The dead of Jericho (5 page)

He was a fisherman, too.

Although he seldom drank much, Jackson stood at the back of his darkened front room that evening with a half-bottle of Teacher's whisky on the cupboard beside him and a tiny, grimy glass in his right hand. He had seen the police arrive: first two of them; then a doctor-looking man with a bag; then two other policemen; and after them a middle-aged man wearing a raincoat, a man with windswept, thinning hair, who was almost certainly a policeman, too, since he'd been admitted readily enough through the front door of the house opposite.
A man Jackson had seen before.
He'd seen him that very afternoon, and he felt more than a little puzzled… After that there'd been the ambulance men; then a good deal of activity with the lights throughout the house flicking on and off, and on and off again. And still he watched, slowly sipping the unwatered whisky and feeling far more relaxed, far less anxious than he'd felt a few hours earlier. Had anyone seen him? — that was his one big worry. But even that was now receding, and in any case he'd fabricated a neat enough little lie to cover himself.

It was 3 a.m. before the police finally left, and although the whisky bottle had long since been drained Jackson maintained his static vigil, his slow-moving mind mulling over many things. He felt hungry, and on a plate in the kitchen behind him lay the fish he'd caught that morning. But when at last he could see no further point in staying where he was, the two rainbow trout remained untouched and he climbed the stairs to the front bedroom, where he pulled the flimsy floral-patterned curtains, jerking them into an ill-fitting overlap across the window, before kneeling down by his bed, putting his hand beneath it, and sliding out a large pile of glossy, pornographic magazines. Then he slipped his hand still further beneath the bed — and drew out something else.

Earlier that same evening, in a posh-addressed and well-appointed bungalow on the outskirts of Abingdon, Mrs Celia Richards at last heard the crunch of gravel as the car drove up to the double garage. He was very late, and the chicken casserole had long been ready.

'Hello, darling. Sorry I'm so late. God! What a foul evening!'

'You might have let me know you were going to be— '

'Sorry, darling. Just said so, didn't I?' He sat down opposite her, reached to his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

'You're not going to smoke just before we eat, surely?'

'All right.' He pushed a cigarette carefully back into its packet and stood up. Time for a quick drink though, isn't there, darling? I'll get them. What's yours? The usual?'

Celia suddenly felt a little more relaxed and — yes! — almost happy to see him again; felt a little guilty, too, for she had already drunk a couple of jumbo gins herself.

'You sit down, Charles, and have that cigarette. I'll get the drinks.' She forced herself to smile at him, fetched another gin for herself, a whisky for her husband, and then sat down once more.

'You see Conrad today?'

Charles Richards looked preoccupied and tired as he repeated the word absently: 'Conrad?'

'Isn't it the duty of your dear little brother Conrad, as co-partner in your dear little company— ?'

'Conrad!
Sorry, yes, darling. I'm a bit whacked, that's all. Conrad's fine, yes. Sends his love, as always. Enjoyed his trip, he said. But the meeting finished at lunch time — well, the formal part of it — and then I had some er some rather delicate business to see to. That Swedish contract — you remember me telling you about it?'

Celia nodded vaguely over her gin and said nothing. Her momentary euphoria was already dissipated, and with a blank look of resignation she sank back into her armchair, an attractive, smartly-dressed, and wealthy woman on whom the walls were slowly closing in. She knew, with virtual certainty, that Charles had been unfaithful to her in the past: it was an instinctive feeling — utterly inexplicable — but she felt she almost always
knew.
Had he been with another woman today? Dear God, could she be wrong about it all? Suddenly she felt almost physically sick with worry again: so many worries, and none greater than her awareness that she herself was quite certainly the cause of some of Charles's orgiastic escapades. Sex meant virtually nothing to her — never had — and for various reasons the pair of them had never seriously considered having children. Probably too late now, anyway, with her thirty-eighth birthday shortly coming up...

Charles had finished his whisky and she went out to the kitchen to serve the evening meal. But before she took the casserole out of the oven she saw the gentleman's black umbrella, opened and resting tentatively on two fragile points, in the broad passage-way that led to the rear door. The place for that (Charles could be so very fussy about some things!) was in the back of the Rolls — just as the place for her own little red one was in the back of the Mini. She furled the umbrella, walked quietly through into the double garage, flicked on the lights, opened a rear door of the Rolls, and placed the umbrella along the top of the back seats. Then she looked around quickly in the front of the car, sliding her hands down the sides of the beige leather upholstery, and looking into the two glove-compartments — both unlocked. Nothing. Not even the slightest trace of any scented lady lingering there.

It was almost half-past eight when they finished their meal — a meal during which Celia had spoken not a single word. Yet so many, many thoughts were racing madly round and round her mind. Thoughts that gradually centred specifically around one person: around Conrad Richards, her brother-in-law.

It was three quarters of an hour later that someone had rung the Police in St Aldates and told them to go to Jericho.

At exactly the same time that Bell and Walters were climbing the stairs in Canal Reach, Edward Murdoch, the younger of the two Murdoch brothers, was leaning back against his pillow with the light from his bedside table-lamp focused on the book he held in his hand:
The Short Stories of Franz Kafka.
Edward's prowess in German was not as yet distinguished and his interest in the language (until so recently) was only minimal; but during the previous summer term a spark of belated enthusiasm had been kindled — kindled by Ms Anne Scott. Earlier in the evening he had been planning the essay he had to write on
Das Urteil,
but he needed (he knew) to look more closely at the text itself before committing himself to print; and now he had just finished re-reading the fifteen pages which comprised that short story. His eyes lingered on the last brief paragraph — so extraordinarily vivid and memorable as now he saw it:
In diesem Augenblick ging uber die Brucke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr.
In his mind the familiar words slipped fairly easily from German into English: 'In this moment there went across the bridge a' (he had difficulty over that
geradezu
in its context and omitted it) 'a continuous flow of traffic'. Phew! That was while the hero (hero?) of the story was hanging by his faltering fingertips from the parapet, determined upon and destined for his death by suicide, whilst the rest of the world, unknowing and uncaring, passed him by, driving straight on across — Ah, yes! That was the point of
geradezu,
surely? He pencilled a note in the margin and closed the slim, orange volume, a cheap white envelope (its brief note still inside) serving to mark the notes at the back of the text. He put the book down on the table beside him, pressed the light-switch off, lay on his back, and allowed his thoughts to hover in the magic circle of the night…

It was Anne Scott who dominated and monopolised those thoughts. His elder brother, Michael, had told him one or two stories about her, but surely
he'd
been exaggerating and romanticising everything? It was often difficult to believe what Michael said, and in this particular case quite out of the question until — until last week, that was. And for the hundredth encore Edward Murdoch re-enacted in his mind those few erotic moments...

The door had been locked the previous Wednesday afternoon, and that was most unusual. With no bell to ring, he had at first tapped gently in a pusillanimous attempt to make her hear. Then he had rapped more sharply with his knuckles against the upper panel and, with a child-like surge of relief, he was aware of a stirring of activity within. A minute later he heard the scrape of the key in the lock and the noisy twang as the key was turned — and then he saw her there.

'Edward! Come in! Oh dear, I must have overslept for hours.' Her hair, usually piled up high on the top of her head, was resting on her shoulders, and she wore a long, loose-fitting dressing-gown, its alternating stripes of black, beige, brown, and white reminding Edward vaguely of the dress of some Egyptian queen. But it was her face that he noticed: radiant, smiling — and somehow almost
expectant,
as if she was so pleased to see him. Him! She fussed for a further second or two with her hair before standing back to let him in.

'Come upstairs, Edward. I shan't be a minute.' She laid her hand lightly on his arm and shepherdessed him up the stairs and into the back bedroom (the 'study', as she called it) where side by side they invariably sat at the roll-top desk while Edward ploughed his wobbling furrows through the fields of German literature. She came into the study with him now and, as she bent forward to turn on the electric fire, the front of her dressing-gown gaped wantonly open awhile, and he could see that she was naked beneath it. His thoughts clambered over one another in erotic confusion and the back of his mouth was like the desert as she left him there and walked across the little landing to the front bedroom.

She had been gone for two or three minutes when he heard her.

'Edward?
Edward?'

Her bedroom door was half open, and the boy stood beside it, hesitant and gauche, until she spoke again.

'Come in! I'm not going to
bite
you, am I?'

She was standing, with her back towards him, at the foot of a large double-bed, folding a light-grey skirt round her waist, and for some inconsequential reason Edward was always to remember the inordinately large safety-pin fixed vertically at its hem. With her hands at her waist, tucking, fastening, buckling, he was also to remember her, in those few moments, for a far more obvious cause: above the skirt her body was completely bare, and as she turned her head towards him, he could see the swelling of her breast.

'Be a darling and nip down to the kitchen, will you, Edward? You'll find a bra on the clothes-rack — I washed it out last night. Bring it up, will you?'

As he walked down the stairs like some somnambulant zombie, Edward heard her voice again. 'The black one!' And when he returned to her room she turned fully towards him still naked above the waist, and smiled gratefully at him as he stood there, his eyes seemingly mesmerised as he stared at her.

'Haven't you seen a woman's body before? Now you be a good boy and run along — I'll join you when I've done my hair.'

Somehow he had struggled through that next three-quarters of an hour, fighting to wrench his thoughts away from her, and seeking with all his powers to come to grips with Kafka's tale
Das Urteil;
and he could still recall how movingly she'd dwelt upon that final, awesome, terrifying sentence...

He turned over on to his right side and his thoughts moved forward to the present, to the day that even now was dying as the clock ticked on to midnight. It had been a huge disappointment, of course, to find the note. The first of the household to arise, he had boiled the kettle, made himself two slices of toast, and listened to the 7 a.m. news bulletin on Radio 4. At about twenty-past seven the clatter of the front letter box told him that
The Times
had been pushed through; and when he went to fetch it he'd seen the small white envelope, face upwards, lying in the middle of the door-mat. It was unusually early for the mail to have been delivered, and in any case he could see immediately that the envelope bore no stamp. Picking it up he found that it was addressed to himself; and sticking an awkward forefinger under the sealed flap he opened it and read the few words written on the flimsy sheet inside.

And now, as he turned over once again, his mind wandered back to those words, and he eased himself up on his arm, pressed the switch on the bedside lamp, slid the envelope out of the text book, and read that brief message once more:

He had never called her 'Anne' — always 'Miss Scott', and always slightly over-emphasising the 'Miss', since he was not at all in favour of the 'Ms' phenomenon; and even if he had been he would have felt self-conscious about pronouncing that ugly, muzzy monosyllable. Should he be bold next week — and call her 'Anne'? Next week... Had he been slightly brighter he might have been puzzled by that 'today', perhaps. Had he been slightly older than his seventeen years, he might, too, have marked the ominous note in that strangely final-sounding valediction. He might even have wondered whether she was thinking of going away somewhere: going away — perhaps for ever. As it was, he turned off the light and soon sank into a not-unpleasing slumber.

Morse awoke at 7.15 a.m. the following morning feeling taut and unrefreshed; and half an hour later, in front of the shaving-mirror, he said 'Bugger!' to himself. His car, he suddenly remembered, was still standing in the court of the Clarendon Institute, and he had to get out to Banbury by 9 a.m. There were two possibilities: he could either catch a bus down into Oxford; or he could ring Sergeant Lewis.