The Malcontenta (26 page)

It was a metallic click and, though muffled, was uncomfortably distinct. It was hard to place where it had come from. He held his breath, waiting, but nothing more disturbed the stillness. Hurriedly now, he continued scanning the names on the screen and comparing them with those in his notebook.

There was another click.

This time Brock rose slowly to his feet. As he did so, his line of sight cleared the back edge of Jay’s desk and took in the pale line of light from the bottom of the connecting door to Ben Bromley’s office. At the same moment he heard the murmur of a voice beginning to speak in the next room. It was Bromley’s voice, and it was answered by another that he recognized, a woman’s, Laura Beamish-Newell.

It occurred to him that if he could see their light under the door, it was possible they could see his. Very carefully he the jack handle and knife back into the towel and reached for his notebook and pen. At that moment the computer in front of him gave a loud ping and the message ‘Save Now?’ flashed up on the screen. Immobilized by the sudden noise, he hesitated long enough to realize his stupidity in correcting the spelling mistake, and so provoking the computer’s question. He was conscious of the abrupt silence from the next room as the murmur of voices stopped.

Then Bromley spoke, his tone quiet, incredulous.

Brock grabbed at his things, switched off the desk lamp and flew for the door. He banged his shin against something as he reached it and wrestled the knob open. As he swung it closed, a shaft of light from behind him flashed against the jamb. He could hear their voices as he reached the outer door, and then he was through and dodging between the armchairs in the entrance hall. He made the corridor and sprinted to the far end of the west wing without pausing to hear if he was pursued. On to the fire stairs, then up to his floor; he peeked through the fire door to make sure the corridor was empty, then made the last dash to his room. His chest was heaving with the sudden exertion. From the direction of the main stairs he could hear a faint voice, and the glow of the stair light coming on suddenly reflected along the corridor wall. He felt in his pocket for his bedroom key and immediately knew, with complete certainty, that it was still lying on his bedside cabinet on the other side of the door. Leaving his room in the dark, he had forgotten to pick it up.

The voices in the stairwell were growing. He reached for the knife and jack handle and fumbled to get them into the door jamb. The handle slipped out of his grip and landed on the floor with a thump. As he groped for it in the gloom, the main lights in the corridor blazed alive. He grabbed the jack handle again, slammed it into the gap and wrenched. With a splintering crack the door flew open and he stumbled into the dark room. Recovering, he swung the door closed again and clicked the lock. He pressed his forehead against the cool surface of the paint and took a deep breath, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

Suddenly the light in the room snapped on. A voice behind him said, ‘What are you doing?’

Brock turned and was startled to see Grace Carrington in his bed. She was staring at him wide-eyed over the edge of the blankets. Then he noticed that the curtains were different, the wardrobe in a different place.

‘Oh no,’ he groaned. ‘The wrong door.’

‘What?’ She was looking at him as if he were mad. Behind him Brock could hear voices approaching.

He took another deep breath. ‘I was trying to break into my own room. I locked myself out. But in the dark I thought your door was mine.’

Her eyes moved from his flushed face to the jack handle in his hand. Then she too heard the voices outside. ‘What’s going on, David?’ she whispered.

He hesitated. ‘I’ve been misbehaving, Grace. And I very nearly got caught.’

She watched him, then said, ‘Do you want to leave now?’

‘I’d rather hang on a moment - if you don’t mind.’

‘Then you’d better sit down and explain what you’re doing in my room in the middle of the night.’ She seemed calmer now.

So he sat on the end of her bed and told her about Kathy, and about her visit with Dowling to his home. He described some of Kathy’s frustrations with the case, and his offer to spend some time at Stanhope. And he spoke of his reasons for breaking into the clinic’s computer that evening.

‘I can’t believe that a senior police officer would do such a thing,’ she said. ‘What if you’d been caught?’

He nodded and hung his head. ‘You’re right. Kathy said exactly the same.’

‘If you believe Alex was murdered, then who do you suspect?’

‘I don’t know. The problem is that the motive is unclear. It might have been blackmail, or sexual jealousy. Or perhaps it was an accident in which others were involved who would prefer to keep their names out of it. I find it hard to come to grips with Petrou. He seems to have been so many different things to different people.’

She nodded, thinking back. ‘I suppose that’s true. He had a surface charm, which he could adapt to the people that he came into contact with. There was a certain intimacy almost immediately you met him; he seemed soft, yielding. But I always felt that underneath he was quite hard, that he had a very strong sense of self-preservation and self-interest.’

‘He was manipulative, then.’

‘Yes, I think he was.’ She looked hard at Brock, who was nursing his breaking-and-entering tools. ‘I’m sorry I flew off the handle at you earlier. I thought
you
were being manipulative.’

‘Well, I suppose I was. Until I got to know you, anyway.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Right now? Well, if the coast is clear, go back to my room, I suppose.’

‘You’re going to smash another door in?’ He smiled, shrugged.

‘Maybe it was fate, David, that you broke into this room. Maybe it was even intentional - subconsciously, I mean.’

He reddened.

‘Alternatively,’ she said, ‘you could just stay here and in the morning I’ll tell Jay that I’ve locked myself out again and she’ll lend me the master key - she does it all the time for the patients.’

Brock looked at the chair by the desk. It seemed the only possibility, but he’d already found from the one in his own room that he was too big for it. ‘Well …’ He sounded doubtful.

‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. She wriggled over in the narrow bed to make room for him, and then reached up to turn off the light.

‘You are real, then.’ He opened his eyes at the sound of her voice and saw her gazing at him. A weak silver light leaked in around the curtain, and the hot water gurgled in the old cast-iron radiator under the window.

‘Yes.’ He felt their bodies pressed together in the narrow bed. ‘I’m real, and a bit… surprised.’

‘Don’t you do this much, then?’ She smiled at him, and he thought how very nice a smile it was, and how much poorer the world was going to be without it. He kissed her cheek and stretched as much as he could in the confined space. ‘I just didn’t expect to find myself waking up here with you. I’m very glad I have, though.’

‘In half an hour I’ll go downstairs and get someone to give me the key. But not yet.’ She slid her hand across his chest and gave him a squeeze.

‘No,’ he agreed, and eased his arm under her shoulders. For the first time he noticed that his automatic wince was unnecessary, for there was no pain from his shoulder.

‘You think Stephen Beamish-Newell killed Alex, don’t you?’ she asked.

He hesitated. ‘I have no real reason to. I think Kathy does.’

‘I can understand that. He can seem intimidating, even terrifying, I suppose. But he would have the most to lose if someone was murdered at the clinic’

‘And perhaps the most to lose from someone who was threatening the reputation of the clinic in some way. You like him, don’t you?’

‘It’s not
liking.
More
trusting.
I just don’t believe he would do it.’

‘How about his wife?’

‘Laura?’ Grace looked at him in surprise, then frowned. ‘Of course not! How do they train you to think like this?’

‘It comes from having to
punish
people all the time, I suppose.’

‘I’m sorry I said that, David. It must be very hard, doing what you do. Not allowed to forgive anyone.’

‘That’s what makes it bearable, Grace. It would be too difficult to have to forgive as well. Someone else gets that job.’

A wood pigeon had settled on their window-sill and began cooing reassuringly. Then a blast of the gusting north-easterly wind sent it fluttering away out of earshot.

An hour later Grace returned from her visit downstairs. ‘Jay doesn’t come in on a Sunday, but the girl who opens the office for her gave me the key. She didn’t seem to know about any goings-on last night.’

‘There’s no way they couldn’t have heard me. And I left the computer on. Still, it doesn’t sound as if they called the police. Not yet, anyway.’

‘What have you got planned today?’

‘Not a lot. I’m supposed to be writing a paper for a conference …’ Brock’s voice trailed away. Talking with her about anything happening in the future was so difficult. He thought how much he would have liked to take her to Italy.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘It’s not important. Not in the least. What about you?’

‘Can I spend time with you, David? It doesn’t matter, if you feel awkward about it.’

‘Of course I don’t feel awkward. I’d like that.’

‘It isn’t that I don’t love my husband. But this …’ She gestured hopelessly round the bare little room.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It isn’t Paris in the springtime, but it’s a comfort. It’s a comfort for me too, Grace, believe me.’

She moved up against him. ‘I arranged to meet Rose this afternoon,’ she said. ‘If you like, I’ll try to persuade her to talk to you.’

They went for a walk in the grounds after lunch and looked in the library when they returned, to see if they could retrieve Brock’s gift to her, but it was gone.

Grace went off to keep her appointment with Rose. ‘She says she will talk to you, David,’ she reported back later. ‘I gather it has something to do with her fiancé, Geoffrey Parsons. Apparently, there’s something he kept from the police, and he’s been worrying a lot about it. He doesn’t want Rose to speak to anyone, but she feels he’s going to have a breakdown if he doesn’t do something. She’s tried getting him to speak to Stephen Beamish-Newell, but he says there’s no one he can talk to.’

‘Does she have any idea what it is that he’s hiding?’

‘I’m not sure if she knows or just suspects. It’s strange -sometimes she sounds very protective and concerned about him, and the next minute she becomes quite aggrieved and annoyed. I got the feeling that their relationship hasn’t been very happy lately, almost as if she’s only keeping it going because he’s dependent on her.’

‘It’s funny you should say that. I got a lecture from Laura Beamish-Newell yesterday about harassing her staff. Apart from Rose, she said I’d been belligerent towards Parsons, who’d told her about the time he approached you while we were out there in the snow. He claimed I almost attacked him.’

‘You were very protective.’ She smiled at him. ‘I thought that was sweet.’

‘Well, the thing that surprised me was how protective Laura was towards Parsons. More so than towards Rose. It almost made me wonder if there could be something going on between them.’

‘What? Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sure there isn’t. She’s probably just noticed that he’s been under a strain lately. I really do think she worries about people she feels responsible for, David.’

‘Maybe. When can I see Rose?’

‘She says that’s difficult. Laura has been questioning her about you, and she thinks Laura has asked the other girls in the house to keep an eye on her. She says she’ll be seeing you anyway tomorrow afternoon for acupuncture, and she’ll talk to you then.’

‘Oh no,’ Brock groaned.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Acupuncture. I don’t know what it is about it. I passed out in the first session I had.’ ‘You didn’t? Really?’

‘Yes. I don’t know why. I barely made it through the second one. I’ve been feeling a bit groggy anyway for the last couple of days. I’d say I was going down with flu, except for what that patient said to Beamish-Newell the first night I was here, about feeling much worse after a week than when she arrived. He said it was to be expected.’

She looked at him with concern. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been selfish. You should be resting this weekend.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he said.

If it hadn’t been for Rose, Brock would have abandoned his afternoon therapy session. The morning osteopathy had left his back aching, barely able to bend. Worse were the headaches and nausea which had been recurring in waves over the past days, and he was convinced he was going down with flu. His stomach felt as if it belonged to someone else and his vision kept blurring. The thought of another acupuncture session filled him with dread, but if Rose was going to talk to him, he would have to be there. Beamish-Newell had brought the time of his session forward to two o’clock, during the rest hour for the other patients, and he suspected that this was to avoid alarm and inconvenience if he passed out again. His sense of gloom was heightened by the darkness of the day, the light of the sun overwhelmed by a motionless mass of black cloud.

Rose was waiting for him, looking nervous. She avoided his eyes as Beamish-Newell swept in and went through the preliminaries. He seemed distant to Brock, even abrupt, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Rose had asked for the meeting, he might have wondered if she had complained to the Director about him. Perhaps his wife had.

He said conversationally, trying to get Beamish-Newell to talk, to hear the intonation of his voice, ‘How many needles today, Stephen?’

Beamish-Newell took a long time to say anything, and when he did the reply sounded ominous. ‘Let’s see how many you can take. It’s probably time we stopped mollycoddling you.’

Brock rolled on to his front and closed his eyes, feeling dizzy even before the first needle went in.

When he opened them again he was completely disoriented. He groaned inwardly.
I’ve blacked out again.