The Malcontenta bak-2 Read online

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’

  ‘No … well. You want me?’

  ‘I’d like a word, if you’ve got a minute, sir.’

  She was very careful with her words, with the tone of her voice, with the expression on her face as she answered him. He had never been overtly rude to her, always listened to what she had to say, always given a reasoned response. Yet from the very first time they had met, she had felt his hostility. At that stage she had had no opportunity to give offence, yet it was palpably there from that moment, and had continued, unprovoked and unacknowledged, ever since. It was a chilling undercurrent to the formality with which he treated her and lack of interest in what she had to say. There was something rather frightening about it — the unreasonableness, the pointlessness of it and, worst of all, the way in which it had gradually inspired in her an equally unjustified aversion. She resented being forced to protect herself by allowing this feeling to grow, of antagonism towards someone she hardly knew, of being drawn towards a confrontation that lacked any reason. He was an admirable officer in many ways — he worked longer hours than anyone else at Division and, like Kathy herself, he had driven himself up the ranks without the benefit of a higher education. He had made no attempt to modify his broad Tyneside accent, which he sometimes seemed to exaggerate as a point of pride. He was tough, experienced and proficient. And he made Kathy’s skin crawl whenever she found herself in the same room with him.

  The other sergeant left, closing the door behind him, and Tanner turned to face her. ‘Speak.’

  ‘I wondered if you would consider a change in my duties, sir.’

  He stared at her for a while, his face expressionless, then lowered his eyes and picked at a thumb-nail. ‘Why would I do that?’

  She took in a deep breath, steadying her voice. ‘Since I’ve been here, for the past six months, I’ve been working with Sergeant Elliot in Family and Juvenile Crime. I wondered whether I could have some time in other areas. Maybe with Sergeant McGregor in Serious Crime.’

  ‘Don’t you get on with Penny Elliot?’ He brought his eyes back up to hers as he completed the sentence, looking for her reaction.

  ‘We get on fine. It’s not that. I’ve learned quite a bit from working with her. She’s very good at it. But it’s not really the kind of detective work that I’m interested in.’

  ‘That you’re interested in,’ he repeated. ‘Wouldn’t you call domestic violence and child abuse serious crime?’

  ‘Of course. But I’d hoped to get some experience in organized crime — some murder investigations perhaps — while I’m here.’

  ‘Murder investigations,’ he again repeated her words, managing, without any particular emphasis in his voice, to make them sound vaguely absurd and self-indulgent.

  Kathy flushed. When she spoke again, her voice was harder. ‘Under the terms of my transfer to County…’

  ‘I’m quite familiar with the terms of your transfer, Sergeant,’ he broke in, without raising his voice, ‘according to which you go wherever, in my best judgement, I think you should.’

  He paused, giving her more of the cold eye. ‘What’s so special about murder investigations? You think they’re glamorous?’

  She was about to tell him that she had already led one murder investigation while she’d been with ED Division at the Met, then remembered he knew that.

  ‘You don’t have some kind of unhealthy obsession with death, do you?’ he went on. ‘Some kind of fetish?’ He gave her an unpleasant little smirk.

  There was a knock on the door. Without turning, Tanner barked ‘In’, and the sergeant he’d been speaking to earlier put his head round. He handed Tanner a note. ‘I’ll take it if you like, Ric.’ He was pulling a coat on over his jacket.

  ‘No.’ Tanner read the note, the sergeant waiting motionless with one arm in the coat. ‘No, Bill. I want you to stay with the cars.’

  ‘Shall I give it to Arnie?’

  ‘No. Sergeant Kolla here is very interested in unnatural deaths. This should appeal to her.’

  The sergeant glanced at him, then at Kathy, shrugged and left. Tanner handed her the note. It read: 0855 hrs, 19 October. Request for CID assistance. Suicide hanging at Stanhope House Clinic, Edenham. Patrol car at scene. Police Surgeon notified.

  ‘Looks like the angels were listening to you, Sergeant.’ Tanner’s smile was very tight. ‘The angels of death, perhaps. It’s all yours. Your very own investigation. Take that sleepy bugger Dowling with you.’

  He turned, swept up his files and walked out of the room. She had spoken to Penny Elliot about Tanner. Penny didn’t particularly like him, thought him fairly unsympathetic on a personal level, but couldn’t fault him in his dealings with her. Although he wasn’t much interested in the areas of domestic crime that she was concerned with, he had made sure that she had received a fair — and in recent years a growing — share of resources. She had experienced none of the animosity Kathy felt.

  ‘So it’s not common-or-garden sexism; it must just be me; Kathy had said, and Penny Elliot had smiled.

  ‘Well, he does like to control things. Maybe he doesn’t like the fact that you really belong to the Metropolitan Police and are only here for a year.’

  Maybe. Kathy stared gloomily out at a wood of dark pines that flashed past the car window. Dowling was skirting the edge of Ashdown Forest on the way to Stanhope House. Making a report on a suicide wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d finally worked herself up to approach Tanner. She wondered why the uniformed branch couldn’t have dealt with it themselves. ‘What is this place we’re going to, anyway? Any idea?’

  She hadn’t worked with Dowling before and asked the question as much to make conversation as anything, as he’d been very quiet since they got in the car. He chewed his lip for a moment, concentrating on a bend.

  ‘Er … some kind of health farm, I believe, Sarge.’

  ‘Call me Kathy. You’re Gordon, aren’t you?’

  ‘Er … yeah, that’s right, Sarge.’

  Sleepy Dowling, Kathy said to herself. Thanks a lot, Inspector Tanner.

  There were puddles by the road from the recent rain, and the woods looked sodden. Through Edenham, a small market town whose streets were still almost deserted this Monday morning; lights on in the two glass-fronted supermarkets which had pushed their way in among the old brick and halftimbered houses of the high street; the largest building in the street a pub, formerly a coaching inn, the Hart Revived, whose painted sign of a deer drinking from a pool was suspended over the pavement. Beyond the town, more belts of dark conifers; then high hedges closed in on either side. Sporadic patches of mist crossed the road and Dowling slowed, peering forward through the windscreen.

  ‘Somewhere around here …’ he muttered. Then, with satisfaction, ‘There!’

  A signpost marked STANHOPE indicated a narrow lane branching to the right. More hedges, then a cattle grid, beyond which the hedges stopped abruptly, opening up a rolling landscape of sheep-cropped grass dotted with small copses of oak and beech. They came to a river, maybe ten yards wide, which they followed until a bridge appeared, a single high arch of weathered grey stone decorated with elaborately carved balusters and urns.

  ‘Wow,’ Kathy said, and then repeated herself a moment later as Dowling carefully steered the car up to the crown of the arch, and a panorama of Stanhope House, half shrouded in a bank of silver mist, presented itself before them. A pale-grey cube made of the same stone as the bridge, in the same classical style and embellished with a tall pedimented portico, the Palladian villa’s original simplicity and symmetry had been ruined by a later wing grafted on to the left side, like the single ungainly claw of a hermit crab thrust out of a perfect shell.

  On the far side of the bridge the metalled road curved away to the right, and a gravel road branched off it towards the house. Beside the junction stood a dark-green sign with white lettering, STANHOPE NATUROPATHIC CLINIC, beneath a symbol based on the design of th
e front portico of the house. The winding gravel road took them around the edge of the meadow which lay in front of the house, and soon revealed a red-brick stable block among the trees further to the left. Perhaps thirty cars — Jaguars, BMWs and Mercedes accounting for more than half — stood in the area between the stables and the house.

  ‘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 standin
g, 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.