The Memory of Blood (6 page)

‘And you can sense that now? You can feel death in the air tonight?’
Crofting looked around. ‘Who’s giving you this feeling? Where is it coming from?’

Mona glanced down at her shoes and shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Everyone’s being thoroughly ill-tempered; they’re just pretending things are fine. Robert’s over there saying hateful things about his first wife. Our writer is talking about moving to Australia where the money is apparently better. I overheard Russell complaining that he thought everyone’s performances were off this afternoon.’

‘Oh, he’s just the director. Everyone ignores him.’

‘I’m sorry—take no notice of me, darling. It’s been a long day. I didn’t think the matinee went especially well. Marcus was put out when that woman’s cell phone went off, did you notice? He lost a whole page in the fourth scene. He doesn’t seem to care that it throws the rest of us off.’

‘You know matinees never get the reaction they’re supposed to. It didn’t help to look out and see a row of critics sitting there making notes. I wonder if Robert really did try to bribe them. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

‘Do you mind if I sit down for a minute? I’m tired and it’s hot in here.’

‘Really? I was just thinking how oddly cold it was,’ Crofting replied. ‘There’s a draught coming from somewhere.’

‘Someone just walked over your grave,’ said Mona, raising her glass. ‘Be a darling and get me another drink, would you?’

T
he great glass lounge cast a buttery glow across the street. The Kramers’ duplex penthouse occupied a key position on Northumberland Avenue, the elegant, underused thoroughfare that extended south of Trafalgar Square toward the Embankment. The terraced floor of ground-to-ceiling glass was topped with a minstrel gallery and three en suite bedrooms. The views took in the London Eye and the Royal Festival Hall. There were few more desirable properties in central London.

Robert Julius Kramer, the host, was a self-made man who had come up with the bright idea of buying all the private car parks that had existed on former bomb sites around the city. The sites had made fortunes for their owners in the postwar years, until the city’s public transport system improved and London’s congestion charge kicked in.

Kramer realised that the old property rights were mostly still attached to these derelict open spaces and warehouses, so he applied for planning permission to erect office buildings, offsetting
his costs with funding provided by city regeneration schemes. He had become a millionaire before his twenty-fifth birthday, and celebrated the occasion by informing his loyal girlfriend that he was now rich, and was dumping her. That was when he added the name Julius. Now he was in his early forties, and his second wife, Judith, had recently given birth to their first son.

Beneath the building’s portico, the liveried doorman glanced out at turbulent clouds and watched lightning crack the sky apart. All thirty-five of Robert Kramer’s guests had been checked against his list. No-one had failed to show up, even on a night like this. From what he’d heard, they wouldn’t dare to stay away if they valued their jobs. He settled back in the doorway to await their intoxicated departures.

Up in the penthouse, Gail Strong, the new ASM, was working the other side of the room. Robert Kramer had suggested she should come along and meet everyone, but they were all wrapped up in private conversations. She passed a broad-shouldered man with a luxuriant cascade of glossy black hair, and heard someone call him Russell, so that had to be Russell Haddon, the play’s director. Pretty fit, but he was wearing a flashy wedding ring. She spotted an anxious-looking, bespectacled but oddly pretty young man with thin blond hair and a reticent attitude, seated alone beside the food display.

‘Hi, I’m Gail Strong, do you know anyone here?’ she asked, sitting down beside him. For a moment he seemed not to hear. When he turned to study her with faraway eyes, something prompted her to ask, ‘Are you okay?’

‘No, not exactly,’ he replied, breathing out. ‘I hate being here.’

‘I grew up accompanying my parents to parties like this almost every night. My father—’

‘—is the Public Buildings Minister. I know who you are. You’ve been in the papers quite a lot lately.’ He removed his glasses and
wiped them. He had tiny black eyes, like a mouse. ‘I’m Ray Pryce. Pleased to meet you.’

‘I’ve just joined the company as the new ASM?’

‘Then we’ll be working together.’

‘Cool—I’ll be the one fining you when you’re late for rehearsals. What do you do?’

‘I’m the writer.’

‘Oh, my God, I’m like so embarrassed!’ She threw hands to her face. ‘I thought you were one of the cast. You’re so young. I saw the dress rehearsal of
The Two Murderers
last week, I thought it was totally amazing?’

She had a way of moving her hands around her face that made him think of a deaf person signing. She had the studied elegance of a model. He fell for her, trying not to remember that everyone who met her fell in love—at first.

‘The critics don’t seem to agree with you.’ A note of annoyance crept into his voice. ‘There’s an old Chinese proverb:
Those who have free seats at a play hiss first
.’

‘Oh, who cares about them, you heard what Mr Kramer said, it’s a critic-proof show.’

‘
He
doesn’t seem to think so.’ Ray Pryce pointed through the gathering at a portly, bald man in his late thirties who was attacking a plate of salmon sandwiches. ‘That’s Alex Lansdale; he’s the theatre reviewer for
Hard News
. One of the critics Kramer couldn’t buy.’

‘I hate that paper. Their photographer took a picture of me coming out of The Ivy and said I was drunk, but I’d just broken my heel.’ In fact, Gail had broken her heel
because
she was drunk, but she felt it was important to rail against the gutter press whenever possible.

‘Lansdale wrote an incredibly insulting piece about the play even before the New Strand Theatre held its press event. Nobody
does that; it breaks a long-standing unspoken rule of the West End. Now he has the nerve to turn up here for the party. If I was the host I’d have him thrown out. After all, Robert Kramer holds more power in this room than everyone else put together. The rest of us are just his players, but at least we’re here because we have skills. Theatre critics are just wannabees.’

‘Yeah, well, it gives you all a common enemy.’

‘We already have a common enemy.’ Pryce glared in the direction of a smarmy-looking city type with slicked reddish hair and a supercilious smirk. ‘Gregory Baine. The producer.’

‘I’ll never remember who everyone is,’ said Gail.

‘It doesn’t matter—you’ll soon get to know them, trust me.’

‘What’s the problem with him?’

‘Baine stopped our salaries and put us on a profit-share, says it’s better for us that way. He and Robert know they’ll be able to fiddle the books and prove the show hasn’t made enough money to pay us scale. We should never have signed our contracts, but I guess we were all desperate to work. What about you?’

‘I’m really an intern. This is my first professional job. I haven’t worked in a West End production before. My father thought it would be a good way of keeping me out of the papers for a while.’

‘Well, don’t expect to be recompensed for your labours.’

‘I guess Robert Kramer has plenty of money,’ said Gail, looking around. ‘This is a pretty cool penthouse.’

‘He bought the New Strand Theatre outright in order to indulge his hobby. Owners don’t use their own cash for shows anymore.’

Gail didn’t have much of an attention span, and Pryce was already beginning to bore her. ‘What else have you written?’

‘This is my first full-length play. I took it to Robert because I was sure he’d buy it. The subject matter suits him down to the ground.’

‘It’s about betrayal, seduction and murder.’

‘Exactly.’ He threw her a meaningful look, then turned away.

‘Well, I was looking forward to working here,’ said Gail, annoyed with Ray Pryce for painting such a gloomy picture of her future. ‘I’m going to get myself a drink.’

Glad to be away from the archetypically angry playwright, Gail allowed her champagne to be topped up and took small sips from the glass as she watched the room. Robert Kramer had issued his guests a warning that no photographs were to be taken at the party. The door security had taken their mobile phones away, as if they couldn’t be trusted to follow instructions.

Mona Williams had been ignored by the waiter and was forced to head for the bar, where she poured herself a large glass of appallingly bitter red wine. Her companion seemed to have disappeared, so she stood admiring a framed set of Victorian music hall posters: Marie Lloyd in her tortuous corset and feathered hat; Little Titch leaning forward on his elongated boots; Vesta Tilley, George Robey and Harry Champion photographed against ambrosian backdrops. The apartment was a shrine to the world of artifice.

Mona wondered how Kramer’s new wife coped with it all. The woman clearly had no interest in the theatre. She seemed a class above him. It was hard to imagine why she should have married such a man, if it wasn’t for his money. He was physically unattractive, loud and apparently brutish in his treatment of females. But Judith had given him a son, something Kramer had craved for a long time.

Nearby, the object of Mona’s thoughts, the theatre owner’s new young wife, was attempting to discuss the earlier performance with Marcus Sigler and Della Fortess, the show’s two leads.

Marcus was absurdly handsome, and knew it. He had positioned himself opposite a wall mirror, and had trouble avoiding
its gaze. The atmosphere between the three of them seemed uncomfortable. Mona assumed this was partly because Judith Kramer had influence over her husband and could impose upon him to get rid of anyone she disliked, and the others knew it. But she suspected it was also because Judith knew absolutely nothing about the stage apart from the shows of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom she adored, and therefore had nothing to bring to the conversation—not that this stopped her from holding court.

Mona studied the trio more carefully. The leading lady was staring hard into her martini. The leading man was looking at their hostess in ill-disguised pain. Had they all just had an argument?

Mona stepped a little closer and listened.

Judith Kramer had clearly said something which had upset the other two. And in trying to put it right, she had changed the subject by doing something unthinkable; she was discussing
Macbeth
. You simply didn’t mention the Scottish play in front of the company. Marcus Sigler was looking particularly uncomfortable.

A huge peal of thunder, the loudest yet, made everyone jump. Mona’s glass leapt in her hand and she spilled a little on the arctic white carpet. She glanced guiltily down at the scarlet splash of Rioja and could not help noticing that it looked like blood.

The skin prickled on her bare forearms. It felt like an omen of something terrible about to happen.

A
nna Marquand hated the litter-strewn alleyway. It ran behind Jamaica Road to the back of her terrace, and was the fastest way to get from Bermondsey tube station to her back door. The problem was that she had to pass the sons and daughters of the Hagans.

The Hagans were a four-generation criminal family who lived in the street’s corner house. They often hung around at the mouth of the alley, watching and waiting for trouble to ignite. Three hard little girls with angry, feral faces and armour-plate attitudes, two dim-eyed drug-flensed brothers in baggy bling and a morbidly obese child of indeterminate sex. They lurked in varying combinations depending on the night, as if on sentry duty.

The oldest boy worried Anna the most. His eyes followed her from beneath the arch of his baseball cap, defying her to return his stare. Anna had always presumed herself immune from the attention of men, but Ashley Hagan made a point of noticing her. He licked his lips as she passed.

‘Don’t be intimidated,’ said her mother. ‘They’re all bad apples, those Hagans, flashing their drug money around and behaving like they own the street. The old man used to sell stolen goods after the war, and now his great-grandchildren are still doing it. The police never touched them, not then, not now.’ But it was easy for Rose to say; she never went out anymore, and waited at the window, watching for her daughter to arrive with the groceries.