The Memory of Blood(69)

‘He would say that. He’s a writer; they all exaggerate. I guess in a sense I do put myself into my figures. After all, they’re modeled on real people. I don’t do all this by myself. I have an assistant. We hire models and use their features in order to get exact likenesses. So you do come to think of them as being alive.’

‘I imagine it’s a lucrative field. Unusual jobs often are.’

‘I come from a long line of model makers. My great-grandmother worked for Madame Tussauds, and so did her mother. Madame Tussaud developed her craft by making wax death masks of aristocrats who had been executed during the French Revolution. She arrived in England at the start of the nineteenth century and put her waxworks on display at the Lyceum Theatre, just off the Strand. My skill with wax is what got me the job on The Two Murderers. I’m supplying exhibitions all over the world.’

‘Well, she didn’t seem crazy to me,’ observed May as they left the house. ‘If anything, I thought she was pretty damn smart. She’s about craft, artistry—and making money.’

‘I’m afraid I have to agree with you,’ replied Bryant glumly. ‘My biggest problem is that I can’t see what she would have to gain by killing. But her fascination with the morbid fits a certain pattern.’

‘I’ll do some checking into her background, look for the usual signs, but we’re going to need more than circumstantial evidence if we’re going to make anything stick to anyone. It sounds like they all had access to the Hangman puppet.’

‘Did she have any unexplained absences during the party?’

‘She’s another smoker. I think she slipped out for a ciggie a couple of times, but wasn’t gone long in either case. Sounds like we can’t prove where she was when Gregory Baine died.’

‘Too many suspects, and none of them entirely fit—yet. Bloody annoying.’

They returned to the Unit and worked separately for the rest of the day. After the Unit had finally closed for the night, Bryant told his partner to put on his coat and follow him to the King Charles I pub. He appeared to be troubled by something; his brow was even more rumpled than usual. Over pints of Bombardier, he explained his problem.

‘I think we can rule out Robert Kramer now,’ he began, leaving a foamy moustache on his upper lip. ‘I’m afraid we have to assume you were fed a dud lead by the Home Office.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘I realised that Kramer doesn’t fit the pattern. He might have reached the top by behaving in an immoral manner, but he certainly isn’t an anarchist. If anything, he’s an arch-conformist. He abides by the status quo. He doesn’t want to upset the ordered world, he simply wants to exist in its upper echelons. He might assume that he has something in common with the myths of strong leaders, but he behaves in the proscribed manner of all rapacious businessmen.’

‘Well, he’s all we have right now, even though he has no motive for killing his own partner.’

‘I read the email Lucy Clementine sent you. Fond of detailing her boss’s bad behaviour, isn’t she?’

‘If she’s right, we’ve got enough to hold Robert Kramer on suspicion,’ said May. ‘We’re not subject to the rules governing the Met.’

‘You won’t get a confession out of him. He’d fight every step of the way.’

‘You sound like you don’t want to make an arrest.’

‘Of course I do, but we can’t afford another mistake. You’ve no concrete evidence, only hearsay. We need more proof than the word of a disgruntled former secretary. He fired her, John. Lucy Clementine sued Kramer for wrongful dismissal and settled compensation out of court, but the amount she received was the lowest that could have been awarded.’

‘How did you find this out?’

‘I didn’t. I got Dan Banbury to run a background check on her. What he found was that she had no background.’

‘You mean someone erased it?’

‘Afraid so. Their mistake was taking out the whole of the period when she worked for Kramer. It would have been more convincing if they’d left something in. Her testimony is compromised.’

‘Why were you suspicious?’

‘The Department of Social Resources is housed in the same Whitehall Home Office building as the Department of Internal Security—the department that’s run by Oskar Kasavian.’

‘It could just be a coincidence.’

‘And it might not be. All I’m saying is, you can’t trust your source.’

‘Then what do you want to do?’

‘The same as you. I want to get to the truth before anyone else is hurt.’