The Memory of Blood (9 page)

Gail Strong accepted one of the sheets as they were handed out. She glanced at Marcus Sigler, making sure that he understood she was about to lie. The actor sent the faintest of nods in her direction, and turned to providing his own alibi.

The gabled gingerbread house behind the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church was finished in orange bricks and maroon tiles, and appeared to have been designed by the Brothers Grimm. Plane trees and rowans hung over it with branches like claws that scrabbled at the windows, leaking sap and dripping rainwater so that moss and lichen grew in abundant clumps about the eaves, gradually consuming it. A miserable-looking heron balanced forlornly at its gate, and a pair of moorhens had bundled themselves against the downpour inside a bucket by the door. This bucolic night tableau was all the more remarkable for being just two miles from Piccadilly Circus, and no more than a three-minute walk from Europe’s largest railway terminus.

‘I suppose Mrs Danvers is still on the door,’ muttered Bryant, checking his watch. ‘Giles should get rid of her before she goes mad and burns the building down.’

‘The poor woman spends her day surrounded by opened corpses,’ May reminded him.

‘Didn’t Giles’s predecessor die in mysterious circumstances? Maybe she killed him.’

‘You wish. It would make a good case for you, wouldn’t it? Let’s get inside.’

Bryant furled his umbrella and rang the bell, then jumped back as the door swung open, revealing Rosa Lysandrou, Giles Kershaw’s housekeeper. As usual she was clad in a shapeless knee-length black dress and had pulled her thick dark hair back in a severe bun.

‘She must have been standing behind the door,’ whispered Bryant as they entered. ‘Hello, Rosa,’ he said loudly, ‘you’re looking particularly effervescent this evening—is that a new shroud?’

‘He’s in there. He’s expecting you.’ She raised a stiff arm and pointed.

‘It probably takes a major traffic accident to bring a smile to her face,’ groused Bryant as they passed along the dimly lit corridor.

Giles was in the autopsy room, still dressed in the green plastic apron he was required to wear while working. Mercifully, the tiny body of Noah Kramer had been filed away. ‘Dear fellows, good to see you, although these are awful circumstances. The babies are the worst—one always wonders what lives they might have led. I’ve finished here. Let me get out of this and wash up. Rosa will make us some tea. Trust me, you’ll need it after hearing my report.’

They entered the octagonal room beyond the chapel of rest and found refreshments neatly laid out beneath the stained-glass windows, tea and plates of warm chocolate cake. Rain cascaded from the eaves, rippling the light.

‘Rosa is passionate about baking; you must eat.’

‘No, thanks,’ said Bryant. ‘I remember what happened to Hansel and Gretel.’

‘Oh, she’s all right once you get to know her.’ Giles flicked back his mop of blond hair and dropped into a deep sofa. He always seemed to bring sunshine into the room. ‘I thought we’d have a chat away from the morgue. Rosa believes that children keep on listening after they die. She lost a child herself, you see. It changed how she saw the world.’ He helped himself to cake, then checked his notepad. ‘I’ll spare you the main list of injuries. They’re what I would expect, entirely consistent with a fall from a window of that height. However, I’m afraid that the fall doesn’t appear to have been the cause of death.’

‘Why, what else did you find?’ asked May.

‘I think we’ve got a case of SBS, except that in this case there’s evidence of external injury.’

‘Shaken baby syndrome? I thought it was difficult to diagnose.’

‘Well, it is, because there’s no single definable symptom. There can be multiple fractures in the vertebrae, retinal hemorrhages, subdural hematomas—bleeding in the brain—it’s a rotational injury generally associated with child abuse, but really I suppose it’s about the frustration of someone ill-equipped to deal with a crying baby. The real problem, of course, is that it’s hardly ever a premeditated action. This was a particularly violent example. Noah Kramer’s larynx was ruptured, and there are bruises on either side of his throat. Broken blood vessels near the surface were caused by severe restriction. He was shaken violently, then strangled. It was an act of rage, which probably means a lack of prior intention to kill.’

‘So, manslaughter.’

‘Obviously it will depend on the
mens rea
—criminal culpability based on the perpetrator’s state of mind.’

‘Do you have any idea how long before the fall this might have occurred?’

‘I imagine the two acts, the shaking and the defenestration, were virtually concurrent, the second happening moments after the first, but of course I have no proof.’

‘So whoever did this plucked Noah from his cot, attacked him, then opened the window and threw him out.’

‘Yes, which is problematic from a legal point of view.’

‘Because the perpetrator stopped and opened the window, which would indicate a level of premeditation.’

‘Exactly. But I’m afraid it’s a little stranger than that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Dan Banbury brought me the Victorian doll you found beside the cot. I got a very bothersome feeling in my stomach the moment
I examined it. Dan can’t do any DNA matches—I gather you don’t have the budget to send samples away for such things—but you know how he gets a sense of what happened. Well, he suggested that the pressure bruises on Noah’s throat might match the dummy’s wooden hands. I’m afraid it looks like he’s right. The fingers are coarsely carved and grooved. They leave a pretty unique mark.’

‘Oh, please don’t say this,’ groaned May, passing a hand across his face.

‘I did some tests. The hands exactly fit the bruises on Noah Kramer’s neck. There was even a tiny wooden splinter stuck on the surface of the baby’s epidermis. I talked with Dan, and he says he can’t find any evidence that anything human touched the baby. What’s more, there was no forced entry to the nursery. So far he’s found no signs of anyone apart from Mrs Kramer and the nanny having been in there.’

‘So what you’re telling me is that after the baby was left alone, Mr Punch climbed down from his hook, turned the key in the nursery door lock, crept over to the cot, took his rage out on Noah Kramer and fulfilled his mythical destiny to become a murderer,’ said Bryant, genuinely shocked.

T
he senior detectives felt it was important for the PCU staff to be able to share time together away from their desks and laptops, so they had set aside the newly designated common room. May thought it would be an area where they could form impromptu gatherings at various times of the day and night to share their ideas about ongoing cases.

Instead, they usually found Bimsley there with his boots off, eating cheese and onion crisps while thumbing through the latest issue of
Gadgets
. Now it was heading toward midnight, but the lights were still ablaze in the common room, and all was far from well.

‘Oh no,’ said Raymond Land, studying the photographs Sergeant Jack Renfield had taken. ‘No, no, no.’

‘I’m afraid that’s who she is,’ said John May. ‘I assume that’s why we’ve been given the case.’

‘The daughter of the Minister for Public Buildings,’ said Land. ‘Gail Strong is working for this troupe?’

‘It’s a theatre company. A troupe refers to the actors. She’s on the production side. Assistant stage manager, I believe. A perfectly reasonable explanation for what she was doing on the premises.’

‘Yes—but the murder of a baby? And she’s a potential suspect? That phone is going to start ringing any minute now. My God, the implications are appalling!’

‘The only appalling thing is that an infant has been brutalized,’ said May, annoyed. Land worried too much about his job and not enough about the victims of tragedies.

‘Yes, yes, babies die all the time, but the involvement of a minister’s daughter is unthinkable. I suppose you know that Gail Strong fled the country after a pregnancy termination earlier this year? She told the press she has a horror of babies. She also has a habit of disappearing whenever the spotlight gets too strong. Her father usually pays the press to hush everything up. What if she killed Noah Kramer in a fit of jealousy or something? No, even worse, suppose Bryant starts thinking she’s guilty? Her father’s department has been under fire lately. This could be a lethal blow for him.’

‘I’m glad you’ve got your priorities in the right order.’

‘I look at the broader picture. You just have to deal with the aftereffects of the crime. I’ve got to keep the money coming into this Unit. If the budget dries up, cases like this will revert to the Met’s jurisdiction, and we know what that means. You might as well give them to the cat.’ He threw a poisoned glance at Crippen. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound callous. Coming in this morning I thought to myself, this is a good start to the week. I’ve had trouble at home all weekend; I was glad to get back to work. And now this.’

‘It’s not Leanne again, is it?’ asked May solicitously. Land’s wife was bored and showing renewed signs of unfaithfulness. She had taken a suspiciously large number of flamenco lessons lately, and was now attending sherry-tasting evenings in the company of a
twenty-three-year-old Tio Pépe representative from Jerez. She had already suggested going on holiday with Paco instead of their customary cycling fortnight in Wales.

‘I think it’s some kind of midlife crisis. She’s dyed her hair blond and wants to buy a sports car. It’s all these late-night women’s TV shows about fulfilment she’s been watching. She’s suddenly got it into her mind that she should be enjoying regular sex. But enough of my troubles. Get this sorted out as quickly as possible, will you? And try not to involve Gail Strong. She wants to be a singer or something. She’s hired a PR consultant to manage her, but he has to spend the whole time covering up her indiscretions.’

‘I’m surprised you know about all this,’ said May.

‘I saw it on television,’ Land admitted sheepishly. ‘One of Leanne’s programmes.’ He eyed the overcoat he had hung on the back of his chair, and knew there would be no likelihood of slipping into it until midnight at the earliest.

‘I don’t know what more I can tell you, Mr Bryant,’ said Dan Banbury. The detectives had returned to the Unit after visiting Kershaw, because they knew Banbury would be back from the crime scene. ‘It appears that Noah Samuel Kramer was removed from his cot at around nine o’clock
P.M.
tonight. Giles has told you he was shaken and strangled to death, and his body sustained further injuries from a fall, and I’m telling you he was thrown from the end of the cot through an open window into the basement area of the building. There are no footprints on the wet rug beneath the sill. There are faint depressions on the other rug that the cot stands on, because that’s where everyone has to stand in order to reach in and pick the baby up.’

‘But no definable prints.’

‘No. It’s a hard-wearing cord that doesn’t hold heel marks. The
door of the nursery was securely locked on the inside, with the key still firmly in place. The key turns easily enough but it’s tricky to actually get out, so I guess they just left it in the door. There were no signs of tampering with the lock, and Mr Kramer had been forced to kick the door in. A couple of minutes after he did this, the noise, and Mrs Kramer’s scream, attracted the attention of the party guests, eleven of whom came to see what the problem was. They saw the damage and naturally entered the room, but Mr Kramer sensibly realised that a crime had been committed and stopped them from coming all the way in. He could see that the rug beneath the window was wet and that the rails of the cot might hold prints. As it was, there weren’t any.’