The Verge Practice Part 6

First thing the next morning, Brock held another team meeting. In the grey light of day Kathy felt that her bright idea about Verge was blindingly obvious and hardly worth pa.s.sing on. In any case, Brock was taking a different tangent.

One of the experts who had provided support to Chivers' team was a financial specialist from SO6, the Fraud Squad, and he had joined them that morning as Brock quizzed them on the details of their investigation of possible sources of funds for Verge on the run. As they explained where the trip-wires had been set up to warn of any of his close family or friends providing financial help, it became apparent that there was one possible major gap, the Verge Practice itself, whose income and a.s.sets represented the largest legitimate source of funds for the fugitive. The problem was that the firm was involved in so many financial transactions, large and small, with suppliers, consultants, contractors and sub-contractors in many different parts of the world, that it was impossible to monitor them all in detail. Superintendent Chivers had restricted checks to the most likely channels-Verge's company credit card and cheque book accounts-but that wouldn't help if he were getting a.s.sistance from someone inside the firm.

'What sort of person, Tony?' Brock asked the Fraud Squad man, who, in a black suit and with a pale expressionless face, looked as if he wouldn't have been out of place in a convention of undertakers.

'Almost anyone, sir,' he said with an air of regret. 'The ones able to authorise larger payments would be the most obvious-his partners, the finance manager, accountants, people like that. But anyone who knew the accounting system could probably slip something through to a dummy account if they put their mind to it. The girl who looks after the stationery, the bloke who approves the travelling expenses or maintains the computers.'

'He's got a lot of loyal staff there he might have contacted, chief,' Bren observed. 'And it's not as if they'd really be stealing from the firm. I mean, it is his money, after all.'

'How would we set about looking?' Brock asked.

Tony said, 'If they were sensible, it could be hard to detect. They could use a number of small creditors to avoid being conspicuous, and change the names every few months. We should get every payment verified by at least two people, and we might look for coincidences or anomalies. Maybe payments to several different people but all to the same bank branch, or with the same VAT number. An added complication is that the firm does a lot of foreign business. With their overseas projects, VP often forms one-off partnerships with locals to manage the contracts, and these could provide a way of getting money overseas.'

They discussed it for a while, until Brock, becoming impatient with the technicalities, finally said, 'Tony, I want you to brief Bren and a small team on how to make a start-where they should look, what they should collect, what questions they should ask. Bren, get a warrant before you go, and threaten them with Tony's heavy mob if they seem to be hiding anything. Make your presence felt, Bren.

Make it very obvious what we're doing. If anyone there is in touch with Verge, we want to get them worried.'

There were reports of extensive roadwork delays on the A40, so Kathy headed north-west instead, picking up the M1 until it reached the M25 and the open country beyond Watford, where she turned off the main roads into hedge-lined lanes. There was an abrupt release from the pressure of heavy traffic, a sudden transition from the sprawling reach of the great conurbation into a rural landscape bathed in pure September sunshine, and she felt immediately cheerful. When she wound down the window the car filled with smells of wood smoke and damp silage. She came to a small village and stopped at the twisted crossroads in the centre to check her route. A thatched pub, its timbers painted black, stood silent across the way, and a bright scarlet tractor drove past, a dog in the cabin with a russet-faced farmer.

She came at last to a white gate bearing the name 'Orchard Cottage', and parked on the gra.s.s shoulder. When she stood at the gate she was presented with a little tableau, a rustic scene from a Pre-Raphaelite painting perhaps, except for the glint of chrome on Madelaine Verge's wheelchair. Beside her a young woman was reaching up into an apple tree for fruit to fill the basket that Madelaine cradled on her lap. The young woman was pregnant, the swell of her belly obvious beneath an ankle-length smock, and her cheeks were as rosy as the pippins she was plucking. Her hair was long, straight and black, and Kathy thought she could recognise something of her father in her Latin features, unlike the older woman whose silver hair had once been fair and whose complexion looked as if it were rarely exposed to sunlight. They were set against a backdrop of a simple brick-and-tile agricultural worker's cottage, wreathed in roses, and they turned their heads to stare at the newcomer as the hinges of the white gate creaked.

They both frowned when Kathy introduced herself.

The young woman, Verge's daughter Charlotte, appeared frankly hostile, while her grandmother seemed at first put out that they had not sent someone more important. She quickly recovered herself and seemed prepared to make the best of it. 'Do come in,' she said graciously. 'We were about to have a cup of coffee.'

They sat in the sun at a wooden table in the back garden, also planted with gnarled apple trees. 'We have so many apples this year. We must give you some to take away with you,' Madelaine Verge, Lady Bountiful, observed, while her grand-daughter kept silent, resting a hand on her stomach. Kathy felt a little twist, quickly suppressed, of envy or regret.

'This is a beautiful spot,' she said. 'DCI Brock said that you used to live near here, Mrs Verge.'

'That's right. Just over that next rise. Charles built a house for me there, twenty-five years ago. His very first masterpiece. Are you interested in architecture, Sergeant?'

It was a polite inquiry, not expecting much.

'I'm fairly ignorant about it,' Kathy said honestly, and caught a small scornful snort from Charlotte. 'But you can't help being affected by it, can you? And I suppose if you were married to one architect, and had a famous son for another, you couldn't help becoming an expert.'

Madelaine smiled. 'That's very true. It becomes part of the air one breathes.'

'And have you followed the family tradition, Charlotte?'

Kathy asked.

The young woman turned to glare at Kathy, taking so long to reply that her grandmother broke in, 'In a way.

Charlotte is a graphic designer. A very good one. She runs her business from here, designing people's web pages. She's extremely successful.'

Charlotte winced at this grandmotherly endors.e.m.e.nt, and got awkwardly to her feet. 'I'll fetch the coffee,' she muttered angrily.

'You must excuse Charlotte,' Madelaine said confidingly as she disappeared into the cottage. 'This has been a very emotional year for her. She feels the loss of her father keenly-they were very close, his only child. And then she'd split up with her partner just a short while before that, and now she's preparing to be a sole parent. All very trying.'

'Yes. Of course.' Kathy felt a familiar sense of viewing lives from the outside, as if through a lens, deciphering connections and relationships that would probably be irrelevant to her purpose.

'Do you have children, Sergeant?'

'No.' Kathy was aware of being probed, while Mrs Verge made up her mind whether it would be more productive to groom or attack her.

'Perhaps you're wise. They are a blessing, of course, but also a heartache.'

Especially if they go around stabbing people, Kathy thought. There was something odd about all this, something she was missing. 'But this seems a wonderful refuge for Charlotte,' she said. 'Is it just a coincidence that it's so close to where you used to live?'

'Not exactly. Charlotte was born a couple of years after Charles built Briar Hill for me, and when she was a child she had so many happy memories of staying with me there that when her relationship broke down she decided to get out of London and come to live in the area. Charles helped her financially, and now when I come to stay with her we go for drives and catch sight of the house again, and remember those happy days. Someone else owns Briar Hill now, of course. Charles sold it to a Spanish artist, a friend of his, on the condition that she promise to change nothing.'

Not only odd but a little spooky, Kathy thought, as if his mother and his daughter had decided together to live in the past, before all of this unpleasantness had happened. 'I can understand her resenting me for invading her privacy here to question you about her father.'

'She does rather regard the police as the enemy, I'm afraid. She thinks you believe the worst of her father, but I tell her that we must try to do everything we can to help you come to the truth of the matter, that Charles is the real victim in all this.' There was such a calm certainty in the way she said this that Kathy was impressed, despite her conviction that the woman was deluding herself. 'So how can I help you? And may I say that I was most impressed by your Mr Brock. Much more intelligent than the last fellow.

I feel more confident now that we can make some progress at last.' She smiled.

Grooming then, Kathy thought. 'I've brought a copy of your earlier statements, Mrs Verge, and I'd like to go through some of the points you raised there, but mainly I'd like to get to understand Charles better, as a person.' Made-laine Verge beamed. Nothing would delight her more, her only regret being that most of the photograph alb.u.ms were in her London flat, a fact for which Kathy was silently grateful.

When Charlotte returned they were deep in conversation about Charles's boyhood, his sense of mischief, his stubbornness, his enthusiasm for compet.i.tive sports, his oddly inconsistent school results until he suddenly blossomed just in time to get decent A-levels. Charlotte poured the coffee then said that she had work to do.

'Before you go, dear,' her grandmother said, 'would you please fetch me the family alb.u.m in my room?'

'It must have been difficult for you, bringing him up on your own, Madelaine,' Kathy said, the intimacies of Charles's childhood having brought them to first-name terms.

'I always felt that I had his father, Alberto, at my shoulder, guiding me. He was a very special man, an Olympic athlete and a very gifted architect. I never made any attempt to guide Charles into his father's footsteps, but Alberto was always there as a shining example, and I was thrilled when Charles announced that he would become an architect, too. And it soon became obvious that the gift had been pa.s.sed down, undiminished.'

Charlotte returned with an old photograph alb.u.m, then disappeared again. It contained pictures from Charles's childhood, mostly bland and remote, but there was one that caught Kathy's attention for its strangeness. In it, the small boy was standing encased in some kind of tall, thin construction which Kathy couldn't make out. It looked something like a giant condom or a syringe, daubed with spots and surmounted by a crown, his face peering out from a hole cut in the middle.

'Oh, that's a favourite of mine,' Madelaine chuckled.

'He won first prize.'

Kathy looked perplexed.

'A fancy-dress compet.i.tion! He went as the Empire State Building.'

Kathy got it now. The spots were windows, and the crown formed the famous silhouette. It was hard to make out what little Charles was thinking, but he didn't look happy.

Madelaine went on to talk about the early years of his practice, when Charles had returned from graduate school in America with a young fellow-graduate as his wife and had put out his shingle in London, penniless but filled with confidence. She then glowingly related the critical success of Briar Hill, its publication in Architectural Design and Casabella, and the triumphs of the middle years.

'The break-up with his first wife must have been hard, with her having been so much a part of all that,' Kathy said, trying to move the story forward.

Madelaine Verge took a deep breath, as if reluctant to come to that episode, then turned her head sharply at the sound of feet on gravel. 'Ah, George!' she cried as a man came round the corner of the cottage, carrying a garden fork and hoe. 'Did you get the plants you wanted?'

'Most of 'em, Mrs V. They were out of onions.' He lifted his cap to the women, squinting suspiciously at Kathy. He was a stocky figure, of late middle age, with a deeply lined face and wisps of fair hair across his pate, dressed in old clothes for garden work. He replaced his cap, picked up his tools and moved towards a freshly dug bed on the far side of the small lawn. As he turned away Kathy saw that the left side of his face was badly scarred.

'George is one of Charles's projects,' Madelaine whispered, leaning towards Kathy. 'He was in prison at the time Charles was doing research for the Marchdale project-are you familiar with that? Yes, well, Charles learned a great deal from George about prison life, so much so that he engaged him as a consultant and then, when he was released, Charles took him on as a general handyman to look after my little garden in town and to get this place into shape for Charlotte. It really was a mess when he bought it for her, but within a few months George had repaired the roof, knocked out a wall, put in a new kitchen and bathroom, redecorated, and now he's reorganising the garden.'

'Very handy.'

'And very honest and loyal. We trust him absolutely, despite his past. He is a real vindication of Charles's faith in him.'

'What happened to his face?'

'The story is that he had a pan of chip fat spilled on him when he was young. He has had a very tragic life.'

'We were talking about Charles's divorce.'

'Oh . . . yes.' Her voice hardened. 'Well, I think the truth of the matter is that Charles simply outgrew Gail. The split was inevitable, really.'

'Outgrew her?'

'In professional terms. Oh, Gail was very supportive in the early days, very clever with designing the details, Charles used to say. But as the practice grew, it really became far too demanding for Gail's abilities. She had to take a back seat, and I'm afraid that had its effect on their personal relationship. Charles was very sad about it, of course.'

'He had a breakdown?' Kathy ventured.

'No, no, that's putting it far too strongly. It was a setback, yes, and at a sensitive time for Charlotte, at sixteen.

Gail . . . well, I'm probably biased, but she let a lot of people down, walking out like that.'

'But then Charles met Miki Norinaga.'

Silence for a moment, then the elderly woman said primly, 'Not immediately. There was an interval of a couple of years.'

'That must have been difficult for Charlotte too, her being not much younger than her new stepmother.'

Madelaine Verge turned a stern eye on Kathy. 'If you're trying to suggest some kind of family crisis arising from Charles's second marriage, you're quite wrong. Charlotte was starting at university, she had a new life of her own to focus on.'

'I get the impression that you didn't like Charles's choice much, Madelaine.'

The other woman seemed about to make some frosty remark, but then she raised her twisted hands in a gesture of resignation and sighed. 'Miki was an arrogant and manipulative young woman. But Charles fell for her, and there was nothing that I or anyone else could say to dissuade him.'

'Others tried, did they?'

'His colleagues were concerned. Sandy Clarke had the unenviable task of voicing their reservations to Charles, but he swept them aside.' Then she added wistfully, 'He always had the courage of his convictions, my Charles.'

'Mr Clarke said that Miki became much more a.s.sertive as time went on. Do you think that Charles had begun to have second thoughts?'

Madelaine Verge sighed, as if weary at being dragged from the golden memories of her son's youth to the sordid complications of the present. 'He said nothing to me. And no matter how difficult his wife might have been, he would never, never have resorted to anything so grotesque and stupid as murdering her like that. And that really is the nub, isn't it, Kathy? You must see that. That's why you must come round to my point of view.'

'I have to tell you that from the information we've got, your idea about the American compet.i.tors just doesn't seem plausible.'

'You're direct, Kathy. I like that. Superintendent Chivers was always so tactful in dismissing my ideas that he ended up being patronising and offensive. I didn't say it was the Americans necessarily, just that it must be somebody like that; a rival, a resentful enemy.'

'Charles was obviously a strong personality. Did he have enemies as resentful as that?'

'Clearly he did, and it's up to you to find them.'

Kathy asked if she could have a few words with Charlotte before she left. She found the young woman in a small room fitted out as an office, working at a computer.

'h.e.l.lo, Charlotte,' Kathy said. 'Can I have a word?' The other woman grunted but didn't shift her attention from the screen. While she waited, Kathy looked around the room at the shelves of computer manuals and files, some rather impressive glossy computer printouts pinned to the wall, a calendar, and a framed lithograph which caught her attention. The geometric figures, three red squares on a fading yellow background, reminded her of the large painting in the Verges' apartment, and she thought she recognised the small black signature at the bottom. She asked Charlotte if it was the same artist.

'Yes,' Charlotte muttered, still not turning from the computer, and then, reluctantly, added a name, which Kathy thought was Ruth Diaz until she examined the signature more closely and realised it was Luz Diaz.

'Your grandmother mentioned that you have a Spanish artist as a neighbour, at Briar Hill.'

Charlotte finally turned away from her work and looked at Kathy with a resentful glare. 'Yes, it's her. She gave me that as a house-warming present, when I moved in.'

'She's a friend of your father?'

'That's right. You'd know all this if you'd read your own reports. She was interviewed . . .' she gave the word a bitter emphasis, '. . . like everyone else. No wonder no one wants to know us any more. No one except the press, that is.'

'I'm sorry, it must have been very difficult for you.'

'There's several Charles Verge websites, have you seen them? All the latest sightings from around the world, the latest sick theories. He was in a three-way relationship with Miki and a lover of hers, did you know that? All three of them were heavily into cocaine, apparently, or LSD. That's where they got their ideas for buildings from. Or he was inspired by Jack the Ripper, and he's still stalking the East End with a carving knife.'

She turned away with a sigh. 'Just go away, will you? We don't want you here.'

Kathy had had enough of being dismissed by Charlotte.

'Well, I can understand that. But it won't go away until we discover the truth. You do appreciate that, don't you? There will never be any resolution to this until we find your father.

Your child will grow up in the shadow of what he did, just as surely as you're living in it now. When she goes to school, when she applies for a job, people will go on whispering about her.'

Charlotte had gone pale and motionless.

Kathy went on remorselessly, voice low so that Made-laine wouldn't hear. 'In the end, you'll have to make up your mind about whether you can live with that, Charlotte.

Hard as it may be to face this, you're going to have to help us find your father, so that your child can be free of what he did.'

'Get out . . .' Charlotte's voice was a low hiss. 'Get out, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h.'

Kathy's face was flushed as she returned to her car and drove off. She felt guilty, annoyed with herself. Maybe she would have been less brutal if Charlotte hadn't been quite so complacently pregnant, so obviously fecund.

On the outskirts of the village she pulled in to the roadside and made a call on her mobile to Scotland Yard.

She got herself put through to the team's data manager and asked her to check the name. 'L-U-Z D-I-A-Z, p.r.o.nounced "Looth Dee-ath".' She heard the rattling of a keyboard at the other end, a pause and then, 'Yes, here she is. Born 18.01.53, unmarried, Spanish citizen, two home addresses, one in Barcelona, Spain, the other in Buckinghamshire, England. She was identified as a possible person of interest on June 14 last and interviewed on July 20 by two officers of the Spanish CGP, and again in London by DI Heron and DS Moffat on August 17.'

There was a pause as the officer scanned the reports, giving Kathy a summary of the main points. 'Says she's been a friend of Charles Verge since 1993, when he bought one of her paintings . . . They met from time to time when he was visiting Barcelona . . . She claims not to know his relatives there, and she denies ever having a closer relationship with Verge.'

'We haven't spoken to her again since the seventeenth of August?'

'Don't think so . . . hang on . . . no, but both we and the Spanish police did checks on her telephone contacts and bank accounts through May, June and July. Nothing suspicious. And the Spanish police did a search of her Barcelona apartment in July, without result.'