The Malcontenta

4

Kathy broke off her account while Brock went to make a fresh pot of coffee. Now that she was well into the story, she was feeling much more confident and relaxed. The visitors got up from their seats round the fire and stretched their legs. When Brock returned, Dowling was casting his eye over the titles of the books piled on the worktop, keeping well clear of the live computer, and Kathy was having another look at the enigmatic little artwork on the wall.

‘Mr Schwitters did me a big favour,’ Brock said, setting down the pot. ‘I’d never be able to get anything as good again, and I’ve never had the nerve to put anything second-rate beside it. If it hadn’t been for that, these walls would have been a mass of flying ducks and faded Gauguin prints.’

Kathy laughed, but he saw the expression on her face and added, ‘Really, it may just look like a mess of old tram tickets, but it is in fact a milestone of twentieth-century art. How I came by it is another story.’

It seemed to Kathy that it was very like Brock to own a treasure that you wouldn’t recognize inside a house you couldn’t find.

‘Well, it’s a great house,’ she said. ‘I love it.’

‘I rented a room here many years ago, when my life was going through a change. Then later, when my landlady died, I bought the place from her estate. They were glad to get rid of it. It was a tiny, crooked little terrace house, and buyers couldn’t find it. A few years later the one next door came on the market and I bought that too and knocked them together, and gradually it’s just sort of grown. What about you, Kathy? Have you kept on your flat in North Finchley? I remember you had a very protective next-door neighbour and a splendid view.’

‘Yes, I kept it on.’ She smiled at the memory of his visit, when she had almost pushed the bunch of flowers he had brought, his peace offering, down the sink disposal unit. ‘While I’m away, a friend is staying there. He’ll move on when I return to London — if they’re prepared to have me back at the Met.’

‘Perhaps your friend will have grown attached to the place, like I did here. Not want to leave.’

She thought that remark was a little sly, and didn’t respond.

‘Well, you’re welcome to use this place as a base any time you need to come up to town — both of you, I mean. There’s plenty of room. Are you married, Gordon?’ Brock asked.

‘No, no.’ He shook his head.

‘Well, why don’t you both stay over tonight? Return to the wild south tomorrow.’

‘Oh,’ Gordon said nervously, ‘I think, if you wouldn’t mind, sir, I really ought to get back today.’

‘Of course, whatever. I just thought your tale may need plenty of time to do it justice. I must say I’m intrigued by the body in the Temple of Apollo. Whips and carrot juice. And the brass swastika, Kathy, you haven’t explained that yet.’

Intrigued, and also a little worried. Kathy had become more confident, swifter in her decisions, than when he remembered her last. But he was concerned at her obvious antagonism towards Tanner, Beamish-Newell and Long — all of the main male characters in her account so far, apart from Dowling, whom she seemed to be mothering. He worried whether she was being objective enough in her assessments.

The building was brand new, the sharp smell of fresh paint and new carpets still strong in the air. They showed her through a door into a narrow viewing area separated from the examination room by a glass screen. She hardly noticed the three or four people present, as the sudden vision of Petrou’s naked body on the stainless-steel tray just a couple of metres away leaped up at her. In the rush to get here, she hadn’t consciously prepared herself for this. It was true that she had seen any number of corpses before, and with much more horrific injuries than this — her three years in Traffic Division had ensured that. But the immaculate objectivity of the setting gave the body a startling presence. Naked, blotched, its head thrust dramatically back by the block beneath its neck, eyes closed in the total self-absorption of the dead, it formed the focus of the brilliant lights overhead, of the silent attention of the watchers; the focus, too, of threat and danger, underscored by the plastic visors covering the faces of those who shared its space on the other side of the protective glass screen.

All except Professor Pugh, whose only head protection was his horn-rimmed glasses, which he continued to click absent-mindedly against his teeth when he needed to think.

‘Ah, Sergeant!’ he called to her, his voice distorted by the speaker system between the two halves of the room. ‘Glad to see you.’

‘Sorry I’m late, Professor. I came as soon as I could.’

‘Don’t worry. We haven’t really started without you. We’ve undressed our friend, as you see, and we’ve been taking photographs and swabs and so on, as you’d expect. One or two interesting things for you. But tell me, any idea of a last sighting alive?’

‘The best we have so far is around four o’clock yesterday afternoon. He was apparently fit and well then.’

‘Excellent. That should give us plenty of time, then. Well now, definite recent anal intercourse, but his partner used a condom. We’ll be able to identify the type by the lubricant. And the UV lights have given us suspected semen traces on his legs. The swabs will go for blood type and DNA analysis.’

Well, I’m not sorry I missed that bit.

‘Nothing obvious in the finger-nails. We’ve been having a good look at the lividity, of course.’ ‘Can you say any more about that?’

‘Not at this stage, I’m afraid. Our earlier impression is clearly confirmed — the pattern is unmistakable. What I can’t do is put a timetable to any changes in the body position. Analysis of tissue samples may help us there.’

‘What about cause of death?’

‘There’s quite a confused pattern of contusions to the throat — can you see? At present there’s nothing to indicate a cause other than ligature strangulation.’

He took his glasses off, holding them in his gloved hand, and tapped them on his teeth. ‘There are some marks on the torso which need some explanation. Difficult to see in this light, but clearer under UV. Like the marks of straps or bonds of some kind. We’ve got a photographic record for you. And the clothing has some points of interest. There are traces of a gritty dust on both the outside and the inside of the material of both top and bottom of the tracksuit. I’d guess the stuff on the inside has been transferred from the skin, where there are also traces, rather than the other way round. And I’d also be willing to speculate that it comes from the stone floor of the chamber where we found him.’

‘You’ll make tests for all the standard drugs, won’t you, Professor?’

‘Do you have something in mind?’

‘Only that, if he was in that cold place in the middle of the night for fun, he must have been high as a kite.’

‘Good point. But I’d say there has to be some doubt about that — I didn’t mention the shoes.’

‘The shoes?’

‘Yes.’ Pugh reached behind him for the plastic bag and brought it over to the glass for Kathy to see. ‘Look like new, don’t they?’

Kathy looked at the sparkling white leather of the elaborate boots.

‘Amazing what people put on their feet these days, eh?’ Pugh raised his eyebrows. ‘Pumps and valves and gadgets. Basketball baroque. Whatever happened to plain old plimsolls? Anyway, the point is, it doesn’t look as if these have ever been out of doors, let alone walked through the wet grass and mud between the house and the temple.’

Kathy felt her skin crawl with excitement once more. ‘He was carried there.’

‘Well, that’s for you to establish, Sergeant. I can only tell you what I see. Now, I think we might as well get on with the normal procedures, eh?’

He stepped back and nodded to his assistant, who had been hovering watchfully in the background. In a gracefully balletic movement the young man came gliding forward, raised a syringe over Petrou’s upturned face, and plunged the needle down into his left eye.

Kathy swallowed and felt her eyes water in sympathy. It took her a moment to realize that something was wrong. The assistant was hesitating, frozen in position for a moment with the needle still in the eye. He glanced across at Pugh, then slowly retracted the needle, stooped and pulled Petrou’s eyelid open. Pugh had moved to his side, wondering at this interruption in the smoothly predictable drill of collecting the first samples from eye and bladder. He stared at the eyeball, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. He reached forward and opened the other lid, then looked up at Kathy watching them through the glass.

‘Someone’s already taken a needle to this eye. It’s punctured in several places,’ he said. ‘It’s stupid of me. The lids have been closed all this time. I only examined the other eye. There was nothing wrong with that. The lids are intact.’

He turned and looked at his assistant.

‘It just felt different — softer,’ the young man said, consternation on his face.

‘I don’t understand,’ Kathy said. There was an unpleasant constriction in her throat. ‘What does it mean?’

‘I haven’t the remotest idea,’ Pugh replied slowly. ‘Someone has punctured his eyeball. God alone knows why.’