The Memory of Blood

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Wait,’ said May, ‘am I missing something here? You’re annoyed with me because the investigation is likely to prove more mundane than you hoped it might be, is that it? You honestly thought Giles might find some kind of mechanical equipment inside the puppet that could control it?’ May was furious. ‘I’m sorry the world isn’t weird enough to keep you interested. You know what’s wrong with you, Arthur?’

  ‘No, but I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.’

  ‘You see words on pages but you never see beyond them to the heart. If this was a story in one of your grubby old books you’d be interested, wouldn’t you? Imagine: A rich, successful couple thinks they have everything, but the one thing the father wants most of all is denied to him, so his wife provides him with a son from her lover on the condition that she can continue the affair, and he silently endures the arrangement so that he can raise a boy of his own, with the complicity of his wife and the man she prefers. But the triangle fractures, and the reason for the arrangement is removed. Now a mother is comatose with grief over the death of her only child, her husband doesn’t know what to say that can comfort her, and the lover remains trapped on the outside, suspicious that tragedy might somehow strike again. That’s boring old real life for you, is it? Their worlds have been overturned not once but twice, and we have a chance to give them closure—’

  ‘Closure—phffft—ridiculous term thought up by psychotherapists to justify their jobs.’ Bryant waved the idea away.

  ‘Yes, closure—by finding out why this happened and ensuring that justice is done.’ May jabbed a forefinger back in the direction of the common room. ‘Life is going on out there, not in here in your books. And if that isn’t enough for you, maybe it really is time to retire.’

  Bryant watched his partner storm from the room with a heavy heart. He was not himself today; the news of Anna Marquand’s death had upset him more than he realised.

  As for the case, he could sense a greater tragedy at work, and as much as he hated to deceive John, he was powerless to act until he had some proof. Part of the answer lay right in front of them, but May needed to reach the same conclusion independently before they could act together.

  He picked up the phone and punched out Banbury’s number. ‘Dan, are you terribly busy? I want to examine the layout of the Kramers’ penthouse, right now if possible. Could you come with me?’

  ‘Sure thing, Mr Bryant.’

  Bryant rose and rubbed his back, then jammed his shapeless trilby onto his head.

  They pulled up outside 376 Northumberland Avenue in Bryant’s old yellow Mini Cooper. Banbury had been alarmed to find that he needed a bent teaspoon to keep the seatbelt in its clasp. Bryant squinted up through the smeary windscreen as he tried to avoid hitting the kerb. He had refused to be dissuaded from driving this time. ‘The doctor says Mrs Kramer’s in her bedroom asleep and can’t be disturbed under any circumstances, but I need to take another look at the nursery.’

  Banbury got out and peered down. ‘You can’t park here, it’s a double red line.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I’m elderly, I can do whatever I want. Here. I had Renfield knock it up.’ He threw a forged disabled card onto the dashboard.

  ‘You’re not allowed to do that.’

  ‘I’m colour-blind. That’s a disability.’

  ‘There’s been a huge rise in senior citizen crime in the capital lately, you know,’ said Banbury.

  ‘Quite right, too. There should be some compensations for the horrors of getting old. Come along.’

  ‘I don’t know why we’re back here. I gave the place a thorough going-over. There’s no more evidence to lift.’

  ‘I don’t want to gather evidence,’ said Bryant. ‘I want to understand.’

  ‘So do I. Usually I get a sense of what went on, but this one—’ Banbury shook his head. ‘I didn’t pick it up at all.’

  They made their way up to the front door and were admitted by the Kramers’ nanny, who showed them to the great glass lounge.

  Seating himself, Banbury opened his laptop and pointed to the design he had created. ‘This is the layout of the place.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t need a computer program to see that,’ said Bryant. ‘Here, I made my own drawing.’ He unfolded a damp piece of paper and tried to lay it flat. ‘How’s that for draughtsmanship?’

  ‘Incredible,’ Banbury admitted. ‘It could be anything. It looks like a henhouse drawn by Picasso.’

  ‘I was trying to capture the building’s spiritual resonance.’

  ‘It would help if you put the doors in. Let’s work from my layout, shall we? Okay, it’s a corner property on two floors with windows on both sides. Two-thirds of the lower floor is given over to the lounge, with kitchen, loo, TV room and service room coming off the corridor from the front door, main staircase and elevator. The rear door opens onto the fire escape at the back, which is where the guests went to smoke. A single staircase goes up to the floor above, where there are three bedrooms and three bathrooms. The bedrooms are as follows: main double, guest double, smaller guest room. It’s this last one that was made into a nursery.’

  ‘No fire escape on the top floor?’

  ‘No. The idea is that if there’s a fire you’d make your way down one floor and use the rear exit.’

  ‘Can you get onto the roof?’

  ‘There was access before the conversion, but it was removed.’

  ‘How long does it take to get from the lounge door to the nursery door?’

  ‘I timed it climbing the stairs at a fast pace. Seven to ten seconds.’

  ‘The nursery is at the end of the hall, so you pass the other two rooms and the toilet first. In theory, someone could have been hiding in one of the other rooms.’

  ‘Unlikely. Although they aren’t lockable, Mrs Kramer closed them before the party because she didn’t want anyone going into the private areas, and hers are the only prints on the handles.’

  Bryant stood before the toilet door and tapped its window with his walking stick. ‘Smoked glass. You can just about see if there’s someone inside.’ He reached in and turned on the light, checking the level of visibility from outside. Then he tried the door handle, examining it carefully. ‘There’s something wrong with the inside bolt.’

  ‘Funnily enough, it’s the one room you need a lock on and the only one that doesn’t work properly. Someone painted over the hasp. You can get it shut, but you have to push hard.’

  Bryant stepped into the toilet and looked around. ‘Another exit,’ he noted.

  ‘Yeah, the door on the far side opens into the guest double, so it functions as an en suite bathroom or as a stand-alone toilet if you’re having a party.’

  ‘Righty-ho, so if the culprit had been hiding in there, anyone queuing for the loo would have been able to make them out through the glass.’

  ‘I understand a number of people ended up waiting out here in the hall, because they couldn’t access the locked en suite bathrooms. Now, let’s check out the nursery.’ Banbury led the way and opened the door. The cot had been left in position. ‘Nothing has been moved. The Mr Punch doll came down from its hook and was found by the side of the cot that faced away from the window.’

  ‘Just as if it walked over, opened the window, picked up the baby and hurled it out.’

  Banbury threw him a look. ‘I think we need to establish something, Mr Bryant. The doll did not climb down from the wall and commit murder. I can’t work from that supposition.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m keeping an open mind.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re talking about the supernatural. I have to be more realistic.’

  ‘I appreciate that. You gather up your spoor—your skin flakes and hairs and particles of food—and ship them off to a company who’ll tell you what they mean. I’ll attempt to communicate with the spirits of the departed.’

  ‘You don’t mean that literally.’

  ‘Most certainly. Everyone leaves a trace,
Dan, you should know that.’

  Banbury tried to work out whether he was being teased, but as usual it was impossible to read Bryant’s thoughts. The detective’s phone bleeped, but by the time he’d removed the bits of string, rubber bands, coins, conkers, boiled sweets, keys and pencil stubs from his pockets, the caller had rung off. ‘Bugger, do you know how to retrieve a call?’ he asked. ‘I’m sure it must be in there somewhere.’

  ‘Give it to me.’ Banbury snatched the cell phone from him and studied it in amazement. ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘I bought it from a splendidly moustachioed Russian gentleman in the Edgware Road. I accidentally microwaved my old one. There’s something odd about it, though. I keep getting crossed lines with angry-sounding foreigners.’

  ‘That’s because it’s a State Security Agency phone from the Republic of Belarus. It’s illegal to possess one of these. Don’t ever press the red button.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ll accidentally call the Russian secret police.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Try it if you want to watch your credit cards get cancelled in under thirty seconds. It’s been reconditioned, but I can’t imagine what made you buy it.’ He handed the phone back. ‘There’s your number.’

  ‘Thank you. Now what do I do?’

  ‘Press that one.’ Banbury indicated a button, and watched as Bryant fudged and fuddled his way around the keypad.

  ‘Hello? Who am I speaking to?’ Bryant bellowed.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, I can hear you, hello?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You called me. I mean, I called you but only because you called me first.’

  ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’

  ‘I’m Arthur Bryant. What do you want?’

  ‘You called me.’

  ‘No, you called me.’

  ‘Dear God, if I ever get like you when I’m old just shoot me,’ Banbury muttered.

  ‘You just rang this number a minute ago.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said a mature Germanic voice. ‘I was given it by a lady at your division. My name is Irma Bederke. I work in the Human Resources Department of Farcom. It’s a telecommunications company.’

  ‘If you’re trying to sell me broadband, you’re wasting your time,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m broke.’

  ‘No, I’m in the building opposite the apartments at number 376 Northumberland Avenue. I was working late on Monday evening.’

  ‘You mean you witnessed what happened?’

  ‘Well, I certainly saw something. One of your officers called on me but I was out. She left her number.’

  ‘Are you there now?’

  ‘I’m in my office, yes.’

  ‘Can we come over and talk to you?’

  ‘I am on my lunch break so I suppose it will be all right.’

  Bryant and Banbury left the penthouse and made their way across the road. Ms Bederke was waiting for them in the company’s blankly corporate reception area. A small-boned, elegant woman in her late sixties, she led the way to a conference room at the front of the building. ‘We shouldn’t be disturbed in here,’ she told them.

  ‘Do you mind if I record a statement?’ asked Banbury, holding up his phone.

  ‘Please go ahead. There’s not an awful lot to tell, really. I didn’t realise what I’d seen at the time, but I heard about the death on the news last night, and thought back about it. I was going to report it anyway. First I called the Westminster police, but I couldn’t speak to the right person. Then I got your message.’

  Banbury repeated Ms Bederke’s contact details, then asked her to explain what she saw.

  ‘I was required to work late on Monday night. The company is restructuring and we’re short-staffed. I’ve been here longer than anyone else in the organisation and know where everything is. I had hoped to finish by eight-thirty P.M. so I could catch the eight forty-five train from Charing Cross to Dartford, but the work ran over. I was packing up to leave—’

  ‘What time was this?’ interrupted Bryant.

  ‘A few minutes after nine, perhaps ten past, maybe a little later. I don’t wear a watch but there’s a clock in my office. I put on my coat and walked to the window to see if it was still raining. I’d heard the thunder, but you know what London rain is like, you can usually get away without taking an umbrella. I could see there was some kind of party going on because there was a doorman standing at the entrance to the building, and I could see lots of people in the big semicircular room upstairs. The floor above that is level with my office window. I was idly looking across, wondering who they were—as you do—and while I was watching, the window suddenly opened. It went up with a bang.’

  ‘Did you see who opened it?’

  ‘No, but then, I wasn’t properly looking—and it was raining very hard. There was no light on in the room—I suppose I noticed because I usually go home before the tenants arrive, and it was interesting to see who lived there. It looked like a very glamorous party. While I was watching, it appeared.’

  ‘What appeared?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want you to think I imagine things—I’m really not the imaginative type—but I couldn’t help but think it odd.’

  ‘Please, go on.’

  ‘There was this—thing. A horrible old gnome with yellow striped arms and a bright red face. It had a fat stomach and was wearing a pointed cap. Just under a metre tall, I suppose. It suddenly appeared at the window. It was carrying something wrapped up in its arms. It threw the bundle from the window and stepped back into the dark. I won’t forget the face, because it was so creepy.’

  Bryant dragged out a pencil stub attached to a ring-bound notebook and handed it to her. ‘Do you think you could draw what you saw?’

  ‘I’m no artist but I can try.’

  For the next few minutes, Ms Bederke worked on her sketch. Finally she tilted her head and approved. ‘That’s what it looked like. It reminded me of something from one of my childhood storybooks.’

  She handed back the pad with a perfect rendition of Mr Punch on it.

  DS Janice Longbright alighted at Bermondsey tube station, stepped out into the drizzle and made her way up Jamaica Road toward Rose Marquand’s house. Here, pale cohorts of low-income houses were arranged in regiments beside the dual carriageway, their front doors turned away from the traffic. Longbright saw the problem at once; residents had to walk twice as far to reach the main entrances of their homes. It would be easier to cut through the alleyways behind the terraces, but a lot less safe. The grim utility design of Hadley Street was an architectural admittance of defeat. As she rang the bell of number 14, she wondered if the planners had ever bothered to visit their designs.

  A heavyset, tracksuited girl with a blond ponytail and cheap hoop earrings opened the door. She stared without speaking, her weight hefted to one considerable hip.

  ‘I’d like to see Rose Marquand,’ Longbright told her, indicating her Unit badge.

  ‘She can’t move about much,’ cautioned the girl. ‘I’m looking after her. I’ve had to move her bed into the lounge. It’s a bit of a mess in there.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Longbright, thinking, You should see my flat. I haven’t tidied the place up since Liberty died.

  The house smelled of stale fried food. It had been lived in too long with the windows sealed. Rose Marquand was younger than Longbright had expected. Her dyed auburn hair had been newly permed, and as Longbright studied the pyjama-clad figure seated before her, she suspected there was little wrong with Anna’s mother apart from obesity and a desire to be waited on.

  ‘I was reliant on my daughter for everything,’ said Rose, clearly reluctant to thumb the off switch on her TV remote. ‘I don’t get around to the shops much. The plumbing’s packed up in the other bathroom and I can’t fix it. And the magpies are nicking all my nice seaside stones from the garden. The place is falling down around my ears.’

  ‘What’s actually wrong with
you?’ asked Longbright, nettled.

  ‘The doctors don’t know. I stay well away from them—they’re no bloody use at all. Anyway, I’ve got Sheena to look after me now.’ I bet they told you to eat less and get some exercise, thought Longbright. You certainly didn’t waste any time replacing your daughter.

  ‘She seems like a good kid,’ said Rose. ‘They don’t feed her properly at home so she’s staying here.’

  ‘I understand Anna had trouble with the local youths. What happened?’

  ‘The Hagan family, they live in the corner house, grandparents, parents, kids and their kids, none of them ever had a job in their life, all on the fiddle, all ex-cons. Ashley Hagan, he’s the oldest boy, he’s the worst. We had our car broken into and the radio nicked, had to get rid of it in the end. And Anna had her phone nicked twice, once from the counter in the kitchen—’

  ‘You mean someone broke in?’

  ‘No, she left the back door unlocked by accident. It don’t pay to leave anything unlocked around here.’

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘Yeah, of course, and Anna told them who did it, but they did nothing.’

  ‘Did she have proof that it was Ashley Hagan?’

  ‘She didn’t need proof, everyone knows that when someone gets robbed in this street it’s always the Hagans.’

  ‘The problem is that she would have needed a little more evidence to pursue the matter further,’ Longbright explained. ‘I checked with your local constabulary and they agree the Hagans are most likely involved in much of the crime that goes on in this neighbourhood. But they also get blamed for everything else that happens.’

  ‘Seems to me the police are on the wrong bloody side.’

  ‘They’ve conducted raids on the house looking for stolen goods several times in the past, but haven’t found anything.’

  ‘That’s ’cause the Hagans keep it in a lock-up on the estate.’