Death of a God by S. T. Haymon Read Free Book Online

the forecourt, black plastic bags of rubbish put out for the dustman blocked the exit to the street. The detective hauled them aside, muttering only ‘Bloody hell!’ when one of them burst open, depositing a glissade of time-expired tea-bags over his trouser hems. He was in the car and reversing before he realized that the windscreen was frosted over, had to stop, fumble under the dash for a rag which was inevitably oily, and smear an approximation of visibility before getting on his way again.
    As one who had long ago accustomed himself to the cosmic absurdity of violent death, none of this surprised Jurnet. The Superintendent awaiting him in the Market Place, combed and shaved, in cashmere coat and trousers whose creases were pure poetry, was no surprise either. In their early days of working together, the detective had deeply resented the effortless immaculacy of his superior officer, but no longer; recognizing that a higher authority than the Police determined who were nature’s scruffs and who its swells.
    Detective-Sergeant Ellers, arriving a moment later with his grotty old sheepskin car coat done up on the wrong buttons, redressed the balance, a little. In the first light the little Welshman’s rosy chubbiness looked washed out. For that matter, the whole Market Place looked as if the departing night had taken with it more than its dark. Down among the stalls an occasional light, swinging in the wind, showed where some early bird was already at his daily pyramid building, heaping up the mounds of apples and cauliflowers, carrots and sprouts that, once the day cast off its early misery, would turn the market into a patchwork of colour, as pleasing to the eye as to the palate.
    The Superintendent said without preliminaries, ‘We’ll have to make do with what we have. There’s no way we can get our screens up high enough, and I’m hanged if we’re going to provide a spectacle for the populace.’
    â€˜Dr Colton –’ Jurnet began.
    â€˜He’s over there already. With that new fellow, Stanfield or something, the biologist. Not that there’s much, if anything, either of them can do here beyond a formal assurance that we haven’t got ourselves out of bed at this benighted hour without sufficient reason.’ With the familiar touch of acerbity that made Jurnet’s face stiffen with equally familiar dislike, ‘ We’re not likely to do much better if we hang about.’
    Whoever else had caught it, Jurnet reflected fleetingly, stepping with the others over the low wall on to the flower bed, it was curtains for the daffodils. The three of them, true, moved with practised care: but just wait till the scene-of-crime boys really hit their stride, going over every crumb of earth with a fine-tooth comb. Then – never mind the daffs – even the worms, gone down deep to get away from the frost, would wish they’d never been born.
    On Angleby Market Place, in the cheerless light of dawn, a figure hung from the great central cross. Prepared as he was, Jurnet caught his breath, suppressed an exclamation for which, in the circumstances, there was no need to apologize. Admittedly, in his years in the Police, he had seen a fair number of men and women dead by violence. But it was, on the other hand, the first time he had attended a crucifixion.

Chapter Eight
    â€˜Like I told the officer on the desk, I brung over my first load from the van – onions it was, good old Ailsa Craig, you don’t see all that lot about nowadays – and what do I find but them great feet sticking out under the skirting board like there was some bloody down-and-out bedded down there for the night.’
    Nosey Thompsett took out a grubby handkerchief and blew a fanfare on the nose which was one of the sights of Angleby. By the time he had finished, that organ had lost some of its pallor and once more displayed, albeit in a delicate mauve rather than its normal clotted