The Verge Practice Part 21

'Leon's not here. I thought . . .'

'Everyone's all right. He wants to talk to you in person, face to face. But not tonight.'

Kathy's heart sank. This was sounding worse by the second. Face to face. 'But where is he?'

There was a delay before Ghita answered. 'He's here, actually.'

'Well, can I speak to him, please?'

'Not tonight, Kathy. He'll contact you tomorrow.' And the line went dead.

'The b.i.t.c.h!' Kathy breathed. She felt shocked and disturbingly vulnerable. What the h.e.l.l was Leon playing at?

Why wouldn't he talk to her? Or was that just a fabrication of his mother's? The thought offered a brief moment of comfort that quickly faded. They had been expecting her to ring, and Ghita had been appointed guardian of the phone.

n.o.body could get past Ghita. Kathy imagined a history of smitten teenage girls trying to phone the handsome Indian boy, and being blocked by Ghita. Was that all she was, the latest in a long line of Ghita's rejects? She felt angry now, and for a moment considered driving over there and storming their snug little semi. Then the anger turned cold, and she went to run a bath.

While it was filling the phone rang. She raced to pick it up. 'h.e.l.lo?' She just stopped herself from adding, 'Leon?'

But it was Brock's voice on the other end. 'Ah, you're home, Kathy. Good. You got back safely then.' His voice sounded cautious and concerned, as if he had hardly expected her to get back in one piece.

'Yes. The flight was delayed. I've just got in.'

'You must be tired.'

'I am rather.'

'Well, I won't keep you. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. It is okay?'

This wasn't like Brock, and Kathy had a sudden suspicion that he knew something, about Leon. For a moment she almost told him that he was gone, but then she bit it back and said only, 'Yes.'

'Good.' He didn't sound rea.s.sured. 'I'll see you tomorrow, then.' He hung up.

Kathy swore to herself and began to pull off her clothes.

19.

Commander Sharpe stood at his window, gazing with satisfaction at the scaffolding on the roof of the Home Office building. 'Our friends are very content, Brock. Very content.'

'You've told them already?' Brock asked unhappily.

'Certainly.' Sharpe lifted his coffee cup to his mouth and sipped, then came and sat down to face Brock. 'Time is short. The Palace was on the point of calling the whole thing off. The Home Secretary is expecting questions in the House. There's no way we can keep quiet about this, you know.' Then he broke into a smile. 'Oh, I understand how you feel. You want to keep it all close to your chest until you've dotted every I and crossed every T.'

'Verge's body would help,' Brock said morosely.

'No sign yet?'

'We've got the list of sites they surveyed for the DTLR, and we're searching them as fast as we can, but so far nothing.'

'Hm. But there's no suggestion that the confession isn't genuine, surely?'

'I'd have preferred it in his handwriting, with his signature.'

Sharpe chuckled again. Clearly he was in a good mood, indulging the reluctant Brock. 'That's not how it works any more, is it? Pretty soon we'll all have lost the knack of handwriting- and of speech, too, I shouldn't wonder. Just communicate through keyboards. But you said in your report that only Clarke could have known many of the things he referred to.'

'Yes.' It was true. The affairs with Miki and Charlotte, the references to TQS and Kraus, the Barcelona bank account-no one else outside the police force knew of all of these.

'Details,' Sharpe insisted, 'like the bloodstained handkerchief found in Verge's car, and the single driving glove, neither of which we released to the press.'

All true. So why was he unhappy? Perhaps it was the confession itself, its form rather than its content. It wasn't like any suicide note he'd ever seen before. For one thing, it was long, longer than any other he'd come across-except one, a rambling twenty pages of invective and self-pity left behind by a city bankrupt. But that one had been tearstained and almost incoherent in places, with sentence structure and spelling all over the place. Clarke's confession, on the other hand, was written in impeccable prose, even allowing for the computer's spelling and grammar checks.

And it had been written fast; the computer recorded the doc.u.ment as having been created at six fifty-four p.m. and saved at seven thirty-six p.m., just forty-two minutes later.

Two thousand six hundred and eighty-two words in forty-two minutes, which was some going. No doubt he'd been thinking about it for much longer, marshalling the ideas, composing the phrases. He probably had most of it memorised before he began. But he couldn't have been very drunk when he wrote it, just as he couldn't have been very drunk when he taped the hose so neatly to the car. Presumably he completed those preparations and then settled down with the brandy and sleeping pills that had been absorbed so plentifully into his bloodstream.

And then there was the tone of the confession; rather calculated, it seemed to Brock. Clarke had spoken about his feelings of horror and regret, but in such a very controlled way, like an observer rather than a partic.i.p.ant. Brock sensed no real panic or terror, no blackness of despair. In fact, the tone seemed rather playful in places-the metaphor of the high-alt.i.tude balloon, for example-even tongue-in-cheek, 'I then bounced off him not ideas, but a sizeable lump of concrete'. Brock knew the whole thing by heart. Of course, a psychologist would provide a professional opinion.

'Maybe you just expected the hunt to take longer, be more difficult,' Sharpe suggested.

Brock conceded a nod. Yes, that might well be the case.

He felt a little like someone brought in to break down an impregnable door, only to find that it crumples at the first a.s.sault.

'Maybe you feel frustrated that in the end he escaped us?'

That too. He had felt a surge of frustration when they discovered Clarke's body and he had realised, even before they reactivated the computer, what they might find there.

'But the point is, Brock, that the job is done-and brilliantly, too. This is a triumph for the service and for you personally. I have to confess that I doubted you could pull it off before the opening of Marchdale, but by G.o.d you did! And clearing Verge, too, that's the great thing. The Home Office aren't the only ones who'll be breathing big sighs of relief. The great architect's reputation is restored, his buildings are masterpieces once again, the judgement of his friends in high places is vindicated. All Verge's prestigious clients, all the august bodies that showered awards on him, all the people who had egg on their faces for having patronised a notorious murderer, will now be breaking out the champagne. Good grief, we should be breaking out the champagne!'

And that, Brock reflected, was perhaps the real reason for his misgivings, for Sharpe had made it quite plain at the start that any result that cleared Verge would be particularly welcome, and he had duly obliged. Was it perverse to feel uncomfortable when you fulfilled other people's fondest wishes?

Kathy, newly established as chair of the Crime Strategy Working Party, was also feeling uncomfortable. She had reported to Queen Anne's Gate that morning on autopilot, her feelings frozen as she waited for Leon to ring, and had been told to report immediately to Robert at New Scotland Yard. There she had sat through a two-hour briefing in which the administrator had told her exactly how the committee might be run, what outcomes she might expect, and how they might be achieved. At the end of it she thanked him mechanically and they proceeded to a meeting room where the rest of the committee were now a.s.sembled.

She found them remarkably cooperative and eager, while she felt detached, suspended in limbo. At one point, Rex began to make difficulties about some procedural matter, but she cut him short and brought him into line hard. The others seemed impressed, Shazia sending her a covert smile and Jay a thumbs-up, but Kathy herself was oblivious.

Just as they broke for a sandwich lunch, her phone finally rang.

'Leon,' she acknowledged formally. Her voice sounded, to her own ears, as if she were still conducting the meeting, though she felt cold sweat beneath her s.h.i.+rt. 'What's going on?'

'I wondered if we could meet for a drink this evening?'

'Sure.' Her voice sounded ridiculously remote, and she mentally shook herself, trying to force her feelings to the surface. h.e.l.l, he needed to know how she felt! 'I missed you last night.'

'Yes, I'm sorry. I'll explain.'

'Where?' He would go for neutral ground, she guessed, where the other cops wouldn't be. She remembered the first time they'd had a drink together, in a pub south of the river, near the forensic science labs. He'd said he sometimes stayed there overnight when he was working late, and she had thought that he was married and looking for an affair.

But instead he suggested a pub tucked down a side street off Whitehall. It would be convenient for her to catch a train home afterwards on the Northern line, she realised.

Maybe that was his reasoning.

The afternoon pa.s.sed in a blur. At its conclusion, several of the group congratulated her on the way she'd run the meeting, and even Robert murmured a few approving words in his guarded way, yet she felt as if they were talking to someone else. She detached herself and caught the lift down to the ground-floor lobby where she surrendered her pa.s.s and stepped out into a cold, bl.u.s.tery evening.

Wrapping her coat around her, she started walking towards Whitehall, the breeze whipping her fair hair round her ears.

By the time she got to the pub she felt damp and windblown but refreshed, ready to face whatever was coming.

She antic.i.p.ated the worst, of course. What else could she think? It was probably Alex Nicholson, the forensic psychologist who had always fancied Leon and had tried to convince him to do a year's master's course with her up at Liverpool University. Yet now that she really confronted the possibility, Kathy found it hard to see Leon as a cheat. How boring, she thought, hardening herself, how disappointing.

He would find it almost as painful to tell her as she would find it to listen, but she resolved she wouldn't make it easy for him. At least he hadn't just sent her an email.

It was four days since she had last seen him, and when she first caught sight of him, seated at a corner table in one of the little rooms that made up the pub, she felt a jolt of shock. It seemed so long since they had been together, and he was more beautiful than she remembered. It was as if, on the point of losing him, she was finally allowing herself to realise how she really felt about him. Then he looked up and saw her, his dark eyes widening anxiously as he rose to his feet.

He had bought two gla.s.ses of white wine for them, their usual these days. She almost told him she wanted something else, then caught herself in time. 'h.e.l.lo, Leon.'

'Hi.' He looked exhausted, she thought, and for the first time she could see his father's dark rings of fatigue around the eyes. 'How was your trip?'

'It seems a long time ago now.'

'Yes.' He couldn't meet her eyes.

'Well, what's the story?'

Perhaps he'd prepared some gentle introduction, something with a touch of irony or self-deprecating humour maybe, but Kathy's cold question threw him off track.

'I'm sorry, Kathy. I really am. It's just that I've reached a point where I can't go on. It wouldn't be fair, to either of us . . .' He saw the tightening of Kathy's mouth at this, and stopped. He looked as if he were trying to pick his way through a verbal minefield.

Kathy said quietly, 'Spit it out, Leon.'

He seemed to cut several preliminary paragraphs and said, 'It was that week you were at Brams.h.i.+ll, in June.'

The week when Sandy Clarke's DNA result had slipped through the cracks, Kathy remembered.

'Something happened,' he went on. 'I was forced to take a hard look at myself. Since then things haven't been the same, with us. I thought . . . I hoped they could be. But while you were away this time it all blew up again . . .'

Was that how it was? She couldn't remember things being different when she returned from the course at Brams.h.i.+ll, apart from the usual mild strangeness after a period apart. A small glimmer of hope came to Kathy. 'This hasn't got anything to do with that forensic report that wasn't followed up, has it?'

'In a way,' he said gloomily. 'Yes.'

'You're not in trouble over that, are you? Oh G.o.d, darling, why didn't you say? You know I'd back you up.' She reached her hand across the table to his, but he drew back.

'Is it Brock?' she asked, mystified. 'Is he giving you a hard time?'

'Has he spoken to you?'

'Not about this, no, but I can talk to him. You know it wasn't your fault. It was that other bloke who took over from you, wasn't it? What was his name? The one who went abroad. Are they trying to blame you for his mistake?'

Leon shook his head. 'Paul Oakley, that was his name.

He's back in the UK now, and Brock's spoken to him.'

'Well then . . .'

'It isn't the forensic report that's the problem, Kathy.

It's Paul.'

'He's the problem?' Leon was being frustratingly slow and halting in his explanation. She felt like shaking him, and had to force herself to be patient. She was supposed to be expert in interviewing techniques. She mentally checked off the stages of the formula for questioning suspects- prepare, engage, explain, account, closure and evaluation.

Which one had they reached?

'He's gay, Kathy.'

'So?'

'While you were at Brams.h.i.+ll I had to brief him on the material for the Verge inquiry. We spent a fair bit of time together.'

Kathy recalled the entries in his diary, PO. 'Yes, so?'

'So he told me I was too.'

'What?' Kathy stared at him, then started to laugh, but Leon looked devastated. 'Leon, that is crazy. Of course you're not gay.'

'Yes, I am,' he said softly. 'I knew, all the time. I just didn't want to face up to it.'

Kathy blinked in disbelief, running through the possible things she could say, but Leon's obvious sincerity and conviction stopped her dead. 'Are you telling me you had an affair with this Paul Oakley?' The impossible words froze in her throat like ice cubes.

'No . . . He wants to, but I had to clear things up with you first.'

'Leon, this is nonsense. Some bloke appears, and out of the blue . . .'

'It wasn't out of the blue, Kathy. I told you, I've had these feelings before. I knew, as soon as he began talking about it, that he was right.'

Kathy sat back in her chair, speechless. She was aware of the murmur of normality from the tables around her intruding into the unreality of the thoughts going through her head, the phrases about outrage and betrayal and deceit.

But she couldn't voice them, not yet. She wasn't prepared to move on to 'closure' and 'evaluation'.

Finally she broke the silence between them. 'Does your mum know?'

'No.' His voice was almost inaudible. 'I just said we were splitting up. I wanted to speak to you before I told them.'