Barry Maitland - The Malcontenta

‘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.’

For a moment she thought he was going to become abusive. His eyes widened and his beard rose on his chin, like the hackles on the back of a dog. Then his expression abruptly softened to something almost like a smile.

‘You eat too much junk food, Kathy. Full of poisons. You have good skin naturally. You should take care of it. I’ll give you some pamphlets on diet — we have our own Stanhope recipes you should try.’

It was the lazy, almost intimate way he said her name that jolted her most. For the sake of his loyalty to his working-class accent she had suspended judgement on his contrived name, his black gloves and his fairground hypnotist’s eyes. But no more. She decided he was manipulative, patronizing, a bully. She clenched her jaw, then said, in a voice as quiet as his, ‘Did you remove anything from the body this morning, sir?’

It was the first time she had noticed him blink. For a moment her question seemed to stun him. ‘What?’

‘It surprised me that there were no keys on the scene.’

‘Ah,’ he smiled quickly, ‘of course.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out a small bunch of keys. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot all about that. These were in the pocket of his tracksuit.’

Something else, Kathy thought. Not the keys. He thought I was talking about something else.

‘He also had the key of the temple door which belongs on the office key board. I returned it there half an hour ago.’

She looked at him coldly. ‘You did what?

‘I’m sorry, I would have told you. It just didn’t seem important compared … well, to the fact of his death.’

‘And why did you remove the keys?’

He shrugged. ‘I wanted to have a look in his room. I wasn’t sure if my master key would open it. Some of the staff rooms have non-standard locks.’

‘So you’ve been up to his room?’ Her eyes were blazing, but he seemed quite unabashed.

‘Mmm. Nothing there. No note. That’s what I was concerned about, of course. I felt I had a responsibility.’

‘To whom?’ Kathy exploded.

He leaned forward over the desk and said, his voice punching the words home, ‘To those who have to go on living with what he did to himself, Sergeant.’

‘And what else did you do for them, doctor? What else did you tamper with?’

‘Tamper!’ He glared at her, affronted, then sat back slowly in his chair, his face becoming expressionless. His hands rested on the desk top, balled into fists.

‘I’d like you to take me up to his room now, sir,’ Kathy said. ‘I want you to show me exactly what you touched.’

Without a word he got to his feet and led the way out of the room.

They returned to the stairs which Kathy had passed before, and climbed up to the attic floor. The space under the roof had been subdivided and rearranged several times in its history, and the narrow corridor twisted and turned incomprehensibly. Beamish-Newell stopped in front of one of the doors and used the bunch of keys to open it.

‘Don’t go in, please,’ Kathy said, and stepped past him into the small room. A tiny window had been cut into the ceiling, which sloped steeply beneath the roof on the far side of the room. Below it, an old cast-iron radiator gurgled fitfully. A miserable grey light illuminated the contents of the room — a bed, bedside cupboard and lamp, small wooden desk and chair, an empty bookshelf, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers. The only personal items visible were a Greek-language newspaper folded on the bed and a bright yellow Walkman on the desk. Kathy stood still by the door. She would come back later to see what was in the wardrobe and drawers when the SOCOs had been through the place.

‘Tell me what you did when you opened the door last time.’

‘Well … not much. I walked in … stood by the desk.’ He shrugged.

‘You came directly up here? With your gloves on?’ Beamish-Newell looked irritated. ‘No, I left them in my office on the way up.’ ‘What then?’

‘I saw there was no envelope or paper that seemed obviously like a note, and so I left, locking the door behind me.’

‘So we won’t find your fingerprints on the drawers or cupboards.’

He pursed his lips, exasperated. ‘Oh really! This is absurd. Yes, you may find my fingerprints in one or two places.’ ‘Which places?’

‘I really can’t remember.’

‘Every drawer?’ Kathy persisted. ‘Every cupboard?’

‘I really think you’re going a bit overboard on this, Sergeant. Your attitude seems unnecessarily … aggressive. I’m trying to cooperate with you, you know.’

He is firm, she is aggressive, Kathy said under her breath. ‘All right, doctor. We’ll leave it at that for the moment. Perhaps we could see about somewhere for us to work now, and you could prepare the list of patients who especially asked for Mr Petrou.’

As she went to follow him, he stopped suddenly and turned to her within the narrow space of the corridor. ‘It’s possible to be too zealous, Kathy. Be careful, won’t you? People make allowance for inexperience, but only so much.’

She was close enough that she could smell his breath, yeasty like the cooking. She pulled back abruptly and he turned and walked on before she could frame a reply. Thrown again by his intrusive use of her first name, she guessed she’d probably lie awake that night thinking of all the replies she should have made.

They began to hear the hubbub as they descended the stairs, at first a faint growl like a distant mob, then, more distinctly, confused voices interspersed with sharper cries.

‘What the devil!’ Beamish-Newell hurried down the corridor and was brought to an abrupt halt by the crowd which was backed up through the arch leading into the entrance hall.

Dowling had been uncharacteristically persuasive and had caught the police station at a time when two shifts had overlapped. The officers’ arrival at the clinic had coincided with the mid-morning break, when all patients returned to the dining room next to the entrance hall for a glass of carrot or apple juice. As more and more patients surfaced from the treatment and exercise rooms in the basements they were met by a confused crush. Big men in dripping black raincoats squeezed together to let them through. Their good-natured banter (‘Watch yer back, missus’, ‘Pull yer gut in, Jerry’), interspersed by the alien squawk of their radios, only underlined the grossness of this invasion from the outside world. Lowering their eyes, most of the patients pushed blindly forward, shrinking from body and eye contact, swallowing the indignity of their slippers and dressing gowns until they could reach the sanctuary of the dining room. Kathy noticed Mrs Cochrane pressed back against a wall nearby, her eyes bulging. The little woman suddenly lunged at the arm of another patient struggling past and squealed in terrified excitement, ‘It’s Alex, Gillian — the nice boy. He’s been murdered!’

‘Oh my God,’ Kathy groaned, and at that moment Mrs Cochrane met her eye, blushed with embarrassment like a naughty schoolgirl caught spreading gossip, and then was swept away by the crowd. At her elbow, Kathy heard Beamish-Newell talking to her.