The Memory of Blood(58)

‘He wasn’t bothered by that?’

‘I suppose he has the morality of a typical City boy. They’re all opportunists, aren’t they? It doesn’t pay to be sentimental. Anyway, with the money he made, he bought a Victorian theatre called the Putney Empire from two widowed sisters, on another supposedly unbreakable promise—that they could stay as sitting tenants in the property next door while he restored the building’s fabric to its former glory.’

‘He didn’t keep his promise?’

‘No. He cheated the building regulations, paid off the council, hired some thugs to kick the sisters out and tore both the theatre and their house down. I heard they died penniless, although that may be an exaggeration. While the case dithered in the courts he rented the site as a coach park. He used the money from the vehicle leases to build a block of flats, and opened his first nightclub. He was just twenty-one years old.’

‘If nothing else, it sounds as if he’s been consistent.’

‘Robert has every version of the Punch story on his bookshelves because he believes in its message. Morality is just sentiment, challenge the world with righteous anger; that’s how he thinks you should live your life. I wonder just how much of his tainted wisdom he’d have imparted to Noah if he’d lived. I wonder if I’d have liked my son once he’d grown.’

‘How is Marcus?’

‘He’s rather more like Robert than he realises. He doesn’t have time to think about anything or anyone other than himself. Not even the child he fathered. I don’t really mean that as a criticism, it’s just the way he is. Maybe one day he’ll look back with regret. Once he starts to age. I don’t suppose I’ll still be with him. It’s exhausting loving someone more than they love you. But since Monday’s … event … I don’t think I want to see him anymore. I don’t know what I want.’

‘These are early days.’

‘I suppose you see a lot of tragedy in your job. You’re trained for it.’ Judith seemed keen to move the conversation away from herself.

‘Yes, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that this part is the worst, and it slowly gets better, to the point when you’ll look back and see something harmful and distant—like a fading thunderstorm.’

‘That’s a poetic thought.’

‘I have to ask you, Mrs Kramer. Do you think—’

‘You’re going to ask me if I think my husband could break the law and get away with it.’ Judith gave her appearance a final check and turned from the mirror. ‘I know he could, because as far as I can tell, he’s been doing so all his life. He never seems to have any regrets. Do you know what’s wrong with all the people who pass through this house? Nobody ever cries. There’s no real emotion here, it’s all hidden away. And I’ve broken yet another rule by bringing it out. Oh, and did I tell you I mentioned the Scottish play on the night of my son’s death? So I brought a curse down on the house. I’m starting to see why Robert’s first wife killed herself. It must have seemed a viable option.’ Judith Kramer wiped her cheek, closed the lipstick and handed it back. ‘Thanks for the girl talk.’





There was something wrong with Leslie Faraday’s chair. It squeaked every time he tipped it back. Faraday had sat his broad bottom on it every day of his working life for the last fourteen years, and took it with him when he moved departments. Like its owner, it was noisy and had an overstuffed red seat. It tilted and swivelled and had fat wooden arms that helped to support his increasing girth. Faraday leaned forward and punched out his PA’s internal number.

‘Miss Queally, could you get maintenance to come up here with an oilcan?’

There was a sigh of impatience. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘And can you bring in the file on the PCU?’

‘Which one? There are so many.’

‘Just dig out the latest. And brew some fresh tea, will you? I’m spitting feathers.’

The portly Home Office liaison officer unsheathed himself from the chair and gave it an experimental wiggle. It squealed in protest. Sighing, he went to the window and looked down into the tiled Whitehall courtyard, at the palms and ferns, the pacing executives on their BlackBerrys. He saw the same view every day. It was like being in prison, only with more paperwork. It seemed he had spent his life peering out from cages; through the bars of his nursery pen at his family home in Norwich, through the mullioned windows of his prep school in Cambridge, through the stained glass of his college chapel in Bristol. He was happily instinationalized, and if someone was to open the door of his office and boot him unceremoniously into the outside world without his black umbrella and initialled briefcase, he suspected he would creep around the back of the building and return via the service bay, to remain in place until the day he died, after which he would be technically freed from his contract.