Bryant & May 09; The Memory of Blood

by Christopher Fowler

  “There’s something else,” said Mona, always happy to be a harbinger of ill will. “Gail Strong, our so-called ASM, was giving our leading man the come-on from the moment she set eyes on him at the party. I’m RADA-trained, you know. I miss nothing.” May made another note.

  The corpulent Alex Lansdale had been a restaurant critic, a film critic, an art critic and now a theatre critic. He explained that he had been born to criticize others for a living, and made more money than any of those he lambasted. His ultimate ambition was to become a TV talent show judge. Lansdale sat back in the sofa, his tiny grey eyes lost in a basin of unhealthy flesh, and held forth to his audience.

  “You must understand, Mr May, that Robert Kramer is a terribly clever man when it comes to money, and an imbecile when it comes to art. He knows what the public wants, but he couldn’t tell Nijinsky from Stravinsky. Basically, he’s a property developer with no taste. Have you seen The Two Murderers? Oh, it’s smartly written, I suppose, but pure sensation, gore and sex for the masses. It’ll make a fortune, but in my opinion it’s meretricious trash.”

  “So it’s safe to say you don’t like Robert Kramer,” May pushed.

  “I’m not paid to have an opinion about him one way or the other,” Lansdale replied. “I’m paid to cover the show.”

  “You broke ranks to stab the play in the back. Yet you still showed up to the party. Why was that?”

  “I’m as entitled as anyone. My readers expect me to be rude, and I try not to disappoint them. Besides, I had a – ” He stopped himself.

  “You had a what?”

  “Nothing. Please go on.”

  May switched tactics. “Who do you think killed his son?”

  Lansdale puckered his dimples, thinking. “It’s usually the mother, isn’t it? Postnatal depression. I think the wife’s positively unhinged. You hear all kinds of rumours about her, how she married him because she’d heard how much money he’d made and found herself stuck in a hellish relationship. Maybe she was pushed to the end of her tether. She’s out of her depth, pretty as porcelain and a lot more fragile.”

  “Judith Kramer is a saint,” said Gregory Baine a few minutes later. “You have no idea what she’s had to put up with.” The producer helped himself to fresh strong coffee, which was probably a bad idea. His fingers fluttered restlessly in his lap and brushed at his shirt. He kept pawing at the iPhone on the next sofa seat, as if expecting momentously bad news to arrive at any second.

  “How’s the general atmosphere between you all?” May asked. “Amicable? Fractious?”

  “I’m sure you’d like to hear that we’re all at each other’s throats, but we’re not,” Baine replied. “It’s one of the most ego-free productions I’ve ever worked on. We all have our designated roles and we stick to them. Outsiders always assume we’re either friends or rivals, but that’s not true these days. Modern theatre is a business like any other. You draw up contracts and budgets, take meetings, put in your hours and go home at night. But money’s a problem. Cash flow is a nightmare, and I’m the one who takes the blame if anything goes wrong.”

  “Do you think what happened to Noah Kramer is a personal affair? Nothing to do with anyone else at the party?”

  “This is a private matter between Robert and Judith. The rest of the company is hardly known to them. They’re just employees.”

  “You don’t count yourself in that group?”

  “No. I’ve known Robert for years.”

  “I understand Mr Kramer was primarily a property developer. What made him get into the theatrical business?”

  “He fell in love with the building, and when the property report came in he found out that it still had a theatre licence, simple as that. He saw a way to make easy money on a relatively small investment. But he wouldn’t have been able to do it without Ray Pryce.”

  May checked his notes. “The playwright.”

  “Ray went to Robert with the play already written. Robert’s an astute businessman but he hasn’t got a creative bone in his body. Luckily, Robert listened to his advisors and Ray chose to stick with him.”

  The director, Russell Haddon, agreed. He had nothing but compliments for his team and the company. But May noticed they were all being careful when it came to discussing Robert Kramer’s relationship with his wife. The detectives were being politely but firmly treated as outsiders. The theatre company had closed ranks against them.

  Flicking back through the pages on his desk, May became aware that the case was starting to point in a single direction. To all appearances it seemed that Robert Kramer had found out about his wife’s affair and had killed their child in a fit of uncontrollable anger.

  Marcus Sigler looked uncomfortable from the moment he sat down. He glanced around and dropped his voice, as if expecting to be spied on. “Am I being singled out?” he wanted to know.

  “No, we’re talking to everyone.” May held him with a level gaze. “The main reason bad things happen to loved ones is that someone close to them gets angry, and I wondered how angry you are right now.”

  “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

  “Let’s start with your relationship to Judith Kramer. I understand you met her before she got married, and began an affair with her that’s still continuing – ”

  “Oh, Jesus – ”

  “Who initiated it?”

  “It was a mutual thing.”

  “Did you ask her to leave her husband?”

  “Oh, Christ.” Marcus pushed back in his seat and covered his face with his hands. “No, you don’t understand. I care for her but I’m glad she married Robert. She is too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she got what she always wanted. The best of both worlds.”

  “A successful husband and an attractive lover.”

  “She also became a mother, something else she’d always wanted.”

  “Don’t you think it was a dangerous idea to continue seeing her?”

  Sigler stared silently down at his perfectly manicured nails.

  “How does it work, in the practical sense? You wait for Mr Kramer to go to the theatre, then say you’re heading off somewhere on business? You send Mrs Kramer a coded telephone message? What?”

  “Look, it just happens. We find ways. Theatre people work unusual hours. It has to be like this.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You could have stopped seeing her.”

  “You have no right to judge me.”

  “I’d agree with you if I were a regular police officer, but I’m not. I’m paid to hold opinions. You could be the cause of what’s happened, have you thought about that? Robert Kramer might have done this to get back at his unfaithful wife. And he might want to hurt you too.”

  “No. Until Monday at least, I thought he couldn’t know about us.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He’s not the kind of man who can bottle up his emotions. You should hear him in the theatre sometimes. When he gets angry everyone knows about it.”

  “OK, let me run another situation past you. You killed Noah Kramer to hurt the man who has been mistreating his wife – your lover.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  Another silence extended into discomfort. “I could never harm a child. Any child.”

  “Give me a reason, Mr Sigler. Eliminate yourself from the inquiry, or we’ll be seeing quite a bit more of each other.”

  “You mean I’ll remain under suspicion if I don’t tell you?”

  “It’s looking that way.”

  Sigler glanced around, then leaned closer. “How can I be sure that what I say in this room remains in the strictest confidence?”

  “You can’t. It will stay within the confines of the investigation, but I’m not a priest.”

  Sigler took a deep breath. “The boy was mine.”

  “Noah Kramer was your son?”

  “Yes. Judith told me that she and Robert had had trouble conceiving. They went to get advice, and Robe
rt found out he has an abnormally low sperm count. He thinks he got lucky with Noah, but the hospital told Judith it was unlikely he would ever be able to give her a child. So I did. OK, it was an accident, but that’s what happened.”

  “How did Judith feel when she discovered she was pregnant?”

  “She was happy about it. She wanted to keep the baby – for Robert’s sake.”

  “And Mr Kramer has no inkling about this either?”

  “No, of course not. And now Noah’s dead, so you need to look for someone who wants to hurt me, not him. You wouldn’t have to look very far.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I would have thought it was obvious. Something happened at the party. Somebody must have told Robert about us, and he put two and two together. He took his revenge by killing our child. I don’t know how he covered his tracks, but I’m sure it was him.”

  This idea crystallized an uncomfortable sensation that May had felt since the start of the investigation; everything turned on the conversation at the party. It made the investigation trickier, because Bryant was chronically unable to empathize with the victims and witnesses of crime. This was a problem only May would be able to solve.

  He released Marcus Sigler. As they walked out into the corridor, May collected Ray Pryce from the bench that had been set there. “I just have a few questions for you,” he explained, ushering the playwright into the common room.

  Pryce flattened his hair in an attempt to smarten himself as he sheepishly entered, clearly uncomfortable with being in a police office, even one that looked like a cross between a student bedsit and a junkyard.

  “I need to get certain facts clear in my head,” began May. “You went to Robert Kramer with a play you’d written. I can’t find any previous CV for you. Have you always been a playwright?”

  Pryce looked embarrassed. “No, before this I was working for the government.”

  “As a playwright?”

  “No, I was in the parks and gardens department. I’d excelled at English at school. But I didn’t think I had any talent. I wrote for my own amusement, at evenings and weekends. I finished this play, The Two Murderers, and didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t have an agent, so I sent it direct to Robert Kramer. He forwarded it to Russell Haddon, and the director hired me.”

  “How did you know who to send it to?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If you didn’t have an agent.”

  “I read in The Stage that Kramer was opening the New Strand Theatre. It’s a hard field to break into.” Pryce seemed unsettled in his skin, the kind of man who transmitted his discomfort to others. “I thought because he was new to the business himself he might have more of an open mind about hiring someone with no previous experience.”

  “I haven’t seen the play but I hear it’s incredibly gruesome. Like that kind of stuff, do you?”

  “The audiences do. And actually, yes, I do too. I’ve always been a big fan of horror films. Theatrical styles come and go, but a good scary plot never goes out of fashion.”

  “People keep telling me that there are parallels between the events of the play and the performers – I mean, in terms of jealousies, rivalries and so on. That true?”

  “I hate to disillusion you, Mr May, but I understand that actors say this about virtually every production. The truth is, I wrote the play before I’d ever met any of the performers, and I didn’t have a say in the casting. That was down to Russell Haddon.”

  “Isn’t there a puppet that comes to life in the show or something similar?”

  “It’s a dummy – a wax dummy comes to life at the end of the first act and murders a girl. It’s a traditional image that has precedent in many films and plays of the past. I’m new but I’ve done plenty of research on the subject.”

  “I see. Perhaps you’d better let me have a copy of the script. Just in case anything else happens.” May found himself taking an irrational dislike to the little writer. There was a paradoxical arrogance in his humility that irked the detective.

  “Sorry, I don’t have one on me,” said Pryce, folding his arms. “Is there anything else?”

  ♦

  “I’ve got one in my bag you can have,” said Larry Hayes, the young wardrobe master. “I always keep a script on me.” He worked closely with Ella Maltby, the set and props designer, and had asked to be interviewed with her. Together, they had been responsible for creating a brooding, Gothic feel to the play. Larry was pierced and tattooed in every visible spot, with a splayed pack of playing cards stitched in red and blue up his right arm and a chain of Asian tigers running around his left. He proved friendly and helpful, but could add no further insights into Robert Kramer’s relationships with the members of his company.

  “Yeah, I’m in charge of bringing the dummy to life,” Ella Maltby agreed, “but that doesn’t make me a suspect, does it?”

  “Why would you think you were?” asked May.

  “Because there’s a rumour going around that the kid was chucked from the window by a walking Mr Punch puppet. Which rather puts me in the frame, don’t you think?” Maltby’s tone suggested a prickly, aggressive personality. She was solid-framed and crop-headed, the self-consciously creative type one usually saw in Camden Town or Hoxton.

  “I’m more concerned with motive, Ms Maltby. This doesn’t appear to have been a premeditated act, so I’m looking for people who have some kind of grudge against Mr Kramer and his wife.”

  “Then that rules out most of us,” said Larry Hayes. “I mean, unless we had a death wish about our careers. If we upset the boss we could kill the show.”

  “Fair point,” May conceded. “Any idea who might want to do that?”

  “None whatsoever. I’m production, which means I’m basically backstage staff. If you’re trying to find someone who bears a grudge, you’d be better off asking Mr Kramer himself.”

  ♦

  Finally, May saw Robert Kramer for a second time. The theatre owner was displeased at being retained and impatient to be on his way, but submitted to May’s questions with the resignation of a man who was used to attending long, dull meetings. He perched on the common room’s ratty sofa, his ankles crossed at his red socks, and watched with distaste rain leaking through the warehouse’s rusted window frames. May knew it was impossible to mention what he had discovered without incurring further threats of lawyers, something he was anxious to delay for as long as possible.

  “Enemies,” he said instead. “Family stresses or people you meet in the course of your working day. I need an honest appraisal from you. Anyone you might consider a risk?”

  “Plenty, in financial terms,” answered Kramer. “You don’t rise in business without making tough decisions. But there’s no one so upset with me that he’d shake my son to death and throw him from a window.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  It was the first time Kramer looked less than confident. His gaze lost its focus, as if he feared what he might imagine. “I don’t know. Something evil. Something cruel. I can’t understand how anyone could visit such horror upon us. I honestly can’t. Maybe our lives were too perfect and something terrible had to happen. I watched my wife sleeping this morning, and I thought this will destroy us. You don’t get over the death of your only child, not when you’ve tried so long and hard to bring him into the world. I haven’t always been a good man, but I don’t deserve this.”

  May kept his counsel, but wondered how long it would be before the lie of the Kramers’ marriage escaped. Secrets had a habit of slowly becoming visible, like images appearing on photographic paper. Crime often exposed hidden shames to the light.

  He watched from the window as Kramer left the building. Standing on the edge of the pavement searching for taxis in the rain, the tycoon seemed a bewildered, lonely figure. May wondered what his partner would have made of these people, but Bryant had chosen to hide himself away in the office, preparing an archive for his rare books. The last time May looked in
on him he appeared to be dismantling a bookcase and searching behind it for something. He showed no interest whatsoever in the interviews, and rudely sent May away to carry out what he considered to be the prosaic end of the investigation.

  It was no good. May knew he would have to find out what was going on by himself.

  ∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

  15

  Storybook

  Arthur Bryant couldn’t handle cases that required an understanding of human relationships, and would take off into lunatic new directions if left unchecked. Someone had to keep an eye on him.

  May peered round the door of their office and watched Bryant knocking the contents of his pipe into the brainpan of the Tibetan skull on his desk. Half a bookcase had been emptied and two immense stacks towered on each side of the desk, framing the old man with playscripts, manuals, comics, art books, histories, encyclopedias, miscellanies and a number of surprisingly sleazy pulp thrillers.

  “I knew it,” May said with a sigh. “You’ve been thinking again.”

  Bryant widened his watery blue eyes in surprise. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “I’m attempting to archive some of my more esoteric but occasionally useful research volumes. Now that you’ve finished holding your little chats, we can talk. Do come in, and shut the door behind you.”

  “No loopy diversions this time, OK?” May warned, settling himself in another overstuffed armchair that had appeared in the room. Bryant seemed to accumulate furniture wherever he went. “It’s a fairly straightforward case, despite the circumstances of the death.”

  “What do you mean?”

  May pointed to the nearest stack of books on the desk. He could see spines which read: The History of Icelandic Hospitals, Confessions of a Soho Call Girl, Phrenology for Beginners, The Role of Duty in the Operas of Gilbert & Sullivan, A Treatise on the Correlation Between Victorian Dental Care & Naval Policy and – open on top of the pile – Poetic Justice: The Morality of Dramatic Puppetry. “I mean there’s no point in going through all this stuff, hidden meanings about puppets.”