The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

20

Ketch

On Thursday morning at exactly eight o’clock, the workmen finishing the rebuild of Cannon Street station began hammering scaffolding pipes out of place. They always made as much noise as possible at this time, then knocked off at eight-thirty for a leisurely breakfast, knowing that one of the nearby Thameside residents would call the council to complain about the noise. In this way the workmen provided proof that they started on time, and as it was legal in the City of London to begin construction on the stroke of eight, the residents had no complaint upheld.

Amir Sahin slipped out of his harness and climbed out along the planks laid across the bridge scaffold. He knew Health and Safety would go nuts if they saw him, so he stayed in the shadows beneath the green painted arch as he worked his way out over the water.

He had taken to keeping his coat and tools here because someone in the team was a thief, and he wasn’t going to leave his stuff back on the ground until he’d figured out who it was. Also, it was the only place where he could enjoy a cigarette; the bridge site had a smoking ban enforced upon it, despite the fact that they were in the open air and there were no flammable materials in use. Back in Dubai, where Amir had been working on the Burj hotels, they worked a hundred floors up on buildings without safety cables, and side winds could pluck you out of the construction like a doll. But here in this wet, grey little country, every move you made had to be approved by a sour-faced foreman. No wonder everything took so long to get done.

He reached up to get his tool bag, which was wedged in a junction of steel poles just below the underside of the bridge, when he saw the rope and knew that someone else had been out here. There had definitely been no equipment left out last night. It wasn’t one of theirs, for a start – they used standard-issue blue nylon cord, not the kind of rough old hemp you used to find in fishing villages.

He leaned out from the edge of the gangplank and followed the rope down, over the cloudy green water of the incoming tide.

The body of a short, middle-aged white man was slowly twisting on the end of it.

He reached for his mobile and called his foreman.

♦

“You have to wear a safety harness,” insisted Mick Leach, the burly Cannon Street foreman. “If you slip and fall in out there, you won’t surface. The river flows faster than you can swim, and the current will draw you out from the reach. Sometimes the bodies don’t come back up until they beach at Richmond Lock. I don’t want another death on my hands. I’ve already had trouble with the ambulance crew. They wanted to take the body and leave you guys with the paperwork.”

“Suspicious death, we take precedence,” said Colin Bimsley. “I’ll sort it out. Turn your back for a minute.” He zipped up his PCU jacket. “Dan, I can haul him in before you even know we’re out there.”

Banbury didn’t look so thrilled with the idea. He peered out into the dark nest of cables and scaffold tubes with apprehension. “It’s not a good idea with your spatial awareness problems, Colin. Let me have a go.”

“It’s fine,” Colin assured him. “I’ve done this loads of times. It’s only a problem when I’m on the move.” He led the way along the planks to the end of the scaffolding. Bimsley had immense upper body strength. Planting his legs astride, he was able to grab the creaking cord and slowly haul it up.

“Try not to let it touch the sides,” warned Dan. “Site contamination.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you? Seen the state of this place? You want to give me a hand then?”

The pair pulled and lowered the body onto the wet planks. The corpse was dressed in designer jeans with muddy knees and an expensively tailored navy Bond Street jacket. But the rope was the thing; it was secured round his neck in a traditional hangman’s noose.

Banbury got in closer. The face was a reddish grey. It was a common belief that beards and nails continued to grow after death, but they merely became more prominent as the soft tissues around them lost their turgidity, so the skin around a hair follicle would retract. The effect was to make it look as though the nails and beard had suddenly grown. Kershaw could use the retraction to help him gauge the time of death.

The victim’s open mouth revealed a swollen, blue-grey tongue. The skin of the dead man’s neck had been abraded under either ear by the roughness of the tightening rope. He had lost a shoe, and was still wearing an expensive watch.

“Tricky things to do up, those,” said Banbury, snapping on a pair of transparent gloves. “The rope, a bit of a specialist skill I would have thought. Otherwise you’d say suicide. I don’t think his neck’s broken. Looks like he hung there until he choked to death. Either that or suspension trauma.”

“What’s that?”

“If you get strung up and can’t get down for a lengthy period of time, the blood pools in your legs and keeps the oxygen from reaching your brain. You lose consciousness, then your body slowly shuts down and you die. Takes about an hour. Faster if it’s cold, and it must have been cold down here last night. My missus had the heating on, ridiculous in June. Suspension trauma, definitely. Supposedly it’s what happened to Christ on the cross. Let’s see what he’s got on him.”

Banbury knelt and carefully opened the jacket. Fishing around in the pockets, he pulled out a wallet. “What have we here? Nearly two hundred quid in tenners. Killer obviously not interested in dosh. Driver’s licence – Gregory Simon Baine.”

“Blimey, he’s the producer of Kramer’s play.”

“Leave him here for the distress crew. Let’s go back.”

They made their way down through the construction grid and found Mick Leach waiting for them. “If you’d had an accident I’d have had my site shut down,” he complained.

“Well, we didn’t, did we? Who found him?”

“My lad over there.” Leach pointed to a shivering Arab boy in a yellow safety jacket. “He won’t be able to tell you much more than I have. He’s not exactly Stephen Fry when it comes to the English language.”

“How did you know who to call?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you call the PCU and not City of London?”

“We had your phone number.”

“Where did you get it from?”

“Here,” said Leach, holding up a clear plastic bag with what appeared to be a child’s doll inside it. “One of our men found it on the planks this morning, just where the rope was tied.”

Banbury glanced at Bimsley as he accepted the plastic bag and examined it. One of the PCU’s cards had been folded into the top opening. He removed it and carefully tipped out the contents.

“This is going to make the old man’s day, this is.” He showed Bimsley. “Looks like we’ve got a little game of cat and mouse.” He held up the puppet.

“Christ, I thought it was a baby for a second.”

“No, it’s not a baby,” said Banbury.

It was under a foot long, with articulated arms and legs, and was swathed in a black leather cloak and a black upper-face mask. Banbury dropped it in the largest evidence bag he had, sealed it and filled in the plastic overhanging leaf requesting the exhibit number, OCU, customer number, CRIS ref, lab ref, ID signature, exhibit description, location, date, time, statement signature, witness signature and seal ID. Trying to do this with a ballpoint pen and nothing to lean on usually resulted in illegible scribble.

Bimsley eyed the contents of the bag with suspicion. He recognized the figure from his childhood. On Sunday treats at the seaside, the silent figure had bothered him so much that his mother had stopped letting him attend the Punch and Judy show on the pier.

It was the figure of Mr Punch’s hangman, Jack Ketch.