Laura paused, and Kathy could see that she was trembling.
‘What did she answer?’
‘She told me to mind my own business. I can see her now. Her face was flushed, her chin up — she was angry with me. She said something about me …’
‘What?’
Laura Beamish-Newell’s eyes dropped to the floor. She shuddered and forced the words out. ‘That I must leave her and Geoffrey alone now, because I only destroyed things. She said she wouldn’t be destroyed as Alex Petrou had been.’
‘She accused you of killing him?’
‘I wasn’t sure if that was what she was saying. I didn’t understand. I tried to tell her he had been an evil man, and that for Geoffrey’s sake she must say no more about him. She burst into tears and ran out of my office.’
She stared wildly at Kathy. ‘I never told Stephen! When he killed her, he had no idea that she might be carrying a child. You must believe that!’
‘Laura,’ Kathy spoke intently, ‘listen to me. Stephen believes it was you who killed Petrou and Rose, and you believe it was him. You have each been trying to protect the other, just as Geoffrey has been trying to protect you both.’
Laura looked blankly at her. ‘No,’ she protested, ‘that’s not true. I don’t want to hear any more. I’m so tired. You must leave now. I beg you, give me ten minutes before you come back.’ She pulled back the sleeve of her cardigan and placed the needle against the inside of her forearm.
‘It’s true, Laura. Chief Inspector Brock and I interviewed Stephen just now. Brock is still with him. There’s no doubt in our minds that he genuinely believes you were responsible for both deaths.’
Laura frowned, confused. ‘That isn’t possible … Who …?’
Kathy hesitated. ‘We need your help. Please, you must put that away and come back to the house with me.’
‘I think you’re just saying this,’ Laura said, but she was either too tired or too stubborn to think it all through again. Her protest was half-hearted, and when she saw the look on Kathy’s face her determination crumpled and her arms fell to her sides. Kathy stepped forward and took the syringe and its box from her fingers and packed them safely away.
‘Come on,’ she said. She reached out, took Laura’s arm and in guided her towards the stairs. They made their way slowly back up through the temple.
As they reached the doors Laura stopped and said to Kathy, ‘Was it Stephen who was with Petrou that afternoon when I first tried the door to the gym?’
‘What’s his blood group, Laura?’ Kathy asked.
Laura looked puzzled. ‘It’s O.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, it wasn’t him. Whoever it was, was AB.’
They didn’t speak as they picked their way in the pitch darkness towards the house. Someone had switched off the basement corridor light and locked the entry door, so Laura used her master key. They reached the Director’s office and opened the door. Beamish-Newell looked up and panic crossed his face as he saw his wife. ‘Oh God!’ he whispered, and tears welled up in his eyes. ‘My dear, I’m so sorry … so sorry.’
‘It’s all right, Stephen. It really is,’ she said, and went round the desk and put an arm round his shoulders. ‘I think it’s going to be all right.’
After composing herself, Laura told them all how she had found her brother the evening Petrou died and had persuaded him to help her. They had lifted Petrou from the exercise machine and hidden him temporarily in a corner of the gym under a pile of mats. Later, in the early hours of the morning, they had returned to the basement and carried him out to a wheelbarrow which Geoffrey used to move him to the temple. They took with them the hood and whip which they had found in the gym, as well as some rope which Geoffrey had brought. At the temple they took off Petrou’s tracksuit and shoes before hanging his body as best they could.
‘Why the temple, Laura?’ Kathy asked.
She shrugged. ‘I wanted to hide the time and the place where he died to confuse things. Also, I wanted to make it look like suicide or some kind of bizarre accident. Afterwards, when you wouldn’t believe that, I wished we’d just driven his body miles away and dumped it somewhere.’
Kathy thought of the small white marble slab in the temple, and how odd Laura’s choice had been, as if she had been gathering together her husband’s sacrifices.
‘Well, you certainly did confuse things. And again the next morning.’
‘Yes, we hadn’t anticipated Stephen wanting to change Petrou’s clothing. Geoffrey put it down to his sense of guilt. So did I.’
‘Didn’t Geoffrey discuss it with you?’ Kathy asked Beamish-Newell. ‘Talk about what had happened?’
He shook his head. ‘It was as if we were acting out parts, trying to do and say what an innocent person would do and say. After that, Geoffrey seemed to avoid any contact with me.’
‘He was frightened of you,’ Laura said. ‘He was terrified by what he thought you had done.’
‘What about the rope, Laura? Did Geoffrey have some left over after he’d strung Petrou up?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t remember that. I carried the torch and tried to do what I could to help. It was dreadful, so cold, and the body was so awkward. Rigor had set in while it had been lying on the floor of the gym, and when we eventually got it into place it looked so twisted and wrong. I just hoped that its weight would straighten it by morning.’
She fell silent, head bowed.
Kathy looked across at Brock and murmured, ‘I could do with some of Ben Bromley’s strong black Italian coffee.’
Brock nodded. ‘Good idea. In fact, I think we could do with Mr Bromley in person.’
25
Ben Bromley woke with a start, the telephone burbling in his ear. He had insisted that it go on his wife’s side since, in a household with five women, he reckoned the chances of a call being for him were infinitesimal. He heard his wife mutter groggily that it was for him.
‘What’s the effing time, for God’s sake?’ he grumbled, but she had rolled over and fallen asleep again.
‘Hello?’ he said cautiously.
‘Ben, it’s Stephen here. Sorry to wake you at this hour.’
‘Stephen? What time is it?’
‘Just after two.’
‘What! What on earth is the matter?’
‘I’m sorry, but we have a bit of an emergency here.’
Bromley was waking up fast now. There was something odd about Stephen’s voice, remote and expressionless. What the hell was going on?
‘What sort of emergency?’
‘I can’t really talk about it over the phone, Ben. We need you here right away. Could you do that? Could you come to your office, please?’
‘It’s not another break-in, is it, Stephen? If that bastard’s been into my bloody computer again — ’
‘Please, Ben. If you would just come over right away.’
Bromley put the light on and groped around for some clothes. The time-switch of the central heating was off, and it was damn cold. He swore and woke his wife.
‘There’s some stuffing crisis at the clinic,’ he said. ‘I have to go.’
‘Oh Ben! Not another murder?’
‘How the fuck would I know?’ he muttered, leaving her to switch out the light.
It was a twenty-minute drive to the clinic, and he pulled up at the foot of the front steps. He could see a dim light in the entrance hall, and lights in the windows of both his own office and the Director’s. He raced up the stairs, made his way along the corridor, and opened his office door.
He was startled to find Brock, alone, sitting behind his desk in his executive swivel chair, drinking a cup of his best coffee. Before he could sort through the expletives forming in his mind, Brock said, ‘Ah, come in, Ben, come in. I hope you don’t mind me taking advantage of your hospitality, but under the circumstances … Sit down and have a cup of coffee.’