The Verge Practice Part 7

'What about her purchase of the house in Bucking-hams.h.i.+re from Verge?'

'Yes, it's here. Contracts exchanged just over a year ago.

All quite legit.'

Kathy considered all this. Luz Diaz was one of hundreds of friends, colleagues and acquaintances who had been checked, and it sounded as if the degree of interest in her had been appropriate. They had discovered nothing incriminating in her behaviour. The only thing that marked her out from all the rest was the fact that she had bought a house from him, which now happened to be close to the daughter he was expected to contact. And, perhaps, that she was single, close to him in age, commuting between Barcelona and Bucks, and artistic. Kathy wondered if she was attractive.

'Do we have a phone number for her?'

'Sure.'

Kathy rang off and dialled the number. After some time there was a reply. 'Allo?'

'Ms Diaz?'

'Yes.'

'My name is Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla from the Metropolitan Police. We're updating our files on the Charles Verge inquiry, and I'd like to have a talk to you if I could.'

There was a deep sigh from the other end. 'I've told you everything I can. I don't know what else I can say.' The voice sounded husky, a smoker's voice, Kathy thought.

'It won't take long.'

Another sigh. 'Well . . . hang on, I'll get my diary.'

'Actually, I'm in the neighbourhood now, if that would be convenient.'

'Now? I'm in the middle of working.'

'It would get it over.'

'Oh . . . I suppose I could break for ten minutes. No more, okay?'

Kathy listened to her instructions on how to find the house and set off again. She pa.s.sed into a wood and came abruptly upon a harvester filling the narrow lane. She slowed to a crawl behind it. Rooks shrieked down from the treetops and she felt a sense of unreality, as if this were all some kind of rural theme park and she a partic.i.p.ant in a fairytale.

Little Red Riding Hood, perhaps, on her way to her grandmother's cottage. The machine turned in to a field and she accelerated away.

She turned in to a gravelled driveway that threaded between tall beech trees and stopped in a clearing. Ahead lay a flagged path leading towards an opening in a white wall that sliced across the top of the slope. She reached it and stepped through onto a terrace, catching her breath at the sudden revelation of a panorama of rolling fields and copses, and in the distance hills that Kathy a.s.sumed must be the Chilterns. She realised that the white wall was a cunningly placed barrier between the enclosed woods and the broad view that lay on this side of the ridge, the doorway like Alice's s.p.a.ce-warping looking gla.s.s.

The rectangle of a swimming pool was cut into the terrace in front of her, and to her right a horizontal roof plane hovered over what she took to be a bathers' pavilion.

To her left, a second roof sheltered a larger pavilion enclosed by a gla.s.s wall, one panel of which was open, a woman standing motionless there, watching her.

Luz Diaz was wearing a paint-streaked pair of workmen's overalls and yellow plastic gloves. Her black hair was cut in a short bob, neat and compact like her figure.

She gazed at Kathy with intent dark eyes for a moment, then stepped back and began to peel off the gloves.

Kathy followed her into the lobby of the house. One wall was made of polished stone, and chrome-plated columns of cruciform cross-section supported the floating roof. In front of them the floor was cut away to reveal levels below, and Kathy realised that the terrace was the roof of the house, built into the side of the hill. It was like a prototype, she thought, for the Thamesside offices, with tiers of floors and double-height s.p.a.ces facing a spectacular outlook. As they descended a spiralling steel staircase, Kathy could understand why Madelaine Verge, wheelchair-bound, could no longer live here.

'This is stunning,' she said.

Luz Diaz said nothing, leading her through an intermediate level that obviously served as her studio. Decorators' drop cloths were spread over the polished timber floor, in the centre of which stood a large, almost-bare canvas on an easel. Ms Diaz threw the gloves to one side and picked up a packet of cigarettes, not bothering to offer them to Kathy.

She held the cigarette between the fingers of a cupped hand, almost a fist, which she brought to her mouth to draw on. Her hands were large, Kathy noticed, more like she would have expected a sculptor's to be.

'Sit,' she said, breathing smoke.

Kathy sat, but Luz Diaz did not, instead examining Kathy, feet apart, cigarette-wielding fist c.o.c.ked, like a bullfighter a.s.sessing her next move.

'Thanks for seeing me at such short notice, Ms Diaz,' Kathy began.

'You say you were in the neighbourhood?' the other woman said suspiciously.

'Yes.'

'To see Charlotte Verge?'

'And her grandmother, yes.'

'Madelaine is here? Why did you see them? Has something happened?' The English was good but strongly accented, and Kathy had to attune to it and the smoker's timbre.

'As I said on the phone, we're updating our files on the inquiry.'

'I read in the paper this morning. There is a new detective in charge, yes?'

'DCI Brock, yes.'

'And you work for him?'

'Yes.'

'Why is this?' Diaz demanded. 'What has happened?'

'Look, won't you sit down, Ms Diaz? This isn't a formal interview. I just want to keep our paperwork up to date.'

'About me?' She frowned, ignoring the suggestion to sit, pacing now without taking her eyes off Kathy, as if sizing up some object she might be about to paint, or lunge at.

Kathy felt uncomfortably at a disadvantage. This was why it was better to get them to come to the station, she thought. 'Has anything happened during the past month that we should know about?'

'Happened? Like what?'

'Has Charles Verge tried to contact you?'

Diaz waved her smoking fist dismissively. 'Of course not.'

'It would be natural, wouldn't it? You were good friends, and you live close to his daughter.'

The other woman turned away, her mouth a tight line of exasperation. 'This is how you think. I came here to work in peace. I don't like to think that you are watching me. Maybe I should go back to Barcelona until this is all over.'

'You were good friends, weren't you?'

'You mean, were we lovers, is that it? That's what those cops in Barcelona went on about. It's the only kind of relations.h.i.+p between a man and a woman they understand.'

She took an angry suck at her cigarette.

'So what was your relations.h.i.+p, exactly?'

'We were both professionals, and we admired each other's work.' She finally took a seat, as if reconciling herself to having to talk. 'I first met him at the opening of a show I had in a gallery in Barcelona. He was knowledgeable about contemporary painting and had definite opinions.

He was very generous in his praise of my work and bought a small painting. Then he contacted me a week later to say that he wanted to recommend me to a client of his to do a big canvas, bigger than I had ever done in my life, for the lobby of a new building he was doing. He said my work and his would go together very well. I was flattered. The commission fell through, actually, but we became friends and when he was in Barcelona he would often come to my exhibitions or my studio.'

'So you've known him since the time of his first marriage.'

'Yes, about ten years. It has been a difficult period in his life, a time of change. He was very successful, sure, but first there was the divorce, then his affair with Miki. With me he enjoyed to talk. We had rapport. People said we looked like brother and sister together, and maybe that was it-we were both single children, you see.'

She shrugged and stubbed out the cigarette.

'How did you come to buy this house?'

'I explained all this to the other officers, in London.

They checked the paperwork, didn't they? It was just chance, really. The house had been empty for several years since Madelaine moved out, but Charles couldn't bear to sell it because of what new owners might do to it. He brought me to see it one day when I was in London, the spring before last, and I fell in love with it. I had inherited some money at the time, and I had been looking for a new house and studio, and I thought how perfect this would be.

The great window faces north, you see? The light is perfect for painting, and I needed somewhere where I could spend time away from the distractions of my scruffy little place in Barcelona. And he was right about his architecture and my painting being made for each other. Here they could be one. So I told him that if he would sell it to me, I would promise to change nothing.'

'When did you last see him?'

'He was in Barcelona in early April, we met briefly.'

'What did he talk about?'

'Mainly about his daughter. He had just heard that she was to have a baby, and he was very happy about this, but also worried about her not having a partner to help her.

Charlotte had recently split up from the father, and then she discovered that she was pregnant.'

'Was Charles angry about that?'

'Angry? No. He thought the man was lazy, that Charlotte was well rid of him. But he wanted to help her. They had just found this cottage for her, near here. He said he hoped I wouldn't mind having her as a neighbour. I said of course not.'

'Did he talk about anything else?'

'About his work, I think. Yes, his prison.' She arched an eyebrow, catching the small crease in the corner of Kathy's mouth. 'You think that's amusing?'

'No. A bit ironic, that's all. It's an unusual project, isn't it?'

'Charles was very bound up in it . . .' Now Luz allowed herself a tight smile. 'Yes, full of irony, I know. But he was really pa.s.sionate about it. He said no other well-known architect would do such a project. They all want to design what he called safe public buildings-prestigious art galleries, museums, universities. No one had the courage to face such an uncomfortable subject as a prison. But he said that it is the father and mother of all buildings, because it does absolutely what other buildings do only in part. A prison is the building that most fully controls the lives of the people inside it, so the very best architects should design it.'

'Someone in his office said that he had the idea that his building could fundamentally change people. They said he was obsessed with it.'

Luz Diaz looked thoughtfully at Kathy. 'Did they say that? Were they laughing at him, do you think?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'Do they miss him? Or do they hate him for what he's supposed to have done?'

'I think they're just trying to weather the storm caused by it.'

'Yes, of course. We're all trying to do that . . .' She said it wistfully, looking out through the large window as if she 'You sound as if it affected you a great deal.' might catch sight of the missing man somewhere out there in the sunlit fields.

The woman looked back sharply at Kathy. 'Not me, no.

I meant the others. Although I miss him now, more than I would have expected.'

Kathy watched her reach for another cigarette. Her fingers looked pink and inflamed, as if she were allergic to something in the paint. 'Are you quite sure you haven't heard from him, Ms Diaz?'

Luz snapped the flame off and took a deep breath.

'Quite sure. And I'm quite sure I never shall.'

'Why?'

'Because his mother is right. He is dead.'

'How can you be certain?'

'I feel it. I know it. I am absolutely sure that he didn't murder his wife. And whoever did has made quite certain that you will never find him. You're wasting your time looking. Charles Verge doesn't exist any more.'

Luz Diaz got to her feet and looked at her watch. 'I said ten minutes. I've given you twenty. Now I must work.' She rammed the cigarette into her mouth and reached for the yellow gloves.

7.

The idea of fronting up to another strong woman didn't appeal to Kathy, but she knew that Leon would have phoned his mother to warn her she might be calling. She rang the Barnet number and when Ghita Desai answered she heard the guarded tone in her voice.

'Yes, dear, Leon said you might call to see us. Is everything all right?'

'Yes, yes. I'm just going to be over your way, so I thought I'd say h.e.l.lo. But only if it's convenient.'

'Of course. Morarji may be resting. His operation, you know. But that doesn't matter.'

Kathy arrived armed with a bunch of flowers at the Desai house, its semi-detached neatness enhanced by some recently fitted double-glazing.