‘His first wife is an architect too, isn’t she?’
‘Gail, yes. They began the Verge Practice together, but of course Charles was the real driving force. After Charlotte was born Gail took a less active role, but until the pressure of his work took its toll on their marriage, she was always very supportive of his talent.’
Unlike the second wife, Brock inferred. He got to his feet. ‘I have a lot of work to do, Mrs Verge. I’d better go. But thank you for your information. I promise I shall look into it.’
She pushed herself forward with her right hand, her left still clutching her untouched whisky. ‘I wanted you to understand how important this is, Chief Inspector. I have lost my son, but I cannot bury him, nor save his reputation. Only you can do that. I am helpless.’
Brock doubted that.
4
The two teams assembled at the appointed time, awkward in each other’s company like players who were uncertain what the game was, let alone which side they were on. Brock opened the proceedings by outlining the new orders from above and inviting Chivers to take over the briefing. The superintendent glowered at the meeting, as if daring anyone to find fault with what he was about to say, then slowly lit a cigarette in defiance of the sign on the wall behind him. In a flat, monotonous voice he delivered a well-prepared summary of his four-month investigation, aided by photographs, diagrams, a world map and the police scene-of-crime video. The acoustics of the room in the basement of New Scotland Yard were poor, and several times a voice from the back of the room would pipe up, ‘Sorry, chief, what was that last bit again?’ and Chivers would clear his throat, raise his volume a little and repeat.
At the end there was silence, no one game to ask a question. Chivers lit up again. His grinding monotone seemed to have cast a spell on them all, and Brock noticed the deadened expressions on the faces of Chivers’ team. Finally, Brock’s inspector Bren Gurney asked for more information on the Barcelona connection. Verge had a number of relatives there from his father’s family, and in addition he had done architectural work in the city, including an apartment building in the port area for athletes competing at the 1992 Olympics, and he had visited the city regularly. Of the relatives, one had been of particular interest, a cousin who had been a close boyhood friend of the fugitive. This man ran an engineering manufacturing business which exported a range of valves and pumps to various parts of Europe and Latin America, and in particular Argentina, where he owned a local sales and servicing company.
Relatives and other contacts had been interviewed by detectives of the Cuerpo General de Policia in Barcelona, the CGP, and by members of Chivers’ team, but none admitted to contact with Verge since his disappearance. Phone calls and financial transactions between the families in Spain and England were being monitored, and between the cousin’s businesses in Barcelona and Buenos Aires, so far without result.
There was one other possible link with Barcelona. On the same Monday morning that Miki Norinaga’s body had been discovered in London, a holidaying English couple called McNeil had been strolling along the Passeig de Gracia, the main avenue of Barcelona’s fashionable Eixample district, when Mr McNeil noticed a man get out of a taxi and quickly cross the pavement in front of them, then enter an adjoining building. After a moment’s thought he said to his wife that he thought he recognised the man as the famous architect Charles Verge. McNeil was a recently retired structural engineer, and although he had never met Verge in person, he had seen his picture many times in industry journals, and confidently picked him out later when shown photographs. He didn’t realise the significance of his sighting until they returned to England a week later, when they discovered the papers full of the Verge scandal, and he phoned the police hotline. By that stage the police had already had dozens of reports of Verge from all over Europe, but they knew of the family connection with Barcelona and paid particular attention to McNeil’s story. From maps and photographs supplied from Spain the couple identified the building on the Passeig de Gracia, and its tenants were questioned by the CGP-paying particular attention to the staff of a travel agency on the first floor- but again there was no result.
Someone asked about Verge’s state of mind at the time of the murder. The clients he had met in California in the week before the murder had been interviewed, as had the crew on the overnight flight back to London, and both could say no more than that he had seemed normal and not unduly stressed, and he certainly hadn’t appeared drunk when he disembarked. He had been met at Heathrow by his business partner Sandy Clarke, who said they had talked about Verge’s successful trip and about a presentation they were doing on the following Monday morning. Verge had been calm and in good spirits.
According to his friends and colleagues in London, his relationship with Miki had gone through a change in the previous year or so. He had worshipped her when they first married, but more recently there seemed to have been a cooling between them, and rumours of disagreements. However, there had been no public scenes, and no one believed that Miki Norinaga might have had a lover. Everyone appeared to find the idea of Verge committing a violent murder quite inexplicable.
‘What you’ve got to understand,’ Chivers said, ‘is that they all think Charles Verge was the Archangel Gabriel. He might have been an egotistical bastard at times, but that was okay because archangels have a lot to put up with. The important thing was that he could mesmerise the big clients, come up with the big ideas, and pay them all big salaries. And if he did bump Miki off, well, she probably deserved it, didn’t she, because archangels are always right. What they’re all secretly hoping is that he will turn up any day now with a perfectly reasonable explanation and everything can go back to the way it was before the Fall.
‘And they didn’t like Miki. They won’t come right out and say it, because they’re all nice middle-class people who wouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but it’s pretty obvious. The men didn’t like her because they thought she manipulated Verge into marriage when he was on the rebound from a divorce, and she promptly changed from being a lowly apprentice into someone who acted as if she was the boss herself. And the women didn’t like her because she was aloof and didn’t share in their gossip, and because she got off with the man they all secretly fancied.’
Kathy, who had been examining the crime-scene and autopsy photographs, asked, ‘Were there any injuries apart from the stab wound?’
Chivers shook his head. ‘Nothing. What of it?’
‘If they got into an argument and he flew into a rage, you’d think there would have been some preliminary physical stuff, a shove, a slap. Going out to the kitchen and selecting a knife seems very deliberate, cold.’
‘That was how he got angry, apparently,’ Chivers said. ‘He didn’t rant and rave. One of his staff said he could kill with a look if someone stuffed up. Another said it felt like being verbally disembowelled. And the killing was very efficiently done. The medical examiner was full of admiration. One very powerful, clean, deep blow. We did get an opinion from a psychologist, who was interested in the fact that both the blade and the woman were Japanese. He suggested that there might have been something symbolic in the act.’ Chivers snorted to indicate what he thought of that idea.
When the questions seemed to have come to an end, Brock said, ‘I had a call yesterday from Verge’s mother, Madelaine Verge. She wanted to tell me about her theory that Charles was murdered for commercial reasons, and that his wife was killed to put us off the scent.’