The verge practice

25

I’ve just spoken to the local police,’ Kathy said. ‘They had nothing to tell me.’ ‘Take me through that day again,’ Brock asked. On the desk in front of him he had the report sheet that Leon had sent to Kathy, together with the original forensic reports on Clarke’s suicide and Kathy’s car.

Kathy consulted her notebook. ‘Friday the fourteenth, the day you interviewed Sandy Clarke, and he thought you’d discovered that he was the father of Charlotte’s baby because of his DNA. You asked me to go out to Buckinghamshire to speak to Charlotte, to check his story. I phoned her to say I was coming, and drove out there in my own car, the Renault. I got there about two-thirty p.m., and stayed for half an hour. She was angry that Clarke had told us about Atlanta and the baby, and seemed keen to keep it a secret, but she confirmed his account. On my way back to London, I stopped at a new supermarket outside Amersham and did some grocery shopping. I suppose I was inside for about twenty minutes, and when I came out I found the side window smashed and things missing from my car-the CD player, sunglasses and my briefcase containing the transcript of Clarke’s interview. I noticed that another car next to mine had been broken into as well. It was about the same age as mine, a blue Ford, and didn’t have an alarm. I went back into the supermarket to report it to the manager, who admitted they’d had a few similar break-ins.’

She turned the page of her notebook. ‘While I was in the car park I got a phone call from Robert, the administrator for the committee I’m on, wanting me to meet him urgently at headquarters, so I didn’t hang around to talk to the local cops. I left my details and returned to London.’

‘What else was in your briefcase?’

‘There was a small calculator… some notepaper, envelopes and stamps. The Clarke transcript was in a red plastic folder. There was a London A-Z. And I think there may have been the book that goes with my Spanish language tapes. I haven’t seen it since. The local police said nothing’s been recovered.’ Something else niggled at the back of Kathy’s mind, but she couldn’t pin it down. Then she remembered. ‘There was something else. The scrapbook you gave me to look at, Stewart and Miranda’s. It was in my briefcase too.’

Brock looked up sharply.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, thinking of all the work they had put into it.

He shrugged. ‘Not your fault. I’ll make it up to them. You must have been followed from Charlotte’s house to the supermarket.’

‘Yes.’ Kathy looked glum. ‘Though I can’t imagine how they could have done it without me spotting them. The lanes are narrow and twisting around there, and they would have to have stayed close not to lose me. And as far as I can remember, there’s nowhere near the cottage that they could have waited in a vehicle out of sight.’

‘You didn’t discuss going to the supermarket with Charlotte?’

‘No, but her grandmother was there, Madelaine Verge. It was she who recommended it. She gave me some sauce she was making, and suggested I buy some fish to go with it. I told her I needed some groceries anyway, and she told me about the new supermarket.’

‘And Charlotte heard this conversation?’

‘I think so. Yes, I’d forgotten that. They both would have known I was going there.’

‘But did they know about the Clarke transcript- assuming that’s what the thief was after?’

‘Charlotte certainly did. I referred to it while I was talking to her, and she wanted to read it. I said she couldn’t. I don’t think she would have told her grandmother about it. She seemed anxious to keep it secret.’

‘Well, I don’t believe that Madelaine Verge was capable of driving after you and breaking into your car, but I suppose it’s just conceivable that Charlotte might. Or alternatively one or other of them could have contacted someone else who came after you. Sandy Clarke, perhaps. That would explain the same gloves being used in both places. Except that we never found the gloves at Clarke’s house.’

‘Why would he want to rob my car? He already knew what was on the transcript, and could ask for a copy any time he wanted.’

‘He might have been after something else. Perhaps he thought you had the whole file on him. This was at a time when he knew he was under suspicion. Maybe Charlotte phoned him and said you’d just been there, brandishing a file on him, and he saw a chance to find out how much we knew or suspected.’

‘We can check her phone records for that day.’

Brock lifted the phone and made a short call, then replaced the receiver and began turning the pages of the reports in front of him, reading them again. Finally he asked, ‘What did you make of Oakley this afternoon?’

Kathy’s mind filled with one thought, a thought she had been suppressing with considerable force since watching Oakley’s interview-that Leon had gone to Dublin with him on the same day she had left for Spain, when he had been so desperate for time to finish his university assignment. The thought burned so brightly that she couldn’t see past it to answer Brock’s question.

‘I…I’m not sure.’

‘Did he sound plausible, do you think?’

Yes, she thought, this time he had seemed plausible, and she sensed that Brock and Bren had felt that too, becoming less aggressive in their questioning. ‘Some bits, certainly. The bits we can check.’

‘Yes. How about the meeting he had with Clarke?’

Kathy forced herself to concentrate, wondering what Brock was leading to. ‘That seemed inconclusive. I thought there must have been more to it than he was saying.’

‘What did you make of the bit about Clarke’s pen and glasses?’

‘That didn’t make much sense.’

‘Can we believe Oakley?’

Kathy thought. ‘Probably. I mean it doesn’t do him any credit, does it? He should have reported it to Chivers.’

‘Exactly. He probably thinks Clarke did tell Chivers, and that now we’re wondering why he didn’t report it himself, so he decided to come clean. But if Oakley is telling the truth about that, what does it mean?’

‘I don’t know. Why would Clarke mention it? It could only tend to place him at the scene and incriminate him.’

‘And why didn’t he refer to it in his confession, when he did mention his lost driving glove? Suppose he was genuinely mystified by it, and worried enough to try to pursue it. Imagine for a moment that he didn’t kill Miki and Charles. He’s called up to the bedroom, to the shocking scene of Miki’s corpse. Then, while he’s waiting for help to arrive, he notices things that belong to him. He thinks he must have left them there on the Friday night, and he doesn’t want to have to explain what he was doing in her bedroom then, so he snatches them up and looks around desperately for anything else incriminating. But later, he becomes increasingly certain that he never had that pen and that pair of glasses with him on the Friday night. How had they got there? Had someone deliberately planted them?’

‘The murderer,’ Kathy said. ‘Charles Verge.’

And catching the expression on Brock’s face, she understood for the first time his odd detours around the fens of that morning, and his sense of expectancy when they reached Marchdale. ‘You’ve been thinking this for some time, haven’t you? You do think he’s still alive.’

‘Just a private doubt, Kathy. Let’s keep it that way.’

‘You’ve thought this all along?’

‘I wasn’t sure, but when I spoke to Gail Lewis she seemed to confirm my doubts. And then I became worried. If Verge really is the killer then she may be at risk too, and perhaps others. It depends how rational he is.’

‘Did you really think he might show up at the March-dale opening?’

‘It seemed too good an idea to ignore. But perhaps he had other eyes and ears there to witness the event for him. Because, if he is here among us, I think it’s a fair bet that he’s got help, don’t you?’

‘And Oakley is in the clear?’

‘I believe he is. Oh, if he’d been better at his job he might have picked up Debbie Langley’s error, and he should have made a report of his meeting with Sandy Clarke. I’m sure Leon would have done. I doubt if it goes further than that.’ Then he added, ‘Leon did well to pick up this match between the two traces. Did you ask him to chase it up?’

‘No, he must have done it off his own bat.’ Neat Leon, efficient Leon, badly needing to prove something, Kathy thought.

Brock said, ‘Odd that he should be such good pals with Oakley. I’d have thought they’d be opposites, really. No?’

They were interrupted by Brock’s phone. He listened for a moment, then thanked the caller and hung up. ‘They’ve checked Charlotte’s phone records. It wasn’t used within an hour of your visit. We’ll have to find out Clarke’s movements that afternoon, but if it wasn’t him, who else could it have been? Someone Charlotte could confide in, someone in the neighbourhood.’

‘Someone like George…’ Kathy said softly.

‘Who?’

‘The gardener. We saw him at Marchdale, remember? Helping with Madelaine’s wheelchair. He was working in the garden the day I spoke to Charlotte. He would have seen how upset she got-he might even have overheard some of what we said. He certainly seems to be devoted to her. She could have got him to follow me and steal the transcript.’

‘And then kill Clarke?’

They both thought about that, chilled by the idea of Charlotte, fragile and pregnant, arranging the death of the father of her child. And for what reason? To stifle the scandal of the child’s parentage? To restore her adored father’s reputation? And they both made the same calculations-armed with the information in Clarke’s transcript, the person who broke into Kathy’s car had three days in which to concoct the suicide message, perhaps taken to Clarke’s house as a typed letter on which they planned to plant his fingerprints and a scrawled signature, but instead transferred it to the convenient laptop. Would they both have gone to visit Clarke that evening, Charlotte to gain entry, drug Clarke and type the note, George to do the heavy work of arranging the death scene?

‘What do we know about this George?’

‘Almost nothing. He was there the first time I went to Orchard Cottage, and Madelaine Verge told me that he had been sort of adopted by Charles when he was doing the research for Marchdale. He was either an inmate or an ex-con, and Charles took him on as a handyman and gardener. I don’t even know his surname.’

‘I don’t remember any reference to Dick Chivers’ team interviewing him.’

‘I suppose he wouldn’t have seemed relevant. He’s sort of invisible, in the background, doing odd jobs and the garden, keeping an eye on things. Charlotte spoke of him almost as if he were a kind of chaperone, like her grandmother, who seems to spend most of her time there now.’

Brock recalled Gail Lewis’s comment about Verge appearing to have established a haven for his daughter in Buckinghamshire, ‘an alternative happy little family’ she’d called it. And now here was another player, George the handyman.

Kathy was thinking of the lizard doctor, Javier Lizancos, and his clinic behind the gym at Sitges. You automatically assumed, of course, that the purpose of plastic surgery was to restore, to beautify, to make younger, but presumably it could equally do the opposite, disfigure and age. And she also thought of the look of triumph on George’s face that morning at the opening of the prison.

‘This may sound a bit far-fetched,’ she said, ‘but George is the same height and build as Verge, wouldn’t you say? I don’t suppose it’s possible…’ She hesitated to put the idea into words, sure that Brock would find it absurd. But she looked up and saw that he was nodding.

‘Can’t be difficult to find out,’ he said.

Brock filled his lungs. ‘Lavender, cows, autumn foliage. This is a real haven, Ms Verge. A bower.’

Charlotte wasn’t impressed. She eyed him over the swell of her belly and said, ‘What exactly did you want?’

She hadn’t put on any electric lights, and the evening glow from the small window barely penetrated the shadows of the far corners of the room. Most of the wall surfaces were covered with shelves of books, with the tall volumes on art, design and architecture at the bottom. Brock raised his chin towards the novels packed up to the low ceiling.

‘You’re a great reader, I see. You obviously appreciate fiction.’

No response.

‘You must excuse me,’ Brock went on with a deep sigh. ‘It’s been a long day, and this armchair is very comfortable. Why we’re here, yes. We’re required to prepare a report for the coroner who’ll be conducting the inquest into Sandy Clarke’s death. We have to outline his life in the days leading up to his death, and, as far as we can, any indications of his state of mind. We interviewed him on the morning of Friday the fourteenth of September, but unfortunately we have very little information about his movements after that time. His wife left him alone at their Greenwich Park house on that Friday evening to go to stay with her mother, and she didn’t see him alive again. Nor did any of his work colleagues or neighbours, as far as we’ve been able to establish. Now, we know that you and your baby must have been very much in his thoughts at that time, and we wondered if he had been in contact with you at all over that weekend.’

‘No.’

‘You’re quite sure? You may remember that Friday was the day that Sergeant Kolla here came to speak to you about Mr Clarke’s claim that he was the father of your child.’

‘Yes, of course I remember, and no, I didn’t have any contact with him at that time.’

‘What about other people here? Is your grandmother still with you?’

‘She’s in her room. She was very tired after the trip to Marchdale this morning, and she’s gone to bed early. I don’t want you to disturb her. She would have told me, anyway, if Sandy had called.’

‘All right. Anyone else? Do you have a cleaning lady?’

‘No.’

Kathy said, ‘What about your gardener, Charlotte? Is he here at the moment?’

‘No. He drove us back from Marchdale, then left. But he wouldn’t know anything.’

‘All the same, we might check. What’s his name and address, Ms Verge?’

She seemed on the point of refusing, but then relented with a frown of irritation. ‘George Todd, but there’s no point to this. He lives in the village.’ She gave an address and phone number.

‘Thanks. How long have you known him?’

‘Since I moved in. The end of June.’

‘Oh, I thought you came here before your father… before he disappeared.’

‘He bought the cottage for me in March, but there was a lot needed doing to it. George worked on it for about three months.’

‘And did you see him during that time, while he was working on the house?’

‘No, Dad said it was always a disaster for the client to visit their building while it was being refurbished. George contacted me at the end of June, when it was ready, and helped me move in.’

‘So you didn’t actually see George in person till the end of June?’

‘That’s right. What are you getting at?’

‘It’s not important.’ Brock tucked his book back in his jacket pocket. ‘Looks as if we disturbed you for nothing. Impressive ceremony this morning. Were you all pleased with how it went?’

Charlotte eased herself to her feet with difficulty. ‘Except for what you said to Gran, about some people thinking my father is still alive.’ She glared accusingly at Brock. ‘What did you mean? You really upset her.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I certainly didn’t intend that. I was just making a general point, that she should be prepared for the fact that some people will never be satisfied until Mr Verge’s body has been found, that’s all.’ He gave her a bland, sympathetic smile, and watched the frown of distrust deepen on the young woman’s brow.

As they were walking down the front path, she called after them, ‘Oh, and there’s no point you trying to talk to George anyway. He’s gone away.’

‘Away?’ Brock turned. ‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know. He mentioned it when we got back from Marchdale. He said he was going away for a few days.’

There were lights on in the front room of the house, the end of a row of old brick terraces on the edge of the village. The woman who answered the door wiped her hands on her apron and looked at Brock’s identification anxiously.

‘Oh dear. George rents the attic room, but he’s not here just now. Why?’

‘We’re anxious to talk to him. We understand he’s gone away for a few days. Do you know where?’

‘He didn’t say. He’s a private sort of person. He’s not got into trouble again, has he? I know he’s on parole, but he’s never been the slightest bother to us.’

She agreed to take them up to his room, which confirmed her claim that George Todd was the cleanest tenant she’d ever had. Everything was spotless. The few clothes in the wardrobe, including the suit they’d seen him wearing that morning, were immaculately folded and creased. The kettle and toaster on top of a small food cupboard were spotless. The small fridge was empty, wiped clean. On a shelf stood an orderly row of books concerned with horticulture, looking as immaculate as when they’d left the shop. The room reminded Kathy of a prison cell, ready for inspection.

When they were back in the car, Brock said, ‘This is making me feel very uneasy, Kathy, but let’s not jump to conclusions too soon. We’ll keep your theory to ourselves for the moment. We’d better get it right. I’ve a feeling no one’s going to be happy about this.’

‘One malicious wounding with intent to resist arrest, two woundings with intent to do grievous bodily harm, three aggravated assaults with intent to rob, sixty-seven convictions for theft, five for handling stolen goods.’ Brock paused, scanning the piece of paper in his hand. They were all staring at an enlarged photograph of a tough, battered face, the left side covered by livid scar tissue. Kathy barely recognised the gardener or the man pushing Madelaine’s wheelchair at the Marchdale opening.

‘So approach with caution,’ Brock continued. ‘Aged fifty-five years, of which eighteen have been spent in gaol, twelve in category A prisons. George Todd is currently on parole. An alert was issued last night, but so far we have no idea of his current whereabouts. We believe he may have information relating to the Verge case, and we want to know his whereabouts on the afternoon of September fourteenth, when DS Kolla’s car was broken into, and the evening of September seventeenth, when Sandy Clarke died. We are also looking for a pair of black leather gloves, traces of which have been found at both scenes. Apart from the rented room where he lives, we also have warrants to search the two places where he is known to work regularly as a gardener and handyman-Orchard Cottage, belonging to Ms Charlotte Verge, and Briar Hill, owned by Ms Luz Diaz-and also the house of Mrs Madelaine Verge in Chelsea, which Todd also visited. Apart from gloves, we are interested in tools that might have been used to break the car window, any written notes resembling Sandy Clarke’s suicide statement, and anything which might belong to, or indicate recent contact with, Charles Verge.’

People looked puzzled. ‘You mean recent as in before May twelfth, chief? When he died?’

‘No, I mean since May twelfth. I mean like in the last few weeks.’

This produced a murmur of consternation. Brock’s raised hand restored an expectant hush. ‘The coroner will expect us to be thorough. In the absence of Verge’s body, we’ll be expected to be able to say categorically that he’s left no recent traces, and these women are the people who would have been closest to him, the ones he’d most likely have tried to contact, if he’d still been alive.’

‘We’re to search the whole properties, sir? Not just the outbuildings where Todd might have kept his tools?’

‘Everywhere, but do it tactfully. If they ask, explain that you’re looking for something Todd might have hidden or mislaid. Don’t tell them you’re looking for traces of Verge- that’ll only upset them.’

You can say that again, Kathy thought, picturing the reaction of the three women to this violation. It was as if Brock were planning to put his hand into a beehive. The team looked doubtful too, perhaps imagining trying to explain to Madelaine Verge that they were searching her underwear drawers for something that her gardener might have hidden or mislaid. For once Kathy was glad that she would be tied up all that day with her committee.

The Crime Strategy Working Party was going well under Kathy’s chairmanship, so everyone agreed, and she could only assume it was one of those cases of something going right when you’d paid it no attention, because she’d hardly given it any serious thought since Leon had left. She sat through the rest of the day half listening to the others excitedly discussing institutionalised racism and homophobia, and wondered how she was going to get through another weekend, and how Brock and the rest of the team were making out. When Jay spoke to her in the lunchbreak about the arrangements for Saturday night, it took her a while to remember what the other woman was talking about.

‘Do you know the pub on the corner of Old Compton Street? I thought we could all meet up there. What do you think?’

‘Oh, fine. Yes, that would be fine.’

Jay lowered her voice, and looked sheepish. ‘I know you’re a copper and everything, but when you’re off-duty, you’re off-duty, right?’

‘How do you mean?’ But Kathy knew exactly what she meant.

‘Well, some of my friends like…’ Jay stopped as Shazia, balancing a paper plate of sandwiches and a cup of orange juice, joined them. They didn’t get a chance to finish the conversation, and afterwards Kathy wondered what she was getting herself into.

Brock rocked forward on the balls of his feet, absorbing the confrontation between stubble fields and hedgerows out there, and stainless steel and leather cushions in here. It was a platitude of modern architecture, he knew, but it still had the power to shock, the unmediated impact of room and landscape through a sheet of naked glass.

Luz Diaz stood with her back to him, arms folded, smoking angrily. ‘I cannot believe that this is permitted in this country. It is worse than Franco.’

‘I’m sorry, Ms Diaz. But the coroner…’

‘Fuck the coroner!’ She spun around to face him. ‘That’s just an excuse. You know what I think? I think you enjoy breaking into people’s houses and turning over their private things. I think you are no different from criminals.’

‘Did you know that your gardener had an extensive criminal record?’

‘George? Yes, of course I knew. Charles told me all about George, ages ago, before I even came here. He met him in prison, when he was working on the Marchdale project. Is that all you see? A man has a record, so that’s it? Do you look beyond that? Do you know anything about him?’

‘Tell me.’

‘He was a model prisoner, doing a degree in horticulture with the Open University. No, he was the model prisoner, that is what the prison governor told Charles-the best, the most responsive prisoner he had ever met. And he had had a terrible life. Did you know that he witnessed his father murder his mother when he was five? Did you know that he was shockingly abused by the relatives who took him in, and then again when he was put into care?’

The blaze of anger in her eyes died a little as she took in Brock’s look of concern. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, you should do better research, Chief Inspector. George is probably the most trustworthy and honest man I know. What do you suspect him of doing?’

‘I can’t say at present. But your assessment of his character is very helpful.’

‘You’re just saying that to calm me down, yes?’ But despite her words, Brock saw that her stabs at her cigarette were less violent. ‘You believe that once a thief, always a thief, right?’

‘I think it’s very hard for any of us to change a pattern that’s shaped our whole lives.’

Luz frowned at him. ‘So you would say that once we have decided what we are going to do with our lives-you a policeman, Charles an architect, me a painter-that those things then lock us into their own patterns? You think after thirty years of thinking and acting in our different ways, we’re so shaped by the experience that we simply can’t change?’

‘Something like that.’

She stared back at him as if trying to provoke him into saying more, then broke into a smile. ‘But people do it all the time, don’t they? And in your heart I bet you believe that you could still be anything you want. And George is the proof that you can be. He overcame his past and changed himself.’

Brock smiled back. ‘We’ll see, Ms Diaz. We’ll see.’ Then he added, ‘Is that why George was important to Charles, because he was able to change himself, like a hermit crab throwing off its shell?’

Luz looked startled. ‘Why do you say that? That was

…’ She stopped herself and turned away, crushing her cigarette into a glass bowl. ‘George was a resource, that’s all. Charles paid him as a consultant, because he knew everything about prisons from the inside.’

‘I see.’ There was a thump from the floor below, a muffled curse, and Luz stiffened. ‘If those bastards break anything… I have jars of pigment down there from Venice. It’s the only place in the world you can get it. You’d better tell them…’

‘Don’t worry, they know their job. And is that why you left Barcelona, to change yourself? Or your painting, perhaps? Your colours are so bright and clear, the geometry so sharp-will that survive this damp English light?’ He nodded out to the view, where evening mist was seeping out of the copses.

‘I haven’t experienced an English winter yet,’ she said, lighting another cigarette. ‘But perhaps it is the reason, yes. We all need a change of perspective from time to time. Something to make us think and feel in fresh ways. A change of palette…’

Another dull thud sounded from below and Luz wheeled around and made for the spiral staircase. ‘I’m going to see what those people are doing.’

Brock remained in the artist’s studio, going over to a shelf of books. Most of them were gallery exhibition catalogues, many with pages marked by slips of paper. When he opened them he found illustrations of her work. They dated back over ten years, from private galleries in Barcelona, Madrid, San Francisco and New York.

George Todd’s yellow motorbike was spotted early that afternoon, twenty-four hours after he had disappeared, parked outside a small holiday hotel in Bexhill, the place where Charles Verge had supposedly walked into the sea. Todd had apparently booked into the hotel the previous evening. Within half an hour he had been located in a pub less than a hundred yards away, and begun the journey back to London under escort.

Now he sat on the other side of the table, painstakingly rubbing his fingertips with a handkerchief. Brock could see no remaining traces of the ink, but still he rubbed and scoured.

‘I thought you scanned them electronically now,’ Todd said softly. ‘What’s the point, anyway? Did you think I were someone else?’ A Yorkshire accent. He looked up from his scrubbing with a glint in his eye, as if relishing some private joke. ‘Who did you reckon I was then, Charles Verge?’

Brock said nothing. The idea did seem far-fetched now, a clutching at straws.

It was hard not to stare at Todd. There was a fastidious intensity about his gestures, which contrasted oddly with the anarchy of his damaged features. Brock noted the creases down the arms of his shirt, the way he folded the handkerchief neatly before replacing it in his pocket. The crew that had searched his toolshed at Orchard Cottage had commented on how obsessively neat everything was, like in his rented room. Brock had seen it before, the model prisoners who responded to the order and discipline of prison that had been so absent from their early lives. More than one of the assessors in Todd’s file had diagnosed an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

‘What were you doing at Bexhill?’

‘I wanted a few days’ holiday. Decided to go down to the seaside.’

‘To the place where Charles Verge was supposed to have disappeared.’

Another private smirk. ‘Seemed as good a place as any.’

‘When did you first meet Mr Verge?’

‘Two, two and a half years ago.’

‘That was at…’ Brock consulted his notes.

‘HMP Maidstone. He was doing research.’

‘How did he come to meet you?’

‘I was picked, by the governor, to talk to him about my experiences. We hit it off. I was able to put him right on a few things.’

Brock wondered if the two men had recognised something of themselves in the other. ‘What sort of things?’

‘He was interested in how people feel when they’re inside, how their attitudes change over time, what makes them tick. Then later on, when he was working on his plans, we talked about them. I helped him design March-dale.’ The claim was made flatly, without bombast.

‘Did he pay you for your help?’

‘He insisted. He called me a consultant, and put money into an account for me, for when I got out. Don’t worry, it were all declared. I paid tax on it.’

‘And you got out last January? What did you do then?’

‘He invited me to work for his family, as a general handyman and gardener. I got Orchard Cottage ready for Miss Charlotte, painting and wallpapering and repairs, and I do the gardens and other odds and ends for her, and for Mrs Madelaine Verge and Ms Diaz at Briar Hill. Ask them. I’m a good worker.’

Brock didn’t doubt it, and moved on to Todd’s whereabouts at the time of Kathy’s car break-in and Clarke’s suicide. He had been working in Charlotte’s garden at the time of the first, he said, though whether she or her grandmother had seen him there all afternoon he couldn’t say. As for the second, he thought he had been at home that evening, probably watching TV, but he couldn’t be sure. The absence of a firm alibi didn’t encourage Brock. None of the teams had found a pair of black gloves, or anything else incriminating.

It was six p.m. before Kathy returned to Queen Anne’s Gate from her committee meeting. She passed Brock on the front steps. Clearly he was in a hurry, buttoning his coat against the chill with one hand, the other clutching a briefcase, a preoccupied frown on his face. He grunted hello, unsmiling, and marched off down the street in the direction of headquarters.

Bren was inside in the lobby, consulting the appointments book.

‘What’s up with the boss?’ Kathy asked.

‘Shit and fan have connected, Kathy. Phones have been melting, explanations demanded.’

‘The searches?’

Bren nodded gloomily. ‘Not a thing. No black leather gloves, no hidden messages, not even a trace of an illicit substance in Todd’s medicine cabinet. You heard we found him, did you? Sitting in a pub at Bexhill having a quiet beer. Said he was having a seaside break.’

‘Really?’ Kathy was stunned, and realised how convinced she had become that Todd and Verge were the same man.

‘And he’s definitely who he says he is?’

‘Sure. We took his prints and DNA, and had his parole officer in.’

‘Does he have an alibi for the times on the fourteenth and seventeenth?’

‘Convincingly vague. He runs a motorbike, by the way. Yellow Honda, with a black crash helmet. You don’t remember seeing it in the supermarket car park, do you?’

Kathy thought. ‘Sorry, no. And the women have complained?’

‘Long and loud, in person and through legal representatives, and to higher authorities. Brock’s just been called in to see Sharpe. Hell, it isn’t as if we couldn’t have seen it coming. What was in his mind, do you know, Kathy? It was almost as if he believed that Charles Verge was still alive.’

Kathy shook her head.

‘I can just hear Sharpe telling him he’s being obsessive. And it’s true. Well, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know, Bren. I really don’t.’

‘And how certain is this match of the leather fibres?’ Sharpe demanded.

‘Ninety-seven per cent,’ Brock replied.

‘Ninety-seven per cent certain of what?’ Sharpe insisted. ‘That they’re from the same glove, or from the same type of glove, or from a similar piece of black leather?’

‘A piece of leather processed in the same way, using the same dye.’

‘And that covers what percentage of the total number of leather items on sale in London?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There could be hundreds of matches for these samples, yes? Thousands maybe. One might be from a bag and the other from a glove, or the sleeve of a jacket, or a shoe. You see my point?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you must have realised this, yet you persisted. Why?’

‘I said when we met a week ago that I felt it was premature to close the investigation, sir, especially in the absence of a body.’

Sharpe’s face hardened, his voice taking on a repetitive stress as if he were reciting an obvious truth or a nursery rhyme. ‘And I made it quite plain to you that the case was over. I congratulated you on a brilliant result. I made it crystal clear that everyone was completely satisfied.’ He reached for a file and slammed it down in front of Brock. It was open at a record of a meeting dated the twentieth of September. The wording was almost identical to what Sharpe had just said.

‘You seem intent on shooting yourself in the foot, Brock. Almost obsessional about it. Why is that?’ Sharpe stopped pacing and sat down. ‘I’ve assured the three women that neither they nor their gardener will be disturbed again, and that the case is closed. You’ll write to them yourself, today, and confirm this, and apologise for any inconvenience and distress. All right?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He felt ten years old again, in the headmaster’s study, the only one of the Black Hand Gang to have been caught wiping boot polish on doorhandles on April Fool’s Day.

‘And I want a copy of the letters for my file.’ Sharpe filled his lungs and relaxed slowly. ‘Anyway, on a brighter note, your DS Kolla seems to be acquitting herself extremely well on the Working Party committee. Robert is very pleased with her, tells me she’s taken it by the scruff of the neck and made it perform. Excellent leadership qualities, he says. Focused. Sound.’

Sound was Sharpe’s favourite quality, Brock knew. He was in no doubt that his own soundness quotient had taken a dive.

‘You might learn a thing or two from her, Brock.’

He stopped for a double scotch at a pub on the way back, a little place packed with office workers in no hurry to get home. They jostled and laughed too loudly at their own jokes, shouting their orders through the smoke to the girls behind the bar, and after ten minutes Brock felt a little better. He fought his way out onto the street and continued back to the annexe in Queen Anne’s Gate. It occupied a four-storey brick terrace of what had once been indiviual houses, later connected by a warren of doors and corridors and converted to offices, most recently belonging to a publisher. In a few years it would change its use again, Brock thought, and no one would remember or care what he and his people had done here.

He stopped at an office on the second floor when he saw Kathy inside working at her computer. ‘Sorry I was a bit abrupt earlier,’ he said. ‘Was in a bit of a hurry.’

‘Bren said there was trouble.’

As she looked up from the screen Brock was struck by how dark the shadows around her eyes seemed, how hollow her cheeks. Or perhaps it was just the light. ‘A call to order from above. The Verge case is closed. Drop it, forget it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, maybe they’re right. We had our chance. Look, I’ve got some paperwork to clear up, but do you fancy a meal later on?’

‘Yes, okay. That would be fine.’

After he’d gone she sat for a while thinking about the Verge case, then, inevitably, about Leon, then back to Verge. She thought of Brock’s conviction that they’d got it wrong, his fear that Verge might strike again, and her absurd notion about Todd. It was so easy to see threats and shadows where none existed.

Her phone rang, Brock’s voice, but sounding odd, asking her to come to his office. When she got there she was startled to see the blank, stunned look on his face.

‘You all right?’ she asked.

‘Sit down.’ He shook himself, ran a hand across his eyes. ‘I just had a call from Suzanne. She happened to mention that the children had met up with someone we know, someone on the force, she assumed. Yesterday afternoon, they were coming home from school, and he met them outside the shop.’

Kathy visualised the children in their school uniforms outside the front of Suzanne’s antiques shop and home on the High Street in Battle, wondering what this was leading to.

‘He called them by their names, and said that he was a good friend of ours, and that he’d heard they were very interested in the Verge case. He said he’d heard they’d made their own dossier of the case, and it was a very good piece of work.’

Now Kathy understood. She felt a chill as she recalled the title page of the scrapbook that had been taken from her car, with the children’s names, ages and address.

‘Could they describe him?’

‘Oldish man, funny accent, and he spoke to them in an odd way, with the left side of his face turned away.’

‘Oh God.’

‘It’s a threat, Kathy, or a warning.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s what Todd was up to.’

‘What can we do?’ And that, Kathy realised, was the big question, the reason why Brock was immobilised instead of calling all hell down upon the head of George Todd.

‘Sharpe won’t let me act on this without some confirmation,’ Brock said. ‘I’ll go down there now, and try to get something concrete from the kids. Maybe Sharpe will agree to an identification parade.’ He said it without conviction. ‘At the least I can get Suzanne to take them away somewhere safe for a while.’

For how long, she thought, and what then?

‘I’m sorry, Brock. I feel this is my fault, with the scrapbook.’

‘Nonsense, it was sheer bad luck. At least it confirms that Todd is tied up in this. If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll take the bastard away for another little holiday, and beat the truth out of him.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ He got to his feet and began shoving documents into his briefcase. ‘I’d better go.’

Kathy felt helpless. ‘I’ll see you on Monday. You won’t do anything till then, will you?’ He smiled grimly. ‘Don’t worry. Have a good weekend.’ Later, sitting alone in her office, she came to a conclu sion. She picked up her phone and rang the number of a twenty-four hour ticketing agency.