The Malcontenta (3 page)

‘No sign of the patrol car,’ Dowling said, and then spotted a uniformed officer standing under the trees. He slowly rolled forward and Kathy lowered her window, filling the car with cool morning air sharp with autumnal smells of damp and rotting leaves.

‘You follow that path’ - the man pointed to a gravelled way leading off through the trees between the stables and the house - ‘past the staff cottages to a turning circle at the end. You’ll see the patrol car there. The body’s in another building in the grounds on the other side of the main house.’ He sounded cheerful. ‘Young male. One of the staff, apparently. My partner’s round there waiting for you with the bloke that found him and the Director of this place. I’ll stay here for the doc’

Kathy nodded. ‘Why did you call for CID?’ she asked.

He hesitated a moment, then, ‘Just to be on the safe side, Sarge.’ He grinned and stepped back to let them continue.

Once through the trees, they passed four identical brick cottages set out like doll’s houses along the curve of the drive, each fronted by a narrow bed filled with recently pruned rose bushes. Between the houses they caught glimpses of the high brick backdrop of a walled garden. Soon they saw the patrol car ahead of them, the driver’s door open, a man in uniform sitting behind the wheel, looking up from his notepad. A dozen paces away stood two men, watching them approach, waiting.

Kathy got out and walked briskly to the patrol car as the officer got to his feet. She introduced herself, keeping her voice low. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We answered a 999 call timed at 0832. Arrived here at 0845. The Director of the clinic, over there, Dr Stephen Beamish-hyphen-Neweir - the policeman spoke with a strong cockney accent and pronounced the name laboriously, raising one eyebrow, as if there were something dubious about it -’met us at the front of the main building and brought us back here to a building they call the Temple of Apollo’ - again the raised eyebrow - ‘behind the trees over there.’ He pointed with his chin towards a dense thicket of rhododendron, yew and laurel, through the upper part of which Kathy could just make out a stone parapet. In contrast to his partner’s cheerfulness, this man’s forehead was scored with worry. He referred back to the notes on his pad.

‘The other bloke, name of Geoffrey Parsons, is the Estates Manager, looks after the grounds. One of his jobs is to open this temple each morning. Apparently, this morning he found a member of their staff, a Mr Alex Petrou, hanging in there. Stone cold, no chance of resuscitation. He ran back to the main house, found the Director. They both came back out here, then back to the house to ring for us.’

He tore the sheet of notes off the pad and handed it to Kathy, then closed the pad and looked at her uneasily.

‘Why did you ask for CID?’ she asked.

‘I think you should have a look down there, Sergeant. Without those two, I might suggest.’

‘OK.’ She looked over at the two men. There didn’t seem much doubt which was which. One was wearing an old tweed jacket over a thick sweater, and brown corduroy trousers tucked into green gumboots. He wore a tweed cap on his head, which was bowed as he slowly shifted his weight from foot to foot. The other man wore a black double-breasted suit, grey polo-neck sweater and black shoes. His thick black hair stood up from his scalp like a long crew-cut, and the neatly trimmed goatee beard on his chin had a silver streak. He stood motionless, staring intently at Kathy, with his hands clasped in front of him, black leather gloves adding to an effect both theatrical and funereal.

She walked over and he held out his gloved hand. His eyes were very dark, unblinking and hypnotic. She thought what an asset they would be in an interrogation.

His handshake was firm, his voice soft and, surprisingly, almost as broadly cockney as the patrol officer’s. She guessed he was in his forties.

‘I’m Stephen Beamish-Newell, Director of Stanhope, and this is our Estates Manager, Geoffrey Parsons.’

‘Detective Sergeant Kolla and Detective Constable Dowling from County CID, doctor. I understand you’ve both seen the victim and that he is known to you both?’

‘Of course. Alex Petrou.’

‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘Age about thirty, I’d have to check his file to be precise. He came to us last spring, around April I’d say. I took him on as a general physiotherapy assistant. We’re deeply shocked. I don’t think either of us was aware of any problems that might have led him to this.’

He glanced at Parsons, who merely shook his head.

‘I’ll need to get some more details from you, sir, but it’ll probably be more convenient in your office, with your records. I’d like to see the body first, and wait for the doctor. When I’m finished I’ll come back to the house and see you there.’

Beamish-Newell hesitated a moment, as if about to suggest something else, then nodded and turned to go. Parsons made to follow him.

‘I’d like you to stay with us if you would, Mr Parsons. To show us around.’

Parsons hesitated, nodded, lowered his head. Kathy looked more closely at him. Under the cap his face looked white. He was younger than she had first assumed, early thirties perhaps.

‘Are you feeling all right, sir?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was weak and he cleared his throat. ‘Got a bit of a shock. Just catching up with me, I think.’

‘Of course. Do you want to sit in the car for a while?’ He shook his head, cleared his throat again. ‘No, no. It’ll help if I walk.’

He led them to a narrow gap in the wall of vegetation and into a tunnel of dripping rhododendron branches. It led out on to a lawn which stretched away to their right, down to the rear facade of Stanhope House. Ornamental pools and terraces were laid out on the axis of the house, and carefully clipped yew hedges and pergolas contained the gardens on the far side.

Parsons turned left, leading them towards a classical temple front, now visible on a knoll, facing the house. They climbed the stone steps of the plinth up to a row of four columns supporting the pediment. Tall glass-panelled doors formed an opening in the stone facade. Parsons pulled out a thick bunch of keys and, with some difficulty, unfastened the lock.

‘I’d better hang on to that key, Mr Parsons,’ Kathy said. ‘Why don’t you wait out here with my colleague while the constable shows me round? I’d like you to think over the sequence of exactly what you did before and after discovering the body, so we can take a statement from you.’

Parsons nodded and removed his cap to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. His hair was lank, sandy-coloured, thinning on top. It was plastered to his head with recent sweat.

The interior of the temple was lit by a dim green light. It smelled strongly of damp and mould, and the air was warmer than the outdoor chill. Rows of wooden chairs were set out on each side of a central aisle within the narrow chamber, whose walls were lined with columns and panels of marble -dark green and black and, in a few places, the startling blue of lapis lazuli. Overhead a plain vault ran the length of the building and was punctured towards the far end by a dome with a small lantern toplight in its centre.

Kathy and the patrol officer walked down the aisle until they stood beneath the dome. In front, a brass rail separated them from what in a church would have been the chancel. Here, however, Kathy was surprised to find that the floor was cut away, revealing a lower chamber. On the wall on the far side of the void hung a large oil painting, so faded that Kathy had to peer to make out the figure of a naked youth on an open hillside, gesturing towards a glowing cloud. Puzzled, she looked round, her eyes coming to rest on the series of heavy brass gratings set into the marble floor. With a shock she realized that the biggest one, on which she was standing, was cast in the pattern of a large swastika. A red nylon rope was looped round the centre of the broken cross.

‘That’s where he is,’ the uniformed man murmured. ‘Under your feet.’

‘Oh.’ Kathy’s voice echoed up into the dome. ‘How do we get down there?’

He took her to one side of the chamber, where a door opened into a narrow spiral staircase leading to the lower level.

‘Aren’t there any lights?’ Her voice sounded muffled within the stone shaft.

‘Apparently the wiring is dodgy - they’ve cut everything off except one small light at the organ console, and a heating circuit to keep the damp out of the organ chamber. Watch your step at the bottom here.’ He flashed his torch at the stone floor at her feet. She was now standing in the lower chamber, below the oil painting.

‘There’s an organ?’

‘Yeah. The main part of it - the pipes and so on - are in a pit below the floor of the hall upstairs. That’s what the floor grates are for - to let the sound out. This area down here is where the choir or orchestra or whatever would be. The idea apparently was to fill the space upstairs with sound, without the audience being able to see where it was coming from.’

‘Bit weird.’

‘Yeah.’

He turned, and the beam of his light swept round the wall to a recess below the brass rail at the end of the upper floor. The body of a man was suspended there.

Kathy froze, staring at the figure, taking it in.

The space beneath the grating was almost as high as a normal room, and she could make out the stops and foot-pedals of an organ console behind him. The organist’s stool was lying on its side below his feet, as if kicked away. Her eyes traced the taut red rope from the back of his head of thick, black, wavy hair, up the short distance to the underside of the grille, then diagonally down to a series of loops tied around part of the body of the console. He was dressed in a green tracksuit, with bright white Reeboks on his feet.

There was something odd about his posture, she thought, although she had never seen a hanging in the flesh before. He didn’t look slack, like the photographs she had seen on detective courses, where the bodies looked like pathetic sacks of potatoes. He seemed hunched, his right arm half drawn up across his body, and his legs didn’t reach to the same length.

‘Was he handicapped, do you think?’ She found she was speaking in a whisper.

‘Maybe he was beaten.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Look.’ He moved closer to the figure, pointing the torch at its head. Although the stark contrast of light and shadows from the flashlight obscured it at first, Kathy soon made out what he was talking about. The flesh looked puffy and distorted, its colouring blotchy, with a strong pattern of white and dark-purple areas.

‘Could be bruising, do you think?’ the officer asked.

‘Mmm. The doctor will tell us. Anything else?’

‘Down there, in the corner.’

He swung the beam away from the body and down into a narrow space at one end of the organ console. All Kathy could see was something black.

‘I can’t make it out,’ she said. He handed her the torch without a word. She knelt down within a couple of feet of the thing - two things, she realized, both black, made of leather. One was a bunch of thongs, with a handle shaped like a phallus.

She straightened up. ‘I see. What’s the other thing, with the whip?’

He frowned, shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t touch anything. I thought it might be a glove, or a hood. I’m assuming that the two who found him didn’t spot them. Without a torch you wouldn’t pick them out. They only had the organist’s console light to see by. That’s the only light in the whole building. Apparently it was on when Parsons came in this morning. He noticed the faint glow through the grating.’

‘Who turned it off?’

‘They did, when they left to phone us.’

It seemed an odd, parsimonious gesture.

‘The switch is over near the foot of the stairs.’ With his torch he showed her the white line of a new length of cable which was tacked to the wall and ran to a switch. She went over and turned it on. There was just enough light to illuminate the organ controls. Kathy could imagine Parsons’ shock as he went down the stairs and saw the dangling figure silhouetted against the glow.

They heard the creak of the front doors opening, and the voice of the other uniformed constable echoed above them, ‘Sergeant… Hello … You there?’

‘We’re down here,’ Kathy called out.

‘I’ve got the doctor.’

He was young, fresh-faced and almost completely bald. He shook hands with Kathy enthusiastically and followed her over to the body.

‘Can we have more light?’

‘I’m afraid not. At least, it may take half an hour or more for me to arrange it. We can get some more torches, though.’

‘Yes, that might help.’ He held the corpse’s wrist for a moment, peering at its head. ‘Long gone.’ ‘How long?’

The doctor shrugged. ‘Twelve hours at least, I’d guess. But that’s only a guess. I’d like to take his temperature, but …’ He took the torch from the uniformed man and looked closely at the head and hands. Finally he stepped back and shook his head. ‘I’m not going to touch this,’ he said. ‘You’d better see if Gareth Pugh is available. If he is, he’ll want to see it undisturbed. If he isn’t, then I’ll do it.’

‘Gareth Pugh?’ Kathy asked.

‘He’s the County’s Senior Forensic Pathologist. Professor Pugh. Haven’t you come across him? I’m sure he’ll want to do the post-mortem if he can. I’ll try to call him from my car if you like. And I think you should get some lights fixed up for him.’

Kathy nodded. ‘And some SOCOs?’

‘Well, that’s up to you, really, but I’d say so. Certainly a photographer. In fact, you’ll probably need everything.’

‘You think the circumstances are suspicious?’

He shrugged. ‘Looks pretty odd to me.’

For the first time Kathy let the sense of anticipation that had been building in her since she first saw the body, come to the surface.

‘Good. You go ahead and contact the pathologist, then, doctor. I’ll get things organized down here.’ She turned to the two uniformed men, telling one to remain there and touch nothing, and the other to return to the car park to direct people to the temple as they arrived.

‘Several people have come over and asked me what’s going on while I’ve been stood out there,’ the cheerful one said.

‘Don’t tell them anything. And both of you, don’t mention anything about the things in the corner - to anyone.’ She saw him smirk. ‘I mean that,’ she glared at him. ‘Not a soul.’