Barry Maitland - The Malcontenta

The sarcasm was like water off a duck’s back to Brock. ‘Now there’s another thing,’ he went on, ‘a name like that. What kind of person would give themselves an absurd double-barrelled handle like that? Anyone with a pretentious name like that wouldn’t survive five minutes at Burnley Tech, would they, Ben? And yet it seems to impress people down here.’

Bromley snorted and gave a crooked little grin. Before he could stop he found himself reciting the limerick he’d spent idle moments perfecting:

‘Said a brilliant young doctor from Poole,

Whose name was simply Steve Newell,

To get where the cream is,

I’d better add Beamish,

And make them all eat Squeamish-Gruel.’

Brock smiled appreciatively. ‘Still, despite the absence of viscounts in your formative years, you seem to have done very well. You’ve got a nice detached house near Redhill, I understand, and a charming family. Four daughters, is that right?’

Bromley looked suspiciously at Brock. He didn’t remember telling him that.

‘Are they at the pony stage? You’ll be up to your armpits in manure with four of them. They’ll be demanding a paddock and stables of their own. Your whole life will be spent mucking out. Or does your wife do that? She doesn’t work, does she? Paid work, I mean — she’ll have her hands full with the girls and the ponies.’

Bromley started to tell Brock to mind his own business, but the conversation took an abrupt turn.

‘What I’d like to know, Ben, is what you really thought of Alex Petrou. I’ve been having difficulty understanding what he was like. To begin with, people seemed to be telling me that he was charming and attractive, but then, after a while, I got another, darker side. How did you see him?’

Bromley squinted closely at the figure across the desk — his side of the desk — to see if this was on the level. Then he said carefully, ‘He was unusual. Not the type we usually get. Smoother, a bit of an operator. Good with the patients. He found it easy to establish a rapport with people. Interested in their gossip.’

‘Like a woman? You implied to Sergeant Kolla that there was something odd about his sexuality — that he was bisexual.’

‘I steer well clear of all that,’ Bromley said stoutly.

‘Do you, Ben? Well … And what about the dark side of his personality, were you aware of that?’

‘Can’t say I was, David. There was something … racy about him. Bit of a devil, I’d guess. Nothing sinister.’

‘Really? A devil …’ Brock was studying Bromley’s face closely as he replied, his mood suddenly serious. ‘So you saw him as an asset to the clinic?’

Bromley shrugged. ‘Sure. He was popular with the punters. That was good enough for me.’

‘No, there was more to it than that,’ Brock said flatly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Petrou could attract the punters all right, sniff out their predilections — he had a talent for it. He wasn’t just an asset, he was a resource. On his own he was merely an opportunist, didn’t really appreciate how things work, although he had a nice instinct. But to be really effective he needed a manager, someone to organize things for him, keep the Beamish-Newells off his back, line up the punters, give him advice, feed his ambition. He needed you, Ben. Together you created an alternative clinic within the alternative clinic — a neat idea. You had your own special patients and your own special programme, a bit more indulgent than Stanhope’s, and almost invisible inside the respectable setting it provided.

‘I’m not suggesting that you didn’t steer well clear of his sexuality. You must have been about the only one around here who wasn’t fascinated by it. Your interests were more practical. Where there’s muck there’s brass. The invisible clinic had its own fees and profit line and cash flow and investment portfolio too, didn’t it?’

Bromley half rose out of his seat in protest, but Brock waved him down. ‘I’m not much interested, really. I could turn it over to the Fraud Squad and they would get to the bottom of it. They know how to track down cash transactions. They don’t look for records that are there so much as those that aren’t, if you follow me — like looking for the invisible clinic. You know, you buy a pony for one of the girls, and there’s no record in your cheque or credit-card accounts, so where did the cash come from? It’s a tedious process looking for records that aren’t there. Very expensive and very intrusive. The only satisfaction is that we get you twice — once when we discover how you made the money, and then again when we hand you over to the Inland Revenue for tax evasion.

‘As I say, it’s not the sort of thing I’m much interested in. If the members of your little club were daft enough to pay you good money for arranging some discreet hanky-panky with Mr Petrou, good luck to you. I’m only interested in who killed him. And if it was one of your club members and you try to obstruct me, then God help you, Mr Bromley.’

Ben Bromley had gone very pale. The coffee stood cold in the cup on the desk in front of him, and he found it difficult to break free of Brock’s gaze.

‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

‘What I was trying to find in your computer was the record of who was actually here at Stanhope at the time of Petrou’s death. I had discovered that Norman de Loynes was here, although his name never appeared in the records given to Sergeant Kolla. That was your doing, wasn’t it, Ben?’

‘Maybe …’ Bromley whispered speculatively, ‘maybe I should get a solicitor or something.’

‘Be my guest.’ Brock indicated the phone. ‘Perhaps Sir Peter Maples would organize one for you.’

At the mention of his boss’s name, Bromley felt a flush of nausea rise up his throat. He fumbled his antacid tablets out of his pocket while he tried to think straight, but his head still felt fuzzy from being woken in the middle of the night. ‘De Loynes went for a walk after breakfast that morning,’ he said at last. ‘He spotted the police car sitting out there at the end of the drive that goes past the cottages. He came back here in a tizz wanting to know what was going on. It took me a little while before I managed to get hold of Stephen Beamish-Newell, who told me that Petrou had been found hanged in the temple. I was stunned, as you’d imagine. I went up to the private lounge that the Friends use, and found two of them there.’

‘Who?’ Brock interrupted.

‘Norman de Loynes and a bloke called Mortimer, Simon Mortimer. I told them what had happened, and how Beamish-Newell had told me that the police had asked that no one leave the clinic without their say-so. The two of them went into a blind panic at that. De Loynes had told his family he was somewhere else that weekend, and Mortimer had had a run-in with the police some time in the past, and neither wanted to get involved. They swore they had nothing useful to tell the police anyway. Apparently, they’d last seen Petrou on the Friday night, and neither had seen him on the Sunday. They more or less demanded that I keep them out of it.’

‘What did you do?’

I came back downstairs and found that Jay had started preparing a list of everyone who was there for Beamish-Newell to give to the police. I sent her off to make my coffee, and removed de Loynes’s and Mortimer’s names while she was away.’

‘Were they the only ones you removed?’

‘Yes. The only other Friend there was Mr Long, but I hadn’t seen him. Anyway, I didn’t think he’d need my help.’

‘Go on.’

‘I could see more police beginning to arrive, so I went upstairs again and told de Loynes and Mortimer that they’d just have to sit tight for the day until the police left. There was a good chance they’d get overlooked provided they never showed their faces, and that’s exactly what happened. I called them a taxi about nine that night, after the last of the coppers had left.’