The Memory of Blood(92)

‘Nice pitchfork shot,’ remarked Bryant. ‘Would he have survived if he’d fallen the other way?’

‘Yes, probably. Bad luck. Slippy shoes. Expensive leather soles. He’d have lived if he’d been wearing trainers.’

‘Any dabs on the handle?’

‘Given the history of this case, what do you think?’ Banbury gave him a withering look.

At the front of the barn, May was talking to medics from the Kent Ambulance Service. They were attempting to find a staffed regional local police constabulary, but so far had had no luck.

‘The dummy’s a bit of a giveaway,’ said Bryant, opening a packet of Rolos. ‘You’d better put a call out for Ella Maltby, John. And see what’s happened to Renfield.’

‘We’re in a barn,’ said Banbury. ‘I’m not going to look for fibres and specks of dirt, the whole place is made up of them. There’s half a foot of mud in here. I’ve got at least six sets of prints made by wellingtons.’

‘Just do what you can.’ Bryant unstuck caramel from his dental plate. ‘We’d better find out who this place belongs to. A local copper would be useful. John, you having any luck?’

‘We’re still trying,’ said May. ‘Can I send the med team in yet?’

‘Dan, can we take out the body?’

‘Yeah, I’ve got all I need there.’

The detectives watched as Robert Kramer was unpinned from his position on the barn floor and removed. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Bryant. ‘We should have caught him before this happened. I honestly thought both victim and criminal were equally duplicitous, but now I can see I made one fundamental error.’

‘What was that?’

‘Anger takes many forms. Kramer came here unbidden. It means he was arrogant enough to think he could deal with whomever he was meeting. I’d assumed we had got in the way of a victim and an attacker who were equally matched. They say cruelty is the English disease, don’t they? But from here it looks like they had very different temperaments. Kramer had the coldness that allowed him to retain perspective. His killer is someone whose frustration makes him prone to outbursts of violence. Now he’s finished what he set out to achieve. It’s over. We’ve lost him.’

‘It has to be somebody who was at the party, so if he tries to vanish, we’ll know who’s gone.’

‘Yes, but if he’s smart he’ll stay in plain sight and brazen it out, just as he has been doing, and then we’ll never get to discover the truth. I honestly thought we could stop him before he acted again. Four deaths. It’s a total disaster.’

‘Jack chased someone across a field and got cut off by a stream.’

‘A stream? Tell me you’re joking. He couldn’t cross a stream?’

‘It’s pitch black out there and raining hard, and there was quite a drop by the sound of it.’

‘Did he at least get a good look at him? Where’s the nearest light?’

‘Sevenoaks. Nine miles away. No, he didn’t. Couldn’t even be sure it was male. Just somebody running in a big coat and boots.’

‘Well, here’s a how de do. Dan, have you got anything else?’

Banbury looked up from his position beside the dummy. ‘You could say so.’ He held up something in a pair of tweezers. ‘He makes his own labels. Stitched into the top of the dummy’s spine.’

‘What does it say?’

‘An Ella Maltby Original.’

‘That does it. Let’s get back to London. We can stick Maltby in one of the lockups in Islington and resume in the morning. Make sure she’s not left alone.’

‘You’re sure this is over, Arthur?’

Bryant folded his sweet wrapper into his pocket, thinking. ‘The target of all this torture is dead. The killer is, we hope, about to be apprehended. There’s nothing more we can do except watch the Unit crash and burn after Kasavian gets wind of this. I guess we should all start looking for jobs again. Oh, and by the way, I’m having my home taken away from me tomorrow. All in all it’s the end of a perfect week.’





The Sunday morning sky was milky and soft, its light blurring the buildings and fading the edges of the streets. It was the kind of early summer’s day London excelled in, burning off to a clear blue hemisphere by eleven, clouding again by three, finally clearing for a gold sunset.

At seven A.M. in the warehouse on 231 Caledonian Rd, the Unit staff began sleepily arriving. Meera boiled spiced tea and Longbright made fresh coffee. Colin brought croissants and sausage rolls. Bryant stood on the tiny back balcony sucking at his pipe, his forehead creased in thought. Renfield was on the top floor hitting a punchbag Bimsley had rigged to the ceiling. And Ella Maltby was brought down from Islington Police Station for questioning.