Barry Maitland: The verge practice

‘Didn’t you decide on the spot?’

‘I asked him to give me the weekend to think about it.’

In the reflected glow of the pool of light shining from the lamp over the desk he noticed a small, unfamiliar scar on the side of the bridge of her nose. Had she acquired this on one of the cases they’d worked on together? Why had he never noticed it before? She was gazing at him steadily, waiting for his answer. He looked away and thought, this is how we end up lying to our friends, wanting to do the right thing by them.

‘Of course you should do it. It’s an honour to be picked, and it’s a great opportunity. If nothing else, it’ll look good on your CV.’

‘But I hate committees. I never know what to say. I hate listening to people who love the sound of their own voices.’

‘You just do what we do on the job-you sit quiet and listen and observe, and when the moment comes you put the boot in.’

She smiled, but still watched him carefully. ‘So you recommended me?’

‘He asked my opinion and I told him you’d be excellent.’

‘And you want me to take it?’

‘No, I’d rather have you here to be honest, but that’s not the point. Look…’ he added brusquely, ‘… you make up your own mind, but if you ask me I say you’d be mad to turn it down.’

‘Okay, thanks. I suppose I’ll do it.’ Her eyes passed over the papers on the desk, the job schedules and files. ‘Has something come up?’ She read the label on the top file. ‘Charles Verge?’ Her eyes widened. ‘They’re not giving us the Verge case?’

‘They are. We’ll be having a briefing on Monday.’

‘But that’s fantastic!’

Her enthusiasm was immediate and completely untainted by Brock’s misgivings. He envied her optimism and wondered if he’d been infected by Chivers’ gloom.

‘No, it’s not. It’s an act of desperation. Chivers’ people have been flogging it for four months and they’ve got nowhere.’

‘Yes, but we’re better…’ She grinned suddenly and said, ‘It’s an honour to be picked, and it’s a great opportunity.’

Brock acknowledged his own rather awkward words with a reluctant smile. Kathy’s attention had turned to the job matrix lying beside the files, and she frowned at the blank beside her own name. ‘I’ll be on the Verge team, won’t I?’

‘What did Sharpe have to say about time commitments?’

‘He said it would be a fractional commitment, about fifty per cent. I just have to give the committee priority if there’s a clash with other duties. Oh, come on, Brock! You have to let me on.’

He pondered a moment, then said, ‘Okay,’ and took up his pencil, writing ‘0.5’ in the blank space.

She smiled her thanks, then checked her watch. ‘I have to run.’

‘A date?’

‘I’m meeting someone. Leon.’

‘Ah yes. Would you describe yourselves as partners these days, Kathy?’

She gave him an odd look. ‘I might. Yes, something like that.’

‘Have fun.’ He turned back to his papers.

When she had gone he repeated softly, ‘Something like that…’ What did that mean, exactly? Something unresolved? He shook his head and hoped that Leon Desai knew what he was playing at.

On the way home through South London he stopped at a supermarket and stocked up for the weekend with some precooked lasagne, a pork pie, salad, eggs, bread, coffee and a couple of bottles of Chilean red. That evening he began with the crime scene file, and eventually fell asleep in his armchair over a copy of the pathology reports.

By the following evening he felt he had a reasonable overview of the case. Although he had been given only a small part of the huge volume of material that had been generated, it was enough to confirm his earlier expectation that Chivers’ team had done a very thorough job. Once he had become convinced that Verge had indeed bolted, Chivers had set about constructing a huge spider’s web of tripwires that spanned the globe. Phones were tapped, mail intercepted, bank accounts monitored, passenger lists scanned, in the hope that one day, somewhere, a contact would register. Given the celebrity of the runaway and the crime, foreign police forces had been glad to assist, and liaison officers in over thirty countries had been identified, in addition to normal Interpol links. Particular effort had gone into working with the police in Spain and in a number of Latin American countries.

Brock couldn’t fault the investigation, assuming the initial assumptions were correct, and there seemed nothing to suggest otherwise. The only thing that niggled was a certain vagueness about the forensic evidence, an absence of information, which Brock found unusual. The handle of the murder weapon had revealed no fingerprints or DNA traces of the assailant; the victim’s body showed no signs of injury apart from the fatal wound; the bedding on which she lay had been recently changed, and offered no forensic data; and neither did a single driving glove, found on the floor of Verge’s car. It was almost as if the murder setting had been sterilised, wiped of drama and significance.

He sighed, poured himself a glass of wine and opened the file containing a summary of each of the 1863 reported sightings of Verge from around the world which had been officially logged up to and including the previous Sunday, quite apart from the thousands more that had been recorded on the various Verge websites that had sprung up.

He was interrupted by the phone ringing at his elbow.

‘I thought we were going to meet this weekend.’

Brock recognised Suzanne’s voice, sounding slightly peeved.

‘Yes, I’m sorry. I was about to phone. Something came up yesterday, and now I’m up to my ears in files. I don’t think I’m going to make it.’

‘Oh dear. A new case?’ Her voice softened, prepared to be mollified.

‘An old one, but they’ve decided it needs a fresh look, and they’ve dumped it on me.’

‘It must be important. It’s not the Verge case, is it?’

Brock was astonished. ‘Well… yes, it is actually.’

‘Oh David, that’s fantastic! And you’re in charge of it now?’

‘Well, yes…’

‘Just wait till I tell the kids. They’ll be thrilled. Stewart thinks he got away in a submarine, and Miranda’s sure she’s seen him in our shop. Of course, they both think you should have been on it from the start.’ Then a thought struck her. ‘But you don’t mean to say you’ve been down here without telling us?’

‘No… Why?’

‘Well, to see the place where he disappeared. Bexhill. The kids are sure he would have come through Battle on his way down to the coast.’

Brock hadn’t really registered the fact that Verge’s jumping point had been quite close to where Suzanne lived with her two grandchildren. ‘No, I hadn’t got that far yet.’

‘Well obviously you must. We’ve been down there to look for clues. We can show you exactly where the car was found. Stewart found an icecream wrapper that he thought should have been dusted for prints, but our local nick weren’t much interested. No doubt he’ll give it to you. And we worked out how Verge could have got to the Channel ports from there, that is if he wasn’t picked up by a passing submarine.’

‘You seem to know a lot about this.’

She laughed. ‘Of course we do! David, this is the biggest thing since Princess Di. The beautiful couple, the crime of passion, the disappearance. We follow every move. Stewart’s got a map of the world on his bedroom wall with pins stuck in for each sighting reported in the papers.’

More than I’ve got, Brock thought.

‘Anyway, you’ll have to come down. Why not make it tomorrow? The forecast is fine. We can have a picnic on the very spot.’