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.’
3
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.
‘That was the one compromise I insisted on. Of course Charles wanted absolutely bare walls, but I said I must hang my photographs, so in the end he had to settle for designing the stainless-steel frames.’ She chuckled affectionately at the memory.
All of the pictures seemed to be of Charles, either alone or with other important people. In one he was accepting a medal from the President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in another shaking the hand of President Clinton.
‘Many of these are other world-famous architects.’ She emphasised other. ‘There he is with Kenzo Tange and the Emperor of Japan in Tokyo. There with Peter Eisenman in New York, and there with Frank Gehry in Bilbao. Over here he’s receiving the Erick Schelling Prize in Architecture. He was going to get the Pritzker, you know, if not this year then the next. I’m quite certain of it.’
The photographs recorded Verge ageing, from slender youthfulness to a more powerful middle age. In the most recent picture, taken on a rooftop with a group of Arabs, he seemed to have lost weight.
Miki Norinaga didn’t appear anywhere, but there was one extraneous figure, a thin man with glossy black hair shown in a grainy black-and-white enlargement running in a singlet and shorts on a racing track.
‘My husband, Alberto, Charles’s father. That’s him running for Spain in the 1948 Olympics in London. That’s how I met him. One day I was sitting in the tube with a girlfriend, and there were these two very charming young men sitting opposite us, with running shoes tied round their necks. We got chatting, and they said they were going to run in the Olympics. That’s the way it was then, so informal and casual. The athletes simply got on a bus or a tube with their kit and turned up for their event. We fell in love straight away. By the time the games were over we were engaged. We got married three months later in Barcelona and Charles was born in the following year. Alberto was an architect, too, you know. He was very progressive and becoming very well known in Spanish circles when he died suddenly eight years later.’
Brock felt he was being indulged, or perhaps indoctrinated into the Verge story by a very committed curator and archivist.
‘You’re obviously very proud of your son’s achievements.’
‘Oh, I am. I make no apology for that. He was an outstanding man. Posterity will confirm his talent. That’s why this appalling lie must be laid to rest.’
‘What lie is that?’
‘That Charles murdered his wife.’
‘Didn’t he?’
‘Of course not! The idea is quite preposterous. He was not a stupid man, Chief Inspector, and he did not lose control of himself. If he had had some dreadful quarrel with Miki, he simply would have walked out. The idea that he might have murdered her in this gruesome fashion and then run away is absolutely unbelievable to anyone who knew him. Apart from any moral scruples, he would never have acted so extravagantly against his own best interests.
Believe me, I knew my son.’
She said this with a fervent insistence, but still as one presenting a purely rational argument.
‘Then where is he now, Mrs Verge?’
‘He is dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Murdered, as surely as Miki was murdered. Indeed, that’s why she was killed, to hide the fact of Charles’s murder and make him appear the guilty party.’
She saw the frown on Brock’s face and renewed her attack, leaning forward in her chair with frustration. ‘It’s perfectly simple; if you want to murder someone without drawing suspicion on yourself, you make him disappear and then kill his wife and make it look as if he did it and fled. It’s the obvious conclusion, isn’t it? The police always suspect the close family members first. The point is that Charles was the real target of the murderers, not
