and somebody else. There’s no chance of catching up with her this time.’
‘Are you really letting me go, George?’
‘Yeah, really. I advised against it, you might like to know. Loose end, I said, but she didn’t see it that way. She wants the cops to know, and not be able to say or do a thing about it. Otherwise, she said, it would be like designing a building and not having anyone know it’s yours. She said this was her last big design.’
‘What makes you so sure they won’t do anything?’
‘We’ll see, shall we?’
‘What about Madelaine and Charlotte? How do they feel about all this?’
‘They know nothing. Nobody does, except you and me, and I’ve got a watertight alibi for the last twenty-four hours.’
Kathy was silent, thinking. They came to the M4, but then, at the next junction, turned off at the signs to Heathrow. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the way.’
‘I’ll drop you off at the taxi rank here.’ He felt in his pocket and produced some cash that he handed to her. ‘Luz told me to look after you. Here you go.’ He pulled over to the kerb. ‘Goodbye, Kathy. As far as I’m concerned, none of this happened.’
She watched him roar away, then walked over to the taxi queue and caught a cab into town. As it pulled to a halt at Queen Anne’s Gate, she looked up at the brightly lit windows and wondered what sort of reception she would get.
The first person she bumped into in the corridor was Bren, who goggled as if seeing someone risen from the dead.
‘Kathy! We’ve been looking everywhere. What happened to you?’
‘It’s a long story, Bren. Is Brock about?’
‘In his office, yeah. You’d better get up there. Are you okay? No damage?’
‘I’m fine. Catch up later.’
But Bren came with her up the stairs all the same, as if she might disappear once again.
Dot’s desk was empty, and Kathy knocked on Brock’s door. There was a muffled ‘Come’ and she pushed it open. Brock was bending over a pile of papers. He straightened with a cry, and, in a spontaneous gesture that took her by surprise, grabbed her and pulled her to him.
‘Kathy! I thought…’ He hugged her for a moment, then stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, embarrassed now at this display. ‘I really thought…’ Then he seemed to force a frown across his face. ‘Dear God, you’ve had us in a panic. What happened to you?’
Kathy turned to Bren, standing behind her in the doorway. ‘I need to talk to Brock alone.’
He nodded and closed the door softly behind him. Kathy and Brock sat down, and she told him her story.
At the end of it he shook his head. ‘I don’t know where to begin, Kathy. It’s like some textbook exercise on how to make every mistake under the sun. They’ll be using this at Bramshill for training purposes, and no one’ll believe it could actually be true.’
Kathy lowered her head, accepting the inevitable.
‘… dashing off without talking to me first. Not saying a word!’
‘I thought that would only make things worse, involving you,’ she offered, trying to sound contrite.
‘No back-up, no explanation. Where did that leave us when things went wrong?’
He went on, twenty-four hours of sleepless anxiety resolving itself into anger and dismay. Kathy said as little as possible, answering the odd point, making necessary explanations about some of the more lurid disasters, the break-ins, the drunk driving.
‘And how you could then, knowing what you did, have agreed to get into that car with Diaz and Todd…’
‘I needed evidence,’ she said reasonably. ‘I knew I was about to be kicked off the force. I needed something concrete.’
He shook his head in despair. ‘It’s not the first time, Kathy. I sometimes think you have some kind of death wish…’
But she sensed the anger fade and something else take its place, a sort of astonished admiration, not so much for her as for Charles Verge.
‘He really did that? I had no idea. And none of them knew? No one recognised him, his mother, his daughter…? It’s incredible.’
‘You do believe it, don’t you?’
‘Yes…’ He was thinking of Gail Lewis’s story of the hermit crab dragging around the wrong shell. Yet she, like everyone else, had misinterpreted the image. ‘Yes, I do.’
When the interrogation was over, Brock poured them both a scotch and sat back, thinking.
‘Lizancos will have destroyed his tapes and files, we can be sure of that. But Luz Diaz couldn’t have lived at Briar Hill for the past few months without leaving DNA traces, no matter how well they’ve cleaned the place.’
‘I thought of that,’ Kathy agreed, ‘but even if we found Verge’s DNA in the house, it wouldn’t help, would it? We know he was there before he disappeared.’
‘Depends on the traces, and where they are.’
He reached for the phone and called in Bren, instructing him to get a warrant and take a SOCO team out to the Diaz house as quickly as possible. ‘It seems she’s disappeared. You’re looking for her traces and those of third parties. We know George Todd has been there recently, and so has Kathy. We want to know who else has.’
Bren looked curiously at Kathy. ‘Are we looking for Diaz, chief?’
‘Yes. Put out a full alert.’
‘Right. You coming to the house?’
‘Maybe later. Kathy and I have another appointment to keep, and some rehearsing to do before we go.’
The facade of the conference venue was lit up with floodlights and carried a large banner bearing the Metropolitan Police logo and the motto Protect and Respect: Embracing Diversity. The taxi dropped them among waiting limousines and they made their way up the steps to the entrance. A steward directed them to a side corridor, and they caught glimpses into a main hall filled with suits and uniforms, glasses and canapes in hands. They came to a room marked Conference Meeting Room Number 2, knocked and went inside. There was no one there. On the table were sheets of notes abandoned from an earlier meeting. On one Kathy saw the heading Crime Strategy Working Party, and realised with a little shock that her own committee must have been here, preparing for its presentation the following day.
The door opened and two men in uniform came in. Kathy felt their unsmiling curiosity as they examined her before they turned to Brock. The first man introduced Brock to the second. Kathy missed the name, but caught the title, Deputy Commissioner, and saw the badge of rank on his shoulders. Then the first man was speaking to her.
‘I’m Commander Sharpe, and you must be DS Kolla? Sit down.’ He waved to seats at the end of the room. ‘You’d better tell us your version of events, Sergeant. Quickly if you please.’
Kathy did her best, but in that setting, faced with the two sombre uniforms, she felt as if she were recounting some kind of lurid fairytale.
‘…I was concerned that some sections of the press believed that Charles Verge was still alive,’ she said, following a line that Brock had suggested, ‘and I thought they might eventually get to hear of Dr Lizancos and his clinic. I thought this was one important line of inquiry that we hadn’t been able to complete when the case was closed, and I believed that it might eventually rebound on us. However, I was aware that the Barcelona police, one captain in particular, was shielding Dr Lizancos, and I knew our direct approaches had been fruitless. Given the sensitivity of the matter, I decided to mount an operation on my own initiative, without involving any of my colleagues, as a form of insurance.’
In this fairytale, ‘break and enter’ became ‘covert admission’, and the doctor’s abandonment of his clinic at Sitges a compelling reason for further ‘provident inquiries’ at his home in Barcelona. The two senior officers remained stony-faced throughout this, reacting only when she came to the revelation of Charles Verge’s transformation into Luz Diaz. This produced a snort from Sharpe, a look of quizzical disbelief from his colleague.
At the end there was a long silence, then Sharpe said, ‘I think I can truly say that that is the most outlandish story I have ever heard. Do you believe it, Brock?’
‘I’m rather afraid I do, sir,’ Brock murmured.
