The Malcontenta

25

Ben Bromley woke with a start, the telephone burbling in his ear. He had insisted that it go on his wife’s side since, in a household with five women, he reckoned the chances of a call being for him were infinitesimal. He heard his wife mutter groggily that it was for him.

‘What’s the effing time, for God’s sake?’ he grumbled, but she had rolled over and fallen asleep again.

‘Hello?’ he said cautiously.

‘Ben, it’s Stephen here. Sorry to wake you at this hour.’

‘Stephen? What time is it?’

‘Just after two.’

‘What! What on earth is the matter?’

‘I’m sorry, but we have a bit of an emergency here.’

Bromley was waking up fast now. There was something odd about Stephen’s voice, remote and expressionless. What the hell was going on?

‘What sort of emergency?’

‘I can’t really talk about it over the phone, Ben. We need you here right away. Could you do that? Could you come to your office, please?’

‘It’s not another break-in, is it, Stephen? If that bastard’s been into my bloody computer again — ’

‘Please, Ben. If you would just come over right away.’

Bromley put the light on and groped around for some clothes. The time-switch of the central heating was off, and it was damn cold. He swore and woke his wife.

‘There’s some stuffing crisis at the clinic,’ he said. ‘I have to go.’

‘Oh Ben! Not another murder?’

‘How the fuck would I know?’ he muttered, leaving her to switch out the light.

It was a twenty-minute drive to the clinic, and he pulled up at the foot of the front steps. He could see a dim light in the entrance hall, and lights in the windows of both his own office and the Director’s. He raced up the stairs, made his way along the corridor, and opened his office door.

He was startled to find Brock, alone, sitting behind his desk in his executive swivel chair, drinking a cup of his best coffee. Before he could sort through the expletives forming in his mind, Brock said, ‘Ah, come in, Ben, come in. I hope you don’t mind me taking advantage of your hospitality, but under the circumstances … Sit down and have a cup of coffee.’

‘What circumstances?’ Bromley didn’t move.

‘Stephen and Laura are just tying up a few loose ends with Sergeant Kolla.’

‘Sergeant Kolla?’ Bromley repeated dumbly.

‘You remember her from the first investigation of Alex Petrou’s murder? I expect you know that I’m also with the police — the Metropolitan Police, Detective Chief Inspector.’ Brock showed him his warrant card.

‘What’s happened? Why are you here?’

‘We should probably wait until they can join us. Why don’t you sit down and have a cup of coffee? Not much fun being woken up like that in the middle of the night.’

Looking slightly disoriented, Bromley took the visitor’s seat Brock indicated, and accepted a cup of black coffee.

‘I don’t know where you keep the milk,’ Brock smiled.

‘Jay brings it for me fresh each day,’ he replied dumbly.

Brock nodded, sat back and sipped appreciatively at his cup. ‘Very nice, Ben. In fact the whole office is very nice. A centre of calm. I imagine you can really think in an office like this, unlike mine, which is always chaotic. I’d love to know how to get my desk as clean as this at the end of the day. I tell people that the only ones who can keep a clear desk are those who deal with simple problems, but I know I’m kidding myself. It requires discipline, I suppose. A tidy mind.’

‘What exactly are we waiting for?’ Bromley interjected.

‘They shouldn’t be too long. Please be patient.’ Brock smiled sympathetically. He continued to look appraisingly around the room, as if filling in time, and his eyes fixed on Bromley’s computer. ‘And a systematic mind. Dealing with information in a systematic way.’

Bromley saw where he was looking and his face darkened with suspicion. ‘Yes, well,’ he said sarcastically, ‘you’d know all about our computer system, wouldn’t you?’

Brock beamed. ‘That was embarrassing, Ben. I needed some information and I couldn’t see how else to get it.’

‘You could have tried asking.’

‘True. That’s probably what I should have done. But it concerned those special guests of yours — the Friends — what some of the patients call the “goats”. I thought you might feel too protective towards them to want to help me.’

Bromley said nothing.

‘Although I did get the impression that, even though you look after them, and bow and scrape when it’s necessary, you don’t really like them. Am I right?’

‘Bow and scrape!’ Bromley said indignantly.

‘Well, it’s a service industry, isn’t it? But they’re a toffee-nosed lot, aren’t they, your Friends? Public schoolboys to a man. Privileged southerners who’d only willingly travel north of Watford Gap if there was some salmon or grouse in the offing.’

‘Makes no difference to me, squire,’ Bromley said coolly. ‘I just get on with my job. You’d know more about that sort of thing, being a Cambridge man yourself. Dr Beamish-Newell tells me you’re both Cambridge men:

‘Yes,’ Brock nodded, ignoring the veiled contempt. ‘I went up from grammar school. I don’t know what it’s like now, but there were plenty of upper-class twits around then. I remember going into a pub one night, the Blue Boar it was, and two chinless wonders were ranting away at the bar. “I say,” one said, “I knocked a chappie off his bike with my sports car just now. A black man. He put out his hand to turn right, but it was dark, so of course I didn’t see it. Those chappies should be made to wear white gloves.” I swear that’s true, his exact words.’

But Bromley wasn’t buying any of it. ‘Is that a fact, David?’ he said, unimpressed. ‘It’s hard to credit. But I suppose we didn’t get too many viscounts at Burnley Tech, so I wouldn’t really know. I’ll leave that sort of thing to you and Dr Beamish-Newell.’

The sarcasm was like water off a duck’s back to Brock. ‘Now there’s another thing,’ he went on, ‘a name like that. What kind of person would give themselves an absurd double-barrelled handle like that? Anyone with a pretentious name like that wouldn’t survive five minutes at Burnley Tech, would they, Ben? And yet it seems to impress people down here.’

Bromley snorted and gave a crooked little grin. Before he could stop he found himself reciting the limerick he’d spent idle moments perfecting:

‘Said a brilliant young doctor from Poole,

Whose name was simply Steve Newell,

To get where the cream is,

I’d better add Beamish,

And make them all eat Squeamish-Gruel.’

Brock smiled appreciatively. ‘Still, despite the absence of viscounts in your formative years, you seem to have done very well. You’ve got a nice detached house near Redhill, I understand, and a charming family. Four daughters, is that right?’

Bromley looked suspiciously at Brock. He didn’t remember telling him that.

‘Are they at the pony stage? You’ll be up to your armpits in manure with four of them. They’ll be demanding a paddock and stables of their own. Your whole life will be spent mucking out. Or does your wife do that? She doesn’t work, does she? Paid work, I mean — she’ll have her hands full with the girls and the ponies.’

Bromley started to tell Brock to mind his own business, but the conversation took an abrupt turn.

‘What I’d like to know, Ben, is what you really thought of Alex Petrou. I’ve been having difficulty understanding what he was like. To begin with, people seemed to be telling me that he was charming and attractive, but then, after a while, I got another, darker side. How did you see him?’

Bromley squinted closely at the figure across the desk — his side of the desk — to see if this was on the level. Then he said carefully, ‘He was unusual. Not the type we usually get. Smoother, a bit of an operator. Good with the patients. He found it easy to establish a rapport with people. Interested in their gossip.’

‘Like a woman? You implied to Sergeant Kolla that there was something odd about his sexuality — that he was bisexual.’

‘I steer well clear of all that,’ Bromley said stoutly.

‘Do you, Ben? Well … And what about the dark side of his personality, were you aware of that?’

‘Can’t say I was, David. There was something … racy about him. Bit of a devil, I’d guess. Nothing sinister.’

‘Really? A devil …’ Brock was studying Bromley’s face closely as he replied, his mood suddenly serious. ‘So you saw him as an asset to the clinic?’

Bromley shrugged. ‘Sure. He was popular with the punters. That was good enough for me.’

‘No, there was more to it than that,’ Brock said flatly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Petrou could attract the punters all right, sniff out their predilections — he had a talent for it. He wasn’t just an asset, he was a resource. On his own he was merely an opportunist, didn’t really appreciate how things work, although he had a nice instinct. But to be really effective he needed a manager, someone to organize things for him, keep the Beamish-Newells off his back, line up the punters, give him advice, feed his ambition. He needed you, Ben. Together you created an alternative clinic within the alternative clinic — a neat idea. You had your own special patients and your own special programme, a bit more indulgent than Stanhope’s, and almost invisible inside the respectable setting it provided.

‘I’m not suggesting that you didn’t steer well clear of his sexuality. You must have been about the only one around here who wasn’t fascinated by it. Your interests were more practical. Where there’s muck there’s brass. The invisible clinic had its own fees and profit line and cash flow and investment portfolio too, didn’t it?’

Bromley half rose out of his seat in protest, but Brock waved him down. ‘I’m not much interested, really. I could turn it over to the Fraud Squad and they would get to the bottom of it. They know how to track down cash transactions. They don’t look for records that are there so much as those that aren’t, if you follow me — like looking for the invisible clinic. You know, you buy a pony for one of the girls, and there’s no record in your cheque or credit-card accounts, so where did the cash come from? It’s a tedious process looking for records that aren’t there. Very expensive and very intrusive. The only satisfaction is that we get you twice — once when we discover how you made the money, and then again when we hand you over to the Inland Revenue for tax evasion.

‘As I say, it’s not the sort of thing I’m much interested in. If the members of your little club were daft enough to pay you good money for arranging some discreet hanky-panky with Mr Petrou, good luck to you. I’m only interested in who killed him. And if it was one of your club members and you try to obstruct me, then God help you, Mr Bromley.’

Ben Bromley had gone very pale. The coffee stood cold in the cup on the desk in front of him, and he found it difficult to break free of Brock’s gaze.

‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

‘What I was trying to find in your computer was the record of who was actually here at Stanhope at the time of Petrou’s death. I had discovered that Norman de Loynes was here, although his name never appeared in the records given to Sergeant Kolla. That was your doing, wasn’t it, Ben?’

‘Maybe …’ Bromley whispered speculatively, ‘maybe I should get a solicitor or something.’

‘Be my guest.’ Brock indicated the phone. ‘Perhaps Sir Peter Maples would organize one for you.’

At the mention of his boss’s name, Bromley felt a flush of nausea rise up his throat. He fumbled his antacid tablets out of his pocket while he tried to think straight, but his head still felt fuzzy from being woken in the middle of the night. ‘De Loynes went for a walk after breakfast that morning,’ he said at last. ‘He spotted the police car sitting out there at the end of the drive that goes past the cottages. He came back here in a tizz wanting to know what was going on. It took me a little while before I managed to get hold of Stephen Beamish-Newell, who told me that Petrou had been found hanged in the temple. I was stunned, as you’d imagine. I went up to the private lounge that the Friends use, and found two of them there.’

‘Who?’ Brock interrupted.

‘Norman de Loynes and a bloke called Mortimer, Simon Mortimer. I told them what had happened, and how Beamish-Newell had told me that the police had asked that no one leave the clinic without their say-so. The two of them went into a blind panic at that. De Loynes had told his family he was somewhere else that weekend, and Mortimer had had a run-in with the police some time in the past, and neither wanted to get involved. They swore they had nothing useful to tell the police anyway. Apparently, they’d last seen Petrou on the Friday night, and neither had seen him on the Sunday. They more or less demanded that I keep them out of it.’

‘What did you do?’

I came back downstairs and found that Jay had started preparing a list of everyone who was there for Beamish-Newell to give to the police. I sent her off to make my coffee, and removed de Loynes’s and Mortimer’s names while she was away.’

‘Were they the only ones you removed?’

‘Yes. The only other Friend there was Mr Long, but I hadn’t seen him. Anyway, I didn’t think he’d need my help.’

‘Go on.’

‘I could see more police beginning to arrive, so I went upstairs again and told de Loynes and Mortimer that they’d just have to sit tight for the day until the police left. There was a good chance they’d get overlooked provided they never showed their faces, and that’s exactly what happened. I called them a taxi about nine that night, after the last of the coppers had left.’

‘Had you any way of knowing what the two of them had been doing on the Sunday?’

Bromley shook his head. ‘I wasn’t here on the Sunday at all.’

‘So their claim that they hadn’t seen Petrou on that day could have been false.’

‘Yes, but they …’ he hesitated.

‘What?’

‘Oh,’ Bromley sighed. ‘They just seemed convincing. They told me about this party that Petrou had organized for them in the gym on the Friday night, and they swore blind that they hadn’t seen him since. In fact de Loynes said he’d arranged to see Petrou again on the Sunday evening and he’d been annoyed because he never showed up.’

‘What kind of party was it on the Friday?’

‘Don’t ask, squire. / didn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘Petrou got a couple of lads in from Edenham, or something.’

Brock sat back in the thickly padded chair and considered Bromley in silence. There was a kind of underlying swagger to the man’s manner, an impudent gleam that he couldn’t keep out of his eye, that tended to make you distrust him, even if he was only giving the time of day.

‘Look,’ Bromley said, feeling a need to fill the silence, ‘the amounts were chicken shit, let’s face it — I mean, compared to what you’d call real money these days. It was just a bit on the side, that’s all, an appreciation for services rendered.’

Brock lowered his eyes and didn’t respond, increasing the tension.

‘It wasn’t as if I invented him, for God’s sake. One day, there he was. He already had it pretty well worked out. He made it clear that he had people looking after him. It was noticeable how Beamish-Newell let him have his way, and he more or less told me that he had you lot on side. I just lent a hand to make it all happen as unobtrusively as possible.’

‘What do you mean, that he had us lot on side?’ Brock asked.

‘Well, Mr Long. He was Mr Long’s favourite, right from the start.’

Brock nodded. ‘This Mortimer, was he here when Rose was killed too?’

Bromley shook his head. ‘No, he hasn’t been back since Petrou copped it. Frightened him off, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘But de Loynes was here on both occasions. And you’re absolutely certain, Ben, that he is the only one of your Friends who was? I want you to think for a moment before you answer. I don’t want there to be any mistake about this.’

Bromley nodded, then seemed to take in the implication of the question.

‘Oh, but look, bloody hellfire. He didn’t have anything to do with it!’

‘How do you know?’

‘Rose died sometime between two and three that afternoon, right?’

Brock nodded.

‘Well, de Loynes was with me in this room throughout that time. I told that to your bloke who took my statement. De Loynes is investing in this time-share set-up in the south of Spain, and I was helping him with the paperwork that afternoon. You blokes should talk to each other, for God’s sake!’ There was an edge of panic in Bromley’s voice.

Brock gave a little smile and got abruptly to his feet. ‘All right, Ben. Now, I want you to stay here and make yourself a fresh cup of coffee and I’ll be right back.’

Brock returned fifteen minutes later, accompanied by Kathy.

‘Hello, Ben,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Got any new jokes for us?’

He regarded her sourly over the rim of his cup. ‘Why does it take six premenstrual women to change one light bulb?’ he said grumpily.

‘Heard it,’ Kathy smiled. ‘Put your cup down now, Ben. We want you to come down to Division with us. We’d like you to make a new statement. OK?’

‘You realize this is the middle of the effing night. Doesn’t the United Nations have rules about this sort of thing?’

But he did as they said, going outside with them into the cold night and settling himself in the back seat of their car.

After a few miles he said to Kathy, who was driving, ‘Where the hell are you going? This isn’t the way to Crowbridge.’

Brock turned and spoke over his shoulder.

‘We’re just going to pick somebody else up on the way, Ben. Don’t worry, we’ll get there.’

It took another twenty minutes along empty country lanes before they reached a crossroads by a deserted village green. Brock consulted the map on his lap and pointed forward. Soon they came to a row of oaks, and behind them the dark outline of a large house. The headlights picked up two white gateposts marking the entrance, and Kathy turned the car up the drive.