Brock looked up sharply.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, thinking of all the work they had put into it.
He shrugged. ‘Not your fault. I’ll make it up to them. You must have been followed from Charlotte’s house to the supermarket.’
‘Yes.’ Kathy looked glum. ‘Though I can’t imagine how they could have done it without me spotting them. The lanes are narrow and twisting around there, and they would have to have stayed close not to lose me. And as far as I can remember, there’s nowhere near the cottage that they could have waited in a vehicle out of sight.’
‘You didn’t discuss going to the supermarket with Charlotte?’
‘No, but her grandmother was there, Madelaine Verge. It was she who recommended it. She gave me some sauce she was making, and suggested I buy some fish to go with it. I told her I needed some groceries anyway, and she told me about the new supermarket.’
‘And Charlotte heard this conversation?’
‘I think so. Yes, I’d forgotten that. They both would have known I was going there.’
‘But did they know about the Clarke transcript- assuming that’s what the thief was after?’
‘Charlotte certainly did. I referred to it while I was talking to her, and she wanted to read it. I said she couldn’t. I don’t think she would have told her grandmother about it. She seemed anxious to keep it secret.’
‘Well, I don’t believe that Madelaine Verge was capable of driving after you and breaking into your car, but I suppose it’s just conceivable that Charlotte might. Or alternatively one or other of them could have contacted someone else who came after you. Sandy Clarke, perhaps. That would explain the same gloves being used in both places. Except that we never found the gloves at Clarke’s house.’
‘Why would he want to rob my car? He already knew what was on the transcript, and could ask for a copy any time he wanted.’
‘He might have been after something else. Perhaps he thought you had the whole file on him. This was at a time when he knew he was under suspicion. Maybe Charlotte phoned him and said you’d just been there, brandishing a file on him, and he saw a chance to find out how much we knew or suspected.’
‘We can check her phone records for that day.’
Brock lifted the phone and made a short call, then replaced the receiver and began turning the pages of the reports in front of him, reading them again. Finally he asked, ‘What did you make of Oakley this afternoon?’
Kathy’s mind filled with one thought, a thought she had been suppressing with considerable force since watching Oakley’s interview-that Leon had gone to Dublin with him on the same day she had left for Spain, when he had been so desperate for time to finish his university assignment. The thought burned so brightly that she couldn’t see past it to answer Brock’s question.
‘I…I’m not sure.’
‘Did he sound plausible, do you think?’
Yes, she thought, this time he had seemed plausible, and she sensed that Brock and Bren had felt that too, becoming less aggressive in their questioning. ‘Some bits, certainly. The bits we can check.’
‘Yes. How about the meeting he had with Clarke?’
Kathy forced herself to concentrate, wondering what Brock was leading to. ‘That seemed inconclusive. I thought there must have been more to it than he was saying.’
‘What did you make of the bit about Clarke’s pen and glasses?’
‘That didn’t make much sense.’
‘Can we believe Oakley?’
Kathy thought. ‘Probably. I mean it doesn’t do him any credit, does it? He should have reported it to Chivers.’
‘Exactly. He probably thinks Clarke did tell Chivers, and that now we’re wondering why he didn’t report it himself, so he decided to come clean. But if Oakley is telling the truth about that, what does it mean?’
‘I don’t know. Why would Clarke mention it? It could only tend to place him at the scene and incriminate him.’
‘And why didn’t he refer to it in his confession, when he did mention his lost driving glove? Suppose he was genuinely mystified by it, and worried enough to try to pursue it. Imagine for a moment that he didn’t kill Miki and Charles. He’s called up to the bedroom, to the shocking scene of Miki’s corpse. Then, while he’s waiting for help to arrive, he notices things that belong to him. He thinks he must have left them there on the Friday night, and he doesn’t want to have to explain what he was doing in her bedroom then, so he snatches them up and looks around desperately for anything else incriminating. But later, he becomes increasingly certain that he never had that pen and that pair of glasses with him on the Friday night. How had they got there? Had someone deliberately planted them?’
‘The murderer,’ Kathy said. ‘Charles Verge.’
And catching the expression on Brock’s face, she understood for the first time his odd detours around the fens of that morning, and his sense of expectancy when they reached Marchdale. ‘You’ve been thinking this for some time, haven’t you? You do think he’s still alive.’
‘Just a private doubt, Kathy. Let’s keep it that way.’
‘You’ve thought this all along?’
‘I wasn’t sure, but when I spoke to Gail Lewis she seemed to confirm my doubts. And then I became worried. If Verge really is the killer then she may be at risk too, and perhaps others. It depends how rational he is.’
‘Did you really think he might show up at the March-dale opening?’
‘It seemed too good an idea to ignore. But perhaps he had other eyes and ears there to witness the event for him. Because, if he is here among us, I think it’s a fair bet that he’s got help, don’t you?’
‘And Oakley is in the clear?’
‘I believe he is. Oh, if he’d been better at his job he might have picked up Debbie Langley’s error, and he should have made a report of his meeting with Sandy Clarke. I’m sure Leon would have done. I doubt if it goes further than that.’ Then he added, ‘Leon did well to pick up this match between the two traces. Did you ask him to chase it up?’
‘No, he must have done it off his own bat.’ Neat Leon, efficient Leon, badly needing to prove something, Kathy thought.
Brock said, ‘Odd that he should be such good pals with Oakley. I’d have thought they’d be opposites, really. No?’
They were interrupted by Brock’s phone. He listened for a moment, then thanked the caller and hung up. ‘They’ve checked Charlotte’s phone records. It wasn’t used within an hour of your visit. We’ll have to find out Clarke’s movements that afternoon, but if it wasn’t him, who else could it have been? Someone Charlotte could confide in, someone in the neighbourhood.’
‘Someone like George…’ Kathy said softly.
‘Who?’
‘The gardener. We saw him at Marchdale, remember? Helping with Madelaine’s wheelchair. He was working in the garden the day I spoke to Charlotte. He would have seen how upset she got-he might even have overheard some of what we said. He certainly seems to be devoted to her. She could have got him to follow me and steal the transcript.’
‘And then kill Clarke?’
They both thought about that, chilled by the idea of Charlotte, fragile and pregnant, arranging the death of the father of her child. And for what reason? To stifle the scandal of the child’s parentage? To restore her adored father’s reputation? And they both made the same calculations-armed with the information in Clarke’s transcript, the person who broke into Kathy’s car had three days in which to concoct the suicide message, perhaps taken to Clarke’s house as a typed letter on which they planned to plant his fingerprints and a scrawled signature, but instead transferred it to the convenient laptop. Would they both have gone to visit Clarke that evening, Charlotte to gain entry, drug Clarke and type the note, George to do the heavy work of arranging the death scene?
‘What do we know about this George?’
‘Almost nothing. He was there the first time I went to Orchard Cottage, and Madelaine Verge told me that he had been sort of adopted by Charles when he was doing the research for Marchdale. He was either an inmate or an ex-con, and Charles took him on as a handyman and gardener. I don’t even know his surname.’