Barry Maitland - The Malcontenta

‘Why the temple, Laura?’ Kathy asked.

She shrugged. ‘I wanted to hide the time and the place where he died to confuse things. Also, I wanted to make it look like suicide or some kind of bizarre accident. Afterwards, when you wouldn’t believe that, I wished we’d just driven his body miles away and dumped it somewhere.’

Kathy thought of the small white marble slab in the temple, and how odd Laura’s choice had been, as if she had been gathering together her husband’s sacrifices.

‘Well, you certainly did confuse things. And again the next morning.’

‘Yes, we hadn’t anticipated Stephen wanting to change Petrou’s clothing. Geoffrey put it down to his sense of guilt. So did I.’

‘Didn’t Geoffrey discuss it with you?’ Kathy asked Beamish-Newell. ‘Talk about what had happened?’

He shook his head. ‘It was as if we were acting out parts, trying to do and say what an innocent person would do and say. After that, Geoffrey seemed to avoid any contact with me.’

‘He was frightened of you,’ Laura said. ‘He was terrified by what he thought you had done.’

‘What about the rope, Laura? Did Geoffrey have some left over after he’d strung Petrou up?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t remember that. I carried the torch and tried to do what I could to help. It was dreadful, so cold, and the body was so awkward. Rigor had set in while it had been lying on the floor of the gym, and when we eventually got it into place it looked so twisted and wrong. I just hoped that its weight would straighten it by morning.’

She fell silent, head bowed.

Kathy looked across at Brock and murmured, ‘I could do with some of Ben Bromley’s strong black Italian coffee.’

Brock nodded. ‘Good idea. In fact, I think we could do with Mr Bromley in person.’

Ben Bromley woke with a start, the telephone burbling in his ear. He had insisted that it go on his wife’s side since, in a household with five women, he reckoned the chances of a call being for him were infinitesimal. He heard his wife mutter groggily that it was for him.

‘What’s the effing time, for God’s sake?’ he grumbled, but she had rolled over and fallen asleep again.

‘Hello?’ he said cautiously.

‘Ben, it’s Stephen here. Sorry to wake you at this hour.’

‘Stephen? What time is it?’

‘Just after two.’

‘What! What on earth is the matter?’

‘I’m sorry, but we have a bit of an emergency here.’

Bromley was waking up fast now. There was something odd about Stephen’s voice, remote and expressionless. What the hell was going on?

‘What sort of emergency?’

‘I can’t really talk about it over the phone, Ben. We need you here right away. Could you do that? Could you come to your office, please?’

‘It’s not another break-in, is it, Stephen? If that bastard’s been into my bloody computer again — ’

‘Please, Ben. If you would just come over right away.’

Bromley put the light on and groped around for some clothes. The time-switch of the central heating was off, and it was damn cold. He swore and woke his wife.

‘There’s some stuffing crisis at the clinic,’ he said. ‘I have to go.’

‘Oh Ben! Not another murder?’

‘How the fuck would I know?’ he muttered, leaving her to switch out the light.

It was a twenty-minute drive to the clinic, and he pulled up at the foot of the front steps. He could see a dim light in the entrance hall, and lights in the windows of both his own office and the Director’s. He raced up the stairs, made his way along the corridor, and opened his office door.

He was startled to find Brock, alone, sitting behind his desk in his executive swivel chair, drinking a cup of his best coffee. Before he could sort through the expletives forming in his mind, Brock said, ‘Ah, come in, Ben, come in. I hope you don’t mind me taking advantage of your hospitality, but under the circumstances … Sit down and have a cup of coffee.’

‘What circumstances?’ Bromley didn’t move.

‘Stephen and Laura are just tying up a few loose ends with Sergeant Kolla.’

‘Sergeant Kolla?’ Bromley repeated dumbly.

‘You remember her from the first investigation of Alex Petrou’s murder? I expect you know that I’m also with the police — the Metropolitan Police, Detective Chief Inspector.’ Brock showed him his warrant card.

‘What’s happened? Why are you here?’

‘We should probably wait until they can join us. Why don’t you sit down and have a cup of coffee? Not much fun being woken up like that in the middle of the night.’

Looking slightly disoriented, Bromley took the visitor’s seat Brock indicated, and accepted a cup of black coffee.

‘I don’t know where you keep the milk,’ Brock smiled.

‘Jay brings it for me fresh each day,’ he replied dumbly.

Brock nodded, sat back and sipped appreciatively at his cup. ‘Very nice, Ben. In fact the whole office is very nice. A centre of calm. I imagine you can really think in an office like this, unlike mine, which is always chaotic. I’d love to know how to get my desk as clean as this at the end of the day. I tell people that the only ones who can keep a clear desk are those who deal with simple problems, but I know I’m kidding myself. It requires discipline, I suppose. A tidy mind.’

‘What exactly are we waiting for?’ Bromley interjected.

‘They shouldn’t be too long. Please be patient.’ Brock smiled sympathetically. He continued to look appraisingly around the room, as if filling in time, and his eyes fixed on Bromley’s computer. ‘And a systematic mind. Dealing with information in a systematic way.’

Bromley saw where he was looking and his face darkened with suspicion. ‘Yes, well,’ he said sarcastically, ‘you’d know all about our computer system, wouldn’t you?’

Brock beamed. ‘That was embarrassing, Ben. I needed some information and I couldn’t see how else to get it.’

‘You could have tried asking.’

‘True. That’s probably what I should have done. But it concerned those special guests of yours — the Friends — what some of the patients call the “goats”. I thought you might feel too protective towards them to want to help me.’

Bromley said nothing.

‘Although I did get the impression that, even though you look after them, and bow and scrape when it’s necessary, you don’t really like them. Am I right?’

‘Bow and scrape!’ Bromley said indignantly.

‘Well, it’s a service industry, isn’t it? But they’re a toffee-nosed lot, aren’t they, your Friends? Public schoolboys to a man. Privileged southerners who’d only willingly travel north of Watford Gap if there was some salmon or grouse in the offing.’

‘Makes no difference to me, squire,’ Bromley said coolly. ‘I just get on with my job. You’d know more about that sort of thing, being a Cambridge man yourself. Dr Beamish-Newell tells me you’re both Cambridge men:

‘Yes,’ Brock nodded, ignoring the veiled contempt. ‘I went up from grammar school. I don’t know what it’s like now, but there were plenty of upper-class twits around then. I remember going into a pub one night, the Blue Boar it was, and two chinless wonders were ranting away at the bar. “I say,” one said, “I knocked a chappie off his bike with my sports car just now. A black man. He put out his hand to turn right, but it was dark, so of course I didn’t see it. Those chappies should be made to wear white gloves.” I swear that’s true, his exact words.’

But Bromley wasn’t buying any of it. ‘Is that a fact, David?’ he said, unimpressed. ‘It’s hard to credit. But I suppose we didn’t get too many viscounts at Burnley Tech, so I wouldn’t really know. I’ll leave that sort of thing to you and Dr Beamish-Newell.’