‘The old man’s got it in his head that the Punch puppet was put beside the cot to leave some kind of warning. You know what happens in the story. After Mr Punch kills the baby, he goes after his wife and beats her to death.’
‘Someone’s been reading too many supermarket thrillers,’ said Colin. ‘Stuff like that just doesn’t happen in real life.’
‘But it has, hasn’t it?’ Meera drained her gin. ‘And it does happen, Colin. In Indian communities men go to incredible lengths to hide honour killings.’
‘Robert Kramer’s not Indian.’
‘No, he’s a millionaire sleazebag businessman working in the theatre.’
‘And that’s exactly what makes it unlikely,’ said Colin. ‘When it comes to settling scores, men like Kramer have plenty of legitimate means. My dad once paid to have a boxing referee’s ankle crushed. They spend all their time on their feet. Ended his career, it did.’
‘And you seriously wanted me to go out with you before admitting that, did you?’ asked Meera.
The squabbling continued late into the rainy night.
On Wednesday morning the June weather grew worse, and the pleasant, airy start to the week faded to a memory. Charcoal clouds punched down over King’s Cross, and drizzle drew a shroud across the streets, staining brickwork and shining roads. The working population dragged itself to offices in the knowledge that the London summer had once again failed to materialise, and would probably truncate itself to a halfhearted four-week period starting in late July.
John May arrived early at the warehouse on Caledonian Road, to face a mountain of old-fashioned glue-staples-and-scissors paperwork. In his spare evenings and weekends away from the PCU, he had been building an experimental program based on witness responses that would work as a supplement to Banbury’s. Now, looking at the forest of forms before him, he was starting to wish that he hadn’t.
Traditional witness statements often failed to garner as much information as they could. On one side of the usual chequered MG 11 form, there was a consent request about the provision of medical records, a disclosure for the purposes of civil proceedings and an agreement to allow details to be passed to the Witness Support Service. The other side simply left room for a statement made in the knowledge that falsehoods would be liable to prosecution.
May’s new supplementary questionnaires were informal and oblique, dwelling largely on moods and feelings, but he thought they could prove useful in understanding the mind-sets of those who had been suddenly exposed to criminal activity.
Although the new forms could not be officially recognised in a court of law, he was planning to try them out with the guests who attended the party at 376 Northumberland Avenue. Accordingly, he arranged for everyone to visit him in the informal atmosphere of the PCU staff common room, and sorted the appointments into three main groups.
At nine a.m. he saw the party’s wait staff and the downstairs doorman. Immediately, it was clear that the questionnaire could provoke surprising responses. One waitress, a ghostly, slender Estonian girl, remembered overhearing an urgent whispered argument in the kitchen between Mrs Kramer and the handsome young actor Marcus Sigler, but her English was not fast enough to follow the conversation. A Polish waiter recalled which of the guests were smokers and which were not. He also knew which ones were heavy drinkers, who had appeared agitated and who had left the room to use the bathroom.
‘They don’t see us,’ he explained. ‘We’re invisible when we move among them, so we see everything.’
The doorman remembered who treated him with politeness and who regarded him disdainfully. In May’s experience, staff usually made good witnesses because they were focussed, silent and watchful.
At ten A.M. May met with Robert Kramer and his financiers, and went through the same exercise. Now, though, the recollections were about business conversations, not body language and shielded slights.
Kramer was frank about his reasons for throwing the party. His producer had asked him to raise further finance and find new backers for the show. The company needed to be seen as a new force in the world of commercial theatre. He had discussed mergers and acquisitions, copyright and licensing issues. But there were others in attendance who spent the evening vying for his attention.
For Kramer, hosting the party had been an important display of power, and he was convinced that someone in the room hated him enough to harm his only child. He freely admitted that he was disliked, but was reticent when it came to providing a reason. His employees were even less forthcoming. May learned the least from this group.