People looked puzzled. ‘You mean recent as in before May twelfth, chief? When he died?’
‘No, I mean since May twelfth. I mean like in the last few weeks.’
This produced a murmur of consternation. Brock’s raised hand restored an expectant hush. ‘The coroner will expect us to be thorough. In the absence of Verge’s body, we’ll be expected to be able to say categorically that he’s left no recent traces, and these women are the people who would have been closest to him, the ones he’d most likely have tried to contact, if he’d still been alive.’
‘We’re to search the whole properties, sir? Not just the outbuildings where Todd might have kept his tools?’
‘Everywhere, but do it tactfully. If they ask, explain that you’re looking for something Todd might have hidden or mislaid. Don’t tell them you’re looking for traces of Verge- that’ll only upset them.’
You can say that again, Kathy thought, picturing the reaction of the three women to this violation. It was as if Brock were planning to put his hand into a beehive. The team looked doubtful too, perhaps imagining trying to explain to Madelaine Verge that they were searching her underwear drawers for something that her gardener might have hidden or mislaid. For once Kathy was glad that she would be tied up all that day with her committee.
The Crime Strategy Working Party was going well under Kathy’s chairmanship, so everyone agreed, and she could only assume it was one of those cases of something going right when you’d paid it no attention, because she’d hardly given it any serious thought since Leon had left. She sat through the rest of the day half listening to the others excitedly discussing institutionalised racism and homophobia, and wondered how she was going to get through another weekend, and how Brock and the rest of the team were making out. When Jay spoke to her in the lunchbreak about the arrangements for Saturday night, it took her a while to remember what the other woman was talking about.
‘Do you know the pub on the corner of Old Compton Street? I thought we could all meet up there. What do you think?’
‘Oh, fine. Yes, that would be fine.’
Jay lowered her voice, and looked sheepish. ‘I know you’re a copper and everything, but when you’re off-duty, you’re off-duty, right?’
‘How do you mean?’ But Kathy knew exactly what she meant.
‘Well, some of my friends like…’ Jay stopped as Shazia, balancing a paper plate of sandwiches and a cup of orange juice, joined them. They didn’t get a chance to finish the conversation, and afterwards Kathy wondered what she was getting herself into.
Brock rocked forward on the balls of his feet, absorbing the confrontation between stubble fields and hedgerows out there, and stainless steel and leather cushions in here. It was a platitude of modern architecture, he knew, but it still had the power to shock, the unmediated impact of room and landscape through a sheet of naked glass.
Luz Diaz stood with her back to him, arms folded, smoking angrily. ‘I cannot believe that this is permitted in this country. It is worse than Franco.’
‘I’m sorry, Ms Diaz. But the coroner…’
‘Fuck the coroner!’ She spun around to face him. ‘That’s just an excuse. You know what I think? I think you enjoy breaking into people’s houses and turning over their private things. I think you are no different from criminals.’
‘Did you know that your gardener had an extensive criminal record?’
‘George? Yes, of course I knew. Charles told me all about George, ages ago, before I even came here. He met him in prison, when he was working on the Marchdale project. Is that all you see? A man has a record, so that’s it? Do you look beyond that? Do you know anything about him?’
‘Tell me.’
‘He was a model prisoner, doing a degree in horticulture with the Open University. No, he was the model prisoner, that is what the prison governor told Charles-the best, the most responsive prisoner he had ever met. And he had had a terrible life. Did you know that he witnessed his father murder his mother when he was five? Did you know that he was shockingly abused by the relatives who took him in, and then again when he was put into care?’
The blaze of anger in her eyes died a little as she took in Brock’s look of concern. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘Well, you should do better research, Chief Inspector. George is probably the most trustworthy and honest man I know. What do you suspect him of doing?’
‘I can’t say at present. But your assessment of his character is very helpful.’
‘You’re just saying that to calm me down, yes?’ But despite her words, Brock saw that her stabs at her cigarette were less violent. ‘You believe that once a thief, always a thief, right?’
‘I think it’s very hard for any of us to change a pattern that’s shaped our whole lives.’
Luz frowned at him. ‘So you would say that once we have decided what we are going to do with our lives-you a policeman, Charles an architect, me a painter-that those things then lock us into their own patterns? You think after thirty years of thinking and acting in our different ways, we’re so shaped by the experience that we simply can’t change?’
‘Something like that.’
She stared back at him as if trying to provoke him into saying more, then broke into a smile. ‘But people do it all the time, don’t they? And in your heart I bet you believe that you could still be anything you want. And George is the proof that you can be. He overcame his past and changed himself.’
Brock smiled back. ‘We’ll see, Ms Diaz. We’ll see.’ Then he added, ‘Is that why George was important to Charles, because he was able to change himself, like a hermit crab throwing off its shell?’
Luz looked startled. ‘Why do you say that? That was
…’ She stopped herself and turned away, crushing her cigarette into a glass bowl. ‘George was a resource, that’s all. Charles paid him as a consultant, because he knew everything about prisons from the inside.’
‘I see.’ There was a thump from the floor below, a muffled curse, and Luz stiffened. ‘If those bastards break anything… I have jars of pigment down there from Venice. It’s the only place in the world you can get it. You’d better tell them…’
‘Don’t worry, they know their job. And is that why you left Barcelona, to change yourself? Or your painting, perhaps? Your colours are so bright and clear, the geometry so sharp-will that survive this damp English light?’ He nodded out to the view, where evening mist was seeping out of the copses.
‘I haven’t experienced an English winter yet,’ she said, lighting another cigarette. ‘But perhaps it is the reason, yes. We all need a change of perspective from time to time. Something to make us think and feel in fresh ways. A change of palette…’
Another dull thud sounded from below and Luz wheeled around and made for the spiral staircase. ‘I’m going to see what those people are doing.’
Brock remained in the artist’s studio, going over to a shelf of books. Most of them were gallery exhibition catalogues, many with pages marked by slips of paper. When he opened them he found illustrations of her work. They dated back over ten years, from private galleries in Barcelona, Madrid, San Francisco and New York.