The Memory of Blood (29 page)

‘The way you talked to Ashley Hagan. That
don’t do anything she’d have hated
. You know, being nice. He’s scum.’

‘He was a kid once. Now he’s half dead and in despair. He hates his family and he’ll never be able to get away from them. Kicking him around isn’t going to change anything.’

Renfield had been a desk sergeant with the Met, where they behaved differently. He sat back, lost in thought as the train rattled through the tunnel, heading north toward King’s Cross.

S
aturday morning dawned but nobody noticed. It barely grew light. The sky had tilted and was moving fast. The racing clouds bulged so low that the spires of St Pancras threatened to tear them open. The lack of a rush hour today meant that most of the shops and offices in King’s Cross were shut, but the lights were on at the PCU. A seven-day policy had been placed in effect while the investigation remained active.

Unusually, Raymond Land was the first one in. Last night Leanne had sent him an email saying that she couldn’t join him on their sailing holiday in the Isle of Wight because she had accidentally made a double booking. This morning she had gone off to a retreat in Wales to practice tantric yoga with an old family friend. In a way Land was quite pleased, because he needed to get the investigation closed, and was a lousy sailor.

He made himself a cup of coffee, then wandered into Bryant’s room and stood before the case containing Madame Blavatsky.
Looking around to check that he was alone, he felt in the coin slot for an old penny, inserted it and waited.

The medium’s eyes glowed and buzzed. Her cogs turned, and she withdrew a card, jerkily reaching forward to drop it into the metal tray. Land plucked it out and turned it over. It read:

NOBODY DOES YOGA IN WALES

‘Ah, there you are,
mon petit oiseau tot
.’ Bryant was standing in the doorway with a dreadful grin on his face.

‘What?’ said Land, shocked, tucking the card behind him.

‘Early bird. You. In early.’

‘Ah. Yes. Couldn’t sleep.’ Mortified, he hastily dropped the card back into the tray.

‘Just as well. There’s a lot to get through today. We went to Ella Maltby’s house yesterday.’

‘Remind me?’

‘The set designer. She has a dungeon filled with people being tortured. Wax mannequins.’

‘How extraordinary.’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t exactly move her forward as a suspect. Questions, questions everywhere. The most obvious one—is the case closed?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did Gregory Baine hang himself? If he did, why did he take a Hangman doll with him? Could it be he committed suicide because he felt guilty about Noah Kramer’s death?’

‘Why would he have had reason to kill a child?’

‘You see, another unanswered question. Anyway, he didn’t kill himself, I’m just being theoretical.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Yes, I do. Dan tells me the bulbs were burned out in the safety
lights by the duckboards beneath the bridge. With the best will in the world Baine wouldn’t have been able to find his way to the hole in the boards and attach a rope. It was prearranged by someone else. And where are the motives? What are they? Revenge, profit, love—hate? Well, that one’s obvious, at least.’

‘It is?’

‘Hate. Somebody hates Robert Kramer very badly indeed. They kill his child. They kill his best friend. The pair owned a company together, Cruikshank Holdings. That’s what gave the game away.’

Land looked lost. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The name Cruikshank.’ Bryant widened eyes and raised hands, expecting Land to get it. ‘Obviously Kramer chose it. George Cruikshank was the greatest-ever illustrator of Punch and Judy. His book is still the key text on the subject. I found details on the register at Companies House. Cruikshank Holdings operated out of the Cayman Islands. It was their nest egg, and Baine was in charge of it. He’d been making some heavy withdrawals. The rumour is that he played the Stock Exchange and hit a losing streak. Oh, Robert Kramer has the business sense but Baine was the money man. His death effectively destroys Kramer’s financial power, because Baine has been prevented from making the money back. There’s nobody else in yet—mind if I smoke?’

‘Oh, go on, then, just this once. It’ll help get rid of the smell of damp.’

Bryant enthusiastically stuffed his pipe with Old Mariner No.2 Rough Cut British Navy Shag and lit up. ‘What’s the matter, old boot? You look like you have the cares of the world upon your shoulders.’

‘It’s just—’ For a moment, Land thought about confiding in Bryant. Then he came to his senses. ‘Nothing. I just want to get the case closed.’

‘Weren’t you supposed to be going on holiday today?’

‘I changed my mind. The case is more important.’

‘That’s impressive. Not like you.’ He cascaded a graceful funnel of blue smoke into the air. Land coughed.

‘There’s a terrible smell of burning rope on the landing,’ said John May, unbuttoning his coat and throwing a copy of
The Guardian
onto his desk. ‘Or someone’s hair is on fire. Oh, it’s you, Arthur.’

‘Raymondo’s letting me smoke today. I feel most privileged.’ Bryant swanned to his desk, wreathed in smoke, and flicked open the programme of
The Two Murderers
.

‘Well, it’s good to see both of you in the same place for once,’ Land said. ‘It seems to me the more time you spend together, the closer we usually get to a solution.’

‘I think he just complimented us, John. That’s a first. I had no idea you were capable of pleasantries, Raymondo.’

‘I don’t see why not, I was well brought up. Some of the older ladies in our family—’

‘Oh, my Lord! Older ladies!’ Bryant sat up suddenly, catapulted by his chair.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘
Older ladies!
I’m a total idiot!’ He climbed onto his desk and began pulling at a dusty leather-bound volume at the top of the bookcase.

‘Do you want me to get that?’ asked May, concerned.

‘What did I say?’ asked Land, but nobody was listening to him now.

‘Why did I not think of it at the time? Somebody take this from me.’ Bryant passed Land the volume and toppled off his desk, just in time to be caught by May. The book was
Twentieth-Century British Theatre, Volume 2
by A. A. Gingold. Bryant began feverishly searching it.

‘What on earth’s he so excited about?’ Land asked May, bewildered.

‘I really have no idea,’ May admitted.

‘Here it is,’ Bryant announced. ‘Of course. It all fits together perfectly. But we may be too late.’ He squirmed around in his chair, trying to get his arms into his coat.

‘For goodness sake, let me do it.’ May threaded one of his partner’s arms into a sleeve.

‘Have you got your car here?’

‘No, I got the tube in today, why?’

‘Then we need a cab. Hurry.’ With half of his coat still trailing on the floor, Bryant was pulling him toward the door like a dog that had been offered a walk.

Out on the street it was just starting to rain. ‘Damn, the taxis will vanish in seconds,’ Bryant complained. ‘Wait, there’s one.’ He threw himself into the street, slipped in front of the taxi and nearly disappeared under it.

‘Where to?’ asked the driver.

‘The New Strand Theatre, Adam Street. Fast as you can.’

‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ asked May as they fell back in the seat.

‘Echoes,’ said Bryant enigmatically. ‘There are echoes everywhere. I thought there was something vaguely familiar about that blasted play when I saw it. Then when Raymond mentioned the older ladies in his family—you see, I was coming out of the performance and bumped into Ray Pryce. He mentioned that Ella Maltby kept wax dummies. And Maltby told us that the talent had always been in her family. Then I went to get a programme and had a bit of a row with the seller—’

‘Why am I not surprised at that part?’

‘—and she said the older ladies in the cast remembered the days when the theatre had a nicer class of clientele—then I remembered the book.’

‘Arthur, I struggle to make sense of you at the best of times, but you’ve completely lost me.’

‘And I thought
older ladies
? There’s only one older lady in the cast—Mona Williams, the one who kept flirting with me during the interviews—and the programme seller must mean her. So I was wrong, it’s not Alex Lansdale, he’s not the one.’

‘He’s not the one what?’

‘The one who’s in danger. It’s Mona.’

‘Why are we going to the theatre?’

‘Because according to Janice’s notes, that’s where she is this morning.’ The taxi got stuck in traffic halfway down Gower Street, but the driver turned off sharply and gunned his way through Holborn, coming into the other end of the Strand in record time.

‘That was a nifty piece of driving,’ said Bryant, throwing a note at him. ‘You’ll go far.’

‘Not if it involves going south of the river,’ said the cabbie with a laugh, roaring off.

‘Stick!’ said May. ‘You’ve forgotten your walking stick!’

As they watched, the cab screeched to a stop, reversed, stopped and Bryant’s walking stick was thrust from the open window. The pair raced into the theatre.

T
he foyer of the New Strand Theatre was unlit, and the doors to the main auditorium were locked.

‘There must be someone here,’ said May, ‘otherwise the front doors would have been closed. There’s probably a cleaner.’ He looked at the stairs, and realised that Bryant would have trouble getting up them quickly. ‘Stay here and keep an eye out. I’ll go up.’

He took the stairs two at a time. Theatres, by their nature, are buildings largely contructed without windows. Moments later, May found himself in oppressive darkness. The air in the closed theatre was still and dead. All sound was muffled. He stopped to listen. In the distance, an ambulance siren seesawed along the Embankment. Nothing in here, though.

He searched for a light switch but realised that the lighting panel would have to be housed inside a central office, where the general public could not touch it. The corridor at the rear of the dress circle curved away into velvet limbo.

He felt his way along the wall, trying to be as quiet as possible. Somewhere above him a floorboard creaked. He froze and listened. Nothing. As he moved forward, he groped for his radio and turned it off.

At the end of the rear corridor he found a set of doors to the upper circle, and swung one open. Small windows set into the staircase wall afforded him a little light. Reaching the floor above, he pushed carefully against the brass panel on the door.

The steeply raked rows of seats descended below him. May knew that one mistake in the dark would send him headlong down the stairs. He wished he had brought his Valiant—the old usherette’s torch used to go everywhere with him, but they had been in a hurry to leave.

A foot scraped, and there was a small but definite displacement of air behind him. He felt the flat of a hand on his back, pushing hard, and suddenly there was nothing beneath his feet. He fell into darkness and silence.

‘What happened?’

‘You bashed your head on the armrest of a chair,’ said Bryant, leaning over and studying him with interest. ‘It was padded, but still gave you a nasty bruise.’