The verge practice

10

A brisk north-easterly breeze gusted up the long slope of Greenwich Park, ruffling the hair of the little boy in the pushchair. Despite the wind the morning was mild, the sun glinting through a silvery sky and casting a shimmer of light on the surface of the river and the glassy towers of Canary Wharf beyond. Sandy Clarke stooped and lifted the child, setting him on his feet. Like a mechanised toy, the little legs immediately began pumping and the toddler hurtled off across the grass.

Clarke had surprised both his wife and himself when he had announced over breakfast that he wouldn’t be going in to the office that day. He added that he had paperwork he could do better in the peace of home, but that was fiction. In truth, it was simply an impulse, something to do with the claustrophobic atmosphere in the office and his inability to sleep these nights. And something, too, about the day itself, mild yet misty as if on a cusp between summer and winter, the past and the future, very like that other turning point, in May, when everything had changed forever.

When their daughter had arrived with their grandson later in the morning he had insisted on taking the child to the park, and now, watching him chasing tiny butterflies caught in the breeze, he found himself overwhelmed by a terrible sense of loss. The force of it made his eyes momentarily water and filled him with a desire to flee, not to some other place but to another time, twenty years before, when he had walked another child, his daughter, on this same grassy hillside. He had been cocky then, confident and strong. Now he felt like an impostor, as limp and undeserving as the used condom lying by his foot. They had worked on small buildings in those days, houses and office conversions, projects for which you could hold every detail in your mind. Now they tendered for whole cities. What madness was that, to imagine that you could design a whole city? All you made was a shell, an imitation of a real place. Had Charles felt that too, that their lives had insidiously progressed from the tangible and real to the grandiose and fake? For a moment Clarke was certain that he had, that Charles’s tragedy-all their tragedies-boiled down to that.

But all lives have a trajectory, he thought, an axis running inevitably onward, regardless of our doubts. The thought of axes, of intention and certainty, was comforting, and appropriate, too, in this place criss-crossed by organising lines. His eye strayed down to the great central axis of symmetry of the Queen’s House and Wren’s Naval College, so firm and bold. It continued, he knew, back up the hill to the south, and along Le Notre’s formal avenue to the gates of the park and then out across Blackheath to the spire of All Saints, and it also continued northward, aligning across the river to the distant Hawksmoor church of St Anne’s in Limehouse, hidden now by the modern piles on the Isle of Dogs. And even this grand four-mile-long axis paled into insignificance alongside the greatest axis of them all, the invisible meridian running through the Old Royal Observatory up there on the hill, the axis of zero longitude encircling the whole globe.

Clarke’s distracted musings on axes and life were interrupted by a figure approaching across the grass, striding as straight and purposeful as if following some invisible axis of its own; a bulky figure, hands thrust into the pockets of a black coat flapping in the breeze. Clarke recognised the cropped white hair and beard and braced himself. ‘Deliver me, Lord,’ he breathed in prayer, ‘from eternal death on that dreadful day…’

‘Morning!’ Brock hailed him as he came in range. ‘Beautiful day.’

They strolled across the slope, following the trail of the little boy. Clarke felt a great calm descend on him, and when the policeman didn’t seem inclined to broach the reason for his being there, Clarke saw no need to prevaricate.

‘You’ve come about the DNA test, I take it?’

‘Yes indeed.’

‘It was positive, was it?’ He took a deep breath, picking up the scent of distant chimneys. ‘I didn’t doubt it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’

Clarke bridled. The arrogance of these people was without limit, poking into everyone’s lives, requiring everything to be confessed. ‘It was and is none of your damn business, that’s why!’

The detective looked mildly puzzled. ‘When exactly did she tell Mr Verge?’

That stopped Clarke in his tracks. He felt the blood drain from his face. ‘Dear God… She told Charles? She swore…’ He tried to think clearly. ‘But of course, she’s told you too, I suppose.’ How absurd that he hadn’t realised that all along.

The policeman was looking distinctly unsettled now. He gazed at Clarke beneath lowered brows and said finally, ‘Look, Mr Clarke, let’s make a clean breast of it, eh? What have you got to tell me?’

Clarke gave a bitter laugh. ‘You want a confession, do you? I should have thought that was hardly necessary if you’ve got the tests, and she’s told you anyway.’ But the anger faded quickly. What was the point? ‘Very well, for the record, I acknowledge that I am the father of Charlotte Verge’s child.’

‘Blimey.’ Bren Gurney sat down beside Kathy who was watching the interview on the CCTV screen. ‘He was poking Verge’s wife and his daughter? We’d better check out his old mum, make sure Clarke wasn’t going for the triple crown.’

Brock was letting Clarke find his own pace. Since agreeing to make a formal statement the architect had behaved as if the act of confession had brought some relief. The question of a DNA test to confirm the parentage of Charlotte’s unborn child had apparently been preying on his mind for some time, and when the police had asked for a second DNA sample he had assumed that it was for this reason.

‘It was a farce, really. A farce that turned into a nightmare. I’ve never been caught out this way before. That it should happen at this stage, and with Charles’s daughter…’ He lifted his hands in a gesture of appeal to Brock, man to man. Brock looked up from the report of the DNA test in which he seemed to be more interested, and nodded sympathetically.

‘Charles and I had been invited to an architectural conference in Atlanta, last February. Charlotte had recently split up with her boyfriend of three years standing and was in the depths of despair, so at the last minute Charles invited her along. We’d been there a couple of days when some crisis blew up on the Marchdale Prison project and Charles had to fly back to London. I’d delivered my paper by that stage, and was getting a bit bored with the conference. The next morning I took Charlotte to see the Coca-Cola museum, and while we were there I mentioned that, in my opinion, the most beautiful city in the United States was Charleston in South Carolina. She’d never been there, and on an impulse we decided to go. I hired a car and we set off. That night we stayed in this rather seedy little motel, and I felt like Humbert Humbert with Lolita. It wasn’t a very pleasant feeling.

‘That was the farcical bit, and it lasted for one night only. The nightmare began a couple of months later when Charlotte told me that she was pregnant and I was the father. I was appalled, but she seemed rather… well, pleased. She insisted that she would have the baby and that my name would be kept out of it.’

‘This must have been a couple of weeks before Miki Norinaga was murdered?’

‘That’s right. After Charles disappeared, I contacted her again and said that I wanted to help her financially. She didn’t seem particularly concerned, but I sent her some money anyway.

‘Now look,’ Clarke sat up straighter in his chair and glared at Brock, ‘I’ve been completely open with you. But as far as I’m concerned this is a private matter between Charlotte and me. My wife doesn’t know and…’ He faltered. ‘I assume my wife doesn’t know. Good God, Charlotte hasn’t told her, too, has she? I can’t imagine what could have possessed her to tell her father. Are you sure about that? And what has this got to do with your inquiries? Surely you’re not suggesting that this has some bearing on what happened on the twelfth of May?’

The other person in the interview room was Tony, the financial expert, who, like Brock, seemed more interested in his papers than in what Clarke had to say. They were photocopied account statements and computer printouts, some of whose items Tony would tick as his eye ran down the sheets. But now, as Clarke ended on a somewhat plaintive note, he lifted his head and looked questioningly at Brock.

Brock cleared his throat as Clarke waited for a reply. ‘I think we’ve been at cross-purposes, Mr Clarke. When I asked when she had told Mr Verge, I wasn’t referring to Charlotte. You jumped to that conclusion. As far as I’m aware, Charlotte Verge has told no one of your involvement with her. She certainly hasn’t spoken to me.’

Clarke rocked back, stunned. ‘What! Then who…?’

‘It was your involvement with Miki Norinaga that I was interested in. That’s what the DNA tests were for.’

‘Oh Christ.’ Clarke rolled his head back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘So you know about that.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘I didn’t think… I have no reason to believe that she told Charles,’ he said, but without conviction. ‘It was a miserable affair. It meant nothing. She was being manipulative.’

‘Poor bloke,’ Kathy in the next room murmured. ‘All these women keep taking advantage of him.’

‘Yeah,’ Bren agreed. ‘Shocking. And them half his age.’

‘You’d better tell me about it,’ Brock said mildly.

‘Oh…’ Clarke sounded weary now, resigned. ‘It began a couple of months before that weekend in May. I’d given her a lift home from some function we’d been at. Charles was away. She started talking about the time when she’d first joined VP, and she accused me of flirting with her then. She was being playful, but I knew from past experience that when Miki acted coy she was up to something and you should watch out, so I didn’t respond. Then she asked me if Charles had discussed his impotence with me. I was shocked and embarrassed. She said she needed to talk to someone, so I went up to the flat with her, and that evening we became lovers.

‘It wasn’t like any other relationship I’d had. It was brutally functional, and I sensed that I was simply being recruited to her side for some looming battle with Charles. I tried to avoid it happening again, but she demanded periodic sex, like a tax, or tribute.’

‘What about that Friday evening, the eleventh of May, before Charles returned from America?’

‘Yes. We’d been preparing for the presentation we had on the Monday to a delegation of Chinese…’

‘Yes, you told us about that.’

‘Right. When we packed up for the night she demanded I go up to the apartment, to have a drink before I went home. It was about eight-thirty or so. I was tired, she mixed a pretty strong vodka tonic, and we talked for a while, then went to bed.’

‘Did she talk about Charles?’

‘Yes. She referred to him a couple of times with contempt, and I got the impression that things between them were coming to a head. As I said, I was dog-tired, and after we had sex I fell asleep for a short time and she had to wake me up. I felt terrible, had a shower and went home.’

‘Did she change the sheets after you got up?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose she might have.’

‘And the next day?’

‘It was as I’ve described. I picked Charles up at the airport the next morning and we looked at a site he was interested in on the way back. I dropped him off at the private lift to the flat, and didn’t see him or Miki again until we discovered her body on the Monday. I went home about five p.m.’

‘The statements of the people you were working with suggest that there were extended periods when you weren’t with them. You could have gone up to the apartment during that day.’

‘I could have done but I didn’t. I spent quite a bit of time alone in my office, dealing with correspondence and so on.’

Brock frowned, head bowed, as if profoundly disappointed. He glanced up at Tony, who gave a slight shake of his head.

‘It’s true,’ Clarke insisted.

‘No, it won’t do. Here you are working alongside Miki Norinaga for, what, five years? Then she seduces you and within a couple of months she’s murdered, possibly on the night that you last share her bed, according to the medical evidence.’

‘No!’

‘And at the same time her husband disappears,’ Brock pressed on, voice hard now, ‘and you’ve made it quite clear that he had very good reason to hate you, his closest business partner, who had seduced both his wife and his daughter. Is that how it was, Mr Clarke? Did Charles learn what you’d been up to when he returned that Saturday morning, and call you up to the apartment to confront you? What happened then?’

‘No! No!’ Sandy Clarke was on his feet now, his chair crashing back onto the floor. ‘This is insane. I won’t say another word, not a word. I want to leave now.’

Brock looked coldly at him for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll repeat that I’m not satisfied with your account, Mr Clarke. Before you rush off you might like to consider how it will look if you refuse to cooperate at this point.’ Then, voice becoming milder, he added, ‘I’ll suspend this interview now and we’ll leave you alone with a cup of tea to collect your thoughts. Maybe you’d like to call a legal advisor?’

Brock and Tony gathered up their papers and left the room. On their screen Kathy and Bren watched Clarke stare blankly at the closed door. For a moment it looked as if he would storm after them, but then he shook his head in a gesture of despair or disbelief, and began to pace up and down.

‘What do you think?’ Brock came into the observation room, Tony in his wake.

‘He sounds plausible,’ Kathy suggested, ‘but he’s the type that would.’ She looked at his clothes, expensive understated casuals-windcheater, slacks and leather loafers. He had come to a halt in the middle of the interview room, hands in pockets, head bowed, deep in thought.

‘I’d like you to talk to Charlotte Verge again, Kathy,’ Brock said. ‘See what her version is. The timing of her announcement to Clarke about the baby sounds significant, so close to the murder. Maybe she did say something to her father or stepmother. But be discreet. Take a copy of the transcript of this interview with you. You might find some discrepancies.’

On the screen Clarke looked up as an officer came into the room with a cup of tea. As he left again, Clarke sat down at the table, took out a diary and began to make notes.

‘Tony, I can see you’re anxious to get on to the money matters,’ Brock went on. ‘We’ll do that next, if he decides to cooperate.’

A tray of polystyrene cups of tea was brought for the watchers, who waited in silence as the figure in the room tapped a silver pen in agitation against the pages of his diary, kneading his forehead with his other hand as if to squeeze memories out of his brain. Finally, he got to his feet and strode over to the door, where he spoke to the officer who stood outside. A moment later this man put his head around the door of the observation room.

‘He’s ready to talk to you again, sir.’

‘Good.’ Brock and Tony picked up their files and made for the door.

‘I suppose,’ Clarke began, when they were seated again around the interview table, ‘that panicking people is part of your technique, is it? Throwing wild accusations at them and seeing what they let slip.’ He was calm again, in control of himself, determined not to be fazed. ‘The problem with that is it can just create confusion. I’ve been going over that evening in my mind again, the last time I saw Miki, that Friday night, and I don’t think I’ve really made clear to you what it was like.’

He waited for Brock to challenge him, but the DCI only nodded in a vague sort of way, as if not greatly interested.

Clarke drew a small circle in the margin of his diary with his silver pen, then drew a straight line through it. ‘You see, her whole manner that evening was odd, out of character. When she insisted I go up to the apartment for a drink after we’d finished our work, I felt there was something in the wind, something involving Charles, presumably, that was preoccupying her. I assumed she wanted my support in some scheme or other, but she seemed to have difficulty getting to the point. She talked about the past, before she arrived on the scene, about Charles’s relationship with his first wife, Gail, but I couldn’t make out where she was heading. At one point she made some cryptic remark about having married the wrong partner, but I didn’t really follow. And then, when she started to get amorous, I thought to myself that she was just trying to soften me up so she could share this big confidence, whatever it was, about Charles, and all I could think was how grotesque it was, because amorous seduction just wasn’t her style at all.’

Clarke paused, looking questioningly at Brock, who still said nothing.

‘Well, don’t you see? I think she knew that there was this big row brewing with Charles, when he got back from the States, and she’d been hoping to get some sort of ammunition or support from me. But when it came to the point, she just couldn’t bring herself to confide in me.’

He fell silent, the tip of the silver pen hovering over the page.

‘Hmm. That’s it, is it, Mr Clarke?’ Brock said at last. ‘Nothing else you’d like to tell us?’

‘No, that’s it.’ Clarke snapped the diary shut and slipped it and the pen into his jacket pocket.

‘Only we’d like to move on to other matters now. Tony?’

Tony cleared his throat and leaned forward, tracing his finger across an item on the page in front of him. ‘Ahem, yes,’ he began softly, diffidently even, as if broaching a delicate subject. ‘I’d like to ask you about a payment made to a company called Turnstile Quality Systems Limited, or TQS, on the first of March of last year, in the sum of twenty-three thousand, one hundred and eighteen pounds and sixty-five pence.’

Clarke looked at him in astonishment for a moment, then turned to Brock. ‘Are you serious? What is this?’

‘Quite serious, Mr Clarke,’ Tony said.

Clarke turned his gaze back to his lugubrious interrogator and gave a little snort of amusement. ‘You sound like a quantity surveyor,’ he said. ‘How the hell should I know?’

‘Well, you did authorise the payment, Mr Clarke, and nobody else seems to know anything about this company.’

‘What?’ Clarke shook his head, becoming annoyed. ‘What was the name again?’

‘Turnstile Quality Systems.’

‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

Tony turned the page and ran his finger down the next. ‘In the following month, sixteenth of April last year, you authorised a second payment to TQS,?86,453.27p. Do you remember that one?’

‘No,’ Clarke’s voice was insistent, ‘I don’t.’

‘Or a third in May, larger again-?156,978.50p.’

‘No! They’re obviously a contractor of some kind. Stage payments on a contract. The name means nothing to me, but someone must know. What contract number is it set against? What does it say on the payment certificates?’

‘Well, that’s the thing, Mr Clarke. There were no job certificates issued for these payments, no contract number quoted, and the funds were drawn from the Verge Practice working account, on your signature.’

‘What?’ Clarke looked startled.

‘That’s a quarter of a million pounds in just over three months, and the payments went on, right up to April of this year, a grand total of?1,932,786.90p drawn from Verge Practice funds in favour of a company that nobody knows anything about.’

Clarke frowned, thinking. ‘I… I don’t know. We invest working capital and surplus income in various ways-property, funds, cash management accounts, I don’t know. And last year was a very strong year. Surely the accountants, our bookkeepers…?’

‘They know nothing about it.’

‘That’s impossible. No, look, you’ve made a mistake. What are you suggesting, anyway?’

‘Does the name Kraus mean anything to you, Mr Clarke?’

Brock, who, despite appearances, was watching Sandy Clarke closely at this point, saw the man become very still. There was silence for a long moment.

‘Kraus? How do you spell that?’

‘K-R-A-U-S. Martin Kraus.’

‘No,’ Clarke sounded offhand. ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

‘He’s listed as the sole director of Turnstile Quality Systems.’

Clarke withdrew his diary and pen from his pocket again and wrote the names in the inside cover of the book. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing, I’m afraid. But I’ll check through my address book and email directory if you like, just to make sure.’

‘Good idea,’ Brock said, not mentioning that they had already done that.