Barry Maitland: The verge practice

She turned off Jamaica Road into a maze of narrow streets that led towards the old brick warehouses lining the south bank of the river. Tyres drumming on granite cobbles, she slowed opposite a vertical plane of glass, shockingly naked among all this brick and stone, which she recognised from a picture in the Verge Practice brochure that Superintendent Chivers had circulated at the briefing. In the photograph, the half-dozen floors behind the glass had been filled with people, illuminated like mannequins in a department-store window or actors in some kind of experimental theatre, but now she could see no one.

A woman was waiting for them, introducing herself as Jennifer Mathieson, information manager, her red hair made more vivid by a black silk blouse and suit. As she led them to a glass lift in the central atrium, Kathy noticed that not only the structure of the building, but also all of its furniture and fittings-including the reception desk, stairs and tables-were made of glass and glittering stainless-steel rods.

‘It was you who found the body, wasn’t it, Ms Mathieson?’ Brock asked as they glided upwards.

‘That’s right.’ She sounded nonchalant, the shock and immediacy of her discovery long gone. ‘I’ll take you up to the apartment after you’ve seen Sandy Clarke.’

The lift sighed to a stop and she led the way to a glass-enclosed office to one side of the atrium with a view out over the river. The room was spartan and immaculately neat, a row of gold-embossed design award certificates forming a frieze along one wall. Clarke rose to his feet from behind his desk, shook hands gravely and they took their places on black leather swivel chairs arranged around a glass-topped table.

He was tall, careful and rather elegant in both dress and movements. He straightened his tie with fingers that were long and delicate, like a pianist’s. ‘Has there been some new development?’ he asked, and it seemed to Kathy that the possibility worried him.

But as Brock explained the changes to the investigating team Clarke looked pained, as if at the thought of having to go through the whole thing again for their benefit. ‘It all seems academic now,’ he said, voice flat. ‘You’re not going to find him after all this time, are you?’

‘You think he’s found a secure bolthole?’

‘I didn’t say that. As I told your colleagues, I find this whole tragedy inexplicable. The idea of Charles committing murder and then running away just doesn’t make any sort of sense to me. Both actions would be completely out of character.’

‘Is there any other plausible explanation?’

‘Well…’ Clarke sighed as if reluctant to go over old ground, and ran a smoothing hand over hair which was still thick, though flecked with grey. ‘My only thought was that he must have disturbed an intruder when he went up to his flat that morning, someone who had already killed Miki, and then forced Charles to leave with him. But I accept that you’ve found no evidence of anything like that.’

Brock nodded. There had been no sign of a forced entry or a struggle. ‘You were the last person to see him that Saturday morning, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. He’d been over in California for the previous three days on a project, and I picked him up at Heathrow after an overnight flight from Los Angeles. He was his usual self, energetic, wanting to know what had been going on, and he got me to make a detour on the way home to look at a site he was interested in. When we reached our offices I gave him a copy of a report we’d done for a presentation on the following Monday, so that he could brief himself over the weekend, and he took the private lift straight up to his apartment. I worked in the office for the rest of the morning, then went home, and I didn’t see either him or Miki again.’

‘What about Mrs Madelaine Verge’s theory, about some kind of commercial sabotage?’

Clarke shook his head ruefully. ‘I know she’s convinced herself it’s the only explanation, and I can’t blame her for that, but it doesn’t stack up. Oh, I’m not saying that some of our competitors wouldn’t stoop to dirty tricks. A couple of years ago a large model of a competition entry of ours for a new parliament building in East Africa mysteriously caught fire the night before the presentation, and we were pretty sure it was no accident. But not this, not murder.

Apart from anything else, the Americans who won the Wuxang City project didn’t need to resort to anything like that. They won because they undercut our fee bid, that’s all. They wanted it more than we did, and cut their fee below what we were prepared to contemplate.’

‘What about other projects?’

‘No, it’s really not plausible. Knocking us out wouldn’t necessarily guarantee that a particular competitor would get the job. It’s not credible.’

‘How long have you worked with Mr Verge, Mr Clarke?’

‘Almost twenty-five years. I joined him in the early days, soon after he and his first wife, Gail, returned from America, when we worked from a couple of rooms in the house they’d bought in Fulham.’

‘So you know him very well. How would you describe him?’

‘Oh… totally committed, passionate about his work, tremendous energy, inspirational, a great persuader, very imaginative…’ The adjectives trailed off.

Brock said, ‘I heard someone describe him as an egotistical bastard.’

Clarke allowed himself a little smile. ‘He would probably have accepted that, a necessary part of the job. You see, to arrive at a design concept with absolute clarity, and then to sustain it through the years of challenges and difficulties of getting it built, you need a certain singlemindedness, a confidence in your own judgement that might be interpreted as arrogance. And we all accept that. Anyone coming to work here knows that they have to do things the Verge way.’

‘Yes, but in personal matters… a passionate man, you said. Capable of a crime of passion?’

‘Passionate about his work, I said. But he didn’t allow his emotions to run away with him. He was much more deliberate. That’s what I found so inexplicable.’

‘And you didn’t notice any changes in his behaviour in the months leading up to the murder?’

‘I’ve thought a lot about that. I mentioned that I’d seen him taking pills a couple of times, but I understand his doctor wasn’t prescribing anything, so they were probably just aspirin or vitamins or something. As for his manner, I thought he did seem more agitated lately, less inclined to concentrate, which I put down to overwork. And I was aware, the whole office was, of some undercurrent between him and Miki. More on her side, actually. She seemed less dependent on him, less willing to defer.’

‘Ms Norinaga was strong-willed too, was she?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘How did that work, if he was so used to being number one?’

‘At first she was his devoted disciple, hung on his every word. Then later, after they were married, he indulged her, encouraged her to express her own ideas.’

‘Well, I suppose it was natural that she’d want to do that. She was an architect in her own right, wasn’t she?’

‘It was hardly the same,’ Clarke retorted. ‘Charles was immeasurably more experienced, and talented. I mean, Miki had only been out of architecture school for a few years.’

‘Do you think he might have been losing his touch? I suppose architects can go off, like soccer players?’

‘It doesn’t usually work like that. Architecture is a long game, and architects tend to get better with age and experience. Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of his greatest masterpieces in his eighties. Charles wasn’t even approaching his peak…’ Clarke paused as if struck by some thought.