The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

11

Parallels

Just after nine o’clock on Tuesday morning at the St Pancras mortuary, they went to work.

“OK,” said Giles Kershaw. “Hold it steady, I’m going in.” He raised his scalpel above the steel dissection table, sprayed the blade with a neutral oil-based lubricant and inserted it beneath the neck of the prone Mr Punch, just where his hump began.

“Try to keep it to the stitching,” Dan Banbury suggested. “This one’s worth a fortune. Most of them are in the hands of private collectors or in museums, and Mr Bryant told me this one is part of a complete set from the 1880^s, which makes it very rare.”

“I open bodies, Dan, I can do this, OK?” Kershaw’s blade snicked the stitches apart. He reached the dummy’s legs and carefully began to remove the kapok-and-horsehair stuffing inside. A jointed brass skeleton was gradually revealed, still gleaming. “Amazing bit of workmanship, this. Beautifully put together. The Victorians really made things to last, even toys.”

“It’s not a toy, Giles; it was crafted like that because it was a way of earning a living. According to Mr Bryant, the Punch and Judy men were masters of their craft and could make good money. There was one appointed to Buckingham Palace for garden parties. He was granted the royal crest – By Appointment – it’s on this one’s back.”

Giles shone a penlight into the puppet’s cranium. “The head and hands are made of carved wood, hollowed out but heavy things to lift, performing with your arms raised all the time.” Kershaw set aside another handful of brown horsehair and peered deeper inside.

“I think there were usually two men working in the booth. The later models are papier-mache over a wire frame. See anything?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. No electrical wiring, no pistons, certainly nothing that could allow the thing to stand up under its own power. There would have to be some kind of support in here. The Japanese currently have a couple of robots that could do it, although I think even they would draw the line at building one that could strangle a baby. There goes the Golem theory.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the sixteenth century, the Chief Rabbi of Prague brought a huge creature made of clay to life to stop anti-Semitic attacks, but the Golem eventually turned on his creator. I get crazy thoughts while I’m working. It comes from hanging around old Bryant too much. You start to think like him, and then pretty soon no self-respecting CID officer will talk to you.”

“OK, what do we do now?”

“Stitch it back up,” Giles replied, studying Mr Punch’s angry red face. It seemed the creature was staring at him, its eyes filled with murderous intent.

HARD NEWS – ARTS SECTION

A Stab in the Back

Alex Lansdale

The classic murder thriller used to be a staple of the West End theatre. Plays like Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn, Sweeney Todd, Wait Until Dark and Sleuth proved popular with the public, but lately this genre has gone into decline, with only Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap still hanging on for grim death at the St Martin’s Lane Theatre, where the director is still required to follow the original moves laid down in the play’s first production sixty years ago, preserving the whole ghastly farrago in amber for the undemanding non-English-speaking tourists who inexplicably keep it running.

I was reminded of the play while sitting through The Two Murderers, a farcical drama in which a young woman (soap actress Delia Fortess – dismal) is beaten by her husband and falls into the arms of hunky gardener Bert (former boy-band singer and model Marcus Sigler). Together the pair hatch a plot to murder the bullying captain of industry, but plans go awry and soon the stage is drenched in Kensington Gore.

Despite some brief and painfully hammy support from veteran actors Neil Crofting and Mona Williams, the show belongs to the young leads, who’ll have no appeal whatsoever to older audiences. Ella Maltby’s superbly evocative Gothic set designs and extravagant period costuming from Larry Hayes notwithstanding, the overmiked sound makes it unbearable for anyone above the iPod generation, especially when the absurd plot twists start kicking in after the intermission.

The fault lies largely with the New Strand Theatre’s Russell Haddon, whose misjudged blood-and-thunder direction renders the actors’ Grand Guignol posturing ludicrous and turns the plot into some kind of teenage multiplex action movie. First-time author Ray Pryce provides clever dialogue that bristles with ironic epithets, but his lines are lost under a welter of overblown effects that include a stabbing, torture, nudity and a grotesquely realistic hanging. None of this will make a jot of difference to the youngsters who will flock in droves to see this monstrously distasteful catalogue of lurid thrills, especially as the second half features a scene in which Miss Fortess dances naked for her lover in the most gratuitous nude scene I have ever witnessed on stage. The soap star’s ample charms will doubtless prove a useful distraction from the play’s many faults. Meanwhile, the company has already announced a new production, God help us, and at least author Pryce will once more be on hand to ensure that the script provides frissons, even if the director is unable to rise to the occasion.

The Two Murderers New Strand Theatre, Adam Street, WC2 Perfs 7:30pm (exc. Sundays, Mats: Weds, Sats)

“The bastard has the nerve to show up at my house, witnesses our private grief and then prints these two items right next to each other!”

In the manager’s office above the New Strand Theatre, Robert Kramer threw the newspaper across the desk to Gregory Baine, his accountant and producer. “‘Unable to rise to the occasion’ – Lansdale knows we had trouble conceiving because of my low sperm count. My wife was stupid enough to tell him.”

“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean it to read like – ”

“Of course he bloody did!” Kramer bit back. “Read the second piece.”

Baby in Horror Fall

An 11-month-old baby boy fell to his death from an open sixth-floor window in central London last night. Noah Kramer, son of millionaire theatre owner Robert ‘Julius’ Kramer, 47, and his second wife Judith Kramer, 26, were hosting a lavish first-night party to mark the opening of their play The Two Murderers when tragedy struck.

An ambulance was dispatched to the £3.5 million penthouse at around 9:30 p.m. Officers are at a loss to explain how baby Noah reached the window, which the parents insist was securely locked, or why it had been opened during the torrential rainstorm that hit central London last night. “The couple had given their nanny the night off and were downstairs celebrating with celebrity guests when Noah somehow found his way to the window,” said a close friend. “Judith is devastated.” The police want to know why the baby was left alone by an open window, and will have no choice but to treat the death as suspicious.

Kramer’s first play at London’s newly opened New Strand Theatre is a gruesome horror-drama that is not for the fainthearted, and has received a critical drubbing.

“You can see what he’s implying, can’t you?” said Kramer. “That the show is somehow paralleled in our private lives. And that we deliberately neglected our own child. ‘Left by an open window’, ‘celebrating with celebrity guests’, ‘Judith is devastated’ – no mention of my grief. And putting our ages and the price of the property in the bloody article! Apart from anything else, the place is worth four million at least. This is obviously Lansdale’s work, although I don’t know what they think they’re doing, getting a bloody theatre critic to write the news. I got him his first job on the Telegraph and this is how he treats me. Well, I want him kept out of my theatre from now on.”

“How’s Judith doing?” asked Baine. He wasn’t really interested, but felt that Kramer would expect to be asked.

“How do you think she’s doing? She’s inconsolable. She’s been dosed to the gills with Valium and has taken to her bed. I can’t go to the theatre while this is going on. We can’t even plan the funeral until some coroner has finished poking about with the body. It’s a bloody nightmare! And now the press are working some kind of neglect angle, things can only get worse.”

“Everything’s under control at the theatre. We had a bit of a flood after the storm but we’re working on that. The box office is healthy. I hate to say it, but the coverage of the accident has raised your profile.”

“My wife has just lost her child. Show some bloody respect.”

Baine shrugged. “I’m an accountant, Robert, it’s how I see the world. Bad for you, good for business.”

♦

“What are we going to say?” asked Marcus Sigler. “They’re going to find out that we were together on the fire escape when they compare notes.” He and Gail Strong were seated outside a coffee shop on Upper Street, Islington. Gail was wearing absurdly huge Audrey Hepburn glasses that drew attention to her.

“You don’t need to sound so worried.” She took a drag on her cigarette and jetted smoke away from him. “I lied to that stupid policewoman about the timings, the one who looked like a model from the sixties. I told her I was out there after you, and passed you coming in as I went out.”

“Christ, what if somebody else saw us and contradicts your testimony? When were you going to tell me this? You know my situation. They’ve got everyone else’s times. If there’s a mismatch, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

“Grow yourself some gonads, Marcus. I’m just going to stick to my story. No one can prove we were outside together, and so what if we were? Strangers take cigarette breaks in each other’s company all the time.”

“They’ll know something was going on. Judith will know. Women can sense these things.”

“Judith’s virtually in a coma, in case you haven’t heard.”

“She’s probably been prescribed something to calm her down. You can’t imagine how bad I feel about this.”

“It didn’t seem to bother you at the time. That’s what cracks me up about men. You never think things through.”

“If this gets out I could have my contract cancelled.”

“I forgot, it’s all about you, isn’t it?”

“Well, it rather is in this case.”

“What do you mean?”

“Give me one of those.” He pointed at her Marlboro Lights. “I thought you understood. I thought that was the whole point.”

“Understood what?”

“Well.” Marcus fussed about trying to light the cigarette. There are few sights as spectacular as a handsome man embarrassed. “That Judith and I are an item.”

“No, somehow you never got around to mentioning that.”

“We met at her best friend’s wedding in Gloucester and spent the night together. In the morning, she told me that Robert had already proposed to her. I tried to stop seeing her, but it’s kind of still going on.”

“Kind of? How could you have let that happen if she was about to marry someone else?”

“I don’t know. We really do care for each other. I guess it was just bad timing for both of us. I mean, I made love to her the night before her wedding to Robert. But since then things have got even weirder. I’m starting to get this feeling he knows something’s going on.”

“So, what the hell happened between us on the fire escape?”

“I was a bit drunk, and you came on to me.”

“Is that all it takes to make you unfaithful, Marcus? God, at least I’m unattached. Poor Judith. Do you really think her husband knows something?”

“Probably not. I don’t see how he can. He’d kill me if he did. At the very least he’d make sure I never worked again.”

“I suppose it’s struck you how similar your situation is to the character you play in The Two Murderers. It sounds like you’re living the part.”

“I’ve been feeling uneasy about that for a while, but lately the sensation’s been getting worse. It’s like some kind of shadow play.”

“God, if it follows the play we’re all in trouble.”

“You don’t know Robert Kramer. He’s a dangerous man. He manipulates everyone.”

Gail removed her dark glasses. She was wearing no eye makeup and suddenly looked like a child. She rubbed at her nose with a tissue. “I joined this company because my father thought it would keep me out of trouble. If the press finds out I was there when a baby died, they’ll ruin everything for me. I’ve had a few problems in the past. And they’ll start digging around. Who knows what they’ll turn up about the rest of the cast?”

“Sometimes productions take years to gestate, and all kinds of things happen to the casts in that time. Actors get promoted or replaced, they marry, divorce and die, kids get born. People always look for parallels between the plays they’re in and the lives they lead…”

Something in his manner made her pause and stare at him. Without her sunglasses she could see that Marcus had purple shadows beneath his eyes. “What else do you know?” she asked.

“Look, there’s some stuff you shouldn’t get involved in. In fact, I think we should try to avoid each other’s company. It wouldn’t be healthy to be seen together. I’m trying to protect you.”

Gail did not feel protected. Either Marcus was simply trying to brush her off after an ill-advised liaison or he was genuinely terrified, and for once she decided not to ask any more questions.

♦

For Arthur Bryant, the case was starting to evoke a different parallel. London has nearly fifty major theatres and countless fringe venues employing hundreds of people, so it was hardly surprising that occasionally crimes occurred within these very public spaces. The Unit’s first investigation had involved the gruesome death of a dancer in the Palace Theatre, and still fascinated the elderly detective. The theatre was where a great many of Bryant’s obsessions intersected. The heady combination of artifice, obsession, esoterica and intrigue fired his synapses. As a child he had sneaked into theatres via their open scenery docks and would be allowed to watch performances. He watched in open-mouthed awe while Hamlet goaded Claudius and Richard III schemed. Walton’s masque from The Tempest and the sprites of Arden seduced him into an impossible world, taking him away from the poverty and bitterness of his childhood home. He still visited theatres whenever he could, but had become disenchanted with the Disneyfication of the West End, which had lured audiences away from thoughtful plays to witless family extravaganzas.

Bryant clambered onto his library steps and pulled down various musty volumes on the history of British theatre, hoping to find some answers to the elliptical questions that flittered about inside his head.

In a book on the lives of Gilbert and Sullivan he found a quote: “London’s modern skin has settled easily over its Victorian heart. Far from erasing the old and replacing it with the new, the city seems to encourage paradox, just as it always did. The high-born and the lowly, the wealthy and the poor, are kept as separate as they have always been.”

How true, he thought, recalling Lord Lucan, the missing seventh earl of Lucan who in 1974 allegedly murdered his nanny and fled the country, apparently protected by a coterie of wealthy friends. Bryant knew that if Robert Kramer operated in similar circles, he would never get to the truth of the boy’s death. There were areas of London society where even the law was powerless. The gap between rich and poor was not just one of wealth but of accountability.

However, Kramer could not be protected by any altitude of birthright. He had few friends in high places. He was an opportunist, a financier, a self-made man. His protection was based solely on money, and that made him a little more vulnerable. What’s more, he ran a new and already disreputable theatre company. Something about the play and the death resonated, and as Bryant searched the shelves, he found what he was looking for. He pulled down a rare French volume from 1887: The ‘Rosse’ Vignettes of Oscar Metenier.

Laying it carefully on his desk, he began to read. Metenier’s lurid little plays had given horrified Parisians a glimpse into the lives of desperate men and women laid low by birth and circumstance. His stage was filled with cackling whores, violent alcoholics and graphic executions. Some of his work was labelled an affront to public morality because of its shocking street jargon and was promptly banned. In La Casserole, the writer even hired real criminals to play themselves. It seemed the play-going public always loved to witness gruesome tragedy, so long as it didn’t involve people of their own class.

Artifice and reality, he thought, examining the photographs and drawings, they combine more easily than we realize. TV shows pretend to offer realism but they hide as

much as they show. Fiction, on the other hand, can contain fundamental human truths. And sometimes it’s possible to step back and forth between these two worlds just by opening the correct door, by finding the key that will unlock mysteries. So much of London is masked; unspoken rules protect the privileged, unseen codes hide the guilty. What a crafty lot we are!

This, then, was Arthur Bryant at work, his furrowed forehead bowed beneath the yellow light of the desk lamp, a shambling Prospero presiding over the desiccated pages of his literary arcana, stirring fresh knowledge into the heady stew of ideas that filled his brain.

As he sat at the chaotic centre of his office-cum-library, blowing the dust from one forgotten volume after another, scribbling notes and teasing out tenuous links, he began to build a structure of evidence in the case.

Bryant had no interest in the common grounds of detection. He refused to be swayed by plausibility or likelihood. Human beings, he knew, were capable of acting in extraordinary ways for reasons that extended into the realms of the bizarre, and the best way to uncover their confidences was to match the strangeness of their thinking.

As he unfolded a series of grotesque etchings from the works of Charles Baudelaire, Jules Verne and Andre de Lorde, he wondered if the shroud shielding London’s deepest secrets was about to lift for him once more. In the miasma of his mind, dark ideas began to swirl and take solid form.