Fall of Angels Read online

  Earwig’s voice wavered and she gulped down emotion, reaching into her bag for a handkerchief.

  “I understand,” he said gently, filling the gap until she could recover. “I always polished my buttons and waxed my moustache before going over the top.”

  “But you don’t wear—oh!”

  “Carry on. If it gets too dramatic, I’ll put my hands over Snapper’s ears.”

  She rewarded him with a watery smile and pressed on: “Jehu sees her up in her window, flanked by her two bodyguards. Jezebel leans out and taunts and abuses him. Jehu calls up to the eunuchs, who are his countrymen, after all, to do their patriotic duty. They seize the queen and throw her from the window, down to her death under the hooves of Jehu’s horses. Her body is trampled, and the dogs of the town tear it to pieces and consume it entirely, apart from her skull, a lock of hair and the palms of her hands.”

  “And all we have left of this astounding woman is a few words,” Redfyre said. “And lucky to have those after—how many?—three thousand years?”

  Earwig looked at him in scorn. “We have her story. But a story told by a man. A male scribe, a historian on the side of the victor, perhaps is even the victor himself.”

  “But even he can’t eradicate the pride, the style, the intelligence and the strength.”

  “Some men will always feel demeaned by that. Some men will always call out the execution squad.”

  They had reached, finally, the point she had been steering him towards but he decided to allow her to make the accusation.

  “I think, John, there was one such in the audience tonight. A Jehu who was seeing Juno, not as the exceptional and talented individual she is, but as a dangerous threat. A woman! Sordid. Unclean. Immoral. A man’s downfall.”

  “Surely a medieval monkish attitude we wouldn’t find in today’s society?” His tone was only mildly challenging.

  She pounced on his response with scorn. “Do you have any idea how many men in Cambridge still live the medieval monkish life? They seek it out; they relish it. They would go to any lengths to preserve it.” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of his bookshelves. “Even you aspire to some aspects of it. There are thousands of such men. They are at every level of society, in every family. But they are especially present in this city, making their rules, smothering female talent, gagging and belittling their wives and daughters.”

  “Hold it right there, Earwig!” Redfyre was finding it increasingly painful to play the chosen scapegoat for his sex. “I’ve no wife or daughter to gag, and I’m sure I’ve never smothered a female talent in my life, so please, won’t you point your arrows elsewhere? I’m one of those state-appointed soldier-ants who stand in a thin blue line between the angry crowd and the feminist firebrands who set out to annoy them. We’re attacked from front and rear, and pretty fed up with both sides.”

  Appearing regretful, she reached over and took hold of his hands. The gesture came not out of affection or a rush of good feeling, he suspected, but from a determination to make the point she had been working up to all evening. “I know that, John. And we thank God you’re there! A modern man, a man of the new century. Approachable and rational. But listen! One of these monstrous men I’m speaking of was in the audience with us tonight. He clapped and smiled, he sang along with the carols, he shuffled in procession past what he’d planned would be Juno’s body. Perhaps he even murmured words of condolence or offered assistance, attempting to stay close by his victim until it became clear—to his chagrin, no doubt—that she’d survived the fall. He realised he’d have to try again. Perhaps he’s plotting his second attempt as we speak! And, as I’m in a biblical mood tonight, I’m going to give you a clear command, inspector! Before he can do any more damage, give me that man’s head! In a noose, on a plate, or in a bag. I’m not fussy.”

  “Earwig, if there’s a guilty head to be severed, you shall have it. And I’ll ensure Caravaggio is standing by with his brushes to record the moment. Would Scrivener of the Cambridge Oracle with his trusty Speed Graphic and magnesium flare be a satisfactory stand-in?”

  Chapter 6

  Redfyre hurried downstairs to answer the telephone. Seven o’clock! It wasn’t even daylight yet, and no one ever rang before dawn with good news. Was this the hospital ringing to tell him something he didn’t want to hear? Earwig Stretton, attempting to relight his fuse? He was almost relieved to identify the gravelly tones of his superior officer, Superintendent MacFarlane.

  He’d got as far as “Detec—” before the familiar northern voice began its onslaught.

  “Just read the notes you sent me via Sergeant Thoday on that fiasco at St. Barnabas. Good thing you were there on the spot. Ringside seat, no less! And perhaps you’ll tell me, when you decide to put in an appearance, how you managed to pull that one off. Now, this girl—the one who died in the night? Tell me what you know.”

  “I’m sorry, sir—girl? Which girl?” Redfyre dragged the phone across the desk and sank down into his chair.

  “Why are you still there instead of at the scene of the crime? I sent Constable Whatsisname with a message half an hour ago! Good thing I chased you up. The doc’s first impression is not long dead, and not suicide, but murder.”

  “No message yet, sir. I say again, which girl? Who’s died?”

  “Good Lord, man! No need to shout! Now, if I knew her name, I’d have had the courtesy to use it. Loosen your tie and tell me, how many dead girls have you got on your books this weekend? I’m talking about the one we dragged out of the Cam an hour ago.” He growled for a moment in a holding manoeuvre, then launched crisply into his briefing, reading from notes. “Female, eighteen-ish. Unidentified as of yet. Body spotted by a Sewage Works employee. On his way to work? Dunno. Anyhow, floating in the river, the body was, about ten minutes he calculated—and he would know!—from entering the city sewage system. So thank God for small mercies. It could have been worse. All the same, I’d advise gum boots.”

  “Have you checked the list of missing female persons?”

  “Course I have! Nothing corresponding in the latest alert.” Paper crackled as he read and summarised: “Two elderly ladies sought by their nephew. Having met their young relative, I’d judge they’ve probably done a bunk to Brighton to avoid him, though I have sent Matcham to check out said nephew’s back garden for evidence of fresh diggings . . . you never know. Fourteen-year-old girl, been missing two days. Most likely hopped on a train to London to stay with her older sister, who’s thought to be leading a livelier life than Cambridge can offer. So—duty doc’s already there at the scene, as I said. We’re all just waiting for our fancy-pants inspector to finish his early-morning star jumps, take an invigorating swig of his Earl Grey and bugger off down there. North bank of the river, opposite Midsummer Common. Got it? Good! On your bike, man! The cycle path is the best way to go. Take your best torch. Now, where the hell’s Whatsisname got to?”

  “He seems to be at the door right now, sir. I’ll keep you posted.”

  MacFarlane had rung off.

  MacFarlane grinned and shook his head indulgently as he replaced the receiver. He called down the corridor for a mug of tea, emptied his full ashtray into the wastepaper basket and lit a Senior Service, frowning thoughtfully through the puther of blue smoke. He knew he didn’t need to keep so close behind his star inspector, treading on his heels. He just got a kick out of being the governor of a subordinate who was patently a toff. And this was all right, he reckoned, just so long as he reminded himself occasionally that the satisfaction derived was certainly self-indulgent and probably reprehensible. And so long as the subject of his bullying—the patent toff—was toff enough to affect a complete indifference to class and rank. Regardless, Redfyre whatever his class—and this was, for the most part, a mystery to the superintendent—was a bloody good copper.

  Unlike some of the newly appointed officers coming straight into the force from the w
ar, Redfyre had done a formative year on the beat before rising swiftly up through the newly fluid organization to his present rank. Rumour had it that one of his great-uncles was the present Director of Scotland Yard, a fearsome old general who’d retired from the army, enjoyed a week of retirement and gone straight back into harness as head of the police. The old tiger had excelled on the battlefield and was now cutting a swathe through the organisation that purported to be the national force of law and order, rebuilding its reputation. Or rather, since that reputation had always been dubious, setting out to swing the demolition ball about a bit and build up from the very foundation a new reputation for efficiency and probity.

  Smart young men like Redfyre had been promoted, while corrupt coppers—and there had been many, especially in the capital—had been sacked or pensioned off. MacFarlane approved. He liked to run a tight ship, but he acknowledged that he had his own demons to deal with. A Yorkshireman, grammar-school educated and with few social graces, he was, nevertheless, intelligent and ambitious. He strode the deck of his tight ship keeping order, and sent other, more fleet-footed crew members up the rigging.

  MacFarlane’s deployment to Cambridge—a university town, and the most ancient and lovely in the east of England—had confounded him for a while. The townsmen were, to his relief, the kind of law-abiding and not so law-abiding mixture of common folk you’d meet anywhere in the land. As far as he could work out, they were a three-part cocktail: largely the indigenous East Anglians, fair-haired, easy-going and ponderous of speech; a sprinkling of dark, tight-lipped Men of the Fens from downstream towards the North Sea; and, adding a sharper note, a dash of Cockney from the incoming Londoners bringing their yapping voices, quick wits and flashy style of dressing. All contributing to the usual mongrel mix that somehow always managed to blend, balance and be British.

  It was the other lot, the gownsmen, he had a problem with. They lived, largely unobserved by ordinary folk, in a land of their own behind ornate stone walls and thick oak doors, a land they called Academe, where they made their own rules, employed their own officers to enforce them and looked down on the efforts of the civil constabulary. If there was an outbreak of bicycle stealing and it was suspected by the colleges that townies were responsible, the superintendent’s immediate attention and interest would be demanded. But a police presence, even the highest officer’s, was otherwise discouraged in their domain.

  To gain access, he would have to alert the porter at the front gate and be directed round to the tradesmen’s entrance. He’d be parked, ignored, in some busy corridor, waiting for an escort to take him through a labyrinth of courts and staircases to find a supercilious official who would barely put down his toasted crumpet long enough to give him his instructions and dismiss him. It was trickier than negotiating a passage across the Styx. After one or two humiliating episodes when he’d attempted to investigate young ruffian undergraduates who’d inflicted severe injuries on lads from the town, he’d admitted he’d been out-talked, outsmarted and set aside.

  And then, two years ago, he’d been allocated this secret weapon: John Redfyre, MA, DSO, CID.

  Here was a bloke who spoke their language, was related to not a few of them, had a good degree from a Cambridge college and was much decorated for gallantry in the recent war. He marched into these institutions through the front gate with a smile on his face, a spring in his step and who knew what token for Cerberus in his pocket. He took on the masters, the deans, the whole boiling, and addressed them, as he would have said—de couronne en couronne. MacFarlane wasn’t quite sure and never bothered to ask what he meant by that, but he approved. The inspector got some interesting results. Not always by the book, and on one occasion, his inspector had explained to him the meaning of another pertinent foreign phrase, Latin this time. Quid pro quo was familiar territory to MacFarlane, and he let it pass. So long as no ‘quids’ in the currency sense of the word changed pockets, he had no objections. He knew when to look the other way and let his officer take the lead.

  The superintendent glanced down at his scribbled notes. The drowned girl, he could have sent any one of three inspectors to investigate. He knew Redfyre was up to his ears in last night’s melodrama in the chapel and he ought by rights to have spared him, but there were some details here that alerted him. This was no street girl, the kind of woman who usually ended up by suicide or violence in the Cam. What had the constable said, reporting the doctor’s comments? “Found in a well-to-do part of town. Large private houses all about, university boathouses nearby, nice little park . . . The victim is well dressed, manicured hands, expensive boots, smart hairdo—” MacFarlane had interrupted to ask bluntly, “Lady of the Night, was she? Doc find any sign of sexual aggression?” The constable’s reply had been a stiffly delivered, “No sir. And none found.” Into the silence on MacFarlane’s end, he had relented and added, “A girl from a good background, to all appearances. Doctor Beaufort quickly established that she was virgo intacta, and her underpinnings similarly untouched.”

  Good background? In Cambridge, chances were that meant a university background. Two upper-class girls attacked in one night? How likely was that? MacFarlane knew it was as likely as a snowstorm in June. Not unheard of, but come on! Instinct told him to send in Redfyre. Already involved in the first attempted murder, he’d be in a position to find out whether the second—and this time, successful—attack was somehow connected.

  Experience told MacFarlane they probably weren’t. The first attack (if that was what it proved to be) was staged in front of several hundred people in a brightly lit chapel. This second was a secretive piece of nastiness committed on a deserted towpath under cover of darkness, where the victim was alone. And what the hell was she doing out there on a freezing river bank at that hour?

  Still, two young, upper-crust ladies in one night? MacFarlane remembered that Jack the Ripper had attacked twice in the space of an hour, on the occasion when his first killing and mutilation had been interrupted by passersby. He’d had to scarper and find another victim round the corner. Couldn’t rest until he’d had his fill of blood. Unresolved murderous urges, psychological deviance—was that what plagued the culprit? Was this some upper-class loony loose on the Cambridge streets? MacFarlane groaned. Cyril the Slasher?

  The superintendent couldn’t be doing with the new psychological insights into motivation that he was supposed to consider. A killer was a killer, no matter what excuse he put forward for the blood-dripping dagger in his hand. And no matter what his family and connections.

  And where would it end? Worryingly, the superintendent recalled murders of women which seemed occasionally to happen one after the other. For the reason that the perpetrator had it in for a certain class of female and, being of the weaker sex, these females succumbed easily to male violence. The name “Whitechapel” still sent shivers of dread and guilt down the spine of any conscientious policeman. But these poor wretches had died in the hunting grounds of the criminal classes: the red-light districts, fairgrounds and cheap boarding houses. And their attackers came from the same lowly social class. To MacFarlane’s knowledge, no one ever cut a swathe through the ranks of educated, upper-class women, however great the provocation. He spent a brief moment taking the pulse rate of his own response to provocation. Worse than the average man’s, he estimated with honesty. He loathed any uncontrolled outpouring of emotion in male or female members of the public, but shrieking women put his teeth on edge. And that jab with a sharpened six-inch hatpin wielded by a Newnham College harpy had lowered his tolerance a few notches.

  Worse—you couldn’t lay a finger on them, even in your own defense. With a crowd of men, you could pick out the trouble-makers, knock ’em down and sit on ’em to achieve a bit of order, but when the gentler sex stabbed you in the bum, all you could do was offer the other cheek.

  “Sir! Your copy of the Oracle, sir.” The duty bobby swept into his office, disturbing his lugubrious train of thought. He put t
he morning’s newspaper down on the desk. But instead of leaving at once as he usually did, Constable Barnes loitered, casting a critical eye on the paper and sighing with discomfort of some sort.

  “What’s up? Ulcer giving you gyp again, Barnes? Or have you seen something you don’t like the look of in the rag?”

  “Page three, sir,” Barnes said and shot off.

  MacFarlane picked up the paper hesitantly. Printed during the small hours of the night, there was no way they could have got wind of the body in the river. Surely?

  He turned straight to the recommended page, read a few lines and his roar of outrage was audible even to the retreating back of Barnes as he hurried down the stairs to the security of the front desk.

  MacFarlane lit another cigarette and sat down to make a dispassionate reading of the article by one Sebastian Scrivener. He realised he was talking to himself but, judging no one else on his staff deserved to be made to listen to his foul-mouthed comments he decided not to call in his sergeant to hear them.

  Under an over-emphatic headline: fall of an angel? there appeared to be an account of the very events witnessed and reported by his own officer the previous evening at the Barnabas concert. Shit! Was no place safe from the weasels of the press? A tedious old carol concert in a college chapel, for Gawd’s sake! What possible excitement could have drawn one of them there? A tip-off? How do you give someone a tip-off about an accident?