The Memory of Blood

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘It’s a theatre company. A troupe refers to the actors. She’s on the production side. Assistant stage manager, I believe. A perfectly reasonable explanation for what she was doing on the premises.’

  ‘Yes—but the murder of a baby? And she’s a potential suspect? That phone is going to start ringing any minute now. My God, the implications are appalling!’

  ‘The only appalling thing is that an infant has been brutalized,’ said May, annoyed. Land worried too much about his job and not enough about the victims of tragedies.

  ‘Yes, yes, babies die all the time, but the involvement of a minister’s daughter is unthinkable. I suppose you know that Gail Strong fled the country after a pregnancy termination earlier this year? She told the press she has a horror of babies. She also has a habit of disappearing whenever the spotlight gets too strong. Her father usually pays the press to hush everything up. What if she killed Noah Kramer in a fit of jealousy or something? No, even worse, suppose Bryant starts thinking she’s guilty? Her father’s department has been under fire lately. This could be a lethal blow for him.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve got your priorities in the right order.’

  ‘I look at the broader picture. You just have to deal with the aftereffects of the crime. I’ve got to keep the money coming into this Unit. If the budget dries up, cases like this will revert to the Met’s jurisdiction, and we know what that means. You might as well give them to the cat.’ He threw a poisoned glance at Crippen. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound callous. Coming in this morning I thought to myself, this is a good start to the week. I’ve had trouble at home all weekend; I was glad to get back to work. And now this.’

  ‘It’s not Leanne again, is it?’ asked May solicitously. Land’s wife was bored and showing renewed signs of unfaithfulness. She had taken a suspiciously large number of flamenco lessons lately, and was now attending sherry-tasting evenings in the company of a twenty-three-year-old Tio Pépe representative from Jerez. She had already suggested going on holiday with Paco instead of their customary cycling fortnight in Wales.

  ‘I think it’s some kind of midlife crisis. She’s dyed her hair blond and wants to buy a sports car. It’s all these late-night women’s TV shows about fulfilment she’s been watching. She’s suddenly got it into her mind that she should be enjoying regular sex. But enough of my troubles. Get this sorted out as quickly as possible, will you? And try not to involve Gail Strong. She wants to be a singer or something. She’s hired a PR consultant to manage her, but he has to spend the whole time covering up her indiscretions.’

  ‘I’m surprised you know about all this,’ said May.

  ‘I saw it on television,’ Land admitted sheepishly. ‘One of Leanne’s programmes.’ He eyed the overcoat he had hung on the back of his chair, and knew there would be no likelihood of slipping into it until midnight at the earliest.

  ‘I don’t know what more I can tell you, Mr Bryant,’ said Dan Banbury. The detectives had returned to the Unit after visiting Kershaw, because they knew Banbury would be back from the crime scene. ‘It appears that Noah Samuel Kramer was removed from his cot at around nine o’clock P.M. tonight. Giles has told you he was shaken and strangled to death, and his body sustained further injuries from a fall, and I’m telling you he was thrown from the end of the cot through an open window into the basement area of the building. There are no footprints on the wet rug beneath the sill. There are faint depressions on the other rug that the cot stands on, because that’s where everyone has to stand in order to reach in and pick the baby up.’

  ‘But no definable prints.’

  ‘No. It’s a hard-wearing cord that doesn’t hold heel marks. The door of the nursery was securely locked on the inside, with the key still firmly in place. The key turns easily enough but it’s tricky to actually get out, so I guess they just left it in the door. There were no signs of tampering with the lock, and Mr Kramer had been forced to kick the door in. A couple of minutes after he did this, the noise, and Mrs Kramer’s scream, attracted the attention of the party guests, eleven of whom came to see what the problem was. They saw the damage and naturally entered the room, but Mr Kramer sensibly realised that a crime had been committed and stopped them from coming all the way in. He could see that the rug beneath the window was wet and that the rails of the cot might hold prints. As it was, there weren’t any.’

  ‘What, none at all?’ asked May.

  ‘Well, I got prints from the nanny and Mrs Kramer, but that’s all. As for the floor, it’s hardwood and hadn’t been cleaned in several days, so there are a few scuff marks which we’ll try to identify by matching against the shoes of the guests and those in the Kramers’ closets, but there are no water marks. I’m bothered by the fact that there’s nothing on the rug, because the killer had to have left the room by the window and it would be physically impossible to do so without putting a foot down. There’s simply no other method of exit unless we find some kind of secret panel in the room—’

  ‘There are quite a few houses in London with secret panels,’ Bryant pointed out.

  ‘I was joking, Mr Bryant. The house was converted into flats from offices three years ago, it’s not Gormenghast. All the walls are new and solid. So the killer had to climb out of the window, and unless he could fly he would have had to place a foot on the rug. Likewise if he came in that way.’

  ‘Is there any way he could have scaled the building and entered from the outside?’ asked Meera Mangeshkar.

  ‘The toilet window is about fifteen feet away and the nearest drainpipe is at least seven feet away,’ said Banbury. ‘I don’t see how that would be possible.’

  ‘Parkour,’ suggested Longbright. ‘That jumping thing kids do.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that’s defined as the art of overcoming obstacles in your path by adapting your movements to the environment,’ Bryant recited. ‘I’ve watched lads doing it down the South Bank on a Sunday morning.’

  ‘They can climb a wall just using their fingertips, can’t they?’

  ‘That still leaves the closed and locked window, the print-free rug, the lack of raindrops shaken onto or around the cot—it was howling down outside, remember—and so far no witnesses from the buildings opposite or the street below. Have we got any CCTV cameras outside?’

  ‘A couple mounted at either end of the avenue but not in the middle,’ said Longbright. ‘We’re checking them for coverage at the moment. Westminster has an e-map of every CCTV in central London.’

  ‘And no unexpected fingerprints anywhere? You checked the whereabouts of the nanny?’

  ‘At her mother’s bedside in Kent. And Mrs Kramer was downstairs in the lounge at the estimated time of Noah’s death,’ said Banbury. ‘I want to run checks on fibres from the floor and rugs if we can scrape together the lab costs, but I’ve got nothing out of the ordinary.’ He sat back with his thick arms folded, defying anyone to come up with a theory.

  ‘Mr Punch,’ muttered Bryant, fishing about for his pipe.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bryant?’

  ‘Well, he seems to be the obvious culprit. If Mr Punch had killed the baby, there’d be no conflicting evidence, would there?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Bryant. The only thing Mr Punch lacks is the motor movement that usually comes from muscles controlled by the human brain.’

  Sarcasm had no effect on Bryant. He located his pipe and calmly attached the stem to the bowl, patting down his pockets for tobacco. ‘Remote control,’ he said through clenched false teeth. ‘Take it apart.’

  ‘Where is the puppet now?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘It’s still with Giles,’ said Banbury. ‘He and I are going to pull it to bits first thing in the morning. Robert Kramer’s already warned us that it’s valuable and we’re not allowed to cut it open, but I chucked him a bit of legal and he shut up sharpish. Makes you wonder if he cares more about a bloody toy than his own flesh and blood.’

  ‘Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.’ May indicated that Longbr
ight should hand out copies of the witness statements. ‘Everybody take a few and we’ll start going through them. We’re going to be here most of the night.’

  ‘Whoa, I’m not spending the night in this building,’ said Meera. ‘There’s something wrong with it. Bad karma.’ There had been a number of complaints about strange late-night noises in the Victorian property since the staff had discovered that it had once provided a home for the society of black magic practitioners.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,’ Bimsley said with a laugh. He was more than prepared to, as well—if only she wanted him.

  ‘Yeah, right, that’s reassuring.’ Meera shot him a sour look and slumped back in her chair to study the pages. ‘It looks like a third of my witnesses left the room to use the bathroom at some point during the forty minutes. This guy, Marcus Sigler, went outside for a ciggie twice.’

  ‘So did some of mine,’ said Longbright. ‘I don’t think these are going to be detailed enough for us, Dan.’

  ‘All right, I’ll fix it, but until then we’ll draw up a chart,’ said Banbury, turning over a whiteboard. ‘Time line along this side, guests at the top. Mark every absence to the minute, see where they cross over, get them to verify each other’s movements.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very scientific,’ said Meera.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry I can’t nip over to an American forensics lab and split everything into nucleotides and mitochondrial DNA, Meera, but we’re just a small experimental unit in North London operating on a budget that wouldn’t keep a string quartet going.’

  ‘I’m going on the balcony for a ponder and a puff,’ said Bryant, ‘unless I’m allowed to enjoy my pipe in here, seeing as it’s raining and I’m a fragile senior with a dreadful chest.’

  ‘No!’ said everybody in the room.

  ‘That’s a pity, because I was going to share my thoughts with you.’

  ‘I’m not sure we’re ready to hear your theories on ambulatory puppets,’ May warned.

  ‘No, this is about premeditation.’ Bryant hovered in the doorway, shamelessly playing his audience, waiting to be called back. ‘Yes?’ He raised his eyebrows and listened for a response.

  ‘Oh, all right, then,’ May said finally. ‘Tell us.’

  Bryant darted back in and lit up. ‘It’s all right, I’m on the herbal stuff. Old Malahyde’s Tincture of Rose-Mulch.’ It smelled suspiciously like grass. ‘Well, the crime is bizarrely polarized, isn’t it? On the one hand we have factors that point to an act of violence occurring in a flash of temper—the shaking, the throwing—but on the other, everything seems planned—the locked room, the lack of prints suggesting gloves or at least a cloth to wipe up with, the waiting for the perfect opportunity. The party, by the way, provided the perfect cover, because the Kramers’ house is alarmed, so it was the easiest way to gain admittance when the baby was sure to be there. And the window was opened. If it was simply an act of murderous temper, why not hurl the baby to the floor? Why not dash its brains out on the head of the cot? Why go to the window, avoid stepping on the rug, open it and throw the baby out? It really is the most contradictory set of circumstances. And the theatricality of the whole thing smacks of actorly behaviour—you know, a grand dramatic gesture.’

  ‘What do you think it tells us about the killer?’

  ‘I think the intention to do harm had been harboured for a while, but something happened at the party to flush it into the open. We need to look at the evening’s events far more carefully. Janice, can you organise that?’

  ‘All right, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Longbright wearily. ‘Let’s go back to the beginning and see how much more we can wring out of the statements. I suggest we form pairs and keep switching until they’re all covered.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Meera, ‘but I don’t want to sit next to Colin.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Bimsley.

  Meera wrinkled her nose at him. ‘You smell like you fell in a vat of cheap scent.’

  ‘That’s Lynx.’ Bimsley sniffed his right armpit.

  ‘What are you, fourteen?’

  ‘It pulls the chicks, this stuff.’

  ‘I can tell you right now that it doesn’t.’

  Longbright watched her teammates bickering like schoolchildren and wondered how they would ever make any headway. She hoped they would remember that at the base of the investigation was the tragedy of a child’s lost life.

  Just after nine o’clock A.M. on Tuesday morning at the St Pancras mortuary, they went to work.

  ‘Okay,’ said Giles Kershaw. ‘Hold it steady, I’m going in.’ He raised his scalpel above the steel dissection table, sprayed the blade with a neutral oil-based lubricant and inserted it beneath the neck of the prone Mr Punch, just where his hump began.

  ‘Try to keep it to the stitching,’ Dan Banbury suggested. ‘This one’s worth a fortune. Most of them are in the hands of private collectors or in museums, and Mr Bryant told me this one is part of a complete set from the 1880s, which makes it very rare.’

  ‘I open bodies, Dan, I can do this, okay?’ Kershaw’s blade snicked the stitches apart. He reached the dummy’s legs and carefully began to remove the kapok-and-horsehair stuffing inside. A jointed brass skeleton was gradually revealed, still gleaming. ‘Amazing bit of workmanship, this. Beautifully put together. The Victorians really made things to last, even toys.’

  ‘It’s not a toy, Giles; it was crafted like that because it was a way of earning a living. According to Mr Bryant, the Punch and Judy men were masters of their craft and could make good money. There was one appointed to Buckingham Palace for garden parties. He was granted the royal crest—By Appointment—it’s on the back.’

  Giles shone a penlight into the puppet’s cranium. ‘The head and hands are made of carved wood, hollowed out but heavy things to lift, performing with your arms raised all the time.’ Kershaw set aside another handful of brown horsehair and peered deeper inside.

  ‘I think there were usually two men working in the booth. The later models are papier-mâché over a wire frame. See anything?’

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. No electrical wiring, no pistons, certainly nothing that could allow the thing to stand up under its own power. There would have to be some kind of support in here. The Japanese currently have a couple of robots that could do it, although I think even they would draw the line at building one that could strangle a baby. There goes the Golem theory.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the sixteenth century, the Chief Rabbi of Prague brought a huge creature made of clay to life to stop anti-Semitic attacks, but the Golem eventually turned on his creator. I get crazy thoughts while I’m working. It comes from hanging around old Bryant too much. You start to think like him, and then pretty soon no self-respecting CID officer will talk to you.’

  ‘Okay, what do we do now?’

  ‘Stitch it back up,’ Giles replied, studying Mr Punch’s angry red face. It seemed the creature was staring at him, its eyes filled with murderous intent.

  The classic murder thriller used to be a staple of the West End theatre. Plays like Maria Marten or, Murder in the Red Barn; Sweeney Todd; Wait Until Dark and Sleuth proved popular with the public, but lately this genre has gone into decline, with only Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap still hanging on for grim death at the St Martin’s Lane Theatre, where the director is still required to follow the original moves laid down in the play’s first production sixty years ago, preserving the whole ghastly farrago in amber for the undemanding non-English-speaking tourists who inexplicably keep it running.

  I was reminded of the play while sitting through The Two Murderers, a farcical drama in which a young woman (soap actress Della Fortess—dismal) is beaten by her husband and falls into the arms of hunky gardener Bert (former boy-band singer and model Marcus Sigler). Together the pair hatch a plot to murder the bullying captain of industry, but plans go awry and soon the stage is drenched in Kensington Gore.

  Despite some brief and pa
infully hammy support from veteran actors Neil Crofting and Mona Williams, the show belongs to the young leads, who’ll have no appeal whatsoever to older audiences. Ella Maltby’s superbly evocative Gothic set designs and extravagant period costuming from Larry Hayes notwithstanding, the overmiked sound makes it unbearable for anyone above the iPod generation, especially when the absurd plot twists start kicking in after the intermission.

  The fault lies largely with the New Strand Theatre’s Russell Haddon, whose misjudged blood-and-thunder direction renders the actors’ Grand Guignol posturing ludicrous and turns the plot into some kind of teenaged multiplex action movie. First-time author Ray Pryce provides clever dialogue that frequently bristles with ironic epithets, but his lines are lost under a welter of overblown effects that include a stabbing, torture, nudity and a grotesquely realistic hanging.

  None of this will make a jot of difference to the youngsters who will flock in droves to see this monstrously distasteful catalogue of lurid thrills, especially as the second half features a scene in which Miss Fortess dances naked for her lover in the most gratuitous nude scene I have ever witnessed onstage. The soap star’s ample charms will doubtless prove a useful distraction from the play’s many faults. Meanwhile, the company has already announced a new production, God help us, and at least author Pryce will once more be on hand to ensure that the script provides frissons, even if the director is unable to rise to the occasion.

  The Two Murderers New Strand Theatre, Adams Street, WC2 Perfs 7:30pm (Exc. Sundays, Mats: Weds, Sats)

  ‘The bastard has the nerve to show up at my house, witnesses our private grief and then prints these two items right next to each other!’

  In the manager’s office above the New Strand Theatre, Robert Kramer threw the newspaper across the desk to Gregory Baine, his accountant and producer. ‘Unable to rise to the occasion—Lansdale knows we had trouble conceiving because of my low sperm count. My wife was stupid enough to tell him.’