The Verge Practice

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Instigated by whom?’

  ‘By someone who stood to benefit greatly from his death. Chief Inspector, the work that Charles was involved in was not only wonderful architecture, it was also business on a very large scale. At the time of his disappearance he was the leading contender to design and build a new city for two million people in the province of Zhejiang in China. It would have meant enormous contracts, not only for his practice and that of other consultants, but also for British construction and engineering companies. Of course, when Charles disappeared the Chinese went elsewhere. They appointed an American firm.’

  ‘And you’re suggesting that the Americans murdered your son?’ Brock had to make an effort not to sound incredulous.

  ‘Why not? They can be very ruthless, the Americans, where business is concerned. But it may not be them. There were probably half a dozen other major projects coming Charles’s way that someone would have killed for, either for money or prestige. The point is that this is a far more plausible motive than the one your predecessor insisted on pursuing so single-mindedly. All along I have been trying to point this out to him, without the slightest success. Instead he has stubbornly focused on the idea of a lurid family scandal, like a salacious schoolboy.’

  This was going too far. Brock was about to point out coolly that she might be assumed to have a vested interest in this other explanation, when he stopped himself. Did she really prefer to have her son dead in order to preserve his reputation? Looking at her tight-lipped intensity, at the hall-of-fame pictures covering the walls, he rather thought she did. The alternative was probably just too painful.

  So, instead of challenging her, he simply said, ‘I’m sure Superintendent Chivers would have looked carefully into your suspicions, and I shall certainly talk to him about them.’

  She didn’t look convinced. ‘It happened on the Saturday, May the twelfth, I’m sure of it. I believe they were waiting for him in his apartment when he returned from America. Sandy Clarke, his partner in the practice, picked him up at the airport and brought him home, and he was never seen again. I think they had already killed Miki and set up the whole thing. When he arrived they killed or drugged him, then took him down in the private lift to his car in the basement and drove him away. The abandoned car and clothes on the coast were meant to look implausible. I mean, no one could imagine Charles killing himself in such a way—such bathos!’

  ‘How would he have done it, Mrs Verge?’ Brock asked quietly. She seemed about to protest at such a question, then changed her mind. She had thought about this, he could see.

  ‘He had a beautiful glider,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you know anything about gliders.’

  ‘Actually I do. I used to fly them myself, at a club down in Kent.’

  She cocked her head and offered him a little smile.

  ‘How interesting. Superintendent Chivers had no idea what I was talking about. Charles was passionate about it. He used to take me up, you know, even after I was reduced to this . . .’ She slapped the arm of her chair. ‘We shared the sense of liberation, of escape from the drudgery of gravity.

  You do know what I mean, don’t you? To glide through great cities of cloud at dusk, to pass under the rim of a cumulus and rise into the vast dome . . . He was inspired by the architecture of clouds, by the infinite possibilities of light and space and form.’

  ‘Yes, I do know what you mean,’ Brock said, hearing the phrases that had most probably come from Charles, and the almost sensual agitation in her voice. ‘And you feel that’s how he would have chosen to make an end of things?’

  ‘Exactly! He would have taken off into the dying sun and flown out to sea and simply disappeared. I know he would—he almost told me as much once.’

  ‘He discussed it with you, disappearing?’

  ‘Not seriously. But like many creative people he was liable to periods of darkness. During one such time he told me that, if it came to it, that’s how he would go, just vanish into the blue.’

  ‘It would have required help, to launch the plane . . .’

  ‘No. It’s a Stemme S10 Chrysalis, Chief Inspector. A self-launching sailplane, with a 93 horsepower four-stroke aircraft engine and conventional landing gear.’ She rattled off the specifications as if any fool should know them.

  ‘A powered glider?’

  ‘Yes. He loved the independence that it gave him, the ability to take off unaided and fly out of trouble when the gliding currents let him down. It was a fine example of hybrid technology, he used to say, such as he was famous for in his architectural designs. He has a field near Aylesbury where he kept the plane, and he could take off and land there unaided. That’s where he would have gone if he’d wanted to disappear. The Chrysalis has an engine range of 900 nautical miles at 120 knots . . .’

  She turned her head to gaze out the window at the sky, her eyes unfocused as if she were picturing the pale cross of her son’s plane far out across the North Sea.

  ‘But the plane is still at Aylesbury?’

  ‘Yes. And whoever set up that grubby little pantomime on the south coast, you can be sure it wasn’t Charles. He had more style than that.’

  ‘Was this the important information you wanted me to know?’ Brock asked gently.

  ‘I thought it was vital that you understood this right from the outset, before you become embroiled in all the detail. And I shall be going to stay with my grand-daughter tomorrow, in the country near Amersham, and I wanted to tell you before I went. She’s pregnant, you know, with Charles’s grandchild.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Brock drained his glass and shifted in his seat, but Madelaine Verge was reluctant to let him go.

  ‘She lives not far from the house that Charles built for me when he first came home from Harvard, where he did his master’s degree. Briar Hill was the first building the Verge Practice built, and it launched his career. It received most wonderful publicity. He said later that it was the best thing he ever designed. I lived there for twenty years, until I lost my mobility, and then it was just impossible to cope with all the changes of level. Charles had recently divorced his first wife, Gail, and he wanted me to live in the city, near him, so he converted this flat for me.’

  ‘His first wife is an architect too, isn’t she?’

  ‘Gail, yes. They began the Verge Practice together, but of course Charles was the real driving force. After Charlotte was born Gail took a less active role, but until the pressure of his work took its toll on their marriage, she was always very supportive of his talent.’

  Unlike the second wife, Brock inferred. He got to his feet. ‘I have a lot of work to do, Mrs Verge. I’d better go.

  But thank you for your information. I promise I shall look into it.’

  She pushed herself forward with her right hand, her left still clutching her untouched whisky. ‘I wanted you to understand how important this is, Chief Inspector. I have lost my son, but I cannot bury him, nor save his reputation.

  Only you can do that. I am helpless.’

  Brock doubted that.

  4

  The two teams assembled at the appointed time, awkward in each other’s company like players who were uncertain what the game was, let alone which side they were on. Brock opened the proceedings by outlining the new orders from above and inviting Chivers to take over the briefing. The superintendent glowered at the meeting, as if daring anyone to find fault with what he was about to say, then slowly lit a cigarette in defiance of the sign on the wall behind him. In a flat, monotonous voice he delivered a well-prepared summary of his four-month investigation, aided by photographs, diagrams, a world map and the police scene-of-crime video. The acoustics of the room in the basement of New Scotland Yard were poor, and several times a voice from the back of the room would pipe up, ‘Sorry, chief, what was that last bit again?’ and Chivers would clear his throat, raise his volume a little and repeat.

  At the end there was silence, no one game to ask a question. Chivers lit up again. His grinding monotone s
eemed to have cast a spell on them all, and Brock noticed the deadened expressions on the faces of Chivers’ team.

  Finally, Brock’s inspector Bren Gurney asked for more information on the Barcelona connection. Verge had a number of relatives there from his father’s family, and in addition he had done architectural work in the city, including an apartment building in the port area for athletes competing at the 1992 Olympics, and he had visited the city regularly. Of the relatives, one had been of particular interest, a cousin who had been a close boyhood friend of the fugitive. This man ran an engineering manufacturing business which exported a range of valves and pumps to various parts of Europe and Latin America, and in particular Argentina, where he owned a local sales and servicing company.

  Relatives and other contacts had been interviewed by detectives of the Cuerpo General de Policía in Barcelona, the CGP, and by members of Chivers’ team, but none admitted to contact with Verge since his disappearance.

  Phone calls and financial transactions between the families in Spain and England were being monitored, and between the cousin’s businesses in Barcelona and Buenos Aires, so far without result.

  There was one other possible link with Barcelona. On the same Monday morning that Miki Norinaga’s body had been discovered in London, a holidaying English couple called McNeil had been strolling along the Passeig de Gràcia, the main avenue of Barcelona’s fashionable Eixample district, when Mr McNeil noticed a man get out of a taxi and quickly cross the pavement in front of them, then enter an adjoining building. After a moment’s thought he said to his wife that he thought he recognised the man as the famous architect Charles Verge. McNeil was a recently retired structural engineer, and although he had never met Verge in person, he had seen his picture many times in industry journals, and confidently picked him out later when shown photographs. He didn’t realise the significance of his sighting until they returned to England a week later, when they discovered the papers full of the Verge scandal, and he phoned the police hotline. By that stage the police had already had dozens of reports of Verge from all over Europe, but they knew of the family connection with Barcelona and paid particular attention to McNeil’s story.

  From maps and photographs supplied from Spain the couple identified the building on the Passeig de Gràcia, and its tenants were questioned by the CGP—paying particular attention to the staff of a travel agency on the first floor— but again there was no result.

  Someone asked about Verge’s state of mind at the time of the murder. The clients he had met in California in the week before the murder had been interviewed, as had the crew on the overnight flight back to London, and both could say no more than that he had seemed normal and not unduly stressed, and he certainly hadn’t appeared drunk when he disembarked. He had been met at Heathrow by his business partner Sandy Clarke, who said they had talked about Verge’s successful trip and about a presentation they were doing on the following Monday morning. Verge had been calm and in good spirits.

  According to his friends and colleagues in London, his relationship with Miki had gone through a change in the previous year or so. He had worshipped her when they first married, but more recently there seemed to have been a cooling between them, and rumours of disagreements.

  However, there had been no public scenes, and no one believed that Miki Norinaga might have had a lover.

  Everyone appeared to find the idea of Verge committing a violent murder quite inexplicable.

  ‘What you’ve got to understand,’ Chivers said, ‘is that they all think Charles Verge was the Archangel Gabriel. He might have been an egotistical bastard at times, but that was okay because archangels have a lot to put up with. The important thing was that he could mesmerise the big clients, come up with the big ideas, and pay them all big salaries. And if he did bump Miki off, well, she probably deserved it, didn’t she, because archangels are always right. What they’re all secretly hoping is that he will turn up any day now with a perfectly reasonable explanation and everything can go back to the way it was before the Fall.

  ‘And they didn’t like Miki. They won’t come right out and say it, because they’re all nice middle-class people who wouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but it’s pretty obvious. The men didn’t like her because they thought she manipulated Verge into marriage when he was on the rebound from a divorce, and she promptly changed from being a lowly apprentice into someone who acted as if she was the boss herself. And the women didn’t like her because she was aloof and didn’t share in their gossip, and because she got off with the man they all secretly fancied.’

  Kathy, who had been examining the crime-scene and autopsy photographs, asked, ‘Were there any injuries apart from the stab wound?’

  Chivers shook his head. ‘Nothing. What of it?’

  ‘If they got into an argument and he flew into a rage, you’d think there would have been some preliminary physical stuff, a shove, a slap. Going out to the kitchen and selecting a knife seems very deliberate, cold.’

  ‘That was how he got angry, apparently,’ Chivers said.

  ‘He didn’t rant and rave. One of his staff said he could kill with a look if someone stuffed up. Another said it felt like being verbally disembowelled. And the killing was very efficiently done. The medical examiner was full of admiration. One very powerful, clean, deep blow. We did get an opinion from a psychologist, who was interested in the fact that both the blade and the woman were Japanese. He suggested that there might have been something symbolic in the act.’ Chivers snorted to indicate what he thought of that idea.

  When the questions seemed to have come to an end, Brock said, ‘I had a call yesterday from Verge’s mother, Madelaine Verge. She wanted to tell me about her theory that Charles was murdered for commercial reasons, and that his wife was killed to put us off the scent.’

  This caused a buzz of interest, silenced by Chivers’ exasperated shake of the head.

  ‘Crap. She started flogging that line as soon as it became obvious to everyone else what her darling boy had done.

  She tried to get the press to take an interest, but they soon discovered that she had nothing to back it up. One of the tabloids tried to run with it—Distraught mother claims Verge victim of conspiracy—that kind of thing, but couldn’t make it work. We did look into it, but came up with nothing.

  Charles’s staff thought the idea was ridiculous. We couldn’t find anything more substantial than a mother’s wishful thinking.’

  Brock decided to leave it there. He thanked Chivers, then read out the list of names of members of the earlier team who would be transferring to the new investigation, including Chivers’ exhibits officer, statement reader and action manager, and the liaison coordinator with overseas forces. He had agreed these beforehand with Chivers, but it was an uncomfortable moment nevertheless, and at the end of it Chivers got to his feet, ground his cigarette in a plastic cup, stiffly wished them good luck and left with those no longer required.

  Only one of the newcomers was a woman, Kathy noticed. DS Linda Moffat, the overseas liaison coordinator, was a tall, dark-haired thirty-odd year-old, who presented confidently and economically when it came to her turn to describe what they’d been doing. She spoke of her contacts, the Alonsos and Garcías and Alejandros, as if they were all old friends, and when Brock asked about Barcelona she became quite lyrical.

  ‘Captain Ramiro Alvarez and Lieutenant Jésus Mozas are our two CGP contacts. We’ve visited them twice and they’ve been over here once. Ramiro’s a bit grim, but Jésus is lovely. The trouble is, both they and Buenos Aires seem to be going a bit cold on us. We think they’ve been told to be polite but not spend any more money. Superintendent Chivers was thinking of going over there again soon to try to keep them involved, but I think he was waiting until When they finally broke up, Brock asked Kathy if she would go with him to have a look at the crime scene and talk to Verge’s colleagues. She was glad, because he hadn’t said in the meeting what her role in the investigation would be and she was afraid of bei
ng sidelined because of the committee business, which she was already regretting. A preliminary meeting of the working party had been called for later that afternoon, and she knew she’d have to watch her time. we had something definite to follow up. He was planning to take me,’ she added hopefully, then clamped her mouth tight when she noticed the smirks passing between the men.

  It took the rest of the morning to work through the business and allocate jobs. Kathy observed the way Brock quietly brought the two halves of his team together, coaxing Chivers’ people to reconsider what they had done, identifying the areas of old ground that would have to be gone over yet again. Though he appeared all method and rationality, for Brock the most important part of the process was encouraging something more intangible, an act of faith, a belief that he would simply be luckier than Chivers. Sharpe wanted to believe this and so did the remnants of Chivers’ team, flagging now after four months without a result, and Brock needed their faith to bring the hunt back to life.

  As she drove across Westminster Bridge she decided to ask Brock what she would be doing. He didn’t reply at first, gazing out of the side window at the sunlight glinting on the great wheel of the London Eye. Finally he said, ‘I want you to explain Verge to me, Kathy. Get me inside his head.

  I want to understand what he was thinking when he did it.

  What was in his mind as he drove down to the south coast?

  Maybe if we understand better how his journey began, we’ll have a better chance of working out where he’s ended up.’

  Sounds all right, she thought, then began to wonder how it could be done. Get inside his head. She pondered this as she negotiated the South Bank traffic, slowing at roadworks under the railway bridge by London Bridge station, past Southwark Cathedral then across Tower Bridge Road and into Bermondsey. Just lately, with Leon, she’d begun to doubt if it was possible to get inside anyone else’s head, especially a man’s. They’d been living together for six months, but there were parts of his mind that were completely closed to her, she knew, just as there were parts of hers that she hadn’t let him see. And if it was impossible with someone that close, how could you do it with a man who had vanished four months before?