The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

17

Highways

On Wednesday evening the sky cleared so suddenly that it looked as if the clouds had been vacuumed away like dirt, leaving a rich azure sky. The buildings lightened and the pavements dried. People reappeared on the grey streets of King’s Cross and workers once more began drinking outside pubs. Smokers surrounded buildings. Cautious smiles were even spotted.

Inside the PCU, the Turkish workmen who were refitting the electrics and repairing walls had returned and were mopping up pools of water left by the holes in the building’s roof. In Bryant and May’s shared office, the detectives pored over the spreadsheet May had created to track the movements of everyone at the Kramers’ party. Bryant was visibly bored and itching to return to his books.

“It’s very attractive, all these nice coloured panels,” he said, “but of absolutely no use. I don’t know why you keep insisting I should study them.”

“Look, you can see who left the room, when and why,” said May. “It saves you having to talk to anyone.”

“I don’t need to be protected from the public, thank you.”

“I’m protecting them from you. By studying this we can tell who was missing at the time of the murder.”

“Ah, but this is where your reliance on technology lets you down. Your fancy chart is based on the memories of witnesses, which are nearly always faulty. It can’t show us what we need to understand most of all. We can’t know what each of them saw and heard that night. Upstairs, there was a queue outside the toilet. At the back, there were people smoking on the rear fire escape. Everyone else was either in the lounge or the kitchen. Are we agreed on that?”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve got there.”

“Then, at approximately ten past nine, somebody heard an odd noise from the fire escape stairs. This is in the testimony of Gail Strong, who was outside having a cigarette at that time. Strong says she passed Sigler coming in as she went out, but Sigler says he only saw Pryce coming out, and Pryce only saw Sigler, did Renfield tell you that?”

“No. I’m getting confused.”

Bryant tapped the chart. “Look at your time lines. At nine-ten Sigler, Strong and Pryce were absent from the room. Upstairs, a chap called Mohammad al-Nahyan, the theatre’s carpenter, and Larry Hayes, the wardrobe chap, went to use the loo. So altogether there were five people missing from the lounge, three smokers, two full bladders, all accounted for. In the corridor we have al-Nahyan, in the toilet we have Hayes, out on the fire escape we have the others. But Hayes doesn’t remember seeing al-Nahyan even though he must have passed him when he left the loo. People remember things imperfectly. If you overlap the times of the smokers, the bladders and the remaining guests, who were all within each other’s sight in the lounge, there are no other suspects left to consider apart from the staff.”

“The one waiting to use the toilet and the other inside – they don’t remember seeing each other?”

“One does, one doesn’t. These are mundane moments – party chatter, a loo break – we don’t give them our full attention. Several of the guests wandered back and forth from the kitchen to the main room, having a look around. And of course the host and hostess were absent to check on their baby.”

“OK, I agree that it doesn’t seem likely they would all be able to keep tabs on each other, no matter what they told Renfield. Apart from anything else, they’d all been drinking.”

“Which is why all the charts and time lines in the world can’t help us. So I’ve invited someone to give us a hand.” Bryant went to the door and opened it. “Mr Pryce, can you come in now?”

The author stepped into the room with a look of apprehension on his face. He solemnly shook hands with each detective.

“I invited Mr Pryce here because of his specialist skill,” Bryant explained. “He scripts the exits and entrances of his cast, and spends his days thinking of how they might respond in different situations.”

“Have you gone out of your mind, Arthur?” whispered May. “Pryce is a potential suspect. He could compromise the entire investigation.”

“And if we were working out of a Metropolitan Police unit, I’d agree with you. But we’re not. Our remit allows us to endorse experimental methods, although you seem to have forgotten that lately. Well, I’m putting the experimental thinking back in. As Mr Pryce is one of only three people whose movements we can reliably account for during the course of the entire evening, I think it’s fairly safe to involve him.”

“Who are the other two?”

“The carpenter, Mohammad al-Nahyan, and the front-of-house manager, Jolie Christchurch. But neither of those has the kind of specialist thinking that might help us. We need to get an inside perspective on this, John. Writers have a long tradition of helping the government. Dennis Wheatley used to be employed by the war office and worked for Winston Churchill. He was hired to come up with ideas about how the Germans might attack us, although he did say they would try to use a death ray on London, which was a bit wide of the mark. Still, we have to be similarly open-minded.” He turned to the playwright. “Mr Pryce, I explained our problem to you. Now you know almost as much as we know. Have you had any thoughts?”

Ray Pryce sucked at his teeth, thinking for a moment. “Well, yes, I suppose I have, but it sounds ridiculous.”

“Come on, you’re used to thinking of ridiculous situations, it’s what you do for a living.”

The writer bristled visibly. “Have you seen the show?”

“No, but I understand it features a murderous puppet and various gruesome deaths.”

“That’s right. Ella Maltby designed some very creepy props. In fact, one of the ones she came up with for The Two Murderers was modelled on the puppets in Robert Kramer’s Punch and Judy collection. Which makes me wonder about this whole thing. I mean, the murder site, the audience, the setting – it feels like a staged performance.”

“Staged for the benefit of whom? And by whom?”

Pryce looked down at his grubby trainers, fidgeting with discomfort. “There’s been trouble at the theatre. I mean, we’ve all overheard the fights. It’s kind of hard to ignore them when they’re happening in the stalls, right in front of you.”

“You’re talking about the Kramers,” translated May.

“Robert often attends rehearsals with notes, even though it’s not his job to do so. And he makes Judith come with him. He treats her in a way that no woman deserves to be treated. He’s always asking her where she’s been, and making her account for her time.”

May gave his partner a knowing look. “Why do you think he does that?”

“Apparently he did the same thing with his first wife. I guess he’s just a naturally suspicious man. Personally, I think he’s a bully. I saw him slap her once – actually hit her, although he pretended it was an accident – and I heard him threaten to have Gregory Baine thrown off the board of his company unless he sorted out a problem with the accounts. And if Robert Kramer really wanted to hurt his wife he’d take away the thing she loves most of all, wouldn’t he? My play is a revenge tragedy, and it seems to me he’s following the storyline – not in terms of actual plot, but in tone. He’s always asking me questions about the murderer’s motivation. He takes a lot of interest in that.”

“Marcus Sigler is playing the murderer, isn’t he? Don’t some actors start identifying strongly with the characters they’re playing?”

“If he did, that would mean Marcus was your main suspect. But actors are trained to know the difference between their roles and their own characters. It’s those who watch who become the most obsessed. Look at stalkers. Look at the history of murderers who say they’ve been influenced by fictional characters.”

“Do you really think Robert Kramer could have murdered his own son?”

Pryce looked even less comfortable now. “There are people who say Noah wasn’t his son.”

“Who’s been saying that?”

“I try not to listen to backstage gossip. Besides, Robert is my employer, and if anything happens to the show I’m out of a job. But you can’t be too careful. His wife’s been doped up since Monday night. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t leave her alone with him.”

“You say the murder was like a theatrical performance. I think most murders are acts of cowardice. Surely theatre is different. Doesn’t it take bravery to act before so many people?”

“No, I think it just takes a form of anger. And it’s an anger you can burn out by acting something out.”

“Thank you, Mr Pryce, you’ve been most illuminating. We may be in touch again.” Bryant opened the door to let the writer out. “I think we need to put someone in there with her, John. Just in case Pryce turns out to be right.”

“I guess we could spare Meera. Right now, Judith Kramer is the person we most need to talk to, and the only one we can’t get to. So?”

“What?” Bryant feigned innocence.

“Your big theory, the one I’m going to hate. Are you ready to share it?”

“Not yet. I’m revising my thinking in the light of recent developments. I still have some more tests to conduct.”

“What kind of tests?”

“Bells. Mythomania – that’s pathological lying – and the cephalic index.”

“I’m sorry.” May shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”

“Well, the bells – ”

“No, the last thing.”

“The cephalic index is an index of head shape, the most popular component of racial studies. You get it by measuring the width of the head from a point over one ear to the opposite point over the other ear.” Bryant waggled his fingers around his face. “Then you measure the maximum length of the head from a point in the middle of the forehead between the eyebrows to the occiput on the back of the head, dividing the width by the length and multiplying the result by one hundred. Most human adults range from seventy to eighty-five, and the range indicates whether you’re brachycephalic, mesocephalic or dolichocephalic. But this measurement is different from the cranial index. Eastern European immigrants entering the United States were measured, and what they found – ”

“Perhaps I could just stop you there before I go mad and kill you,” May suggested calmly. “I fail to see what on earth this has to do with the investigation.”

“Well, of course you would, because I’m making sure you deal with all the boring bits. I get to do the fun stuff.”

“Explain this in terms I can understand.”

“Robert Kramer is a Bavarian Jew.” Bryant raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

“And what does that mean?”

“Well, one of the more grotesque racial myths is that you can separate Jews and Gentiles by measuring the shape of their heads. Officials once thought that the way you folded your arms was also an indicator of ethnicity. Whether you folded your right over your left or your left over your right could reveal whether you were a Kurdish Jew or not, because the Kurds in Israel favoured right over left.”

“OK, I think I’m going to leave you to wander the untraveiled highways of your mind a little longer,” May said. “Let me know when you have something to share that makes the slightest iota of sense, will you?”

“Absolutely, no problem at all,” said Bryant, slamming open another dusty volume, entitled Morphological Traits & Ethnic Physiognomy in ‘The Arabian Nights’. “Feel free to call upon me at any hour, but next time come bearing brandy – I’ll be here most of the night. Oh, and get ready for a train journey early in the morning. There’s something we need to see.”