B&K02 - The Malcontenta

by Barry Maitland

  While they waited, Kathy was able to examine the other features of the place, now brightly illuminated by the temporary lights. The service door which Parsons had mentioned was visible now, on the side wall near the foot of the spiral stairs, its two bolts securely in place. The painting on the end wall was also clear and obviously in need of attention, with the canvas sagging in its frame. Otherwise the walls were bare, efflorescing with damp. On the floor below the other side wall a small panel of white marble had been set flush with the paving slabs. No inscription explained its presence.

  ‘Now,’ said Pugh when the photographer was done, ‘let’s have another look.’

  He put on his glasses and gave the body a further close scrutiny, gently pulling the collar and hem of the tracksuit top away from the flesh, and then drawing the waistband of the pants down to look at the right thigh. He felt each of the limbs with his gloved hands and stepped back, nodding.

  ‘Rigor is generalized,’ he said, ‘so between ten and forty-eight hours, say.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘Do we know if anyone saw him yesterday?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Mmm. I wouldn’t like to risk losing this, you see.’ He was talking half to himself, or to an imaginary tutorial group of students.

  ‘Lose what, sir?’ Kathy asked.

  He turned and gave her a little smile, eyes bright. ‘The pattern of compression of the muscles, you see? All down the right side as far as I can tell - the face, right shoulder, hip and so on. The flattening has been fixed by rigor mortis, which starts in the face and jaw, then the upper limbs, and finally the hips and legs. It disappears in the same order. I want to have a proper look at that pattern. Is that what you were concerned about, Anthony?’ He turned to the doctor.

  ‘Well, and the lividity,’ he replied, stepping forward.

  ‘Yes, yes, the lividity, of course.’ Professor Pugh puckered his lips, staring at the drooping head.

  ‘The bruising?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Well, it’s not bruising in the normal sense. When the heart stops pumping, blood gradually settles into the lowest vessels of the body, like oil settling into the sump of a car when you switch off the engine. That creates the dark patches you see; it’s called hypostatic or congestion lividity. But if the flesh is pressed against something, the blood is excluded, which produces the white patches.’

  ‘But…’ Kathy hesitated, then decided to state the obvious. ‘The patches are on the side of his head.’

  ‘Exactly, and down the right side of his body. He’s been moved, you see. For a time after he died, he was lying on his right side.’

  ‘Ah.’ Kathy felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

  Pugh moved forward again and squatted, peering at the right hand. ‘At least, that’s the way it looks at the moment. That’s why he seems twisted. The muscles are holding the position he had on the floor, or wherever he was. Just to complicate matters, he’s got dark skin, which tends to hide all but the most glaring lividity patterns. But there’ll be others we’ll pick up on the table. And of course, there may really be bruising, which the lividity may disguise.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the pattern of lividity change after he’d been moved into the new hanging position?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Good question!’ Pugh cried. ‘After a period of time - a few hours, it varies - haemoglobin begins to diffuse into the tissues, and the pattern becomes fixed permanently. That’s called diffusion lividity. So what have we really got here? It’s tricky, you see, because each process - rigor, hypostatic lividity, diffusion lividity - they happen at unpredictable rates, depending on the temperature, the characteristics of the body, how he died, and so on.’

  ‘So he may not have died by hanging at all?’

  ‘Possibly not. Why were you particularly interested in bruising?’

  Kathy indicated the two objects beside the organ console. She called over one of the civilian scene-of-crime officers, who had now arrived. Like Pugh, he wore overalls and gloves. He bagged the objects and handed them to Kathy. The second object, she saw, was a black leather hood, as the patrol officer had guessed, with slits for eyes, nostrils and mouth. She passed both to the pathologist, who put his glasses on again to examine them, wrinkled his nose and muttered, ‘The impenetrable strangeness of the human mind,’ and then, ‘We’ll have to wait for laboratory tests and the post-mortem to see what these have been used for, of course.’

  He handed the plastic bags back to the SOCO.

  ‘Would you check the pockets for me, please?’ Kathy said to the man, who nodded and felt inside Petrou’s tracksuit.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s odd.’ Kathy frowned.

  ‘Well now, let’s get this chap down, shall we?’ Pugh said. ‘We’ll need plenty of plastic sheeting. He mustn’t touch anything at all, all right?’

  They did as he directed, unfastening the bottom of the rope and lowering Petrou slowly down on to the sheeting. Pugh moved in again. ‘Let’s get his temperature now, shall we?’

  He eased down the tracksuit pants and grunted. ‘No shorts or singlet or anything under this. He’s gay, is he, Sergeant?’ ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, there are signs of recent anal intercourse, I’d say. Bruising. Almost sure.’

  He straightened and with another instrument took a reading of the room temperature. ‘All right, then. We have an ambient room temperature of 10.4 and an internal body temperature -’ he peered at the first instrument ‘- of 11.2. What do you think, Anthony?’

  ‘Getting close.’

  ‘Too close to be much help.’ Pugh turned to Kathy. ‘After death the internal body temperature stays stable for a couple of hours, then begins to drop towards the ambient. It takes perhaps forty-eight hours to reach it, but the main drop occurs in the first twelve to fifteen hours; then the curve flattens and temperature change occurs slowly. But it all depends on so many things, you see - body weight, clothing, difference between body and air temperature - and we don’t really know much about those, do we? We don’t know for sure whether he’s been here all the time, or whether he was wearing something else to begin with, or what.’

  He looked around fiercely. ‘All right. The best thing is to get him on the table as quickly as possible, before rigor starts to weaken.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I think … yes, I think I could do him at twelve. I’ll have to check with the morgue and the coroner’s office.’

  ‘Midday?’ Kathy said. ‘As soon as that?’

  ‘Yes, as soon as possible. Is that a problem? You’ll be there, of course?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Only I’ll have to get things organized here.’

  ‘You’ll manage, I’m sure, Sergeant. Now, the tests in here …’ He glared around the room and waved the SOCO over. ‘I’ll need scrapings and swabs of different areas of the floor, down here and upstairs. Fibre samples, of course, if there are any. Have a good look for human hair. What about a UV search?’ He looked inquiringly at Kathy. She looked blank.

  ‘Semen shows up under ultraviolet light. Sometimes. Worth a try?’

  ‘Sure,’ she shrugged, ‘yes.’

  ‘Try the whole building,’ he commanded the officer, who nodded and said, ‘I’ll have to get the lamps in. We haven’t got them with us.’

  ‘All right. Anything else, Sergeant?’

  ‘I’ll talk to the fingerprint man. There are a couple of chairs upstairs that look as if they were disturbed recently.’

  Pugh nodded. ‘Better print the organ keys. Never know what they were up to.’

  ‘They?’ Kathy repeated. ‘Was he murdered, Professor?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe we’ll know more at noon. I’ll see you then, unless I ring with another time. Are you coming, Anthony?’

  Kathy followed the two doctors up the stairs. The building was alive with people now. She had the impression of a machine of which she’d pressed the starter button. The problem now was going to be to control it. She had very little time. It was essential she got more background before
she left for the post-mortem. But how far beyond that should she go? If she waited till the PM was over, it would be mid-afternoon. People would have come and gone from the clinic, rumours would be flying around, memories confused by all the talk, evidence lost. On the other hand, if she launched a full-scale search of the grounds and interviewed a hundred people, the pathologist might turn up an innocent explanation and she would look as if she’d badly overreacted.

  Either way, she had to decide now.

  Dowling was standing under the portico of the temple, staring forlornly at the rain, now coming down steadily.

  ‘Gordon, listen carefully. I’m going down to the house to interview the Director. I want you to begin organizing the next stage. It looks as if the body was moved at some point after he died, before he was strung up down there. You follow? That sounds like murder.’

  Dowling looked intensely worried. ‘Shouldn’t we get help, Sarge? Shouldn’t we call Sergeant McGregor or Inspector Tanner?’

  Kathy flushed. ‘No, Gordon! We’ve been given this case to handle and that’s exactly what we’re going to do, at least until we’ve found out more about what’s going on!’

  ‘Yes, Kathy. Sorry.’

  ‘Now listen to me.’ She put as much quiet confidence into her voice as she could gather. ‘I want the area around the temple secured and thoroughly searched. But coordinate closely with the SOCO team. You’ll need half a dozen men, I should think. Start around the temple and work outwards, towards the house and the staff cottages. Then I also want to set up interview teams inside the house. Get as many as you reasonably can. I’ll brief them when I’m finished with Beamish-Newell. I’ll organize an incident room in the house. And see if you can get Belle Mansfield to come up here with them, too. Got all that?’

  Dowling nodded, worried.

  ‘Come on, Gordon! This is exciting!’

  He was a foot taller than she was, and she was standing inches away from him, glaring up into his face.

  ‘Yeah … yeah.’ He gave a weak smile. ‘It was just … seeing that bloke down there. It shook me up, I think. Don’t worry. I won’t mess up.’

  ‘I know you won’t.’ She relaxed back on to her heels and gave him a big encouraging smile.

  Kathy ignored the gravel path which led round the side of the west wing and out on to the main drive, and cut across the wet grass to the front of the house. The lowest floor of the original building was half sunk into the ground as a semibasement, its windows tiny and deeply set into the heavily rusticated stone wall. Flights of steps on each side of the central portico led up to the main entrance at first-floor level. Tough on wheelchairs, she thought.

  She paused at the top of the steps and shook her hair, now dripping wet. Far across the meadow the mist which had hung over the bridge and stream had been dissipated by the general drizzle. She turned and opened one of the tall glass doors, grander versions of the ones at the front of the temple.

  She was enveloped by the warmth and by the smell of food - vegetable, institutional. A mixed collection of sofas and side tables filled most of the entrance hall. Beyond an archway, two bowed figures wearing dressing gowns and carrying towels shuffled away along a corridor. To her right, Kathy saw a counter through an open doorway. An elderly woman in a quilted dressing gown and fluffy pink slippers was leaning across it, speaking with suppressed intensity to the receptionist behind.

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ she whispered urgently, ‘I have to leave today. It’s exceedingly important … something unexpected has turned up.’

  The receptionist flicked a page of the file in front of her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cochrane, your treatment doesn’t finish until Saturday. You can’t leave till then.’

  ‘No, no, that’s quite impossible …’ The woman looked over her shoulder and, seeing Kathy behind her, lowered her voice and tried again. ‘The fact is, I just don’t want to stay any longer.’ She gave what she had intended to be a conspiratorial chuckle, but it came out as a whimper. ‘This is the twelfth day. I’ve really had quite, quite enough. So if you would, please, just make the necessary arrangements …’

  The receptionist was unmoved. She had clearly been through this before, and she had the advantage over the other woman in that she was young, beautiful and had her clothes on. She fixed the old lady with a look that would have stalled a bulldozer and said firmly, ‘Dr Beamish-Newell would never allow it, Mrs Cochrane.’

  Kathy forced herself to be patient while this exchange continued. She turned to examine the titles of the books and pamphlets on sale in racks behind her - Understanding Your Vital Organs, The Essence of Homoeopathy, Grains and Pulses.

  Come on! She took a deep breath as the old lady’s fruitless appeal finally ground to a halt. The receptionist looked over the bowed white head to Kathy. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Dr Beamish-Newell, please. He’s expecting me - Kathy Kolla.’

  The receptionist checked on the phone, then nodded. ‘I’ll show you the way.’

  Kathy followed her, leaving Mrs Cochrane still standing, head lowered, at the counter.

  On the far side of the reception hall they entered a dark, carpeted corridor, where the smell of yeasty food was very strong and they could hear the clatter of metal pots from the basement and the sound of someone whistling. Past some stairs, the woman stopped at an unmarked door, knocked and showed Kathy into the Director’s office.

  The cold gripped her. Beamish-Newell was sitting at a desk in front of the open window. He raised his head slowly and again she was conscious of the eyes.

  ‘Please sit down, Sergeant,’ the voice soft.

  His room was small, claustrophobic, barely large enough for the big desk set skew within it and the visitors’ chairs. Against the dark-green wallpaper stood several mahogany bookcases, crammed with what looked like textbooks. On the wall to the right of the window hung a long chart showing the outlines of naked male figures in front and rear views with larger details of head, hands and feet, all covered with networks of red lines, like wiring diagrams, the junctions annotated with Chinese characters.

  ‘So, you’ve finished your investigations.’ A statement, not a question.

  ‘Not quite, sir. The body is being taken to the County Mortuary. A post-mortem examination will be carried out later this morning.’

  ‘So quickly?’ he murmured. ‘Who’ll do it?’

  ‘Professor -’ Kathy began, and he completed the words for her, nodding, ‘Gareth Pugh.’

  ‘Sir, I wondered -’

  Again he cut across her words. ‘What do you hope to establish from the post-mortem?’

  She blinked and clenched her fists on her lap. ‘Time of death. Cause of death.’

  ‘Cause? That’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’d like forensic confirmation. Do you have the information on Mr Petrou, sir?’

  He stared at her for a long moment, his left eyebrow raised, then, without lowering his eyes, stroked his hand across a manila folder on the desk in front of him. ‘This is his file. Not a great deal, I’m afraid.’

  Kathy took it from him. There were only two pieces of paper inside. A copy of what appeared to be a standard form of employment agreement between the clinic and a member of staff provided his name, date of birth and a few other basic details. Next of kin was given as his mother, Mrs Ourania Petrou, of Apartment 114, 86 Souda Avenue, Athens. The signature at the end was dated 4 April 1991. A passport-sized photograph was stapled to the top corner of the page. Dark-eyed, startlingly attractive, with a thick thatch of black wavy hair, it took an effort to associate the face giving a racy grin at the camera with that of the mottled corpse in the temple.

  The other document was a photocopy of an official translation into English of a diploma certificate in physiotherapy from the Academy of Health Sciences in Athens, awarded in 1987. The translation had been certified as accurate by the British Embassy in Rome, dated 10 March 1991.

  ‘How did he come to be working here, Dr Beam
ish-Newell? Did he answer an advertisement?’

  ‘No. He was on holiday, as I recall, travelling in Europe. He had an interest in naturopathic medicine and had heard of us. When he reached the UK he decided to pay us a visit. It happened we were short of a trained physio.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t necessarily expect him to stay for long, but it suited us both at that moment. He seemed to settle in well enough.’

  ‘He made friends easily?’

  Beamish-Newell hesitated, choosing his words. ‘I would say so, yes. His English was a bit limited at first, but he soon began to pick up colloquialisms. We’ve had a number of patients particularly ask for him over the months he was here, which is always a good sign.’

  ‘I’d like their names.’

  The Director frowned, opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it.

  ‘What about staff? Did he have special friends?’

  ‘I’m not sure, really. I recall him going up to town one weekend with a group. Parsons may know - he lived next to him.’

  ‘What about outside the clinic? Friends, clubs he joined, interests?’

  ‘I really don’t know. You’ll have to ask other people about that.’

  ‘And you say he gave no indication of depression, as far as you know?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He turned his attention to a desk diary and then pointedly looked at his watch. ‘My secretary is preparing the list of staff and patients who have been here over the past couple of days, as you asked.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m going to have to interview them all.’

  ‘All?’ He looked incredulous.

  ‘Yes. A team of detectives will be arriving shortly. Would it be possible for us to have the use of a large room, or some small rooms, for talking to people individually?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that will be possible at all. It would be extremely disruptive.’ Beamish-Newell’s stare challenged her to disagree.

  ‘I’m afraid it will be necessary to see everyone,’ Kathy insisted quietly. ‘If you can’t find space for us, I’ll arrange for some mobile accommodation to be brought, but that will take longer. I’d like to be out of your way as soon as possible.’