The Memory of Blood (15 page)

‘Fair point,’ May conceded. ‘Any idea who might want to do that?’

‘None whatsoever. I’m production, which means I’m basically backstage staff. If you’re trying to find someone who bears a grudge, you’d be better off asking Mr Kramer himself.’

Finally, May saw Robert Kramer for a second time. The theatre owner was displeased at being retained and impatient to be on his way, but submitted to May’s questions with the resignation of a
man who was used to attending long, dull meetings. He perched on the common room’s ratty sofa, his ankles crossed at his red socks, and watched rain leaking through the warehouse’s rusted window frames with distaste. May knew that it was impossible to mention what he had discovered without incurring further threats of lawyers, something he was anxious to delay for as long as possible.

‘Enemies,’ he said instead. ‘Family stresses or people you meet in the course of your working day. I need an honest appraisal from you. Anyone who you might consider a risk?’

‘Plenty, in financial terms,’ answered Kramer. ‘You don’t rise in business without making tough decisions. But there’s no-one so upset with me that he’d shake my son to death and throw him from a window.’

‘So what do you think happened?’

It was the first time Kramer looked less than confident. His gaze lost its focus, as if he feared what he might imagine. ‘I don’t know. Something evil. Something cruel. I can’t understand how anyone could visit such horror upon us. I honestly can’t. Maybe our lives were too perfect and something terrible had to happen. I watched my wife sleeping this morning, and I thought
this will destroy us
. You don’t get over the death of your only child, not when you’ve tried so long and hard to bring him into the world. I haven’t always been a good man, but I don’t deserve this.’

May kept his counsel, but wondered how long it would be before the lie of the Kramers’ marriage escaped. Secrets had a habit of slowly becoming visible, like images appearing on photographic paper. Crime often exposed hidden shames to the light.

He watched from the window as Kramer left the building. Standing on the edge of the pavement searching for taxis in the rain, the tycoon seemed a bewildered, lonely figure. May wondered what his partner would have made of these people,
but Bryant had chosen to hide himself away in his room. The last time May looked in on him he appeared to be dismantling a bookcase and searching behind it for something. He showed no interest whatsoever in the interviews, and rudely sent May away to carry out what he considered to be the prosaic end of the investigation.

It was no good. May knew he would have to find out what was going on by himself.

A
rthur Bryant couldn’t handle cases that required an understanding of human relationships, and would take off into lunatic new directions if left unchecked. Someone had to keep an eye on him.

May peered around the door of his partner’s office and watched Bryant knocking the contents of his pipe into the brainpan of the Tibetan skull on his desk. Half of the bookcase had been emptied, and two immense stacks towered on either side of the desk, framing the old man with playscripts, manuals, comics, art books, histories, encyclopedias, miscellanies and a number of surprisingly sleazy pulp thrillers.

‘I knew it,’ May said with a sigh. ‘You’ve been thinking again.’

Bryant widened his watery blue eyes in surprise. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘Now that you’ve finished holding your little chats, we can talk. Do come in, and shut the door behind you.’

‘None of your deranged diversions this time, okay?’ May warned, settling himself in another overstuffed armchair that had
appeared in the room. Bryant seemed to accumulate furniture wherever he went. ‘It’s a fairly straightforward case, despite the circumstances of the death.’

‘What do you mean?’

May pointed to the nearest stack of books on the desk. He could see spines which read:
The History of Icelandic Hospitals, Confessions of a Soho Call Girl, Phrenology for Beginners, The Role of Duty in the Operas of Gilbert & Sullivan, A Treatise on the Correlation Between Victorian Dental Care & Naval Policy
and—open on top of the pile—
Poetic Justice: The Morality of Dramatic Puppetry
. ‘I mean there’s no point in going though all this stuff, hidden meanings about puppets.’

‘I was reading it because I had some ideas about the case,’ said Bryant cheerily. ‘I know you think you’re going to make an arrest in the next day or so, but you won’t.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘There were thirty-five invites to the party, and fifteen guests left downstairs in the main lounge at the time of Noah Kramer’s death, plus the wait staff, the chef in the kitchen and the doorman. Eleven of these guests went up to see what the fuss was about when Robert Kramer kicked in his nursery door. That’s a surprisingly high number of curious people, don’t you think? I assume you’ve talked to everyone now, and have some idea about their feelings for one another.’

‘It certainly helped to sit down and talk to them. Why wouldn’t you sit in on the interviews?’

‘John, there’s nothing for me to do there. I never ask the right questions. You’re better with people. You know what time they all arrived, which ones left and when they did so. You have all their timings and statements. You’ve got graphs and that computer thing.’

‘It’s a new application. You should try using it.’

‘I don’t need to. I mean, surely this is just a matter of elimination,
and then putting the screws on the remaining likely suspects.’

‘I know a lot more than I did this morning, and you would if you’d come in to help me. I thought you were going to give me the benefit of your wisdom.’

‘My money’s on the husband. He’s got shifty eyes. Far too close together for my liking.’

‘Motive?’

‘Oh, I’m sure one will come up.’

‘I was rather hoping you could bring a little more insight to the case than that.’

‘As it happens I can, but you wouldn’t like it, particularly as it involves a paradox worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan. I think I’ll wait for a while, until you’ve given it your best shot. I still have more reading to do. Begone with you now.’ Bryant wrapped the arms of his bifocals around his ears and returned to his books.

‘Wait,’ said May, ‘am I missing something here? You’re annoyed with me because the investigation is likely to prove more mundane than you hoped it might be, is that it? You honestly thought Giles might find some kind of mechanical equipment inside the puppet that could control it?’ May was furious. ‘I’m sorry the world isn’t weird enough to keep you interested. You know what’s wrong with you, Arthur?’

‘No, but I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.’

‘You see words on pages but you never see beyond them to the heart. If this was a story in one of your grubby old books you’d be interested, wouldn’t you? Imagine: A rich, successful couple thinks they have everything, but the one thing the father wants most of all is denied to him, so his wife provides him with a son from her lover on the condition that she can continue the affair, and he silently endures the arrangement so that he can raise a boy of his own, with the complicity of his wife and the man she prefers. But the triangle fractures, and the reason for the arrangement
is removed. Now a mother is comatose with grief over the death of her only child, her husband doesn’t know what to say that can comfort her, and the lover remains trapped on the outside, suspicious that tragedy might somehow strike again. That’s boring old real life for you, is it? Their worlds have been overturned not once but twice, and we have a chance to give them closure—’

‘Closure—
phffft
—ridiculous term thought up by psychotherapists to justify their jobs.’ Bryant waved the idea away.

‘Yes, closure—by finding out why this happened and ensuring that justice is done.’ May jabbed a forefinger back in the direction of the common room. ‘Life is going on out there, not in here in your books. And if that isn’t enough for you, maybe it really is time to retire.’

Bryant watched his partner storm from the room with a heavy heart. He was not himself today; the news of Anna Marquand’s death had upset him more than he realised.

As for the case, he could sense a greater tragedy at work, and as much as he hated to deceive John, he was powerless to act until he had some proof. Part of the answer lay right in front of them, but May needed to reach the same conclusion independently before they could act together.

He picked up the phone and punched out Banbury’s number. ‘Dan, are you terribly busy? I want to examine the layout of the Kramers’ penthouse, right now if possible. Could you come with me?’

‘Sure thing, Mr Bryant.’

Bryant rose and rubbed his back, then jammed his shapeless trilby onto his head.

They pulled up outside 376 Northumberland Avenue in Bryant’s old yellow Mini Cooper. Banbury had been alarmed to find that he needed a bent teaspoon to keep the seatbelt in its clasp. Bryant squinted up through the smeary windscreen as he tried
to avoid hitting the kerb. He had refused to be dissuaded from driving this time. ‘The doctor says Mrs Kramer’s in her bedroom asleep and can’t be disturbed under any circumstances, but I need to take another look at the nursery.’

Banbury got out and peered down. ‘You can’t park here, it’s a double red line.’

‘What are you talking about? I’m elderly, I can do whatever I want. Here. I had Renfield knock it up.’ He threw a forged disabled card onto the dashboard.

‘You’re not allowed to do that.’

‘I’m colour-blind. That’s a disability.’

‘There’s been a huge rise in senior citizen crime in the capital lately, you know,’ said Banbury.

‘Quite right, too. There should be some compensations for the horrors of getting old. Come along.’

‘I don’t know why we’re back here. I gave the place a thorough going-over. There’s no more evidence to lift.’

‘I don’t want to gather evidence,’ said Bryant. ‘I want to understand.’

‘So do I. Usually I get a sense of what went on, but this one—’ Banbury shook his head. ‘I didn’t pick it up at all.’

They made their way up to the front door and were admitted by the Kramers’ nanny, who showed them to the great glass lounge.

Seating himself, Banbury opened his laptop and pointed to the design he had created. ‘This is the layout of the place.’

‘Oh, I don’t need a computer program to see that,’ said Bryant. ‘Here, I made my own drawing.’ He unfolded a damp piece of paper and tried to lay it flat. ‘How’s that for draughtsmanship?’

‘Incredible,’ Banbury admitted. ‘It could be anything. It looks like a henhouse drawn by Picasso.’

‘I was trying to capture the building’s spiritual resonance.’

‘It would help if you put the doors in. Let’s work from my
layout, shall we? Okay, it’s a corner property on two floors with windows on both sides. Two-thirds of the lower floor is given over to the lounge, with kitchen, loo, TV room and service room coming off the corridor from the front door, main staircase and elevator. The rear door opens onto the fire escape at the back, which is where the guests went to smoke. A single staircase goes up to the floor above, where there are three bedrooms and three bathrooms. The bedrooms are as follows: main double, guest double, smaller guest room. It’s this last one that was made into a nursery.’

‘No fire escape on the top floor?’

‘No. The idea is that if there’s a fire you’d make your way down one floor and use the rear exit.’

‘Can you get onto the roof?’

‘There was access before the conversion, but it was removed.’

‘How long does it take to get from the lounge door to the nursery door?’

‘I timed it climbing the stairs at a fast pace. Seven to ten seconds.’

‘The nursery is at the end of the hall, so you pass the other two rooms and the toilet first. In theory, someone could have been hiding in one of the other rooms.’

‘Unlikely. Although they aren’t lockable, Mrs Kramer closed them before the party because she didn’t want anyone going into the private areas, and hers are the only prints on the handles.’

Bryant stood before the toilet door and tapped its window with his walking stick. ‘Smoked glass. You can just about see if there’s someone inside.’ He reached in and turned on the light, checking the level of visibility from outside. Then he tried the door handle, examining it carefully. ‘There’s something wrong with the inside bolt.’