The Malcontenta

9

There was a little municipal park whose narrow entrance was squeezed between two buildings facing on to the long market-place which formed the heart of Crowbridge. It had been built on the site of the only building to be bombed in the town during the Second World War, a narrow-fronted terrace with a large rear garden which rolled down the long slope of the hillside. In the earnest spirit of the late forties, the town council had turned this single casualty into a public amenity, transforming a pleasant eighteenth-century garden into the functional patchwork zoning of dahlia beds, herbaceous borders and rose gardens which signified the beneficent arrival of the Welfare State.

Kathy sat on a bench watching a gardener tending the roses. In her present circumstances she felt a sharp envy for the simplicity and satisfaction of his work, which involved the severe pruning of a year’s exuberant growth to a foot or two of stunted stalk. There were a number of men upon whom she would have liked to practise similarly drastic surgery.

She sat for over an hour until the cold and gloomy atmosphere of the afternoon had soaked into her sufficiently to restore a sense of proportion. Then she climbed back up the winding path to the iron gates facing the market-place and returned to her car. She drove to Edenham and parked in the High Street, right outside the greengrocers’. Jerry wasn’t pleased to see her. She waited while he finished serving his customer.

‘I’m just closing. What do you want?’ he said.

‘I’d like some grapes, if they’re sweet and juicy.’

He stared at her through his big lenses, which gave his face a surprised, innocent expression even when he was scowling, as now. ‘They are. How many do you want?’

‘Couple of big bunches. How’s Errol?’

‘You should ask! He’s off sick as a matter of fact, thanks to you.’

‘How come?’

He stared at her for a moment and his lip curled. ‘I don’t want to talk to you. Take your grapes and eff off.’

‘I’d like to speak to Errol. I suppose I could call round to your place now.’

‘Don’t you dare! Errol’s under doctor’s orders. I’m warning you, you leave him alone! You’ve given us both quite enough grief.’

‘But you haven’t said how. What’s happened, Jerry? Did someone else come round to visit him? Today? Who was it?’

Jerry was becoming quite agitated, cocking his head from side to side, adjusting his glasses on his nose as if something had happened to their focus. ‘He’s been told to speak to nobody, and so have I. If you try to pester him again I’m going to make an official complaint. I warn you, one more try and I’m on to my solicitor.’

He turned away, looking towards the shop window, blinking rapidly.

Kathy sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Jerry,’ she said finally, shook her head and left.

She found a phone box and rang the County Mortuary. She was told that Professor Pugh had left for the day. She found his home address in the phone book and returned to her car, where she identified his place on a street map of Crowbridge.

The road was lined with horse-chestnut trees, but most of their big leaves had fallen. The houses were large, red-brick, built fifteen or twenty years before, when Crowbridge had been discovered by commuters from the metropolis. Pugh’s house was in darkness, and Kathy waited in her car in the street, eating the grapes. Jerry had been right: they were succulent.

Towards seven a large white Volvo pulled into Pugh’s drive, and the boot swung up. The professor and his wife got out of the car and began carting plastic carrier-bags of shopping from the boot to the front door. It took them two journeys each, and then Pugh opened the garage doors and drove the Volvo inside. Kathy gave them ten minutes to get themselves organized, then went to the front door and rang the bell.

Mrs Pugh came to the door, a small, grey-haired woman in a thick cashmere jumper and tweed skirt.

‘I wondered if I might speak to Professor Pugh. My name is Sergeant Kolla, from County CID.’

The little woman looked intently at Kathy for a moment, then said, ‘Yes, come in, Sergeant. Funnily enough, we were just talking about you. Gareth was wondering if you might get in touch with him.’

Kathy stepped into the warm hall, which smelled of furniture polish and pine-scented air-freshener.

‘Let me take your coat. It looks a bit damp. I’ll hang it beside the boiler. Perhaps it’ll be dry by the time you leave. Gareth is in the living room with the evening paper. Come along.’

The pathologist was sitting in front of an imitation-log gas fire. He looked up at her, peering over the top of his glasses. ‘Ah!’ He got to his feet. ‘We were just talking about you, Sergeant! Come in, come in.’ He seated her opposite him beside the fire, in a plump, floral armchair. ‘Now, am I to take it that this is an unofficial visit?’

‘That’s right. I would really appreciate a few minutes of your time on an informal basis. If it isn’t too much of an imposition,’ she added uneasily.

He nodded. ‘So, it’s as if, let us say, we had met in the supermarket just now by chance, and my wife had said, as she well might, that you must come back with us and share the mug of hot chocolate which she always makes after our weekly expedition to Sainsbury’s. It’s surprising how enjoyable these little rituals become as one gets older. You do like hot chocolate?’

‘Really, I’m fine.’

‘Nonsense. Anyway, the hot milk is on and Megan will be making you one regardless.’

‘This is very kind of you. I should really have rung first.’

‘But you were afraid I’d say no, eh?’ He smiled. ‘What it is, see, we have a daughter, about your age. She’s an engineer, and I suppose watching her progress has brought it home to me how difficult it is for a young professional woman to make her way — well, for all young people these days it’s so competitive, but particularly for girls. And I would like to think, were she to encounter a problem of some kind, that some old duffer like me, familiar with her work perhaps, might spare her the time of day, see?

‘Of course, she could hardly expect him to talk to her about, say, the senior partners in the company she works for. They might be rogues for all I know, but all the same it wouldn’t be right for him to comment on that to her. But if some of the technical details of her work were to come up in discussion — things he might expect her to be familiar with anyway — well, there would surely be no harm in him talking them over with her, now, would there?’

Kathy smiled at this elaborate preamble. She noticed that the lilt was back in his voice.

‘I’m sure she’d very much appreciate that, sir.’

‘Good. And here is Megan with our hot chocolate. I was just telling Kathy here about our Marion, cariad.’

‘Yes, that’s her picture over there. We’re very proud of her.’ Mrs Pugh pointed up to a framed graduation portrait in the centre of the mantelpiece. ‘I’ll go and get on in the kitchen, then.’

‘You don’t need to go. Stay with us, cariad.’

‘No, I don’t think I will. I don’t have Gareth’s professional detachment, see, Sergeant. When he talks about body fluids and the intimate parts of people, he might as well be talking about bits of his car. But I can’t help seeing it all in my mind and picturing the horrible things that people do to each other. It makes me feel quite sick, I’m afraid. I can’t help it.’

Pugh chuckled indulgently and settled back with his mug. ‘Well, you’re wondering about Dr Beamish-Newell’s new story, is that it? He is a real doctor, by the way, in case you were wondering. I looked him up when I first came across him and that clinic of his. Interesting man, in fact. He did his medicine at Cambridge, stayed on for a while at Adden-brooke’s, then went to one of the London hospitals — Guy’s, I think. While he was a student he was quite radical. That was normal for those days, the late sixties, though not necessarily for a medical student. He was actually arrested at the Garden House riot, do you remember? No, of course not, you’d only have been about ten, I suppose. Anyway, while he was in London he became increasingly interested in alternative medicine, and in the early seventies he threw in his job and went to China to study acupuncture. He wrote an article for the Lancet about alternative medical procedures in China, and when he came back he wrote a book, Holistic Therapies or something like that, which was quite well received. Then he managed to turn his theories into practice, I suppose, at Stanhope. He’s been back to China a few times since, I believe, and he’s lectured widely about his ideas.’

‘You approve of the clinic, then, Professor?’

‘Ah, I didn’t say that. I’m not one of those medics who pooh-pooh alternative therapies as hogwash, not at all. I’m only too well aware of how little we know about how our bodies work — good lord, half the time I can hardly tell why one of them has stopped working, let alone how the rest of them manage to continue. So if someone can cure the rheumatism in your arm by sticking pins into your big toe, I say good luck, boy, so long as it works. And if someone else can take some substance that causes the same symptoms as you’re presenting, and then dilute it until there’s barely a molecule or two left in the glass, and have you drink it and cure you, even though the whole procedure seems absolutely bonkers, well, again I say good luck.

‘But what bothers me about Dr Beamish-Newell and his clinic is the arrogance of the man. He doesn’t believe he’s practising an alternative form of medicine at all — he believes his is the only way. It may be fine for encouraging people to stop smoking or think more about their diet or take a bit more exercise. A week or two at Stanhope for those who can afford it may be just the thing. But what about the poor fellow who’s got something seriously wrong and is persuaded to abandon his conventional treatments, his drugs and surgery, for the sake of some will-o’-the-wisp that has no scientific basis at all? That’s what bothers me and I’ve said so. Dr Beamish-Newell and I had a fairly vigorous exchange of letters on the subject some time ago in the Daily Telegraph. The local paper took it up and did an article on the clinic which Beamish-Newell wasn’t best pleased about. So, you see, in his eyes I’m a hostile witness. I am against him — probably trying to blacken his name. That’s how he will think. I have to bear that in mind when it comes to this business with Petrou, and so should you, Kathy.’

Kathy nodded. ‘Yes, I see. I felt something of that atmosphere of… of conviction, although I didn’t really understand what it was. That’s what made someone like the Business Manager seem so out of place. He was so normal he seemed weird.’

Pugh laughed. ‘Yes, but it would be a mistake to dismiss them as cranks. There is a lot of sound stuff in what they practise. As usual it’s the human element that complicates matters. And the man has powerful friends, don’t forget that. Plenty of important people have gone through Stanhope and been very impressed by its Director.’

‘Yes, that point has been brought to my attention.’

‘Ah, right. So, best that we just stick to the physical evidence, eh?’

Kathy nodded. ‘How does it square with the new story, would you say?’

‘Well, according to what Inspector Tanner put to me this morning, Parsons actually found the body soon after six that morning. He fetched Beamish-Newell from his house, and together they went to the temple and lowered the body to the ground. Beamish-Newell delayed returning to the temple until he was certain he had thoroughly searched Petrou’s room and removed anything he didn’t like the look of. Working back from the time of calling the police, it could have been ten or quarter past eight before they lifted the body off the floor again, so he might have been lying there for over one and a half hours. That could explain the patterns of lividity and flattened muscle, provided we assume that diffusion lividity was already occurring but that rigor had not yet fully set in. That would put the time of death at about 2 a.m. Beamish-Newell has also provided a rough description of the things Petrou was wearing when they found him, and it does correspond pretty well with that other pattern of marks I found on the body, which I mentioned at the post-mortem.

‘So the picture we get is of Petrou, in a disturbed or hallucinogenic frame of mind, under the influence of ecstasy, dressing himself up, coming to the temple around 2 a.m., stringing himself up for some kind of weird thrill, kicking away the chair by mistake, and hanging himself.

‘As far as I can see, this explains quite a few of the mysteries of the forensic evidence. It explains the marks on the body and the patterns of lividity and muscle distortion fairly well; it explains body fluid traces we found on the floor beneath the body; it explains the floor dust on the body and inside the tracksuit; and it explains the presence of those peculiar things you found in the corner.

‘So far, so good. All of those puzzling things are now clear.’

Pugh paused and sipped thoughtfully at his hot chocolate.

Kathy waited. ‘But you’re not completely happy.’

‘The trouble is that the things I’m uneasy about are the very things it’s hard to be precise with. If he died at around 2 a.m. — and it couldn’t have been much earlier according to this account, or rigor would have set in before he was laid on the floor — I was taking his temperature not much more than eight hours later. I wouldn’t have expected it to be as close to ambient in that time. But …’ He shrugged. ‘Body temperature is always a dodgy guide to time of death.

‘Then there were the shoes, being so clean. We did find stone dust on them, but then they had been sitting on the floor of the temple all night. But there were no mud or grass stains to suggest they had been used outside. Again, though, the absence of evidence is problematic. Inspector Tanner pointed out that you can get from the house to the temple on a gravel path, and though we found no signs of gravel on the shoes, it could explain the absence of other stains.’

Pugh lapsed into silence.

Eventually Kathy said, ‘There are other things too. You said before that you thought you’d found traces of ecstasy — it didn’t sound as if he’d had very much.’

Pugh nodded. ‘But that’s something else I can’t be precise about, you see? There’s simply nothing available on what you’d expect to find in a body ten or twelve hours after taking MDMA, let alone relating it to quantities. I’ve put out an inquiry to see if data is available from fatal car accidents involving users, but even then, with the variables of time, quantity, body weight…’

‘Yes, but either way it doesn’t work.’ Kathy insisted. ‘If he was fairly sober, the cold and the sheer inconvenience of going out to the temple on his own would surely put him off. Whereas if he was high enough to be oblivious to all that, it doesn’t seem very likely he could manage the mechanics of getting out there without waking up half the clinic — he had to get into the office for the temple keys, find his way out of the house and across the grounds, find some rope from somewhere, open up the temple and make his way down to the crypt, all in the pitch dark, without a torch. You see? He didn’t even have a torch.’

Pugh nodded. ‘Yes, put like that…’

‘That’s why there had to be someone else, the AB secretor or whoever,’ Kathy said. ‘Whether it was an accident or murder, there had to be someone else. What about the semen stains on his legs?’

‘I can’t put an accurate time to that, Kathy. He could have acquired those any time that previous evening.’ The pathologist shook his head. ‘People do strange things, Kathy. The longer you live, the less surprised you become by anything, especially in our jobs.’

‘They gave you a hard time,’ Brock said. He got to his feet and slowly stretched his back.

‘Maybe they were right,’ Kathy said. ‘Maybe I did get it out of proportion. Maybe I was determined that this was going to be a murder case from the start. When Tanner brought up the jokes and accused me of homophobia … I felt terrible when I thought about it afterwards. I couldn’t sleep properly for weeks.’

‘But you knew he was trying to intimidate you. He was just good at his job.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘You know it, Kathy. Deep down, you know it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here now.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, why are you here now?’ He sat down again and faced her across the table, folding his big hands in front of him.

‘The inquest was held later in November,’ Kathy replied. ‘A verdict of accidental death while under the influence. I wasn’t required, and I didn’t go. I was sick of the whole thing, actually. Just wanted to forget about it. Then around Christmas I got a letter from the clinic, from Rose Duggan, Parsons’ fiancee. The one who was out with Petrou on the Saturday night.’

Kathy handed Brock two sheets of pale-blue writing paper. The lettering immediately took him back to the blackboard of his primary school, where the teacher could make a’s and b’s and p’s with perfect circular forms. Rose Duggan’s lettering had retained this perfection, unspoilt by speed or lazy habits.

Dear Sergeant Kolla, I hope this letter reaches you in confidence. Everyone here is busy writing Christmas letters and cards and I thought I would write to you as I have thought of doing many times this past month.

They told me what came out in the Coroner’s Court and the verdict on what happened to poor Alex. You can imagine the whispers in a place like this. It makes me very sad to think of him gone and his memory no more than a dirty joke. I knew the man better than any of them. He loved fun and liked to enjoy himself. But he would never have done what they say unless he was made to do it by people in positions who should know better.

I beg you to clear the filth from the memory of a darling man.

Yours truly,

Rose Duggan

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing. Rose Duggan was the one who laughed at the idea of Petrou being gay. It seemed to me she didn’t know him as well as she thought. I guessed she might have had a bit of a crush on him. And anyway, what could I do?’

‘So?’

‘Just that … doing nothing didn’t do me a lot of good. I’ve kept thinking about that letter. It was like an accusation that I’d given up.

‘Anyway, I did nothing. And then earlier this week I heard a rumour about Long. His secretary is a friend of Penny Elliot’s sister and told her that Long has put in for a top job at Scotland Yard — she said the Assistant Commissioner. I couldn’t believe it, and then I wondered: what if it’s true? I remembered how he’d interfered in the Petrou case, and then I thought about Rose’s phrase “people in positions who should know better”, and I thought, what if she meant him} The only thing I could think to do was see you, Brock. I wondered if you could find out anything about Long. Maybe check if the story was true about him applying to the Met.’

‘Oh, I already know about Long, Kathy,’ Brock said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he lusted after a position like that. I’d hate to believe it was anything more than fantasy, but you never know … worth a phone call, I suppose.’

He got to his feet and went over to the phone on the work-bench beside the computers. While he thumbed through a small notebook, Kathy and Gordon set about clearing the lunch things, taking them through to the kitchen and washing them in the sink. They took their time, not speaking, wanting to leave Brock alone while he phoned his friends. When they returned he was sitting deep in thought, a frown on his face.

‘He’s got it,’ he said at last. ‘The bugger’s got it. Apparently the process has been going on for months, and he’s come out on top. They’re currently in the final negotiations over the package — the knighthood, I suppose. The position is a direct appointment of the sovereign. There probably won’t be a public announcement for several weeks.’ ‘Oh God!’ Kathy looked sick.

‘I can’t believe it. It seems he has important friends. But still … he’s such a …’ He searched for the word, failed and paced up and down, shaking his head.

‘We went through Bramshill Police College together in the early sixties,’ he said at last. ‘I remember being impressed by the fact that he was the first person I’d ever met who had already planned his whole life — he would have been, I don’t know, twenty-five, twenty-six. He’d done a first degree at Manchester, then gone to America to get an MBA — ahead of his time, you see. He wasn’t in the least interested in what the police do. The force for him was simply a structure to be climbed according to a prearranged plan. It might have been the Foreign Office or the Inland Revenue, it didn’t really matter. He chose the police because he’d read that a new spirit was afoot, sweeping away the old types, the ones who’d come up slowly through the ranks. A new culture was to be nurtured, a culture of young, tertiary-educated, managerial types who would be given accelerated promotion so as to bring about the sweeping changes necessary. Well … you know the sort of thing. It makes me tired to think about it.

‘Anyway, he was right in a way. He did rise quickly, despite the objections of one or two absurd old reactionaries who felt that policemen should probably know something about solving crimes. I thought when he reached Deputy Chief Constable, five or six years ago, that he must have finally reached the level of his incompetence. But I was wrong, it seems.’

‘It isn’t only him,’ Kathy said. ‘Tanner made Chief Inspector last month.’

‘Well, now, they’re all doing fine, aren’t they? I did wonder about Tanner, why he went along with Long’s interference. Perhaps that’s the explanation: he knew what was in the wind.’ Brock collected his thoughts for a moment.

‘Anyway, the heart of the matter is Petrou’s death. If you were wrong to smell a rat there, then there’s nothing to be done. But if you were right…’

Kathy nodded. ‘But there’s no way I can get the case reopened, Brock. Nobody could now, not without some real evidence.’

‘And if there’s any of that, it’s hidden away in Stanhope Clinic’

Brock got stiffly to his feet and stretched his back. He started talking again as if on a completely different tack. ‘I’ve been feeling a bit out of shape lately. And this damn shoulder has been getting worse. It’s been playing up all winter. I wonder if a spot of acupuncture would help.’

Kathy and Gordon stared at him. ‘You’re not serious?’ she said.

He beamed. ‘Do you know, Kathy, I’ve been worried over the past couple of months that I was about to turn into one of those old men sitting in their armchairs, tapping out their reminiscences, pontificating to the young. I do believe you’ve saved me. Anyway, I can take my laptop with me, write my paper for the conference while they’re cleaning the poisons out of my system. Do you have the phone number? I could be down there tomorrow.’