The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

23

Operations

“Forget this rubbish about Punch and bloody Judy,” Raymond Land warned the PCU staff. “Let Bryant and May wander around the country looking at puppet theatres while we concentrate on the basics of criminal investigation, before the whole of the bloody Met starts laughing at us again.” Bryant had ill-advisedly left a message apprising Land of his whereabouts. Perhaps his note should not have read: Gone to see puppets at the seaside. Back soon.

“Bring in the usual suspects from around Blackfriars and Cannon Street. Run a check on the hostels, see if they’ve had any trouble. Any offices that were working late, bus drivers, cabbies, street sweepers, tube workers, anyone who might have seen him. I want some answers today. Who were Gregory Baine’s enemies? Close friends? Work colleagues? Talk to the girlfriend. Who’s his family? What were his movements last night? Come on, you all know the routine. How the bloody hell did he end up underneath Cannon Street Bridge? Was he killed before being strung up? If so, how did the killer get his body there? Where did he park? And the doll of the hangman, where was that bought?”

“We’re already getting answers to some of those questions,” said Janice, checking her notes. “Baine’s girlfriend had dinner with him last night at the Square, which is a restaurant in Mayfair. He left very abruptly after getting a message from the maître d’ at around nine-fifteen. We’ve questioned the waiter who took the call. Baine told his girlfriend he had to meet someone for a quick drink – didn’t say who or why, but said he was heading over to Cannon Street. She reckons he was in a very odd mood when he left – preoccupied. His PA doesn’t know about any privately arranged appointments, suggested I talk to Robert Kramer or the show’s director.”

“Has Kershaw already ruled out suicide, then?” asked Renfield.

“No, but he thinks it unlikely that someone like Baine would have known about the drop from the bridge scaffolding. The street doesn’t lead anywhere and gets hardly any traffic.”

“Were there other prints at the site?”

“Yeah, loads,” said Banbury. “Workmen had been treading mud over it all day and it had been raining, so there was nothing salvageable. Suicides tend to go out in familiar surroundings. And if he’d chosen the bridge, why not just jump off? The tides are pretty lethal.”

“He might not have known that,” Renfield persisted.

“Giles found chemical residue on his face and reckons he may have been sprayed with pepper spray – like the ones you can buy for a handbag,” said Longbright. “He’s had water from the bridge dripping on him, so that’s not conclusive.”

“Don’t you have one in your bag?” asked Land.

“No, Raymond, I have a house brick. More effective. Baine had a fresh bruise on the side of his head, like he’d been slapped or punched, or he might just have walked into the scaffolding, blinded. He’d been led or walked along the planks and stepped off the end. Then he choked to death on the rope. He was a small bloke, but it would still have required a certain amount of strength to get him in place, so Giles is ruling out a woman unless it was someone with specialist training, like Meera here.” Mangeshkar had studied tae kwon do. “Of course, a lot of actors keep very fit.”

“Meera, you were supposed to be keeping an eye on Judith Kramer,” said Land. “Why are you here?”

“She wouldn’t let me,” Mangeshkar replied. “Her call.”

“Baine had been hammering the booze,” Renfield added. “The girlfriend says he’d sunk a bottle and a half of Rioja.”

“Baine’s neck was badly bruised when he dropped, but his shirt collar probably prevented it from snapping. Giles banged on for a while about the strength of the human spine but didn’t add anything significant to his initial findings. It’s unlikely that Baine walked any great distance – his girlfriend says he hated exercise. He didn’t have an Oyster card on him and wasn’t the public transport type, so we’re checking taxis now.”

“Good. Anyone else?”

Meera tapped her notepad. “The Hangman puppet – it doesn’t belong to Robert Kramer. He says he still has his full set, minus the Punch, of course, which Giles has returned to our evidence room. I haven’t yet found anyone who sells them. There’s a Goth internet site that does something similar but they say they haven’t received any special orders. Which probably means the puppet was either homemade or in someone else’s private collection.”

“When I spoke to Robert Kramer, I asked him to talk to his doctor about reducing Judith Kramer’s meds,” said Renfield. “He said he’d done that anyway, because she wants to attend the funeral tomorrow afternoon. With any luck we’ll be able to interview her afterwards.”

“Jack, you can’t interview a mother about her dead son on the way back from his funeral,” Longbright objected.

“I don’t see why not. I mean, there’s never gonna be a good time, is there?”

“Forget it. I’ll go later today, even if it means talking to her before her medication fully wears off. At least she can get it over and done with.”

“What about the phone number on the doll?” Land asked. He was quite enjoying being in charge for once, without Bryant being there to make fun of him.

“It was one of our own PCU contact cards,” Longbright answered. “Whoever did this knows we’re handling the case and is making fun of us, or trying to force us into action.”

“We’re goading killers now?” asked Renfield. “Have you ever thought that we might be making matters worse? Maybe if this unit didn’t exist there wouldn’t be so many crazies around trying to get at us.”

Land was flummoxed. “No, you’re wrong there, Jack. The world is full of weirdos – ”

“Yeah, and we’re encouraging them, aren’t we? Our very existence is a red rag to a bull. We’re bringing them out of the woodwork. Set up a unit to solve abnormal crimes and you get more criminals committing them and trying to outwit us. It’s like we’re a recruitment agency for psychopaths. Peculiar Crimes Unit – Nutter Magnet.”

This was one conversation Land did not want to get drawn into. “Look, he – or she – obviously wants us to catch him – or her – otherwise he – or she – wouldn’t be leaving clues.”

“Women are statistically less likely to kill,” Meera pointed out, “so can we just stick with the male pronoun?”

“Actually, I think you’ll find they’ve been catching up in the last couple of years.”

“You see?” cried Renfield, exasperated. “Now you’re talking about bloody statistics. Can we find out where this doll came from?”

“I’ve a list of other places that might be able to help us with that,” said Longbright. “Hamleys toy shop stocks their own traditional puppets made by Pelham, and the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood has a couple of experts who might be able to identify it.”

“Good, get on it,” Land said. “The rest of you – traditional methods, witness statements, doorstep interviews, dustbin duty.” Colin and Meera groaned. “And come back with some solid connections. Find out where Kramer and all of his guests were last night. And no more nonsense about Punch and bloody Judy.”

Longbright returned to her office and opened up the time line of guests once more. Something had been bothering her for days.

She had made a list of smokers, all of whom had been out on the rear fire escape at some point in the course of the party. Gail Strong and Marcus Sigler must have done more than just pass each other on the fire escape. Larry Hayes, the wardrobe man, said he had tried to open the back door but it had been wedged shut. Yet it had opened easily a couple of minutes earlier, when Ray Pryce tried it. If Strong and Sigler had been outside holding it shut, perhaps they had been holding a little party of their own.

This particular line of enquiry seemed to be a dead end, not least because being on the fire escape had nothing to do with scaling a wall and prising open a locked window under the gaze of closed-circuit cameras, pedestrians and street traffic.

The more she studied the activity grid, the harder it became to discern an accurate pattern. Raymond Land was wrong – standard operational procedures would not be enough to unlock the investigation. She wondered how Arthur and John were getting on. They hadn’t yet been told about the discovery under Cannon Street Bridge. This latest development would either confirm their theories – or wreck them.