He decided to cut directly through to them rather than follow the path, and found himself floundering up to his thighs in deceptively deep mounds of pristine snow. The two motionless figures seemed unaware of his approach as he struggled towards them. Finally, Grace nodded and turned her face towards Brock, and he realized she had known he was coming but had been listening to something the other figure had been saying. It, too, turned, and Brock saw a peaked cap projecting under the hood of the black parka, and beneath the cap a male face.
‘David! You’ll give yourself a heart attack,’ Grace said, with genuine concern.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to bring his heaving lungs under sufficient control to speak. ‘Who …? Who …?’
‘This is Geoffrey Parsons, David. He’s the Estates Manager.’
Parsons offered his hand and Brock was obliged to pull his glove off and shake it.
‘What were you doing, lurking over there?’ he asked truculently.
‘I saw you, but I didn’t want to interrupt …’ Parsons sounded anxious. And looking at him close up, at the wisps of sandy hair falling untidily across his eyes, and listening to his weak voice, Brock felt foolish at having expended so much effort pursuing him.
‘What about yesterday? You followed us up to the temple, didn’t you?’
Parsons nodded. ‘I’ve been wanting to ask Mrs Carrington something. Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you.’ He smiled wanly at Grace, then nervously at Brock, and turned and walked away.
‘What did he want?’ Brock asked.
‘He’s worried about his girlfriend, Rose. Wanted to know if she had been speaking to me. She works here too, and we got quite friendly the last time I was here.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps I should speak to her, try to find out what’s wrong. It’s the last thing I want to do, but of course he doesn’t know about …’ She looked up at Brock sharply. ‘You won’t say anything to anyone, David, will you? I didn’t mean to tell anyone.’
‘Of course not. Can I help in any way — with Rose, I mean?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not even sure that he wants me to approach her. He’s so tense. I wonder if her problem is him:
14
Brock met Rose the following morning, although the circumstances were such that her problems were not uppermost in his mind. She was acting as assistant to Stephen Beamish-Newell for Brock’s first acupuncture session, the thought of which had been making him feel unreasonably apprehensive.
‘Any side-effects from the fasting, David?’
Beamish-Newell had sat Brock on the edge of the couch, really a kind of trolley, waist high, and was now taking his blood pressure before beginning the treatment. The room was one of a series of small, sparsely furnished rooms which ran down one side of the corridor in the basement and were linked by connecting doors with frosted-glass panels.
‘No, I seem to have coped with it all right, after the first shock.’ Brock suddenly thought about Ben Bromley’s meat pie, and his stomach gave a small gurgle. He looked up at Rose, standing waiting in the corner, and she shot him an automatic smile of encouragement. There was a stainless-steel trolley beside her, and on it were rubber gloves, some folded hand-towels and a block of sponge into which a number of acupuncture needles had been stuck. Whether it was the thought of the meat pie or the sight of the needles or the combination of the two, Brock felt suddenly nauseous. He took a deep breath and tried to think of something else while Beamish-Newell took his pulse.
‘All right, good. Lie face down on the couch now, David, and we’ll get you started.’ The doctor went over to a small basin and washed his hands.
The large cast-iron radiator beneath the tiny window was oversized for the small room, and with the doors closed it was even more oppressively hot than elsewhere in the house. Brock lay on his front, folded his arms under his head and tried not to think about pierced eyeballs.
He felt something soft dab at a spot on his upper left hip, then a pause, and then a slight tingling sensation in his flesh.
‘You’ll be finishing your fast tonight, David.’ Another soft dab, this time on the right side. ‘The grosser poisons should pretty well have drained from your system. Takes time for them to leach out completely, but you’ll soon notice the difference. Hope you’ve been drinking plenty of water?’
No reply.
‘David?’
Silence.
‘Haven’t fallen asleep on us, have you?’
Beamish-Newell moved to Brock’s head and touched his cheek, then pulled his eyelid back. ‘Passed out.’
The doctor swore quietly under his breath and checked Brock’s pulse. Rose wet a cloth under the cold tap and offered it to him. He nodded but didn’t take it, and she came forward and wiped Brock’s face. He didn’t stir.
‘Come on!’ Beamish-Newell slapped the back of Brock’s hand and waited. Nothing.
After five minutes the doctor withdrew the two needles he had inserted. After ten he shook his head impatiently and told Rose to keep a close eye on the totally unresponsive figure on the couch while he got started on the other patients in the adjoining rooms. While she waited Rose turned down the valve on the radiator, and then stood up on a chair and with difficulty tugged open the little window under the vault. She chatted to Brock reassuringly as she did so. ‘Sure it’s awful hot in here. Isn’t it just? It’s no wonder you passed out. I had someone pass out in the sauna just last week. Heat can take you that way. No warning, especially if you’re short of fluids. Could that be the way of it, do you think?’
But no sound came from Brock until over half an hour had passed since the first needle had gone in. Then he suddenly gave a snuffling grunt and scratched his beard.
‘Well, thank the Lord!’ Rose helped him sit up and offered him a glass of water.
‘All done?’ Brock asked, disoriented.
‘All done, indeed! We never even began. Do you feel all right? I’ll fetch the doctor.’
Beamish-Newell came bustling in and gave Brock a quick check-over.
‘You seem to be all right. Maybe you’ll do better after you’ve taken in some nutrition. You have another session scheduled for tomorrow morning, don’t you? Well, we’ll try again then. You’d better go and lie down in your room now for an hour or so. What’s your second session this morning?’
‘I think it’s the exercise bicycle or something.’ Brock found it hard to focus his thoughts. ‘Better give it a miss.’
‘I’ll see Mr Brock to his room,’ Rose said, helping him on with his dressing gown.
Walking seemed to revive him, and by the time they reached the lift he felt considerably better. He shook his head as they waited. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what brought that on.’
‘You’ll feel just fine after a wee lie-down.’
‘I met your fiance yesterday, Rose, while I was walking outside with Grace Carrington.’
‘Is that right?’ The professional solicitude faded from Rose’s voice. ‘Are you a one for the ladies, then, Mr Brock? I hear you tried to take on Martha Price, no less. And then there’s your friend Kathy Kolla.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing, Rose.’
The lift arrived, a tiny box squeezed into the width of a cupboard in the old masonry structure, barely big enough to take the two of them.
‘You wouldn’t be in the same line of work as Kathy, would you, Mr Brock? A policeman?’
Brock smiled. ‘Do I look like a policeman? Anyway, would it matter if I was?’
The lift wheezed to a halt and they stepped out.
‘I don’t know,’ she said as they walked down the deserted corridor. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, about you taking her a message. I’m not sure. I’m in an awkward sort of position, you see. And it may do no good anyway. After all, the poor man’s dead, isn’t he? Nothing can alter that.’
‘Depends how you feel about that. Sometimes it’s harder to live with than it should be. When something hasn’t really been sorted out, for example, or when a cloud hangs over a person’s memory that shouldn’t be there.’