The Malcontenta bak-2

by Barry Maitland

  Suddenly the light in the room snapped on. A voice behind him said, ‘What are you doing?’

  16

  Brock turned and was startled to see Grace Carrington in his bed. She was staring at him wide-eyed over the edge of the blankets. Then he noticed that the curtains were different, the wardrobe in a different place.

  ‘Oh no,’ he groaned. ‘The wrong door.’

  ‘What?’ She was looking at him as if he were mad. Behind him Brock could hear voices approaching.

  He took another deep breath. ‘I was trying to break into my own room. I locked myself out. But in the dark I thought your door was mine.’

  Her eyes moved from his flushed face to the jack handle in his hand. Then she too heard the voices outside. ‘What’s going on, David?’ she whispered.

  He hesitated. ‘I’ve been misbehaving, Grace. And I very nearly got caught.’

  She watched him, then said, ‘Do you want to leave now?’

  ‘I’d rather hang on a moment — if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Then you’d better sit down and explain what you’re doing in my room in the middle of the night.’ She seemed calmer now.

  So he sat on the end of her bed and told her about Kathy, and about her visit with Dowling to his home. He described some of Kathy’s frustrations with the case, and his offer to spend some time at Stanhope. And he spoke of his reasons for breaking into the clinic’s computer that evening.

  ‘I can’t believe that a senior police officer would do such a thing,’ she said. ‘What if you’d been caught?’

  He nodded and hung his head. ‘You’re right. Kathy said exactly the same.’

  ‘If you believe Alex was murdered, then who do you suspect?’

  ‘I don’t know. The problem is that the motive is unclear. It might have been blackmail, or sexual jealousy. Or perhaps it was an accident in which others were involved who would prefer to keep their names out of it. I find it hard to come to grips with Petrou. He seems to have been so many different things to different people.’

  She nodded, thinking back. ‘I suppose that’s true. He had a surface charm, which he could adapt to the people that he came into contact with. There was a certain intimacy almost immediately you met him; he seemed soft, yielding. But I always felt that underneath he was quite hard, that he had a very strong sense of self-preservation and self-interest.’

  ‘He was manipulative, then.’

  ‘Yes, I think he was.’ She looked hard at Brock, who was nursing his breaking-and-entering tools. ‘I’m sorry I flew off the handle at you earlier. I thought you were being manipulative.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I was. Until I got to know you, anyway.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Right now? Well, if the coast is clear, go back to my room, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re going to smash another door in?’ He smiled, shrugged.

  ‘Maybe it was fate, David, that you broke into this room. Maybe it was even intentional — subconsciously, I mean.’

  He reddened.

  ‘Alternatively,’ she said, ‘you could just stay here and in the morning I’ll tell Jay that I’ve locked myself out again and she’ll lend me the master key — she does it all the time for the patients.’

  Brock looked at the chair by the desk. It seemed the only possibility, but he’d already found from the one in his own room that he was too big for it. ‘Well …’ He sounded doubtful.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. She wriggled over in the narrow bed to make room for him, and then reached up to turn off the light.

  ‘You are real, then.’ He opened his eyes at the sound of her voice and saw her gazing at him. A weak silver light leaked in around the curtain, and the hot water gurgled in the old cast-iron radiator under the window.

  ‘Yes.’ He felt their bodies pressed together in the narrow bed. ‘I’m real, and a bit… surprised.’

  ‘Don’t you do this much, then?’ She smiled at him, and he thought how very nice a smile it was, and how much poorer the world was going to be without it. He kissed her cheek and stretched as much as he could in the confined space. ‘I just didn’t expect to find myself waking up here with you. I’m very glad I have, though.’

  ‘In half an hour I’ll go downstairs and get someone to give me the key. But not yet.’ She slid her hand across his chest and gave him a squeeze.

  ‘No,’ he agreed, and eased his arm under her shoulders. For the first time he noticed that his automatic wince was unnecessary, for there was no pain from his shoulder.

  ‘You think Stephen Beamish-Newell killed Alex, don’t you?’ she asked.

  He hesitated. ‘I have no real reason to. I think Kathy does.’

  ‘I can understand that. He can seem intimidating, even terrifying, I suppose. But he would have the most to lose if someone was murdered at the clinic’

  ‘And perhaps the most to lose from someone who was threatening the reputation of the clinic in some way. You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s not liking. More trusting. I just don’t believe he would do it.’

  ‘How about his wife?’

  ‘Laura?’ Grace looked at him in surprise, then frowned. ‘Of course not! How do they train you to think like this?’

  ‘It comes from having to punish people all the time, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m sorry I said that, David. It must be very hard, doing what you do. Not allowed to forgive anyone.’

  ‘That’s what makes it bearable, Grace. It would be too difficult to have to forgive as well. Someone else gets that job.’

  A wood pigeon had settled on their window-sill and began cooing reassuringly. Then a blast of the gusting north-easterly wind sent it fluttering away out of earshot.

  An hour later Grace returned from her visit downstairs. ‘Jay doesn’t come in on a Sunday, but the girl who opens the office for her gave me the key. She didn’t seem to know about any goings-on last night.’

  ‘There’s no way they couldn’t have heard me. And I left the computer on. Still, it doesn’t sound as if they called the police. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘What have you got planned today?’

  ‘Not a lot. I’m supposed to be writing a paper for a conference …’ Brock’s voice trailed away. Talking with her about anything happening in the future was so difficult. He thought how much he would have liked to take her to Italy.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not important. Not in the least. What about you?’

  ‘Can I spend time with you, David? It doesn’t matter, if you feel awkward about it.’

  ‘Of course I don’t feel awkward. I’d like that.’

  ‘It isn’t that I don’t love my husband. But this …’ She gestured hopelessly round the bare little room.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It isn’t Paris in the springtime, but it’s a comfort. It’s a comfort for me too, Grace, believe me.’

  She moved up against him. ‘I arranged to meet Rose this afternoon,’ she said. ‘If you like, I’ll try to persuade her to talk to you.’

  They went for a walk in the grounds after lunch and looked in the library when they returned, to see if they could retrieve Brock’s gift to her, but it was gone.

  Grace went off to keep her appointment with Rose. ‘She says she will talk to you, David,’ she reported back later. ‘I gather it has something to do with her fiance, Geoffrey Parsons. Apparently, there’s something he kept from the police, and he’s been worrying a lot about it. He doesn’t want Rose to speak to anyone, but she feels he’s going to have a breakdown if he doesn’t do something. She’s tried getting him to speak to Stephen Beamish-Newell, but he says there’s no one he can talk to.’

  ‘Does she have any idea what it is that he’s hiding?’

  ‘I’m not sure if she knows or just suspects. It’s strange — sometimes she sounds very protective and concerned about him, and the next minute she becomes quite aggrieved and annoyed. I got the feeling that their relationship hasn’
t been very happy lately, almost as if she’s only keeping it going because he’s dependent on her.’

  ‘It’s funny you should say that. I got a lecture from Laura Beamish-Newell yesterday about harassing her staff. Apart from Rose, she said I’d been belligerent towards Parsons, who’d told her about the time he approached you while we were out there in the snow. He claimed I almost attacked him.’

  ‘You were very protective.’ She smiled at him. ‘I thought that was sweet.’

  ‘Well, the thing that surprised me was how protective Laura was towards Parsons. More so than towards Rose. It almost made me wonder if there could be something going on between them.’

  ‘What? Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sure there isn’t. She’s probably just noticed that he’s been under a strain lately. I really do think she worries about people she feels responsible for, David.’

  ‘Maybe. When can I see Rose?’

  ‘She says that’s difficult. Laura has been questioning her about you, and she thinks Laura has asked the other girls in the house to keep an eye on her. She says she’ll be seeing you anyway tomorrow afternoon for acupuncture, and she’ll talk to you then.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Brock groaned.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Acupuncture. I don’t know what it is about it. I passed out in the first session I had.’ ‘You didn’t? Really?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know why. I barely made it through the second one. I’ve been feeling a bit groggy anyway for the last couple of days. I’d say I was going down with flu, except for what that patient said to Beamish-Newell the first night I was here, about feeling much worse after a week than when she arrived. He said it was to be expected.’

  She looked at him with concern. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been selfish. You should be resting this weekend.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he said.

  17

  If it hadn’t been for Rose, Brock would have abandoned his afternoon therapy session. The morning osteopathy had left his back aching, barely able to bend. Worse were the headaches and nausea which had been recurring in waves over the past days, and he was convinced he was going down with flu. His stomach felt as if it belonged to someone else and his vision kept blurring. The thought of another acupuncture session filled him with dread, but if Rose was going to talk to him, he would have to be there. Beamish-Newell had brought the time of his session forward to two o’clock, during the rest hour for the other patients, and he suspected that this was to avoid alarm and inconvenience if he passed out again. His sense of gloom was heightened by the darkness of the day, the light of the sun overwhelmed by a motionless mass of black cloud.

  Rose was waiting for him, looking nervous. She avoided his eyes as Beamish-Newell swept in and went through the preliminaries. He seemed distant to Brock, even abrupt, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Rose had asked for the meeting, he might have wondered if she had complained to the Director about him. Perhaps his wife had.

  He said conversationally, trying to get Beamish-Newell to talk, to hear the intonation of his voice, ‘How many needles today, Stephen?’

  Beamish-Newell took a long time to say anything, and when he did the reply sounded ominous. ‘Let’s see how many you can take. It’s probably time we stopped mollycoddling you.’

  Brock rolled on to his front and closed his eyes, feeling dizzy even before the first needle went in.

  When he opened them again he was completely disoriented. He groaned inwardly. I’ve blacked out again.

  He blinked, trying to make out what had happened, but it was so dim. My eyes are dim, I cannot see, I have not brought my specs with me. His head was spinning, half waking, half trying not to. He felt an agonizing cramp in his legs, but when he tried to move them he couldn’t. They’ve paralysed my spine, for God’s sake. He struggled desperately to make them work, and suddenly there was a thump and the trolley shifted slightly and he found he was able to move them at last. Thank Christ for that. He realized that it was so dim because the overhead light was off, and although it was only mid-afternoon it was so dark outside that little light was coming through the small high window. Or was it mid-afternoon? He really had no idea. His back was so bad after the manipulation that he could hardly raise his head and turn his wrist to look at his watch. When he finally managed it he saw it was only two-forty. He’d been out for twenty minutes or so.

  Where was everybody? Surely they wouldn’t have left him to come round by himself? Or had Beamish-Newell finally given up on him? Rose too? He lowered his head down on to his forearms again and waited. Faintly, in the distance, he could hear some music. An exercise class perhaps, or relaxation. Maybe just cook in the kitchen, preparing another lentil souffle. Nausea swept through him, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to stay lying there. At least they could have left the bloody light on.

  He sat up with difficulty, cursing his back, and swung his feet to the floor. When he tried to put his weight on them they buckled from the cramp, and he leaned back against the trolley, but only for a moment as he felt the sharp stab of a needle in his back. Oh shit. He reached behind him with a tentative hand and felt ten or a dozen needles, maybe more, in two neat rows down his lower back.

  He waited for a moment for his legs to recover, moving his weight from one to the other, then reached for the towel lying across the end of the trolley. It felt heavy — and odd somehow. Everything felt odd. He shuffled to the door, and found it was locked. A large key was sticking out of the mortice. He turned it and opened the door, blinking from the sudden bright light of the corridor.

  Waiting there a moment in the doorway, shaking the cotton wool out of his head, he saw two elderly ladies approach from the direction of the west wing. They stopped and stared at him, open-mouthed. One of them began to scream, the other crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. A moment later a male therapist came running down the corridor in response to the shrieks and saw Brock. In his subsequent statement to the police he described how he had noticed Brock’s posture, stooping as if he had been in an accident, and the small acupuncture needles covering his back. But before that he saw the blood, lots of it, all over Brock’s hands, drenching his legs, dripping from his towel, staining the carpet around his feet.

  18

  Word of another killing at Stanhope rippled through County Police divisional headquarters at Crowbridge, running fast through some parts of the building, more slowly through others. Kathy was sitting in an office on the fourth floor typing up her fifth report on the tyre-slasher, when the word reached the level below her. A uniformed WPC picked up a pile of papers and headed for the stairs, intending to speak to her friend in the next room to Kathy, but at the same moment Kathy’s phone rang. It was three-thirty, perhaps an hour after Rose’s throat had been sliced open.

  ‘Kathy, have you heard? There’s been another killing at Stanhope Clinic,’ Penny Elliot told her. ‘It looks as if war’s broken out on the second floor.’

  ‘No! I hadn’t heard. What’s happened?’ Kathy felt her heart start thumping with panic, as if she already knew the worst.

  ‘Hang on.’ Kathy heard her talking to someone nearby, then, ‘Apparently, someone’s been found down there with their throat cut.’

  ‘Oh God! Brock!’

  ‘What’s that?’

  But Kathy had already jammed down the receiver and was running for the door, just as the woman in the next office looked in and said, ‘Have you heard …?’

  Kathy skidded to a halt under the trees before the car park, full of marked and unmarked police vehicles. An ambulance had backed across the grass verge by the west wing and was standing with its rear doors open beside the door to the basement. The two ambulance men were waiting, smoking, chatting to a uniformed constable who challenged her when she got out of the car. She opened her wallet for him, barely slowing as she came down the steps, and raced along the corridor, sensing her way to the epicentre of the disaster from the increasingly strained expressions on the faces she met along th
e way.

  Scene-of-crime and forensic were already well into their routine as she came to a halt, eased her way around a knot of crouching men and looked into the room from which the photographer’s light was flashing. She saw the dark blood everywhere, across the trolley, the walls, and all over the white coat of the body on the floor. She recognized the sheen of Rose’s black hair, wedged into the angle between the floor and wall.

  She stepped back and took her bearings, looking around her, heart racing. Further up the corridor a man in blue overalls and wearing surgical gloves came out of a room carrying several plastic bags containing blood-stained items. She walked quickly up the corridor and looked inside. Brock was sitting motionless on a metal chair facing the door. He was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, originally white but now stained, like most of his body below the elbows, with blood. His face was as grey as his beard and his eyes seemed to be looking at something far, far away. One man was taking scrapings from his finger-nails, another swab samples from the blood on his feet, and another — she recognized Professor Pugh squinting through his glasses — was removing acupuncture needles from his back. For a moment Kathy was struck by the image of a grotesque beauty parlour.

  ‘Ah, Sergeant Kolla! How nice to see you again!’ Professor Pugh beamed at her. Brock looked up and his eyes met Kathy’s. Almost imperceptibly he shook his head, then lowered his eyes again.

  ‘I wondered if you might be coming along to the party,’ Pugh went on, stooping to retrieve a needle from Brock’s lower back. ‘I thought Chief Inspector Tanner must be calling upon your extensive experience of this place.’

  As if on cue, a voice, low and cold and hard, growled in Kathy’s ear. ‘You — outside!’

  Kathy turned and he indicated the corridor with a jerk of his head. She started walking and sensed him following half a step behind and to one side. She retraced her steps back below the west wing until the door at the end came into view. The uniformed man standing there straightened up as he saw them. Tanner’s hand on her arm stopped her and she turned to face him.