The Memory of Blood(96)
‘How are you going to arrange it?’
‘Tomorrow night there was going to be a charity performance of the play to raise money for the Variety Club of Great Britain. The idea is to now go ahead with the performance. The crime scene has been cleared, so the obligation can be honoured. There’ll be a dedication to Robert Kramer at the end; it’s an old theatre tradition. Marcus Sigler will say a few words, and so will Judith Kramer. Ray will send a text to everyone hinting that there’s going be some kind of revelation during the course of the after-show party. We’ll reveal that we’ve arrested someone as a potential suspect. John and I will have some carefully worded questions prepared, and we’ll be watching everyone. And we want the facts of the investigation to be subject to full disclosure—no withheld information.’
‘You absolutely can’t do that.’ Land was outraged. ‘It’s unethical and contravenes just about every rule in the book. Besides, what if still nothing happens?’
‘Then we’ll be no worse off than we are now.’
‘We’ll just be messing with a few people’s heads,’ said Meera. ‘It’s worth a try, isn’t it?’ With a shock, Bryant realised that for the very first time, the entire team was behind him.
‘All right,’ said Land finally. It was worth giving in just to stop them all staring at him. ‘But we’d better have someone stationed there in case this goes wrong.’
‘I’ll put Fraternity DuCaine on standby,’ said Longbright.
An hour later, Ray Pryce came by to sort out the invitation wording with May. ‘How’s this?’ he asked. ‘I’ll personalise all the texts. I’ll tell them that you and your partner wanted to thank the company and pay your last respects to Robert. I’ll mention that you’re going to be on hand to explain that you’re now ready to press charges.’
‘And you think everyone will accept?’ asked May.
‘How can they not? They all have to be here tomorrow in order to complete their contracts. We’ve even had an email from Gail Strong asking if she could come back for the final show. A bloody cheek, after walking out like that.’
‘What time does everyone finish work?’
‘The play ends at nine forty-five, so I guess the last one will be out of the theatre by ten-thirty.’
‘Then we start the party at eleven. My partner has come up with the perfect venue.’
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Ray. ‘I could take notes about this to use in my next play, except that nobody would believe me.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said May, indicating his partner. ‘Welcome to my world.’
The weather worsened steadily through the day. Longbright had applied anti-inflammatory cream to her blue-black bruise, but the side of her face was still painful. She listened to the sound of tapping buckets as she sat in her office and ran through the contents of Bryant’s disc.
She had decided not to worry her boss with the news that she had managed to retrieve his disc. He was locked in his room with May, planning something. She settled down and prepared to search through four hundred pages of small-point type. After five hours without a break, she was still unable to find any disclosure so contentious that someone would be prepared to kill to hide it. The answer had to lie in some footnote or sidebar to the main investigations under discussion, something seemingly innocuous. She tried to think of a way of isolating the information. What would the Ministry of Internal Security find so damning in the Unit’s old cases?
Using a technique she had learned from Bryant, she decided to tackle the problem from an entirely different perspective. Oskar Kasavian had been transferred to the department from the Ministry of Defence a couple of years ago. She ran a search on Kasavian’s background but was shut out of the MoD’s files, so she called up his CV through a public access request. It meant that her enquiry would be logged at HOIS, but that couldn’t be helped.
The CV contained no detailed information, just a list of dates and employment statistics. She was about to shut it down when one date jumped out—a period spent at Porton Down, the military science park in Wiltshire. Porton Down was home to the MoD’s Science & Technology Laboratory, DSTL. It was an executive agency that had been set up by the Ministry of Defence itself. It was common knowledge that the site housed Britain’s most secretive military research institute, but access was denied to journalists without written permission from a variety of senior officials.
She scanned back through the pages of Bryant’s memoir and found what she was looking for: the suicides of eleven Asian workers, all based at a company outsourced by the DSTL. The case had made news headlines at the time, until all details of it had suddenly been pulled. Their dates fell within the period that Kasavian was employed there.