29
Kathy stared out the window at the baggage-handling trucks circling the parked aircraft. Rain was streaming across the glass, making the picture blur and streak as if she were weeping. She sighed and got to her feet, joining the queue of passengers shuffling towards the exit.
There was a crowd waiting on the other side of the barrier. A group of children were waving frantically at a Spanish girl in front of Kathy, limousine drivers held up placards with names. In the confusion Kathy didn’t immediately notice the dark figure standing off to the left, but when she was through the crush and into the open space of the arrivals hall, something made her turn to see Luz Diaz closing in on her.
‘Hello, Sergeant Kolla,’ the woman said. ‘Welcome home.’
‘Hello. You look as if you were expecting me.’
‘Dr Lizancos phoned to tell me about your adventures in Barcelona.’ ‘You know him, of course.’ The woman gave a little nod. ‘How did he know what plane I was on?’ Luz smiled. ‘Captain Alvarez felt obliged to brief the doctor when they decided to let you go. I decided to come and meet you. There are some things we should discuss. My car is outside.’
Kathy hesitated. She met the woman’s eyes and felt a return of the nausea that had disappeared during the flight. ‘I don’t think so. It’s been a long day.’
She noticed Luz’s eyes shift to a spot beyond her right shoulder, and turned to find George Todd standing there. He had his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, and he was regarding Kathy with the closest attention.
‘Even so, it’s important that we talk before you meet with your superiors tomorrow morning, Kathy,’ Luz said. ‘It concerns Charles Verge. I take it you believe he’s still alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dr Lizancos said you were very persistent. He said you wouldn’t give up.’
‘Clever old Dr Lizancos.’
‘I can take you to Charles.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘You do want to find him, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come on, then.’ She linked her arm through Kathy’s and led her towards the doors.
Later, as they headed north up the M25, Luz turned to Kathy in the passenger seat beside her and said, ‘You are a very determined young woman, aren’t you? Did you really do all that breaking and entering in Spain off your own bat, or did someone put you up to it? Chief Inspector Brock, perhaps? I always thought he might be hard to convince.’
Kathy didn’t reply. She watched Luz’s hand go to the indicator and saw the sign up ahead for the exit road into the dark countryside beyond the highway.
After a while, she recognised the village they passed through. She caught a brief glimpse of light glowing from the windows of the pub, and then they were plunged back into the darkness of winding lanes between tall hedges.
Finally, the car slowed and turned in to a gravel drive. Kathy made out the razor-sharp line of a dark wall against the night clouds. They were at Briar Hill, she realised, Luz Diaz’s home and Charles Verge’s first building.
Luz led the way through the opening in the wall into the glass pavilion, so like the one in Barcelona, and down the spiral staircase into the studio lounge, George Todd following close on Kathy’s heels all the while. So far he had said not a word. Luz indicated a seat for Kathy, then threw the short jacket she was wearing over the back of another chair and sat down.
‘I’m dying for a drink. Scotch for me please, George. What about you, Kathy?’
‘Water, please.’ Kathy sat. Beyond their reflections in the glass wall she could make out the shapes of dark tree masses across the fields. They waited while George poured the drinks and then sat down, placing himself, Kathy saw, in the background, between her and the stairs, but also where he could watch her face.
‘Kathy…’ Luz Diaz leaned forward, cupping her glass in her two hands as if offering something precious to her guest. She fixed Kathy with dark eyes that dilated slightly with concentration, a calculated, rather theatrical effect, Kathy thought. ‘What I am going to tell you I will never repeat outside of this room, and will vehemently deny if you repeat it to anyone else. As far as the world is concerned, Charles Verge was murdered on the twelfth of May by his partner Sandy Clarke. As all the world now knows, with the exception of you it seems, he was an innocent victim, an architect of world standing, a tragic loss.’
She sat back, placed her drink on the glass table at her elbow and lit a cigarette. ‘Okay. Now the truth. Charles Verge may have been a genius, I wouldn’t know, but he was a deeply flawed character. He bullied his colleagues relentlessly, treated his male employees like slaves and female staff with contempt. He was manically jealous of his peers, was obsessed with his public image, and paranoid in his suspicions of disloyalty in those around him. After Gail left him, these tendencies, which she’d more or less reined in, blossomed unchecked. His second wife actually encouraged them, because she thought that, seeing everyone else as potential traitors and enemies, he would rely totally on her.’
Luz took a sip of her drink, drew on her cigarette and studied her listener for a response. Kathy thought the picture made sense, and gave a nod.
‘Okay. About two years ago I met up with him-in Barcelona, I think it was, or maybe New York. Anyway, I hadn’t seen him for a while and I was struck by how he’d changed for the worse. I guess he was under stress with his work, but he struck me as close to a breakdown. We had a meal together, and the whole time he ranted and raved about how everyone was trying to ruin him. His mother and daughter were driving him mad. Sandy Clarke, who from what I’d heard must have had the patience of a saint, had always just exploited his reputation and was now so jealous of his fame that he was trying to undermine his business, Charles claimed. Worst of all was his wife, Miki, who was hell-bent on destroying his reputation with her hopeless ambition to be recognised as a design star.
‘I tried to reassure him, make him see sense, but that just made him angrier, and in the end all I could do was be a good listener, and a good friend when he needed a shoulder to cry on. But I think now, looking back, that it must have been around then that he decided, like Samson, to bring the whole temple crashing down, and destroy them all.
‘There was another side to him. Outside his own world he could be an extraordinarily generous person, as both George and I know. I caught up with him again early this year, and he seemed calmer, as if he now was in control of the situation. I, on the other hand, was a mess. I’d recently broken up with a partner who had cheated me badly, taking just about everything I owned. Charles insisted on putting me back on my feet. He offered me this house, the chance to move to England and start again. He made it look as if I’d bought the place, but really it was a gift, an astonishingly generous gift. George has a similar story. Charles befriended him in prison, and set him up when he came out with a home and money. He, too, has been able to start over again, with a new life. So in the end, when Charles needed us, even though we knew that what he’d done was terribly wrong, we had to help him.
‘He came here on the Saturday, right after he’d killed Miki. He was very calm. He explained what he’d done and said it had been unavoidable, that Miki had become unreliable and unfaithful, and dangerous to him. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and needed our help. George spent the rest of the day with him, taking his car to the coast, and that night took him over to France in a boat he’d arranged to use. Charles said that he would get Dr Lizancos to change his appearance in Barcelona, then go on from there to South America.
‘It was a couple of months before we heard from him again, by phone. He was still in Barcelona, he said, and things had gone terribly wrong. Lizancos had botched the operations on his face, there had been infections and he was ill. The Spanish police were closing in, he couldn’t get to South America and Lizancos was panicking. He needed somewhere to hide out, to recuperate. Of course, we agreed. George drove down to Spain and brought him back here. There is a small self-contained flat on the ground floor. He has been there ever since.’
Kathy sat very still, as if expecting Verge’s figure to emerge from the shadows.
Luz crushed out her cigarette. ‘He was in a terrible state, poor man, when George brought him back. His face was a mess-my God, that Lizancos is a butcher! Charles said he is too old to cut people up, his hands shake. It was
