The Memory of Blood (38 page)

An hour later, Ray Pryce came by to sort out the invitation wording with May. ‘How’s this?’ he asked. ‘I’ll personalise all the texts. I’ll tell them that you and your partner wanted to thank the company and pay your last respects to Robert. I’ll mention that you’re going to be on hand to explain that you’re now ready to press charges.’

‘And you think everyone will accept?’ asked May.

‘How can they not? They all have to be here tomorrow in order to complete their contracts. We’ve even had an email from Gail Strong asking if she could come back for the final show. A bloody cheek, after walking out like that.’

‘What time does everyone finish work?’

‘The play ends at nine forty-five, so I guess the last one will be out of the theatre by ten-thirty.’

‘Then we start the party at eleven. My partner has come up with the perfect venue.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Ray. ‘I could take notes about this to use in my next play, except that nobody would believe me.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said May, indicating his partner. ‘Welcome to my world.’

The weather worsened steadily through the day. Longbright had applied anti-inflammatory cream to her blue-black bruise, but the side of her face was still painful. She listened to the sound of tapping buckets as she sat in her office and ran through the contents of Bryant’s disc.

She had decided not to worry her boss with the news that she had managed to retrieve his disc. He was locked in his room with May, planning something. She settled down and prepared to search through four hundred pages of small-point type. After five hours without a break, she was still unable to find any disclosure so contentious that someone would be prepared to kill to hide it. The answer had to lie in some footnote or sidebar to the main investigations under discussion, something seemingly innocuous. She tried to think of a way of isolating the information. What would the Ministry of Internal Security find so damning in the Unit’s old cases?

Using a technique she had learned from Bryant, she decided to tackle the problem from an entirely different perspective. Oskar Kasavian had been transferred to the department from the Ministry of Defence a couple of years ago. She ran a search on Kasavian’s background but was shut out of the MoD’s files, so she called up his CV through a public access request. It meant that her enquiry would be logged at HOIS, but that couldn’t be helped.

The CV contained no detailed information, just a list of dates and employment statistics. She was about to shut it down when one date jumped out—a period spent at Porton Down, the military science park in Wiltshire. Porton Down was home to the MoD’s Science & Technology Laboratory, DSTL. It was an executive agency that had been set up by the Ministry of Defence itself. It was common knowledge that the site housed Britain’s most secretive military research institute, but access was denied to journalists without written permission from a variety of senior officials.

She scanned back through the pages of Bryant’s memoir and found what she was looking for: the suicides of eleven Asian workers, all based at a company outsourced by the DSTL. The case had made news headlines at the time, until all details of it
had suddenly been pulled. Their dates fell within the period that Kasavian was employed there.

She scanned through the disc and found what Bryant had written. He mentioned the case in reference to an entirely separate matter—a mentally ill man who had killed a number of women in London pubs. That investigation had been solved and closed, so why had he mentioned Porton Down at all?

Then she saw it, a small reference number directing her to an addendum at the end of the chapter. She went in to see Bryant.

‘You shouldn’t have come in today,’ Bryant said. ‘Your poor face.’

‘I’m fine. It looks worse than it is. Arthur, what is Project Genesis?’

Bryant’s aqueous blue eyes sought focus as he remembered. ‘It was a bioscience initiative. I always felt it was linked with the deaths of some technicians.’

‘The drownings—you think the MoD had something to do with them?’

‘Let me put it this way: The deaths could have been avoided. I think they were probably suicides, but they were caused by the stress of the situation. You have to remember that an awful lot of people worked there under conditions of absolute security.’

‘But why would they all pick the same method of death?’

‘I talked about that with our old pathologist Oswald Finch at the time. He reckoned many scientists see drowning as a painless, clean method of taking one’s life. The whole thing came to our attention because of a man named Peter Jukes. He was project leader for chemical and biological security at the MoD’s Wiltshire laboratory. He was found dead in suspicious circumstances. I requested his notes from the Home Office, but the Defence Secretary refused to acknowledge that there was a case. Supposedly Jukes had been suffering from depression and had long
been recognised as a security risk. It was said he drowned, but there were anomalies in the case. At the time, military contractors were desperately trying to spend out the year-ends of their budgets before the axe fell on their departments. Project Genesis was closed down.’

‘What were they trying to do?’

‘I can’t remember the details—what we heard was mostly rumour—but it was something involving gene splicing. The management had been exaggerating their progress to the MoD, and it turned out that their technology wasn’t quite as advanced as they’d led everyone to believe it was. So the unit was shut and the staff dispersed.’

‘Then I have some bad news for you,’ said Longbright. ‘I think someone’s opened it back up again. You mentioned the Porton Down case in your notes.’

‘You think that’s what they were after?’

‘You flagged it yourself. You showed your hand by contacting the MoD. That’s why Oskar Kasavian has been trying so hard to close us down all this time. He’s desperate to discredit you. He’s been monitoring us. And then he discovers that an outsider—a well-connected writer and editor, to boot—has the information. The situation was containable so long as it remained inside the Unit, but suddenly he discovered a leak. Anna Marquand probably ran fact-checking enquiries from her computer. I’m willing to bet that Mrs Marquand’s so-called carer copied Anna’s hard drive and then wiped it.’

‘You think Kasavian acted on his own initiative to kill the story?’

‘It looks that way. He mustn’t know that we know. We need the advantage over him.’

Bryant ran a wrinkled hand through his side tufts. ‘Okay, let’s get through the party. I’m not a woman.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Can’t do two things at once.’

Longbright left him studying the spreadsheet Banbury had created from the activity at the Kramers’ party. As she walked away, a chill ran across her back.
Things are coming to a head
, she thought.
There’s danger here for all of us. Nobody is safe now
.

‘T
he London Dungeon. This is your grand idea, is it?’ said Land, looking up at the swinging sign that dripped with painted blood. The rain was pounding down on the deserted pavements, as hard and heavy as the spray from a thousand showerheads. Bryant had ducked under the cover of the doorway. He peered around the corner like an exhibit planning an escape.

‘I thought it would appeal to their sensibilities,’ he replied. ‘Plenty of Ella Maltby’s gruesome tableaux inside.’

‘And hardly any light. What if you do catch one of them out and he makes a break for it? How are you going to find him?’

‘There are only two exits. We’ll have Meera and Colin, and Jack and Fraternity positioned in front of them. We’re putting them in guards’ uniforms. Nobody will even notice them.’

‘This is the most deranged thing I have ever let you do,’ said Land wearily. He checked his watch. ‘They’ll be here in a few minutes. Well, I suppose we’re committed now. Show me how this is going to work.’

Bryant led the way inside, past a skeleton in an iron gibbet. ‘They’re geared up for parties,’ he explained, pointing to a table laden with wine and glasses.

‘Wait a minute, who’s paying for all this?’

‘I got it out of petty cash. Listen, Raymond, I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought there was any other way. I think the killer has finished his work but won’t be able to resist turning up for one last gloat. Robert Kramer was made to suffer and now he’s finally dead. I should have been able to save him. I should have acted on my instincts but I held back.’

‘For once I really wish you’d done something crazy earlier,’ Land admitted.

‘This is our last chance. You’ve seen this sort of thing before, people who turn up to watch the ambulance services removing the bodies of the victims they’ve killed, murderers who stand by as the houses they’ve set alight burn down. Our killer shared his victim’s sense of the macabre—that’s why he continued to use the puppets. Tonight we will get to the truth, or the Unit will go down trying.’

A few minutes later, just as Bryant had predicted, the guests began turning up. The show’s female lead, Della Fortess, was still in her closing scene costume, a black diamanté basque hidden by a long red overcoat.

Neil Crofting, the veteran actor who had been Mona Williams’s best friend, looked years younger in jeans and a sweatshirt.

By contrast, Marcus Sigler, the male lead of
The Two Murderers
, looked sickly and unwell.

Unsurprisingly, Judith Kramer was putting in an appearance under sufferance.

Ray Pryce was already inside, helping May to learn his lines.

The director, Russell Haddon, turned up with an extremely young woman on his arm who was protruding from her miniscule dress and appeared to be under the mistaken impression that she was attending some kind of a premiere.

Ella Maltby, the set designer and props wizard, strolled in as if she was coming home, and in a sense she was.

The wardrobe master, Larry Hayes, arrived with his suspiciously pretty male assistant.

The corpulent
Hard News
critic, Alex Lansdale, came with his publisher, Janet Ramsey.

Lastly, Mohammad al-Nahyan (carpenter) and Jolie Christchurch (front of house) arrived together.

Just before the doors were shut, Gail Strong made her entrance alone. She looked lost and far less confident than she had a week earlier at Robert Kramer’s party.

‘Who are all these extra people?’ Land asked. ‘I thought you’d only invited the suspects.’

‘I invited everyone from the office to make up numbers and be on hand if there was trouble,’ said Bryant. ‘Plus, they heard there was a party.’

‘Obviously we had to invite everyone who was there on the night Noah Kramer was killed,’ said Ray. ‘It would have looked really odd just to have half a dozen people sitting under statues of torturers, drinking cheap white wine.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Bryant apologised. ‘The Unit budget wouldn’t run to good plonk.’

‘Well, now what happens?’ Land demanded.

‘We crank up the music and let them get a few glasses down. Then John makes his announcement.’

At first, the guests stood uncomfortably beneath the exhibits, keeping to their usual groups while John May and Ray Pryce circulated between them. Bryant sat at the back of the room watching carefully. Russell Haddon’s girlfriend was called Naida, and seemed to be drunk already. Gail Strong and Marcus Sigler were most noticeably different. They stayed clear of each other, and seemed to be eyeing everyone else with suspicion.

May checked his watch and turned to Bryant. ‘Okay, let’s get this started.’

Ray Pryce stepped up onto the low dais that stood at the rear of the room and called for everyone’s attention.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I know it seems odd to be having a party without Robert here to play host, but, in spite of the week’s extraordinary events, we couldn’t let the production close without marking the occasion in some way. The Unit detectives investigating these dreadful deaths were anxious to meet with you so that they could make themselves accountable and answer as many of your questions as possible. I’m sure you’re anxious to know what happened to Robert, and where the police now stand with regard to ending the investigation. They’ll be at your disposal during the course of the evening, and they hope that by doing this we can achieve some sense of closure and be able to move on with our lives. I’ve been asked to explain that anything said in this room tonight will operate under Chatham House Rules—in other words, all information goes no further than here.’