The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

41

Pitch

Robert Kramer saw that he had lost the motorbike, and doubled back. He turned the sat nav back on and followed its instructions, coming off the M25 somewhere near Dunton Green. He headed south into the Kent countryside. The roads grew narrower, the overhead branches grew denser and soon there was only an intermittent signal on his mobile phone.

His headlights picked up the distant homes of the rich, buried behind hedges, beyond fields. He passed an ancient granite church, a dead pub, a handful of dark houses, then nothing but black and green country roads for miles.

The sat nav told him he had almost reached his destination, but there was nothing to be seen outside: no turn-off, no signpost, only spattering rain and the dark treeline at the horizon. He slowed down, searching the hedgerows, and found a car-width space with a twin tyre track running through it. Nosing the wide-bodied Mercedes along the lane, jouncing over the tufts of grass, the branches snatching at his wing mirrors, his headlights picked up some kind of farm building ahead.

He pulled up in front of it and opened the window slightly. He felt the spit of rain and smelled pig dung. It was several degrees colder here than in town. He rarely made trips into the countryside and would not have come tonight but for the message left at the theatre.

He was wearing light brown handmade shoes and did not wish to get them stained. Collecting a torch and treading carefully, he made his way to the barn door and tried the handle. It opened easily. Inside were machine-rolled bales of hay; some kind of farm machinery, all red metal and spikes; and what appeared to be a stage area, surrounded by lit candles in curved glass pots, the ones you could buy in cheap hardware stores.

“Well, you got me here,” he said aloud, looking up. “Now what?”

Somewhere from the rear of the barn he heard piano music start playing – tinny and unreal, presumably an iPod hooked up to a portable system. He walked forward onto the makeshift stage and squinted into the musty darkness. “Is this supposed to frighten me?” he called. “If the music is meant to tell me something, you’re wasting your time. How did you know I would come here?”

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away,” sang a strange, distorted voice.

“What is that – Auto-Tune? Or are you meant to be Mr Punch? Dear God, tell me you’re not using a swozzle. There can’t be two of us, you know. Anyway, I think you’ve misunderstood me. It’s not an obsession, just – a role model. I could have picked Flashman or Moriarty or Julien Sorel from The Red and the Black. Patrick Bateman. Hannibal Lecter. They all rise above mere morality to make something more of themselves.”

There was no reply.

“Yes, that’s right, I read books. You didn’t know that, did you? That’s what we have to do these days, find a role model. It’s not easy making a success of yourself any more. You can’t just sit around waiting for a war.”

He walked while he spoke, trying to work out where his adversary was hiding. He stopped to listen, but there was no sound other than the warped piano music and the patter of rain on the barn’s corrugated iron roof. The candles guttered, extending shadows. He paced in a slow circle around the lights, carefully placing one polished shoe in front of the other, his hands linked behind his back, like Prince Philip attending the opening of a new factory.

“But a funny thing happened when I was a little boy. I grew up in Brighton, and every Sunday afternoon I used to go to the beach to watch the Punch and Judy show. Not because I liked the show – it was always exactly the same – but there was a girl there I cared for. Her father was the Punch and Judy man, so she had to sit there and wait for him. She had a kind of – what do you call them? A pageboy cut, like French girls have, shiny black hair that came to points below her ears. I used to sit behind her and study that soft white neck. I wanted to reach forward and touch it with my tongue. I suppose she was two or three years older than me. I was ten.

“Well, one day I was sitting behind her and it had just started to spit with rain, and Mr Punch had come on and was beating the hell out of his wife with a stick, and everyone was laughing, and I reached forward, closer, and – very lightly – touched her neck with my tongue. And she turned around and slapped my face. And all the kids started laughing at me. Well, they probably weren’t, but you know how sensitive you are at that age.

“I followed her around for weeks and she never knew I was there. One day I waited while she bought an ice cream and watched as she walked down the alley back to her horrible little pebble-dashed council house with seashells set into the garden walls, and I kicked her legs from under her and pelted her with stones I had brought from the beach. I broke her teeth and blacked her eyes with them, and then – well, let’s just say I enjoyed my first sexual experience.

“Next Sunday the Punch and Judy man was gone. He never came back. Well, somebody had to become Mr Punch. Life kicks you in the teeth and the only way you can win is by kicking it back. There, I’ve only told one other person that story in my entire life.”

He stopped and looked up into the rafters. It sounded like a pigeon scuffling. Something was moving about among the beams. Dust sifted down, glittering in the candlelight.

“Now I think you’d better tell me what you want. Before you’re arrested, I mean. The detectives who interviewed us after the party, they seem to have put a tracker on my car. I bought this little device at the spy shop in Park Lane that tells you whether there are any abnormal electromagnetic pulses near you, quite useful. They should be here very shortly.”

“Why did you come?” sang the voice.

“Why? I would have thought it was obvious. I want to know why you would go to so much trouble as you have, but not try to hurt me.”

“I want you to admit your guilt.”

“For what?”

The sound above Kramer grew suddenly louder. Wood cracked. A fresh flurry of dust and cobwebs fell. Something heavy dropped down, a large dark shape that barely missed his head.

It slammed onto the plywood sheets at his feet.

He found himself looking at the body of a woman. For a moment his breath froze inside him, but he took a step closer and the brief spasm of fear melted. The dummy had cracked open, spilling a mixture of what appeared to be dried red beans and sawdust. The effect was unnerving, like an eviscerated corpse.

“Do you understand now?” asked the voice.

Kramer laughed. “Is that what this is about? You drag me all the way out from bloody London to stage this? Christ, it’s a good job you never tried for a career in the theatre – sorry, I forgot – you did, didn’t you? I think I’m going to have to fire you now, though. I don’t think our working relationship will be able to survive this.”

Kramer walked closer to the dummy and knelt to examine it. “Ella will be very upset when she finds you’ve stolen one of her dummies. She would never have dressed it up in this tacky outfit. Do you want to tell me what your connection is with this creature? Or do I have to guess? Were you two having an affair?” He rose to his feet, angry now. “Oh, for Christ’s sake you can come down now and ditch the am-dram. I knew I should have hired a decent director. You should have stuck with telly, Russell, it’s where you belong. You know your problem? You’re the director but you just can’t get the right reaction from your audience.”

The pitchfork seemed to have no one behind it. It came out of nowhere, thrown in anger, but found its mark. One of the tines pierced Kramer’s throat, and the one below it entered his chest very close to his heart. The third tine only grazed his armpit, but the damage had been done.

Kramer gave a small gasp of surprise and fell forward onto the fork, punching it deeper into his throat. His expensive new handmade shoes had slipped away from him on the plywood floor.

He hovered there in a fulcrum, then toppled to the side. He was dead before the PCU officers managed to open the barn door.