‘Ah, right. So, best that we just stick to the physical evidence, eh?’
Kathy nodded. ‘How does it square with the new story, would you say?’
‘Well, according to what Inspector Tanner put to me this morning, Parsons actually found the body soon after six that morning. He fetched Beamish-Newell from his house, and together they went to the temple and lowered the body to the ground. Beamish-Newell delayed returning to the temple until he was certain he had thoroughly searched Petrou’s room and removed anything he didn’t like the look of. Working back from the time of calling the police, it could have been ten or quarter past eight before they lifted the body off the floor again, so he might have been lying there for over one and a half hours. That could explain the patterns of lividity and flattened muscle, provided we assume that diffusion lividity was already occurring but that rigor had not yet fully set in. That would put the time of death at about 2 a.m. Beamish-Newell has also provided a rough description of the things Petrou was wearing when they found him, and it does correspond pretty well with that other pattern of marks I found on the body, which I mentioned at the post-mortem.
‘So the picture we get is of Petrou, in a disturbed or hallucinogenic frame of mind, under the influence of ecstasy, dressing himself up, coming to the temple around 2 a.m., stringing himself up for some kind of weird thrill, kicking away the chair by mistake, and hanging himself.
‘As far as I can see, this explains quite a few of the mysteries of the forensic evidence. It explains the marks on the body and the patterns of lividity and muscle distortion fairly well; it explains body fluid traces we found on the floor beneath the body; it explains the floor dust on the body and inside the tracksuit; and it explains the presence of those peculiar things you found in the corner.
‘So far, so good. All of those puzzling things are now clear.’
Pugh paused and sipped thoughtfully at his hot chocolate.
Kathy waited. ‘But you’re not completely happy.’
‘The trouble is that the things I’m uneasy about are the very things it’s hard to be precise with. If he died at around 2 a.m. — and it couldn’t have been much earlier according to this account, or rigor would have set in before he was laid on the floor — I was taking his temperature not much more than eight hours later. I wouldn’t have expected it to be as close to ambient in that time. But …’ He shrugged. ‘Body temperature is always a dodgy guide to time of death.
‘Then there were the shoes, being so clean. We did find stone dust on them, but then they had been sitting on the floor of the temple all night. But there were no mud or grass stains to suggest they had been used outside. Again, though, the absence of evidence is problematic. Inspector Tanner pointed out that you can get from the house to the temple on a gravel path, and though we found no signs of gravel on the shoes, it could explain the absence of other stains.’
Pugh lapsed into silence.
Eventually Kathy said, ‘There are other things too. You said before that you thought you’d found traces of ecstasy — it didn’t sound as if he’d had very much.’
Pugh nodded. ‘But that’s something else I can’t be precise about, you see? There’s simply nothing available on what you’d expect to find in a body ten or twelve hours after taking MDMA, let alone relating it to quantities. I’ve put out an inquiry to see if data is available from fatal car accidents involving users, but even then, with the variables of time, quantity, body weight…’
‘Yes, but either way it doesn’t work.’ Kathy insisted. ‘If he was fairly sober, the cold and the sheer inconvenience of going out to the temple on his own would surely put him off. Whereas if he was high enough to be oblivious to all that, it doesn’t seem very likely he could manage the mechanics of getting out there without waking up half the clinic — he had to get into the office for the temple keys, find his way out of the house and across the grounds, find some rope from somewhere, open up the temple and make his way down to the crypt, all in the pitch dark, without a torch. You see? He didn’t even have a torch.’
Pugh nodded. ‘Yes, put like that…’
‘That’s why there had to be someone else, the AB secretor or whoever,’ Kathy said. ‘Whether it was an accident or murder, there had to be someone else. What about the semen stains on his legs?’
‘I can’t put an accurate time to that, Kathy. He could have acquired those any time that previous evening.’ The pathologist shook his head. ‘People do strange things, Kathy. The longer you live, the less surprised you become by anything, especially in our jobs.’
‘They gave you a hard time,’ Brock said. He got to his feet and slowly stretched his back.
‘Maybe they were right,’ Kathy said. ‘Maybe I did get it out of proportion. Maybe I was determined that this was going to be a murder case from the start. When Tanner brought up the jokes and accused me of homophobia … I felt terrible when I thought about it afterwards. I couldn’t sleep properly for weeks.’
‘But you knew he was trying to intimidate you. He was just good at his job.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘You know it, Kathy. Deep down, you know it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here now.’
‘Yes.’
‘So, why are you here now?’ He sat down again and faced her across the table, folding his big hands in front of him.
‘The inquest was held later in November,’ Kathy replied. ‘A verdict of accidental death while under the influence. I wasn’t required, and I didn’t go. I was sick of the whole thing, actually. Just wanted to forget about it. Then around Christmas I got a letter from the clinic, from Rose Duggan, Parsons’ fiancee. The one who was out with Petrou on the Saturday night.’
Kathy handed Brock two sheets of pale-blue writing paper. The lettering immediately took him back to the blackboard of his primary school, where the teacher could make a’s and b’s and p’s with perfect circular forms. Rose Duggan’s lettering had retained this perfection, unspoilt by speed or lazy habits.
Dear Sergeant Kolla, I hope this letter reaches you in confidence. Everyone here is busy writing Christmas letters and cards and I thought I would write to you as I have thought of doing many times this past month.
They told me what came out in the Coroner’s Court and the verdict on what happened to poor Alex. You can imagine the whispers in a place like this. It makes me very sad to think of him gone and his memory no more than a dirty joke. I knew the man better than any of them. He loved fun and liked to enjoy himself. But he would never have done what they say unless he was made to do it by people in positions who should know better.
I beg you to clear the filth from the memory of a darling man.
Yours truly,
Rose Duggan
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. Rose Duggan was the one who laughed at the idea of Petrou being gay. It seemed to me she didn’t know him as well as she thought. I guessed she might have had a bit of a crush on him. And anyway, what could I do?’
‘So?’
‘Just that … doing nothing didn’t do me a lot of good. I’ve kept thinking about that letter. It was like an accusation that I’d given up.
‘Anyway, I did nothing. And then earlier this week I heard a rumour about Long. His secretary is a friend of Penny Elliot’s sister and told her that Long has put in for a top job at Scotland Yard — she said the Assistant Commissioner. I couldn’t believe it, and then I wondered: what if it’s true? I remembered how he’d interfered in the Petrou case, and then I thought about Rose’s phrase “people in positions who should know better”, and I thought, what if she meant him} The only thing I could think to do was see you, Brock. I wondered if you could find out anything about Long. Maybe check if the story was true about him applying to the Met.’
‘Oh, I already know about Long, Kathy,’ Brock said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he lusted after a position like that. I’d hate to believe it was anything more than fantasy, but you never know … worth a phone call, I suppose.’