Brock cleared his throat as Clarke waited for a reply. ‘I think we’ve been at cross-purposes, Mr Clarke. When I asked when she had told Mr Verge, I wasn’t referring to Charlotte. You jumped to that conclusion. As far as I’m aware, Charlotte Verge has told no one of your involvement with her. She certainly hasn’t spoken to me.’
Clarke rocked back, stunned. ‘What! Then who…?’
‘It was your involvement with Miki Norinaga that I was interested in. That’s what the DNA tests were for.’
‘Oh Christ.’ Clarke rolled his head back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘So you know about that.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘I didn’t think… I have no reason to believe that she told Charles,’ he said, but without conviction. ‘It was a miserable affair. It meant nothing. She was being manipulative.’
‘Poor bloke,’ Kathy in the next room murmured. ‘All these women keep taking advantage of him.’
‘Yeah,’ Bren agreed. ‘Shocking. And them half his age.’
‘You’d better tell me about it,’ Brock said mildly.
‘Oh…’ Clarke sounded weary now, resigned. ‘It began a couple of months before that weekend in May. I’d given her a lift home from some function we’d been at. Charles was away. She started talking about the time when she’d first joined VP, and she accused me of flirting with her then. She was being playful, but I knew from past experience that when Miki acted coy she was up to something and you should watch out, so I didn’t respond. Then she asked me if Charles had discussed his impotence with me. I was shocked and embarrassed. She said she needed to talk to someone, so I went up to the flat with her, and that evening we became lovers.
‘It wasn’t like any other relationship I’d had. It was brutally functional, and I sensed that I was simply being recruited to her side for some looming battle with Charles. I tried to avoid it happening again, but she demanded periodic sex, like a tax, or tribute.’
‘What about that Friday evening, the eleventh of May, before Charles returned from America?’
‘Yes. We’d been preparing for the presentation we had on the Monday to a delegation of Chinese…’
‘Yes, you told us about that.’
‘Right. When we packed up for the night she demanded I go up to the apartment, to have a drink before I went home. It was about eight-thirty or so. I was tired, she mixed a pretty strong vodka tonic, and we talked for a while, then went to bed.’
‘Did she talk about Charles?’
‘Yes. She referred to him a couple of times with contempt, and I got the impression that things between them were coming to a head. As I said, I was dog-tired, and after we had sex I fell asleep for a short time and she had to wake me up. I felt terrible, had a shower and went home.’
‘Did she change the sheets after you got up?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose she might have.’
‘And the next day?’
‘It was as I’ve described. I picked Charles up at the airport the next morning and we looked at a site he was interested in on the way back. I dropped him off at the private lift to the flat, and didn’t see him or Miki again until we discovered her body on the Monday. I went home about five p.m.’
‘The statements of the people you were working with suggest that there were extended periods when you weren’t with them. You could have gone up to the apartment during that day.’
‘I could have done but I didn’t. I spent quite a bit of time alone in my office, dealing with correspondence and so on.’
Brock frowned, head bowed, as if profoundly disappointed. He glanced up at Tony, who gave a slight shake of his head.
‘It’s true,’ Clarke insisted.
‘No, it won’t do. Here you are working alongside Miki Norinaga for, what, five years? Then she seduces you and within a couple of months she’s murdered, possibly on the night that you last share her bed, according to the medical evidence.’
‘No!’
‘And at the same time her husband disappears,’ Brock pressed on, voice hard now, ‘and you’ve made it quite clear that he had very good reason to hate you, his closest business partner, who had seduced both his wife and his daughter. Is that how it was, Mr Clarke? Did Charles learn what you’d been up to when he returned that Saturday morning, and call you up to the apartment to confront you? What happened then?’
‘No! No!’ Sandy Clarke was on his feet now, his chair crashing back onto the floor. ‘This is insane. I won’t say another word, not a word. I want to leave now.’
Brock looked coldly at him for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll repeat that I’m not satisfied with your account, Mr Clarke. Before you rush off you might like to consider how it will look if you refuse to cooperate at this point.’ Then, voice becoming milder, he added, ‘I’ll suspend this interview now and we’ll leave you alone with a cup of tea to collect your thoughts. Maybe you’d like to call a legal advisor?’
Brock and Tony gathered up their papers and left the room. On their screen Kathy and Bren watched Clarke stare blankly at the closed door. For a moment it looked as if he would storm after them, but then he shook his head in a gesture of despair or disbelief, and began to pace up and down.
‘What do you think?’ Brock came into the observation room, Tony in his wake.
‘He sounds plausible,’ Kathy suggested, ‘but he’s the type that would.’ She looked at his clothes, expensive understated casuals-windcheater, slacks and leather loafers. He had come to a halt in the middle of the interview room, hands in pockets, head bowed, deep in thought.
‘I’d like you to talk to Charlotte Verge again, Kathy,’ Brock said. ‘See what her version is. The timing of her announcement to Clarke about the baby sounds significant, so close to the murder. Maybe she did say something to her father or stepmother. But be discreet. Take a copy of the transcript of this interview with you. You might find some discrepancies.’
On the screen Clarke looked up as an officer came into the room with a cup of tea. As he left again, Clarke sat down at the table, took out a diary and began to make notes.
‘Tony, I can see you’re anxious to get on to the money matters,’ Brock went on. ‘We’ll do that next, if he decides to cooperate.’
A tray of polystyrene cups of tea was brought for the watchers, who waited in silence as the figure in the room tapped a silver pen in agitation against the pages of his diary, kneading his forehead with his other hand as if to squeeze memories out of his brain. Finally, he got to his feet and strode over to the door, where he spoke to the officer who stood outside. A moment later this man put his head around the door of the observation room.
‘He’s ready to talk to you again, sir.’
‘Good.’ Brock and Tony picked up their files and made for the door.
‘I suppose,’ Clarke began, when they were seated again around the interview table, ‘that panicking people is part of your technique, is it? Throwing wild accusations at them and seeing what they let slip.’ He was calm again, in control of himself, determined not to be fazed. ‘The problem with that is it can just create confusion. I’ve been going over that evening in my mind again, the last time I saw Miki, that Friday night, and I don’t think I’ve really made clear to you what it was like.’
He waited for Brock to challenge him, but the DCI only nodded in a vague sort of way, as if not greatly interested.
Clarke drew a small circle in the margin of his diary with his silver pen, then drew a straight line through it. ‘You see, her whole manner that evening was odd, out of character. When she insisted I go up to the apartment for a drink after we’d finished our work, I felt there was something in the wind, something involving Charles, presumably, that was preoccupying her. I assumed she wanted my support in some scheme or other, but she seemed to have difficulty getting to the point. She talked about the past, before she arrived on the scene, about Charles’s relationship with his first wife, Gail, but I couldn’t make out where she was heading. At one point she made some cryptic remark about having married the wr
ong partner, but I didn’t really follow. And then, when she started to get amorous, I thought to myself that she was just trying to soften me up so she could share this big confidence, whatever it was, about Charles, and all I could think was how grotesque it was, because amorous seduction just wasn’t her style at all.’
Clarke paused, looking questioningly at Brock, who still said nothing.
‘Well, don’t you see? I think she knew that there was this big row brewing with Charles, when he got back from the States, and she’d been hoping to get some sort of ammunition or support from me. But when it came to the point, she just couldn’t bring herself to confide in me.’
He fell silent, the tip of the silver pen hovering over the page.
‘Hmm. That’s it, is it, Mr Clarke?’ Brock said at last. ‘Nothing else you’d like to tell us?’
‘No, that’s it.’ Clarke snapped the diary shut and slipped it and the pen into his jacket pocket.
‘Only we’d like to move on to other matters now. Tony?’
Tony cleared his throat and leaned forward, tracing his finger across an item on the page in front of him. ‘Ahem, yes,’ he began softly, diffidently even, as if broaching a delicate subject. ‘I’d like to ask you about a payment made to a company called Turnstile Quality Systems Limited, or TQS, on the first of March of last year, in the sum of twenty-three thousand, one hundred and eighteen pounds and sixty-five pence.’
Clarke looked at him in astonishment for a moment, then turned to Brock. ‘Are you serious? What is this?’
‘Quite serious, Mr Clarke,’ Tony said.
Clarke turned his gaze back to his lugubrious interrogator and gave a little snort of amusement. ‘You sound like a quantity surveyor,’ he said. ‘How the hell should I know?’
‘Well, you did authorise the payment, Mr Clarke, and nobody else seems to know anything about this company.’
‘What?’ Clarke shook his head, becoming annoyed. ‘What was the name again?’
‘Turnstile Quality Systems.’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
Tony turned the page and ran his finger down the next. ‘In the following month, sixteenth of April last year, you authorised a second payment to TQS,?86,453.27p. Do you remember that one?’
‘No,’ Clarke’s voice was insistent, ‘I don’t.’
‘Or a third in May, larger again-?156,978.50p.’
‘No! They’re obviously a contractor of some kind. Stage payments on a contract. The name means nothing to me, but someone must know. What contract number is it set against? What does it say on the payment certificates?’
‘Well, that’s the thing, Mr Clarke. There were no job certificates issued for these payments, no contract number quoted, and the funds were drawn from the Verge Practice working account, on your signature.’
‘What?’ Clarke looked startled.
‘That’s a quarter of a million pounds in just over three months, and the payments went on, right up to April of this year, a grand total of?1,932,786.90p drawn from Verge Practice funds in favour of a company that nobody knows anything about.’
Clarke frowned, thinking. ‘I… I don’t know. We invest working capital and surplus income in various ways-property, funds, cash management accounts, I don’t know. And last year was a very strong year. Surely the accountants, our bookkeepers…?’
‘They know nothing about it.’
‘That’s impossible. No, look, you’ve made a mistake. What are you suggesting, anyway?’
‘Does the name Kraus mean anything to you, Mr Clarke?’
Brock, who, despite appearances, was watching Sandy Clarke closely at this point, saw the man become very still. There was silence for a long moment.
‘Kraus? How do you spell that?’
‘K-R-A-U-S. Martin Kraus.’
‘No,’ Clarke sounded offhand. ‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘He’s listed as the sole director of Turnstile Quality Systems.’
Clarke withdrew his diary and pen from his pocket again and wrote the names in the inside cover of the book. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing, I’m afraid. But I’ll check through my address book and email directory if you like, just to make sure.’
‘Good idea,’ Brock said, not mentioning that they had already done that.
11
The front door of the cottage swung open before Kathy’s hand had touched the brass horse-head knocker, her approach betrayed by the sound of her feet crunching up the gravel path. Charlotte Verge stared intently at her visitor, then stepped forward across the threshold into the sunlight, followed by a rich whiff of cooking. She was wearing no make-up, her elfin features childlike, and Kathy recalled Clarke’s reference to her as Lolita.
‘What did you mean on the phone,’ she demanded in a whisper, ‘that you wanted to see me in private? What’s it about?’
‘It’s about Sandy, Charlotte. Sandy Clarke.’
The dark eyes widened as she stared fixedly at Kathy, then blinked as her grandmother’s voice called from inside the house, ‘Who is it, Charlotte?’
The young woman frowned at Kathy, indicating for her to go inside. Madelaine Verge was seated in her wheelchair at the kitchen table, a knife in her hand, skinning tomatoes.
‘Ah, Sergeant, what a nice surprise.’ She wiped her hands on a towel and propelled herself across the room.
‘That smells good.’
‘We’re making romesco sauce for our dinner tonight. It’s a Catalan speciality. My mother-in-law taught me when I lived in Spain with Charles’s father.’ ‘I’ll have to get the recipe.’ Kathy thought guiltily about the pizzas they’d been living off recently. Maybe that was why Leon was so down, still in withdrawal from his mother’s cooking.
‘Of course. And what brings you here? Is there news?’
‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Verge. I just have to ask Charlotte a few questions.’
‘Charlotte? Well, if you must.’ Madelaine Verge looked displeased, but began to move forward as if to lead them into the sitting room.
‘She wants to see me alone, Gran,’ Charlotte said. ‘It’s because she didn’t interview me properly the last time. It’s not important.’
Kathy was surprised by the effortless way Charlotte told her lie. She raised the transcript of Clarke’s interview that she was carrying as if it were some official document that spoke for itself. ‘Just some paperwork to tidy up, Mrs Verge.’
Madelaine seemed reluctant to accept this, but Charlotte went on, ‘We’ll go outside. I could do with some fresh air.’
She led the way to the sitting room, and through the French window onto a brick-paved terrace overlooking the back garden. ‘What about Sandy?’ she asked quietly.
‘He’s told us that he’s the father of your child.’
‘What?’ Her voice rose in a suppressed yelp. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘He misunderstood something we said to him. He thought we already knew. He assumed you’d told us.’
Charlotte looked horrified. ‘No! You tricked him, didn’t you? You told him lies about me.’
‘It wasn’t like that. It was an innocent mistake. We told him you hadn’t said anything to us. But it is true, isn’t it? He is the father?’
Charlotte looked away, towards the vegetable patch in front of which the handyman, George, was on his hands and knees, painstakingly positioning bricks on a bed of sand to form a new path. After a moment she turned back to Kathy. Her lips were pouted like those of a stubborn child.
‘No one must know, you understand?’ she said fiercely. ‘Sandy was a fool to tell you. I don’t know what got into his stupid head.’ She was trembling and clutching her hands across her front as if to hold herself physically together. Then suddenly she froze, her eyes looking past Kathy to something behind her and low down. Kathy turned and made out Madelaine Verge’s foot just visible through the bottom pane of the French window.
‘Come on,’ Charlotte muttered, and took off diagonally across the lawn, Kathy hurrying after. When they
reached the line of apple trees Charlotte stopped and turned to look back. The gardener got stiffly to his feet and gave her a little wave, then wiped his brow with his handkerchief.
‘He’s making a path to the end of the vegetable patch, where he’s going to build a sandpit for my kid. He’s got it all worked out. Sometimes I wish he’d just bloody well piss off and leave us alone. He’s so bossy in his quiet way.’
Him and Gran both, Kathy thought. Between the two of them Charlotte was pretty well chaperoned.
‘Can’t you tell him to go away?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. He feels he owes it to Dad to do what he can for me. He was in prison…’
‘Yes, your grandmother told me the story. Are you his only client?’
‘He does Gran’s and Luz’s gardens, too. I don’t know about anybody else. I should be grateful. I’m hopeless at practical stuff like that, and when the baby comes…’ She took a deep breath. ‘In a funny sort of way it’s a relief to be able to talk about the baby with somebody who knows the truth. But please, for Christ’s sake, you mustn’t let it get out. If Gran heard she’d die. And if it got back to my dad…wherever he is.’
An interesting thought, Kathy reflected. Would he come back to punish his partner?
‘How did it happen?’
‘None of your business, is it?’ the young woman said bitterly.
‘No. It was only if you wanted to talk…’
They walked a few paces along the row of gnarled old pippins, then Charlotte stopped again. ‘What did he tell you?’
‘He said you were in Atlanta together and your dad had to fly home suddenly. He said the two of you decided to drive to Charleston, and stayed there overnight in a motel…’
‘A crummy little place, but he thought it had a tacky charm. I wondered if he just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew.’
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