The verge practice
( Brock and Kolla - 7 )
Barry Maitland
The verge practice
Barry Maitland
1
The Zhejiang delegation stood huddled at the foot of the great sheet of glass that hung between two brick warehouses, twisting out before hitting the ground to form a shimmering canopy supported on a spider’s web of thin stainless-steel rods.
Sandy Clarke, senior partner of the Verge Practice, hurried through the glass doors to welcome them, the firm’s information manager, Jennifer Mathieson, at his side. Stiff little bows, handshakes and business cards were exchanged, and the party moved from the chill May morning into the warm interior. Once past the low ceiling of the reception area, they paused for a moment to admire the sweep of the atrium that soared up above them, surrounded by floors of open-plan drawing offices, and to take in the view of the river through the glass wall on the far side.
‘Rondon Bridge.’ Cheong Hung, leader of the delegation, beamed knowingly at the structure to their left.
‘Tower Bridge, Mr Cheong,’ Clarke corrected politely, and drew his guest further to the right to point out the pinnacles of the Tower of London just visible beyond the bridge. He then turned to indicate the tiers of levels rising above them, all brightly lit and humming with activity, although it was only eight o’clock on a Monday morning. ‘Would you care to inspect our facilities?’
Cheong’s English wasn’t that good, and he looked inquiringly at a woman at his elbow, who began to whisper a translation into his ear.
‘Ah.’ Cheong checked his watch and shook his head. He spoke to the woman, who then turned to Clarke. ‘Mr Cheong regrets we are short of time. We are familiar with your facilities from your brochures. They are most impressive. Please to continue to the presentation of your proposals.’
‘Of course.’ Clarke was aware the party had three other presentations to attend that day before catching their flight back to the People’s Republic, and that time was tight, but he knew that Jennifer was anxious to delay things until Charles could be traced. He led the way through a gallery in which models and photographs of some of their more spectacular recent projects were displayed: office towers, a football stadium, a dinosaur museum. Jennifer Mathieson described them briefly as they passed, but the visitors seemed more interested in her red hair and long legs. They came to a milky glass wall that parted with a mechanical sigh in front of them, and entered the auditorium that had been prepared for the formal presentation. While the Chinese accepted coffees and took them to their seats, Jennifer whispered urgently in his ear, ‘Where the hell is he, Sandy?’
‘He must still be upstairs in the flat,’ Clarke said calmly. ‘I saw a light on when I arrived this morning. I asked Elaine to call him.’
‘I spoke to her. She says no one’s answering the phone. There’s no sign of Miki either.’
Clarke could understand her consternation. This wasn’t at all like Charles. Normally he’d have been down in the office hours before, thrashing out the final details of the presentation with the media unit.
‘Maybe he’s in the shower or on his mobile. He’s probably still jet-lagged from the States. Why don’t you go up there, Jennifer? Take the key and winkle him out. I’ll get things started.’
He fixed a confident smile on his face as Jennifer made for the door.
The audience was waiting. Clarke walked to the front of the room and introduced the other senior staff of the Verge Practice who were present.
‘And Mr Verge?’ Cheong asked haltingly. ‘Will he join us?’
‘Naturally, Mr Verge intended to join us. He has been totally involved in the proposals you are about to see. Unfortunately, he seems to have picked up a virus on a recent trip to California, and he has been unwell. He will join us if he possibly can.’
This was translated, producing an exchange of stony looks among the Chinese.
Cheong murmured a few words to the interpreter, who said, ‘Mr Cheong is most disappointed. He very much wished to meet Charles Verge in person.’
‘And Charles is very anxious to meet him. However, since time is short, I suggest that we start the presentation.’ Sandy Clarke beamed another reassuring smile and nodded at the technician. Thank God for digital media, he thought; at least I shan’t have to speak for the next fifteen minutes. Charles wouldn’t have done it this way, of course. He would have worked the audience first, set the scene, hinted at the vision, created a receptive atmosphere. They had formed an effective partnership so often in the past, Charles’s dynamism and his own poise, but today he was on his own.
Clarke moved to a seat against the wall and the room slowly filled with the sound of traditional Chinese music; the screen flicked alive to a scene of white clouds and the title, in both Chinese and English characters, came into focus: The New City of Wuxang. The titles faded and the clouds parted to reveal a patchwork of green fields, a rural landscape in Zhejiang province. Below could be seen a small village, rice paddies, a lake, a wood-and suddenly something else: an interchange, a row of towers, and then a huge city, digitally realised, stretching away in magnificent order towards the horizon, its buildings and highways glittering purposefully in the sunlight.
It was a lie to say that Charles had been totally involved in the development of this proposal. The truth was that he had shown little interest in it, though it was far and away the biggest thing they’d ever been called upon to design. The statistics were staggering, the quantities of concrete and steel and dollars, numbers with long strings of zeros. Yet Charles had remained remote from it all, attending design sessions reluctantly, offering advice only when pressed and then in a tone almost of amusement, as if the whole thing were absurd. And perhaps it was. As he watched the camera dive down to fly along one of the main boulevards leading to the centre of the metropolis, Sandy felt a dispiriting sense of failure, suspecting that though they had designed a vast and efficient beehive, they had utterly failed to grasp the possibilities of a city for two million human souls. And this feeling was immediately followed by a flash of anger. If only Charles had contributed a little more, set the team ablaze as only he could, things might have been different.
Fourteen minutes later there was still no sign of Verge, and Clarke was breathing deeply, maintaining his control. He saw Jennifer Mathieson’s red hair at the glass door of the theatre. She was behind the audience, whose faces were fixed on the screen, and Clarke half rose from his seat, trying to make out what she was doing. She seemed to be signalling to him, waving her hand, but he made no move to go to her. Then something behind her must have distracted her; she half turned and the lights outside caught her face. Clarke was startled by its appearance. It was so white, eyes unnaturally wide, lips drawn back from her teeth, as if she’d had some terrible shock.
But the film was suddenly over, the room lights coming on to the sound of polite clapping from the guests, and Clarke rose to his feet. He invited questions, and it was clear that the party had prepared a list. One by one their questions were laboriously translated and then answered by either Clarke himself or one of the specialist team members. Traffic projections, construction methods, environmental concerns, pedestrian networks, densities, surface water management, each topic was worked over. Finally Mr Cheong spoke what sounded like a rehearsed line.
‘I assume your fee proposal is negotiable.’ Then he paused and said something in Mandarin to the interpreter, who translated: ‘But Mr Cheong prefers to discuss this in person with Mr Verge, when he is available.’
Clarke felt humiliated, but gave no sign. He apologised again for his partner’s absence, and the delegation began to shuffle their papers into their briefcases. The mood was not buoyant.
After he had seen them off, he hurried back to the reception area. ‘Where’s Jennifer?’
‘She went back upstairs to Mr Verge’s apartment, Mr Clarke. She wants you to meet her there urgently, and asked would you go alone.’ The receptionist was watching to see how he would react to this odd message, and he forced himself to speak calmly.
‘Very well.’
Clarke maintained his composure until the lift doors slid shut behind him, then he took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from his brow with his handkerchief, aware that his hand was shaking. He vividly recalled the look of panic on Jennifer Mathieson’s face, and wondered whom she’d spoken to and if she’d summoned help.
The doors opened and she was there, waiting for him outside the door to Charles’s apartment.
‘Sandy, thank God. I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought I should wait here… to make sure…’
He went over and laid a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘It’s all right, Jennifer. What’s up?’
‘You’d better… better look for yourself.’ She could hardly get the key to turn in the lock, her hand was trembling so much. Then they were inside, and Clarke thought how deathly silent the place seemed. There was a strong smell of stale whisky, and he noticed a half-finished tumbler of amber liquid on a coffee table next to a copy of the Italian design magazine Casabella. A pair of women’s shoes lay abandoned on the rug below.
‘In the bedroom,’ Jennifer whispered, as if the slightest sound might bring the ceiling down.
The bedroom was entirely white-white walls and ceiling, white carpet and blinds, white bed linen and furniture-and this made the glossy blackness of Miki Norinaga’s hair and pubic triangle even more startling than it might otherwise have been.
She looked very young, Sandy thought, lying there naked in the centre of the double bed, the white quilt tangled round her knees. Her face was tilted up, eyes open, Japanese lids drawn back in that characteristic look of inquiry she had, as if doubting if the older men around her understood what she was saying. It was a look that her husband Charles had once adored, but which Sandy Clarke had found rather irritating. The symmetry of her slender figure was spoiled by the steel hilt embedded in her left side, immediately below her small breast. In death, her colouring had changed to a waxy yellow.
‘What is that?’ Jennifer Mathieson pointed an unsteady finger, her voice a mixture of panic and outrage.
‘It looks like the handle of one of those rather beautiful carving knives that Miki and Charles brought back from Tokyo on their last visit.’ Now that he had seen it, he felt very calm. ‘Have you spoken to anyone yet, Jennifer?’
‘No, I…I thought I should wait until the visitors had gone. She is dead, isn’t she?’
‘Oh yes. No sign of Charles?’
‘No. God, this is so awful…’ She looked as if she might pass out.
Sandy Clarke put an arm around her shoulders and led her out of the room. ‘Look, this is what I want you to do. Take the lift down to the street and wait by the private apartment entrance for the police to arrive. I’ll phone them now. Will you be all right? You’ll feel much better for a breath of fresh air.’
After he’d seen her into the lift and made the call, he returned to the bedroom and stood for a long while, just staring at Miki. He had a disturbing sense that, dead as she surely was, she was still capable of explaining what had happened, that when the police arrived they would find the truth right there in her face. His eyes slid away from her, across the bedside cabinet to the chair, to the phone and flatscreen TV. He hardly saw these things, yet something must have registered, for his attention returned to the white cube of the cabinet beside the bed and focused on a pair of glasses. Neither Miki nor Charles wore glasses. The round lenses and fine dark frames looked familiar. He took a step closer, feeling heat rising up through his body to his face. He found he could hardly breathe. They were his own reading glasses, the spare pair he kept in his office. He couldn’t remember bringing them up here. At his back he heard the hum of the lift, and he reached forward, snatched up the glasses and slipped them into his jacket pocket. Now his eyes began to dart wildly around the room. What else, dear God, what else? He heard the lift’s motor stop. As he turned to leave he noticed a glint of silver beneath the pillow by Miki’s head. He peered closer, panic rising in his chest. It looked like… it was… his silver pen, the one he’d mislaid. He heard the murmur of voices and leaned over, gripped the end of the pen between thumb and forefinger, and tugged it out from under the pillow.
‘Mr Clarke?’ A man’s voice in the living room. He straightened, ramming the pen into his pocket, and turned to face them.
2
Brock marched quickly along Queen Anne’s Gate, head thrust forward, a preoccupied frown on his face, and crossed onto Broadway. The September morning was sunny and warm, but he hardly noticed it. His current investigations were bogged down, there was a problem with his budget, and the summons to headquarters had been disturbingly vague. The bland office block was only a couple of hundred yards away from the converted terrace annexe in which his team was based, but in his mind the distance was much greater. He reached the entrance to New Scotland Yard and unconsciously straightened his shoulders as he presented his identification, signed the book, accepted a pass and took a lift to the sixth floor.
Commander Sharpe was standing at the window of his office when Brock was shown in. As the figure turned from contemplating the panorama of the city northward across St James Park, Brock was once again struck by the way his boss seemed to fulfil the promise of his name. The same height as Brock, six foot two, he was much leaner in build and thinner of feature, and in appearance, dress and manner he was, decidedly, sharp. This impression was reinforced by his excellent memory, by the intensity of his gaze and his precise form of speech. The effect on Brock was to make him feel vaguely crumpled. He tried to remember when he’d last had his hair cropped and beard trimmed.
‘Morning, Brock. I see our friends are patching their roof again.’ Sharpe gestured towards the window, and Brock looked out to see which particular friends he might be referring to. Close by there was the Art Deco headquarters of the London Underground, beyond it the Wellington Barracks, and in the distance the rooftops of Buckingham Palace.
‘Home Office,’ Sharpe said, referring to the building to the right of the barracks. Further to the right again, Brock could make out the chimneys and rear windows of his own outpost, and was uncomfortably aware that, with a powerful telescope, Sharpe would probably be able to read the correspondence on his desk. ‘That’s the reason I wanted to see you.’
The Home Office roof? Brock wondered, but said nothing.
‘Coffee?’ Sharpe went over to a cabinet and poured boiling water into two individual coffee plungers. He carried them to the circular table on a tray with cups, sugar and cream.
‘I find this is the best way to get a decent coffee in this place. How’s the knee?’
‘Much better,’ Brock replied, automatically rubbing the joint as he took the offered chair.
‘Physio?’
‘Yes. That seemed to sort it out.’ It was over six months since he’d been attacked by a mob of skinheads in the East End, but the leg still ached at night.
‘The commendation was well deserved, Brock, well deserved.’
‘Thank you, sir. It was much appreciated. And by DI Gurney.’
‘Bren Gurney, yes. And your DS, Kathy Kolla, she also performed extremely well, didn’t she? In difficult circumstances.’
Brock shifted uneasily in his seat. Sharpe’s memory for names was well known, but still, it sounded as if his boss had been checking up on his team.
‘Couple of important things I need to discuss with you, Brock. You’re familiar with the Verge inquiry, I take it?’
Of course he was-the whole country had been following it avidly since May, when the body of Miki Norinaga had been found in her bed, naked and stabbed through the heart. Her husband, prominent architect Cha
rles Verge, had not been seen since, and the international hunt for the missing man had become a national obsession. The press carried regular reports of sightings from around the world, but none had yet resulted in an arrest.
‘It’s one of those cases that just won’t go away.’ Sharpe stirred his coffee vigorously. ‘Tabloids love it. Today he’s seen in Sydney, last week in Santiago. He’s Ronnie Biggs, Lord Lucan and the Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled into one. And he’s not just any architect. High profile, international reputation, knighthood pending-the very epitome of Cool Britannia.’ Sharpe snorted and sipped at his coffee.
‘It’s all very embarrassing,’ he continued. ‘He had some extremely important clients. Significant buildings for the German and Saudi governments, for instance, neither of which are pleased to find that their glossy new landmarks are the work of a murderer. And our friends in the Home Office are particularly cheesed off. Their new Verge masterpiece is nearing completion, a Category A prison as luck would have it-Marchdale, out in the fens. The Prince was going to do the opening, but that’s in doubt now, and the Home Secretary has been taking a lot of stick in the House. You can imagine what the press’ll make of the unveiling.
‘What particularly galls our friends isn’t just that their golden boy is a killer, but that the world believes he’s got away with it. If they can’t hush the whole thing up, which they can’t, then they want some kind of resolution-either his arrest and incarceration in one of their grubbier institutions, or, better still, proof of his innocence.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Hardly, but you can’t blame them for hoping. The point is that after four months we haven’t been able to deliver on either option, which is a major embarrassment for the Met. So…’ Sharpe deliberately placed his cup in its saucer and sat back, fixing Brock with one of his scalpel stares, ‘… it’s been decided that we need a fresh approach. A new team.’
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