to talk posh—all the way up to the roof. And that doesn't include the tower and the spire. The vergers'd never get home if they had to go through that lot every day.”

“The doors to the stairs must be kept locked.”

“Must they, indeed? Then you won't want to take my word for it that at least two of the doors—there may be more, for all I know—haven't got any locks on them at all, just bolts on the outside anybody can draw. One stair doesn't even have a door at all—just a red cord like in a cinema and a
No Admittance
sign. Anyway, Liz has a key to the stairs back of the organ loft, so what difference does it make? All official and above-board. She keeps her cameras and stuff up there. So no problem.”

Jurnet pondered what he had been told, then commented, “You looked as if you had a problem or two when I saw you next morning, on your way out.”

The young man paled, if that were possible. He shut his eyes, either to cut off the physical presence of his questioner, or the better to see the remembered images of which he spoke.

“We went up to the triforium just before closing time. There was nothing to it, coming in as we did by the Bishop's Postern. You can slink along the wall in shadow all the way, and bob's your uncle. Once upstairs, we peeped over the edge, and there, down below, were the vergers looking for Reds under the bed. It was a bit of a giggle, really. Down at ground level you simply don't realize how much room there is up there. You don't even have to crouch down to stay out of sight, so long as you stay well over towards the outer wall.