The Malcontenta

Part Two
10

Brock set off late on Monday morning with an expansive sense of freedom and anticipation. He hadn’t realized what a relief it would be to get back to the investigation of a crime again. The novelty of working on his own, without the need to report to or organize anyone else, was exhilarating. As if to highlight his mood, the sun came out as soon as he reached open country, bringing a blinding sparkle to the snow-covered fields. As he made his way down the Kentish back roads, he lowered the window to catch the smells in the sharp country air and listen to the shrieks of rooks wheeling out of the copses. He stopped at a quiet country pub and had a light lunch of bread and cheese and beer, in deference to the simple but wholesome diet he expected to enjoy over the next two weeks that he was booked into the clinic.

The sun disappeared shortly before he reached Edenham, and by the time he reached Stanhope the sky was dark and heavy. He pulled up under the trees in the car park and walked to the front of the house. At the top of the steps he stopped to recover his breath, admire the view and kick the snow off his shoes. He stepped into the warmth of the entrance hall and was immediately confronted by the pervasive smell which Kathy had tried to describe — earthy, institutional, yet not quite like anything he had ever smelled before.

The woman at the desk checked his name against a schedule and told him he had an appointment with the Director in just over an hour, at three-thirty. Before then he should go up to his room, get changed into the clothes he’d been told to bring and fill in the questionnaire she gave him. She took a print of his credit card and gave him a key, and on a photocopied diagram of the layout of the house she marked out for him with her ball-point the route he should take to his room in the west wing. He felt like a new boy at school, making his way in his outdoor clothes and carrying his small suitcase past the patients he met in the corridors.

The room was spartan, with basic furniture and a washbasin simply mounted in one corner. A large window looked directly out to the gardens on the north side of the house. And there in the centre of his view, brooding in its dark grove above the swell of white ground, was the Temple of Apollo.

The sense of pleasurable anticipation with which he had set off from London was evaporating. He changed into shorts and T-shirt and sat on the edge of the bed in his dressing gown and slippers. He felt absurd. The few belongings he had brought with him — the laptop, a box of disks, a couple of books — looked pathetically out of place on the small table. He picked up the file of information about the clinic which had been left for him on the bedside cabinet and flicked through it, wondering how he would pass the time until his appointment.

He turned to the questionnaire and began to fill it in. When he came to ‘Occupation’ he entered ‘Civil Servant’, a half-truth. In response to ‘What do you most want to achieve from your stay at Stanhope?’ he wrote ‘General physical well-being and relief from shoulder pain’, a lie.

At three twenty-five he went downstairs and followed the photocopied plan to the room marked ‘Director’s Office’. Dr Beamish-Newell looked sombre and impressive as he shook Brock’s hand. He held it just a little longer than might be expected, fixing Brock with his dark eyes, his expression slightly distant as they exchanged pleasantries, as if his mind was concentrating on making a diagnosis through his hand and eye contact. He offered Brock a seat and examined his responses to the questionnaire. ‘A civil servant, Mr Brock,’ he murmured.

Brock smiled absently. ‘Yes.’

‘We’ve had quite a few people from various parts of Whitehall visit us in the past. What kind of work do you do?’

‘Home Office,’ Brock replied. ‘Statistics.’ Another lie. ‘Sedentary work?’ ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Do you take any form of exercise?’

‘Well, not much, really. I used to walk a neighbour’s dog until a year ago, when she died. The dog, I mean.’

‘And you’re a single man. Divorced. How long ago?’

‘Oh, ages. 1970.’ Brock wondered if this was really necessary. He was beginning to feel like a suspect.

Beamish-Newell questioned him at length about his diet and eating habits and then moved on to his health record, confirming that he hadn’t smoked for ten years and querying his estimate of his alcohol intake. ‘Did you bring any alcoholic drinks here with you?’

‘I did as a matter of fact.’ Brock felt absurdly guilty. ‘A bottle of whisky.’

Beamish-Newell nodded. ‘Many people do, the first time they come here, David.’ The confession seemed to have earned the use of the first name. ‘But I don’t want you to touch it. What you drink is part of your diet, and diet is central to what we do. Abstinence is an important tool in the control of diet, as in the control of self. I shall invite you to embrace abstinence willingly, David. Forgoing the whisky will be the first step. All right?’

Brock nodded. This was going to be more serious than he had thought.

‘You say you want to achieve general physical well-being. Apart from the shoulder, how do you feel about your physical state, would you say?’

‘Oh … a bit flabby, I think. Need to lose a few pounds.’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know. In fact I’m not sure how much I weigh normally. But I’d say I’m up a bit at present.’

Beamish-Newell went on at some length, discussing sleeping patterns, headaches, stiff joints, until he returned to Brock’s shoulder.

‘I got it a long time ago, when I was in my twenties. Had a fall.’

‘Sporting accident?’ He was adding notes on the back of Brock’s questionnaire.

‘No. I was in the army. Malaya.’

‘Really?’ Beamish-Newell looked up. ‘Wouldn’t have taken you for the military type.’

Brock smiled amiably, the picture of an unmilitary civil servant. ‘I took a short-service commission when I finished university, rather than do National Service. More eventful than I expected. Malaya, Cyprus, Aden.’

‘Did you enjoy that?’

‘Yes, I did as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?’ ‘Just curious. Did you kill anyone?’ He was staring at Brock intently.

Brock looked back at him, surprised. ‘No. Not directly, at any rate. But then the hand that pulls the trigger isn’t the only one that kills, is it, doctor?’

‘Indeed. Does it ever trouble you, what you were involved in doing then?’

‘Only my shoulder. As I said, I had a fall. Broke the collarbone et cetera, and was laid up for a couple of months. Ever since, it plays up from time to time.’

‘Take your dressing gown off, will you?’

Brock did as he was told and made to get up.

‘It’s all right. Sit down.’ Beamish-Newell came round the desk, moved behind Brock and began to probe his shoulder and spine. Brock winced.

‘Here?’

‘Yes, and closer to the spine … Yes, there.’

‘Which university did you go to before the army?’ Beamish-Newell continued feeling as he spoke. ‘Cambridge.’

‘Really? So did I. Which college?’ ‘Trinity.’

The fingers stopped prodding and Brock began to relax. ‘I was at King’s.’

Suddenly Beamish-Newell’s arms came round Brock’s head, gripping it hard and violently twisting it to the left. For a moment Brock thought he was trying to kill him. Then the arms abruptly released him.

‘Try moving your head and arm now,’ the doctor said, as if nothing had happened.

Brock did. ‘It feels … different.’

Beamish-Newell nodded and returned to his seat. He began writing again. ‘Should relieve it a bit. But you’ll need physiotherapy. And acupuncture — ever had that?’

‘No, never.’

‘Well, it’ll be a new experience. But not for the first few days. First we’re going to get rid of some of the accumulated poisons in your system.’

He began writing rapidly on another sheet, which looked like a chart of some kind. When he had finished he looked up.

‘What’s your real reason for coming here, David?’

Brock wondered if the surprise showed on his face. He had been finding it unexpectedly difficult to lie, something he had assumed that, having studied so many experts, he would have no problem with.

‘I, er… I mentioned the reason on the form there. My health…’

‘Is that the real reason?’

‘I’m not sure I follow you.’

‘People come here for many reasons, David. Not always the ones they put on the form. Companionship, perhaps, or time to get away, resolve some problem.’

‘Ah, yes. There may well be something of that. Sometimes one’s motives aren’t altogether clear, even to oneself.’

‘Exactly. And if we are to help you in any real way, we must come to an understanding of what it is you are really seeking here.’

Brock nodded solemnly. ‘Yes, yes, I see that.’

‘How did you come to choose us, by the way?’

‘Someone at work told me about you.’

‘Oh really? Who was that?’

‘A colleague. Not one of your patients, but they knew of you through people who had been here. I wouldn’t have thought of it except I was suddenly told by Personnel to take some of my back leave, and when someone mentioned Stanhope I thought, why not?’

‘Interesting. Some of our most important decisions are made spontaneously, you know. Let’s hope you find that this is one of them. Many of our patients have found exactly that, and they’ve then wanted to become more involved in the clinic, feel more a part of it. If you came to that view, you would find many advantages in talking to Ben Bromley, our Business Manager.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. He has developed a number of highly tax-effective packages for people who would like to support what we do here and at the same time invest in their own health.’

‘Well, I’ll certainly do that.’

‘Good. Now, I’ll introduce you to my wife. She’ll be supervising the treatment regime which I’ll work out for you, and she’ll want to meet you and show you round the treatment facilities.’

He lifted the phone. While he waited, Brock looked around the room. Near the door he spotted a small framed picture, and he got to his feet to have a closer look. It was a coloured etching, the view of a classical house in a parkland landscape. Beneath it was a title: The Malcontenta.

‘You recognize it?’ the voice said behind him. ‘It looks familiar.’

‘You just walked through that portico. It’s this house, when it was first built, in the eighteenth century. Without the west wing, of course.’

‘Ah yes. And the title?’

‘That’s the name of an Italian house it was modelled on. You’ll find a history of the place in the library if you’re interested.’

Beamish-Newell tried another number. ‘Laura’s probably still tied up with the afternoon sessions. Hello? … Ah, Rose, is Mrs Beamish-Newell with you? … No? Well, I wonder if you could come up to collect a new patient … Yes, my office.’ He put down the receiver. ‘Are you interested in architecture, David?’

Brock shrugged. ‘I sometimes wonder how we manage to persuade ourselves to go to all the trouble of making such permanent things, knowing our own time is so limited.’

‘That’s a particularly apt observation as it happens. The gardens here were laid out as a kind of architectural discourse on the theme of mortality, a sort of eighteenth-century conceit about life and death. If you look closely at the etching, you’ll see a small ruined pyramid under that tree to the right. It’s actually out there, if you search for it, at the end of the avenue of cypresses. And there are other things scattered about, reminders of what’s in store for us.’

‘From my room just now I could see a rather forbidding-looking temple hidden among the trees at the back. Is that one of the reminders?’

‘In a way. At least it was originally. When the garden was set out they built just the four columns and the pediment on that little hill as a folly, a ruin. Then much later, early this century, the owner of the house had the temple building constructed behind the ruined front. Resurrecting the imaginary original building, if you like — the building that had never been there.’

‘You make it sound like a Frankenstein monster.’

Beamish-Newell gave a thin smile. ‘Buildings aren’t people. You can do things to them — hack them to bits, reconstruct them, bring them back to life — that wouldn’t be acceptable, on the whole, with people.’

There was a tap at the door. The Director called ‘Yes’, and a young woman in a white coat and white shoes came in. Beamish-Newell introduced Brock to Rose, who impressed him as being bright and alert, eager to please her boss. She shook his hand, gave him a big smile and led him off for a tour of the basement treatment areas.

By the time they reached the gym, Brock was feeling a bit more comfortable about what lay in store for him. Most of the rooms they looked into were occupied by small groups of patients and staff, all of whom seemed absorbed and content. Rose had a knack of making the oddest-sounding procedures sound quite appealing, and even the empty room with the acupuncture couch seemed almost commonplace by the time she had explained it.

‘There’s more space down here than you’d think,’ he said, as he watched her trying to unlock the heavy door in front of them.

‘Mmm, it’s a bit of a rabbit warren, really,’ she agreed, in her strong Ulster accent. ‘But you’ll soon know your way around, David. Is it all right if I call you David? Most of the patients prefer first names, you know.’

‘Of course. Which part of Ireland are you from, Rose?’

‘Belfast. Sandy Row, if you know the place.’

‘I do,’ Brock smiled, then immediately regretted it as the inevitable question followed.

‘How come?’

He recalled his short visit several years before, during the course of a murder investigation of an Irish girl in London.

‘I visited some friends in Belfast once. They showed me round the area.’

Then you’ll know why I left.’

He smiled vaguely and decided to change the subject, conscious again that he was going to have to work harder at telling lies or avoid having to tell them at all.

‘What’s this chamber of horrors, then?’

The door swung open at last, and he saw the exercise machines and recognized Kathy’s description of the gym which Petrou had been in charge of.

T don’t know if you’ll be needing this place. Patients have to use it under instruction because it’s just too easy to pull a muscle or do yourself some other injury, and we don’t want your family to see you hobbling home in worse shape than when you came.’ She had a full, warm laugh. ‘Do you have any muscular problems?’

‘A bit of a sore shoulder. Dr Beamish-Newell said I’d be needing physiotherapy and acupuncture.’

‘Oh well, we’ll see whether he wants you to exercise in here, then.’

‘Do you look after the gym, Rose?’

‘No, Mrs Beamish-Newell has overall charge, of course, but one of the men, Tony, usually supervises.’

Brock surveyed the room. It seemed constricted by the low brick vaults supporting the house above, and the air smelled musty with old sweat as if it was rarely aired.

‘I should have mentioned it before, Rose, but I think we may have a friend in common.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, her name’s Kathy. I met her unexpectedly in London not long ago, and when I told her I was coming here she said to say hello to you.’

‘Kathy, you say?’ Rose frowned, puzzled.

‘Kathy Kolla. She’s in the police.’

Brock saw Rose’s expression freeze.

‘She mentioned that you had written to her a while ago and she felt guilty that she had never replied. Something about her having been taken off the case and not able to do much to help. She did say, though, that, off the record, she shared your concerns, and if there was any new information she’d like to hear about it. You could either contact her direct, or you could tell me about it and I’ll pass it on. That’s what she said.’

I see.’ Brock caught the reserve in her eyes and voice. Outside in the corridor he could hear the sound of people leaving the afternoon therapy sessions. ‘It was to do with the young man who died suddenly here, wasn’t it? I read about it in the papers, I remember.’

Rose hesitated, the vivacity gone from her face. Brock scratched his beard and pressed on, trying to get some response before they were interrupted. ‘That must have been a terrible thing. Did you know him well?’

‘Quite well,’ she said after a pause, then added, ‘This was his gym — he was in charge of it before Tony.’

‘Ah. What was his name?’

‘Alex … Alex Petrou,’ she said, and at that moment the heavy door swung open and Brock met the eyes of another woman in a white coat standing staring at them.

‘Rose?’ she said sternly.

‘This is a new patient, Mrs Beamish-Newell. Mr David Brock.’

The Director’s wife nodded and offered her hand to Brock. She had the same cold look of detached appraisal as her husband, but was taking less trouble to put a friendly front on it. ‘Come to my office, Mr Brock.’ She turned on her heel. Brock gave Rose a little smile as he followed. She made an effort to respond, but her face was troubled, her dark eyebrows lowered in a frown.

Laura Beamish-Newell closed her office door behind Brock, went round the desk and picked up a file. They both stood while she read from it in silence. Through the small semicircular window above her head the afternoon light was dying. When she finally looked up at him, he almost felt disposed to make a full confession. She had intelligent eyes and he noticed they were lightly made up to cover some premature creases. She considered him steadily for a moment as if weighing up whether he was a fraud. ‘Take off your dressing gown, Mr Brock, and your slippers. Get on the scales, please.’

She noted his weight, fourteen stone six, and his height, six foot two, then told him to sit down on the metal office chair facing her desk. Remaining standing, she wrapped a strap around his upper left arm and took his blood pressure. Then she took the file back round to the other side of the desk and sat down.

‘Are you interested in exercising in the gym?’

‘Well, I thought it might be a good idea.’

‘It should be all right. But only under Tony’s instruction. I’ll have a word with him.’ Her accent was difficult to pin down, Home Counties probably, but with a trace of something underneath, from the north perhaps. She continued writing, filling in boxes on what looked like a timetable and making notes on a page in the file.

Eventually she made a number of copies on the small photocopier in the corner of the room, put them into a plastic folder and handed them over to Brock. ‘This is the information you need for your first week here. We’ll review your progress at the end of that time. That is the schedule of your therapy sessions.’ She leaned across the desk and indicated with her pen on the timetable. ‘There are three sessions each day, at nine, eleven and three; in between you have the morning break, lunch and rest hour, and afternoon free time. A notice of evening talks and other events is posted in the entrance hall outside the dining room. All sessions start promptly, Mr Brock. Please bear that in mind.

‘This is information on your dietary programme for the first week,’ she continued, indicating another sheet in the folder. Brock stared at it for a moment, trying to make sense of it. It didn’t look much like a menu, more like a chemical analysis. The numbers of grams listed in the right-hand column didn’t seem very large.

‘The first week is crucial. At each meal-time you will find a tray with your name on it waiting for you on the long table in the dining room. Please don’t supplement your diet in any way, apart from water and lemon juice. Is that understood?’

There was none of Dr Beamish-Newell’s invitation to set out on a great dietary adventure. These were orders, not requests. This was going to be serious.