♦
“Don’t stand any closer or I’ll brain you,” said Dan Banbury. The CSM had been on his way home to Croydon when he received the call, and was quickly able to divert his route. Bryant had been about to walk on the plywood boards but thought better of it. Instead he was forced to lean forward from behind Banbury’s tape line.
“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 wasn’t forced to come here. 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 as if 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?”
“AM Ella Maltby Original.”
“That does it. Let’s get back to London. We can stick Maltby in one of the lock-ups 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 Memory of Blood ∧
43
Admission
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 golden sunset.
At seven a.m. in the warehouse at 231 Caledonian Road, 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 up from the ceiling. And Ella Maltby was brought down from Islington police station for questioning.
“I have never seen such unprofessional behaviour in my life,” said Maltby’s lawyer, Edgar Digby, an oleaginous young man with a mane of slicked black hair, a Turnbull & Asser shirt and an air of outraged entitlement. “You take my client to a police station and leave her there for collection by your unit without any explanation of her rights or what’s going on, and now you expect her to cooperate with you?”
“We had to act quickly in the interests of public safety,” May explained. “Your client is the chief suspect in an investigation involving four deaths. Her explanation for her whereabouts during the times of these events is uncorroborated, and items belonging to her were found at the sites of three of the crimes. I think you’d better let her answer our questions, because any further silence from Ms Maltby is merely going to build the case against her.”
“My client’s silence is no indication of her guilt. Under British law – ”
“Drop it, Edgar,” said Ella Maltby. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”
“Robert Kramer was killed last night, and this was found beside his body.” May opened the plastic bag containing the dummy. “Your label is sewn into the back of it.”
“This is our most popular model,” said Maltby. “We sell them all over the world. Madame Tussauds have around thirty, which they use in background scenes. The New Strand Theatre has two. Let me see.” She took a look inside the bag. “These are supplied naked. Our clients add the clothes.”
“Dan, get the skirt and jacket off and find out where they’re from,” said May. “In your statement you say – once again – that you were home all evening.”
“Yeah, I don’t go out much. Is that a crime?”
“Did you talk to anyone?”
“No, I was working on some new designs. I don’t email or use the phone when I’m working, it’s too distracting.”
May knew he was on shaky ground. Ella Maltby’s car had not been driven in days. Banbury had found no mud or dirty clothes at her house. There was nothing to indicate that she had left her home in twenty-four hours. “Somebody is clearly anxious to place you at the crime scenes,” he pointed out. “Do you have any idea who that might be?”
“Is this the part where you ask me if I have any enemies?” Maltby scoffed. “No, I don’t to my knowledge. People just dislike me in general. I’m not a sociable woman, but to my knowledge that’s not a punishable offence either.”
“We’re going to get nowhere here,” Longbright whispered in May’s ear. “Let her go. Jack can arrange for someone to keep an eye on her.”