The verge practice

12

There was a sting in Madelaine Verge’s bounty, Kathy discovered later, though she could hardly blame her for it. She had spotted the superstore on the road back to the A41, just as she’d been directed, and had driven in to the huge car park, relatively quiet at this time on a Friday afternoon. She filled a trolley with groceries, returned to the car and swore. A side window was smashed, chunks of glass scattered over the tarmac and the seat inside. Looking in she saw that her CD player had been roughly levered out of its housing in the dashboard leaving an ugly gaping hole with wires trailing. Her sunglasses were also gone, and, looking over the back seat, so was her briefcase. They’d left her coat and an umbrella.

‘Damn.’

She felt the crude intrusion like a jolt, and part of her brain observed herself in the role of victim, passing through the stages of disbelief and outrage. She looked around at the peaceful rows of late-model suburban cars, a roof rack on one, a dog in another, warming in the autumn sun, and saw no sign of violence. Then she noticed the car parked on the other side of hers, like hers an older model without an alarm, and saw that it too had been violated, its glass scattered like icy tears across the blacktop.

It’s nothing, she told herself. It happens all the time, to everyone, at random. Nobody hurt, no harm done, just a bloody pest. She loaded her groceries into the boot and walked back towards the building, looking between the cars as she walked. There was no sign of her briefcase. It was scuffed and worthless, and they would chuck it once they realised it held nothing of value, no electronic organiser, no mobile phone-but probably miles away.

And it was just then that her phone, fortunately stowed in her shoulder bag, began to chirp like a hungry chick in its nest. Of all the people she least wanted to hear from at that moment, Robert the committee administrative officer was certainly one.

‘I’m sorry, who?’ she queried, trying to think who the hell he was.

‘Serving the Crime Strategy Working Party,’ he reminded her.

‘Oh, oh, of course. Sorry.’

‘We’re wondering if you could attend a special meeting, Kathy.’

She groaned inwardly. ‘Oh, I suppose so, yes. When were you thinking…?’

‘Now, actually.’

‘I’m in darkest Bucks at the moment, Robert,’ she heard herself snap. ‘And my car’s just been broken into.’

‘Oh dear,’ he said blithely. ‘Is it driveable?’

‘I assume so.’ The ignition switch hadn’t looked as if it had been tampered with. Why would they want to steal a vehicle like that, after all? ‘It’s just the window that’s been smashed and some stuff taken.’

‘Suppose I get a secure parking spot for you in the basement here. Will that help?’

Kathy was impressed. Anyone who could command a parking place beneath headquarters building was to be respected.

‘Just give my name. In an hour?’

Kathy continued into the hypermarket and found the manager’s office, where she reported her break-in to a pink-faced youth. As he painstakingly recorded the details in a book, she speculated that it might be his mates who were doing the cars.

‘Have there been others?’ she asked.

‘Erm…I don’t think it’s company policy to give out that kind of information.’

‘I’m a police officer.’ She showed her ID.

‘Oh…Yeah, one or two.’

‘I couldn’t see any cameras out there.’

‘Only at the doors of the building,’ he said.

‘What’s your local cop shop?’

She took a note of the phone number and gave him her card. ‘I have to go back to London now. Tell them to ring me if they need to talk to me.’

Within the hour Kathy was shown up to a private office, the door of which bore Robert’s name. He was expansive and quietly authoritative, quite unlike the reticent figure she’d seen in the committee meetings. She took the seat he indicated and accepted a cup of coffee.

‘Neither of us has time to waste, Kathy,’ he said, ‘so I’ll come to the point. We’re becoming rather concerned about the lack of progress of the CSWP. I don’t need to tell you that it has been less than productive so far. Now it may be that our choice of some of the members was unwise, but we can’t do anything about that now.’

Kathy was surprised by his frankness and wondered uneasily where this was leading.

‘The crucial point seems to be the chairmanship. It’s become clear, I think, that Desmond’s position as chair has become untenable. Would you agree?’

‘I thought that wasn’t negotiable.’

‘There may be a way around it that would satisfy everyone, at least sufficiently to allow us to move forward. I’ve been canvassing opinion, and I’d like to run this past you.’

‘Fine.’

‘We’d like you to take on the chair.’

‘Me?’

‘It seems there is no other solution which the whole committee would support, and from our point of view it is crucial that the chair is a member of the service.’ He sat back and beamed at her. ‘So there we are.’

Kathy realised that her sense of confrontation was rather greater than it had been when faced with her robbed car. ‘That’s very gratifying…’

Robert nodded. ‘It won’t be easy, but you’ll have our full support.’

Kathy wondered about his continual references to ‘we’ and ‘our’. Did he mean himself or was there a whole hierarchy of senior management involved?

‘And I do appreciate the honour, but I’m heavily involved in a very important case right now…’

‘The Verge case, yes I know, but there are many others working on that. We’re sure you can be spared. Given the time that’s been lost already, the CSWP is going to rely on some intensive work by its chair, especially in the next few weeks leading up to the conference.’

The conference! A mild panic attack gripped Kathy at the thought of presenting the committee’s spurious findings to five hundred senior police and community figures.

‘The fact is, Robert, that I just don’t think I’m cut out for that kind of thing. I haven’t had any real experience. I don’t speak well in that sort of setting…’

Robert chuckled and shook his head. ‘We think otherwise.’

Who the hell is ‘we’? Kathy thought. Does it include Brock? She recalled his throwaway remark about this being her big chance.

‘We have every confidence that you can handle it splendidly. And it will be a tremendous opportunity for you to shine, Kathy. To be noticed.’

That’s exactly what I’m terrified of, she thought. ‘Have you spoken about this to DCI Brock?’

Robert consulted a list. ‘Brock… Brock… no. Should I?’

‘He’s SIO on the Verge case. I think he may feel he needs me there.’

‘Indispensable are we, Kathy?’ Robert smiled indulgently.

‘Well, no, but…’

‘DCI Brock will fall in with our requirements, I have no doubt. This is a crucial matter, Kathy. I don’t think I need to emphasise that, do I?’

‘No, of course not. Can I have the weekend to think about it?’

Robert looked disappointed, as if she’d failed a test. ‘What’s there to think about, Kathy? Will it help to clarify your thoughts if I tell you that the Deputy Assistant Commissioner has agreed to the change, and wants a quick resolution?’

Oh thanks, Kathy thought. In other words, it’s an order.

She hurried out of New Scotland Yard, leaving her car in the basement. They can keep it for another hour or two, she thought, looking at the cars exiting from the ramp, senior staff going home for the weekend. Her little wounded Renault had looked particularly pathetic down there among the BMWs.

Brock’s secretary, Dot, nodded her through as soon as she appeared. ‘He was trying to reach you, Kathy.’

‘I was in a meeting. I turned my phone off. Was it about the committee I’m on?’

‘No idea. Go on through.’

He was hunched forward in front of a video machine, Bren Gurney at his side. He looked up as she came in and jabbed the remote at the screen. ‘Kathy! Just the person.

Come in and look at this.’

‘Dot says you were trying to reach me.’

‘Mm. How did you get on with Charlotte?’

‘Okay. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t told anyone about Clarke being the father, and she was convinced he wouldn’t have either. He’s terrified his wife will find out.’

‘Yes, well, things have moved forward. An hour after he left us he came back with a lawyer in tow, wanting to make a new statement. Grab a seat and watch.’

As they waited for the tape to rewind, Kathy added, ‘It’s possible that Clarke raped Charlotte. She was equivocal, but I think that’s what it amounts to.’

Bren said, ‘Maybe he forced himself on Miki, too.’

‘That’s what I wondered,’ Kathy said. ‘His description of how they came to be lovers sounded odd, sort of mechanical.’

‘Yeah,’ Bren agreed. ‘Also, you’ve got to wonder about the relationship between Clarke and Verge. Why was Clarke deflowering his partner’s nearest and dearest? Weren’t there any other willing women around the place? Was his real motive to punish Verge?’

‘Interesting,’ Brock murmured. ‘Here we go. Watch this.’

The screen cleared to show four men sitting around the table: Brock and the Fraud Squad officer, Tony, and Sandy Clarke and his solicitor. After Brock’s caution and introductions, it was the solicitor who spoke. He was aiming to sound confident, Kathy thought, but somehow it wasn’t coming off, as if he were still wrestling in his mind with the implications of what his client had told him. He understood that a reward had been offered for information on the whereabouts of Charles Verge, and he wished to put a proposition to the police on behalf of his client. First, he wanted to remind the police that his client had an unblemished record, and that the catastrophic events of May had caused great damage to him personally and to his employees.

In light of this, he was willing to offer certain information to the police which might assist them with their inquiries, and he was willing to waive any claim to reward moneys to which the information might give rise, on condition that he be offered immunity from prosecution for failing to bring this information forward earlier.

‘What a load of crap,’ Bren breathed.

On screen Brock evidently agreed with this view, though he framed his refusal slightly more politely.

The solicitor began to say that he would have to consult with his client, but Clarke cut across him. ‘It’s all right. I’ll say my piece.’ He turned to Brock. ‘You asked me if the name Martin Kraus meant anything to me. It does, or at least M. Kraus does.’

Perhaps it was the lighting in the interview room or the quality of the tape, but to Kathy it seemed as if Clarke’s whole face had stretched tighter across his bone structure in the few hours since she’d last watched him from the observation room. His voice, too, seemed harsher and more strained in pitch.

‘On the morning of Saturday the twelfth of May, a couple of hours after we’d got back from the airport, I had a phone call in my office from Charles.’

‘That’s Charles Verge, your business partner?’ Brock asked, for the record.

‘Yes. He sounded rather breathless, as if he was in a rush. He said that something had come up and he had to go out on an urgent matter. He didn’t explain what it was or where he was going, but he said he had a favour to ask me. He needed some funds transferred right away to the account of an acquaintance, and he didn’t have time to see to it himself. It was a family matter, personal, and he didn’t want it to go through the firm’s accounts. He wondered if I could see to it for him from my own funds, and he would square it with me when he saw me for the Wuxang City presentation on the following Monday. He was apologetic because the amount was quite large for such short notice, thirty thousand sterling. I assured him it wasn’t a problem. He said it was a sensitive matter and he’d be grateful if I would keep it completely to myself. He had left the details of the account to be credited in a note on the desk in his office.’

‘Did you understand him to be phoning you from his apartment in the Verge Practice building?’

‘I got the impression he’d already left there, on his way elsewhere, and that was why he couldn’t give me the details over the phone.’

‘All right, go on.’

‘I went into his office and found the note with the details of the account he wanted credited. During the course of the day I made arrangements over the phone to transfer thirty thousand pounds from my personal cash management account to that account. I remember that it was at a Barclays branch, in Barcelona. I don’t have a note of the account number any more, but my bank must have a record. I had forgotten the name of the recipient until you mentioned it this afternoon. It was M. Kraus.’

On screen Brock was leaning forward to say something to Tony, who was shaking his head.

Brock said, ‘Yes, well, we’ll get you to obtain those details from your bank for us, Mr Clarke. Go on.’

‘That’s basically it. At the time I didn’t attach any particular significance to it. I expected to see Charles on the Monday. When he didn’t come to the presentation and then we found Miki’s body, the shock drove the business out of my mind for a while. It was only later that day, when I was actually being interviewed by the police, that I remembered it. I was talking about something else, and it suddenly hit me in mid-sentence that perhaps the thirty thousand Charles had asked for was for himself, to help him disappear. I had to decide right there, in the middle of talking about something else, whether to mention this. I remembered how insistent he had been that I tell no one about it, and I decided to err on the side of loyalty to my friend and say nothing until I had had a chance to think it through. Once I’d made that decision, of course, it became impossible to go back on it without making myself appear to be involved. I’m sorry. I suppose I assumed you’d find out where he was without my help anyway. I realise now I should have said something.’

Very glib, Kathy thought.

‘You’re suggesting that Martin Kraus is an alias for Charles Verge?’ Brock asked on screen.

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe it’s the name of an intermediary, someone who can pass the money on to him.’

‘And what about the payments to Martin Kraus’s company, Turnstile Quality Systems, that we asked you about earlier?’

‘I know nothing about those. That’s the truth. I acknowledge that it looks like my signature on the cheques, but I have no recollection of writing them, and I can’t believe I could have done so on such a frequent basis and for such amounts without remembering. The whole process was irregular. Why were the invoices not processed in the normal way through the office?’

‘Indeed. They were addressed directly to you.’

‘But I never saw them!’

‘You’re suggesting fraud?’

‘Well, what else can I suggest?’

‘By your partner, Charles Verge?’

Clarke pursed his lips in frustration and fell silent. At last he said, voice weary, ‘It doesn’t make sense. If Charles wanted to draw large sums from the firm he only had to discuss it with his partners, Miki and me. We could have come to some arrangement, restructured the capital so he could liquidate some of his share against future earnings. But he never said a word, not to me anyway.’

‘But the fact remains that, according to you, Charles knew Martin Kraus, the nominal beneficiary of these payments.’

‘Yes. But it just doesn’t make sense,’ he repeated. ‘I mean, it was bound to come out, wasn’t it? I’m surprised the accountants haven’t picked this up before now.’

‘They say,’ Tony broke in, ‘that’s because it was done by someone at a high level in the firm. Someone who could bypass the normal processes.’

‘Well, it wasn’t me.’

‘Have you anything else you want to tell us, Mr Clarke?’ Brock asked.

‘There is something else, yes. When I decided to keep quiet about the thirty thousand, it also led me to, well, sanitise my account of Charles’s recent behaviour, out of the same sense of loyalty. The fact is that I was becoming increasingly concerned about his mental and physical state.’

‘In what way?’

‘It’s hard to specify a precise event, more a gradual change. Something was going badly wrong with his marriage. I can’t say exactly what, and I’ve learned over the years that it’s unwise to interfere, but there was a certain tension that developed, and quite heated arguments about design directions, almost violent and sometimes embarrassingly public. Miki increasingly adopted the pose of an injured prima donna, while Charles sank into a kind of angry despair.

‘I tried several times to suggest that he see his doctor for help, but he shrugged me off. He threw himself into the Marchdale Prison project as if it were a life raft, but he was so manic about it that that alarmed me too. He became more and more moody and erratic. It got to the point where I was nervous about him dealing with our clients on his own.’

Clarke reached for a jug on the table and poured himself some water. It was hard to see on the video, but there was the sound of a slight rattle of glass against glass as if his hand were unsteady. He drank deeply, then blew out his cheeks. It was a gesture of relief, Kathy guessed, as if he’d reached that stage in an interview where the subject has got the main business off his chest. Now he gets chatty, she thought, happy to offer cooperation just to get out the door.

‘You said you were concerned about his physical state, too?’

‘Well, he changed, looked different. Sort of puffy around the face, and grey from lack of sleep. He began to dress carelessly, as if he wasn’t bothered any more how he looked. Most unlike him. Towards the end he seemed to find no pleasure in anything. Well, except Charlotte’s…’ His voice tailed off into a bout of coughing, and his face became red.

‘Charlotte’s child, yes,’ Brock said drily.

‘No, I mean, as if he really didn’t belong any more, not following the details at meetings, forgetting appointments, driving his secretary mad.’

‘Any signs of violent behaviour?’

‘Anger, yes. Especially towards Miki.’

‘Did she ever talk to you about their deteriorating relationship?’

‘Not directly. Sometimes, when they were having a quarrel over some point of design, she would try to draw me in on her side, talking as if it was common knowledge between us that Charles’s judgement was becoming unreliable. I found it acutely uncomfortable.’

‘But she didn’t mention threats or violence towards her?’

‘No.’

‘And on the evening of the eleventh of May, Miki didn’t say anything specific about his return?’

‘I told you, I had a feeling that there was something she wanted to tell me, but she never got it out. Just that reference to having married the wrong partner, as if she’d discovered that Charles was flawed in some way.’

Brock leaned forward with the remote and stopped the tape. ‘There’s a bit more but nothing new. What do you think?’

‘I think Clarke is good at presenting facts to his advantage. He realised he had no choice but to tell you more about Martin Kraus, and to shift the blame onto Verge, who can’t speak for himself.’

‘We’re checking what we can at the moment, phone and bank records, passport and immigration, but it’s the first solid lead we’ve had. Depending on what Barclays can tell us, I’m thinking that I may send Tony over to follow the money trail at that end, with Linda Moffat as interpreter of course.’

‘Lucky them,’ Kathy said automatically.

‘And I’m thinking that if we really can establish a link to Barcelona, then the McNeils’ supposed sighting becomes particularly important. If they did see Verge, on the run, what was he doing there, who was he meeting? If it wasn’t the travel agent, who was it?’

‘Yes,’ Kathy said doubtfully. ‘I wish I could be more confident about them.’

‘You think they’re mistaken?’

‘I think, between them, they may be confused about exactly where they saw him, even which side of the street. And if there’s doubt about where they saw him, there’s got to be doubt about who they saw.’

‘Then we’ve got to eliminate that doubt, one way or the other. Which means taking them over there and walking them up and down that street until they stop being confused. And for that they’ll need a chaperone, a detective to jog their memories and follow up anything that looks promising.’ He looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

‘Me? Oh…well, that would be great, but…’ She thought bitterly of her meeting with Robert, and explained to Brock, ‘I’ve just agreed to take on the chair of that bloody committee I’m on. I’ve been told it will require a full-time commitment for two or three weeks.’

‘What?’ Brock looked annoyed. ‘Why the hell did you do that? You didn’t talk to me about it.’

She didn’t remind him that he’d suggested it to her earlier. ‘I didn’t have much choice. It was put to me that I had to agree on the spot. I said they should discuss it with you, but he said it wasn’t necessary and that it had already been approved at DAC level.’

Brock’s face darkened. ‘Who said this?’

‘The admin guy who services the committee. Robert.’

‘Damn cheek!’ He gave a low growl, like an old bear contemplating an unruly pup. ‘Have you got this character’s number?’

Kathy handed it to him.

‘You might step out of the room, would you, Kathy? You too, Bren.’

‘I’ve got things to do,’ Bren said, getting to his feet.

Kathy closed the door carefully behind her and went out to chat with Dot. After a couple of minutes they stopped in mid-sentence at the sound of Brock’s bellowed voice, muffled through the heavy door. Dot smiled. ‘That’s good. I haven’t heard him do that for a while. He’ll feel much better afterwards. I’ve been a bit worried lately that his friend might be mellowing him. What do you think?’

His friend. Kathy knew Dot was referring to Suzanne and assumed that she was about to be pumped. ‘I haven’t noticed it,’ she said tactfully.

‘You don’t think she’s trying to get him to leave the force?’

Kathy was saved from answering by Brock’s face at the door. ‘All sorted. You’ve got leave of absence from the committee until next Thursday, when you take up your position there full time. Okay? You’d better get on to the McNeils and persuade them to leave with you tomorrow.’

In the event the McNeils, who jumped at the chance of an expenses-paid trip to Barcelona, couldn’t leave until the day after, Sunday. While Dot started booking flights and hotel rooms, Kathy spoke again with Brock.

‘Just make sure they understand about the subsistence rate,’ Brock said. ‘We’re not paying for their bloody bar bills.’ Then he added, ‘Maybe you should get Leon to go with you.’ He said it diffidently, and Kathy wasn’t sure if it was a serious suggestion or just a probe.

‘He’s up to his ears in an assignment for his uni course. I doubt if he could afford the time.’

‘Ah yes.’

‘To be honest, it’ll probably be a relief for both of us for me to get out of the way for a few days. The flat’s a bit crowded since he moved his computer and books in.’ The words came out without thought, and it was only when they were spoken that Kathy wondered with a small shock whether she really would be relieved to leave him.

‘It’s not a big flat, is it? Must be a bit tight for two.’

‘Yes. We’re thinking about finding somewhere bigger,’ Kathy said, puzzling over Brock’s tone, as if he were looking at the question from a completely different point of view, one which Kathy wasn’t aware of. She decided to change the subject. ‘On my way back from seeing Charlotte this afternoon, I stopped at a supermarket and had my car broken into. They took my briefcase, among other things, with the transcript of Clarke’s interview.’

‘Would anyone be able to identify him?’

‘I don’t think so. I didn’t have the cover sheet, with the names.’

‘Better send a report to the local boys, make sure they take it seriously. Was there much damage?’

‘The side window was smashed. I’ll get it fixed while I’m away.’

Brock nodded. ‘Keep your eyes open over there. You never know, someone may have missed something. That’s really why I want you to go. You speak some Spanish, don’t you?’

‘Very little. I started learning it last year.’

‘I wish I was going too.’ Brock looked regretfully around his office, at the files piled on his desk and the table by the window and spilling over the floor. ‘Maybe if you find something you’ll have to call me over.’

‘I’ll do my best.’ Kathy grinned and headed for the door.