Honest men, Kathy thought, trained as boys to tell the truth, and despite a lifetime of contrary experience, can betray themselves in small ways. They begin fiddling with paperclips or suddenly avoid a questioner’s eyes, as Clarke had just done. Curiously, she found it harder to spot the same signs in women.
Brock seemed to have had the same perception. He stared thoughtfully at Clarke for a moment, then turned to the information manager. ‘What about you, Ms Mathieson? Did you notice any change in his manner?’
‘Well, you’re right about him losing weight. I think it was stress. And I did think he’d lost interest a bit lately. Do you remember the last awards night, Sandy? We were up against the other big London names-Foster, Rogers, Wilford-for the annual design awards, and that usually brought out the competitive side of Charles. But he seemed almost indifferent last time.’
Clarke shrugged and glanced at his watch. ‘I’m rather pressed for time at present, Chief Inspector. Do you think I might hand you over to Jennifer to show you the flat, and Charles’s office too, if you wish?’
‘Just one more thing, Mr Clarke. I understand you were also the last person to see Ms Norinaga alive, on the Friday night?’
‘Yes, that’s right. We were working late on the presentation for the Chinese on the following Monday. The others finished about eight, but Miki and I went on till eleven.’
‘That’s late.’
‘Yes, there was a lot to do to get everything ready so the media team could finish the video for Monday.’
‘How was Ms Norinaga when you left her?’
‘Tired, but quite cheerful. Excited about the project.’
‘She didn’t mention anyone coming to visit her that weekend?’
‘No, she didn’t say what her plans were.’
‘And you didn’t go up to her apartment that evening before you left?’
‘No.’
Kathy knew that the autopsy hadn’t been able to establish the time of death more closely than the twenty-four hours between the Friday and Saturday evenings.
Brock nodded, and he and Kathy got to their feet and followed Jennifer Mathieson, leaving Clarke contemplating the pigeons whirling outside his window.
‘There are two penthouse apartments,’ Mathieson explained as they waited for the lift. ‘The idea was that the senior partners would live there and share a housekeeper and cook, but in the end only Charles moved in. Sandy and Denise couldn’t face living on top of the shop, I suppose.’
‘So the other flat was unoccupied at the time of the murder?’
‘That’s right. There were people working down on the office floors over that weekend, but this lift gives independent access to the penthouse floor from the street and the basement car park, where Charles kept his Landy.’
Kathy looked at the floors stacked like bookshelves around the atrium. There were people working at computers and drawing boards, a group clustered around a table, but not as many as she had expected.
When she commented on this, Mathieson lowered her voice and said, ‘Our staff has shrunk by a third in the last four months. It’s been a catastrophe.’
The lift arrived and they stepped in. When the doors closed she went on, voice normal again, ‘In fact, I’m moving on myself. It became pretty clear in the months after Charles disappeared that things were going to change, with projects being cancelled and no new ones coming in. Sandy puts a brave face on it, but I’d be surprised if they’re still in this building a year from now.’
There was little in the apartment to add to what they had already learned from the police video and still photographs of the crime scene, except that it could now be appreciated in the context of the whole building, with the same steel and glass detailing carried through into its bathrooms and kitchen and furnishings generally. It occurred to Kathy that the Japanese kitchen knives looked as if they could have come from this same kit of parts, so that it was almost as if Miki Norinaga had been killed with a splinter of the building itself. The only colourful element in the whole flat was a large painting in the living room. It was an abstract with geometric figures, squares and segments of circles, in vivid primary colours, and the contrast between it and the severe constraint of the rest of the interior hadn’t been apparent on the video. The signature in the bottom corner meant nothing to Kathy, but those on the black outfits in Miki’s wardrobe certainly did.
After they’d had a good look round, each taking notes, Jennifer Mathieson took them back to the lift and down to the level of Clarke’s office, but this time she led them to the opposite side of the atrium, where Charles Verge had had his office. She opened the door with a key.
‘Apart from his computer and his diary, which your people took away, everything is exactly as it was last May.’
There were a desk and chairs identical to those in Clarke’s room, bookshelves, a drawing table and another low table on which a model stood. On the drawing table lay an open book, a roll of yellow tracing paper and a pencil abandoned on some rough sketches, as if Verge had only just stepped outside. Despite the similarity to Clarke’s office, the atmosphere seemed quite different, more sombre and purposeful. There were no framed certificates on the walls, but just one etching, of what looked like some gigantic ancient crypt, with iron rings attached to huge stone piers. It was hung directly over the model, which was a large grey and white construction beneath a clear Perspex cover. Kathy looked back up at the etching, trying to work out if there was supposed to be a connection, when a voice behind her said, ‘Piranesi, eighteenth century.’
She turned and saw Sandy Clarke at the door, observing her.
‘He drew fantastical prison scenes, terrifying and sublime. And that…’ Clarke pointed at the model, ‘… is Charles’s last masterpiece, the Home Office project; not quite so terrifying, perhaps, but possibly sublime.’
‘It’s a prison, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, a radically new kind. Designed not just to punish or rehabilitate, but to change the man. I paraphrase, I’m not altogether au fait with the theory, but that’s the essence of it. The building, along with the regime, the training programs, the medications and so on, is designed to reconstruct personalities, to make new men.’ He said this with a slight sceptical lift of the eyebrow. ‘Charles was fascinated by the idea. No, more than that, obsessed with it. He even spent some time in gaol as part of his research.’
‘Not new women?’
Clarke smiled. ‘This one is just for men. I believe they represent the bigger problem and the more testing subjects.’
Brock had been listening to this in silence. Clarke’s words reminded him of a report he’d read about a new Home Office program, a radical response to an ever-expanding and recalcitrant prison population. He hadn’t realised it had been taken so far.
Clarke had a book in his hand, which he offered to Brock.‘If you want to know more about our work you should have a look at this.’
‘Thanks.’ Brock examined the glossy hardback, thick and square, titled The Verge Practice: Complete Works and Projects, 1974 -1999.
He had been skimming another book lying open on Verge’s drawing board. On one page was a set of plans, titled ‘Ledoux, Prisons, Aix-en-Provence, 1787. Engravings from Ramee.’ The plans were each a perfect square divided into four quarters, and looked remarkably similar to the basic arrangement of Verge’s Home Office model. Turning the page he had come across a section underlined in pencil. He had read it, then taken notes.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Clarke said. ‘You’re thinking how ironic it would be if Charles ended up as the first inmate of his own masterpiece. I think we’ve all had that thought.’
‘You don’t see him as a suicide then?’
Clarke shook his head firmly. ‘No. Never.’
It wasn’t until they were back in the car that Kathy realised that she was going to be late for her committee. Well, there was nothing to be done about that, and the Verge case was much more interesting anyway.