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.