“There are so many different levels of guilt. Arthur was right, this entire city is complicit. Nobody is innocent.”
♦
Janice Longbright glanced at the watch Bryant had bought her for her thirtieth birthday. The date dial ran backwards for some reason, but the time was accurate. Seven minutes to midnight. Her nerve endings were buzzing. If we have to close the Unit for good, she thought, at least I’ll be able to place an accurate time on the moment when the decision was made.
When she couldn’t take it any longer, she headed for the bar and ordered herself a large gin and tonic.
“You’re not supposed to drink before midnight,” said Renfield, leaning next to her.
“Jack, I’m watching my career collapse here, and so are you.” Ignoring his protestations, she ordered him a beer. She raised her glass to his. “This should be a relief, but I just feel terrible. I can’t believe we failed. In the past we always managed to come up with something at the last minute.”
“Hey.” He stooped and lightly kissed her bruised cheek. “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages. Slap my face if you want, I don’t care. We won’t be working together any more after this. I just tendered my resignation.”
♦
“Hey, did you just see that?” said Colin Bimsley. “Renfield just got a snog in with Janice. What’s going on?”
“It’s four minutes to midnight,” said Meera. “We’re under orders to open the doors at twelve. The old man’s given up and gone outside with his pipe. And you were convinced he was going to crack it. I should have put money on this.”
“Don’t gloat, Meera, it’s really bloody ugly, OK?” He turned away from her, genuinely upset.
“I’m sorry, but I saw this coming. We should never have been given the case. It was a family problem, the husband and wife could no longer stomach the sight of each other, both having affairs, other people meddling, the husband kills the baby in a rage, kills the producer for nicking his funds, muzzles the old bag to shut her up – ”
“Then stabs himself to death with a pitchfork, thrown from the other end of a barn. In front of a life-sized dummy of his wife.”
“No, I saw the dummy – it didn’t look like his wife.”
“Then who did it look like?”
“His first wife.” Meera shrugged. “I found some photos of her online – very frumpy. Same Marks and Spencer skirt.”
“Did you tell the old man this?”
“No, of course not.”
“I think you should. He specifically asked us if we’d come across anything odd.”
“Well, it’s too late now. Almost midnight.”
“There’s still – three minutes left.”
“Right. Tell you what, if the old man pulls something out of the hat now – ”
“You’ll what? You’ll go out on a date with me?”
“No, stupid. Just – ”
“No, come on, Meera, put your money where your mouth is, he’s got the time it takes to smoke a cigarette left. If he still manages to nail someone before midnight, you’ll go on a date with me.”
“All right,” agreed Meera, safe in the knowledge that she had already won, “you’re on.”
♦
Bryant pulled on his pipe and watched the embers turn crimson. “That stuff will kill you,” said Ella Maltby, joining him in the courtyard.
“Doesn’t matter, I’m ninety-five per cent dead anyway,” Bryant replied. “Our brains start atrophying when we turn eighteen. Can I ask you something?”
“Fire away.”
“How did the dummy get to the barn? I mean, it’s a bulky objectj not heavy but awkward. Did you take it there?”
Maltby held his eyes for a long moment. “I guess we must have done. At least, our delivery firm would have. It was bulky because it was one of our pregnant models.”
“Pregnant?”
“That’s right. The order came through from the theatre.”
“Whose name was on it?”
“The producer’s. Gregory Baine had to sign off on everything we bought. It’s the producer’s job to balance the budget.”
“The clothes as well?”
“Everything.”
“Interesting. You don’t suppose the dummy killed him, do you? Like Mr Punch killed the baby?”
“Now you’re making fun of me,” said Maltby. “I’m a craftsperson, not a witch.”
“Fair enough,” Bryant replied. “You can’t blame me for asking.”
“Sorry, can I borrow a light?” Ray Pryce stepped between them. Bryant lit his cigarette for him. “I guess the evening didn’t go as planned. It’s midnight.”
“Yes, I’m a bit disappointed about that,” said Bryant.
“Just a bit?” Ray held the cigarette between them, its smoke wafting across their faces. “I should think you’re devastated. What a terrible way to end a career.”
“Nobody said it was the end of my career.”
“Your boss has been telling everyone that the Unit is finished. He seems quite pleased about it.”
“He always is.” Bryant looked down at Ray’s cigarette. “What brand is that?”
“Oh, my brother gets them abroad. They’re pretty strong. Want one?”
“No, no.” Bryant checked his watch. There were only a few seconds left before the doors had to be thrown open.
“Tell me,” he said. “I suppose you watch actors all the time, don’t you?”
“I have to. They’re the ones who translate my words into actions.”
“But that’s not strictly true, is it, because you’re new to the business. Which would explain it.”
Ray looked puzzled. “Explain what?”
“The way you hold your cigarette.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
There came a cheer from inside; the dungeon doors were being opened.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” said Ray. “We’re free to go.”
“I’m afraid not.” Bryant sucked on his pipe until the bowl glowed demonically. “I’m arresting you.”
“I think not, Mr Bryant. You’re a dog who has had its day.”
Ray turned to go, then looked down. He found himself attached to the courtyard’s waste pipe by a pair of handcuffs.
∨ The Memory of Blood ∧
48
Strung Up
When Colin Bimsley was seven years old his father bought him a black and white cat which he called Bargepole because it kept knocking things over. One day, Bargepole decided to get closer to the blackbirds that lived in the elm tree at the end of the garden and got stuck in its boughs.
Colin’s father suffered from a rare syndrome that affected his spatial awareness. It created an imbalance in the inner ear and was a hereditary condition but, luckily, young Colin had shown no sign of developing the same problem. Until he decided to climb the elm tree.
For once he reached the cool, breeze-swept branches at the top where Bargepole had become lodged, his sense of distance and equilibrium deserted him. The ground telescoped away into the distance and Colin was left as stranded as the cat.
Every time he reached out to Bargepole, trying to lure him nearer, the cat growled in fear and backed further away. What the boy had failed to notice was that he was now in the more precarious position, extended on a sapling branch that could not hold his weight for long. As he felt it break, he glanced back at the ground and saw it rushing towards him like the bottom of a roller-coaster loop. The fence to the railway broke his fall, and his right leg.
The memory of falling never left him. His old nemesis reappeared whenever his diminished spatial awareness struck, and it did now, with a vengeance.
Colin was halfway up a flight of service stairs leading from the brick arches of Tooley Street to the railway line above when sweat broke out across his back and forehead. Ahead of him was Ray Pryce, running with a section of rusted iron downpipe manacled to his wrist. It shouldn’t have happened – but nothing in the c
ase should have happened the way it did, and now they were dealing with the consequences.
Colin fell back against the wall, watching in horror as the stairs rotated beneath his feet. He could not move. From the corner of his eye he saw Jack Renfield and Fraternity DuCaine ascending towards him. All he could do was point upwards.
Renfield and DuCaine powered up and out into the rainswept corridor that ran beside the train lines. The southern routes of London Bridge station fanned out in a vast grey swathe. The bright windows of carriages flickered past, heading for Kent and the coast. Pryce was running hard, but DuCaine’s powerful long legs quickly closed the gap. Renfield could see an escape route; at the end of the alley there was an open section of the fence that led to a buttress of the railway arch. Ray Pryce would be able to get out, but it was a long way to the street below.
Fraternity had almost caught up with him when Ray slipped through and out onto the brick promontory. “Leave him,” Renfield called, “he can’t go anywhere.”
Fraternity answered by jabbing his finger down: Look.
Renfield peered over the side and saw a decorative pillar ten feet below. If Pryce jumped to it, he could jump once more to the pavement and run back into the tunnels beneath the lines. There was a good chance that he would be able to evade capture. “No,” he shouted, “you can’t let him jump!”
But it was too late, and Fraternity was still too far away. Ray saw the pillar and made his move. He was light and managed the fall easily. Now he just had to jump again, and then he would be home free. Renfield fatally hesitated, knowing he should head back down the stairs, but was too far behind. Fraternity was there one second, gone the next. He had jumped, too. Renfield watched as Ray made the second leap.
And right at that moment, something entirely unexpected happened. He stopped in midair, hovering above the street with his arms over his head. It seemed insane, impossible, but there he was, suspended over the road.
Bryant, you’ve got the luck of the bloody devil, Renfield thought, unable to stop himself from grinning.
Ray Pryce had jumped between a pair of all-but-invisible metal guy ropes that ran between the arches. They had been used to suspend signs for the London Dungeon’s last exhibition. Pryce had passed between them but the length of pipe had not. Trapped by his left wrist, desperately trying to ease his weight by holding onto the other guyline with his right hand, he swung helplessly back and forth, unable to move.
A few moments later, he was surrounded by various surprised members of the PCU.
“You’re too late,” Ray shouted down at them. “It’s over. I did what I set out to do. You know I did. Whatever happens now, remember this. I won.”
∨ The Memory of Blood ∧
49
Temple Magic
“Why on earth did he run?” Longbright wondered. “Why didn’t he simply shrug off your accusation? He’s a master liar. He makes stuff up for a living.”
“The handcuffs,” said May simply. “I’ve seen Arthur use that trick before. He only does it when he’s desperate. To some people it’s something tangible, like holding a gun. Maybe a part of him wanted the final chapter in place. It could only truly be over with his arrest.”
“A poetic idea,” said Bryant, “but he still saw an escape route and took it. He realized that the pipe was rusted through, stuck his foot against the wall and pulled hard, then ran.” He sauntered to the centre of the room and looked about. “Well, go on then, I know you’re all dying to ask.” He loved an audience, especially when he knew things they didn’t.
“Talk about leaving it to the last minute – no, the last second,” said Banbury.
“I just couldn’t be sure,” Bryant admitted. “Would anyone begrudge me a pipe on this occasion?”
He didn’t bother to wait for a reply. Wind and rain buffeted the windows of the common room. The storm was so violent that they could hear the roof creaking. It was nearly two in the morning but nobody wanted to go home. Instead, Dan Banbury, Colin Bimsley, Meera Mangeshkar, Fraternity DuCaine, Janice Longbright, John May, Raymond Land and Giles Kershaw were gathered together on the threadbare sofas with a few beers, waiting to piece together the thinking that had resulted in Ray Pryce occupying an Islington police cell.
“Go on then, stop milking the suspense, what caught him?” asked Meera.
“The annoying thing was that I suppose I knew from Wednesday morning – subconsciously, I mean. I told you your time lines weren’t going to help, but they did. The answer was right there in front of me all the time, pinned to the wall. Marcus Sigler, Ray Pryce and Gail Strong were the three on the fire escape. But Sigler’s and Strong’s times didn’t match. Strong reckoned she was there a few minutes after Sigler – she said she saw him coming in, but according to the guests in the lounge she and Sigler left the room at the same time. If Sigler wasn’t in or outside the toilet, he was on the fire escape smoking, so how could he and Gail Strong not have seen each other?”
“We know that one of them was lying, we already established that,” said May.
“Yes, but I wanted to know why. And the answer lay in Janice’s suspicions, which led me back to the testimony of the actress Mona Williams, who said that despite the fact that Marcus Sigler was conducting a passionate long-term affair with Mrs Kramer, Gail Strong had been giving him the come-on that night, right from the moment she set eyes on him, and they left the room together. They made out on the fire escape and lied to protect themselves. Sigler and Strong came back in, and Sigler saw Ray Pryce passing them in the corridor, so he asked the writer to back up his new story. What he didn’t know was that Pryce had just committed murder.”
“What gave him away?”
“Arrogance,” answered Bryant, sucking hard on his pipe and filling the room with the scent of burning hay. “He had to rub my nose in his success. He should have simply kept out of my way.”
“I don’t understand. What did he do?”
“He asked to borrow a light, and then smoked in front of me.”
“Is that all?” Land was horrified. “Please tell me you have something that will stand up in court.”
“Don’t worry about that, old sausage. The cigarette was just the final tip-off. Everyone knows Ray Pryce is a smoker. He’s talked incessantly about his nicotine patches and trying to give up. He barged in while I was talking to Ella Maltby and stood right in front of me, with his cigarette – herbal, incidentally – like this.” He indicated the method with his pipe, holding it a few inches below his chin. “But nobody smokes like that. I talked to actors who don’t smoke, and one of the first things they have to learn is how to smoke convincingly. Actors always need to do something with their hands, so they like smoking roles. Smokers know they annoy non-smokers and become wary around them, so they always hold their cigarettes away to one side.”
“I fail to see – ” Land began.
“Yes, Raymondo, you usually do, but we’re happy to cover for you. When I looked at Ray Pryce standing so close, I suddenly realized he was a non-smoker. Now, if that was the case, it changed everything. On the time line for the Kramers’ party that Janice provided, Pryce is marked down as leaving the room to smoke a cigarette. So the trip was wrong.”
“But Marcus Sigler saw him on the back staircase,” objected Banbury.
“Marcus lied to cover the fact that he was on the staircase with Gail Strong. At Strong’s request he changed his timing so that nobody could place them together. So where did Ray Pryce disappear to? He went upstairs to the baby’s room.”
“Why?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s just say that he was extremely angry, and very good at hiding it. Now, we know the nursery door was unlocked because Judith and Robert Kramer both expressed surprise when they got upstairs and couldn’t open it. So Pryce slipped inside and approached the cot, and the baby started to cry.”
“Was he intending to kill the child right then?”
“That’s hard to say. It’ll be interesting t
o hear him in court. I think he had murderous intentions, but maybe they failed him when he saw the child. Well, he needed to shut Noah up, but already his sense of self-preservation was working and he was worried that someone would find out that he had been in the room. He didn’t want to leave prints. And he wanted to silence the baby. So he grabbed the Mr Punch from the wall behind him and waved it about, hoping to amuse the boy.
“And when Noah cried even harder, Pryce let Mr Punch pick up the baby. He wrapped the figure’s hands around the child and rocked him, and the rocking turned into throttling, and then Noah Kramer was silenced. So he ran to the window and shoved it open, and let Mr Punch shake the baby out into the street. Downstairs, on the fire escape, Marcus Sigler heard what he thought was a can of paint sliding. What he’d heard was the window going up above him. Pryce stepped back, threw the dummy on the floor, and the rain squalled in, soaking the rug. The water raised the nap of the rug, lifting impressions. If you want to remove chair marks from a carpet, you just put an ice cube in each dent. I got that tip from The Good Wife’s Guide to Housekeeping, 1935. Right, so Pryce was back on the door side of the empty cot. The deed was done. But what if somebody came up? He needed to buy himself some time. The Yale key was in the door, but of course there was no way of locking it from the inside without remaining in the room. Except that there was.”
“I really don’t see how.” May frowned.
“Come on. Ray Pryce is a writer. He spends his life coming up with outlandish ideas. And now he had a brainwave. A few minutes earlier, Mona Williams had sat on his glasses and broken them. The right arm had snapped off. He had put the broken glasses in his pocket.
“It was such a simple idea. I tried it myself and it works perfectly every time. He stuck the arm of the glasses through the hole in the end of the key, closed the door and went outside. Then he simply ran his credit card down through the gap in the door. It was enough to flip the key, and now that it was no longer upright, the arm of the glasses simply fell out onto the floor. He had been gone no longer than the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.
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