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

purple, the customary network of veins which striated it like a map of his native fens.
    â€˜Except,’ its owner continued, stuffing the handkerchief into the pocket of an even grubbier windcheater, ‘I knew all the time, really, no tramp in his right mind would be sleeping out in last night’s weather barefoot and without so much as a bit of cardboard against the cold.
    And o’ course, when I seen that ruddy great nail through the middle of the instep –’
    The Superintendent prompted impatiently, ‘Well?’
    To Jurnet’s not all that secret pleasure – it was part of the rum game, without winners or losers, he and the Superintendent played unremittingly – the market trader ignored both interruption and speaker and addressed himself to the Detective-Inspector exclusively.
    â€˜Believe me, Mr Jurnet, I know a creepin’ Jesus when I see one, specially one that’s been giving all of us here on the market the willies, hanging up there in the garden all week like the washing hung out to dry. First go off, I reckoned some of the lads been having a bit o’ fun after closing time, ho ho ho, I don’t think. Sense of humour’s a peculiar thing, I always say. But why me, for Christ’ sake?’ The nose flared momentarily purple with affront. ‘A whole van to unload, Mr Jurnet, an’ me there on purpose to make an early start, never mind my fingers an’ toes, to say nothing of you know what, dropping off wi’ the cold. But I knew it weren’t no good shifting the bloody thing somewhere else. You lot’d be bound to find out, you’re so clever, an’ think I was mixed up in it, some way. So I left it just as it were while I come up to the station to say what I’d found –’
    There was another pause. The handkerchief reappeared, this time pressed into service to wipe lips that needed no wiping; that were dry, and trembled a little.
    â€˜I come up them steps into the garden’ – the tremor had transmitted itself to the words spoken – ‘I didn’t go anywhere near those fuckin’ crosses – I’m chapel myself, I don’t go for graven images – I weren’t even looking that way. All I wanted was to get it reported an’ done with. But I did look, Mr Jurnet. I had to. Like someone said, ‘‘Over here, Nosey,’’ an’ then took hold of my head an’ twisted it round. Even then, my first thought was, tha’s funny! He can’t be in two places at once.
    â€˜An’ then I looked again –’
    Loy Tanner hung naked and dead on the centre cross in the Market Place garden. On either side, the effigies of Lijah Starling and Johnny Flowerdew still suffered their emblematic agonies. But they had become meaningless – or rather, Jurnet amended, obscene travesties, juxtaposed, as they now were, to the real live death that hung between them. The detective saw nothing contradictory about his choice of adjectives.
    Violent death, in his book, did indeed have a life of its own. It was a monster to be exposed and disarmed, a monster and an obligation. An obligation put upon him Ben Jurnet, personally. A settling of accounts between a killer and a victim in no position to do the job himself.
    Not that he personally felt any more drawn to the Loy Tanner who, the night before, had, against his conscious will, enslaved, enchanted and enraged him. In the beginning might be the beat, chum, but not in the end – oh, not in the end! No heart pulsated in that carcass tied to the cross by someone who, all too obviously, had been in too much of a hurry to make a proper job of it. It was a stranger who hung there, head flopped against one shoulder, lank hair over a face invisible save for a single eye which stared out at the burgeoning day with supreme incuriosity.
    The Superintendent observed bad-temperedly, as if the sight of such sloppy workmanship offended him,