The Memory of Blood(17)

May brought them inside the building, took the lift to the apartment and found a quiet room where they could be interviewed in comfort. Judith Kramer was in a bad state. He called in a female medic, who administered a mild sedative.

DS Janice Longbright and Dan Banbury, the Unit’s crime scene manager, were concluding the basic formalities. ‘Take Dan up with you,’ Longbright told May. ‘Colin and I can handle the rest.’ With seamless efficiency, she took over from the detectives and outlined the next stages of the investigative process to the distraught couple.

On the staircase to the top floor the detectives were met by Jack Renfield. ‘Some of the guests are getting restless and making noises about calling lawyers,’ he warned. ‘We’re taking standard witness statements and contact details. They’re expecting to be released as soon as they’ve talked to us.’

‘I don’t care what they’re expecting,’ snapped Bryant. ‘This looks like a murder investigation. Hold them here until we’ve examined the nursery.’ He headed up with May and Banbury. Renfield taped off the stairs and followed them.

‘You’re putting on plastics, both of you,’ said Dan, handing them gloves and shoe covers. ‘I know what you’re like.’

‘I’m not wearing a hairnet,’ Bryant warned. ‘You know my hair type. You’ve found enough of it scattered around past murder sites.’ Carefully skirting around the splintered door, he entered the room.

‘Robert Kramer says it took four hard kicks to break in,’ said May.

‘You can see why, too,’ Banbury replied, kneeling to study the door. ‘Quality wood, look at that.’

A standard brass Yale key was inserted on the inside, with the lock bolt still protruding into the displaced strike plate. ‘It was definitely locked on the inside. Why would the nursery have an internal key?’

‘They’ve only been living here a short time,’ said Renfield. ‘According to Mr Kramer, the previous tenant had a lodger. This was the lodger’s room. He fitted the lock, and they hadn’t got around to removing it. The baby was less than a year old, so he wouldn’t have been able to accidentally lock himself in. One thing’s for sure. He didn’t throw himself out the window, even if he could have climbed from his cot and got up to the sill.’

The window was still wide open, the curtains sodden. The cot stood at least three feet from the exterior wall. Bryant leaned out for a good look. ‘Come away from that,’ Banbury instructed. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘I’m not going to touch anything, all right?’ Bryant shot him a scowl.

‘Mrs Kramer insists the window was down and locked when she last came up,’ said Renfield.

‘When was that?’

‘About half an hour earlier.’

‘Whoever did this didn’t come in from outside the window. The carpet’s soaking, but I can’t see any footprints.’

‘With all due respect, Mr Bryant, your eyesight isn’t anything to write home about. Let me do some tests.’

Banbury dusted the lock and handle for prints, but they were completely clean—there was not so much as a single sweat whorl on the hasp. ‘At a guess I’d say someone wiped up.’

Bryant leaned back out of the window and looked above. ‘Even assuming someone had come up with a way to enter the room from outside, he couldn’t have come from the roof. There’s a sheer wall above. That’s got to be a ten-foot gap. And there’s no way of climbing down, no handholds, nothing.’

May came around the other side of the cot, where the shadows fell from the window. He froze in his tracks. ‘What on earth is this?’

He knelt and examined the sprawled shape on the floor. About two and a half feet long, the hunchbacked figure had jointed limbs, and was garishly dressed in a striped red velvet suit with a great paunched belly, yellow pom-poms and a white ruff collar. It wore a pointed crimson hat topped with a bell and had the curled yellow slippers of a sultan. The scarlet parrot nose was hooked so that it almost met the chin. Its gimlet eyes stared wide and were tinged with madness.

‘Hello, what have we here?’ said Bryant, brightening up. ‘Mr Punch. Dan, may I?’

‘All right, but be careful,’ said Dan, who was tired of dealing with the problems of tainted evidence that occurred whenever Bryant tromped merrily through a crime scene.

Bryant lifted the figure into a standing position. ‘It looks like a Victorian original. Stuffed with kapok, wooden hands and feet, papier-mâché head. There should be a little bell in his cap. What’s it doing beside the cot?’