Barry Maitland - The verge practice

Brock looked around at the papers piled around his feet and said, ‘You know, I think that’s an excellent idea. I’ll be there by noon, and you can give me a briefing.’

And so the following day Brock found himself sitting on a tartan travelling rug laid out on the patch of beach just below where Charles Verge’s car had been abandoned, holding a chicken drumstick in one hand and in the other the bulging scrapbook which Stewart and Miranda had compiled of the crime. He found their information a good deal more readable than the police files, especially concerning the principal characters. There was an amazing number of cuttings from magazines and newspapers, many recent, but some dating back years, scavenged by the children from junk shops and doctors’ surgeries. Verge appeared most often, a short, stocky figure with a Napoleonic gleam in his dark eyes, a good tan, close-trimmed black hair and rather large nose, at the controls of his own helicopter about to fly his plans of the German Ministry to Berlin, or with a beaming Home Secretary examining the model of the new Home Office prison, or helping his wife out of their silver Ferrari. The accompanying articles made much use of phrases like cutting edge and precocious talent, and described him variously as domineering, passionate and obsessive.

‘He’s dishy, isn’t he?’ Suzanne said, offering him a glass of wine.

‘Looks a bit full of himself to me,’ Brock grunted, and read the headline of an article obviously written before the lethal termination of his marriage, My wife is my greatest critic: Charles Verge reveals all. Brock took a sip of the wine and gazed out to sea. It was placid, empty, a light breeze ruffling the low swell. Gulls wheeled overhead. There was something voyeuristic, ghoulish even, about sitting on that spot, poring over these pictures of the missing man.

‘You’re quite convinced he didn’t really drown?’ he asked the boy.

‘Oh yes. Look…’ Stewart flicked through the pages to an article cut from a local paper, featuring interviews with local fishermen and sailors discussing currents and tides, all agreeing that the body would have been washed ashore further along the south coast within forty-eight hours of a drowning.

What most disconcerted Brock was that the kids had never once mentioned to him their fascination with the case, or asked him for inside information.

‘I had no idea you were doing all this,’ he said.

The lad hung his head guiltily. ‘We wanted to ask you about it, but we thought you’d be cross, because it wasn’t your case.’

‘I see. Well, I think you’ve done a very professional job. In fact, I’d like to borrow this for a while, to show some people at Scotland Yard. Would you mind?’

Stewart’s face lit up. He gave a whoop and ran to tell his sister who was tracking a small crab along the water’s edge.

There were pictures of the victim, too. Verge’s wife was a Japanese architect, Miki Norinaga, who had come to work for him five years earlier, a couple of years after his divorce from his first wife. The articles made much of her looks (svelte, waif-like and willowy) and the fact that she was only thirty, twenty-two years his junior. She gazed unsmiling from the pictures, dressed invariably in black, looking very self-possessed.

‘After you’ve caught him, the trial will be such an anticlimax,’ Suzanne said. ‘I mean, there’s not a lot he can say, is there?’

Brock smiled at her confidence. ‘I suppose not.’ He recalled the photographs of the bedroom scene.

‘They don’t like her very much, the press…’ Suzanne pointed to a picture of Miki on her husband’s arm. ‘They always show her looking sulky and imply that she was a gold-digging bitch. Look… A family friend is reported as describing the dead woman as manipulative and possessive. “Charles adored her, and she had him wrapped round her little finger.” But it wouldn’t necessarily have been easy for her, being married to someone like that, do you think?’

They packed up their picnic things and made their way back to the road, where Stewart pointed out where Verge’s Land Rover had been parked, and the spot nearby where he had found the ice-cream wrapper, which he had preserved in a plastic ‘evidence bag’. He handed this solemnly to Brock, whose phone rang as he accepted it. The voice was that of an elderly woman, speaking too loudly into the receiver.

‘Hello? Who is that?’ she demanded.

‘Who are you after?’ Brock parried.

‘I want Detective Chief Inspector Brock.’

‘That’s me.’

‘My name is Madelaine Verge. I am the mother of Charles Verge. I am told that you have been given charge of the investigation into the murder of my daughter-in-law. It is imperative that I speak to you.’

‘How did you get this number, Mrs Verge?’ Brock saw the others prick up their ears at the name.

‘I have many friends, Chief Inspector, and this is urgent. I have important information which you must know before you go any further. We must meet this afternoon.’

‘I’m afraid…’ Brock began, but the imperious voice cut him off.

‘I am confined to a wheelchair, so it would be convenient if you were to come to me. I live in Chelsea. When can you get here?’

‘Can you give me some idea of the information you have, Mrs Verge?’

‘Not on the telephone.’

‘Very well.’ He checked his watch. ‘I can get to you at five. What’s the address?’

As he drove them back to Battle, Suzanne said, ‘I’d hoped you might have stayed over with us tonight, David.’

It was the first time she had said it openly in front of the children, and Brock felt she was making a point.

‘Sorry. I’d have liked that, but I’ve got a lot to do.’

‘He’s got to get on with catching Charles Verge,’ Stewart chipped in.

‘I’ll visit again soon,’ Brock added. ‘I promise.’

Madelaine Verge occupied the ground floor of a discreet Edwardian brick residential block in a leafy back street. There were unobtrusive indications that the resident was wheelchair-bound in the ramped approach to the front door where steps had once been, and the keyhole at waist height. Brock spoke into the intercom and she opened the door, a frail but belligerent grey-haired woman sitting bolt upright in the chair as if challenging comment. Inside the hallway it was clear that the whole interior had been gutted and remodelled to a light and spacious open plan.

She led him through into the lounge area, then wheeled about and peered at him intently for a moment through bright, alert eyes, as if trying to assess whether he was worthy of the task he’d been given. Then she invited him to sit, on a modern stainless-steel and black leather chair.

‘Would you like a drink, Chief Inspector? Whisky?’

The voice was less strident than on the phone, but still forceful. ‘I’d better not, Mrs Verge. I’m driving.’ ‘A little one, surely. I know I could do with one.’ She didn’t wait for a reply, but glided over to a built-in cabinet and took out a bottle and glasses, holding them carefully in arthritically twisted fingers.

‘Ice?’

‘Just water, thanks. Shall I get it?’

‘You can bring the glasses through, if you like.’ She handed them to him, then led the way to the rear of the house where a galley kitchen was laid out with a view over a small, lush garden.

‘Charles designed everything here himself especially for my needs.’ She waved at the low benchtops and cupboards, the specially positioned power points, the lever-action taps. ‘He thought of everything.’

She dribbled water into the glasses and Brock carried them back to the lounge area. Although the spaces were designed to the same minimalist principles that he had seen in the crime-scene pictures of Verge’s bedroom, here the walls were covered by framed photographs. He stopped to examine them.