Free Death of a God by S. T. Haymon

strong, but red and roughened by work.
    â€˜You’re cold, my darling.’ With a little laugh that seemed such a token of intimacy between the two of them that Jurnet was pierced through with shyness simply to have overheard it: ‘You were right as usual – I should have left the fire for you to do. All that mess and ash and coalite, and still hardly anything to show for it! Whatever will you say when you find out I’ve used up all your stock of papers just to get that miserable thing going?’
    Leo Felsenstein responded shakily, ‘One double sheet – how many times must I tell you? – torn into strips and crumpled up –’ He broke off, pulled his hand from the woman’s grasp and put it over his mouth. ‘The boy! The boy!’ he whimpered.
    â€˜The boy,’ she agreed, recapturing the hand and kissing it on the palm with a tender delicacy. Looking up at Jurnet: ‘You’ll find him,’ she pronounced. ‘The murderer. You don’t look like a man to give up. But –’ and to Jurnet’s relief (there was such a thing as being too strong) the wonderful eyes, for the first time, spilled over with tears – ‘I can’t see how I – how we – can help. We know nothing.’
    Jurnet said gently, ‘It often seems like that, when in fact there are things – important things – you may know without realizing that you know them. We’ll talk about them later, when you feel able to. Letters your son may have written you, telephone calls. Things, however trivial, he may have said when he came to see you. Most of all, you know your son. We need to know him too.’
    â€˜We know nothing,’ Mrs Felsenstein repeated, shaking her head. She had begun to tremble slightly. In the absence of the WPC, Sergeant Ellers, who knew the signs, looked about for something to drape round her shoulders; found a cardigan on one of the chairs and brought it over. The woman pushed it aside impatiently.
    â€˜Loy never wrote letters. Not to us, at any rate. And we’re not on the phone. He popped in, just for a minute, Tuesday, the day he arrived in Angleby – the day before the concert – but he was in such a hurry Leo didn’t see him at all. He’d gone to bed early, and Loy wouldn’t let me disturb him. If I’d known there would never be another chance –’ She suddenly sobbed aloud, a sharp, crackling sound, cut off abruptly.
    â€˜Forgive me –’ Jurnet cleared his throat. There was a limit to how long you could go on pretending a murder inquiry was a social call. ‘I take it you and your son were on good terms?’
    â€˜Loy? Oh, yes!’ Mrs Felsenstein was looking as if the unlovely noise she had just made had surprised her. ‘It’s only that the life he’s led has taken him far away from us. What he wanted was to take us with him. Only –’ she looked round the humble little room with love and pride – ‘we didn’t choose to go. Did we, Leo?’ Her husband, slumped in a seeming daze of exhaustion, said nothing. Mrs Felsenstein went on, stumbling a little over the words, ‘I want you to know, Inspector, Loy was a loving and dutiful son. Always sending us money. We would send it back, of course – what did we need money for? – but in a little while he’d send it back again, as if he’d forgotten what we’d said. And then we’d have to send that back. It became a kind of game –’
    â€˜Weren’t there letters with the money, at least?’
    â€˜It wasn’t necessary. He knew we’d know where it came from.’
    â€˜You must have felt upset he couldn’t spend a bit more time with you when, for once, he was actually back in Angleby.’
    â€˜A pop star’s life isn’t his own. We’d long ago accepted that. Besides, as I’ve told you, we did expect him, this morning. We quite