The Memory of Blood

by Christopher Fowler

  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 turnoff, 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, he saw 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 Flash-man 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 anymore. 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 was 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.

  Jack Renfield had run the London Marathon four times, but he had been lighter in those days. He had seen the figure burst from the back of the barn, and had taken off after him. But he didn’t know the terrain and couldn’t see where he was going. He knew he might break his ankle at any moment as they charged across the roughly ploughed, rock-strewn field. There were drops and ditches all around.

  He fell once, then again, and wished there was someone other than Bryant and May with him. Looking up he could still see the figure hopping an
d flailing over the earth trenches, heading for the cover of tall trees. If he reached them there would be no chance of finding him.

  Renfield lifted his aching legs higher and jumped over the deepening ridges. The figure he was pursuing looked like a scarecrow come to life, presumably because of the greatcoat that flapped about him. Perhaps it was a woman—a girl, even—the figure was light and had immense agility. The chase was played out in total silence, with only the rain and the wind talking in the trees. A large bird beat past him, knocking him back. Renfield was not easily stopped, and climbed up on his feet again, now caked in reeking mud.

  But there, just ahead, was an insurmountable problem. A black, wide line crossed the field—a deep-sided brook too wide to jump. He knew he was likely to break a leg if he threw himself in, and would not be able to get up the sheer earth bank of the other side. He watched helplessly as the hopping figure reached the treeline and vanished inside it.

  ‘Don’t stand any closer or I’ll brain you,’ said Dan Banbury. The CSM had been on his way home to Croydon when he received the call, and was quickly able to divert his route. Bryant had been about to walk on the plywood boards, but thought better of it. Instead he was forced to lean forward from behind Banbury’s tape line.

  ‘Nice pitchfork shot,’ remarked Bryant. ‘Would he have survived if he’d fallen the other way?’

  ‘Yes, probably. Bad luck. Slippy shoes. Expensive leather soles. He’d have lived if he’d been wearing trainers.’

  ‘Any dabs on the handle?’

  ‘Given the history of this case, what do you think?’ Banbury gave him a withering look.

  At the front of the barn, May was talking to medics from the Kent Ambulance Service. They were attempting to find a staffed regional local police constabulary, but so far had had no luck.

  ‘The dummy’s a bit of a giveaway,’ said Bryant, opening a packet of Rolos. ‘You’d better put a call out for Ella Maltby, John. And see what’s happened to Renfield.’

  ‘We’re in a barn,’ said Banbury. ‘I’m not going to look for fibres and specks of dirt, the whole place is made up of them. There’s half a foot of mud in here. I’ve got at least six sets of prints made by wellingtons.’

  ‘Just do what you can.’ Bryant unstuck caramel from his dental plate. ‘We’d better find out who this place belongs to. A local copper would be useful. John, you having any luck?’

  ‘We’re still trying,’ said May. ‘Can I send the med team in yet?’

  ‘Dan, can we take out the body?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got all I need there.’

  The detectives watched as Robert Kramer was unpinned from his position on the barn floor and removed. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Bryant. ‘We should have caught him before this happened. I honestly thought both victim and criminal were equally duplicitous, but now I can see I made one fundamental error.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Anger takes many forms. Kramer came here unbidden. It means he was arrogant enough to think he could deal with whomever he was meeting. I’d assumed we had got in the way of a victim and an attacker who were equally matched. They say cruelty is the English disease, don’t they? But from here it looks like they had very different temperaments. Kramer had the coldness that allowed him to retain perspective. His killer is someone whose frustration makes him prone to outbursts of violence. Now he’s finished what he set out to achieve. It’s over. We’ve lost him.’

  ‘It has to be somebody who was at the party, so if he tries to vanish, we’ll know who’s gone.’

  ‘Yes, but if he’s smart he’ll stay in plain sight and brazen it out, just as he has been doing, and then we’ll never get to discover the truth. I honestly thought we could stop him before he acted again. Four deaths. It’s a total disaster.’

  ‘Jack chased someone across a field and got cut off by a stream.’

  ‘A stream? Tell me you’re joking. He couldn’t cross a stream?’

  ‘It’s pitch black out there and raining hard, and there was quite a drop by the sound of it.’

  ‘Did he at least get a good look at him? Where’s the nearest light?’

  ‘Sevenoaks. Nine miles away. No, he didn’t. Couldn’t even be sure it was male. Just somebody running in a big coat and boots.’

  ‘Well, here’s a how de do. Dan, have you got anything else?’

  Banbury looked up from his position beside the dummy. ‘You could say so.’ He held up something in a pair of tweezers. ‘He makes his own labels. Stitched into the top of the dummy’s spine.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘An Ella Maltby Original.’

  ‘That does it. Let’s get back to London. We can stick Maltby in one of the lockups in Islington and resume in the morning. Make sure she’s not left alone.’

  ‘You’re sure this is over, Arthur?’

  Bryant folded his sweet wrapper into his pocket, thinking. ‘The target of all this torture is dead. The killer is, we hope, about to be apprehended. There’s nothing more we can do except watch the Unit crash and burn after Kasavian gets wind of this. I guess we should all start looking for jobs again. Oh, and by the way, I’m having my home taken away from me tomorrow. All in all it’s the end of a perfect week.’

  The Sunday morning sky was milky and soft, its light blurring the buildings and fading the edges of the streets. It was the kind of early summer’s day London excelled in, burning off to a clear blue hemisphere by eleven, clouding again by three, finally clearing for a gold sunset.

  At seven A.M. in the warehouse on 231 Caledonian Rd, the Unit staff began sleepily arriving. Meera boiled spiced tea and Longbright made fresh coffee. Colin brought croissants and sausage rolls. Bryant stood on the tiny back balcony sucking at his pipe, his forehead creased in thought. Renfield was on the top floor hitting a punchbag Bimsley had rigged to the ceiling. And Ella Maltby was brought down from Islington Police Station for questioning.

  ‘I have never seen such unprofessional behaviour in my life,’ said Maltby’s lawyer, Edgar Digby, an oleaginous young man with a mane of slicked black hair, a Turnbull & Asser shirt and an air of outraged entitlement. ‘You take my client to a police station and leave her there for collection by your Unit without any explanation of her rights or what’s going on, and now you expect her to cooperate with you?’

  ‘We had to act quickly in the interests of public safety,’ May explained. ‘Your client is the chief suspect in an investigation involving four deaths. Her explanation for her whereabouts during the times of these events is uncorroborated, and items belonging to her were found at the sites of three of the crimes. I think you’d better let her answer our questions, because any further silence from Ms Maltby is merely going to build the case against her.’

  ‘My client’s silence is no indication of her guilt. Under British law—’

  ‘Drop it, Edgar,’ said Ella Maltby. ‘Let’s hear what they have to say.’

  ‘Robert Kramer was killed last night, and this was found beside his body.’ May opened the plastic bag containing the dummy.

  ‘Your label is sewn into the back of it.’

  ‘This is our most popular model,’ said Maltby. ‘We sell them all over the world. Madame Tussauds have around thirty, which they use in background scenes. The New Strand Theatre has two. Let me see.’ She took a look inside the bag. ‘These are supplied naked. Our clients add the clothes.’

  ‘Dan, get the skirt and jacket off and find out where they’re from,’ said May. ‘In your statement you say—once again—that you were home all evening.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t go out much. Is that a crime?’

  ‘Did you talk to anyone?’

  ‘No, I was working on some new designs. I don’t email or use the phone when I’m working, it’s too distracting.’

  May knew he was on shaky ground. Ella Maltby’s car had not been driven in days. Banbury had found no mud or dirty clothes at her house. There was nothing to indicate that she had left her home in twenty-fou
r hours. ‘Somebody is clearly anxious to place you at the crime scenes,’ he pointed out. ‘Do you have any idea who that might be?’

  ‘Is this the part where you ask me if I have any enemies?’ Maltby scoffed. ‘No, I don’t to my knowledge. People just dislike me in general. I’m not a sociable woman, but to my knowledge that’s not a punishable offence, either.’

  ‘We’re going to get nowhere here,’ Longbright whispered in May’s ear. ‘Let her go. Jack can arrange for someone to keep an eye on her.’

  ‘You’re right,’ May sighed. ‘I’m stuck. How can this have happened? We have four bodies and no investigation. This is humiliating.’

  After Ella Maltby’s release had been secured, May went back to his office and sat on the edge of his partner’s desk. ‘I hate to say this, Arthur, but for once I really need one of your crackpot ideas. We’re getting nowhere.’

  Bryant looked at him steadily. ‘How much are you prepared to trust me?’ he asked.

  ‘Right now, I’ll go anywhere.’

  ‘All right. What do we know about our killer? He’s very angry, and very good at hiding his temper most of the time, but sometimes it erupts and becomes uncontrollable. He lost control with Noah, and again with Kramer himself. That means we might be able to goad him into an admission of guilt. Remember, everything hinges on what took place that first night at the party. What could have happened to make the killer calmly go upstairs and attack a child? And how the hell did he do it, assuming he did and a puppet didn’t just come to life and shake a baby to death?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I imagine he saw the puppets and they gave him an idea.’

  ‘I suppose so. Then he followed the idea through, thinking it was a way to rattle Kramer. And now that everything’s behind him, he thinks he’s got away with it. But he can never stop being vigilant, because he knows we’re after him and will stay on his case—at least, for as long as we and the investigation are still open. But it could happen again; he’ll have the confidence to act on his anger, knowing that he managed to deceive everyone before. What we have to do now is lure him out in the open.’