The Verge Practice Part 18

'Okay, I'll go with Linda. Please give me the name and address.'

'No, Kathy. Captain Alvarez would be very annoyed.'

His face had become quite red, and Kathy realised that this wasn't his fault. She breathed deeply and said, 'Yes, of course. I'm sorry. Let's forget about it.' She threw the plastic cup into the bin and turned back to the office door.

'I'm sorry, Kathy,' he called after her, an edge of relief in his voice. 'We should have something for you on Martin Kraus soon, I think.'

She closed the door firmly behind her and said to Linda, 'Any idea what closed rhinoplastic procedures are?'

'Nose jobs,' Linda replied. 'My Mum's had one.'

'Fancy getting out for a while?'

They began by going to Pa.s.seig de Gracia 83. The day had become hot, and the time was two o'clock, when most of Catalonia closes down for a couple of hours, thinning out the traffic on the boulevard. In the vestibule they found a polished bra.s.s plate with the names of the three doctors.

Beside it was a modern directory board with removable letters identifying two of the doctors as being located on the third floor. The missing name was Dr Javier Lizancos.

Taking a small lift to the third floor, they found the door of the consulting rooms locked, but the buzzer eventually roused a young woman. She opened the door a few inches and said drowsily in Catalan that they were closed.

Linda replied in Spanish that they were police, and needed some information. The girl switched to Spanish to explain that she was on her own and couldn't help. Eventually the exchange got them into the small reception area inside.

'We need to get in touch with Dr Lizancos,' Linda said, offering her Captain Alvarez's card.

'He doesn't come in here very often now.' The girl studied the card unhappily. She hardly looked old enough to be out of school. 'Could you wait until the receptionist comes back?'

'We haven't got time. Do you know where we can find Dr Lizancos?'

'At home, I suppose.'

'Right.' Linda turned her notebook to a fresh page and handed it to the girl. 'Just write the address down here.'

'I don't know . . .'

'Don't worry, it's just routine. Then we'll get out of your way.'

That seemed to make up the girl's mind. She took an address book from the drawer of the reception desk and found the entry. Linda handed her a pen.

'And the phone number too, please.'

The girl wrote down an address and two phone numbers and handed the notebook back. While she had been writing Kathy had opened the appointments book that lay on the desk, and had turned the pages to the fourteenth of May. She looked through the entries but nothing caught her eye, nor on the following days.

Linda pointed the page out to the girl and said, 'Can you tell if Dr Lizancos was here on that day?'

She shrugged, her eye scanning the scribbled names.

'There are no appointments for him.'

Linda thanked the girl, retrieved Captain Alvarez's card, and they left. 'This is much better than sitting around in that office,' she said as they got into the lift. 'Tony's been getting a bit . . .'

Kathy waited for the word.

'. . . Who was it who said that men are animals with a dozen hands?' Linda concluded.

They emerged into the sunshine laughing, and hailed a cab. The taxi driver had to consult a directory to find the street. 'By the Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau,' he finally told Linda.

'Eixample,' she explained to Kathy. 'Shouldn't be too far.'

The driver pointed out the Sagrada Familia church along the way, driving slowly past the queues of tourists waiting beneath the skeletal structure of the Pa.s.sion facade.

'Peter McNeil was keen to get me here,' Kathy said. 'I'll have to tell him I saw it.'

The taxi turned in to the Avinguda de Gaudi, which cuts diagonally through the chamfered grid blocks of the Eixample district, and at its end the driver pointed to the eccentric neo-Gothic pinnacled pavilions of the hospital, explaining something to Linda.

'He says the guy who designed it was a bit crazy. He hated the grid of the city streets, and turned the whole hospital complex onto the diagonal, to face down the avenue towards Gaudi's church.'

The taxi driver said something more and Linda translated. 'He wanted every ward to be a little independent building surrounded by trees and fresh air, so he put all the connecting corridors and service areas underground.'

'Everyone seems determined to give me architecture lessons,' Kathy murmured.

The taxi stopped in a narrow street, shady with dense trees, the house hidden behind an old brick wall. They asked the driver to wait, and opened a creaking wrought-iron front gate. Inside was a garden, almost overwhelmed by foliage. They pa.s.sed around an elaborate fountain and were confronted by an extraordinary ornate villa, in a style very similar to the hospital they had just pa.s.sed. Built in red brick and tiles with stone trim, it was embellished with ornate Gothic arches, pinnacles and spires like a miniature gingerbread castle. The heavily studded timber front door stood open, and beside it a twisted wrought-iron bell handle was suspended on the wall. Linda tugged at it and they waited, staring into the impenetrable darkness of the interior.

After some time they heard a shuffling of feet from inside, and a small hunched figure lurched into the light. It was an elderly woman, dressed entirely in black, who eyed them suspiciously in turn. Linda wished her good afternoon and asked if they could see Dr Lizancos.

The woman peered at her and finally said something.

'She wants to know if we're American missionaries,' Linda said. 'And if we are we can f.u.c.k off.' She spoke some more, and Kathy recognised the word policia. She wished she'd got further with her Spanish lessons.

The woman still didn't seem inclined to be helpful, until Linda mentioned Captain Alvarez, then she barked something and shuffled away into the darkness, her black clothing rendering her instantly invisible.

'His wife?' Kathy asked.

'Housekeeper, I think. Probably came with the house.'

They stood in a pool of brilliant sunlight, growing hot as they waited, until at last the old woman returned and gestured for them to come in. Blinded by the sudden transition into darkness, they found themselves shuffling like her to avoid crashing into furniture. They followed the sound of her feet into a room very dimly lit from tall, shuttered windows. Her footsteps stopped and so did they. There was silence for a moment, then a bank of shutters jerked open with a rattle, throwing a shaft of light across the figure of a thin, erect man standing directly in front of them.

Perhaps it was the a.s.sociation with the first letters of the doctor's name, but Kathy was immediately struck by the image of a lizard. The head, clad in brown leathery skin, jutted out of a dark green silk cravat, and hands like lizard's claws hung from the cuffs of a white shirt. There was a tremor in the right hand as it rose and gestured towards some high-backed chairs, carved from black wood in a Gothic style. When they sat, he stared at them for a moment before taking a chair facing them. His movements were stiff, his hand trembling. He said something in Spanish and Linda replied.

'You are English?' he then said, in a very proper English, as if he'd learned it from listening to recordings of Noel Coward.

'Yes, sir,' Kathy said, offering him her card. 'From London.'

'But I don't understand.' The hooded lizard eyes drooped as he studied it briefly. 'Maria said you are with Captain Alvarez.'

'Captain Alvarez is helping us with a case.'

'A medical matter?'

'No . . .'

'Then I don't understand how I can help you. Perhaps I should speak to Captain Alvarez.'

'We are trying to trace a man who went missing in May of this year, Dr Lizancos. We have received a report that he was seen going into Pa.s.seig de Gracia 83 on the morning of the fourteenth of May, so we're talking to the people who work in that building.'

'Ah.' The lizard head nodded with understanding. 'But as you see, I am now retired. I very rarely go to the consulting rooms.' The slit of his mouth stretched a little in a smile. 'But how curious. They send two lady policemen from London. This missing person is not dangerous?' He gave a dry cackle.

Neither woman smiled back. Kathy said, 'Is it possible you were at Pa.s.seig de Gracia 83 on the fourteenth of May, doctor?'

'I don't think so.'

'Could you check your diary?'

'I no longer have need of a diary,' he replied, the smile gone.

'Do you know a Barcelona family by the name of Verges, by any chance?'

'I can't recall anyone of that name.'

Kathy handed him the photograph of Charles Verge.

'Have you ever seen this man?'

He studied it for quite a long time, then handed it back.

'I'm afraid not.'

'You must have an address book . . .' Kathy began, but he snapped across her sentence.

'If such a book existed, I should not consider showing it to the police without official authorisation at the highest level. Perhaps I will telephone Captain Alvarez.'

Kathy realised that he had sensed that this was the way to get rid of them. 'I don't think we need to bother you further, doctor,' she said reluctantly, and they all got to their feet.

Linda suddenly gushed, 'This is just an amazing house.'

The old man eyed her. 'Do you know anything of Catalan Modernismo?' he asked in a superior tone.

'Very little,' Linda replied, and Kathy thought, but I'm sure we're about to learn.

'Did you notice the Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau near here? Yes? This is by the same architect, Domenech i Montaner-in my opinion the greatest Catalan architect after Antoni Gaudi. It was designed as the house for the hospital superintendent.'

If Charles Verge had ever met this man, Kathy wondered what they would have made of each other's architectural tastes, for it was difficult to imagine anything less like the spare van der Rohe pavilion Verge had so admired.

'Well, it is remarkable.' Their eyes had become accustomed to the light and they could make out a ma.s.sive stone fireplace at the end of the room and another extravagant fountain in the courtyard outside like the one in the front garden.

Lizancos gave a rasping chuckle. 'You won't see this in London, eh?'

'Oh, goodness no! And did you work at the hospital, doctor?' Linda beamed him a big, warm smile.

'I worked in many hospitals, and I had a private clinic.

Ah, I see what you mean-the superintendent's house. No, it was sold by the Sant Pau many years before I bought it.

It's too big for me now, of course. I should sell and go live in a little apartment.'

No, Kathy thought, you belong together, you and the house and Maria.

'That would be a shame,' Linda said, oozing s.e.xy charm. 'You must have been a wonderful surgeon. The CGP have told us about your brilliant work with their men.

Don't you miss it?'

'I'm too old.' He held up a hand to show them the tremor.

'Oh, I don't believe that.'

The lizard couldn't altogether resist the warmth of that lovely smile. Despite himself, Kathy could see, he wanted to stretch out and bask in it. 'Ah well, hacer de la necesidad virtud. You know that saying?'

'Make a virtue of necessity.'

'Your Spanish is good.'

'I know one too. La mujer y el vidrio siempre estan en peligro.'

'Ah!' Lizancos' face creased in a leer. Linda giggled and spun round, knocking a gla.s.s figurine from the table at her elbow. As it spun towards the edge of the table Lizancos' hand flashed forward and caught it cleanly.

'Oh! I'm so sorry.'

Lizancos scowled with irritation, the spell broken.

'Maria will see you out,' he snapped, replacing the ornament carefully on the table.

'You did that deliberately,' Kathy said, when they were back in the taxi, heading for the city centre again.

'Yeah, I wanted to test his reactions. I didn't go for that shaky hand c.r.a.p.'

'You thought he was faking it, too? I noticed the trembling stopped when I mentioned the Verges.'

'Yeah, and when he held Verge's picture his hand was steady as a rock.'

'What did you say to him just before you knocked the figurine?'

'A woman and gla.s.s are always in danger. It's a saying.

Lapped it up, didn't he? So, what do we do now?'

'I'd like to check out the private clinic that he mentioned. See if he really has retired.'

'You think he may have done a nose job on Charles Verge?' Linda asked.

'It's a possibility. I didn't like the way he answered my questions. Do you think he really doesn't keep a diary?'