The Verge Practice (34 page)

Brock reached for his coffee, then slid it away, feeling nauseous. It was as if his own doubts had found a voice in this woman, stern and unequivocal, and he felt obliged to challenge them. ‘Did you part on bad terms from your ex-husband, Ms Lewis?’ he asked, the words sounding pompous as he spoke them.

‘You mean, am I prejudiced? Of course, we all are. But no, we didn’t part on bad terms, not really. We just reached a point where I realised I had to leave him. You might say I left for professional reasons as much as personal ones, although the two were so mixed together. As we became more successful, I began to realise that we were after quite different things. For me, a good reputation was a means to being able to do good work, whereas for him the opposite was true—the quality of our work was a means to attract publicity and success. He was fanatical about publicity; I couldn’t understand it. He’d lose sleep fuming over some mildly critical comment in a review of one of our buildings, while I’d be lying awake trying to work out how to detail a window. And as the projects got bigger and the clients more prestigious, the differences in what we wanted became more difficult to reconcile. His ambition was like a steamroller, and in the end I decided I had to step out of the way or be squashed. He felt terribly betrayed, of course, the way he did if one of his bright young designers decided to quit.

It was an affront to his ego.’

‘You make him sound insecure.’

‘Does that surprise you? I suppose people have told you that he was so full of self-confidence, and that was true. He loved being with people, and drew energy and confidence from them, but on his own, in the middle of the night, he was as insecure as the rest of us—worse.’ She nodded to herself, recalling something. ‘I remember once, it was in New York, we went to an opening at a little gallery in SoHo.

There was an exhibition of photorealist paintings, and one of them was a huge watercolour, about eight feet by five, of a hermit crab. It was a stunning image, of this soft little crawling thing pinned beneath an enormous florid shell, like a building it was dragging around on its back. Charles seemed mesmerised by it. Later I offered to buy it for him, but he was horrified at the idea, and eventually confessed that he saw himself as that little crab, forced to live inside the wrong body.’

‘The wrong body?’ Brock remembered the underlined passage about the criminals’ heads in Verge’s office. ‘What did he mean by that?’

‘I think he meant that he’d spent his whole life trying to be someone else, the person that his mother wanted him to be, maybe—his father the Olympian.’

The reference to the painting reminded Brock of something else, and he said, ‘You were acquainted with a number of painters were you? I’m thinking of a Spanish artist, Luz Diaz, who bought the house you and Charles designed for his mother.’

‘Briar Hill. Yes, I heard she was living there, but I’ve never met her. Charlotte told me about her in one of our conversations—we maintain a rather distant mother– daughter relationship by phone. She was always her father’s daughter, and was very angry when I left Charles.

I used to think . . .’

She stopped in mid-sentence, a startled look dawning on her face. ‘I’m being very slow, aren’t I? If you think it possible that Charles is still alive, that Sandy didn’t kill him, then you also think that Charles may have staged Sandy’s suicide—that he’s here, in this country.’ Her surprise turned to alarm. ‘You think he’s come back?’

‘We haven’t got anywhere near thinking that, Ms Lewis,’ Brock said. ‘As I said at the beginning, I’m just trying to cover every angle, for my own satisfaction. As far as the authorities are concerned, there’s absolutely no doubt that your former husband is dead.’

But Gail Lewis wasn’t reassured. As she reached forward for her pencil Brock saw a tremor in her hand. She fiercely clicked the lead.

‘In any event,’ he added, ‘you’ve surely got nothing to be worried about.’

‘You don’t think so? Chief Inspector, if Charles has been crazy enough to slaughter his wife in May, and then come back to kill Sandy now, I don’t think anyone connected with him can feel safe!’

Brock sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then said, ‘You were talking just now about too much data. One of the problems in my line of work is false data, people who tell us lies. You lied to my sergeant, didn’t you, Ms Lewis? You told her you hadn’t seen Charles Verge in eight years.’

She looked startled, then guilty, her face turning pink.

‘How did you . . .? Yes, you’re right, I did lie. I felt bad about it afterwards, but I just wanted to get back to my meeting, and there was no point . . . I thought there was no point.’

‘Tell me.’

The woman sighed, shaking her head. ‘I bumped into Charles one evening about a year ago, at the opening of an exhibition. He was at his most charming, the champagne was flowing, and he suggested we have dinner together, for old time’s sake. God knows why, but I agreed. He was a little drunk, and a little tired, and during the course of the meal he came out with all this stuff. His marriage was finished, Miki was a nightmare, Sandy was a shit, the partnership was doomed. The thing was, he was laughing all the time he said it, as if he was describing some ridiculous comedy he’d seen at the movies. He was quite witty, almost boasting about his disasters, and I laughed along with him.

He said that he’d like to wipe the slate clean, do away with them all, and start afresh.’

‘He said that, that he wanted to do away with them all?’

‘Yes, something like that. I didn’t think it meant anything, and forgot about it until Miki’s murder. Then I decided I didn’t want to remember what he’d said that evening. I didn’t want anything more to do with the story of Charles Verge. Then I read that it was Sandy who had killed Miki and Charles. But if you’re saying now that Charles may have engineered the whole thing . . .’

‘All the same, you’re surely not in any danger.’

‘Aren’t I? I was one of the people who let him down, perhaps the most, in his eyes. And I remember something else he said that evening, when he dropped me off and said goodbye. He said that in a year’s time we might meet up again, and I should remember what he’d said.’

There was no panic in her eyes, but certainly there was fear.

‘But surely,’ Brock felt himself being dragged into confidences that he didn’t really want to share, ‘in the unlikely event that Charles did kill Sandy Clarke, his purpose was much more deliberate than just getting even?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The death of Sandy Clarke cleared Charles Verge’s name, re-established his reputation.’

‘His reputation . . .’ She thought about that, sipping absently at her coffee. ‘Yes, you’re right.’

And yet, Brock thought, that wasn’t quite the whole story. Like Gail, he felt as if his thinking had been slow, unwilling to pursue the implications of a scenario he didn’t want to believe. But if Verge, officially cleared and dead, was still alive, any program of vengeance would be open to him. He thought again of the suicide note on Clarke’s computer. Whoever had written it had known that Clarke was the father of Charlotte’s child. Did that betrayal precipitate Clarke’s death, and did it now put Charlotte herself at risk? Who else?

‘I mean, he was a rational man, yes? Not unstable.’ He tried to make it sound like a positive statement, rather than a plea.

Gail drew the shape of a cone on her pad, frowning. ‘He had mood swings . . . periods of depression. I don’t think they were properly diagnosed then. Charlotte said he had one for a year after I left. Maybe he’s had better help since then.’

Or none at all, Brock thought, and watched her add a small creature peering out from under the bottom edge of the conical shape, legs and eyes and one lopsided claw.

She looked up suddenly and said, ‘It’s funny you mentioning that Spanish woman just now, the artist. Charlotte told me about her buying Briar Hill at the time that Charles was buying the cottage nearby for her, and I thought it was an odd coincidence. Knowing that Charles and Miki’s marriage was rocky, I wondered if there might be something going on between Charles and this other woman, almost as if he were establishing an alternative happy little family down in Bucks. Then there was Miki’s murder, and Charles disappeared, and another thought came to me. In retrospect, it was almost as if Charles had set about taking care of everything before the tragedy happened—getting Charlotte settled, and establishing the Spanish woman nearby, like a kind of chaperone or proxy parent.’

‘He’s never contacted you, since May?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘You’re absolutely certain of that? No unexplained silent phone calls, no indirect approaches? He would have needed help after it happened, and he might have thought of someone from the past, like you, who we wouldn’t necessarily consider.’

‘He wouldn’t have come to me. And I haven’t the faintest idea where he would have gone. I thought of Spain, like everyone else, but I don’t know of any secret boltholes.’

‘There was speculation that he might try to make contact when Charlotte has her baby. Do you think that’s plausible?’

‘I guess it’s possible. He’d want to know, of course, but he wouldn’t be stupid enough to make a direct approach.

You think Charlotte might know how to send him a message? Or the Spanish woman? Or Madelaine, of course . . . Formidable Madelaine.’ She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Actually, if I’d been asked what would make him come back, it wouldn’t have been Charlotte’s baby.’ She reached over to the table beside her and handed Brock a thick magazine. The front cover showed a dramatic glossy photograph of a building, so geometric and brilliantly coloured that at first glance it looked like an abstract graphic, two squares, red on the left side and blue, fretted with shadows, on the right. Beneath the name of the magazine was the issue’s title, ‘Il Carcere Nuovo’.

‘Marchdale,’ Gail said. ‘ “The New Prison”. It came out last week, ahead of the opening, and before they knew about Charles’s reinstatement. That didn’t bother the Italians one bit. In fact, from the text you’d say that the fact that the architect was a famous murderer only increased the building’s glamour. But they also give it a very detailed appraisal, and the conclusion is that it’s brilliant.’

Opening the magazine, Brock found pages of dense text interspersed with plans and lush photographs. He wondered how they’d been able to conjure such blue skies, such beautiful raking shadows, in the fen country.

‘I have a friend at the
Architectural Review
who tells me that their special issue is about to come out, equally glowing. It seems Marchdale really is Charles’s masterpiece, and I can’t imagine how he’ll be able to stay away, especially now, with this sort of publicity.’

He thanked her for her time and she led him to the front door. The rain had stopped, a weak sun forcing through the cloud. As he walked back to his car, several streets away, he felt rather as if he’d been through a Turkish bath, like he sometimes did after a particularly probing conversation with Suzanne. The effect was both exhausting and rejuvenating. He wondered what story he could use to mobilise the security services and local police at Marchdale to be alert for a man who no longer existed.

22

K
athy tried the home number on file for the former laboratory clerk Debbie Langley. She wasn’t expecting a reply in the middle of the day, but the phone was answered by Debbie’s mother, with whom she apparently lived.

‘Debbie gets home from work at six,’ the mother said.

‘Well, would it be convenient if I called tonight at, say, six-thirty?’

‘I don’t know,’ the woman said defensively. ‘Does she know you?’

‘We’ve never met. I’m with the police. It’s not a big matter, and it only indirectly affects Debbie, so it’d be easier me seeing her at home rather than asking her to come to a police station. It won’t take long.’

Debbie’s mother agreed, and Kathy put the phone down, feeling a squirm of guilt.

The house was a rather gloomy dark-red brick semi, not far from the local commuter rail station and shops. The paint on the garage door was peeling and the concrete path cracked. Debbie Langley opened the door looking worried.

Her make-up was fresh, her cheeks flushed as if she’d rushed to get ready to face this unexpected complication to her day. From the back of the house came a smell of cooking and the sound of a child’s voice. She closed the front door after Kathy and led the way into the front sitting room, the furnishings spotless but worn.

‘Could you tell me what this is about?’ she demanded anxiously, clutching her hands. Kathy had the impression of someone who had faced a fair bit of bad news lately and was bracing for another little smack from fate. ‘It’s not my car is it? Only I told Cheryl when I lent it to her that I’m not going to be responsible . . .’ She stopped, seeing Kathy smile and shake her head.

‘No, it’s nothing like that, Debbie. It’s just a loose end I have to tie up on a case I’m on at the moment, and it’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about.’

‘Oh, good.’ She drew a cautious breath of relief.

‘It’s in connection with your work at the laboratory.’

‘But you know I don’t work there any more, don’t you?

I’m on the clerical staff at the hospital now, full time. I was only part time at the lab, you see, and I really wanted full-time work. If it’s about the same thing they came about before, about the internal review, well I thought I’d done everything needed.’