“You know matinees never get the reaction they’re supposed to. It didn’t help to look out and see a row of critics sitting there making notes. I wonder if Robert really did try to bribe them. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Do you mind if I sit down for a minute? I’m tired and it’s hot in here.”
“Really? I was just thinking how oddly cold it was,” Crofting replied. “There’s a draught coming from somewhere.”
“Someone just walked over your grave,” said Mona, raising her glass. “Be a darling and get me another drink, would you?”
∨ The Memory of Blood ∧
5
Ominous
The great glass lounge cast a buttery glow across the street. The Kramers’ two-storey penthouse apartment occupied a key position on Northumberland Avenue, the elegant, underused thoroughfare that extends south of Trafalgar Square towards the Embankment. The terraced floor of ground-to-ceiling glass was topped with a minstrel gallery and four en suite bedrooms. The views took in the London Eye and the Royal Festival Hall. There were few more desirable properties in central London.
Robert Julius Kramer, the host, was a self-made man who had come up with the bright idea of buying all the private car parks that had existed on former bomb sites around the city. The sites had made fortunes for their owners in the postwar years, until the city’s public transport system improved and London’s congestion charge kicked in.
Kramer realized that the old property rights were mostly still attached to these derelict open spaces and warehouses, so he applied for planning permission to erect office buildings, offsetting his costs with funding provided by city regeneration schemes. He had become a millionaire before his twenty-fifth birthday, and celebrated the occasion by informing his loyal girlfriend that he was now rich and was dumping her. That was when he added the name Julius. Now he was in his forties, and his second wife, Judith, had recently given birth to their first son.
Beneath the building’s portico, the liveried doorman glanced out at turbulent clouds and watched lightning crack the sky apart. All thirty-five of Robert Kramer’s guests had been checked against his list. No one had failed to show up, even on a night like this. From what he’d heard, they wouldn’t dare to stay away if they valued their jobs. He settled back in the doorway to await their intoxicated departures.
Up in the penthouse, Gail Strong, the new ASM, was working the other side of the room. Robert Kramer had suggested she should come along and meet everyone, but they were all wrapped up in private conversations. She passed a broad-shouldered man with a luxuriant cascade of glossy black hair and heard someone call him Russell, so that had to be Russell Haddon, the play’s director. Pretty fit, but he was wearing a flashy wedding ring. She spotted an anxious-looking, bespectacled but oddly pretty young man with thin blond hair and a reticent attitude, seated alone beside the food display.
“Hi, I’m Gail Strong, do you know anyone here?” she asked, sitting down beside him. For a moment he seemed not to hear. When he turned to study her with faraway eyes, something prompted her to ask, “Are you OK?”
“No, not exactly,” he replied, breathing out. “I hate being here.”
“I grew up accompanying my parents to parties like this almost every night. My father – ”
“– is the Public Buildings Minister. I know who you are. You’ve been in the papers quite a lot lately.” He removed his glasses and wiped them. He had tiny black eyes, like a mouse. “I’m Ray Pryce. Pleased to meet you.”
“I’ve just joined the company as the new ASM?”
“Then we’ll be working together.”
“Cool – I’ll be the one fining you when you’re late for rehearsals. What do you do?”
“I’m the writer.”
“Oh, my God, I’m like so embarrassed!” She threw her hands to her face. “I thought you were one of the cast. You’re so young. I saw the dress rehearsal of The Two Murderers last week. I thought it was totally amazing?”
She had a way of moving her hands around her face that made him think of a deaf person signing. She had the studied elegance of a model. He fell for her, trying not to remember that everyone who met her fell in love – at first.
“The critics don’t seem to agree with you.” A note of annoyance crept into his voice. “There’s an old Chinese proverb: Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.”
“Oh, who cares about them? You heard what Mr Kramer said, it’s a critic-proof show.”
“He doesn’t seem to think so.” Ray Pryce pointed through the gathering at a portly, bald man in his late thirties who was attacking a plate of salmon sandwiches. “That’s Alex Lansdale; he’s the theatre reviewer for Hard News. One of the critics Kramer couldn’t buy.”
“I hate that paper. Their photographer took a picture of me coming out of the Ivy and said I was drunk, but I’d just broken my heel.” In fact, Gail had broken her heel because she was drunk, but she felt it was important to rail against the gutter press whenever possible.
“Lansdale wrote an incredibly insulting piece about the play even before the New Strand Theatre held its press event. Nobody does that; it breaks a longstanding unspoken rule of the West End. Now he has the nerve to turn up here for the party. If I was the host I’d have him thrown out. After all, Robert Kramer holds more power in this room than everyone else put together. The rest of us are just his players, but at least we’re here because we have skills. Theatre critics are just wannabes.”
“Yeah, well, it gives you all a common enemy.”
“We already have a common enemy.” Pryce glared in the direction of a smarmy-looking City type with slicked reddish hair and a supercilious smirk. “Gregory Baine. The producer.”
“I’ll never remember who everyone is,” said Gail.
“It doesn’t matter – you’ll soon get to know them, trust me.”
“What’s the problem with him?”
“Baine stopped our salaries and put us on a profit-share, says it’s better for us that way. He and Robert know they’ll be able to fiddle the books and prove the show hasn’t made enough money to pay us scale. We should never have signed our contracts, but I guess we were all desperate to work. What about you?”
“I’m really an intern. This is my first professional job. I haven’t worked in a West End production before. My father thought it would be a good way of keeping me out of the papers for a while.”
“Well, don’t expect to be recompensed for your labours.”
“I guess Robert Kramer has plenty of money,” said Gail, looking around. “This is a pretty cool penthouse.”
“He bought the New Strand Theatre outright in order to indulge his hobby. Owners don’t use their own cash for shows any more.”
Gail didn’t have much of an attention span, and Pryce was already beginning to bore her. “What else have you written?”
“This is my first full-length play. I took it to Robert because I was sure he’d buy it. The subject matter suits him down to the ground.”
“It’s about betrayal, seduction and murder.”
“Exactly.” He threw her a meaningful look, then turned away.
“Well, I was looking forward to working here,” said Gail, annoyed with Ray Pryce for painting such a gloomy picture of her future. “I’m going to get myself a drink.”
Glad to be away from the archetypically angry playwright, Gail allowed her champagne to be topped up and took small sips from the glass as she watched the room. Robert Kramer had issued his guests with a warning that no photographs were to be taken at the party. The door security had taken their mobile phones, as if they couldn’t be trusted to follow instructions.