The Verge Practice (30 page)

‘Maybe you just expected the hunt to take longer, be more difficult,’ Sharpe suggested.

Brock conceded a nod. Yes, that might well be the case.

He felt a little like someone brought in to break down an impregnable door, only to find that it crumples at the first assault.

‘Maybe you feel frustrated that in the end he escaped us?’

That too. He had felt a surge of frustration when they discovered Clarke’s body and he had realised, even before they reactivated the computer, what they might find there.

‘But the point is, Brock, that the job is done—and brilliantly, too. This is a triumph for the service and for you personally. I have to confess that I doubted you could pull it off before the opening of Marchdale, but by God you did! And clearing Verge, too, that’s the great thing. The Home Office aren’t the only ones who’ll be breathing big sighs of relief. The great architect’s reputation is restored, his buildings are masterpieces once again, the judgement of his friends in high places is vindicated. All Verge’s prestigious clients, all the august bodies that showered awards on him, all the people who had egg on their faces for having patronised a notorious murderer, will now be breaking out the champagne. Good grief,
we
should be breaking out the champagne!’

And that, Brock reflected, was perhaps the real reason for his misgivings, for Sharpe had made it quite plain at the start that any result that cleared Verge would be particularly welcome, and he had duly obliged. Was it perverse to feel uncomfortable when you fulfilled other people’s fondest wishes?

Kathy, newly established as chair of the Crime Strategy Working Party, was also feeling uncomfortable. She had reported to Queen Anne’s Gate that morning on autopilot, her feelings frozen as she waited for Leon to ring, and had been told to report immediately to Robert at New Scotland Yard. There she had sat through a two-hour briefing in which the administrator had told her exactly how the committee might be run, what outcomes she might expect, and how they might be achieved. At the end of it she thanked him mechanically and they proceeded to a meeting room where the rest of the committee were now assembled.

She found them remarkably cooperative and eager, while she felt detached, suspended in limbo. At one point, Rex began to make difficulties about some procedural matter, but she cut him short and brought him into line hard. The others seemed impressed, Shazia sending her a covert smile and Jay a thumbs-up, but Kathy herself was oblivious.

Just as they broke for a sandwich lunch, her phone finally rang.

‘Leon,’ she acknowledged formally. Her voice sounded, to her own ears, as if she were still conducting the meeting, though she felt cold sweat beneath her shirt. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I wondered if we could meet for a drink this evening?’

‘Sure.’ Her voice sounded ridiculously remote, and she mentally shook herself, trying to force her feelings to the surface. Hell, he needed to know how she felt! ‘I missed you last night.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll explain.’

‘Where?’ He would go for neutral ground, she guessed, where the other cops wouldn’t be. She remembered the first time they’d had a drink together, in a pub south of the river, near the forensic science labs. He’d said he sometimes stayed there overnight when he was working late, and she had thought that he was married and looking for an affair.

But instead he suggested a pub tucked down a side street off Whitehall. It would be convenient for her to catch a train home afterwards on the Northern line, she realised.

Maybe that was his reasoning.

The afternoon passed in a blur. At its conclusion, several of the group congratulated her on the way she’d run the meeting, and even Robert murmured a few approving words in his guarded way, yet she felt as if they were talking to someone else. She detached herself and caught the lift down to the ground-floor lobby where she surrendered her pass and stepped out into a cold, blustery evening.

Wrapping her coat around her, she started walking towards Whitehall, the breeze whipping her fair hair round her ears.

By the time she got to the pub she felt damp and windblown but refreshed, ready to face whatever was coming.

She anticipated the worst, of course. What else could she think? It was probably Alex Nicholson, the forensic psychologist who had always fancied Leon and had tried to convince him to do a year’s master’s course with her up at Liverpool University. Yet now that she really confronted the possibility, Kathy found it hard to see Leon as a cheat. How boring, she thought, hardening herself, how disappointing.

He would find it almost as painful to tell her as she would find it to listen, but she resolved she wouldn’t make it easy for him. At least he hadn’t just sent her an email.

It was four days since she had last seen him, and when she first caught sight of him, seated at a corner table in one of the little rooms that made up the pub, she felt a jolt of shock. It seemed so long since they had been together, and he was more beautiful than she remembered. It was as if, on the point of losing him, she was finally allowing herself to realise how she really felt about him. Then he looked up and saw her, his dark eyes widening anxiously as he rose to his feet.

He had bought two glasses of white wine for them, their usual these days. She almost told him she wanted something else, then caught herself in time. ‘Hello, Leon.’

‘Hi.’ He looked exhausted, she thought, and for the first time she could see his father’s dark rings of fatigue around the eyes. ‘How was your trip?’

‘It seems a long time ago now.’

‘Yes.’ He couldn’t meet her eyes.

‘Well, what’s the story?’

Perhaps he’d prepared some gentle introduction, something with a touch of irony or self-deprecating humour maybe, but Kathy’s cold question threw him off track.

‘I’m sorry, Kathy. I really am. It’s just that I’ve reached a point where I can’t go on. It wouldn’t be fair, to either of us . . .’ He saw the tightening of Kathy’s mouth at this, and stopped. He looked as if he were trying to pick his way through a verbal minefield.

Kathy said quietly, ‘Spit it out, Leon.’

He seemed to cut several preliminary paragraphs and said, ‘It was that week you were at Bramshill, in June.’

The week when Sandy Clarke’s DNA result had slipped through the cracks, Kathy remembered.

‘Something happened,’ he went on. ‘I was forced to take a hard look at myself. Since then things haven’t been the same, with us. I thought . . . I hoped they could be. But while you were away this time it all blew up again . . .’

Was that how it was? She couldn’t remember things being different when she returned from the course at Bramshill, apart from the usual mild strangeness after a period apart. A small glimmer of hope came to Kathy. ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with that forensic report that wasn’t followed up, has it?’

‘In a way,’ he said gloomily. ‘Yes.’

‘You’re not in trouble over that, are you? Oh God, darling, why didn’t you say? You know I’d back you up.’ She reached her hand across the table to his, but he drew back.

‘Is it Brock?’ she asked, mystified. ‘Is he giving you a hard time?’

‘Has he spoken to you?’

‘Not about this, no, but I can talk to him. You know it wasn’t your fault. It was that other bloke who took over from you, wasn’t it? What was his name? The one who went abroad. Are they trying to blame you for his mistake?’

Leon shook his head. ‘Paul Oakley, that was his name.

He’s back in the UK now, and Brock’s spoken to him.’

‘Well then . . .’

‘It isn’t the forensic report that’s the problem, Kathy.

It’s Paul.’

‘He’s the problem?’ Leon was being frustratingly slow and halting in his explanation. She felt like shaking him, and had to force herself to be patient. She was supposed to be expert in interviewing techniques. She mentally checked off the stages of the formula for questioning suspects— prepare, engage, explain, account, closure and evaluation.

Which one had they reached?

‘He’s gay, Kathy.’

‘So?’

‘While you were at Bramshill I had to brief him on the material for the Verge inquiry. We spent a fair bit of time together.’

Kathy recalled the entries in his diary,
PO
. ‘Yes, so?’

‘So he told me I was too.’

‘What?’ Kathy stared at him, then started to laugh, but Leon looked devastated. ‘Leon, that is crazy. Of course you’re not gay.’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said softly. ‘I knew, all the time. I just didn’t want to face up to it.’

Kathy blinked in disbelief, running through the possible things she could say, but Leon’s obvious sincerity and conviction stopped her dead. ‘Are you telling me you had an affair with this Paul Oakley?’ The impossible words froze in her throat like ice cubes.

‘No . . . He wants to, but I had to clear things up with you first.’

‘Leon, this is nonsense. Some bloke appears, and out of the blue . . .’

‘It wasn’t out of the blue, Kathy. I told you, I’ve had these feelings before. I knew, as soon as he began talking about it, that he was right.’

Kathy sat back in her chair, speechless. She was aware of the murmur of normality from the tables around her intruding into the unreality of the thoughts going through her head, the phrases about outrage and betrayal and deceit.

But she couldn’t voice them, not yet. She wasn’t prepared to move on to ‘closure’ and ‘evaluation’.

Finally she broke the silence between them. ‘Does your mum know?’

‘No.’ His voice was almost inaudible. ‘I just said we were splitting up. I wanted to speak to you before I told them.’

I’d like to be a fly on that wall, Kathy thought, then corrected herself. No, actually she wanted nothing to do with it, any of it. She got abruptly to her feet and walked out. Her last image of him was sitting, head bowed, in front of two untouched glasses of white wine.

It probably wasn’t a good way to leave, she reflected, as she walked blindly down dark, rain-swept streets. Too impulsive. But what was a good way?

She found herself on the Victoria Embankment, standing at a stone wall facing the dark river. It seemed unbelievable that she could have been living with him for six months and not have known, not have had some inkling. She remembered the conversation with Brock, when he had asked her to get inside Charles Verge’s head; she had privately doubted if this was possible, because she sometimes felt that she had no idea what was going through Leon’s head even though she was living with him. Well, you got that right, girl. You just didn’t realise how ignorant you were. She began to laugh quietly to herself, the rain diluting her tears.

20

T
he following morning, Brock called a team meeting to wind up the Verge inquiry. As they sat waiting for him to appear, the others read the accounts in the morning papers, passing them round with the offhand shrugs of insiders who know the real story, for the information released to the press had been carefully pruned. A senior member of the Verge Practice, Andrew Christopher Clarke, had been found dead in circumstances that suggested suicide. Certain new information had come into the hands of the police, who were now satisfied that Charles Verge was not responsible for the murder of his wife Miki in May, and was himself a victim of her assailant. Police were continuing to search for his remains, but did not expect to lay charges against any other parties. An inquest would be held into the death of Clarke. The Home Office meanwhile confirmed that the official opening of Marchdale Prison, Charles Verge’s last masterpiece, would take place as scheduled on the following Thursday.

The team debriefing should have been a buoyant occasion, marking the conclusion of a successful investigation, but it was clear as soon as Brock swept into the room that self-congratulation was not on the cards. For some reason that was not immediately apparent, the old man was grim. A hangover, some speculated, or maybe the mysterious lady friend they’d begun to hear rumours of was giving him a hard time.

In a rapid delivery which suggested that meandering from the point would not be tolerated, Brock outlined the main directions of their investigations and then invited each person in turn to summarise their progress. Bren began, describing the hunt for Charles Verge’s body in the vacant government landholdings. He knew Brock’s aversion to lists presented on overhead transparencies, and wisely kept the slides of the schedules and classifications of the sites in his file. Wisely, too, he decided to forego the Power-Point presentation of site photographs on which he’d worked late into the previous evening, on the sensible assumption that, the way the old man was, the computer would undoubtedly screw up. Instead he concentrated on the core facts. The Verge Practice had looked at forty-six sites for the DTLR, covering a total of three hundred and fifty-two hectares, many of them overgrown and inaccessible, and including extensive derelict structures, several of which had collapsed or flooded basements. The police teams had so far eliminated fourteen of the sites. In the process they had lost two men due to muscle injuries and one dog with a damaged paw. They had discovered several animal corpses and one human, that of an abandoned baby in a carrycot. But no sign of Charles Verge.