The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

8

Punch

John May parked his silver BMW behind the ambulance and got out, opening the passenger door for his partner. Arthur was no longer allowed to take the driving seat since he had sent Victor, his Mini, straight across the roundabout on the north side of Westminster Bridge, ploughing through the flowerbeds without even noticing, because he was busy explaining the history of Dutch microscopes.

Northumberland Avenue was dank and deserted. The tourists stayed on streets that connected restaurants and theatres. Bryant could smell the chill rush of the river from here. He clutched his hat and looked up into the rain. “Sixth floor? Quite a drop.” Thumping his walking stick against the black railings, he peered down into the basement area, where a couple stood beside a small blue plastic frame that had been pegged to the ground. “Body found down there. Poor little bugger. At least it was quick. Who’s securing the place?”

“Renfield’s already up at the crime site. Janice, Colin and Dan are in the lounge with the guests. Local chap down there. Want to go down?”

“I’m not good at consoling the bereaved, but I’d better have a look. I hate this part.”

“Corpses?”

“No, stairs.”

May opened the gate and led the way down.

“You took your damned time getting here, didn’t you?” Robert Kramer had been standing in the rain for almost half an hour, awaiting the senior investigators’ arrival. Judith had refused to leave the spot where her son had fallen. Their guests had been prevented from leaving the flat by an officious bull-necked sergeant. Now Kramer needed someone to vent his anger on.

“Westminster isn’t our jurisdiction, sir,” May explained. “Your local division felt that the situation would require specialist expertise, and their assistance unit contacted us. I understand how terrible this is for you and I’ll do everything within my power to make this part bearable, but you must also consider that a crime may have been committed. Perhaps you could come inside now.”

May brought them inside the building, took the lift to the apartment and found a quiet room where they could be interviewed in comfort. Judith Kramer was in a bad state. He called in a female medic, who administered a mild sedative.

DS Janice Longbright and Dan Banbury, the Unit’s crime scene manager, were concluding the basic formalities. “Take Dan up with you,” Longbright told May. “Colin and I can handle the rest.” With seamless efficiency, she took over from the detectives and outlined the next stages of the investigative process to the distraught couple.

On the staircase to the top floor the detectives were met by Jack Renfield. “Some of the guests are getting restless and making noises about calling lawyers,” he warned. “We’re taking standard witness statements and contact details. They’re expecting to be released as soon as they’ve talked to us.”

“I don’t care what they’re expecting,” snapped Bryant. “This looks like a murder investigation. Hold them here until we’ve examined the nursery.” He headed up with May and Banbury. Renfield taped off the stairs and followed them.

“You’re putting on plastics, both of you,” said Dan, handing them gloves and shoe covers. “I know what you’re like.”

“I’m not wearing a hairnet,” Bryant warned. “You know my hair type. You’ve found enough of it scattered around past murder sites.” Carefully skirting around the splintered door, he entered the room.

“Robert Kramer says it took four hard shoves to break in,” said May.

“You can see why, too,” Banbury replied, kneeling to study the door. “Quality wood. Look at that.”

A standard brass Yale key was inserted on the inside, with the lock bolt still protruding into the displaced strike plate. “It was definitely locked on the inside. Why would the nursery have an internal key?”

“They’ve only been living here a short time,” said Renfield. “According to Mr Kramer, the previous tenant had a lodger. This was the lodger’s room. He fitted the lock, and they hadn’t got around to removing it. The baby was less than a year old, so he wouldn’t have been able to accidentally lock himself in. One thing’s for sure. He didn’t throw himself out of the window, even if he could have climbed from his cot and got up to the sill.”

The window was still wide open, the curtains sodden. The cot stood at least three feet from the exterior wall. Bryant leaned out for a good look. “Come away from there,” Banbury instructed. “You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m not going to touch anything, all right?” Bryant shot him a scowl.

“Mrs Kramer insists the window was down and locked when she last came up,” said Renfield.

“When was that?”

“About half an hour earlier.”

“Whoever did this didn’t come in from outside the window. The rug’s soaking, but I can’t see any footprints.”

“With all due respect, Mr Bryant, your eyesight isn’t anything to write home about. Let me do some tests.”

Banbury dusted the door lock and handle for prints, but they were completely clean – there was not so much as a single sweat whorl on the hasp. “At a guess I’d say someone wiped up.”

Bryant leaned back out of the window and looked above. “Even assuming someone had come up with a way to enter the room from outside, he couldn’t have come from the roof. There’s a sheer wall above. That’s got to be a ten-foot gap. And there’s no way of climbing down, no handholds, nothing.”

May came around the other side of the cot, where the shadows fell from the window. He froze in his tracks. “What on earth is this?”

He knelt and examined the sprawled shape on the floor. About two and a half feet long, the hunchbacked figure had jointed limbs and was garishly dressed in a striped red velvet suit with a great paunched belly, yellow pom-poms and a white ruff collar. It wore a pointed crimson hat topped with a bell and had the curled yellow slippers of a sultan. The scarlet parrot nose was so hooked that it almost met the chin. Its gimlet eyes stared wide and were tinged with madness.

“Hello, what have we here?” said Bryant, brightening up. “Mr Punch. Dan, may I?”

“All right, but be careful,” said Dan, who was tired of dealing with the problems of tainted evidence that occurred whenever Bryant tramped merrily through a crime scene.

Bryant lifted the figure into a standing position. “It looks like a Victorian original. Stuffed with kapok, wooden hands and feet, papier-mache head. There’ll be a little bell in his cap. What’s it doing beside the cot?”

“Over here,” called May, who was standing by the opposite wall. An entire collection of Punch and Judy puppets was arranged along it at head height. Only one was missing from its hook.

“Looks like Mr Punch decided to go for a walk,” said Bryant. “How did it get off the wall and over to the cot inside a locked room?”

“The parents had probably been amusing their child and forgot to put it back,” said May.

“Rather a grotesque thing to wave at a baby, isn’t it? After all, it’s a very valuable antique, not a kiddies’ plaything. It would probably have made him burst into tears.” Bryant knew a thing or two about making children cry. “So what’s it doing on the floor?”

“Don’t read too much into this, Arthur.”

“I can’t help it.” Despite Banbury’s look of horror, Bryant raised the figure high and wiggled it. The puppet’s movements were unnervingly realistic. “After all, what’s one of the first things Mr Punch does in the play?”

Renfield and May looked at each other.

“He throws the baby out of the window,” replied Bryant.