The Memory of Blood

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘We think it’s probably the most complete collection in the world,’ Salterton said. ‘The puppets got passed down from father to son, and each puppet master took on the royal coat of arms as the Queen’s official Punch and Judy man, hired to perform before the children of nobles and heads of state whenever they came to visit Windsor Castle.’ In the light of the puppet cases, Salterton seemed younger. His enthusiasm regenerated him. ‘Everyone recognises certain iconic figures, whether they’re real or fictional. The devil with red horns and a tail, Napoleon with his hat, Alice in her blue dress, Nelson with his eye patch, the Knave of Hearts and Harlequin—and to those you can add Mr Punch here. It’s the striped peascod doublet he wears that gives him the funny shape. He was once played by a live actor—Italian, of course, Punchinello, related to Don Juan—but he was really born in 1649. Then he became a wooden puppet, dancing about in his tall box opposite the Louvre.’

  ‘Dudley Salterton has a secret,’ Bryant told May. ‘He’s the world’s leading authority on Punch and Judy.’

  ‘Mammet,’ said Salterton softly. ‘It was the Elizabethan word for a puppet or idol. From Mahomet.’ He unlocked one of the cases and carefully removed a Mr Punch, lovingly picking off specks of dust and stroking it like a puppy. ‘He’s always dressed in red and yellow, and you always see his legs. Everyone else in the show only appears from the waist up. The sets are here, too. Everything from Hampton Court Palace to the Bay of Naples. And props: Punch’s drum, his beating-stick, his sheep-bell, the string of sausages and the gallows.’

  May was beguiled and puzzled in equal measure. ‘I don’t understand Punch and Judy. It just seems to be all yelling and hitting.’

  ‘The second commandment of the God of the Israelites was levelled against the power of the puppet. The dangerous thing about them, of course, is that they might become human. Many religious figurines were removed in the Reformation, but lived on as gargoyles carved into church walls and on misericords. Punch and Judy is a morality play about the absence of morality,’ Salterton explained. ‘Marionette players were banned by Oliver Cromwell, because many puppets have pagan histories. The Clown was originally Momus, the Harlequin was Mercury. We think Punch got his name from Pulliceno, a turkey-cock—a creature with a resemblance to Punch and his beaked nose. But the French say it comes from Ponche, short for Pontius Pilate, a character represented as a marionette in mystery plays, brought back for Christians to ridicule. Many of the puppets in these cases first appeared in the shows given by Robert Powell, the great Punch exhibitor, outside St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden at fairs and market days. Punch is a clown, too, just as clowns look like puppets.’

  ‘If we understand Mr Punch, we start to get an insight into the mind of the murderer,’ interjected Bryant.

  ‘He follows a long line of low tricksters, from Pan to Loki to Puck. But it was when he came to England that Mr Punch showed his real nature—and it was one that reflected the bullish Englishman of the times. The first English shows were called Mr Punch’s Moral Drama, but Punch himself has no moral compass—he is nothing less than the ferocious spirit of England, condensed into a single creature. He’s a man of the world and selfish, as all men are. He’ll remove all obstacles in his way. This is what makes him so unique. He’s not seeking revenge, he’s not righting wrongs—he kills because he can, because others annoy him or block his path, and as he climbs the scale of adversaries, he finds himself unstoppable. He’s a working-class man made good. And he can be whoever you want him to be—a Quaker, a Republican, a Conformist, a Warrior, a Rake, Jupiter, Fate itself. In France he has a cat, in China he has a dragon. Sometimes in England he rode a white horse. But he must always triumph.’

  ‘Like St George,’ said May.

  ‘Exactly. It’s about sex, too. The length of the nose signifies lechery, as does the stick.’

  ‘All this sounds rather cerebral. I mean, our killer wouldn’t know about this stuff, would he?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Punch is not an intellectual,’ Bryant pointed out. ‘He’s pure unthinking energy. In his Italian origin he was a notorious coward and boaster, but in England he becomes a hero.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Salterton agreed. ‘Punch hates to be dog-bitten, henpecked, opposed, imprisoned, bedevilled, so he strikes out. He has no hypocrisy. He only deals in blood. He kills the Baby because it cries. He kills Judy because she hits him, he takes out the Doctor’s eyes, he tricks the Hangman into hanging himself and roasts the Devil to death on a turning fork. In one version he survives all the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. He’s been described as a cross between Sir John Falstaff and Richard III. Merriment and cruelty. Fear and amusement. It’s a very English notion. Punch’s confidence and presence of mind never desert him. And it’s important that Mr Punch wins. There’s a historical account of a pious showman who was pelted with mud for refusing Punch a victory over the Devil. I say Punch can be anything, but really, at root, he’s a Pagan.’

  ‘I was terrified of him as a child,’ May admitted. ‘That creepy voice of his.’

  ‘Here.’ Salterton held out a serrated circle of pressed tin. ‘It’s called a swozzle, or a call. Put it on the back of your tongue and speak.’

  May wasn’t too happy about this, but gingerly inserted it in his mouth. He tried to talk but a peculiarly high rasping sound came out, and he nearly choked. He quickly spat the swozzle into his hand. ‘God, I nearly swallowed it.’

  ‘If you do swallow it, it doesn’t hurt you,’ said Salterton. ‘That one was owned by my great-grandfather. He swallowed it hundreds of times.’

  May turned pale. Bryant and Salterton laughed.

  ‘There are all kinds of traditions surrounding Punch. The puppet must be made from birch or poplar. If there’s a dog it must be a real one, wearing a flat hat and a ruff, and it must dance on its hind legs. The script is not written down, but passed orally from one generation to the next. And it usually contains words of a mystical nature. Dickens mentions the Punch cry of “Shalla-balah” in The Old Curiosity Shop. Of course, the great secret to Mr Punch—the great paradox, if you will—is that he is not the master of his universe at all. That honour belongs to the puppeteer, the man who controls him. And this marionette master remains invisible, hidden behind the curtains of Punch’s life.’

  ‘You’re not just a seaside entertainer, are you?’ said May. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tell him,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s all right.’

  Salterton smiled sadly. ‘I was an academic employed in investigating the provenance of Victorian artifacts at the British Museum. I used to work with Arthur’s old friend Harold Masters. But I left the museum under a cloud. After my wife died, I fell to drink and got myself in debt. I stole some small articles to pay my bills, and went to jail for my sins.’ He returned the puppet to its case and carefully relocked it. ‘But now fate has had the last laugh on me. I’m the penniless guardian of a priceless collection that I can never allow myself to sell. If I did, it would be broken up. I sit here in the damp and darkness, listening to the rain fall through the roof, and know that once again Mr Punch has come out on top.’

  ‘Forget this rubbish about Punch and bloody Judy,’ Raymond Land warned the PCU staff. ‘Let Bryant and May wander around the country looking at puppet theatres while we concentrate on the basics of criminal investigation, before the whole of the bloody Met starts laughing at us again.’ Bryant had ill-advisedly left a message apprising Land of his whereabouts. Perhaps his note should not have read: Gone to see puppets at the seaside. Back soon.

  ‘Bring in the usual suspects from around Blackfriars and Cannon Street. Run a check on the hostels, see if they’ve had any trouble. Any offices that were working late, bus drivers, cabbies, street sweepers, tube workers, anyone who might have seen him. I want some answers today. Who were Gregory Baine’s enemies? Close friends? Work colleagues? Talk to the girlfriend. Who’s his family? What were his movements last night? Come on, you all know the routine. How the bloody hell did he end up
underneath Cannon Street Bridge? Was he killed before being strung up? If so, how did the killer get his body there? Where did he park? And the doll of the hangman, where was that bought?’

  ‘We’re already getting answers to some of those questions,’ said Janice, checking her notes. ‘Baine’s girlfriend had dinner with him last night at The Square, which is a restaurant in Mayfair. He left very abruptly after getting a message from the maître d’ at around nine-fifteen. We’ve questioned the waiter who took the call. Baine told his girlfriend he had to meet someone for a quick drink—didn’t say who or why, but said he was heading over to Cannon Street. She reckons he was in a very odd mood when he left—preoccupied. His PA doesn’t know about any privately arranged appointments, suggested I talk to Robert Kramer or the show’s director.’

  ‘Has Kershaw already ruled out suicide, then?’ asked Renfield.

  ‘No, but he thinks it unlikely that someone like Baine would have known about the drop from the bridge scaffolding. The street doesn’t lead anywhere and gets hardly any traffic.’

  ‘Were there were other prints at the site?’

  ‘Yeah, loads,’ said Banbury. ‘Workmen had been treading mud over it all day and it had been raining, so there was nothing salvageable. Suicides tend to go out in familiar surroundings. And if he’d chosen the bridge, why not just jump off? The tides are pretty lethal.’

  ‘He might not have known that,’ Renfield persisted.

  ‘Giles found chemical residue on his face and reckons he may have been sprayed with pepper spray—like the ones you can buy for a handbag,’ said Longbright. ‘He’s had water from the bridge dripping on him, so that’s not conclusive.’

  ‘Don’t you have one in your bag?’ asked Land.

  ‘No, Raymond, I have a house brick. More effective. Baine had a fresh bruise on the side of his head, like he’d been slapped or punched, or he might just have walked into the scaffolding, blinded. He’d been led or walked along the planks and stepped off the end. Then he choked to death on the rope. He was a small bloke, but it would still have required a certain amount of strength to get him in place, so Giles is ruling out a woman unless it was someone with specialist training, like Meera here.’ Mangeshkar had studied tae kwon do. ‘Of course, a lot of actors keep very fit.’

  ‘Meera, you were supposed to be keeping an eye on Judith Kramer,’ said Land. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘She wouldn’t let me,’ Mangeshkar replied. ‘Her call.’

  ‘Baine had been hammering the booze,’ Renfield added. ‘The girlfriend says he’d sunk a bottle and a half of Rioja.’

  ‘Baine’s neck was badly bruised when he dropped, but his shirt collar probably prevented it from snapping. Giles banged on for a while about the strength of the human spine but didn’t add anything significant to his initial findings. It’s unlikely that Baine walked any great distance—his girlfriend says he hated exercise. He didn’t have an Oyster card on him and wasn’t the public transport type, so we’re checking taxis now.’

  ‘Good. Anyone else?’

  Meera tapped her notepad. ‘The Hangman puppet—it doesn’t belong to Robert Kramer. He says he still has his full set, minus the Punch, of course, which Giles has returned to our evidence room. I haven’t yet found anyone who sells them. There’s a Goth Internet site that does something similar but they say they haven’t received any special orders. Which probably means the puppet was either homemade or in someone else’s private collection.’

  ‘When I spoke to Robert Kramer, I asked him to talk to his doctor about reducing Judith Kramer’s meds,’ said Renfield. ‘He said he’d done that anyway, because she wants to attend the funeral tomorrow afternoon. With any luck we’ll be able to interview her afterwards.’

  ‘Jack, you can’t interview a mother about her dead son on the way back from his funeral,’ Longbright objected.

  ‘I don’t see why not. I mean, there’s never gonna be a good time, is there?’

  ‘Forget it, I’ll go later today, even if it means talking to her before her medication fully wears off. At least she can get it over and done with.’

  ‘What about the phone number on the doll?’ Land asked. He was quite enjoying being in charge for once, without Bryant being there to make fun of him.

  ‘It was one of our own PCU contact cards,’ Longbright answered. ‘Whoever did this knows we’re handling the case and is making fun of us, or trying to force us into action.’

  ‘We’re being goaded by killers now?’ asked Renfield. ‘Have you ever thought that we might be making matters worse? Maybe if this Unit didn’t exist there wouldn’t be so many crazies around trying to get at us.’

  Land was flummoxed. ‘No, you’re wrong there, Jack. The world is full of weirdos—’

  ‘Yeah, and we’re encouraging them, aren’t we? Our very existence is a red rag to a bull. We’re bringing them out of the woodwork. Set up a Unit to solve abnormal crimes and you get more criminals committing them and trying to outwit us. It’s like we’re a recruitment agency for psychopaths. Peculiar Crimes Unit—Nutter Magnet.’

  This was one conversation Land did not want to get drawn into. ‘Look, he—or she—obviously wants us to catch him—or her—otherwise he—or she—wouldn’t be leaving clues.’

  ‘Women are statistically less likely to kill,’ Meera pointed out, ‘so can we just stick with the male pronoun?’

  ‘Actually, I think you’ll find they’ve been catching up in the last couple of years.’

  ‘You see?’ cried Renfield, exasperated. ‘Now you’re talking about bloody statistics. Can we find out where this doll came from?’

  ‘I’ve a list of other places that might be able to help us with that,’ said Longbright. ‘Hamleys toy store stocks their own traditional puppets made by Pelham, and the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood has a couple of experts who might be able to identify it.’

  ‘Good, get on it,’ Land said. ‘The rest of you—traditional methods, witness statements, doorstep interviews, dustbin duty.’ Colin and Meera groaned. ‘And come back with some solid connections. Find out where Kramer and all of his guests were last night. And no more nonsense about Punch and bloody Judy.’

  Longbright returned to her office and opened up the time line of guests once more. Something had been bothering her for days.

  She had made a list of smokers, all of whom had been out on the rear fire escape at some point in the course of the party. Gail Strong and Marcus Sigler must have done more than just pass each other on the fire escape. Larry Hayes, the wardrobe man, said he had tried to open the back door but it had been wedged shut. Yet it had opened easily a couple of minutes earlier, when Ray Pryce tried it. If Strong and Sigler had been outside holding it shut, perhaps they had been holding a little party of their own.

  This particular line of enquiry seemed to be a dead end, not least because being on the fire escape had nothing to do with scaling a wall and prising open a locked window under the gaze of closed-circuit cameras, pedestrians and street traffic.

  The more she studied the activity grid, the harder it became to discern an accurate pattern. Raymond Land was wrong—standard operational procedures would not be enough to unlock the investigation. She wondered how Arthur and John were getting on. They hadn’t yet been told about the discovery under Cannon Street Bridge. This latest development would either confirm their theories—or wreck them.

  The detectives caught their train home and passed back through the Kent countryside, which was alternately sodden and sunlit. As they crossed the flat expanse of the Medway River, May made an admission. ‘All right, I can see why you wanted me to meet Dudley Salterton. We’re looking for someone who understands perfectly why Robert Kramer is obsessed with Mr Punch. This is a mind game between the two of them. It takes a special kind of arrogance to even contemplate attacking someone in that manner.’

  ‘Oh, I think we’ve already met the killer,’ Bryant replied airily. ‘The circumstances surrounding the taking of life are usually
mundane or squalid. This was at a rather glamorous party. Ego, you see. The ego of someone who’s taking on the world and proving they can win. Kramer prides himself on being a victor. And the trouble with being a victor is that there’s always somebody waiting to challenge you.’

  ‘No, it’s something more than that,’ May insisted, watching the flashing greenery. The fecundity of the English countryside never ceased to amaze him. ‘This great anger is driven by something very powerful indeed. A need for revenge, a desire to right a wrong—it’s not just ego.’

  Bryant sat forward with a crooked smile crinkling his face. ‘Ah, now you’re thinking like me. I wondered if you’d start to see things my way.’

  ‘But I don’t understand how someone can maintain two states of mind. How can you kill and deceive and yet still go to work and smile at your colleagues as if there’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘Because that’s what the most successful killers do, John. They hold two entirely separate mind-sets as one, and don’t see any dissonance between the different states. Punch sees himself as a united persona, not a schizophrenic. He simply goes about his business, righting perceived wrongs and coming out on top, even if it involves murder. Killers have been known to operate in nursing homes where everybody loves them. In the 1940s, Dr Marcel Petiot injected at least twenty-seven people with cyanide while he was healing his patients. They say many successful City businessmen are trained to think in exactly the same predatory manner. Kramer sees himself as Punch, and so does the murderer. Punch wants to knock him down. You can’t have two kings in one palace, as they say.’

  ‘Then how do we separate our suspects? What can we do to force them to open up? If our killer thinks like Punch, he’ll keep going, getting rid of anyone who gets in his way.’

  ‘I have a few ideas. The sheer volume of suspects constitutes some kind of a clue. The killer is trying to cause anarchy, trying to break everything apart. And we are expected to watch. It’s an act of bravura from someone with nothing to lose.’ Bryant opened his mobile and rang Longbright’s direct line. ‘I have to be quick,’ he told her. ‘I think there are tunnels coming up. Did you do anything about Anna Marquand or did you forget?’