Barry Maitland: The verge practice

She paused at a page outlining the CVs of the members of the working party. Desmond was in the personnel department of the Metropolitan Police, and Shazia had recently joined the Race Hate Unit at Rotherhithe. Rex was a civilian member of a community policing committee, Nathan was a lawyer with a large private charity and Jay represented a body called Gay Victim Alliance. Looking at the six names, Kathy thought how careful someone had been with the selection. There were three men and three women, three white and three coloured, three police and three civilians. It was a masterpiece of balance; whatever happened, no one could accuse its convenors of bias, except perhaps in age, for they were all young.

‘Let’s turn to the agenda, shall we?’ Desmond suggested. ‘I’ve put the program as the first item, because that is the most critical thing at present. Our immediate deadline is the next meeting of the Joint Conference in three weeks. Each of the working parties will be expected to present an interim working paper at the conference, with some initial analysis and ideas…’

There was a buzz of consternation round the table.

‘Three weeks?’ ‘That’s ridiculous!’ ‘Are you joking?’

‘I know, I know,’ Desmond said soothingly. ‘It’s just unfortunate how the timing has worked out. Believe me, I’m as concerned about it as you. As chair, I’ll be the one who has to present our paper.’

Rex had been silent up to this point, but now he cleared his throat loudly and the murmur died away. Kathy noticed that he was resting his clenched fist on a newspaper folded to a large colour photograph. She recognised it because it had been in the paper she’d been reading on the tube into work that morning, a picture of the family of an Asian boy trampled by a police horse during a riot up north over the weekend.

‘We cannot be steamrolled,’ he said, in a deep, powerful voice that held everyone’s attention, ‘by some ridiculously short, artificial deadline, into producing half-baked ideas. I didn’t agree to join this committee on those terms.’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Jay nodded her cropped head vigorously.

‘Of course, Rex, but I don’t think…’ Desmond tried to calm things down, but the Sikh hadn’t finished.

‘There are a number of basic issues we have to address before we can even begin to think about producing statements. Such as the make-up of this committee.’

Kathy realised she wasn’t the only one who’d been studying that. But how could he object to it?

Desmond clearly thought the same. ‘Well, I wasn’t involved in the selection process, Rex, but I must say, looking at who’s here, that it seems extremely well balanced. I think Robert and whoever else was involved have done a pretty good job.’

‘The fact that it’s so evenly balanced makes the position of chair especially crucial. Presumably the chair has a casting vote, right?’

‘The aim is to reach consensus, Rex. I would hope that we don’t ever have to get to the stage of taking votes…’

‘All the same, the chair is important, symbolically and practically.’ Rex was sitting very upright and still, not meeting their eyes, but staring down at the newspaper by his hand as he spoke. ‘And right away we’re giving the wrong message by having the committee chaired by a member of the police. I thought the whole point of this exercise was to listen to the community?’

‘Yeah,’ Jay agreed, watching Rex with interest.

‘But the community just isn’t going to give credibility to policies coming from committees set up and chaired by the police, with a few token community reps to make them look respectable.’

Desmond took a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t involved in the decision-making process that led to my appointment as chair. Can you throw any light on the thinking behind that, Robert?’

Robert looked mildly surprised to be brought into the scrap, but he smiled benignly and said, ‘Well, I rather think that the argument is that this whole exercise is being carried out by the Metropolitan Police in order to improve its performance and level of service to the community at large. So it is essentially a police process, informed by the highest possible level of input from community representatives, whose contributions will of course be absolutely crucial. The chair of each committee must have an understanding of the context within which new policies will be framed. In other words, the chairs must understand how the police service operates, and must be able to present the ideas of their committees in a way that the police hierarchy can understand and take on board.’

Rex suddenly rose to his feet, snatched up the newspaper report of the weekend riots and threw it onto the table in front of Robert. ‘I think we all understand very well how the police service operates, thank you. And if the police hierarchy is so bloody stupid that they can’t understand the words of ordinary members of the community without having them dressed up and interpreted, then I’m not interested in having my name associated with this bit of whitewashing.’

He turned and marched out of the room.

The meeting sat in stunned silence for a moment, then Desmond got hurriedly to his feet and ran after the departed Rex. Robert looked shocked, unused, perhaps, to displays of naked anger in his usual line of work, or possibly contemplating a committee-selection disaster. Everyone else was silent, reluctant to speak out now in front of the bureaucrat. Robert must have sensed his isolation, and with an embarrassed little cough rose to his feet. ‘Excuse me,’ he murmured, and made for the door.

‘Well,’ Jay said, ‘maybe this’ll be more interesting than I expected.’

Brock’s visit to Charles Verge’s doctor was less contentious. The surgery was in a quiet cul-de-sac mews in Belgravia, and the doctor had a grave dignity to suit. ‘I made a statement some months ago, Chief Inspector. I don’t really see what I can add.’

‘We’re going back over some of the old ground just to make sure nothing was missed.’

‘You’re still no nearer to finding Charles, then? I really don’t think I can throw any light on where you might look.’

And as Brock took the doctor back over his earlier statement, he tended to agree. Charles Verge had been his patient for over ten years, during which time he had seen his doctor two or three times each year, for an annual check-up and for other minor ailments-a recurring tennis elbow, some lower back pain, a couple of viral infections, and a spell of about a year following his divorce when he had been prescribed an anti-depressant. The only remotely unusual thing about the record was the fact that Verge hadn’t seen his doctor at all in the twelve months leading up to his disappearance, a longer gap than any previously.

‘I put that down to everything going well-with his marriage I mean.’

‘You noticed a difference when he remarried?’

‘Certainly. He seemed rejuvenated.’

‘You were Ms Norinaga’s doctor, too, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, since their marriage. The last time I saw her was a month before the tragedy.’

Brock consulted his notes. ‘That was for a prescription for a contraceptive pill, wasn’t it? Did she discuss her sex life with you?’

‘Very little. She was a woman of few words, and it wasn’t a language problem. She was very articulate and spoke English fluently. She was just very private.’

‘There was no suggestion of any difficulties with her husband?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Tell me about this period when you prescribed antidepressants for Mr Verge.’

The doctor consulted his file. ‘It was seven years ago, around the time of his divorce. I do recall him saying that he had experienced periodic spells of what he called “despair” before, when he lost confidence in himself, but this instance was clearly related to the breakdown of his marriage.’