The Verge Practice (24 page)

This fantasy—for he knew it was only that, but what an unexpectedly beguiling fantasy it was!—gave him a literal sense of weightlessness, as in a recurrent childhood dream when he had floated down his suburban street in his pyjamas. He hadn’t recalled that dream in forty-five years, and yet he could see it now as vividly as when it was fresh.

He smiled, thinking of the small boy who had had the dream, a stranger now, yet somehow living deep inside him still.

He wondered whether Charles had had dreams like that, and immediately, at the thought of Charles, the sense of weightlessness vanished. Oh Charles, he thought sadly, I am so sorry. Too late, of course, but still, so very sorry.

15

B
reakfast was available in the basement of the hotel, in a series of linked, windowless cellar rooms, one of which was filled by a long table bearing large quantities of eggs and cheeses, cold meats and fruits, cereals and breads, juices and hot drinks. Kathy filled her plate and made her way to a vacant dining table. Despite the generous portions of
amanida
and
canelons
the previous evening, she found herself hungry again. As she passed a low archway she heard Audrey McNeil’s voice calling her. ‘Kathy? Over here.’

She obediently joined them at their table, and they swapped information on what they’d done the previous day.

Kathy noticed the copy of
Fifty Favourite Bridge Problems
tucked in Audrey’s bag.

‘I’m sorry you haven’t had much luck so far,’ the woman said. ‘And we weren’t any help.’

‘I didn’t really expect I’d be able to achieve much. I just resent sitting around in an office all day when I could be out exploring the place.’

Linda ambled by at that moment. She looked sleepy and extremely contented. ‘Oh, hi,’ she purred. ‘We’re back there. How are you this morning?’

It was agreed they were all fine, though probably not as fine as Linda.

‘When are you meeting Jeez again?’ Kathy asked.

‘We thought we’d get a cab around ten.’ She yawned expansively. ‘There’s no real hurry, until they come up with something. If I were you, I’d take the morning off. Have a look around Barcelona, for God’s sake. What can you do in that dreadful office?’

‘Good idea,’ Peter McNeil piped up. ‘Tell you what, I’ll come with you, while Audrey’s off meeting her Spanish grandmother bridge fiend.’

‘Yeah,’ Linda agreed. ‘Take a city tour on the Bus Turístic. You can catch it just up the street, in the Plaça de Catalunya.’

‘I know the place,’ Peter said, ‘and the kiosk where you get the tickets.’

Kathy didn’t fancy being stuck with Peter McNeil all morning, but couldn’t think of any polite way of saying so.

‘Oh, great. But don’t you want to go with Audrey?’

‘Good Lord, no,’ Audrey said. ‘I don’t want him hanging around when I meet Juanita.’

Twenty minutes later Kathy and Peter stood at the bus stop, clutching their tickets and complimentary guidebooks. They had debated which of two city circuits they should take, the red or the blue. Peter preferred the red, because it included the Sagrada Família, but Kathy, trying to ease her conscience at skipping work, said they should try to see as many places as possible that Charles Verge had been involved with. This meant the blue circuit, since it included the sports facilities for the 1992 Olympics on the hill of Montjuïc, including a small kiosk that the Verge Practice had designed there, as well as the new apartments of the athletes’ village at Vila Olímpica on the waterfront.

‘You can call it research,’ Peter suggested conspiratorially. ‘Getting into the
mind-set
of the murderer.’

The amateur sleuth, Kathy thought. At least he hadn’t suggested that they might look for
clues
. Yet she had to revise her scornful judgement less than an hour later, when they reached the entrance to the Montjuïc site.

The idea with the Bus Turístic was that you could get off at any of the designated stops, then rejoin the tour on a later bus following the same circuit. They had stayed on for the first three stops, but then Peter suggested getting off at the Plaça d’Espanya, at the foot of Montjuïc and at the monumental entrance to the group of buildings constructed for the International Exhibition of 1929.

‘There’s something here that Verge would have loved,’ Peter said. ‘And from here we can walk up the hill to the Olympic buildings.’ They set off up the formal avenue and came to the foot of a series of terraces and fountains lying in front of the Palau Nacional. ‘This way,’ he said, leading Kathy away from the main axis towards a grove of trees.

They rounded the corner of one of the buildings and Kathy came to an abrupt halt.

‘What’s the matter?’ Peter inquired. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Not a ghost, a ghost house,’ Kathy said, staring at the single-storey building lying in front of them, uncannily like the top floor of Briar Hill, the house that Charles Verge had built for his mother in Buckinghamshire. There was the terrace, the hovering roof planes, the glass pavilion that at Briar Hill enclosed the entry and stairs to the lower levels.

‘Is this what you brought me to see?’

‘Yes. I remember reading an article by Verge in which he said that his favourite architect, and the greatest influence on him, was Mies van der Rohe. Well, this would be just about his most famous building, the German pavilion for the 1929 Exhibition. It’s one of the classic masterpieces of modern architecture, and it doesn’t look the least bit dated, does it? I mean, it could have been designed yesterday, wouldn’t you say?’

‘So Verge would have seen this when he was a boy growing up in Barcelona? His father, the architect, would have brought him here, surely?’

Peter laughed. ‘Well, no. After the exhibition they demolished the pavilion, and it was only rebuilt here in 1986, on the centenary of van der Rohe’s birth. But Verge would have known the building from photographs. Every architecture student in the world would know it.’

They walked on to the open terrace of the building, now known as the Pavelló Mies van der Rohe, while Kathy tried to come to terms with the strange sensation of having been here already, but on an English hillside, as if the polished stone and glass structure were capable of floating from place to place like a magic carpet. The smaller glass enclosure now contained a visitors’ shop, and as they went inside Kathy half expected to see the artist Luz Diaz standing waiting for her. Instead, there was a young woman behind the counter, wearing one of the black T-shirts on sale, with Mies’s famous slogan, ‘Less is more’, in white lettering across the chest.

All the gifts and souvenirs in the glass cases were of elegant design, and among them Kathy spotted a silver pen that looked identical to the one that Sandy Clarke had used. It wasn’t particularly expensive, either, and she thought she might buy it for Leon. As she was studying it, Peter suddenly appeared at her elbow, his eyes bright with some new discovery.

‘I’ve found something,’ he whispered excitedly in her ear. ‘A
clue
!’ Then, seeing the look that crossed Kathy’s face, he added, ‘No, really. Come and look!’

‘Hang on.’ Kathy replaced the pen and followed Peter to a corner of the room, where a book lay open on a table.

‘Visitors’ book,’ he hissed, as if a sudden noise might frighten it away. He took her arm and led her to it, then turned the pages back to the month of May. ‘There!’ he cried triumphantly.

And there, indeed, it was. Kathy recognised the black, spiky architectural script even before she focused on the words. There was no date, but the entries before and after were both dated the fourteenth of May. The message read,
To the New Era!
, and in the space for name and address was written simply
Carlos
.

‘My God,’ Kathy whispered, catching Peter’s mood of shocked elation.

‘That was the day we saw him,’ Peter breathed. ‘He must have come here. Like a pilgrim to the shrine, to pay his respects, or gain strength perhaps. What do you think?’

It seemed a rather fanciful idea, but not more fanciful than the fact of that spiky script sitting there in public view all this time.

‘Excuse me.’ Kathy turned to the woman behind the counter. ‘This entry here . . .’

The woman came over and looked. ‘Oh, that was a phrase that Mies used, “the New Era”. It was the title of a famous speech he gave in 1930, the year after this building was built.’

‘You wouldn’t happen to remember the person who wrote this, I suppose?’

‘When was it? Last May? Oh no, I couldn’t possibly remember.’

Kathy reached into her bag for the photograph of Charles Verge and handed it to her. ‘Would you remember this man coming here?’

‘Hm, he looks familiar . . . Oh, of course! It’s Charles Verge, isn’t it?’

‘You recognise him?’

‘Certainly. I’m an architecture student. We all know his work, and since May . . .’ She stopped and stared again at the entry in the visitors’ book. ‘Oh, Carlos!’

‘Yes.’

‘He was here?’ Her face lit up with excitement. ‘Wait until I tell the others!’

‘No! Look, I’m a police officer, from London.’ Kathy dug in her bag again for her ID. ‘It’s very important that we keep quiet about this, okay? What’s your name? Please?’

The girl looked disappointed, but also captivated.

‘Clara.’

‘Well look, Clara, there are some very heavy detectives here with the CGP who will be very upset with you if this gets out. Understand?’

Clara made a face, then shrugged. ‘Okay. I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep it to myself, but I’ll do my best.’

‘Anyway, it may not be him. We’ll need to borrow this book for a while to do some tests. I’ll give you a receipt and the names and telephone number of the local police you should contact if you remember anything.’

‘What do I tell the boss when he notices the book is missing?’

‘Tell him the police confiscated it and he should ring Lieutenant Mozas if he wants more information.’

Clara gave her a plastic bag for the book and called them a cab. Kathy thanked her and the girl said as they left, ‘You know, I hope you don’t catch him,’ and gave them a broad grin.

Kathy dropped Peter at the hotel on her way to the police offices. As they shook hands on the pavement there was a cry from Audrey McNeil, hurrying towards them, looking flustered. It seemed that the meeting with her bridge partner had been something of a disappointment, not to say a shock, for ‘Juanita’ the grandmother had turned out to be a forty-year-old, childless, male butcher, who had taken a great deal of shaking off. He had been unapologetic about his deception, apparently, and became quite plaintive when Audrey said she would never play bridge with him again.

‘The shocking thing, when I think about it,’ she said, ‘is how convincing he was as a grandmother. I remember all our little exchanges of news about our children and grandchildren, and he was so
plausible
. I thought I knew Juanita so well! I can still hardly believe she doesn’t exist.’

‘Well, maybe you should think about becoming someone else,’ Peter said, clearly enjoying this. ‘Become a biker or a lion-tamer or something. Wouldn’t be hard for you.’ He winked at Kathy, who was getting back into the taxi.

It seemed that the only progress that Linda and Tony had to report was that Kathy’s list of the occupants of Passeig de Gràcia 83 had been left for her attention. They were twitchy with impatience at the delays. ‘Jeez says that there’s been some panic over an ETA bomb threat or something, but reading between the lines, I think he’s embarrassed. My guess is that Alvarez is making us wait.’

‘But why? What’s his problem? He was pretty unhelpful with me yesterday.’

‘Yeah, well, it was Dick Chivers’ fault really. When he was over here a couple of months ago, Superintendent Chivers got a bit stroppy, acting as if these guys were working for us. Jeez says that at one point the super made Alvarez look bad in front of his superiors, and he hasn’t forgiven him. If he’s found out anything he’s probably holding onto it to see what glory he can earn for himself before he passes it on to us.’

‘Well, I’ve got something that might help us.’ She described her visit to the Pavelló and showed them the entry in the visitors’ book.

‘Wow!’ As Linda craned forward to look, Tony leaned over her shoulder, unconsciously stroking her arm. ‘That is his writing, isn’t it?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Have you checked the rest of the book?’

‘Not yet.’

Linda turned the pages back. ‘Let’s start at the beginning.’

While the two of them pored over the entries, Kathy examined the list that Alvarez’s officer had left for her. The information was sparse, confined to a single sheet. Thankfully, she saw that the business descriptions had been translated into English. The building contained a lawyer, a financial consultant, medical consulting rooms, an accountant, a media company of some kind, two stockbrokers and an insurance broker. Almost any of them might have been of use to Charles Verge, Kathy guessed.