The Dead of Jericho Read online

  For

  Patricia and Joan,

  kindly denizens of Jericho

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  BOOK FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  And I wonder how they should have been together

  T. S. Eliot, La Figlia che Piange

  NOT REMARKABLY BEAUTIFUL, he thought. Not, that is to say, if one could ever measure the beauty of a woman on some objective scale: sub specie aeternae pulchritudinis, as it were. Yet several times already, in the hour or so that followed the brisk, perfunctory ‘hallos’ of their introduction, their eyes had met across the room – and held. And it was after his third glass of slightly superior red plonk that he managed to break away from the small circle of semi-acquaintances with whom he’d so far been standing.

  Easy.

  Mrs Murdoch, a large, forcefully optimistic woman in her late forties, was now pleasantly but firmly directing her guests towards the food set out on tables at the far end of the large lounge, and the man took his opportunity as she passed by.

  ‘Lovely party!’

  ‘Glad you could come. You must mix round a bit, though. Have you met—?’

  ‘I’ll mix. I promise I will – have no fears!’

  ‘I’ve told lots of people about you.’

  The man nodded without apparent enthusiasm and looked at her plain, large-featured face. ‘You’re looking very fit.’

  ‘Fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘How about the boys? They must be’ (he’d forgotten what they must be) ‘er, getting on a bit now.’

  ‘Michael eighteen. Edward seventeen.’

  ‘Amazing! Doing their exams soon, I suppose?’

  ‘Michael’s got his A-levels next month.’ (‘Do please go along and help yourself, Rowena.’)

  ‘Clear-minded and confident, is he?’

  ‘Confidence is a much overrated quality – don’t you agree?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ replied the man, who had never previously considered the proposition. (But had he noticed a flash of unease in Mrs Murdoch’s eyes?) ‘What’s he studying?’

  ‘Biology. French. Economics.’ (‘That’s right. Please do go along and help yourselves.’)

  ‘Interesting!’ replied the man, debating what possible motives could have influenced the lad towards such a curiously uncomplementary combination of disciplines. ‘And Edward, what’s—?’

  He heard himself speak the words but his hostess had drifted away to goad some of her guests towards the food, and he found himself alone. The people he had joined earlier were now poised, plates in their hands, over the assortment of cold meats, savouries, and salads, spearing breasts of curried chicken and spooning up the coleslaw. For two minutes he stood facing the nearest wall, appearing earnestly to assess an amateurishly executed watercolour. Then he made his move. She was standing at the back of the queue and he took his place behind her.

  ‘Looks good, doesn’t it?’ he ventured. Not a particularly striking or original start. But a start; and a sufficient one.

  ‘Hungry?’ she asked, turning towards him.

  Was he hungry? At such close quarters she looked more attractive than ever, with her wide hazel eyes, clear skin, and lips already curved in a smile. Was he hungry?

  ‘I’m a bit hungry,’ he said.

  ‘You probably eat too much.’ She splayed her right hand lightly over the front of his white shirt, a shirt he had himself carefully washed and ironed for the party. The fingers were slim and sinewy, the long nails carefully manicured and crimsoned.

  ‘Not too bad, am I?’ He liked the way things were going, and his voice sounded almost schoolboyish.

  She tilted her head to one side in a mock-serious assessment of whatever qualities she might approve in him. ‘Not too bad,’ she said, pouting her lips provocatively.

  He watched her as she bent her body over the buffet table, watched the curve of her slim bottom as she leant far across to fork a few slices of beetroot – and suddenly felt (as he often felt) a little lost, a little hopeless. She was talking to the man in front of her now, a man in his mid-twenties, tall, fair-haired, deeply tanned, with hardly an ounce of superfluous flesh on his frame. And the older man shook his head and smiled ruefully. It had been a nice thought, but now he let it drift away. He was fifty, and age was just about beginning, so he told himself, to cure his heart of tenderness. Just about.

  There were chairs set under the far end of the table, with a few square feet of empty surface on the white tablecloth; and he decided to sit and eat in peace. It would save him the indigestion he almost invariably suffered if he sat in an armchair and ate in the cramped and squatting postures that the other guests were happily adopting. He refilled his glass yet again, pulled out a chair, and started to eat.

  ‘I think you’re the only sensible man in the room,’ she said, standing beside him a minute later.

  ‘I get indigestion,’ he said flatly, not bothering to look up at her. It was no good pretending. He might just as well be himself – a bit paunchy, more than a bit balding, on the cemetery side of the semi-century, with one or two unsightly hairs beginning to sprout in his ears. No! It was no use pretending. Go away, my pretty one! Go away and take your fill of flirting from that lecherous young Adonis over there!

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  He looked up at her in her cream-coloured, narrow-waisted summer dress, and pulled out the chair next to him.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you for the evening,’ he said after a while.

  She lifted her glass of wine to her lips and then circled the third finger of her left hand smoothly round the inner rim at the point from which she had sipped. ‘Didn’t you want to lose me?’ she said softly, her moist lips close to his ear.

  ‘No. I wanted to keep you all to myself. But then I’m a selfish begger.’ His voice was bantering, good-humoured; but his clear blue eyes remained cold and appraising.

  ‘You might have rescued me,’ she whispered. ‘That blond-headed bore across there— Oh, I’m sorry. He’s not—?’

  ‘No. He’s no friend of mine.’

  ‘Nor mine. In fact, I don’t really know anyone here.’ Her voice had become serious, and for a few minutes they ate in silence.

  ‘There’s a few of ’em here wouldn’t mind getting to know you,’ he said finally.

  ‘Mm?’ She seemed relaxed again, and smiled. ‘Perhaps you’r
e right. But they’re all such bores – did you know that?’

  ‘I’m a bit of a bore myself,’ the man said.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Well, let’s say I’m just the same as all the others.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ There were traces in her flat ‘a’s of some north country accent. Lancashire, perhaps?

  ‘You want me to tell you?’

  ‘Uh uh.’

  Their eyes held momentarily, as they had done earlier; and then the man looked down at his virtually untouched plate of food. ‘I find you very attractive,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s all.’

  She made no reply, and they got on with their eating, thinking their own thoughts. Silently.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ said the man, wiping his mouth with an orange-coloured paper napkin, and reaching across for one of the wine bottles. ‘What can I get you now, madame? There’s, er, there’s fresh fruit salad; there’s cream gateau; there’s some sort of caramel whatnot—’

  But as he made to rise she laid her hand on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Let’s just sit here and talk a minute. I never seem to be able to eat and talk at the same time – like others can.’

  Indeed, it appeared that most of the other guests were remarkably proficient at such simultaneous skills, for, as the man became suddenly aware, the large room was filled with the chatter and clatter of the thirty or so other guests.

  ‘Drop more wine?’ he asked.

  ‘Haven’t I had enough?’

  ‘As soon as you’ve had enough, it’s time to have a little drop more.’

  She laughed sweetly at him. ‘Is that original?’

  ‘I read it on the back of a matchbox.’

  She laughed again, and for a little while they drank their wine.

  ‘You know what you just said about – about—’

  ‘Finding you attractive?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  The man shrugged in what he trusted was a casual manner. ‘No call for any great surprise, is there? I expect hundreds of fellers have told you the same, haven’t they? It’s not your fault. The Almighty just happened to fashion you wondrously fair – that’s all. Why not accept it? It’s just the same with me: I happen to be blessed with the most brilliant brain in Oxford. I can’t help that either, can I?’

  ‘You’re not answering my question.’

  ‘No? I thought—’

  ‘When you said you found me attractive, it wasn’t just what you said. It was – it was the way you said it.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sort of – well sort of nice, somehow, and sort of sad at the same time.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say “sort of all the time.’

  ‘I was trying to tell you something that wasn’t easy to put into words, that’s all. But I’ll shut up if you want me to.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I dunno. You see where honesty gets you? I tell you I find you attractive. You know why? Because it does me good to look at you, and to sit next to you like this. And shall I tell you something else? I reckon you’re getting more attractive all the time. Must be the wine.’ His glass was empty again and he reached over for a bottle.

  ‘Trouble with most men is that “attractive” just means one thing, doesn’t it? Slip in between the sheets. Ta very much! Cheerio!’

  ‘Nothing much wrong with that, is there?’

  ‘Of course there isn’t! But there can be more to it all than that, can’t there?’

  ‘I dunno. I’m no expert on that sort of thing. Wish I were!’

  ‘But you can like a woman for what she is, can’t you – as well as what she looks like?’ She turned her head towards him, the dark hair piled high on top, and her eyes shone with an almost fierce tenderness.

  ‘Will you just tell me—?’ He found himself swallowing hard in the middle of whatever he was going to say and he got no further. She had slipped her right hand under the table and he felt the long soft fingers slowly curling and entwining themselves with his own.

  ‘Can you just pass that wine across a sec, old chap?’ It was one of the older guests, red-faced, pot-bellied, and jovial. ‘Sorry to barge in and all that, but a chap needs his booze, eh?’

  Their hands had sprung guiltily apart and remained so, for the other guests were now returning to the tables to make their choice of dessert.

  ‘Do you think we’d better mix in again?’ he asked, without conviction. ‘We shall be causing a bit of comment if we’re not careful.’

  ‘That worry you?’

  The man appeared to give his earnest attention to this question for a good many seconds; and then his face relaxed into a boyish grin. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I don’t give a bugger. Why the hell shouldn’t we sit together all night? Just tell me that, my girl! It’s what I want. And if it’s what you—’

  ‘Which it is – as you know! So why not stop pretending, and go and get me some of that gateau? And here!’ She gulped down the rest of her wine. ‘You can fill this up while you’re at it – right to the top.’

  After finishing their gateaux, and after twice refusing the offer of coffee, he asked her to tell him something about herself. And she told him.

  She’d been born in Rochdale, had been a hardworking and clever girl at school, and had won a place at Lady Margaret Hall to read modern languages. With a good second-class honours degree behind her, she had left Oxford and worked as the (sole) foreign sales rep of a smallish publishing company at Croydon, a company started from scratch a few years previously by two bright and reasonably ambitious brothers and dealing with textbooks in English as a foreign language. Just before she’d joined the company an increasing number of contracts had been coming in from overseas, and the need for some more effective liaison with foreign customers was becoming ever more apparent. Hence the appointment. Pretty good job, and not bad money either – especially for someone without the slightest experience in business matters. It had involved a good deal of necessary (and occasionally unnecessary) travel with the elder of the two brothers (Charles, the senior partner), and she had stayed in the job for eight years, enjoying it enormously. Business had boomed, the payroll had increased from ten to over twenty, new premises were built, new machinery purchased; and during this time, amid rumours of expenses fiddles and tax avoidance, the workforce had witnessed the arrival of the inevitable Rolls Royce, first a black one, then a light blue one; and, for a favoured few, there was a spanking little beauty of a yacht moored somewhere up at Reading. Her own salary was each year – sometimes twice a year – increased, and when three years ago she had finally left the company she had amassed a nice little nest egg of savings, certainly enough for her to envisage a reasonably affluent independence for several years to come. Why had she left? Difficult to say, really. Eight years was quite a long time, and even the most enjoyable job becomes a little less challenging, a little more – more familiar (was that the word?) as the years pass by, with colleagues seeming to grow more predictable and more . . . Oh! It didn’t much matter what they grew! It was far simpler than that: she’d just wanted a change – that was all. So she’d had a change. At Oxford she’d read French and Italian, and through her work with the company she’d become comprehensively fluent in German. So? So she’d joined the staff of a very large (eighteen hundred!) comprehensive school in the East End of London – teaching German. The school was far rougher than she could have imagined. The boys were doubtless good enough at heart, but were blatantly and impertinently obscene, not infrequently (she suspected) exposing themselves on the back rows of their classes. But it was the girls who had been the real trouble, seeing in their new teacher a rival intruder, likely enough to snatch away the coveted affections of the boys and the male staff alike. The staff? Oh, some of them had tried things on a bit with her, especially the married ones; but they weren’t a bad lot, really. They’d certainly been given a Herculean task in trying to
cure, or at least to curb, the pervasive truancy, the mindless vandalism, and the sheer bloody-mindedness of those truculent adolescents to whom all notions of integrity, scholarship, or even the meanest of the middle-class virtues were equally foreign and repugnant. Well, she’d stuck it out for four terms; and looking back she wished she’d stuck it longer. The boys and girls in her own form had clubbed together generously to buy her an utterly hideous set of wine glasses; and those glasses were the most precious present she’d ever had! She’d cried when they made the presentation – all of them staying behind after final assembly, with one of the boys making a stupidly incompetent, facetious, wonderful little speech. Most of the girls had cried a bit, too, and even one or two of the inveterate exposers had been reduced to words of awkward farewell that were sad, and mildly grateful, and quite unbearably moving. Oh dear! Then? Well, she’d tried one or two other things and, finally – two years ago that is – she’d come back to Oxford, advertised for private pupils, got rather more offers than she could cope with, bought a small house – and well, there she was! There she was at the party.

  She’d missed something out though – the man knew that. He remembered, albeit vaguely, how Mrs Murdoch had introduced her to him; remembered clearly the third finger on her left hand as she’d wiped the inside of her wineglass. Had she missed out a few other facts as well? But he said nothing. Just sat there, half bemused and more than half besotted.

  It was just after midnight. The Murdoch boys had gone to bed and several of the guests had already taken their leave. Most of those who remained were drinking their second or third cups of coffee, but no one came up to interrupt the oddly assorted pair who still sat amidst the wreckage of the trifles and the flans.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘You’ve managed to get me to do all the talking!’

  ‘I’m not half as interesting as you are. I’m not! I just want to keep sitting here – next to you, that’s all.’

  He’d drunk a prodigious amount of wine, and his voice (as she noticed) was at last becoming slurred. ‘Nesht to you, thas aw,’ would be more accurate phonetic equivalents of his last few words; and yet the woman felt a curiously compelling attraction towards this mellowing drunkard, whose hand now sought her own once more and who lightly traced his fingertips across her palm.