‘It’s safest if we do think that. It’s when we believe we understand them that we get into trouble.’
A few days ago Kathy would have dismissed this as nonsense, but now she wasn’t so sure. She thought about Leon and the shock of realising that she had lived with a man for six months without detecting the most important thing going on inside his head. And about Sandy Clarke, whose secret life had, it seemed, been completely unknown to his wife of twenty-four years.
As Jay went on to explain her ideas about ‘degendering and demilitarising the police force’, as she put it, Kathy imagined what her colleagues would make of it. Total garbage, of course. But there was something excitingly radical and fresh about it, too, at least to her, and she determined that she’d put something of it into their final report, if only to give Robert palpitations.
Her mind drifted back to Jay’s opening comments about men, and she pictured Paul Oakley at Leon’s side in that pub. Did they understand each other? And how could she dislike Oakley so instantly, when she knew nothing about him? One look had been enough. Yet she’d been wrong about his incompetence, because she had wanted to believe it. The report on Bren’s desk had been quite clear in blaming a female clerk, Debbie Langley, for the error. In transcribing the original report she had apparently omitted the crucial item, then discovered her mistake a week later and amended the computer file without informing anyone and without realising that the file had already passed through the system.
‘Anyway, there’s no point in pursuing it in our report,’ Jay was saying. ‘Your five hundred Chief Constables won’t want to know.’
‘No, but it might be nice to stir them up a bit.’
‘Watch out, Kathy. Don’t make yourself too conspicuous. You know when something goes wrong they all gang up and pin the blame on a woman.’
‘True enough.’ Kathy laughed, then thought, could that be what happened to the clerk, Debbie Langley? She finished her sandwich and said, ‘Tell me, Jay, do you think a grown man, who was secretly gay, still living with his parents, could hide that fact from his mother? Don’t you think she would know, deep down?’
Jay shrugged. ‘Depends on her attitudes.’
‘Traditional, I’d say.’
‘Then, in my experience, she would probably be the first to know and the last to admit it to herself.’
Kathy wondered. ‘Somebody else said to me recently what you just said about not understanding men. Charles Verge’s first wife said she divorced him after twenty years because she couldn’t understand him.’
‘I think there was a bit more to it than that. Chalk and cheese.’
Kathy was surprised. Everyone seemed to have opinions about the Verges. ‘How do you know?’
‘A friend of mine knows Gail Lewis. She runs a homeless shelter, and Gail has done work for her. She reckons Gail is great, really caring and sincere, unlike Verge, big-noting himself in all the colour supplements. Mind you, she did wonder if they might be getting together again.’
‘How come?’
‘She saw them together one time, and they seemed to be very friendly.’
‘That must have been a long time ago.’
‘A year or two. My friend’s been at the shelter for a couple of years now. Verge dropped Gail off there one night. His silver Ferrari drew a bit of attention in that neighbourhood, and my friend recognised him.’
Kathy was puzzled-that wasn’t what Gail Lewis had told her. As she said goodbye to Jay the discrepancy troubled her, so she pulled out her phone and rang Brock’s number.
Brock made his way around Regent’s Park past Primrose Hill, eventually discovering the place tucked away in a back street of Camden Town, part of a terrace built of pale-yellow London stock bricks, blackened with age and the rain. There was a speaker by the front door, and a brass plate reading Gail Lewis, Architect. He pressed the buzzer and waited under his dripping umbrella. A male voice said, ‘Yes?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Brock for Ms Lewis. I phoned.’
‘One moment.’
Gail Lewis opened the door, regarding him with a searching curiosity in her grey eyes, and Brock, getting an impression of sharp intelligence, felt as if he should have prepared more thoroughly for his visit. They shook hands and she led him down a hallway running the length of the house to a room at the back-her office, she explained- which had been extended into an L-shaped area around the small, paved rear courtyard. It was more like a workshop than an office, Brock thought, with its air of purposeful activity. Modest and informal in atmosphere, it could hardly be more different to the Verge Practice’s grandiose offices. It was physically different, too, the building and furniture made predominantly of pine rather than stainless steel. A man was sitting at a computer, a woman was building a balsa-wood model over by the windows. They both looked up and smiled at Brock as he passed, and he noticed how young they seemed; students, perhaps.
‘If you don’t mind we’ll talk at my board,’ Lewis said, leading the way between plan-chests and tables to the far corner. ‘I’m expecting a call that I really need to take, and I’ll want to refer to my drawings. Would you like a coffee?’
Brock said yes, and the young man called after them, ‘I’ll get it, Gail.’
They sat in her workstation, partly screened from the rest of the office by the tilt of her drawing board, to which a half-finished plan on tracing paper was taped. Wanting to get a better sense of the woman before he got down to business, and remembering the banks of machines in the Verge draughting studios, Brock said conversationally, ‘You don’t design on a computer, then?’
‘I still prefer a pencil,’ she said. ‘At least for the early stages. I think better with a pencil in my hand.’ She picked one up, clicking the lead forward, and took a notepad from the side table, as if she were about to interview him. ‘I’m puzzled by why you should want to see me, Chief Inspector. You’re in charge of the case, aren’t you? I’ve seen your name in the papers.’
The case, as if there could be no question why he had come.
‘That’s right. You may have read that we’re closing down the investigation, but we just want to make sure there are no loose ends.’
‘One of your officers spoke to me not long ago. A woman, I can’t remember her name.’
‘Sergeant Kolla, yes. You were caught up in some other business at the time, I think, and she wasn’t able to cover all the points she wanted to raise with you.’
‘What do you want to ask me about?’
‘I’m still puzzled by the relationship between your former husband and his partner, Sandy Clarke. I thought, having known them both over an extended period, you might be able to throw some light on it for me.’
Two little creases appeared between her brows as she considered this. ‘The papers say that Sandy Clarke murdered Charles and Miki, and confessed to this in a suicide note.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you’re quite satisfied that’s true?’
‘We are.’ He saw her eyes narrow at something, his choice of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’, perhaps, sensing him distancing himself. ‘There doesn’t seem much room for doubt.’
‘And now that the case is closed you decide to come to have a chat with someone who hasn’t spoken to either of them for years.’
He was saved from responding to that by her phone. ‘Excuse me.’ She reached for it. ‘Hello? Yes, put him on.’
Brock watched her straighten in her seat, heard her voice take on a brisk authority.
‘Steven? Thanks for getting back to me… Yes, it is important; it’s about the bathroom tiles. I’ve spoken to the supplier and they’ll be on site on Monday… Yes, Monday. They’re diverting another order for us, but there are no type EG30s, so we’ll have to change some of the details…’
She spread a drawing from the side table across her board and put on a pair of glasses. The young man appeared with mugs of coffee and biscuits, and Brock waited while Lewis went through the details and brought her call to an end. She finally put the phone down, smiling to herself as she took off her glasses. ‘Got you,’ she said, then glanced over at Brock. ‘Sorry about that. He was hoping to use the missing tiles as an excuse for his delays. Where were we?’
‘You were going to give me a portrait of Charles Verge and Sandy Clarke.’
‘Actually I was going to ask you again why you’re here. Are you having second thoughts?’
‘The coroner will have to bring a finding on the death of Sandy Clarke. Until that’s done, I’m open to any
