Barry Maitland - The verge practice

‘I expected her to be shocked, of course, but I hadn’t anticipated the full force of her reaction. She was contemptuous. She thought my lifelong dilemma was utterly absurd; she regarded my fantasy about Luz Diaz as disgusting; she said my plans were impossible, that I could no more become a woman through surgery than she could become a mermaid.

‘It took me some time to realise that, not only would Miki never join me in my new life, but that she would do everything she could to ridicule and destroy it. I imagined her regaling our London friends with tales about her ludicrous ex-husband, doing interviews for newspapers and TV shows, writing her memoirs, My Life with the Freak, turning me into a national and international joke. And I also saw her destroying my reputation as an architect, taking over the practice, taking credit for my work, and especially for Marchdale.

‘When I realised all that, I began to see that another plan would be necessary to achieve my flight from Charles Verge. I made her promise to say nothing until I was ready to make an announcement to my family and closest friends, and meanwhile I began to arrange the destruction not only of Miki, but of the Verge Practice, when I finally departed.’

It occurred to Kathy that he might have changed his sex and his appearance, but the self-absorption, the egomania, were unchanged. ‘How did Sandy Clarke deserve to be your victim too?’

Luz waved a dismissive hand. ‘Sandy was a mediocre talent who made an extraordinarily good living from riding on my coat-tails for twenty-five years. He was also screwing my wife. It was time for payback. I knew that if Miki died in suspicious circumstances and I disappeared, I would be blamed. I had to provide an alternative explanation both for the murder and for the money funnelled out of the practice to fund my new life. But what the bloody hell were the police playing at? I left the ground thick with clues, and the bumbling plod missed them all. Didn’t they find Sandy’s glasses in the bedroom, his pen in the bed, for God’s sake?’

‘Sandy removed those when he discovered the body.’

‘Oh.’ Luz looked annoyed. ‘What about the bed linen? Miki boasted to me that morning when I got back from the States that Sandy had slept in her damn bed. Didn’t he leave any traces?’

‘She’d already changed and washed the sheets,’ Kathy said, but didn’t mention the pillowcase that had had such ramifications.

‘Well, what about his driving glove? I took that from his car when he picked me up at the airport that morning, and left it in my car at the beach. Didn’t you trace that back to him?’

‘It had never been worn. It was assumed to be yours.’

‘And the missing money? Didn’t the accountants pick that up?’

‘Only now.’

‘Hell.’ Luz shook her head. ‘I didn’t imagine it would be so difficult. I didn’t intend for Sandy to die, not until I found out what he did to Charlotte. Perhaps I should have stuck to designing buildings, not murders. But I’ve always believed that any design problem, no matter how intractable, has a solution, if one only has the imagination and nerve.’ She caught Kathy looking at her, the question in her eyes, and am I next? Luz turned away, and in that equivocation Kathy thought she saw the fate in store for her.

‘You’d better bed down here, while I work out what to do now,’ Luz said. ‘There’s blankets and linen in the drawers over there.’

‘If you threaten the children, Stewart and Miranda, Brock will never rest until he’s taken care of you.’

‘Of course we shan’t touch them. That was a rather clumsy initiative of George’s. He was concerned that your boss was going to persist and needed warning off. I promise you, there’s nothing to be concerned about in that area.’

Kathy nodded. ‘And the same goes for me. I’ve got an important meeting first thing tomorrow, and if I don’t show up all hell will break loose.’

It sounded feeble even as she said it, and she saw that Luz was unimpressed.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll work things out.’ She got up to call George in, but Kathy stopped her, wanting to keep her talking.

‘I’d like to know what Lizancos did to you, exactly.’

‘Everything he could think of. I was the last opportunity for an old man to display his talent, his last masterpiece. He thinks of himself as an artist too, you see, his medium being flesh and bone, and once he’d begun I didn’t have much say in the matter.’

Kathy remembered the first time she’d seen Luz in this house, and the rubber gloves. ‘Your fingerprints?’

‘Yes, he had a go at those too. It was something he’d always wanted to try, he said, to transplant toe pads to fingertips. I’m still having trouble with them. He’d have transplanted my whole hands if I’d let him-they’re too large, of course. The most difficult thing has been something he couldn’t alter, my voice. I took voice lessons in Barcelona, but I’ve been terrified that some rhythms of speech, some characteristic sounds, would be there for Charlotte or Madelaine to pick up. But they didn’t.’ Luz smiled, proud of herself.

‘And in the end, did it work? Are you a woman?’

The smile faltered, then was forced back. ‘Of course. I told you, I always have been.’

Kathy wasn’t convinced. It was a rehearsed answer, she felt, a response to Miki’s challenge that what he was attempting to do was impossible.

Luz went to the door and spoke to George, who came in and checked the windows, taking keys from the security locks. ‘Triple glazed, toughened glass,’ he told Kathy.

‘Sleep well,’ Luz said, and she and George left. Kathy heard the lock click, then made a hurried inspection of the room. There seemed no way out. She found cutlery in a kitchen drawer, and although the larger knives had been removed, there was a selection of smaller ones. She chose a couple, wrapped herself in a blanket and put out the light.

Kathy stirred with the first glimmer of grey dawn through the little windows. She could hear nothing, no dawn chorus through the heavy glazing, only the soft hum of the refrigerator and ducted airconditioning, and was filled with a sense of dread about theday ahead.

At one point she thought she heard the faint murmur of a vehicle starting up, then nothing but more long silence. Noticing a small intercom grille beside the door, she went over to it and pressed her thumb on the button. After a while the speaker crackled and George’s voice said, ‘Morning.’

‘What’s going on, George? It’s seven-thirty. I need to go.’ ‘Patience. There’s food in the fridge and cupboards. Make yourself some breakfast.’ ‘I don’t want breakfast, I want…’ But the line had gone dead.

She found some orange juice, and ate a piece of bread and marmalade, discovering that, despite a lingering nausea in the back of her throat, she was hungry.

Eight o’clock came and went, and Kathy experienced an odd sense of detachment, imagining the reactions when she failed to keep her appointment with Commander Sharpe. She tried the intercom again.

‘Hello? Luz, George?’ ‘Patience,’ George’s voice repeated. ‘Watch TV. Read a book.’

She made a cup of coffee, and pictured the scene in Sharpe’s office, the angry call to Brock, the consternation in Queen Anne’s Gate. Presumably, Brock had been told about her trouble in Barcelona. What was he thinking now, that she’d done a bunk? The police conference was starting today, she remembered, and she imagined Sharpe and the other top brass in full uniform discussing her case between sessions. The first of the working parties would be presenting their paper that afternoon. Hers was due the next day. She switched on breakfast TV and watched, like a prisoner spying through a keyhole, the normal world outside, remote and unattainable.