‘Charles and I had been invited to an architectural conference in Atlanta, last February. Charlotte had recently split up with her boyfriend of three years standing and was in the depths of despair, so at the last minute Charles invited her along. We’d been there a couple of days when some crisis blew up on the Marchdale Prison project and Charles had to fly back to London. I’d delivered my paper by that stage, and was getting a bit bored with the conference. The next morning I took Charlotte to see the Coca-Cola museum, and while we were there I mentioned that, in my opinion, the most beautiful city in the United States was Charleston in South Carolina. She’d never been there, and on an impulse we decided to go. I hired a car and we set off. That night we stayed in this rather seedy little motel, and I felt like Humbert Humbert with Lolita. It wasn’t a very pleasant feeling.
‘That was the farcical bit, and it lasted for one night only. The nightmare began a couple of months later when Charlotte told me that she was pregnant and I was the father. I was appalled, but she seemed rather… well, pleased. She insisted that she would have the baby and that my name would be kept out of it.’
‘This must have been a couple of weeks before Miki Norinaga was murdered?’
‘That’s right. After Charles disappeared, I contacted her again and said that I wanted to help her financially. She didn’t seem particularly concerned, but I sent her some money anyway.
‘Now look,’ Clarke sat up straighter in his chair and glared at Brock, ‘I’ve been completely open with you. But as far as I’m concerned this is a private matter between Charlotte and me. My wife doesn’t know and…’ He faltered. ‘I assume my wife doesn’t know. Good God, Charlotte hasn’t told her, too, has she? I can’t imagine what could have possessed her to tell her father. Are you sure about that? And what has this got to do with your inquiries? Surely you’re not suggesting that this has some bearing on what happened on the twelfth of May?’
The other person in the interview room was Tony, the financial expert, who, like Brock, seemed more interested in his papers than in what Clarke had to say. They were photocopied account statements and computer printouts, some of whose items Tony would tick as his eye ran down the sheets. But now, as Clarke ended on a somewhat plaintive note, he lifted his head and looked questioningly at Brock.
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.