The Malcontenta bak-2

by Barry Maitland

  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.’

  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 indi
vidually 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, b
oth.’

  ‘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.’