The Verge Practice (37 page)

‘Quite sure. Was there more than one meeting, perhaps?’

‘What? Well, no. To tell the truth, I can’t remember meeting him at all. I think I may have mentioned that to Bren yesterday.’ His eyes narrowed cautiously now as he glanced at Bren sitting by Brock’s side.

‘There is a record of everyone who enters and leaves the Verge offices, and Mr Clarke’s secretary is quite clear on the matter. Apparently you had so much to talk about that you overran your time, and Mr Clarke was late for an important appointment. You remember now? Maybe you have a pocket diary you could check?’

Oakley’s hand began to move, then stopped. ‘Well, if you say so, Chief Inspector, I suppose I must have met him.

There was so much going on just then . . . Is it important? I suppose you’re going back over all his contacts, are you?

Now that he’s been identified as the culprit?’

‘The odd thing is that you kept no record of your meeting, apparently. In the files you left behind, at least.’

‘Really? Well now, let me see . . .’ He made a big show of reaching into the briefcase he had set at his feet, and coming up with an electronic personal organiser. ‘May twenty-third?’ There was silence as he tapped and scrolled and fiddled around. ‘Oh, here we are. You know, you’re right. I’ve got an appointment here for “V.P.” at eleven a.m.

Would that be it? Yes, I remember that week—chaos, it was. And I believe I do remember going to the Verge offices soon after I took over as LO. To orientate myself.’

‘It was only four months ago. What did you and Mr Clarke talk about?’

‘I couldn’t say exactly. General stuff about the case, I suppose.’

There was a long silence, then Brock said in an undertone that Oakley might not even have been expected to hear, ‘You disappoint me, Mr Oakley.’

Kathy couldn’t see Brock’s expression clearly on the small monitor, but she knew the impression Oakley would be registering, of withdrawal, of values being readjusted, of options reconsidered; all uncomfortable.

‘Perhaps . . .’ Oakley forced confidence into his voice.

‘Perhaps if you told me what this was about . . . What you’re after, exactly . . .’

But Brock ignored him and, as if suddenly bored, got to his feet and walked heavily over to the window, hands thrust deep into his pockets, and stared bleakly out at the rain.

Bren cleared his throat. ‘This morning I asked you about another person you claimed you hadn’t met—Debbie Langley.’

It was at this point, Kathy decided, that Oakley finally began to realise that none of this had anything to do with giving him business. He stiffened visibly, and she imagined the brain cells beginning to fire at panic speed.

‘Do you still deny meeting Debbie Langley recently?’

Bren barked. Oakley didn’t reply. ‘Let’s save time,’ Bren persisted. ‘I have here a copy of a statement signed by her on September thirteenth, ten days ago. She says you got her to sign it. Did you?’ Still Oakley said nothing. ‘Did you pay her to sign this, Mr Oakley? Did you give her money?’

At the time, Kathy wasn’t sure if this was a good approach—possibly, she admitted to herself, because it hadn’t occurred to her. But it galvanised Oakley. His face went very pale and he found his voice.

‘I understand now,’ he said, voice shaking slightly with the effort of controlling himself. ‘I understand what this is about now. You people . . . you always stick together, don’t you? I know what this is about. It’s that Kolla woman, isn’t it? She’s behind this, right? My God, hell hath no fury eh?’

Despite the jolt at hearing her name, Kathy was struck by how anger had changed Oakley. No longer the supplicant salesman, he seemed stronger, more formidable, even to have a certain dignity. She wondered if she’d misjudged him.

He stuffed his personal organiser back into his briefcase, a slight fumble betraying his agitation, then he was on his feet.

‘Where are you going, Mr Oakley?’ Bren asked.

‘I’m leaving,’ he said, and added, in a parody of Brock, ‘and
you
disappoint
me
,
Mr
Gurney.’ He turned and swept out of the room. Kathy heard his footsteps thump past in the corridor outside.

‘Well,’ Brock was saying as she walked into the interview room, ‘that was interesting. What did he mean by that, Kathy?’

She saw Bren deliberately turn his attention to his file.

‘He obviously thinks I engineered this. He’s a good friend of Leons. He must think I’m stirring things up to get at Leon or something.’ It sounded feeble, but it wasn’t up to her to spell out what was going on between Leon and Oakley.

‘He seemed very emotional,’ Brock said. ‘Have you two met before?’

‘Just the once, in the company of Leon. We exchanged a few sentences, that’s all.’

‘Hm. What did you make of him, Bren?’

‘Well, he didn’t need his gadget to tell him where he was on the twenty-third of May. He knew bloody well, and he remembers what he talked to Sandy Clarke about. The question is why he doesn’t want to tell us about it.’

‘Exactly. And if it were important, you’d think there would be some trace of it somewhere. Would Clarke have made a record of the meeting? A file note, or a word jotted on the back of Oakley’s card? Would he have discussed it with someone at the office, or with his wife? And we’d better speak to Leon about his signature on this statement of Debbie Langley’s, and anything else he cares to enlighten us on. But you can leave all that to us, Kathy. You can forget about it.’

If only, she thought, as she made her way back to her room, a feeling of foreboding growing in her.

She spotted him just as she reached the shelter of the canopy outside her block of flats. She was shaking the water off her umbrella when she saw him running through the rain towards her, the splash of his footsteps muffled in the downpour. The collar of his black raincoat was turned up, his black hair gleaming as he passed beneath a light.

‘Kathy!’

‘Hello, Leon.’ Her heart sank as she took in the features of his face and remembered how beautiful he was.

‘Kathy, you’ve got to stop this.’ He was close, eyes bright and angry.

‘What?’

‘What you’re doing. It’s so stupid.’

‘I’m not doing anything, Leon. Do you want to come in?’

‘No! You went to see Debbie Langley, didn’t you?’

She nodded.

‘I wouldn’t have believed you’d react this way. It’s so incredibly vindictive! But there always was a hard streak in you.’

‘Leon, I don’t understand what’s going on, and I don’t understand what Paul Oakley’s been playing at, but I do think you should watch out. He’s —’

‘Don’t you threaten me!’ He stopped himself, as if remembering that he had to focus on one thing only, and not lose his temper. ‘Look, for whatever reason, you’ve made something out of nothing. I’m telling you, you’ve got it all wrong. I want to ask you, please, stop this. Get Brock and Bren to drop it.’

‘It’s gone past that. Paul hasn’t been truthful. He has to be straight with them.’

It was only when she was safely in the lift, her knees trembling, that she became aware of her unfortunate choice of word. She hoped Leon hadn’t thought it deliberate.

He would take it as further evidence of her hard streak, she supposed. As the lift rose slowly through the floors another thought occurred to her, that Leon had stood over her in the way she had seen other men behave, trying to intimidate a woman by physical and verbal pressure.

She had never imagined he would have been capable of that.

Later that evening, as she was about to go to bed, the bottle of wine finished, the Leonard Cohen CD milked of every bleak meaning, she jumped at the sudden ring of the phone. At first there was silence on the line, and Kathy wondered if Paul Oakley might be turning his hand to menacing behaviour. Then she heard a woman’s voice.

‘That’s you, is it, Kathy?’

She recognised Leon’s mother, sounding hesitant but also vaguely put out, as if it were Kathy who’d made the call, and at an inconvenient time.

‘Hello, Ghita.’

‘Kathy, Leon has told us that you and he have, er, had a difference.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not irreconcilable, I hope?’

‘I rather think it may be, Ghita.’ And Kathy thought, she doesn’t know, he hasn’t told her.

‘Oh . . . I’m sorry about that. We both would be, Morarji and I.’

Kathy was surprised. It was the first indication of approval Ghita had ever given her.

‘Are you quite sure? There’s nothing that we could do?

Perhaps if you were to tell me what the problem was?’

‘I really think you should ask Leon.’

‘Only he seems so very unhappy. He hardly says a word, just stares into space. It’s so unlike him.’

Kathy couldn’t think of a word to say.

‘Oh well. I just thought I would ask. If there is anything, you will tell me, won’t you?’

‘Yes. Thanks.’

Then, in a quite deliberate tone, Ghita said, ‘We always hoped, you see, that you two would make a go of it,’ and Kathy realised suddenly that Ghita did know, even though he hadn’t told her, and that she had known for some time.

24

A
watery sun was lifting the mist from the fens in pale curtains, revealing a country of unnerving flatness.

From time to time Brock would ask Kathy to stop the car while he scanned the landscape with a pair of binoculars, and the silence, the eerie light and the limitless horizontality spread out around them like an alien sea.

Brock was preoccupied. He had told her to keep her eyes open during the visit, but hadn’t said for what. At one of their stops they found themselves next to an abandoned World War Two airfield. He examined it carefully through the glasses, then raised them to the hazy sky, as if he half expected to see a silver glider overhead. He was the navigator, guiding them according to some scheme of his own on a circuitous journey along the grid of minor roads that criss-crossed the marshlands.

Then, at last, when Kathy was beginning to wonder if they were completely lost, they saw it. It seemed like a mirage—so abrupt, so totally unnatural, that she gave a little gasp and pulled the car into the verge. The image that came into her mind was of a gigantic Rubik’s cube, sunk into the fen so that only its top layer glistened improbably over the sea of wild grasses.

Still Brock detoured, getting Kathy to circle the strange object while stopping periodically to peer at it and the surrounding countryside. During the course of this she realised that the building seemed to be made up of four large cubic elements, each in a vibrant primary colour, blue, green, yellow and red.

They came finally to the approach road, a ribbon of new concrete laid along the top of a dyke, aiming dead straight at the cleft between red and blue cubes. Brock recognised the view from the cover of Gail Lewis’s architectural magazine, and, as if in acknowledgement of this, the sun finally broke through, bathing the coloured walls in a brilliant light, and the sky above crystallised into a limpid cobalt blue.

There was a minimum of disturbance to the natural landscape around the building, no fences and only the most discreet of signs and lighting bollards. Ribbons of the surrounding water and grasses ran across the car park and forecourt, right up to the building’s base. The car park was already almost full, a small group of chauffeurs standing together in conversation beside a Rolls Royce. Kathy found a space and they walked across gravel towards the glass entrance between the cubes. Two men stood outside, watching the arrivals, and Brock went over to talk to them.

Looking at the way they stood, hands clasped in front of them, Kathy guessed they might be armed, and when Brock returned she asked, ‘We’re not expecting trouble, are we?’

‘No, no,’ Brock replied, and led the way through the entrance.

Inside, men and women in black suits checked them in, gave them name tags and pointed the way to a broad ramp rising into the heart of the building between blue wall and red. They came to a hall in which a couple of hundred people stood about in conversation. Sunlight rippled over them from skylights in a coffered vault high overhead, and Kathy was reminded of a stripped-down version of the dungeon etching hanging in Charles Verge’s office.

Brock headed for a table where cups of coffee were being dispensed. Kathy followed, registering the low roar of networking notables, in their expensive suits and high-ranking uniforms. She had a sickening feeling that the audience for her working-party speech would be very much like this.

After ten minutes Brock touched Kathy’s arm and indicated a group emerging at the top of the ramp. Madelaine Verge was at the front, her wheelchair guided by a man Kathy barely recognised at first, being now clean-shaven and dressed in a smart suit. Behind them walked Charlotte and Luz Diaz, arm in arm.

‘Who’s the man?’ Brock murmured.

‘His name’s George. He does the garden and odd jobs for Charlotte. For Luz, too, I think. I don’t know his other name. He’s an ex-con that Charles Verge came across when he was doing the research for this place, and took under his wing, apparently.’