The verge practice

4

The two teams assembled at the appointed time, awkward in each other’s company like players who were uncertain what the game was, let alone which side they were on. Brock opened the proceedings by outlining the new orders from above and inviting Chivers to take over the briefing. The superintendent glowered at the meeting, as if daring anyone to find fault with what he was about to say, then slowly lit a cigarette in defiance of the sign on the wall behind him. In a flat, monotonous voice he delivered a well-prepared summary of his four-month investigation, aided by photographs, diagrams, a world map and the police scene-of-crime video. The acoustics of the room in the basement of New Scotland Yard were poor, and several times a voice from the back of the room would pipe up, ‘Sorry, chief, what was that last bit again?’ and Chivers would clear his throat, raise his volume a little and repeat.

At the end there was silence, no one game to ask a question. Chivers lit up again. His grinding monotone seemed to have cast a spell on them all, and Brock noticed the deadened expressions on the faces of Chivers’ team. Finally, Brock’s inspector Bren Gurney asked for more information on the Barcelona connection. Verge had a number of relatives there from his father’s family, and in addition he had done architectural work in the city, including an apartment building in the port area for athletes competing at the 1992 Olympics, and he had visited the city regularly. Of the relatives, one had been of particular interest, a cousin who had been a close boyhood friend of the fugitive. This man ran an engineering manufacturing business which exported a range of valves and pumps to various parts of Europe and Latin America, and in particular Argentina, where he owned a local sales and servicing company.

Relatives and other contacts had been interviewed by detectives of the Cuerpo General de Policia in Barcelona, the CGP, and by members of Chivers’ team, but none admitted to contact with Verge since his disappearance. Phone calls and financial transactions between the families in Spain and England were being monitored, and between the cousin’s businesses in Barcelona and Buenos Aires, so far without result.

There was one other possible link with Barcelona. On the same Monday morning that Miki Norinaga’s body had been discovered in London, a holidaying English couple called McNeil had been strolling along the Passeig de Gracia, the main avenue of Barcelona’s fashionable Eixample district, when Mr McNeil noticed a man get out of a taxi and quickly cross the pavement in front of them, then enter an adjoining building. After a moment’s thought he said to his wife that he thought he recognised the man as the famous architect Charles Verge. McNeil was a recently retired structural engineer, and although he had never met Verge in person, he had seen his picture many times in industry journals, and confidently picked him out later when shown photographs. He didn’t realise the significance of his sighting until they returned to England a week later, when they discovered the papers full of the Verge scandal, and he phoned the police hotline. By that stage the police had already had dozens of reports of Verge from all over Europe, but they knew of the family connection with Barcelona and paid particular attention to McNeil’s story. From maps and photographs supplied from Spain the couple identified the building on the Passeig de Gracia, and its tenants were questioned by the CGP-paying particular attention to the staff of a travel agency on the first floor- but again there was no result.

Someone asked about Verge’s state of mind at the time of the murder. The clients he had met in California in the week before the murder had been interviewed, as had the crew on the overnight flight back to London, and both could say no more than that he had seemed normal and not unduly stressed, and he certainly hadn’t appeared drunk when he disembarked. He had been met at Heathrow by his business partner Sandy Clarke, who said they had talked about Verge’s successful trip and about a presentation they were doing on the following Monday morning. Verge had been calm and in good spirits.

According to his friends and colleagues in London, his relationship with Miki had gone through a change in the previous year or so. He had worshipped her when they first married, but more recently there seemed to have been a cooling between them, and rumours of disagreements. However, there had been no public scenes, and no one believed that Miki Norinaga might have had a lover. Everyone appeared to find the idea of Verge committing a violent murder quite inexplicable.

‘What you’ve got to understand,’ Chivers said, ‘is that they all think Charles Verge was the Archangel Gabriel. He might have been an egotistical bastard at times, but that was okay because archangels have a lot to put up with. The important thing was that he could mesmerise the big clients, come up with the big ideas, and pay them all big salaries. And if he did bump Miki off, well, she probably deserved it, didn’t she, because archangels are always right. What they’re all secretly hoping is that he will turn up any day now with a perfectly reasonable explanation and everything can go back to the way it was before the Fall.

‘And they didn’t like Miki. They won’t come right out and say it, because they’re all nice middle-class people who wouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but it’s pretty obvious. The men didn’t like her because they thought she manipulated Verge into marriage when he was on the rebound from a divorce, and she promptly changed from being a lowly apprentice into someone who acted as if she was the boss herself. And the women didn’t like her because she was aloof and didn’t share in their gossip, and because she got off with the man they all secretly fancied.’

Kathy, who had been examining the crime-scene and autopsy photographs, asked, ‘Were there any injuries apart from the stab wound?’

Chivers shook his head. ‘Nothing. What of it?’

‘If they got into an argument and he flew into a rage, you’d think there would have been some preliminary physical stuff, a shove, a slap. Going out to the kitchen and selecting a knife seems very deliberate, cold.’

‘That was how he got angry, apparently,’ Chivers said. ‘He didn’t rant and rave. One of his staff said he could kill with a look if someone stuffed up. Another said it felt like being verbally disembowelled. And the killing was very efficiently done. The medical examiner was full of admiration. One very powerful, clean, deep blow. We did get an opinion from a psychologist, who was interested in the fact that both the blade and the woman were Japanese. He suggested that there might have been something symbolic in the act.’ Chivers snorted to indicate what he thought of that idea.

When the questions seemed to have come to an end, Brock said, ‘I had a call yesterday from Verge’s mother, Madelaine Verge. She wanted to tell me about her theory that Charles was murdered for commercial reasons, and that his wife was killed to put us off the scent.’

This caused a buzz of interest, silenced by Chivers’ exasperated shake of the head.

‘Crap. She started flogging that line as soon as it became obvious to everyone else what her darling boy had done. She tried to get the press to take an interest, but they soon discovered that she had nothing to back it up. One of the tabloids tried to run with it-Distraught mother claims Verge victim of conspiracy-that kind of thing, but couldn’t make it work. We did look into it, but came up with nothing. Charles’s staff thought the idea was ridiculous. We couldn’t find anything more substantial than a mother’s wishful thinking.’

Brock decided to leave it there. He thanked Chivers, then read out the list of names of members of the earlier team who would be transferring to the new investigation, including Chivers’ exhibits officer, statement reader and action manager, and the liaison coordinator with overseas forces. He had agreed these beforehand with Chivers, but it was an uncomfortable moment nevertheless, and at the end of it Chivers got to his feet, ground his cigarette in a plastic cup, stiffly wished them good luck and left with those no longer required.

Only one of the newcomers was a woman, Kathy noticed. DS Linda Moffat, the overseas liaison coordinator, was a tall, dark-haired thirty-odd year-old, who presented confidently and economically when it came to her turn to describe what they’d been doing. She spoke of her contacts, the Alonsos and Garcias and Alejandros, as if they were all old friends, and when Brock asked about Barcelona she became quite lyrical.

‘Captain Ramiro Alvarez and Lieutenant Jesus Mozas are our two CGP contacts. We’ve visited them twice and they’ve been over here once. Ramiro’s a bit grim, but Jesus is lovely. The trouble is, both they and Buenos Aires seem to be going a bit cold on us. We think they’ve been told to be polite but not spend any more money. Superintendent Chivers was thinking of going over there again soon to try to keep them involved, but I think he was waiting until we had something definite to follow up. He was planning to take me,’ she added hopefully, then clamped her mouth tight when she noticed the smirks passing between the men.

It took the rest of the morning to work through the business and allocate jobs. Kathy observed the way Brock quietly brought the two halves of his team together, coaxing Chivers’ people to reconsider what they had done, identifying the areas of old ground that would have to be gone over yet again. Though he appeared all method and rationality, for Brock the most important part of the process was encouraging something more intangible, an act of faith, a belief that he would simply be luckier than Chivers. Sharpe wanted to believe this and so did the remnants of Chivers’ team, flagging now after four months without a result, and Brock needed their faith to bring the hunt back to life.

When they finally broke up, Brock asked Kathy if she would go with him to have a look at the crime scene and talk to Verge’s colleagues. She was glad, because he hadn’t said in the meeting what her role in the investigation would be and she was afraid of being sidelined because of the committee business, which she was already regretting. A preliminary meeting of the working party had been called for later that afternoon, and she knew she’d have to watch her time.

As she drove across Westminster Bridge she decided to ask Brock what she would be doing. He didn’t reply at first, gazing out of the side window at the sunlight glinting on the great wheel of the London Eye. Finally he said, ‘I want you to explain Verge to me, Kathy. Get me inside his head. I want to understand what he was thinking when he did it. What was in his mind as he drove down to the south coast? Maybe if we understand better how his journey began, we’ll have a better chance of working out where he’s ended up.’

Sounds all right, she thought, then began to wonder how it could be done. Get inside his head. She pondered this as she negotiated the South Bank traffic, slowing at roadworks under the railway bridge by London Bridge station, past Southwark Cathedral then across Tower Bridge Road and into Bermondsey. Just lately, with Leon, she’d begun to doubt if it was possible to get inside anyone else’s head, especially a man’s. They’d been living together for six months, but there were parts of his mind that were completely closed to her, she knew, just as there were parts of hers that she hadn’t let him see. And if it was impossible with someone that close, how could you do it with a man who had vanished four months before?

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 singlemindedness, 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 bottom 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.’

‘Not new women?’

Clarke smiled. ‘This one is just for men. I believe they represent the bigger problem and the more testing subjects.’

Brock had been listening to this in silence. Clarke’s words reminded him of a report he’d read about a new Home Office program, a radical response to an ever-expanding and recalcitrant prison population. He hadn’t realised it had been taken so far.

Clarke had a book in his hand, which he offered to Brock.‘If you want to know more about our work you should have a look at this.’

‘Thanks.’ Brock examined the glossy hardback, thick and square, titled The Verge Practice: Complete Works and Projects, 1974 -1999.

He had been skimming another book lying open on Verge’s drawing board. On one page was a set of plans, titled ‘Ledoux, Prisons, Aix-en-Provence, 1787. Engravings from Ramee.’ The plans were each a perfect square divided into four quarters, and looked remarkably similar to the basic arrangement of Verge’s Home Office model. Turning the page he had come across a section underlined in pencil. He had read it, then taken notes.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Clarke said. ‘You’re thinking how ironic it would be if Charles ended up as the first inmate of his own masterpiece. I think we’ve all had that thought.’

‘You don’t see him as a suicide then?’

Clarke shook his head firmly. ‘No. Never.’

It wasn’t until they were back in the car that Kathy realised that she was going to be late for her committee. Well, there was nothing to be done about that, and the Verge case was much more interesting anyway.

‘Odd that Clarke should have thought I was implying some kind of premeditation on Verge’s part,’ Brock said. ‘I hadn’t meant that at all, but that was the way he took it.’ ‘Yes, I noticed that too. Almost as if he’d been expecting someone to raise it.’ ‘Or half believed it himself. What kind of man would that make Verge?’ ‘Cold-blooded, sick? But as everyone keeps telling us, killing her like that was so much against his own interests.’

‘Self-destructive as well as obsessive…’ Brock pondered, pulling his notebook out of his pocket. ‘Did you notice that book lying on his drawing table? There was a passage there that was underlined.’ He searched through his notes. ‘I hate it when people mark beautiful books like that,’ he grumbled. ‘Yes, here… Sometime in the 1780s the architect Ledoux was doing research for a prison he was designing. He was studying all the latest theories of incarceration, and he paid a visit to a Doctor Tornotary, a scientist, anatomist and amateur criminologist, who collected the bodies of dead criminals for dissection. This is what he wrote:

He sat me down in the middle of a select collection of heads, ranged in order. ‘You who are an artist, who have studied the conformation of the human body and its relations to the brain and stomach,’ he said, ‘judge the characters, vices, and crimes of these humiliating remains of the dignity of man.’ After having reflected, I assembled my thoughts: ‘The first and the second,’ I said, ‘were assassins; the third died of anger.’ This was enough. He ran to his records, leafed through them: ‘Ah,’ he cried, ‘I am not indeed mad.’

‘What do you make of that? Why did Verge mark that passage?’

‘Perhaps I should put it to my committee.’ Kathy checked her watch. A jam had formed around the roadworks at London Bridge.

‘I think I’ll have a talk to his doctor,’ Brock said.