Barry Maitland: The verge practice

‘I’m surprised. I mean, the picture I’ve been getting is of a man with supreme confidence in himself.’

‘Mmm, he certainly gave that impression, but the marriage breakdown took its toll. His symptoms were classic-sleeplessness, lack of energy, poor appetite. I had him on Zoloft for fourteen months, moderate dose, then he came off it and the symptoms didn’t recur.’

‘And nothing more recently?’

‘No.’

As he showed Brock out, the doctor seemed to feel a sudden surge of sympathy for the policeman with his rather weary stoop and disappointed frown. ‘Haven’t been much help, have I? But to be honest, you’re not likely to catch him now, are you? He’s probably sunning himself on some distant beach, and really, what good would be served by dragging him back here and going through all the trouble and expense of a trial and a gaol term, eh? He did a terrible thing, and he’s lost everything as a result. He’s no danger to anyone now.’

Brock guessed that a lot of people shared the doctor’s opinion. Large sections of the press seemed to mask this view with only the barest of nods to notions of justice.

‘I doubt if the victim’s family feels that way, doctor. Thanks anyway for your help. Oh incidentally…’ a thought seemed to strike him, ‘… you wouldn’t know if Charles Verge had a doctor in Barcelona, would you? He visited there quite frequently.’

‘Sorry, no idea. But it’s not likely that there’s a medical explanation for any of this, is it?’

‘No, you’re probably right.’

Brock turned and strode away, taking a deep breath of the warm afternoon air and catching just a hint of the tang of turning leaves and approaching autumn.

When he got back to his office he opened the book that Clarke had given him on the work of the practice. It was obviously a high-quality production, printed on thick paper with a fine satin surface. The greater part consisted of beautifully printed photographs and plans, with a couple of introductory essays-the first, according to the dust jacket, an analysis of Verge’s work by an internationally acclaimed author of numerous seminal works on architectural theory. If Brock had hoped for enlightenment from this he was quickly disappointed, for the text was, to him at least, largely incomprehensible. He had always held that, if the giants of modern theory-Darwin, Marx and Freud-could write lucid prose, then so should everyone else, but he realised that he was in a minority. After struggling to comprehend the private meanings and convoluted phrasing of the first couple of paragraphs, he gave up and, like most other people he assumed, turned his attention to the pictures. The essay was peppered with little images-a Mongolian yurt, a Zeppelin airship, grain silos, a Japanese teahouse, a seashell, a glider-but what these had to do with Verge’s philosophy of architecture Brock wasn’t certain. He noticed a phrase that Madelaine Verge had used, ‘hybrid architecture’, which apparently had something to do with yin and yang and postmodernism and generally having the best of all possible worlds. He turned with relief to the photographs and plans of Verge’s buildings. The sequence of plans was introduced by a quote from Le Corbusier, ‘The plan is the generator’, and although Brock found it impossible to interpret how they worked, for there was no lettering on them to identify the function of the rooms, he was struck by their abstract beauty, like densely worked cartoons or X-rays, some long and spiky, others gridded and square. The accompanying photographs were impossibly ravishing, like images from a fashion magazine or cookbook.

Leon was cooking when Kathy returned to her flat in Finchley that evening. He had been doing this a lot lately, and despite the resulting debris that made the small flat seem even more crowded, she’d encouraged it, although it made her feel bad, since she only provided takeaway pizza. Also, she wasn’t sure of his motives. Sometimes she felt he was trying to prove that living so long with his parents hadn’t left him incapable of looking after himself, but at other times she wondered if it was insurance, in case it didn’t work out between them. His own explanation was that it was therapy, and tonight she could believe it. He’d had another sticky day, he said, his black hair flopping forward over his eyes, voice barely audible above the thump of the knife chopping the parsley. Two kids, pre-teen, found with some syringes under a pile of cardboard boxes that someone had set alight. With some alarm, Kathy realised that he was preparing roast chicken.

She was becoming convinced that he shouldn’t be in the police force, at least not in the forensic area of laboratory liaison. His working hours revolved around the nasty end of the business, constantly confronted by the worst in life, a never-ending stream of crime scenes and their aftermath. Unrelieved by contact with living clients, he met only victims dehumanised by violent death, and she thought it was beginning to tell on him. He finished chopping and stood for a moment, as if wondering what to do next, looking forlorn and troubled and beautiful, and she was on the point of taking hold of him and telling him how much she loved him, when he suddenly shoved his hand inside the chicken carcass and began to scrape out the scraps of offal inside.

And she felt guilty, because he had had an escape plan and she had been one of the reasons he had abandoned it. As a laboratory liaison officer he couldn’t rise above sergeant, so he had planned to go up to Liverpool University to do a master’s in forensic psychology and move into a more open career path, perhaps in the private sector. Kathy had felt that she would lose him if he left, and had made it easier for him to stay than to go.

‘You’ve got a lot of reading to do?’ Leon nodded at the pile of documents she’d dropped on the table, and she told him about the first meeting of the Crime Strategy Working Party. After some hiatus Desmond had returned with Robert, but without Rex, and they had agreed to postpone the meeting until something could be worked out. Kathy tried to make it sound funny, but Leon didn’t respond.

‘The Asian kid is paralysed,’ he said gloomily. ‘The one who got kicked by the police horse. It was on the news. He’ll likely be a quadriplegic. I shouldn’t think this is a very good time to be starting up your committee.’

Kathy felt mildly deflated. ‘Well, it would suit me if they forgot the whole thing.’ She changed the subject. ‘Did you call your mum today?’

He nodded, stuffing a whole lemon into the chicken. ‘You can open that wine if you like.’

‘How’s your dad’s tummy?’

‘Okay. The doctor said he was pleased with the way it’s going.’

‘Good. I’m going to be out that way tomorrow. I thought I might call in on your mum.’

Leon looked at her in surprise.

‘Just to see how she’s coping. What do you think?’

‘Fine…’ Leon looked extremely doubtful. ‘Afternoon would probably be best. Do you want me to call her?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it once I know how my time is going. Do you want some help with that?’

‘It’s all under control.’

She thumbed reluctantly through the pile of her documents and, coming to the scrapbook that Brock had given her, pulled it out and opened the cover. Inside was the title, Dossier on the Murder of Miki Norinaga and Disappearance of Charles Verge. Compiled by Stewart and Miranda Collins, aged 9 and 6, of 349A High Street, Battle, East Sussex. She smiled to herself and began to turn the pages of cuttings.

Later, relaxed by the wine and a surprisingly competent meal, they lay together in the darkness in the large bed that almost filled the tiny bedroom, and into Kathy’s mind returned the question Brock had asked and she had glibly deflected. Why had Charles Verge marked a passage describing an eighteenth-century architect identifying their crimes from the heads of dead criminals? She pictured the bizarre and macabre scene, and wondered how Verge might have interpreted it. Was he taken with the idea that somehow our worst acts were stamped on our faces? Or, if the faces preceded the acts, were we doomed to commit the crimes that our heredity or environment had conditioned us to? Or was it something to do with the idea of Verge’s new prison, that you had to reconstruct the whole person, physically as well as spiritually, in order to free it from its criminal fate? She was on the point of drifting off, when the idea suddenly hit her. She blinked awake and sat up.