‘It was hardly the same,’ Clarke retorted. ‘Charles was immeasurably more experienced, and talented. I mean, Miki had only been out of architecture school for a few years.’
‘Do you think he might have been losing his touch? I suppose architects can go off, like soccer players?’
‘It doesn’t usually work like that. Architecture is a long game, and architects tend to get better with age and experience. Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of his greatest masterpieces in his eighties. Charles wasn’t even approaching his peak…’ Clarke paused as if struck by some thought.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘It just occurred to me-Wright’s second wife was murdered, too. Their servant went berserk with an axe, if I remember rightly, killed her and burned the house down.’
Brock sucked his mouth doubtfully. ‘You’re not suggesting a parallel?’
‘No, no, of course not. Only…’ He shook his head. ‘Goodness. ..’
‘What?’
‘Well, Miki Norinaga was the niece of a client of ours in Japan-that was how she came to work for us here in the first place, as a young graduate. And Frank Lloyd Wright’s second wife-I’m trying to remember this from history lectures and I’m not even sure if they ever married- anyway, she was the wife of one of his clients. Wright had this breakdown, burnt out when he turned forty, and he ran away with her to Europe. They told nobody, just took flight and disappeared. Then later, after they’d returned to America and he’d built this house, she was murdered…’
Clarke took a deep breath and seemed to pull himself together. ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t relevant. What else can I tell you?’
Brock fished inside his suit pocket for his half-rim glasses, propped them on his nose and began to turn the pages of his notebook as if looking for something. Clarke waited for him with a frown.
‘How was his sex life?’
Clarke looked startled. ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s?’
‘Charles Verge. Were there any difficulties in that area?’
Clarke’s face darkened. ‘I wouldn’t know. We didn’t talk about that sort of thing.’
‘Really? Not even a hint? Is there any possibility she might have had a boyfriend?’
‘No,’ Clarke said flatly. ‘I went through all this with the last people. We would have had some inkling if she had.’
‘And you noticed nothing odd in his manner that Saturday morning?’
‘I’ve gone over that hour in my mind a hundred times. He seemed absolutely normal, a bit tired from the flight, but untroubled.’
Brock seemed unhappy with this reply. ‘From his photographs I got the impression that he’d lost a bit of weight recently, let his hair grow.’
‘You’re right. It’s sometimes difficult to notice small changes when you see someone almost every day, but Denise, my wife, commented that he’d lost weight. She thought he was looking younger.’
‘Was he drinking more?’
‘I hadn’t noticed… He certainly wasn’t affected by drink that morning.’
Brock said nothing for a moment, studying his notes, then asked, ‘So there was no sign, looking back, that anything was wrong?’
‘Premeditated?’ The word burst abruptly from Clarke, who seemed almost as surprised by it as the detectives. He flushed and added, ‘Is that what you’re thinking? That Charles planned it?’
It wasn’t what Brock had meant, but he was intrigued by Clarke’s response. ‘Is that a possibility, would you say?’
Clarke shook his head firmly. ‘No, I’m sure it isn’t.’ He swung his chair round to face the glass wall overlooking the river. ‘How could it be?’ He stared out at a gang of pigeons wheeling in the sky as if he would have liked to join them.
Honest men, Kathy thought, trained as boys to tell the truth, and despite a lifetime of contrary experience, can betray themselves in small ways. They begin fiddling with paperclips or suddenly avoid a questioner’s eyes, as Clarke had just done. Curiously, she found it harder to spot the same signs in women.
Brock seemed to have had the same perception. He stared thoughtfully at Clarke for a moment, then turned to the information manager. ‘What about you, Ms Mathieson? Did you notice any change in his manner?’
‘Well, you’re right about him losing weight. I think it was stress. And I did think he’d lost interest a bit lately. Do you remember the last awards night, Sandy? We were up against the other big London names-Foster, Rogers, Wilford-for the annual design awards, and that usually brought out the competitive side of Charles. But he seemed almost indifferent last time.’
Clarke shrugged and glanced at his watch. ‘I’m rather pressed for time at present, Chief Inspector. Do you think I might hand you over to Jennifer to show you the flat, and Charles’s office too, if you wish?’
‘Just one more thing, Mr Clarke. I understand you were also the last person to see Ms Norinaga alive, on the Friday night?’
‘Yes, that’s right. We were working late on the presentation for the Chinese on the following Monday. The others finished about eight, but Miki and I went on till eleven.’
‘That’s late.’
‘Yes, there was a lot to do to get everything ready so the media team could finish the video for Monday.’
‘How was Ms Norinaga when you left her?’
‘Tired, but quite cheerful. Excited about the project.’
‘She didn’t mention anyone coming to visit her that weekend?’
‘No, she didn’t say what her plans were.’
‘And you didn’t go up to her apartment that evening before you left?’
‘No.’
Kathy knew that the autopsy hadn’t been able to establish the time of death more closely than the twenty- four hours between the Friday and Saturday evenings.
Brock nodded, and he and Kathy got to their feet and followed Jennifer Mathieson, leaving Clarke contemplating the pigeons whirling outside his window.
‘There are two penthouse apartments,’ Mathieson explained as they waited for the lift. ‘The idea was that the senior partners would live there and share a housekeeper and cook, but in the end only Charles moved in. Sandy and Denise couldn’t face living on top of the shop, I suppose.’
‘So the other flat was unoccupied at the time of the murder?’
‘That’s right. There were people working down on the office floors over that weekend, but this lift gives independent access to the penthouse floor from the street and the basement car park, where Charles kept his Landy.’
Kathy looked at the floors stacked like bookshelves around the atrium. There were people working at computers and drawing boards, a group clustered around a table, but not as many as she had expected.
When she commented on this, Mathieson lowered her voice and said, ‘Our staff has shrunk by a third in the last four months. It’s been a catastrophe.’
The lift arrived and they stepped in. When the doors closed she went on, voice normal again, ‘In fact, I’m moving on myself. It became pretty clear in the months after Charles disappeared that things were going to change, with projects being cancelled and no new ones coming in. Sandy puts a brave face on it, but I’d be surprised if they’re still in this building a year from now.’
There was little in the apartment to add to what they had already learned from the police video and still photographs of the crime scene, except that it could now be appreciated in the context of the whole building, with the same steel and glass detailing carried through into its bathrooms and kitchen and furnishings generally. It occurred to Kathy that the Japanese kitchen knives looked as if they could have come from this same kit of parts, so that it was almost as if Miki Norinaga had been killed with a splinter of the building itself. The only colourful element in the whole flat was a large painting in the living room. It was an abstract with geometric figures, squares and segments of circles, in vivid primary colours, and the contrast between it and the severe constraint of the rest of the interior hadn’t been apparent on the video. The signature in the bottom corner meant nothing to Kathy, but those on the black outfits in Miki’s wardrobe certainly did.
After they’d had a good look round, each taking notes, Jennifer Mathieson took them back to the lift and down to the level of Clarke’s office, but this time she led them to the opposite side of the atrium, where Charles
