The Verge Practice

by Barry Maitland

  As if he were reading her mind, Brock said, ‘You might have a talk with his mother, and while you’re doing it, imagine her as a man, and twenty years younger.’

  Not a bad idea. Maybe she should do the same thing with Leon’s mum, the tyrant of the Desais.

  ‘And if that doesn’t work, you might get some inspiration from this . . .’ Brock reached into his briefcase and pulled out the kids’ scrapbook. ‘Stewart and Miranda put it together. Quite a good effort, and a lot more lively than our files.’

  Kathy smiled. She knew the children, abandoned by their mother to their grandmother’s care, and she knew of their ambivalent attitude to Brock, seen sometimes as a heroic crime-fighter and other times as an intruder threatening the security of their home. She wondered if this project was an attempt by Stewart to come to terms with his grandmother’s friend.

  She turned off Jamaica Road into a maze of narrow streets that led towards the old brick warehouses lining the south bank of the river. Tyres drumming on granite cobbles, she slowed opposite a vertical plane of glass, shockingly naked among all this brick and stone, which she recognised from a picture in the Verge Practice brochure that Superintendent Chivers had circulated at the briefing.

  In the photograph, the half-dozen floors behind the glass had been filled with people, illuminated like mannequins in a department-store window or actors in some kind of experimental theatre, but now she could see no one.

  A woman was waiting for them, introducing herself as Jennifer Mathieson, information manager, her red hair made more vivid by a black silk blouse and suit. As she led them to a glass lift in the central atrium, Kathy noticed that not only the structure of the building, but also all of its furniture and fittings—including the reception desk, stairs and tables—were made of glass and glittering stainless-steel rods.

  ‘It was you who found the body, wasn’t it, Ms Mathieson?’ Brock asked as they glided upwards.

  ‘That’s right.’ She sounded nonchalant, the shock and immediacy of her discovery long gone. ‘I’ll take you up to the apartment after you’ve seen Sandy Clarke.’

  The lift sighed to a stop and she led the way to a glass-enclosed office to one side of the atrium with a view out over the river. The room was spartan and immaculately neat, a row of gold-embossed design award certificates forming a frieze along one wall. Clarke rose to his feet from behind his desk, shook hands gravely and they took their places on black leather swivel chairs arranged around a glass-topped table.

  He was tall, careful and rather elegant in both dress and movements. He straightened his tie with fingers that were long and delicate, like a pianist’s. ‘Has there been some new development?’ he asked, and it seemed to Kathy that the possibility worried him.

  But as Brock explained the changes to the investigating team Clarke looked pained, as if at the thought of having to go through the whole thing again for their benefit. ‘It all seems academic now,’ he said, voice flat. ‘You’re not going to find him after all this time, are you?’

  ‘You think he’s found a secure bolthole?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. As I told your colleagues, I find this whole tragedy inexplicable. The idea of Charles committing murder and then running away just doesn’t make any sort of sense to me. Both actions would be completely out of character.’

  ‘Is there any other plausible explanation?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Clarke sighed as if reluctant to go over old ground, and ran a smoothing hand over hair which was still thick, though flecked with grey. ‘My only thought was that he must have disturbed an intruder when he went up to his flat that morning, someone who had already killed Miki, and then forced Charles to leave with him. But I accept that you’ve found no evidence of anything like that.’

  Brock nodded. There had been no sign of a forced entry or a struggle. ‘You were the last person to see him that Saturday morning, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. He’d been over in California for the previous three days on a project, and I picked him up at Heathrow after an overnight flight from Los Angeles. He was his usual self, energetic, wanting to know what had been going on, and he got me to make a detour on the way home to look at a site he was interested in. When we reached our offices I gave him a copy of a report we’d done for a presentation on the following Monday, so that he could brief himself over the weekend, and he took the private lift straight up to his apartment. I worked in the office for the rest of the morning, then went home, and I didn’t see either him or Miki again.’

  ‘What about Mrs Madelaine Verge’s theory, about some kind of commercial sabotage?’

  Clarke shook his head ruefully. ‘I know she’s convinced herself it’s the only explanation, and I can’t blame her for that, but it doesn’t stack up. Oh, I’m not saying that some of our competitors wouldn’t stoop to dirty tricks. A couple of years ago a large model of a competition entry of ours for a new parliament building in East Africa mysteriously caught fire the night before the presentation, and we were pretty sure it was no accident. But not this, not murder.

  Apart from anything else, the Americans who won the Wuxang City project didn’t need to resort to anything like that. They won because they undercut our fee bid, that’s all.

  They wanted it more than we did, and cut their fee below what we were prepared to contemplate.’

  ‘What about other projects?’

  ‘No, it’s really not plausible. Knocking us out wouldn’t necessarily guarantee that a particular competitor would get the job. It’s not credible.’

  ‘How long have you worked with Mr Verge, Mr Clarke?’

  ‘Almost twenty-five years. I joined him in the early days, soon after he and his first wife, Gail, returned from America, when we worked from a couple of rooms in the house they’d bought in Fulham.’

  ‘So you know him very well. How would you describe him?’

  ‘Oh . . . totally committed, passionate about his work, tremendous energy, inspirational, a great persuader, very imaginative . . .’ The adjectives trailed off.

  Brock said, ‘I heard someone describe him as an egotistical bastard.’

  Clarke allowed himself a little smile. ‘He would probably have accepted that, a necessary part of the job.

  You see, to arrive at a design concept with absolute clarity, and then to sustain it through the years of challenges and difficulties of getting it built, you need a certain single-mindedness, a confidence in your own judgement that might be interpreted as arrogance. And we all accept that.

  Anyone coming to work here knows that they have to do things the Verge way.’

  ‘Yes, but in personal matters . . . a passionate man, you said. Capable of a crime of passion?’

  ‘Passionate about his work, I said. But he didn’t allow his emotions to run away with him. He was much more deliberate. That’s what I found so inexplicable.’

  ‘And you didn’t notice any changes in his behaviour in the months leading up to the murder?’

  ‘I’ve thought a lot about that. I mentioned that I’d seen him taking pills a couple of times, but I understand his doctor wasn’t prescribing anything, so they were probably just aspirin or vitamins or something. As for his manner, I thought he did seem more agitated lately, less inclined to concentrate, which I put down to overwork. And I was aware, the whole office was, of some undercurrent between him and Miki. More on her side, actually. She seemed less dependent on him, less willing to defer.’

  ‘Ms Norinaga was strong-willed too, was she?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘How did that work, if he was so used to being number one?’

  ‘At first she was his devoted disciple, hung on his every word. Then later, after they were married, he indulged her, encouraged her to express her own ideas.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it was natural that she’d want to do that. She was an architect in her own right, wasn’t she?’

  ‘It was hardly the same,’ Clarke retorted. ‘Charles was immeasurably more experienced, and talented
. I mean, Miki had only been out of architecture school for a few years.’

  ‘Do you think he might have been losing his touch?

  I suppose architects can go off, like soccer players?’

  ‘It doesn’t usually work like that. Architecture is a long game, and architects tend to get better with age and experience. Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of his greatest masterpieces in his eighties. Charles wasn’t even approaching his peak . . .’ Clarke paused as if struck by some thought.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It just occurred to me—Wright’s second wife was murdered, too. Their servant went berserk with an axe, if I remember rightly, killed her and burned the house down.’

  Brock sucked his mouth doubtfully. ‘You’re not suggesting a parallel?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. Only . . .’ He shook his head.

  ‘Goodness . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, Miki Norinaga was the niece of a client of ours in Japan—that was how she came to work for us here in the first place, as a young graduate. And Frank Lloyd Wright’s second wife—I’m trying to remember this from history lectures and I’m not even sure if they ever married— anyway, she was the wife of one of his clients. Wright had this breakdown, burnt out when he turned forty, and he ran away with her to Europe. They told nobody, just took flight and disappeared. Then later, after they’d returned to America and he’d built this house, she was murdered . . .’

  Clarke took a deep breath and seemed to pull himself together. ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t relevant. What else can I tell you?’

  Brock fished inside his suit pocket for his half-rim glasses, propped them on his nose and began to turn the pages of his notebook as if looking for something. Clarke waited for him with a frown.

  ‘How was his sex life?’

  Clarke looked startled. ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s?’

  ‘Charles Verge. Were there any difficulties in that area?’

  Clarke’s face darkened. ‘I wouldn’t know. We didn’t talk about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Really? Not even a hint? Is there any possibility she might have had a boyfriend?’

  ‘No,’ Clarke said flatly. ‘I went through all this with the last people. We would have had some inkling if she had.’

  ‘And you noticed nothing odd in his manner that Saturday morning?’

  ‘I’ve gone over that hour in my mind a hundred times.

  He seemed absolutely normal, a bit tired from the flight, but untroubled.’

  Brock seemed unhappy with this reply. ‘From his photographs I got the impression that he’d lost a bit of weight recently, let his hair grow.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s sometimes difficult to notice small changes when you see someone almost every day, but Denise, my wife, commented that he’d lost weight. She thought he was looking younger.’

  ‘Was he drinking more?’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed . . . He certainly wasn’t affected by drink that morning.’

  Brock said nothing for a moment, studying his notes, then asked, ‘So there was no sign, looking back, that anything was wrong?’

  ‘Premeditated?’ The word burst abruptly from Clarke, who seemed almost as surprised by it as the detectives. He flushed and added, ‘Is that what you’re thinking? That Charles planned it?’

  It wasn’t what Brock had meant, but he was intrigued by Clarke’s response. ‘Is that a possibility, would you say?’

  Clarke shook his head firmly. ‘No, I’m sure it isn’t.’ He swung his chair round to face the glass wall overlooking the river. ‘How could it be?’ He stared out at a gang of pigeons wheeling in the sky as if he would have liked to join them.

  Honest men, Kathy thought, trained as boys to tell the truth, and despite a lifetime of contrary experience, can betray themselves in small ways. They begin fiddling with paperclips or suddenly avoid a questioner’s eyes, as Clarke had just done. Curiously, she found it harder to spot the same signs in women.

  Brock seemed to have had the same perception. He stared thoughtfully at Clarke for a moment, then turned to the information manager. ‘What about you, Ms Mathieson? Did you notice any change in his manner?’

  ‘Well, you’re right about him losing weight. I think it was stress. And I did think he’d lost interest a bit lately. Do you remember the last awards night, Sandy? We were up against the other big London names—Foster, Rogers, Wilford—for the annual design awards, and that usually brought out the competitive side of Charles. But he seemed almost indifferent last time.’

  Clarke shrugged and glanced at his watch. ‘I’m rather pressed for time at present, Chief Inspector. Do you think I might hand you over to Jennifer to show you the flat, and Charles’s office too, if you wish?’

  ‘Just one more thing, Mr Clarke. I understand you were also the last person to see Ms Norinaga alive, on the Friday night?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. We were working late on the presentation for the Chinese on the following Monday. The others finished about eight, but Miki and I went on till eleven.’

  ‘That’s late.’

  ‘Yes, there was a lot to do to get everything ready so the media team could finish the video for Monday.’

  ‘How was Ms Norinaga when you left her?’

  ‘Tired, but quite cheerful. Excited about the project.’

  ‘She didn’t mention anyone coming to visit her that weekend?’

  ‘No, she didn’t say what her plans were.’

  ‘And you didn’t go up to her apartment that evening before you left?’

  ‘No.’

  Kathy knew that the autopsy hadn’t been able to establish the time of death more closely than the twenty-four hours between the Friday and Saturday evenings.

  Brock nodded, and he and Kathy got to their feet and followed Jennifer Mathieson, leaving Clarke contemplating the pigeons whirling outside his window.

  ‘There are two penthouse apartments,’ Mathieson explained as they waited for the lift. ‘The idea was that the senior partners would live there and share a housekeeper and cook, but in the end only Charles moved in. Sandy and Denise couldn’t face living on top of the shop, I suppose.’

  ‘So the other flat was unoccupied at the time of the murder?’

  ‘That’s right. There were people working down on the office floors over that weekend, but this lift gives independent access to the penthouse floor from the street and the basement car park, where Charles kept his Landy.’

  Kathy looked at the floors stacked like bookshelves around the atrium. There were people working at computers and drawing boards, a group clustered around a table, but not as many as she had expected.

  When she commented on this, Mathieson lowered her voice and said, ‘Our staff has shrunk by a third in the last four months. It’s been a catastrophe.’

  The lift arrived and they stepped in. When the doors closed she went on, voice normal again, ‘In fact, I’m moving on myself. It became pretty clear in the months after Charles disappeared that things were going to change, with projects being cancelled and no new ones coming in.

  Sandy puts a brave face on it, but I’d be surprised if they’re still in this building a year from now.’

  There was little in the apartment to add to what they had already learned from the police video and still photographs of the crime scene, except that it could now be appreciated in the context of the whole building, with the same steel and glass detailing carried through into its bathrooms and kitchen and furnishings generally. It occurred to Kathy that the Japanese kitchen knives looked as if they could have come from this same kit of parts, so that it was almost as if Miki Norinaga had been killed with a splinter of the building itself. The only colourful element in the whole flat was a large painting in the living room. It was an abstract with geometric figures, squares and segments of circles, in vivid primary colours, and the contrast between it and the severe constraint of the rest of the interior hadn’t been apparent on the video. The signature in the bo
ttom corner meant nothing to Kathy, but those on the black outfits in Miki’s wardrobe certainly did.

  After they’d had a good look round, each taking notes, Jennifer Mathieson took them back to the lift and down to the level of Clarke’s office, but this time she led them to the opposite side of the atrium, where Charles Verge had had his office. She opened the door with a key.

  ‘Apart from his computer and his diary, which your people took away, everything is exactly as it was last May.’

  There were a desk and chairs identical to those in Clarke’s room, bookshelves, a drawing table and another low table on which a model stood. On the drawing table lay an open book, a roll of yellow tracing paper and a pencil abandoned on some rough sketches, as if Verge had only just stepped outside. Despite the similarity to Clarke’s office, the atmosphere seemed quite different, more sombre and purposeful. There were no framed certificates on the walls, but just one etching, of what looked like some gigantic ancient crypt, with iron rings attached to huge stone piers. It was hung directly over the model, which was a large grey and white construction beneath a clear Perspex cover. Kathy looked back up at the etching, trying to work out if there was supposed to be a connection, when a voice behind her said, ‘Piranesi, eighteenth century.’

  She turned and saw Sandy Clarke at the door, observing her.

  ‘He drew fantastical prison scenes, terrifying and sublime. And that . . .’ Clarke pointed at the model, ‘. . . is Charles’s last masterpiece, the Home Office project; not quite so terrifying, perhaps, but possibly sublime.’

  ‘It’s a prison, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, a radically new kind. Designed not just to punish or rehabilitate, but to change the man. I paraphrase, I’m not altogether au fait with the theory, but that’s the essence of it. The building, along with the regime, the training programs, the medications and so on, is designed to reconstruct personalities, to make new men.’ He said this with a slight sceptical lift of the eyebrow. ‘Charles was fascinated by the idea. No, more than that, obsessed with it. He even spent some time in gaol as part of his research.’