He released Marcus Sigler. As they walked out into the corridor, May collected Ray Pryce from the bench that had been set there. “I just have a few questions for you,” he explained, ushering the playwright into the common room.
Pryce flattened his hair in an attempt to smarten himself as he sheepishly entered, clearly uncomfortable with being in a police office, even one that looked like a cross between a student bedsit and a junkyard.
“I need to get certain facts clear in my head,” began May. “You went to Robert Kramer with a play you’d written. I can’t find any previous CV for you. Have you always been a playwright?”
Pryce looked embarrassed. “No, before this I was working for the government.”
“As a playwright?”
“No, I was in the parks and gardens department. I’d excelled at English at school. But I didn’t think I had any talent. I wrote for my own amusement, at evenings and weekends. I finished this play, The Two Murderers, and didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t have an agent, so I sent it direct to Robert Kramer. He forwarded it to Russell Haddon, and the director hired me.”
“How did you know who to send it to?”
“I’m sorry?”
“If you didn’t have an agent.”
“I read in The Stage that Kramer was opening the New Strand Theatre. It’s a hard field to break into.” Pryce seemed unsettled in his skin, the kind of man who transmitted his discomfort to others. “I thought because he was new to the business himself he might have more of an open mind about hiring someone with no previous experience.”
“I haven’t seen the play but I hear it’s incredibly gruesome. Like that kind of stuff, do you?”
“The audiences do. And actually, yes, I do too. I’ve always been a big fan of horror films. Theatrical styles come and go, but a good scary plot never goes out of fashion.”
“People keep telling me that there are parallels between the events of the play and the performers – I mean, in terms of jealousies, rivalries and so on. That true?”
“I hate to disillusion you, Mr May, but I understand that actors say this about virtually every production. The truth is, I wrote the play before I’d ever met any of the performers, and I didn’t have a say in the casting. That was down to Russell Haddon.”
“Isn’t there a puppet that comes to life in the show or something similar?”
“It’s a dummy – a wax dummy comes to life at the end of the first act and murders a girl. It’s a traditional image that has precedent in many films and plays of the past. I’m new but I’ve done plenty of research on the subject.”
“I see. Perhaps you’d better let me have a copy of the script. Just in case anything else happens.” May found himself taking an irrational dislike to the little writer. There was a paradoxical arrogance in his humility that irked the detective.
“Sorry, I don’t have one on me,” said Pryce, folding his arms. “Is there anything else?”
♦
“I’ve got one in my bag you can have,” said Larry Hayes, the young wardrobe master. “I always keep a script on me.” He worked closely with Ella Maltby, the set and props designer, and had asked to be interviewed with her. Together, they had been responsible for creating a brooding, Gothic feel to the play. Larry was pierced and tattooed in every visible spot, with a splayed pack of playing cards stitched in red and blue up his right arm and a chain of Asian tigers running around his left. He proved friendly and helpful, but could add no further insights into Robert Kramer’s relationships with the members of his company.
“Yeah, I’m in charge of bringing the dummy to life,” Ella Maltby agreed, “but that doesn’t make me a suspect, does it?”
“Why would you think you were?” asked May.
“Because there’s a rumour going around that the kid was chucked from the window by a walking Mr Punch puppet. Which rather puts me in the frame, don’t you think?” Maltby’s tone suggested a prickly, aggressive personality. She was solid-framed and crop-headed, the self-consciously creative type one usually saw in Camden Town or Hoxton.
“I’m more concerned with motive, Ms Maltby. This doesn’t appear to have been a premeditated act, so I’m looking for people who have some kind of grudge against Mr Kramer and his wife.”
“Then that rules out most of us,” said Larry Hayes. “I mean, unless we had a death wish about our careers. If we upset the boss we could kill the show.”
“Fair point,” May conceded. “Any idea who might want to do that?”
“None whatsoever. I’m production, which means I’m basically backstage staff. If you’re trying to find someone who bears a grudge, you’d be better off asking Mr Kramer himself.”
♦
Finally, May saw Robert Kramer for a second time. The theatre owner was displeased at being retained and impatient to be on his way, but submitted to May’s questions with the resignation of a man who was used to attending long, dull meetings. He perched on the common room’s ratty sofa, his ankles crossed at his red socks, and watched with distaste rain leaking through the warehouse’s rusted window frames. May knew it was impossible to mention what he had discovered without incurring further threats of lawyers, something he was anxious to delay for as long as possible.
“Enemies,” he said instead. “Family stresses or people you meet in the course of your working day. I need an honest appraisal from you. Anyone you might consider a risk?”
“Plenty, in financial terms,” answered Kramer. “You don’t rise in business without making tough decisions. But there’s no one so upset with me that he’d shake my son to death and throw him from a window.”
“So what do you think happened?”
It was the first time Kramer looked less than confident. His gaze lost its focus, as if he feared what he might imagine. “I don’t know. Something evil. Something cruel. I can’t understand how anyone could visit such horror upon us. I honestly can’t. Maybe our lives were too perfect and something terrible had to happen. I watched my wife sleeping this morning, and I thought this will destroy us. You don’t get over the death of your only child, not when you’ve tried so long and hard to bring him into the world. I haven’t always been a good man, but I don’t deserve this.”
May kept his counsel, but wondered how long it would be before the lie of the Kramers’ marriage escaped. Secrets had a habit of slowly becoming visible, like images appearing on photographic paper. Crime often exposed hidden shames to the light.
He watched from the window as Kramer left the building. Standing on the edge of the pavement searching for taxis in the rain, the tycoon seemed a bewildered, lonely figure. May wondered what his partner would have made of these people, but Bryant had chosen to hide himself away in the office, preparing an archive for his rare books. The last time May looked in on him he appeared to be dismantling a bookcase and searching behind it for something. He showed no interest whatsoever in the interviews, and rudely sent May away to carry out what he considered to be the prosaic end of the investigation.
It was no good. May knew he would have to find out what was going on by himself.
∨ The Memory of Blood ∧
15
Storybook
Arthur Bryant couldn’t handle cases that required an understanding of human relationships, and would take off into lunatic new directions if left unchecked. Someone had to keep an eye on him.
May peered round the door of their office and watched Bryant knocking the contents of his pipe into the brainpan of the Tibetan skull on his desk. Half a bookcase had been emptied and two immense stacks towered on each side of the desk, framing the old man with playscripts, manuals, comics, art books, histories, encyclopedias, miscellanies and a number of surprisingly sleazy pulp thrillers.