The verge practice

13

Kathy accepted the small plastic container of orange juice and stretched her legs as far as she could under the seat in front. The other two seats in the row beside her were occupied by the McNeils, who were discussing something offered in the in-flight magazine. DI Tony Heron and DS Linda Moffat were several rows ahead, having checked in together before Kathy and the McNeils had arrived at the airport. In fact it now seemed to Kathy, although she hadn’t noticed anything previously, that Tony and Linda might have something going between them, or else were taking advantage of the trip to get something started. She had seemed positively flirtatious towards her Fraud Squad colleague when they had all eventually met up, while he had miraculously shed his funereal aspect and was transformed in a lightweight bomber jacket and navy T-shirt, and even, Kathy suspected, a touch of gel in his hair. Linda, too, was dressed for leisure rather than work, with white cotton slacks, a bright orange top, espadrilles and a pair of dark glasses propped optimistically on top of her head. The McNeils had also come in their Mediterranean holiday gear and Kathy, who had packed on the basis that this was a serious business trip, felt, in her black suit, as if she’d turned up at the wrong party.

But that didn’t matter. She tilted the seat back, tuned the headphones to a jazz channel and closed her eyes. This was an unlooked-for break, a welcome change from the

routine and familiar. Leon could take over the whole flat while he finished his assignment, and she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about making a noise or spilling things on his precious papers, as she had with Madelaine Verge’s romesco sauce on the Friday night when she’d told him about the trip. The coincidence of the Spanish food and the visit to Barcelona had made Kathy feel awkward, as if he might think she had been secretly planning to go away without him, but he had been pleased for her, and, as expected, turned down her suggestion that he come along.

‘Next time,’ he had said, and set about wiping the sauce from his textbook with paper towels. He had a sad air about him, which Kathy put down to a touch of the martyrs.

A steward offered drinks. Audrey McNeil and Kathy both asked for glasses of wine, Peter McNeil a scotch. Down the aisle Kathy saw Tony and Linda being handed glasses of champagne, and she smiled.

Peter had his Barcelona guidebook open and he and his wife began to give Kathy a briefing on the city. The hotel where they would be staying, on Linda’s recommendation, was very conveniently located, they explained. Just off the Placa de Catalunya, it was not far from the Passeig de Gracia, where they thought they had seen Charles Verge, and only a short taxi, bus or metro ride to the Palau de Justicia, if that was where Kathy was heading. And from the point of view of sightseeing, it was also very handy to La Rambla and the Gothic Quarter. Peter explained all this with the complacent superiority of the seasoned traveller, interrupted from time to time by his wife’s chirpy elaborations, delivered very fast before Peter could cut her off.

The original plan had been for the McNeils to stay just one night, flying home again on the Monday evening after spending the morning with Kathy on the Passeig de Gracia, but they had arranged to extend their stay by another day- principally, it transpired, to allow Audrey to meet her internet bridge partner on the Tuesday morning. ‘We’ve arranged to meet at a cafe opposite the cathedral. I have to brandish my copy of Fifty Favourite Bridge Problems.’ She reached into her handbag to show Kathy the book. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. It’s so strange to meet her in the flesh after getting to know her so well as my partner in cyberspace.’ She said the last word with relish, perhaps to make some point with her husband, who snorted indulgently and took a pull at his whisky. ‘Fine building, the cathedral,’ he said.

‘Yes, Audrey showed me your photos,’ Kathy replied.

‘Oh no, that was Gaudi’s church, the Sagrada Familia,’ Audrey corrected her with a smile and an unspoken undertone, do get it right, dear, so that Kathy felt obliged to repeat it.

‘The Sagrada Familia, right.’

‘The cathedral is in the Gothic Quarter,’ Peter said, ‘not far from our hotel.’ He pointed it out on the street map. ‘It was started in 1298, but wasn’t finished until 1913, to the plans of the original French architect. That’s a construction period of six hundred and fifteen years. And our clients tell us we’re too slow!’ He had a good chuckle at this.

‘Peter wanted to be an architect originally, didn’t you, dear?’

Her husband’s nose screwed up, in disapproval, Kathy thought, as if Audrey had betrayed some shameful weakness on his part. ‘I suggested the idea to my father, who told me not to be daft. “Architects are all poofters in yellow ties,” he said. Well, maybe they did wear yellow ties in those days, I don’t know, but anyway, I took his advice and became an engineer, like him.’

‘I always wondered about your father’s sexuality,’ Audrey said thoughtfully.

For a moment Kathy thought there might be a small domestic, but the prospect of the trip seemed to have mellowed Peter, who let the comment pass.

The plane descended over a brown landscape, and Kathy had the first inkling that they were coming to a place that had had a very different summer from their own, long and hot and dry.

Linda had said that ‘Jeez’, as she called Lieutenant Jesus Mozas, would most probably meet them in the arrivals hall, but when they reached it there was no sign of him, and after hanging around for ten minutes they decided to take two taxis into the city. When they stepped out of the building they were momentarily stunned by dazzling sunlight and heat, and as they drove down the motorway towards the city, Kathy had a sense of disconnection from the autumnal reality they had left behind.

She was impressed with Linda’s choice of hotel when they arrived. An elaborately uniformed man hurried across the footpath to collect their bags, and the reception area was cool and impressively furnished with what looked like antique pieces. When the second taxi arrived, Linda was handed a note-from Jeez, she announced-apologising for not meeting them and saying that he and Captain Alvarez would come to the hotel for them at nine the next morning.

‘That’s too bad,’ Linda smirked in Tony’s direction. ‘And you were hoping we could get down to work right away.’ From the way Tony grinned back, this was clearly a private joke.

Kathy’s room had a little balcony overlooking the street, one end of which ran into the wide Placa de Catalunya, in which she could make out numbers of pedestrians promenading now that the afternoon heat was dissipating. After a shower, she went down to meet the others in the foyer. They walked out to the Placa and from there into La Rambla, the tree-lined pedestrian avenue leading down to the port. The place was thronged with evening strollers now, sedately eyeing each other and the various attractions along the way. Mime artists lined one side of the route like statues, motionless until a coin was thrown into their pot, when they would jerk into life, bowing or gesticulating in character to their patron. There was Julius Caesar in full uniform, sprayed from head to toe in silver paint, and further along a terracotta-coloured Sitting Bull, and General MacArthur, complete with corncob pipe, in khaki.

Linda and Tony walked a few paces ahead of the others, at first turning back from time to time to point something out, but soon absorbed in their own conversation. They reached a stall with caged birds and she made a face of mock annoyance at some remark of his and punched him on the upper arm, then pulled him closer to her to examine the cages.

‘They work together a lot, do they?’ Audrey asked Kathy cautiously.

‘They’ve been working on this case for a few months now, I suppose. Seem to get on well, don’t they?’

Audrey gave a little smile. ‘The spell of foreign travel. I used to discourage Peter from going away without me, though I’m sure there’s no need now.’

Kathy glanced back at Peter, who had been distracted by a tarot reader sitting beneath one of the broad trees that lined the avenue, telling the fortune of an old man.

‘Are you married, dear?’

‘No.’

‘Ah well. Plenty of time.’ Kathy felt herself being scrutinised. ‘Maybe you’ll meet a nice Spaniard while we’re here. They like blondes, I’m told.’

‘Like Charles Verge’s mother. She bumped into a Spaniard on the London tube and that was that. She came back to Barcelona with him and had Charles. I dare say they used to stroll along here fifty years ago.’

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Poor woman. To think this tragedy was lying in wait for them all this time.’ They walked a little way in silence, then Audrey McNeil added, ‘I do hope you aren’t expecting too much from us, Kathy. I mean, bringing us here will probably turn out to have been a complete waste of time.’

‘Don’t worry, they won’t ask for the airfares back,’ Kathy said, and they had a laugh, but all the same, she understood the woman’s sense of being there under false pretences because she felt exactly the same. If anything came of the trip it would almost certainly be due to Linda and Tony.

They continued down the Rambla to the Columbus monument, and beyond that onto the pedestrian boardwalk and across to the new waterfront Maremagnum, where Linda chose a small restaurant for them to eat at. She ordered plates of tapas and a couple of bottles of cava and they sat and watched the daylight dying on the water and the families taking a last turn of the quay before heading for home.

After breakfast the following morning, they gathered in the foyer to wait for the two officers of the CGP. Peter McNeil passed the time studying the city map, Audrey some postcards from the hotel desk, and Tony and Linda each other. The two Spaniards arrived promptly in separate cars. They wore plain clothes, Captain Alvarez in a sober suit, Lieutenant ‘Jeez’ Mozas in a leather jacket and jeans. Linda and Jeez greeted each other like old buddies, while Alvarez, whose expression was as tightly controlled as the little moustache drawn like a ruled ink line on his upper lip, stood back, shaking hands formally when introduced by Linda to the others. Kathy had the distinct impression that he was displeased by their visit, and especially by the McNeils. After the introductions he asked the couple in slow, stilted English if they would please leave the police officers to discuss matters among themselves for a few minutes. Obviously impressed by the man’s gravity, they quickly got to their feet and left. The others sat in a circle in the lobby’s armchairs, surrounded by the suitcases of departing guests, and spoke together quietly.

Jeez, whose English was more fluent and colloquial than his colleague’s, led the discussion. ‘Okay, the captain suggests that Linda and Tony and I go meet some guys in our commercial section who can help with your questions. We have an appointment at eleven with the manager of the bank. Captain Alvarez will accompany you, Kathy. You have anything special in mind?’

Kathy addressed herself to Alvarez, trying to gauge his reaction as she spoke. It wasn’t easy, as he kept his face expressionless. ‘I wondered if we could borrow one of your people to stand in as Charles Verge. One point seven metres, seventy kilograms, age about fifty, straight black hair, clean shaven…’

‘We know what he looks like,’ Alvarez said drily.

‘Of course. Wearing a black leather jacket, black trousers and shoes.’

Alvarez glanced at Jeez and gave a barely perceptible nod.

‘Not a problem,’ Jeez said. ‘Give us an hour?’

‘Ideally, I’d like to walk them down the street at around ten-thirty, at the same time on the same day of the week as when they think they saw him.’

‘What are you wanting from these people, exactly?’ Alvarez asked.

‘There seems to be a discrepancy in their recollections of what they saw. We just want to be quite certain.’

The captain looked puzzled. Linda began to translate Kathy’s words, but he cut her off. ‘After such a long time? You have made a mistake?’ His eyes narrowed accusingly. ‘We sent photographs, plans.’

‘They were very helpful. But my chief wanted them to come in person.’

Alvarez shook his head slowly, whether at the waste of his time or the incompetence of the British police Kathy wasn’t sure, then he said something very fast and low to his lieutenant in what Linda later said was not Spanish but Catalan. Jeez nodded. ‘Captain Alvarez will return for you and the English couple at ten-fifteen.’

‘I understand the street isn’t far away. We could walk up and meet him there.’

Again Alvarez said something in Catalan and Jeez translated. ‘Captain Alvarez will pick you up here, at the hotel, at ten-fifteen exactly.’

‘Whatever you say.’

An hour later, the captain was precisely on time. He arrived in a patrol car, followed closely by a taxi carrying a single passenger in a black leather jacket. Kathy and the McNeils bundled into the back of the patrol car that swept off into the Placa de Catalunya, circling it to its far corner where the broad boulevard of the Passeig de Gracia began. After six blocks it pulled over and Alvarez got out, followed by the others.

‘This is the place,’ he said, gesturing towards the building in front of them.

This wasn’t how Kathy had wanted to play it, but she held her tongue. The McNeils looked around, trying to orientate themselves, obviously intimidated by Alvarez’s manner. Kathy recognised some of the buildings from the photographs the CGP had sent them, and immediately realised that her fancy theory about sunlight and shadows was wrong. Now, in September, the sun would be at a similar angle to that morning in May, and she saw that the entrance Peter McNeil had identified was in full sun, even though it was on the east side of the street. The reason was the peculiar layout of the Eixample district, of which the Passeig de Gracia was one of the principal streets. The quarter had been laid out as a model of town planning in the nineteenth century. The blocks were square, but with the added refinement that their corners were sliced off on the diagonal, so that where four blocks met, their corners created the effect of a small diagonal square at the crossing of the streets. The result was that, although the main east street facade of the Passeig was in shadow, the south-facing corners on both sides of the street were sunlit.

As they stood there the taxi drew into the kerb and the rear door opened. The passenger got out, pretended to pay the cab driver, and strode across the pavement in front of them towards the corner doorway, disappearing into the shadows inside.

‘Okay?’ Alvarez said, sounding ready to pack up and drive them to the airport.

‘Well…’ Peter McNeil frowned, still trying to get his bearings. ‘Let me see. Yes, I suppose this must be the place…’

‘Well, it doesn’t feel right to me,’ his wife said.

‘What’s wrong, Audrey?’ Kathy prompted.

‘I don’t know…Are you sure the sun’s in the same place? Only it’s practically shining into our eyes, so you could hardly make out that man’s face.’

Captain Alvarez’s mouth tightened. This obviously wasn’t what he wanted to hear, and Peter wasn’t best pleased either. ‘Oh yes you could, Audrey. At least, I could.’

‘My eyesight’s every bit as good as yours, Peter. And anyway, he went up some steps at the entrance to the building. I remember that now.’

‘You didn’t mention that before,’ Kathy said.

‘No, it’s just come back to me. The building looked like this one, the same warm stone colour, but there were a few steps.’

‘You’re quite sure? Peter?’

He shrugged, dubious. ‘I was only thinking about recognising his face. I didn’t pay much attention to the building.’

Kathy turned to the Spaniard. ‘Captain, they’re agreed that they saw the person somewhere between the Casa Mila and the metro station. Could I suggest that we walk the whole of that route, just as they did?’

Alvarez frowned and asked her to say it again. She did, more slowly, and he shook his head. ‘Is this necessary? It is long ago. They don’t remember.’

He relented, however, and called his man back from the building entrance and gave him new instructions. They turned and walked the three blocks north until they were standing in front of the undulating facade of Gaudi’s apartment building.

‘Right,’ Kathy said, ‘I recognise this from your photograph. So from here you said you crossed the street to try to get a better picture.’

They crossed over, and the taxi, which had kerb-crawled behind them, did a U-turn and followed. They walked a block south, and then Kathy pointed to a corner entrance, with three steps leading into the shadowed interior.

‘Yes, that’s the sort of thing,’ Audrey said.

‘But it’s on the wrong side,’ Peter objected. ‘It’s to our right. He crossed from right to left. I’m quite sure of that.’

‘I’m not,’ his wife said stubbornly. They stood in irritated silence, glaring at each other, while the stream of well-dressed shoppers with expensive-looking carrier bags parted around them. Kathy sensed Alvarez reaching the end of his patience.

‘Well, let’s try something,’ she said, sounding just a little desperate, she thought. She waved the taxi forward and pointed to the kerb just in front of them. It moved to the spot and the passenger got out and began his mime once more.

‘Okay, we’re moving forward, and you notice him, Peter. You’re looking at something else, Audrey.’

‘Yes, I can remember being attracted by the bright summer fashions in that window over there, but they’re muted now, for autumn.’

‘As he pays the taxi we walk on, past him, and he begins to cross the footpath behind us. You look back over your shoulder, Peter, because you think you’ve recognised him, then you tell Audrey who you think it is. Audrey turns and sees him disappear up the steps into the building. You’re both right, you see-at first he was moving across from left to right, then when you were looking back he was going from right to left.’

‘Ingenious,’ Peter conceded, ‘but I don’t know…’

‘You could be right, Kathy.’

‘And when you turned to look at him, the sun was behind you.’

‘I don’t believe we could have got it so completely wrong,’ Peter protested.

Alvarez evidently agreed. He was shaking his head in disbelief. Kathy hurriedly said, ‘Okay, let’s keep going.’

She took a note of the address of the corner entrance, Passeig de Gracia 83, and they continued along the route the McNeils had taken, crossing back to the east side of the Passeig, past the place where they had begun, and on to the entrance to the metro. Along the way they examined five more corner entrances as possibilities, but none had steps.

‘So it really comes down to how positive you are about those steps, Audrey,’ Kathy said.

‘Oh Lord,’ she sighed and closed her eyes, trying to focus on the mental image. ‘I was quite certain when it first struck me, but the more I try to visualise it, the harder it gets.’

Captain Alvarez was examining his wristwatch pointedly and Kathy said, ‘I think that’s as much as we can do. Thank you for your help, Captain.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes. Oh, there is one thing. Do you think you could get me a list of the businesses who use that entrance over there.’ She pointed back across the street to the entrance with the steps, and checked the address from her notebook, ‘Passeig de Gracia 83’.

He seemed about to object, but then thought better of it and called to his officer in the taxi and gave him instructions. ‘Now I take you to your friends.’

Kathy thanked him but said that she wanted to spend more time with the McNeils, who were looking bewildered. Alvarez gave her a card and pointed to the address, then turned and marched off to his car further up the street.

‘He wasn’t very friendly,’ Audrey said. ‘Did we upset him?’

‘Don’t worry about him. Let’s have a cup of coffee.’ She led them to a cafe, where they gradually relaxed. ‘It felt like we were sitting an exam,’ Peter said, ‘and getting the questions wrong.’

When they’d finished their coffees, Kathy took them back up the Passeig to the Casa Mila, and walked them over the route again. Although they were now at ease and chatting freely, nothing new emerged. As they passed number eighty-three, the policeman in the black leather jacket emerged from the doorway into the sunlight, stuffing his notebook into his pocket, and headed away. Out of curiosity, Kathy went over to the entrance and mounted the steps. Inside, a directory board listed the occupants, but Kathy wasn’t able to make out what businesses they carried on, and after a moment she gave up and they continued on their way back to the metro station. There she thanked the McNeils and told them their time was now their own. They were apologetic about not having been more help, and waved goodbye as Kathy hailed a cab.

As Kathy had expected, Linda and Tony’s time had been much more productive. The bank had been able to provide several useful pieces of information, beginning with an address for their client, Martin Kraus, in an apartment block in the northern part of the city. They had gone with a carload of local cops to the address only to discover that the flat number didn’t exist.

‘Yet the bank forwarded monthly statements to that address over a six-month period,’ Tony explained to Kathy. He was animated and so taken up with the chase that, Kathy noticed, he was able to keep his eyes off Linda for whole minutes at a time. ‘I reckon he’s done the same thing as he did with Turnstile Quality Systems in Neasden. There he got the Post Office to divert TQS mail to a business-accommodation bureau, where they held it for collection. They deal with hundreds of mail-drop customers, most of them dodgy, and couldn’t give a description of whoever picked up the mail. Jeez’s lads are checking that line now.’

‘Did the bank manager ever meet Kraus?’

‘He doesn’t believe so, and there was no note of a meeting in the file. The account was opened by an assistant manager who’s since moved to Madrid. They’re trying to track him down, and a copper is talking to the rest of the staff at the moment, with a picture of Verge. The other thing that’s really interesting is the history of the account. It was opened in October of last year. I’ve spoken to London, to get them to check if Verge was over here then.’

He passed Kathy a photocopy of the form that Kraus had completed to open his account, and pointed to a line under the address he had given. ‘See that? He gave his nationality as Spanish, and provided identification documents of some kind. Jeez is checking on that as well.’

Tony turned to Linda. ‘You got those other sheets, Lind?’

Lind? Kathy suppressed a grimace.

Linda shot him a smile, ‘Yeah, here you go.’

Tony passed one of them to Kathy. ‘This is a summary of the account history. It was opened on the fourth of October last year with a deposit of two hundred and fifty thousand pesetas, which is about a thousand sterling. There were no deposits or withdrawals until the twelfth of May this year, when forty-eight thousand euros were deposited-that’s Clarke’s thirty thousand quid sent over from England. Then on the fifteenth of May the account was closed, the whole balance transferred to an account in another bank.’

‘Do we know where?’

‘Yes.’ Tony sounded sad. ‘It’s the same one that TQS transferred the payments they received from the Verge Practice to. It’s offshore, and so far we haven’t been able to track that money any further.’

Linda patted the back of his hand. ‘Never mind, Tony.’ She grinned at Kathy. ‘He’s really pissed off about that account, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Kathy asked.

‘Wait for Jeez and his lads to come up with something,’ Linda said. ‘I think we should get lunch.’

But by the end of the afternoon, after some long and unproductive hours spent waiting around in the CGP offices, they were no wiser. Only London had come up with anything definite, confirming that both Charles Verge and Sandy Clarke had been in Barcelona on the fourth of October the previous year, for a meeting with city officials to discuss the possibility of a new project there.

While they waited, Kathy thought she might at least check what the CGP had found out about Luz Diaz, and asked to see her file. It arrived just as they were leaving for the evening, and Kathy was allowed to take it with her.