The Malcontenta (12 page)

‘Wednesday was the sort of day when things suddenly go flat. You’ve gone through the first panic, done all the obvious things, and then suddenly you’re on hold, just waiting. I had people trying to check Petrou’s activities outside the clinic, but I didn’t really believe it would lead anywhere. Then Belle came up with something.’

‘Aha!’ Brock settled back in his chair. The light caught his hair and beard in a kind of halo, and Kathy smiled.
What a luxury to have a good listener,
she thought,
like a hot bath at the end of a long, cold day.

‘ This is the schedule of discrepancies, Kath.’ Belle had handed her two pages with about forty numbered items.

‘That’s great. I didn’t expect them so soon,’ Kathy said.

‘I thought you’d be in a hurry, so I worked through the night and all morning on it. I’m going home now for some sleep.’

‘Thanks, Belle, I really appreciate it. There seem to be an awful lot of discrepancies.’

‘Well, most of them are trivial, I’d say, just lapses of memory - A says she left the sauna at quarter past three when B says she was already in the dressing room at five past - that kind of thing. But there’s one that’s kinda interesting.’

She pointed to number twenty-three on the list. ‘Late in the afternoon a patient went to get something out of his car in the car park and noticed the utility van that belongs to the clinic come out of the stable courtyard where it’s kept, and drive away. It was soon after four-thirty, he reckons. It was light enough to identify the vehicle clearly, but dark enough for it to have its side lights on.’

Kathy nodded. ‘Dusk was at four-forty and it became overcast towards evening.’

‘Yes. The thing is, no one claims to have been driving it that afternoon, and everyone is accounted for at that time.’

‘Except Petrou! Did the patient see anything of the driver?’

‘The statement says not, but I guess you could ask again.’

‘That’s great, Belle. We should have picked that up ourselves.’

‘There are just too many things to cross-check. I hope it helps.’

‘Oh yes. It’s exactly what we needed.’

While Gordon organized a new search in Edenham and Crowbridge, this time looking for sightings of the van rather than of Petrou’s motor bike, Kathy returned to the clinic. She spoke to the patient who had seen the vehicle leave on the Sunday evening, but he was unable to add anything useful to his earlier statement. He had a clear picture of the van driving past, but absolutely no recollection of the driver.

Kathy then spoke again to Geoffrey Parsons, who was responsible for the security and maintenance of the vehicle. He said he hadn’t been aware that it had been taken out on Sunday. When he opened up the stable block on Monday morning, it had been parked in the courtyard as normal. He held a set of keys in his office in the stable block, but another set was kept in the office in the main house.

When Kathy said that she wanted to take the van away for forensic examination, Parsons became agitated. ‘We need it to collect groceries and things from town. We use it all the time. I don’t think we can do without it.’ He wiped his thin sandy hair back from his brow. ‘I’m sure the Director won’t agree to it.’

He was right. Dr Beamish-Newell evidently considered Kathy’s request the final straw. He slammed his diary down on the desk and stood up, turning away from Kathy and glaring out of the window. She watched him clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back. When he finally turned round to face her, he made no attempt to hide his anger. ‘What possible reason could you have for wanting the van?’

‘It was seen leaving the clinic on Sunday afternoon, soon after Mr Petrou was last seen here. It’s possible he was the driver. We are trying to trace his movements, and the van may be able to help us.’

‘Was he identified as the driver?’

‘No.’

‘This is getting way, way beyond a joke, Sergeant Kolla. You have done everything possible to disrupt the workings of this clinic, and I have had enough.’ His eyes held her with an almost physical force. She could imagine the effect on patients.

‘We will return it as soon as we possibly can. But if you don’t agree to surrender the vehicle voluntarily, I shall apply for a warrant, sir.’

It was clear he wasn’t used to having people talk back to him. He weighed her up for a moment before shaking his head.

‘You’d better know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Have it back here by tonight.’

At four o’clock that afternoon Kathy kept an appointment with Professor Pugh, made in response to her phone call earlier in the day. She was shown into his office and accepted the offer of a cup of tea. The pathologist left his desk and came and sat with her on the low chairs arranged round a coffee table in the centre of the room. He seemed preoccupied as he thumbed through a sheaf of papers.

‘Any developments?’ he asked, and listened with head bowed, nodding from time to time.

‘Well,’ he said when she had finished, ‘I don’t know that I can help a lot at this stage, but I can tell you what we’ve got so far from the tests. Blood tests now … First of all, he wasn’t HIV positive.’

He searched for a particular sheet and pulled it out. ‘Blood group … He was an O secretor. PGM group (2-2 + ). The blood group of his sexual partner, on the other hand, was AB secretor. Unfortunately, the semen stains weren’t strong enough for a successful PGM grouping. Unlikely anyway after more than six hours…’

As he droned on about different classifications of the blood groups, Kathy found herself listening to the tone of his voice rather than what he was saying. The lilt had gone, his voice flat. He seemed worried.

‘… and until they get an effective PCR technique up and running it’s taking six to eight weeks to get a DNA profile. I’ve sent the semen samples anyway, though the profile won’t be much use unless you have someone to match it to - if it’s relevant at all. You particularly asked about drugs. We think we’ve found traces of MDMA.’

All these initials were beginning to go over Kathy’s head, and it took her a moment to register. ‘Ecstasy?’

‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘It suggests he wasn’t short of money, or the person who gave it to him wasn’t.’

‘I’m not up to date with this. Is it very expensive, then?’

‘It’s not so much that it’s very expensive as that in the past year it’s become so much more expensive than the alternative drug of choice - good old-fashioned LSD. About twenty-five pounds a unit as against five for LSD, so they tell me.’

‘Are they similar, then?’

‘To tell the truth, I’m not really sure. There’s damn-all scientific data on the effects. MDMA’s supposed to be softer, more pleasant, somewhere between a stimulant, like amphetamine, and a hallucinogen, like LSD. But in the high doses, 100 to 150 milligrams, it’s probably much like LSD. If you want to try it, let me know. I could write a paper on it.’

For a moment his face brightened, then reverted to a frown.

‘I was about to fax my preliminary report to you this afternoon anyway,’ he said. ‘You and the Deputy Chief Constable.’

Kathy blinked. He was looking down at his papers, avoiding her eyes.

‘The Deputy Chief Constable?’

‘Yes … I understand he has a personal interest in this case. Didn’t you know?’

‘I didn’t know he was asking for copies of your reports.’

‘Perhaps I’ve spoken out of turn, then.’ He looked up at her carefully, letting her know he was trying to help. ‘Perhaps you’d best forget I told you.’

Gordon Dowling found Kathy standing at a window in the office, staring out at the darkening sky. The street lights were coming on, some orange, others still cold and red. She was wondering why she was doing this. For three days she had been trying, trying hard, and had got nowhere. At the clinic she had been an outsider, attempting to get people to talk to her, help her understand. No one had. She remembered the look on the face of the last patient she had seen as she left. It was the same sensation she had had in the Jolly Roger, of being an unwelcome visitor, an alien. And it was the same sensation she had here in the force. And now Professor Pugh … All the time, she felt as if she had been charging around the outside, trying to find some way in.

‘Cheer up, Kathy,’ she heard Dowling say at her back, ‘I’ve got something for you.’

She turned and saw him standing there like a big puppy, holding two mugs of tea. She smiled. ‘Thanks, Gordon. Just what I need.’

‘I’ve got something else, too.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I found where the van went.’

He beamed in triumph at the look on her face.

‘Where?’

‘A greengrocer’s shop in Edenham. Two blokes own it -Jerry and Errol.’

‘Gordon! That’s terrific!’

‘Yeah. It was the barman in the Jolly Roger put me on to them. He knew they were friends of Petrou’s.’

‘What? He never said anything to me. How come he told you?’

Gordon looked sheepish. ‘I don’t know. He guessed you were a copper.’ ‘What about you?’

‘I told him straight off. He said I might have a word with them.’

Kathy was peeved. ‘Well … and did you?’

‘I spoke to Jerry. You’ll want to see him yourself. I said we’d meet him in an hour, after he’s closed up the shop. He wants to meet in the Hart Revived. More discreet, he says.’

Kathy raised her eyebrows.

‘So Petrou visited them at the shop on Sunday evening.’

‘No. That’s the thing - it wasn’t Petrou. The driver of the van was Dr Beamish-Newell.’

They sat in one of the ingle-nooks by the blazing fire in the snug of the Hart Revived. Jerry had style, Kathy decided. He was telling them a story about the unfortunate interior decor of the Jolly Roger and a biker who had become entangled in a lobster pot and fishing net after importuning an uncomprehendingly straight workman who had come in for a quick drink while repairing the road outside. He was very amusing and talked as if he were sitting with a couple of old friends instead of two police officers seeking his help with their inquiries. His large, round glasses reflected the firelight as he underlined his more telling phrases with languid movements of his hands and head. His complexion seemed ageless, although from the creases in his hands Kathy thought he must be at least forty.

‘So,’ she said eventually, steering the conversation back, ‘how do you come to know Dr Beamish-Newell?’

‘Dr Fiendish-Cruel?’ They laughed. ‘Oh, that’s what they call him up there, you know. That and a few other things. He’s a customer of ours. We supply the clinic. All organic, no pesticides.’

‘I thought they grew their own in the walled garden.’ ‘No, they can’t grow a fraction of what they use. They’re not set up for it.’

‘He’s just a customer, then?’

Jerry looked at her pointedly, pursing his lips. T didn’t say he was
just
a customer, dear. Unfortunately, my partner in life, Errol, has a great talent for attracting such
shit,
which is why I’m talking to you, isn’t it? From what Gordon tells me, it sounds as if Errol has been dancing a bit too close to the flame again, not for the first time.’

‘How long have you two been in partnership?’

‘We’ve had the business for fifteen years. But we’ve been together much longer. Next year is our twenty-fifth anniversary, as a matter of fact.’

‘Anniversary of what?’ Kathy couldn’t help asking, revising his age upwards.

‘Of when we were married. Yes, it’s true. Twenty-five years ago next spring, Errol and I were married in a church, on the quiet, by an obliging vicar we knew. I sometimes wonder why, but we’ve lasted longer than most of the straight couples we know. Are you married, luv?’

Kathy shook her head.

‘No, well. It has its ups and downs, but I think we’re getting to the stage when it’s just too much like hard work to look elsewhere. At least, / am. Sometimes Errol needs reminding.’

‘So what happened on Sunday?’

‘I thought something was going on when he said he was going to the shop to take stock of the non-food items for the VAT return. He
never
does that - leaves it all to me, the lazy bitch. After an hour I decided to go in and see if he really was there. Well, he was, and so was the doctor. They were having an argument about something, I don’t know what. They shut up when I walked in, and Fiendish-Cruel just glared daggers at me - at
me!
Then he marched out. I asked Errol what the hell was going on, and he got all sulky and said I was spying on him, which I was. He
claimed
Fiendish-Cruel just called in out of the blue with an order for fruit for Monday, but I could tell that wasn’t true - Fiendish never does the running around himself and, besides, Errol had that hurt, innocent look he always has when he’s telling lies. Anyway, I thought I’d made my point. But when Gordon came into the shop this afternoon and told me about this police investigation, I began to wonder if Errol was being
used
by that man and getting himself into deep water. He’s an innocent, you see, contrary to appearances.’

‘You knew Alex Petrou?’

‘I recognized the picture Gordon showed me, but I didn’t know his name. I’d seen him in the shop once or twice. Well, you couldn’t help noticing him. I’m not too old to
look:

‘So you never met him socially?’

‘No, never. I’m sure Errol never has, either.’

‘I’ll have to talk to Errol. Is he at home?’

‘Must you? Yes, he’ll be home now. Probably wondering why I’m not there cooking his tea.’

Errol was in a belligerent mood. As Jerry closed the front door he shouted angrily, ‘Jerry? Is that you? Where the hell have you been?’

‘Scoring points,’ Jerry muttered softly.

Errol appeared at the end of the hall, his scowl changing reluctantly into a smile as he saw the strangers. He came forward to greet them.

‘This is Sergeant Kolla and Constable Dowling, Errol. They want to talk to us in connection with someone up at the clinic who died at the weekend.’

Errol stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Come through into the lounge,’ Jerry said, apparently not seeing the stunned look on his friend’s face.

They followed him and sat on a pair of old leather chesterfields.