eyes to hers and seemed barely capable of standing, so they sat him against the corridor wall, one on either side.
“Get your breath back, son,” said Renfield.
“I didn’t know she was dead,” he moaned. “Yeah, I took the phone, but it wasn’t – I mean, I didn’t want to sell it. I took it ‘cause it was hers, you know?”
“What do you mean?” asked Longbright.
He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. “She was – special, you know? She stood up to my sisters. My sisters are bitches, and she stood up to them. An’ they wanted me to hurt her, but I couldn’t so I just took the phone and kept it, because it was hers. ‘Cause she was decent and I wanted – I can’t believe she’s dead. I don’ know how – ”
“She cut herself, a stupid accident,” Longbright told him, bluntly. “Because she was still shaken up after being mugged.”
“Wait, she can’t be dead. She can’t have died.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re talking about the same thing, right? This was months ago.”
“No, it was this week. She was attacked on Monday night and her phone was stolen from her shopping bag along with some keys.”
“But that wasn’t me. I took her phone after she had the fight with my sisters, that was back in February. I’ve still got it at home. I can show you. Her mum will tell you it’s her old phone.”
“Where were you on Monday night at around nine?”
“I was at the clinic waiting to see my doctor. There was a long wait – the nurse knows me, she’ll tell you – ”
“What time did you leave?”
“About ten-fifteen. They’ll tell you.”
“Give me the address.”
Ashley Hagan dug into his pocket and handed over a grubby, creased card. “I can’t believe she’s dead,” he said again, looking for something he could not find in their faces.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Longbright, touching his shoulder. “Stay with your family tonight. Remember what she meant to you. Don’t she’d have hated.”
¦
“The bloke who attacked me was older, heavier,” Longbright told Renfield on the tube back. “He had a lot of upper body strength. He wasn’t wasted away like Ashley. I think he must have got away with whatever was in Anna’s locker.” She turned to look at Renfield. “You don’t suppose this has anything to do with Arthur’s stuff, do you? His memoirs?”
“I don’t see how. The old man’s indiscreet, but he wouldn’t put anything in there that was worth all this hassle.”
“Civil servants have topped themselves over leaking sensitive material. Look at David Kelly. Or they’ve been killed by the Russians.”
“You lot always seem to think there’s a conspiracy going on.” Renfield said it disapprovingly.
“That’s because sometimes there is.”
At London Bridge they changed to the Northern line and flopped down into seats. The train was almost empty.
“So, where did you learn all that stuff?” Renfield asked.
“All what stuff?”
“The way you talked to Ashley Hagan. That
“He was a kid once. Now he’s half dead and in despair. He hates his family and he’ll never be able to get away from them. Kicking him around isn’t going to change anything.”
Renfield had been a desk sergeant with the Met, where they behaved differently. He sat back, lost in thought as the train rattled through the tunnel, heading north towards King’s Cross.
? The Memory of Blood ?
32
Older Ladies
Saturday morning dawned but nobody noticed. It barely grew light. The sky had tilted and was moving fast. The racing clouds bulged so low that the spires of St Pancras threatened to tear them open. The lack of a rush hour today meant that most of the shops and offices in King’s Cross were shut, but the lights were on at the PCU. A seven-day policy had been placed in effect while the investigation remained active.
Unusually, Raymond Land was the first one in. Last night Leanne had sent him an email saying that she couldn’t join him on their sailing holiday in the Isle of Wight because she had accidentally made a double booking. This morning she had gone off to a retreat in Wales to practise tantric yoga with an old family friend. In a way Land was quite pleased, because he needed to get the investigation closed, and was a lousy sailor.
He made himself a cup of coffee, then wandered into Bryant’s room and stood before the case containing Madame Blavatsky. Looking around to check that he was alone, he felt in the coin slot for an old penny, inserted it and waited.
The medium’s eyes glowed and buzzed. Her cogs turned and she withdrew a card, jerkily reaching forward to drop it into the metal tray. Land plucked it out and turned it over. It read:
NOBODY DOES YOGA IN WALES
“Ah, there you are,
“What?” said Land, shocked, tucking the card behind him.
“Early bird. You. In early.”
“Ah. Yes. Couldn’t sleep.” Mortified, he hastily dropped the card back into the tray.
“Just as well. There’s a lot to get through today. We went to Ella Maltby’s house yesterday.”
“Remind me?”
“The set designer. She has a dungeon filled with people being tortured. Wax mannequins.”
“How extraordinary.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t exactly move her forward as a suspect. Questions, questions everywhere. The most obvious one – is the case closed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did Gregory Baine hang himself? If he did, why did he take a Hangman doll with him? Could it be he committed suicide because he felt guilty about Noah Kramer’s death?”
“Why would he have had reason to kill a child?”
“You see, another unanswered question. Anyway, he didn’t kill himself, I’m just being theoretical.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Dan tells me the bulbs were burned out in the safety lights by the duckboards beneath the bridge. With the best will in the world Baine wouldn’t have been able to find his way to the hole in the boards and attach a rope. It was prearranged by someone else. And where are the motives? What are they? Revenge, profit, love – hate? Well, that one’s obvious, at least.”
“It is?”
“Hate. Somebody hates Robert Kramer very badly indeed. They kill his child. They kill his best friend. The pair owned a company together, Cruikshank Holdings. That’s what gave the game away.”
Land looked lost. “What do you mean?”
“The name Cruikshank.” Bryant widened eyes and raised hands, expecting Land to get it. “Obviously Kramer chose it. George Cruikshank was the greatest-ever illustrator of Punch and Judy. His book is still the key text on the subject. I found details on the register at Companies House. Cruikshank Holdings operated out of the Cayman Islands. It was their nest egg, and Baine was in charge of it. He’d been making some heavy withdrawals. The
