Barry Maitland: The verge practice

‘Exactly! He would have taken off into the dying sun and flown out to sea and simply disappeared. I know he would-he almost told me as much once.’

‘He discussed it with you, disappearing?’

‘Not seriously. But like many creative people he was liable to periods of darkness. During one such time he told me that, if it came to it, that’s how he would go, just vanish into the blue.’

‘It would have required help, to launch the plane…’

‘No. It’s a Stemme S10 Chrysalis, Chief Inspector. A self-launching sailplane, with a 93 horsepower four-stroke aircraft engine and conventional landing gear.’ She rattled off the specifications as if any fool should know them.

‘A powered glider?’

‘Yes. He loved the independence that it gave him, the ability to take off unaided and fly out of trouble when the gliding currents let him down. It was a fine example of hybrid technology, he used to say, such as he was famous for in his architectural designs. He has a field near Aylesbury where he kept the plane, and he could take off and land there unaided. That’s where he would have gone if he’d wanted to disappear. The Chrysalis has an engine range of 900 nautical miles at 120 knots…’

She turned her head to gaze out the window at the sky, her eyes unfocused as if she were picturing the pale cross of her son’s plane far out across the North Sea.

‘But the plane is still at Aylesbury?’

‘Yes. And whoever set up that grubby little pantomime on the south coast, you can be sure it wasn’t Charles. He had more style than that.’

‘Was this the important information you wanted me to know?’ Brock asked gently.

‘I thought it was vital that you understood this right from the outset, before you become embroiled in all the detail. And I shall be going to stay with my grand-daughter tomorrow, in the country near Amersham, and I wanted to tell you before I went. She’s pregnant, you know, with Charles’s grandchild.’

‘Ah yes.’ Brock drained his glass and shifted in his seat, but Madelaine Verge was reluctant to let him go.

‘She lives not far from the house that Charles built for me when he first came home from Harvard, where he did his master’s degree. Briar Hill was the first building the Verge Practice built, and it launched his career. It received most wonderful publicity. He said later that it was the best thing he ever designed. I lived there for twenty years, until I lost my mobility, and then it was just impossible to cope with all the changes of level. Charles had recently divorced his first wife, Gail, and he wanted me to live in the city, near him, so he converted this flat for me.’

‘His first wife is an architect too, isn’t she?’

‘Gail, yes. They began the Verge Practice together, but of course Charles was the real driving force. After Charlotte was born Gail took a less active role, but until the pressure of his work took its toll on their marriage, she was always very supportive of his talent.’

Unlike the second wife, Brock inferred. He got to his feet. ‘I have a lot of work to do, Mrs Verge. I’d better go. But thank you for your information. I promise I shall look into it.’

She pushed herself forward with her right hand, her left still clutching her untouched whisky. ‘I wanted you to understand how important this is, Chief Inspector. I have lost my son, but I cannot bury him, nor save his reputation. Only you can do that. I am helpless.’

Brock doubted that.

The two teams assembled at the appointed time, awkward in each other’s company like players who were uncertain what the game was, let alone which side they were on. Brock opened the proceedings by outlining the new orders from above and inviting Chivers to take over the briefing. The superintendent glowered at the meeting, as if daring anyone to find fault with what he was about to say, then slowly lit a cigarette in defiance of the sign on the wall behind him. In a flat, monotonous voice he delivered a well-prepared summary of his four-month investigation, aided by photographs, diagrams, a world map and the police scene-of-crime video. The acoustics of the room in the basement of New Scotland Yard were poor, and several times a voice from the back of the room would pipe up, ‘Sorry, chief, what was that last bit again?’ and Chivers would clear his throat, raise his volume a little and repeat.

At the end there was silence, no one game to ask a question. Chivers lit up again. His grinding monotone seemed to have cast a spell on them all, and Brock noticed the deadened expressions on the faces of Chivers’ team. Finally, Brock’s inspector Bren Gurney asked for more information on the Barcelona connection. Verge had a number of relatives there from his father’s family, and in addition he had done architectural work in the city, including an apartment building in the port area for athletes competing at the 1992 Olympics, and he had visited the city regularly. Of the relatives, one had been of particular interest, a cousin who had been a close boyhood friend of the fugitive. This man ran an engineering manufacturing business which exported a range of valves and pumps to various parts of Europe and Latin America, and in particular Argentina, where he owned a local sales and servicing company.

Relatives and other contacts had been interviewed by detectives of the Cuerpo General de Policia in Barcelona, the CGP, and by members of Chivers’ team, but none admitted to contact with Verge since his disappearance. Phone calls and financial transactions between the families in Spain and England were being monitored, and between the cousin’s businesses in Barcelona and Buenos Aires, so far without result.

There was one other possible link with Barcelona. On the same Monday morning that Miki Norinaga’s body had been discovered in London, a holidaying English couple called McNeil had been strolling along the Passeig de Gracia, the main avenue of Barcelona’s fashionable Eixample district, when Mr McNeil noticed a man get out of a taxi and quickly cross the pavement in front of them, then enter an adjoining building. After a moment’s thought he said to his wife that he thought he recognised the man as the famous architect Charles Verge. McNeil was a recently retired structural engineer, and although he had never met Verge in person, he had seen his picture many times in industry journals, and confidently picked him out later when shown photographs. He didn’t realise the significance of his sighting until they returned to England a week later, when they discovered the papers full of the Verge scandal, and he phoned the police hotline. By that stage the police had already had dozens of reports of Verge from all over Europe, but they knew of the family connection with Barcelona and paid particular attention to McNeil’s story. From maps and photographs supplied from Spain the couple identified the building on the Passeig de Gracia, and its tenants were questioned by the CGP-paying particular attention to the staff of a travel agency on the first floor- but again there was no result.

Someone asked about Verge’s state of mind at the time of the murder. The clients he had met in California in the week before the murder had been interviewed, as had the crew on the overnight flight back to London, and both could say no more than that he had seemed normal and not unduly stressed, and he certainly hadn’t appeared drunk when he disembarked. He had been met at Heathrow by his business partner Sandy Clarke, who said they had talked about Verge’s successful trip and about a presentation they were doing on the following Monday morning. Verge had been calm and in good spirits.

According to his friends and colleagues in London, his relationship with Miki had gone through a change in the previous year or so. He had worshipped her when they first married, but more recently there seemed to have been a cooling between them, and rumours of disagreements. However, there had been no public scenes, and no one believed that Miki Norinaga might have had a lover. Everyone appeared to find the idea of Verge committing a violent murder quite inexplicable.