Barry Maitland: The verge practice

Clarke felt humiliated, but gave no sign. He apologised again for his partner’s absence, and the delegation began to shuffle their papers into their briefcases. The mood was not buoyant.

After he had seen them off, he hurried back to the reception area. ‘Where’s Jennifer?’

‘She went back upstairs to Mr Verge’s apartment, Mr Clarke. She wants you to meet her there urgently, and asked would you go alone.’ The receptionist was watching to see how he would react to this odd message, and he forced himself to speak calmly.

‘Very well.’

Clarke maintained his composure until the lift doors slid shut behind him, then he took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from his brow with his handkerchief, aware that his hand was shaking. He vividly recalled the look of panic on Jennifer Mathieson’s face, and wondered whom she’d spoken to and if she’d summoned help.

The doors opened and she was there, waiting for him outside the door to Charles’s apartment.

‘Sandy, thank God. I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought I should wait here… to make sure…’

He went over and laid a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘It’s all right, Jennifer. What’s up?’

‘You’d better… better look for yourself.’ She could hardly get the key to turn in the lock, her hand was trembling so much. Then they were inside, and Clarke thought how deathly silent the place seemed. There was a strong smell of stale whisky, and he noticed a half-finished tumbler of amber liquid on a coffee table next to a copy of the Italian design magazine Casabella. A pair of women’s shoes lay abandoned on the rug below.

‘In the bedroom,’ Jennifer whispered, as if the slightest sound might bring the ceiling down.

The bedroom was entirely white-white walls and ceiling, white carpet and blinds, white bed linen and furniture-and this made the glossy blackness of Miki Norinaga’s hair and pubic triangle even more startling than it might otherwise have been.

She looked very young, Sandy thought, lying there naked in the centre of the double bed, the white quilt tangled round her knees. Her face was tilted up, eyes open, Japanese lids drawn back in that characteristic look of inquiry she had, as if doubting if the older men around her understood what she was saying. It was a look that her husband Charles had once adored, but which Sandy Clarke had found rather irritating. The symmetry of her slender figure was spoiled by the steel hilt embedded in her left side, immediately below her small breast. In death, her colouring had changed to a waxy yellow.

‘What is that?’ Jennifer Mathieson pointed an unsteady finger, her voice a mixture of panic and outrage.

‘It looks like the handle of one of those rather beautiful carving knives that Miki and Charles brought back from Tokyo on their last visit.’ Now that he had seen it, he felt very calm. ‘Have you spoken to anyone yet, Jennifer?’

‘No, I…I thought I should wait until the visitors had gone. She is dead, isn’t she?’

‘Oh yes. No sign of Charles?’

‘No. God, this is so awful…’ She looked as if she might pass out.

Sandy Clarke put an arm around her shoulders and led her out of the room. ‘Look, this is what I want you to do. Take the lift down to the street and wait by the private apartment entrance for the police to arrive. I’ll phone them now. Will you be all right? You’ll feel much better for a breath of fresh air.’

After he’d seen her into the lift and made the call, he returned to the bedroom and stood for a long while, just staring at Miki. He had a disturbing sense that, dead as she surely was, she was still capable of explaining what had happened, that when the police arrived they would find the truth right there in her face. His eyes slid away from her, across the bedside cabinet to the chair, to the phone and flatscreen TV. He hardly saw these things, yet something must have registered, for his attention returned to the white cube of the cabinet beside the bed and focused on a pair of glasses. Neither Miki nor Charles wore glasses. The round lenses and fine dark frames looked familiar. He took a step closer, feeling heat rising up through his body to his face. He found he could hardly breathe. They were his own reading glasses, the spare pair he kept in his office. He couldn’t remember bringing them up here. At his back he heard the hum of the lift, and he reached forward, snatched up the glasses and slipped them into his jacket pocket. Now his eyes began to dart wildly around the room. What else, dear God, what else? He heard the lift’s motor stop. As he turned to leave he noticed a glint of silver beneath the pillow by Miki’s head. He peered closer, panic rising in his chest. It looked like… it was… his silver pen, the one he’d mislaid. He heard the murmur of voices and leaned over, gripped the end of the pen between thumb and forefinger, and tugged it out from under the pillow.

‘Mr Clarke?’ A man’s voice in the living room. He straightened, ramming the pen into his pocket, and turned to face them.

Brock marched quickly along Queen Anne’s Gate, head thrust forward, a preoccupied frown on his face, and crossed onto Broadway. The September morning was sunny and warm, but he hardly noticed it. His current investigations were bogged down, there was a problem with his budget, and the summons to headquarters had been disturbingly vague. The bland office block was only a couple of hundred yards away from the converted terrace annexe in which his team was based, but in his mind the distance was much greater. He reached the entrance to New Scotland Yard and unconsciously straightened his shoulders as he presented his identification, signed the book, accepted a pass and took a lift to the sixth floor.

Commander Sharpe was standing at the window of his office when Brock was shown in. As the figure turned from contemplating the panorama of the city northward across St James Park, Brock was once again struck by the way his boss seemed to fulfil the promise of his name. The same height as Brock, six foot two, he was much leaner in build and thinner of feature, and in appearance, dress and manner he was, decidedly, sharp. This impression was reinforced by his excellent memory, by the intensity of his gaze and his precise form of speech. The effect on Brock was to make him feel vaguely crumpled. He tried to remember when he’d last had his hair cropped and beard trimmed.

‘Morning, Brock. I see our friends are patching their roof again.’ Sharpe gestured towards the window, and Brock looked out to see which particular friends he might be referring to. Close by there was the Art Deco headquarters of the London Underground, beyond it the Wellington Barracks, and in the distance the rooftops of Buckingham Palace.

‘Home Office,’ Sharpe said, referring to the building to the right of the barracks. Further to the right again, Brock could make out the chimneys and rear windows of his own outpost, and was uncomfortably aware that, with a powerful telescope, Sharpe would probably be able to read the correspondence on his desk. ‘That’s the reason I wanted to see you.’

The Home Office roof? Brock wondered, but said nothing.

‘Coffee?’ Sharpe went over to a cabinet and poured boiling water into two individual coffee plungers. He carried them to the circular table on a tray with cups, sugar and cream.

‘I find this is the best way to get a decent coffee in this place. How’s the knee?’

‘Much better,’ Brock replied, automatically rubbing the joint as he took the offered chair.

‘Physio?’

‘Yes. That seemed to sort it out.’ It was over six months since he’d been attacked by a mob of skinheads in the East End, but the leg still ached at night.

‘The commendation was well deserved, Brock, well deserved.’