‘I thought of that,’ Kathy agreed, ‘but even if we found Verge’s DNA in the house, it wouldn’t help, would it? We know he was there before he disappeared.’
‘Depends on the traces, and where they are.’
He reached for the phone and called in Bren, instructing him to get a warrant and take a SOCO team out to the Diaz house as quickly as possible. ‘It seems she’s disappeared. You’re looking for her traces and those of third parties. We know George Todd has been there recently, and so has Kathy. We want to know who else has.’
Bren looked curiously at Kathy. ‘Are we looking for Diaz, chief?’
‘Yes. Put out a full alert.’
‘Right. You coming to the house?’
‘Maybe later. Kathy and I have another appointment to keep, and some rehearsing to do before we go.’
The façade of the conference venue was lit up with floodlights and carried a large banner bearing the Metropolitan
Police logo and the motto Protect and Respect: Embracing Diversity. The taxi dropped them among waiting limousines and they made their way up the steps to the entrance.
A steward directed them to a side corridor, and they caught glimpses into a main hall filled with suits and uniforms, glasses and canapés in hands. They came to a room marked Conference Meeting Room Number 2, knocked and went inside. There was no one there. On the table were sheets of notes abandoned from an earlier meeting. On one Kathy saw the heading Crime Strategy Working Party, and realised with a little shock that her own committee must have been here, preparing for its presentation the following day.
The door opened and two men in uniform came in.
Kathy felt their unsmiling curiosity as they examined her before they turned to Brock. The first man introduced Brock to the second. Kathy missed the name, but caught the title, Deputy Commissioner, and saw the badge of rank on his shoulders. Then the first man was speaking to her.
‘I’m Commander Sharpe, and you must be DS Kolla?
Sit down.’ He waved to seats at the end of the room. ‘You’d better tell us your version of events, Sergeant. Quickly if you please.’
Kathy did her best, but in that setting, faced with the two sombre uniforms, she felt as if she were recounting some kind of lurid fairytale.
‘. . . I was concerned that some sections of the press believed that Charles Verge was still alive,’ she said, following a line that Brock had suggested, ‘and I thought they might eventually get to hear of Dr Lizancos and his clinic. I thought this was one important line of inquiry that we hadn’t been able to complete when the case was closed, and I believed that it might eventually rebound on us. However, I was aware that the Barcelona police, one captain in particular, was shielding Dr Lizancos, and I knew our direct approaches had been fruitless. Given the sensitivity of the matter, I decided to In this fairytale, ‘break and enter’ became ‘covert admission’, and the doctor’s abandonment of his clinic at Sitges a compelling reason for further ‘provident inquiries’ at his home in Barcelona. The two senior officers remained stony-faced throughout this, reacting only when she came to the revelation of Charles Verge’s transformation into Luz Diaz. mount an operation on my own initiative, without involving any of my colleagues, as a form of insurance.’
This produced a snort from Sharpe, a look of quizzical disbelief from his colleague.
At the end there was a long silence, then Sharpe said, ‘I think I can truly say that that is the most outlandish story I have ever heard. Do you believe it, Brock?’
‘I’m rather afraid I do, sir,’ Brock murmured.
The Deputy Commissioner leaned towards Sharpe and whispered something. Sharpe nodded and said, ‘Step outside, will you, Sergeant.’
Kathy got to her feet, feeling angry and helpless, and made for the door. She stood outside in the corridor for twenty minutes, watching the girls pass up and down with trays of glasses. The muffled roar of conversation from the main hall was louder, and she wondered if the members of her committee were in there, Shazia in her Hijab sipping orange juice, Jay with cropped hair knocking back the champagne. Jay—she remembered their broken date for Saturday night, and thought she must contact her, wondering what she could possibly say.
Just then, Commander Sharpe stuck his head out of the door and called her back in.
She took her seat, unable to tell from their expressions what they were thinking.
‘As I understand it,’ Sharpe began, ‘there is absolutely no physical evidence to support anything that you’ve told us, Sergeant.’ He raised an eyebrow, inviting a reply.
‘No, but a forensic examination of Ms Diaz’s house . . .’
She stopped, seeing him shake his head.
‘DI Gurney has just phoned in. When he arrived at the house he found it ablaze. The fire crews should be there by now, but it seems likely that the building will be completely destroyed . . .’ He paused while Kathy absorbed this, thinking with a sense of shock how final this was, the destruction of his first house, a sign to her and everyone else that the game was over now.
‘. . . And that being the case, there appears to be no possibility that any kind of corroboration for your story will ever be forthcoming. Am I right?’
‘It’s possible. But we do know what Verge looks like now.’
Sharpe winced, as if he still found this too much to swallow. ‘Correction—we know what Diaz looks like. We only have her word for it that she is, or was, Charles Verge.’
‘George Todd knows.’
‘Maybe, but will he tell us? Not likely, I think. And so we have decided that it would be damaging and highly irresponsible to make your suspicions known beyond these four walls.’
He saw the protest flare in Kathy’s eyes and said coldly, ‘Do you want to remain in the service, Sergeant?’
She took a deep breath, feeling the colour burning in her cheeks. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I understand that DCI Brock has told you in no uncertain terms how ill-conceived and dangerous your behaviour has been. By rights you should be the subject of a disciplinary review. However, in light of the somewhat extraordinary circumstances, and the accommodating attitude of the Spanish authorities, we shall say no more.
You will tell no one, repeat, no one, of the events of the past seventy-two hours, is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’ They just want it all to go away, she thought, just as Luz Diaz had known they would, and for a moment she felt a flicker of sympathy for the stiff men in front of her, imagining them trying to explain to a roomful of incredulous reporters that, yes, Charles Verge was actually alive, but he’d turned into a woman and had disappeared, yet again.
They got to their feet, and as he passed her, the other senior officer, who had so far said nothing to her, murmured, ‘Never mind, Sergeant, it was a great story.
I look forward to hearing you present your paper to the conference tomorrow.’
Panic seized Kathy. ‘Oh no. I won’t be doing that.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Well, in view of what’s happened . . .’
‘Nothing’s happened. Isn’t that what we just agreed? Of course you must do it. Robert’s out there somewhere. I’ll tell him you need to speak to him, shall I?’
31
Of all the humiliations of the past days, this, Kathy thought, would be the worst. She hadn’t taken in a single word of the previous speaker’s address, and now they were breaking for twenty minutes for tea before it was her turn. She felt a kind of paralysis invade her thoughts as she headed for the toilets.
Robert had had a copy of her speech all ready for her in the pocket of his imposing double-breasted suit. In her absence, the committee had worked long and hard at refining it, he said, and when she read it she could believe that was true. Whatever fresh or original ideas might have been contained were now so buried under convoluted clauses and mind-numbing platitudes that they were well and truly—she felt qualified to use the word—castrated.
Jay’s radical thoughts, which Ka
thy had promised herself would get a mention, had been completely erased. Reading it, she wondered who would be the first to fall asleep with boredom during her presentation, the audience or herself. But that was no contest—terror would keep her awake.
As she gripped the tap at the washbasin she remembered some research that she’d read, about people who would rather go into combat than stand up and speak in public. Oh yes, she thought, and yanked the tap so hard that a jet of water shot out of the basin and splashed all over the front of her suit. She was mopping it with wads of paper towel when a uniformed woman came in to tell her it was time to take her place on the podium.
She took her seat, aware that she still hadn’t really made up her mind whether to include the additional pencilled notes she’d scribbled on page four, and again at the end.
She was conscious of her name being announced, of applause, and of herself rising to her feet and floating towards the podium. Address a point a few feet above the head of the last person at the back of the hall, Brock had advised, but when she lifted her gaze she was blinded by the spotlights. She began reading from her script, and was suddenly very grateful for Robert’s competently constructed sentences and anodyne turns of phrase. Her voice made strong and sure by the amplifiers, she began to feel that she might after all make it to the end before her heart gave out.
Then she came to page four and the margin notes, and felt sufficiently confident to abandon Robert’s script. She was aware of her voice changing as she began to ad lib. And she was also aware of a change in the silence of the audience, which had become intense, especially when she repeated some of Jay’s slogans, ‘male army of occupation’, ‘militaristic structures and mind-set’ and ‘degendering the service’. Like a tightrope walker she kept her eyes fixed on Brock’s neutral spot between the lights, certain that she would fall if she once looked down into the sea of pale faces.
She reached the safety of page five, and sensed the audience relax again as her voice took on the mechanical rhythm of reading once more. And soon there was only one page left, and she found herself wading through Robert’s rather overblown summarising paragraphs, and, below them, her second set of handwritten notes.
‘. . . But although these processes and procedures may offer an important framework to embrace diversity, there is a danger that we end up viewing diversity as no more than a series of stereotypes,’ she improvised. ‘Every active officer knows that each crime and each criminal is unique, and that stereotypes can be dangerously misleading.’ The most fundamental stereotypes of gender, class and race became meaningless, she argued, in the fluid dynamics of the times, in which the criminal personality might flit from type to type, evolving like a virus to confound the overly rigid systems of law enforcement crime strategies.
So there, she thought, and gathered up her papers and sat down. There seemed to be some applause, then someone else was speaking, and Kathy took a deep, deep breath of relief.
Afterwards, Robert came up to her. He was beaming with what looked like amusement.
‘Well done, Kathy. That went down well.’
‘Did it?’
‘Oh yes. And I think you were right to spice it up with a few off-the-cuff thoughts of your own. Senior management likes to sniff a radical thought from time to time.
Makes them feel they’re in touch.’
‘Really?’
‘Certainly. The DC thought it was very good. The last bit, against stereotypes, was especially brave.’
‘Was it?’ Actually, Kathy had felt she’d been stating the obvious.
‘Well, I mean, look around you. Every person here represents some stereotype or other. Look at the members of your committee. If there were no stereotypes they’d have no constituencies and they’d all be out of a job!’ He chuckled contentedly. ‘So it gives them a bit of a buzz to hear somebody saying stereotypes are dangerous. Of course,’ he said, bending closer to whisper, ‘they haven’t had your recent experiences, seeing how easily someone can turn from one stereotype into its opposite.’
Kathy looked at him in surprise. How did Robert know about Verge’s transformation? And if he knew, who else did?
‘What are you talking about, Robert?’
‘Why, you of course! A policeman one minute and a criminal in a Spanish jail the next. Oh, many odd things cross my desk, Kathy; don’t worry, I’m the very soul of discretion. But perhaps it should make you think about your own position. Maybe you’re the one stuck in a stereotype.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, Brock’s acolyte, working in the shadow of the great detective. One way and another, you’ve been noticed over the past days, Kathy.’
‘Mostly for the wrong reasons.’
‘Maybe at first, but it’s a fine line between dangerous insubordination and daring initiative, and people have been impressed, believe me. It’s time you moved on, into frontline management. You need someone to advise you on your career. Someone like myself.’
He’s coming on to me, she thought with a sigh, and was saved from replying by Jay, who was pushing through the crush towards them.
An old man was holding open the door of the village pub for his moth-eaten black dog as Kathy drove past. It seemed to be a major operation for both of them. She pulled up by the gate of Orchard Cottage, seeing the lights on in the windows. Charlotte seemed surprised but not unhappy to see her. Madelaine Verge, on the other hand, sitting in her chair by the fireside with a magazine on her lap, looked hostile and suspicious.
‘We came across something during the course of our inquiries that I wanted to return to you, Charlotte,’ Kathy said, handing her the photograph that Luz Diaz had given her.
‘Oh, I remember this! Dad kept it in his wallet. Where did you get it?’
‘It turned up among some other papers.’
The young woman stared at it sadly for a moment, then placed a hand on her tummy. ‘Thanks. I thought you might have come about the terrible fire at Briar Hill. Isn’t it awful?
Do they know yet what caused it? George says Luz may have left something on the stove, and then with her painting chemicals in the same area, it was bound to go up.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You do know about Luz leaving, don’t you? We’re all feeling sad about that, too.’
‘Did Luz come to see you before she left?’
‘Yes, on Sunday night. We were just about to go to bed, weren’t we Gran? She called in to say she’d decided to go back to Spain for a while, but she didn’t leave a forwarding address, and until she gets in touch again I don’t know how they’ll be able to contact her about the house.’
Kathy tried not to stare at Charlotte while she weighed every intonation, every shift of expression. She didn’t know, Kathy decided. She had no idea that the painter was her father.
But Madelaine was another matter. When Kathy met her eyes she thought she saw knowledge and anger that shouldn’t have been there.
‘We don’t even know what caused Luz to go so suddenly like that,’ Charlotte said.
‘I think I do,’ her grandmother said, in a voice as tight as the grip of her swollen fingers on the arms of her chair. ‘I think she was driven away by the constant harassment of the police, isn’t that right, Sergeant?’
Yes, Kathy thought, she knew, had always known.
‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not fair, Gran. She’ll probably be back before long.’
‘I don’t think so, dear,’ the old woman said, keeping her angry eyes on Kathy all the time.
‘Well,’ Kathy said evenly, ‘I hope she does. I for one would really like to meet up with her again, Charlotte. I’ve become very interested in modern Spanish painting, and I’d love to contact her about it. Will you let me know if you hear from her?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘She’s bound to be in touch when the baby arrives, don’t you think?’ Kathy added, watching the anger darken Madelaine’s features. ‘I’ll expect to hear from one of you then, eh?’
>
The old dog was tied up outside the pub door when Kathy drove past for the last time. It looked fed up and she wondered how it had disgraced itself. She turned the corner into the lane leading back to the highway, then pulled onto the side as her phone rang.
‘Is that you, Kathy? How are you?’ She felt suddenly disconsolate to hear the Indian accent.
‘I’m fine, Morarji. How are you?’
‘Oh, not so bad, not so bad, all things considered. But I’m a little worried about that silly bugger of a son of mine.
You haven’t been in touch with him lately, I take it?’
‘No, why? Don’t you know where he is?’
‘Oh yes, I know where he is all right. He’s right here, and that’s the problem. He doesn’t go out, you see. He’s so down in the dumps. He had a friend—a man, you understand, not a girlfriend—he went around with for a short while, but they don’t seem to be friends any more, and now he seems to have no one he can talk to.’
Leon’s father was putting on his oh-my-what’s-the-world-coming-to amused voice that tended to exaggerate his Hindu accent, but didn’t hide his anxiety.
‘The silly boy simply hasn’t been himself since he and you broke up, Kathy. That’s the truth of the matter. He’s terribly confused, it seems to me. And I just wondered if there was the remotest chance that you might be able to speak to him? As a former friend, you know?’
Kathy could almost hear Morarji squirming with embarrassment, and guessed that Ghita had told her husband to make the call.
‘I’m sorry, Morarji. I’m afraid I can’t help. I really am sorry. I have to go now.’
The phone rang again almost immediately. It was Brock.
‘Kathy? Sorry I didn’t get to your speech this afternoon.
I’ve been told it was very well received. Well done. I got caught up in something else, unfortunately. Something rather nasty. And I just wondered how you’re placed now?’
‘I’m free,’ she said, taking a deep breath of the cool evening air.
The Verge Practice Page 35