The Verge Practice

by Barry Maitland

  ‘It took me some time to realise that, not only would Miki never join me in my new life, but that she would do everything she could to ridicule and destroy it. I imagined her regaling our London friends with tales about her ludicrous ex-husband, doing interviews for newspapers and TV shows, writing her memoirs, My Life with the Freak, turning me into a national and international joke. And I also saw her destroying my reputation as an architect, taking over the practice, taking credit for my work, and especially for Marchdale.

  ‘When I realised all that, I began to see that another plan would be necessary to achieve my flight from Charles Verge. I made her promise to say nothing until I was ready to make an announcement to my family and closest friends, and meanwhile I began to arrange the destruction not only of Miki, but of the Verge Practice, when I finally departed.’

  It occurred to Kathy that he might have changed his sex and his appearance, but the self-absorption, the egomania, were unchanged. ‘How did Sandy Clarke deserve to be your victim too?’

  Luz waved a dismissive hand. ‘Sandy was a mediocre talent who made an extraordinarily good living from riding on my coat-tails for twenty-five years. He was also screwing my wife. It was time for payback. I knew that if Miki died in suspicious circumstances and I disappeared, I would be blamed. I had to provide an alternative explanation both for the murder and for the money funnelled out of the practice to fund my new life. But what the bloody hell were the police playing at? I left the ground thick with clues, and the bumbling plod missed them all. Didn’t they find Sandy’s glasses in the bedroom, his pen in the bed, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Sandy removed those when he discovered the body.’

  ‘Oh.’ Luz looked annoyed. ‘What about the bed linen?

  Miki boasted to me that morning when I got back from the States that Sandy had slept in her damn bed. Didn’t he leave any traces?’

  ‘She’d already changed and washed the sheets,’ Kathy said, but didn’t mention the pillowcase that had had such ramifications.

  ‘Well, what about his driving glove? I took that from his car when he picked me up at the airport that morning, and left it in my car at the beach. Didn’t you trace that back to him?’

  ‘It had never been worn. It was assumed to be yours.’

  ‘And the missing money? Didn’t the accountants pick that up?’

  ‘Only now.’

  ‘Hell.’ Luz shook her head. ‘I didn’t imagine it would be so difficult. I didn’t intend for Sandy to die, not until I found out what he did to Charlotte. Perhaps I should have stuck to designing buildings, not murders. But I’ve always believed that any design problem, no matter how intractable, has a solution, if one only has the imagination and nerve.’ She caught Kathy looking at her, the question in her eyes, and am I next? Luz turned away, and in that equivocation Kathy thought she saw the fate in store for her.

  ‘You’d better bed down here, while I work out what to do now,’ Luz said. ‘There’s blankets and linen in the drawers over there.’

  ‘If you threaten the children, Stewart and Miranda, Brock will never rest until he’s taken care of you.’

  ‘Of course we shan’t touch them. That was a rather clumsy initiative of George’s. He was concerned that your boss was going to persist and needed warning off. I promise you, there’s nothing to be concerned about in that area.’

  Kathy nodded. ‘And the same goes for me. I’ve got an important meeting first thing tomorrow, and if I don’t show up all hell will break loose.’

  It sounded feeble even as she said it, and she saw that Luz was unimpressed.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll work things out.’ She got up to call George in, but Kathy stopped her, wanting to keep her talking.

  ‘I’d like to know what Lizancos did to you, exactly.’

  ‘Everything he could think of. I was the last opportunity for an old man to display his talent, his last masterpiece. He thinks of himself as an artist too, you see, his medium being flesh and bone, and once he’d begun I didn’t have much say in the matter.’

  Kathy remembered the first time she’d seen Luz in this house, and the rubber gloves. ‘Your fingerprints?’

  ‘Yes, he had a go at those too. It was something he’d always wanted to try, he said, to transplant toe pads to fingertips. I’m still having trouble with them. He’d have transplanted my whole hands if I’d let him—they’re too large, of course. The most difficult thing has been something he couldn’t alter, my voice. I took voice lessons in Barcelona, but I’ve been terrified that some rhythms of speech, some characteristic sounds, would be there for Charlotte or Madelaine to pick up. But they didn’t.’ Luz smiled, proud of herself.

  ‘And in the end, did it work? Are you a woman?’

  The smile faltered, then was forced back. ‘Of course.

  I told you, I always have been.’

  Kathy wasn’t convinced. It was a rehearsed answer, she felt, a response to Miki’s challenge that what he was attempting to do was impossible.

  Luz went to the door and spoke to George, who came in and checked the windows, taking keys from the security locks. ‘Triple glazed, toughened glass,’ he told Kathy.

  ‘Sleep well,’ Luz said, and she and George left. Kathy heard the lock click, then made a hurried inspection of the room. There seemed no way out. She found cutlery in a kitchen drawer, and although the larger knives had been removed, there was a selection of smaller ones. She chose a couple, wrapped herself in a blanket and put out the light.

  30

  Kathy stirred with the first glimmer of grey dawn through the little windows. She could hear nothing, no dawn chorus through the heavy glazing, only the soft hum of the refrigerator and ducted airconditioning, and was filled with a sense of dread about the day ahead.

  At one point she thought she heard the faint murmur of a vehicle starting up, then nothing but more long silence.

  Noticing a small intercom grille beside the door, she went over to it and pressed her thumb on the button. After a while the speaker crackled and George’s voice said, ‘Morning.’

  ‘What’s going on, George? It’s seven-thirty. I need to go.’

  ‘Patience. There’s food in the fridge and cupboards.

  Make yourself some breakfast.’

  ‘I don’t want breakfast, I want . . .’ But the line had gone dead.

  She found some orange juice, and ate a piece of bread and marmalade, discovering that, despite a lingering nausea in the back of her throat, she was hungry.

  Eight o’clock came and went, and Kathy experienced an odd sense of detachment, imagining the reactions when she failed to keep her appointment with Commander Sharpe.

  She tried the intercom again.

  ‘Hello? Luz, George?’

  ‘Patience,’ George’s voice repeated. ‘Watch TV. Read a book.’

  She made a cup of coffee, and pictured the scene in Sharpe’s office, the angry call to Brock, the consternation in Queen Anne’s Gate. Presumably, Brock had been told about her trouble in Barcelona. What was he thinking now, that she’d done a bunk? The police conference was starting today, she remembered, and she imagined Sharpe and the other top brass in full uniform discussing her case between sessions. The first of the working parties would be presenting their paper that afternoon. Hers was due the next day.

  She switched on breakfast TV and watched, like a prisoner spying through a keyhole, the normal world outside, remote and unattainable.

  Half an hour later she stopped pacing and tried the intercom again. ‘George, I want to speak to Luz. Put her on, please.’

  ‘Sorry, she’s busy. We’re in the middle of delicate negotiations. She says you’re to stay calm and not worry.

  She’ll work things out, but it may take some time. And there’s no point buzzing me all the time. Save it for an emergency. You’ve got plenty of grub down there and stacks of channels. Put your feet up, watch a movie.’ He clicked off.

  What negotiations? Were they bargaining for her life?


  She paced around the flat again, searching for something, an access cover, a floor duct, anything that might give her an outlet to the world outside. Nothing. The only possibility for breaking out seemed to be to find something to smash through the glass of a window. She felt for the tea-knife in her pocket and stared at the stone wall, wondering how many years it would take her to dig her way out.

  By ten Brock was in a cold sweat. He’d had no contact with Kathy since Friday night, sixty hours earlier. She had seemed disappointed that the Verge investigation had been shut down, but not unduly so. Then they had parted and he had thought no more about it until he got the phone message on Sunday afternoon that one of his officers had gone berserk in Barcelona, and would he kindly get his arse back to London. He had had no sleep since. He had gone himself to meet her plane at Heathrow, but a cloudburst had jammed traffic on the M4 and by the time he had arrived the passengers were already dispersing. British Airways confirmed that she had been on the flight, and he had assumed she was making her way back to her flat in Finchley. He drove there, and spent half the night sitting outside the building, phoning people until his batteries ran down. Her phone wasn’t answering, and no one else he could think of—Bren, Leon, Suzanne, Linda Moffat—had heard from her. At three a.m. he went home, thinking she might be waiting for him there. She wasn’t, and he raised the alarm.

  When Sharpe phoned at three minutes past nine to find out why the hell DS Kolla hadn’t turned up for her appointment, Brock informed him that she was now listed as missing. ‘Missing?’ Sharpe had growled. ‘Missing in the head, or what? Christ, Brock, this was supposed to be your star. What’re the rest of your cowboys like?’

  When he’d rung off, Brock had sent Bren to Finchley to gain entry to Kathy’s flat, to see if there were any clues as to her whereabouts there. Apart from an altercation with a neighbour who thought he was a burglar, Bren had nothing to report. There was no sign that Kathy had returned to the flat, and nothing apart from a scribbled note of plane times to connect to the events of the weekend.

  If only she’d got engaged to Leon, Kathy thought, and he’d bought her a very large diamond engagement ring, she might have been able to cut her way through the glass. She lifted the small iron she’d found in a cupboard and extended her arm. In her left hand she was gripping a steel leg that she’d managed to detach from a chair. She swung the iron at the glass. There was a solid bang that jarred her arm and reverberated through the structure of the building; a star formed in the glass. She tried again, and the star spread. With the third blow the glass shattered. But this was only the first of three layers.

  She heard feet on the stairs and ran towards the door, dropping the iron and lifting the chair leg to shoulder height. She pressed herself flat against the wall alongside the door and waited. The door burst open and she swung her weapon, but there was no one there.

  A voice outside in the hallway said, with a weary sigh, ‘What do you think this is, James bleeding Bond? Come on, luv, I’ve been around too long. Back off.’

  Feeling somewhat sheepish, Kathy stepped away from the door and George appeared, a small automatic in his hand, aimed in the general direction of her midriff. ‘Ooh . . .’ he frowned at what she was holding. ‘That’s an early Eames prototype that is. Worth a bomb. Hope you haven’t done any permanent damage. Luz’ll kill you.’

  ‘I was thinking that might be the general idea,’ Kathy said, her heart thumping from the adrenaline.

  He clucked scoldingly. ‘I told you to be patient.’

  ‘Where is she, George?’

  ‘Do you want me to cuff you to the bench?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well behave then. Watch telly, have some food. You look like you could use it. There’s some choice stuff in the fridge. I bought it myself.’

  ‘Why are you getting mixed up in this, George? You’re on parole. They’ll put you back inside forever. Let me out now and I’ll do the best I can for you.’

  ‘Save it.’ He stepped back and slammed the door closed behind him.

  It was late afternoon before George appeared again. He knocked on the door and pushed it open cautiously.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Where to?’ she asked, suddenly reluctant to leave the security of her prison.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Queen Anne’s Gate.’

  ‘Okay.’ He turned on his heel and she hurried after him.

  When she reached the top of the spiral staircase she had the impression that the house was deserted. She noticed a large painting had been taken down from the wall of the studio.

  They continued on up to the entry pavilion, and George held the passenger door of the car open for her. Her backpack was on the seat. She got in and they set off along the misty autumn lanes, passing the village pub, its lights on for the evening trade.

  When they reached the M25 Kathy said, ‘Come on, George. What’s happening?’

  ‘She’s gone. You won’t be seeing her again, none of us will. She just needed a bit of time to get clear.’ He glanced over at Kathy, her expression suspicious in the wash of passing lights.

  ‘What, no amazing corpseless death?’

  ‘No. She always knew it might come to this. After the opening of Marchdale she thought she was in the clear, but she couldn’t be sure. There was always the chance of some bloody-minded copper or reporter figuring it out.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So she had arrangements in place. She’s still got her money, of course, and by now she’s a long way away and somebody else. There’s no chance of catching up with her this time.’

  ‘Are you really letting me go, George?’

  ‘Yeah, really. I advised against it, you might like to know. Loose end, I said, but she didn’t see it that way. She wants the cops to know, and not be able to say or do a thing about it. Otherwise, she said, it would be like designing a building and not having anyone know it’s yours. She said this was her last big design.’

  ‘What makes you so sure they won’t do anything?’

  ‘We’ll see, shall we?’

  ‘What about Madelaine and Charlotte? How do they feel about all this?’

  ‘They know nothing. Nobody does, except you and me, and I’ve got a watertight alibi for the last twenty-four hours.’

  Kathy was silent, thinking. They came to the M4, but then, at the next junction, turned off at the signs to Heathrow. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the way.’

  ‘I’ll drop you off at the taxi rank here.’ He felt in his pocket and produced some cash that he handed to her. ‘Luz told me to look after you. Here you go.’ He pulled over to the kerb. ‘Goodbye, Kathy. As far as I’m concerned, none of this happened.’

  She watched him roar away, then walked over to the taxi queue and caught a cab into town. As it pulled to a halt at Queen Anne’s Gate, she looked up at the brightly lit windows and wondered what sort of reception she would get.

  The first person she bumped into in the corridor was Bren, who goggled as if seeing someone risen from the dead.

  ‘Kathy! We’ve been looking everywhere. What happened to you?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Bren. Is Brock about?’

  ‘In his office, yeah. You’d better get up there. Are you okay? No damage?’

  ‘I’m fine. Catch up later.’

  But Bren came with her up the stairs all the same, as if she might disappear once again.

  Dot’s desk was empty, and Kathy knocked on Brock’s door. There was a muffled ‘Come’ and she pushed it open.

  Brock was bending over a pile of papers. He straightened with a cry, and, in a spontaneous gesture that took her by surprise, grabbed her and pulled her to him.

  ‘Kathy! I thought . . .’ He hugged her for a moment, then stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, embarrassed now at this display. ‘I really thought . . .’ Then he seemed to force a frown across his face. ‘Dear God, you’ve had us in a panic. What happened to you?’

 
Kathy turned to Bren, standing behind her in the doorway. ‘I need to talk to Brock alone.’

  He nodded and closed the door softly behind him.

  Kathy and Brock sat down, and she told him her story.

  At the end of it he shook his head. ‘I don’t know where to begin, Kathy. It’s like some textbook exercise on how to make every mistake under the sun. They’ll be using this at Bramshill for training purposes, and no one’ll believe it could actually be true.’

  Kathy lowered her head, accepting the inevitable.

  ‘. . . dashing off without talking to me first. Not saying a word!’

  ‘I thought that would only make things worse, involving you,’ she offered, trying to sound contrite.

  ‘No back-up, no explanation. Where did that leave us when things went wrong?’

  He went on, twenty-four hours of sleepless anxiety resolving itself into anger and dismay. Kathy said as little as possible, answering the odd point, making necessary explanations about some of the more lurid disasters, the breakins, the drunk driving.

  ‘And how you could then, knowing what you did, have agreed to get into that car with Diaz and Todd . . .’

  ‘I needed evidence,’ she said reasonably. ‘I knew I was about to be kicked off the force. I needed something concrete.’

  He shook his head in despair. ‘It’s not the first time, Kathy. I sometimes think you have some kind of death wish . . .’

  But she sensed the anger fade and something else take its place, a sort of astonished admiration, not so much for her as for Charles Verge.

  ‘He really did that? I had no idea. And none of them knew? No one recognised him, his mother, his daughter . . .?

  It’s incredible.’

  ‘You do believe it, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ He was thinking of Gail Lewis’s story of the hermit crab dragging around the wrong shell. Yet she, like everyone else, had misinterpreted the image. ‘Yes, I do.’

  When the interrogation was over, Brock poured them both a scotch and sat back, thinking.

  ‘Lizancos will have destroyed his tapes and files, we can be sure of that. But Luz Diaz couldn’t have lived at Briar Hill for the past few months without leaving DNA traces, no matter how well they’ve cleaned the place.’