The Malcontenta

5

A hundred people, their paths crossing and recrossing during the course of the day. Kathy had thought that Belle Mansfield might have been able to help. A Canadian who had married an English engineer with IBM, she was a systems analyst who had been working as a civilian at County CID for the past year.

‘This is a classic, Kathy! The English country house, with Miss Scarlet in the drawing room with the lead pipe. Only you’ve got just too many Miss Scarlets.’

Kathy smiled, buoyed by Belle’s infectious North American optimism. She hadn’t thought of it like that, but it was true. Sixty years ago the house and a dozen or so occupants would have made a perfect setting for Agatha Christie. Now both house and occupants had been recycled and it would take Belle’s computer to sort it all out.

Before she had left for the post-mortem, Kathy had worked out with Belle a pro-forma sheet for each person interviewed, identifying where they were at each hour of the previous day, and who they were with or had seen. A separate sheet was to be used to note what the person knew of Alex Petrou. Photocopies of both sheets were run off, and by the time Kathy had left they were in the hands of half a dozen interview teams huddled over card tables around the edge of the games room, with Belle collating results on the table-tennis table in the middle. On her return from the autopsy Kathy found the games room empty apart from Gordon Dowling, who was sitting at the central table reading from the pile of interview reports.

‘Where is everybody?’ Kathy said, irritated. The rain was falling heavily now, and she had been soaked again just running from the car park to the front door.

‘It’s the clinic’s rest hour from two to three, and the Director didn’t want people disturbed during it, so I decided to let everyone go and get some lunch at the pub and start up again during the afternoon treatment sessions.’

Kathy nodded, conceding the point.

‘How did it go outside?’

Dowling shook his head. ‘Nothing. The rain didn’t help.’

‘No signs of any similar rope?’

‘No.’

‘Wheelbarrow or trailer, or anything that might have been used to move a body?’

He shook his head doubtfully. ‘We found a wheelbarrow, but it was full of water. Do we know the body was moved?’

‘From the state of his shoes, it doesn’t look as if he could have walked from the house across to the temple.’

‘Ah. Well, we didn’t come across any obvious footprints or tyre tracks, or signs of anything being dragged … Sorry, Kathy.’

She smiled at him. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’

‘No. They offered me something, but I didn’t fancy it. Just the smell of the food in here makes me feel sick. How about you?’

‘No. Looking at other people’s internal organs doesn’t do much for my appetite.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s the list of people we’ve seen so far?’

Gordon showed her a clipboard. ‘We’re concentrating on the patients, pulling them out of their treatment sessions individually without bringing the whole thing to a halt. They have two morning sessions, nine to ten thirty and eleven to twelve thirty, and one in the afternoon, from three to four-thirty. After that is free time until dinner at six, and we thought we should do the staff during that spell.’

Kathy nodded, studying the list. ‘There are a few here I’d like to see.’ She marked a cross against some of the names and wrote a note at the bottom of the page. ‘We might as well make a start, if we can get hold of them.’

Dr Beamish-Newell didn’t get any easier. He accepted Kathy’s apology for the morning’s disruption with a dismissive gesture of his hand and leaned back in his chair, studying her down the length of his nose, silently inviting her, or so it seemed to Kathy, to fall flat on her face again.

‘We’re asking everyone to trace their movements yesterday, doctor.’

‘So I understand. I should have thought there were much easier ways of doing this. We could have simply got everyone together, for example, and explained what had happened, and then invited anyone who saw Mr Petrou yesterday to remain behind and make a statement to you. I should have thought that would have got to the point much quicker, avoided a lot of rumours and inconvenience to us, and saved a lot of police time.’

Kathy took a deep breath. No doubt he had already given the Deputy Chief Constable the benefit of this advice. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the creases of concern on Gordon’s forehead as he waited, ball-point poised to take notes.

‘Mr Petrou now, not ‘Alex’. Distancing himself.

‘What were your movements yesterday, Dr Beamish-Newell?’ she said evenly. He raised his eyebrows a little and continued to stare at her, unblinking.

His silent gaze went on for so long that Kathy began to wonder if he was going to refuse to say anything further. Then he suddenly spoke. ‘Did the autopsy tell you anything?’

Several replies went through Kathy’s head. She settled for ‘Not yet; there are a number of forensic tests to complete,’ and stared right back at him.

He finally shook his head in studied exasperation and,?o looking down at his finger-nails, began to speak rapidly in a low monotone. ‘Sunday, 28 October. I rose at about seven-thirty Read the papers over a leisurely breakfast with my wife Laura until perhaps ten. I came over to the house to see a number of new patients who arrived between ten-thirty and twelve-thirty.’

He broke off to refer to his diary and read out the names of half a dozen patients, then took a sip of water from the glass on his desk. ‘I returned to my house between twelve-thirty and one, had lunch with Laura, sat with her for an hour in our living room, reading a book. At around three the sun came out and we decided to have a walk. I can trace our route if you wish — we saw a number of patients walking in the grounds. We returned to our cottage.’ He drew breath. ‘At around four I returned here to my office, to prepare schedules and do other paperwork for this week. I also did some work on an article I’m writing for the Journal of Naturopathic Medicine. Soon after six I joined Laura in the dining room for a light evening meal with patients and one or two visitors, after which we all retired to the drawing room for a recital she had organized, from seven till sometime after eight. She runs a programme of Sunday evening recitals for patients and friends. Last night it was a string quartet — students from the Conservatoire. She can give you details. There must have been thirty or more people there.’

‘But not Mr Petrou?’

‘No. At no time yesterday did I see him, and I have absolutely no knowledge of his movements.’ ‘Go on.’

He pursed his lips with irritation. ‘We returned to the cottage together at around nine. Laura had a bath, retired around ten. I followed shortly after.’

‘You share a bedroom?’ Kathy was aware of Gordon’s head bobbing up at her question. For a moment she thought she wasn’t going to get a reply, then, ‘No, as a matter of fact. And if you’re suggesting I got up in the middle of the night and went out…’

‘I just like to be clear. You didn’t, then … go out during the night?’

‘No, Sergeant, I did not. Now,’ he looked at his watch, ‘if you don’t mind, this morning’s events have put me way behind.’

‘That’s fine,’ Kathy said brightly, getting to her feet. ‘I’d like to speak to your wife if she’s available.’

Beamish-Newell lifted his phone and dialled.

‘She’s in her office. She’ll come up and collect you.’

‘Thanks. One thing. Why the temple, do you think? It seems a bizarre place for Petrou to choose, especially at night.’

‘Yes.’ Beamish-Newell hesitated, stared down at his blotter. ‘It is … odd. I have no explanation. I must say I find it a rather chilling place. We have no real use for it.’

‘Was it built by a Nazi sympathizer?’

‘What? Oh, I see — the swastika grating. No, that was put there before the Nazis took the symbol over. It has an ancient history — the word itself is derived from Sanskrit. When the temple was built the broken cross would have signified something quite different — the wholeness of creation.’

Laura Beamish-Newell came into the room at this point. She took in Kathy and Gordon with quick, unsmiling glances and shook hands briefly.

‘I’ll take you back to my room so that Stephen can get on with his work,’ she said. Kathy noticed a crease form momentarily between her eyebrows, and followed her gaze to her husband, who was seated again, staring fixedly at his blotter.

‘Have you had lunch, darling?’

It took him a moment to reply. ‘No … no, I didn’t have time with all the disruptions this morning.’

‘I’ll have something sent up from the kitchen.’ Then she turned to Kathy, ‘Come along,’ she said, and led them out of the room.

Her office was in the basement. From the foot of the spiral staircase Kathy and Gordon followed her down a corridor with a vaulted stone ceiling, past cubicles, offices and treatment rooms inserted between the massive piers supporting the main floors above. They came to a door with a rippled-glass vision panel and she showed them inside to tubular metal-framed seats in front of her metal desk, on which stood a telephone and a VDU. An examination couch took up one side of the room and filing cabinets the other. Above her chair a semicircular window had been set in the thick wall, like an eye peering out at the dark sky above. A fluorescent fitting mounted to the underside of the stone vault cast a cold and functional light over the room.

At first, after Stephen Beamish-Newell, Kathy found Laura’s curt, business-like manner refreshing.

‘My husband works too hard,’ she said. She had fine features, a long neck, good posture, blonde hair tied up neatly at the back of her head. Younger than her husband by at least ten years, Kathy guessed, her light-hazel eyes held no warmth and seemed dull with fatigue. ‘He doesn’t need this.’

‘Has this happened at a particularly bad time, then?’ Kathy tried to sound sympathetic, although the woman’s apparent indifference to Petrou’s fate was startling.

‘There’s never a good time, is there?’

‘I just wondered if he’d been under particular pressure lately.’

Laura’s eyes narrowed. ‘By the end of the summer we’re always a bit drained. We haven’t been able to get a break this year.’

‘What’s your role in the clinic, Mrs Beamish-Newell?’

‘I organize the treatment schedules. Stephen identifies the therapy regime for each patient, and I organize them into timetables and so on. I also keep a general eye on what goes on down here. I’ve been a nurse for fifteen years.’

‘So you knew Alex Petrou well.’

‘Of course.’

‘What was your assessment of him?’

‘Not all that high. He was inclined to be a bit showy, lacked substance. Tended to lose interest when it came to the difficult bits. Left it to somebody else. But he was quite popular with a number of the patients.’

‘Men and women?’

She shrugged. ‘Yes, both.’

‘Anyone special?’

‘Special? I’m talking about some of the patients liking his …. his manner, that’s all. He was quite amusing, personable. Nothing more special than that, as far as I’m aware.’

‘And staff? Any close friends, people he saw socially?’

‘I wouldn’t know about that. I was never aware of any particular friendships there.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Not yesterday. It would have been Saturday afternoon. He was exercising in the gym down the corridor there. I came in here to work. Some of the patients were coming and going.’

‘Did you actually speak to him then?’

‘Briefly.’

‘Do you know what he did on Saturday evening?’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Were you aware of him being in any way depressed, down?’

‘No, I didn’t notice anything.’

Mrs Beamish-Newell described her movements on the Sunday, as her husband had done, confirming his account. Some time after he had left their house to go to his office in the afternoon she had also come over, at around five or five-fifteen she thought, to prepare the drawing room for the recital. Although she had come in through the basement entrance and passed the door to the gym where Long had earlier been with Petrou, she had seen no sign of either of them.

Kathy asked to see the gym, and she led them back down the vaulted corridor to a doorway set in a recess. It was locked, and she took a master key from a pocket in her white coat to open the heavy door. The place smelt of damp mixed with the aroma of leather, talcum powder and sweat.

‘Alex made this room his own,’ Laura Beamish-Newell said, switching on the light. The room had the same low, vaulted ceiling as the corridor, and contained an assortment of weights, mats and exercise machines scattered around the floor. The grille of an extractor fan was visible high up in one corner, but there were no windows.

‘Is it the lack of a note that’s bothering you?’ Mrs Beamish-Newell said suddenly. ‘Only, you know they don’t always leave one.’

For the first time Kathy felt that the other woman was trying to communicate with her rather than just fend her off. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘But we haven’t found anyone who even thought he was depressed.’

‘Then again, it could have been an accident.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Oh come on, Sergeant.’ Laura looked hard at her. ‘In our work we’ve both seen stranger things. It happens, accidental hanging. Maybe he was doing it for kicks.’

From the corridor they could hear the muffled sound of patients returning to the basement for the afternoon treatment session.

‘Would that seem likely to you, knowing him?’

‘Yes,’ she turned away. ‘Yes, I think it would.’

She was reaching for the door when it abruptly swung open in front of her. Geoffrey Parsons was there, face flushed. He saw her and began gabbling rapidly. ‘Laura! What are you doing? I thought we — ’ Then he noticed Kathy and Gordon standing in the background, staring at him. ‘Oh … I’m sorry.’ He blinked several times. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. I’ll catch up with you later.’ He turned on his heel and hurried away. Laura Beamish-Newell glanced at Kathy with a bleak little smile, almost apologetic. ‘We’re all under pressure,’ she said. ‘It’s all very upsetting.’

Ben Bromley came round his desk to shake Kathy’s hand. He looked at her keenly.

‘When they told me it was a woman in charge, I realized I’d never actually seen a woman detective in the flesh, so to speak. I mean, apart from on telly.’

‘I hope I’m not a disappointment,’ Kathy replied drily.

‘Oh no, I’m sure you won’t be. From what I hear you’ve made quite an impact with our senior management already, not to mention the punters.’ He grinned at her, eyes twinkling.

‘Is that right?’

‘Enough said. I promised myself I wouldn’t speak out of turn. Come on in and sit down. I think we can find room. It’s a bit cramped in here, as you can see.’

It was true that the room looked no bigger than the storeroom it had indeed previously been, and all available surfaces, including the chairs, were covered with piles of computer print-outs, brochures and other papers.

‘Yorkshire, is it?’ Kathy asked.

‘Lancashire — Bolton,’ he replied.

She nodded. ‘I was partly brought up in Sheffield, but I still have trouble telling the difference.’

‘I saw the light six years ago. Company I’d been with for the previous fifteen years making window frames finally went the way of half the rest of the north of England, down the tubes. Taken over actually, by southerners. Asset-stripped and closed down. I decided if we couldn’t beat ’em I’d better join ’em. Actually I was bloody lucky. Sir Peter Maples, chairman of the conglomerate that took us over, had just acquired a hobby — ’ he rolled his eyes around the room ‘this place. He’d just rescued it from a fate worse than liquidation and was looking for a business manager to put in. I am he.’

He had managed to clear a couple of seats for Kathy and Gordon during this, and they all sat down. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ he asked. Kathy hesitated.

‘No, no.’ He waved a hand. ‘None of that molasses muck or whatever it is they drink here.’ He reached into a drawer in his desk and pulled out a tin of ground coffee with a triumphant flourish. ‘Italian, smashing, what do you say?’

‘Actually,’ Kathy said with a deep breath, ‘that’s the best thing anyone’s said to me all day.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Dowling muttered under his breath.

Ben Bromley had a kettle, jug and mugs tucked beneath a hatstand in the corner, and while he squatted to make the coffee, Kathy continued. ‘I didn’t realize the clinic didn’t belong to Dr Beamish-Newell. I just assumed …’

‘It did once. He bought this place in the seventies. It was a bit of a wreck, you know, needed a lot doing to it to return it to the glory you see today.’ He gestured at the squalor around them.

‘He must have had a bit of money.’

Bromley looked up at her and winked. ‘Not him, luv, his wife. Behind every great man is a rich wife with an open cheque book.’

‘Oh, I see. And then the cheque book ran out, did it?’

‘Well, the great doctor is a brilliant man, of course. Learnt his acupuncture in Tibet or Timbuctoo or some such, and had this vision for a centre for holistic whatsit, but within these four walls he wasn’t too good at keeping an eye on his cash-flow. So — ’ he straightened and placed the jug on the desk, spooning coffee into the filter ‘- when things got tricky he managed to interest some of his more influential patients in the idea of setting up a charitable trust to take over the financial liabilities of the clinic and run it as a non-profit organization. They got Sir Peter interested, and he took charge. Should I be telling you all this?’ He looked quizzically at Kathy. ‘Why not? It’s common knowledge. Not much help with what you’re here for. What are you here for, anyway? I heard about poor old Adonis the Greek, but it’s hardly a case for Crimewatch, is it? Or is there something I haven’t heard yet?’

‘In cases of sudden death we just need to make sure there aren’t any loose ends.’

‘Oh come on, luv! I give you all this background and ply you with coffee — how do you like it, by the way? — and you tell me nothing! Surely there’s something you can tell me? Some titbit? In this house of rumour, one solid fact is worth its weight in red meat! I could have my way with half the lasses in the place if you’d just give me some little juicy thing — only joking, of course. I’m a happily married man and I’m not that desperate — nobody is.’

He was forty-something, rosy-cheeked and balding. His short and stocky build, inherited from undernourished forebears who had laboured for generations in pit and mill, didn’t provide a particularly dashing framework for his more affluent diet. The thought of him daydreaming of having his way with the lasses of the clinic made Kathy smile.

‘Well, for one thing,’ she said, ‘nobody seems to have had any idea that he might have been contemplating suicide. It just seems to have come out of the blue. In cases like that we try to establish some background.’

‘Try to get to the bottom of it, eh?’

Kathy looked carefully at him and he beamed innocently back.

‘Why “Adonis”?’ she said.

‘Oh well, he was another beautiful Greek youth, wasn’t he? And he died while hunting boars, I believe. There’s plenty of old bores to hunt in this place, I can tell you.’

‘You’re suggesting that Mr Petrou preyed on the patients in some way.’

‘Heaven forfend, officer!’ He fluttered his hands as a disclaimer. ‘Just my classical mythology carrying me away. Anyway, the human-relations side of this business is not my problem. I worry about the balance sheets.’

‘But you look at what’s going on with a pretty shrewd eye, I’d say. What made you think that Mr Petrou was gay?’

‘Did I say that? I’m not really sure what he was. I had the impression he wasn’t really sure what he was. But that may be completely out of line.’

‘What gave you that impression, specifically?’

Bromley became vague. ‘Oh … his appearance, manner.’

‘What about his behaviour, with patients, say?’

Bromley looked at her with an angelic smile. ‘Really, officer, I know nothing.’

‘Well, how about the balance sheets, then. How have they been doing since Sir Peter took over?’

‘Pretty well, as a matter of fact. Plenty of people want what our good Director has to offer. I’ve got a copy of last year’s annual report if you want to have a look.’

‘Yes, please.’

He pulled a copy of a brochure out from under a pile of other papers and gave it to her. While she turned the pages over, Bromley turned to Gordon.

‘Talking about bottoms, have you heard the one about the lad with piles who goes to the naturopath and says, “Please doctor, help me for God’s sake, I’m in agony,” and the naturopath tells him to get a tea-bag and insert it in his back passage. So a week later the doctor sees the lad again and says, “How are you feeling now?” and the lad says, “Well, doctor, we haven’t got a back passage at home, so I put it in the side lane. But for all the good it did me, I might as well have shoved it up me bum!’“

Gordon sniggered. Encouraged, Bromley glanced at Kathy, who was thumbing through the report. She was surprised at how glossy the presentation was, in contrast to the rather spartan atmosphere of the clinic. Surprised also by the figures for annual turnover.

Bromley leaned confidentially towards Gordon and went on. ‘Well, the lad uses the tea-bag as instructed, but it still doesn’t do any good, and he’s still having trouble with his piles, see, so he finds another naturopath and says, “Can you help me?” The naturopath says, “Drop your trousers, then, and bend over and I’ll have a look,” so he does that and after a long time the lad says, “Well? What can you see?” and the naturopath says, “I can see you taking a long journey and meeting a tall dark stranger.”

Gordon didn’t get it.

‘He was telling his fortune,’ Bromley had to explain. ‘With the tea-leaves…’

‘Mr Bromley, maybe you’d like to tell us your movements yesterday,’ Kathy broke in. ‘We’re trying to establish everyone’s whereabouts on the estate during the course of the day.’

‘Well, that’s easy,’ Bromley replied. ‘I was at home with my family all day. You wouldn’t catch me out here at the weekend if I could help it. I may be barmy, but I’m not mad.’

The interview teams finished off for the day at around six, and Kathy returned to County HQ with copies of the interview reports soon after. For a couple of hours she sat at a desk in the office reading them and making notes, until she started to nod off. She decided she should have something to eat, although she wasn’t very hungry, and went down to the canteen in the basement. The whole building was quiet, the canteen deserted apart from three people she didn’t know sitting over by the trolley with the sauce bottles.

She had her head down, poking with her fork at a plate of fish and chips, when someone sat down opposite her at her table. She looked up into Tanner’s face. Her stomach lurched.

‘Evening, Kathy,’ he said quietly. It was the first time she had heard him use her first name.

‘Evening, sir.’ She put down her fork, preparing herself for trouble.

‘Don’t let me interrupt you.’ He leaned forward till his head was only a foot away and picked up one of her chips. ‘D’you mind? Haven’t eaten myself yet.’

‘Be my guest. I’m not very hungry.’

‘Got to eat. Got to look after yourself. Nobody else will.’ ‘No, sir.’

‘Hear you had a run-in with the Deputy Chief Constable today.’

‘It was a misunderstanding really, sir. I think I sorted …’ Tanner waved his hand dismissively and took another chip.

‘Bloke’s a wanker. Know the definition of a wanker? Someone who’d rather read about it than experience the real thing. Mr Long reads reports. I’m told he’s never actually run a criminal investigation himself in his whole career.’

‘Is that right?’ Kathy pictured the monogrammed towelling robe, the vaguely fretful tone in his voice. Tanner’s voice, on the contrary, was a hard growl of experience and caution. Kathy wondered what was going on. She wondered why he was telling her this. She wondered if he’d been drinking, though she couldn’t smell anything. Maybe he was just tired, as she was.

‘What did you make of Dr Beamish-Newell?’ he asked, chewing.

‘You know him?’

Tanner stared at her, saying nothing, his expression unchanging.

‘He told me I shouldn’t eat junk food. Bad for my skin.’ ‘Looks good to me.’ The male gaze.

Kathy met his eyes. After a moment they creased at the corners in what might have been a smile, and he reached for another chip.

‘I’ll have to buy you another helping of chips,’ he said.

‘You certainly know how to treat a girl,’ she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was a stupid remark, brought on by tiredness and by relief that he didn’t seem to be hassling her.

His mouth, a tight, narrow line, widened. That was definitely a smile. He got to his feet and walked away. Kathy took a deep breath and went and ordered another cup of tea.