‘We met briefly yesterday morning, Mrs Cochrane, you may remember. You were at the reception desk when I arrived.’
She said nothing.
‘You remember? You were trying to make arrangements to leave early. I couldn’t help overhearing. Did you manage to fix things up in the end?’
An indistinct shake of the head.
‘That’s too bad. You obviously haven’t been very happy here.’
The old lady’s face frowned anxiously. ‘I’m quite all right, thank you. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I wondered what particular things about the clinic hadn’t agreed with you.’
‘I told you, I’m quite all right.’
‘Was it anything to do with Mr Petrou?’
‘No!’
‘I understand you liked him. You particularly asked for him rather than the women physiotherapists.’
‘Please, I don’t want to talk about this.’
‘Why not? What’s the matter, Doris? Can I call you Doris? My name is Kathy.’
It didn’t matter what she called her. The old lady’s lips were pressed tight shut as if they had been instructed to let out as little as possible.
‘But even though you asked to have Mr Petrou again for your second week, I see that in fact you were given someone else. Is that the reason you were upset with them?’
‘No! No! No!’ she cried vehemently. ‘It was nothing to do with that! I don’t want to talk any more about this. Please stop it!’
‘All right, Doris,’ Kathy sighed. The woman was obviously distressed. ‘I won’t keep you any longer. If you think of anything you’d like to tell us, you will get in touch with me, won’t you?’
The slight figure got to her feet. At the door she turned and looked back over her shoulder at Kathy.
‘Dr Beamish-Newell …’ she began, and then stopped.
‘Yes? What about Dr Beamish-Newell?’
‘Dr Beamish-Newell will be angry with you for pestering me.’
Rose Duggan was a welcome relief. Just a year or two younger than Kathy, she was open and frankly interested in what was going on. Thinking about the dispirited figure of the man who had found Petrou’s body, Kathy found the contrast between the engaged couple extraordinary. Rose was sturdy and quick, her dark eyes sparkling, her face animated and expressive.
‘Being called back to see the boss, does that mean I’m in trouble, then?’ she grinned. ‘Me and Doris Cochrane.’ She rolled her eyes.
Kathy immediately felt better. ‘She’s not easy to get across to, is she?’
‘I’m afraid Doris has one or two wires loose, poor dear. I wouldn’t worry about her.’ She spoke with a broad Ulster accent, tougher and more urban than the southern Irish, but still warm and companionable to the ear.
‘I wanted to speak to as many of the people as I could who would have known Alex Petrou best,’ Kathy said.
‘I don’t know what Doris has been telling you, then, because she didn’t know Alex at all.’
‘No, that was a mistake,’ Kathy said. ‘But you worked closely with him, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did.’ Tears suddenly welled in Rose’s eyes. She took a tissue from the pocket of her tunic and dabbed at them for a moment. ‘I’m sorry. I had a wee cry for the man yesterday. It just suddenly springs up on you, doesn’t it? It takes time to accept… that he’s really gone.’
‘You liked him.’
‘Oh, sure. He was a charmer. You couldn’t help liking him.’
‘Somebody said that he wasn’t very thorough in his work, though. You never found that a problem?’
‘And I can guess who would have told you that, right enough. The ice queen. Oh no, he’d leave things for other people to sort out for him, but then he’d make it up to you. You couldn’t be mad at him.’
‘Did he have any special friends?’
‘Not really. He liked to go out with a crowd. And he had friends in London. He did start to go out with one of the girls in the kitchen, right at the start when he first came here, but that didn’t last long.’
‘Is she still here?’
‘No. She left months ago. Went up north.’
‘Tell me about the friends in London.’
‘I don’t know anything about them, really. I never met any of them. I had the impression they might have been Greek. Just sometimes he went up to town. I don’t think anyone from here went with him, though.’
‘There’s a suggestion he was gay.’
‘Oh no!’ Rose looked shocked, then laughed. ‘Who could have said such a thing? I’ll bet it was some old lady who thinks any man who has a pigtail or an ear-ring is queer. Honestly, this place!’
‘You said in your interview that you saw him last on Saturday night. Could you tell me about that?’
‘Yes, we — that is, the four of us girls living in the cottage together — we went out last Saturday night, just to get away for a couple of hours, you know, nothing planned. We went in Trudy’s car to a pub in Crowbridge — there’s nowhere in Edenham — and while we were there we bumped into Alex. He was with another bloke, name of Errol.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘He was older than Alex, bit of a wet blanket, I thought, and he left not long after. Alex stayed with us, and we all went on to a club he knew in Crowbridge. We left not long after midnight and came back here.’
‘You’re sure Alex came back at the same time?’
‘Yes …’ she hesitated. ‘I came back with him, as a matter of fact. The other three girls wanted to leave first, so I said I’d get a lift back with Alex on his bike, which I did. It wasn’t that long after they left. Maybe twenty minutes or half an hour. I shouldn’t have, I know. I didn’t have a helmet.’ She shot Kathy a guilty little smile.
‘When we got back it was about one. Dr Beamish-Newell doesn’t like staff coming into the main house after eleven in case it disturbs the patients, so Alex slept on our sofa and was gone the next morning before any of us were up. I never saw him again.’ Her eyes filled slowly with tears once more.
‘You didn’t go out with Mr Parsons, then, Rose? The two of you are engaged, aren’t you?’
‘Geoffrey’s doing an Estates Management degree course by correspondence, you know. He’s had a lot of assignments to do lately, and so he hasn’t been able to get out as much. He had to get one finished by Sunday evening, to catch the post first thing Monday. He doesn’t mind me going out with the girls when he’s so busy.’
‘So you didn’t see much of him on Sunday either?’
‘That’s right. As I told the other officer, we all had a lie-in on Sunday — it was about eleven before we were up and about. Two of the girls left to visit relatives for lunch, but Trudy and Geoffrey and I had an omelette together in our house about one-thirty. Geoffrey had had to spend half the morning getting one of the drains unblocked, and he was in a bit of a lather about getting his essay finished. He went back to get on with it soon after two, and I spent the afternoon doing some ironing and writing some letters. Geoffrey came over again at five-thirty, after he’d done his rounds like he does each evening. He said he’d just about finished his work, thank goodness. I cooked him a steak and he went back to finish off his assignment about seven. Trudy and I spent the rest of the evening in front of our TV.’
‘Rose, have you any inkling of what might have happened to Alex? How he came to be in the temple that night?’
She shook her head slowly, reaching for her tissue again. After a moment she got control of her sobbing and said quietly, ‘I just don’t understand it, I really don’t. He was a lovely man. Not the moody type. It must have happened very suddenly, his decision. Could he have got some terrible news from home, perhaps? From his family in Greece?’
‘We are trying to contact them. But why the temple? Did he ever express any interest in it?’
She shook her head. ‘Horrible place! A dreadful place to do such a thing! All alone in the dead of night, poor man.’
Kathy made her way back to the games room feeling deflated, empty of ideas. The teams had almost finished the last of the interviews and only two patients were left in the room, an elderly couple conferring with a woman constable on some point of memory. As she came into the room Kathy saw them look up, interrupted by a burst of laughter from a group of detectives nearby. From among them a man’s voice emerged, distinct and crude: ‘… and both of the old ladies are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.’ The elderly couple exchanged a disapproving look as the voice continued. ‘They’re watching a dancing programme on the box, see, and one old dear says to the other, “Oh, ain’t that lovely. Do you remember the minuet?” and the other replies, “Gor blimey, no. I can’t even remember the men I faked.”‘