The Verge Practice Read online

  ‘Home Office,’ Sharpe said, referring to the building to the right of the barracks. Further to the right again, Brock could make out the chimneys and rear windows of his own outpost, and was uncomfortably aware that, with a powerful telescope, Sharpe would probably be able to read the correspondence on his desk. ‘That’s the reason I wanted to see you.’

  The Home Office roof? Brock wondered, but said nothing.

  ‘Coffee?’ Sharpe went over to a cabinet and poured boiling water into two individual coffee plungers. He carried them to the circular table on a tray with cups, sugar and cream.

  ‘I find this is the best way to get a decent coffee in this place. How’s the knee?’

  ‘Much better,’ Brock replied, automatically rubbing the joint as he took the offered chair.

  ‘Physio?’

  ‘Yes. That seemed to sort it out.’ It was over six months since he’d been attacked by a mob of skinheads in the East End, but the leg still ached at night.

  ‘The commendation was well deserved, Brock, well deserved.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. It was much appreciated. And by DI Gurney.’

  ‘Bren Gurney, yes. And your DS, Kathy Kolla, she also performed extremely well, didn’t she? In difficult circumstances.’ Brock shifted uneasily in his seat. Sharpe’s memory for names was well known, but still, it sounded as if his boss had been checking up on his team.

  ‘Couple of important things I need to discuss with you, Brock. You’re familiar with the Verge inquiry, I take it?’

  Of course he was—the whole country had been following it avidly since May, when the body of Miki Norinaga had been found in her bed, naked and stabbed through the heart. Her husband, prominent architect Charles Verge, had not been seen since, and the international hunt for the missing man had become a national obsession. The press carried regular reports of sightings from around the world, but none had yet resulted in an arrest.

  ‘It’s one of those cases that just won’t go away.’ Sharpe stirred his coffee vigorously. ‘Tabloids love it. Today he’s seen in Sydney, last week in Santiago. He’s Ronnie Biggs, Lord Lucan and the Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled into one.

  And he’s not just any architect. High profile, international reputation, knighthood pending—the very epitome of Cool Britannia.’ Sharpe snorted and sipped at his coffee.

  ‘It’s all very embarrassing,’ he continued. ‘He had some extremely important clients. Significant buildings for the German and Saudi governments, for instance, neither of which are pleased to find that their glossy new landmarks are the work of a murderer. And our friends in the Home Office are particularly cheesed off. Their new Verge masterpiece is nearing completion, a Category A prison as luck would have it—Marchdale, out in the fens. The Prince was going to do the opening, but that’s in doubt now, and the Home Secretary has been taking a lot of stick in the House. You can imagine what the press’ll make of the unveiling.

  ‘What particularly galls our friends isn’t just that their golden boy is a killer, but that the world believes he’s got away with it. If they can’t hush the whole thing up, which they can’t, then they want some kind of resolution—either his arrest and incarceration in one of their grubbier institutions, or, better still, proof of his innocence.’

  ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Hardly, but you can’t blame them for hoping. The point is that after four months we haven’t been able to deliver on either option, which is a major embarrassment for the Met. So . . .’ Sharpe deliberately placed his cup in its saucer and sat back, fixing Brock with one of his scalpel stares, ‘. . . it’s been decided that we need a fresh approach.

  A new team.’

  A move of desperation, Brock thought, not liking the sound of this one bit. ‘Superintendent Chivers has been leading the inquiry, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Dick Chivers, yes. The proposal is that he now hands the reins over to you.’

  ‘I see.’ Hell, Brock thought . . . a trail gone cold, all avenues exhausted, the press watching every move, bosses demanding miracles.

  ‘You sound less than thrilled.’

  ‘Chivers is a thorough detective. I doubt he’ll have overlooked much.’

  ‘There’s no suggestion that he has. In fact, I’m certain that he’s conducted himself impeccably. But without result.

  What the inquiry needs now is a fresh mind to rejuvenate it, and you have a reputation for coming out of left field and getting results. It’s not a criticism of Chivers, but it is an expression of confidence in you, Brock.’

  Or of panic, Brock thought, but saw that he would have to make the best of it. He tried to look pleased. ‘Thank you, sir. When exactly is the prison due to be opened?’

  ‘Three weeks. The Palace will make a final decision on their involvement one week beforehand.’

  Brock began to frame an objection, but Sharpe went on.

  ‘Form your own team. Take any of Chivers’ people you want. He’s waiting to brief you now. Room 413, two floors down. All right? Now, the second matter . . .’ He sprang to his feet, reached for a glossy document lying on his desk and slapped it onto the table in front of Brock.

  ‘You’re familiar with this, of course.’

  Protect and Respect: Everybody Benefits. Diversity Strategy of the Metropolitan Police. Brock recognised the cover.

  Everybody in the Met had received one and there had been extensive reports in The Job, but he hadn’t got around to reading it. There had been a series of briefing sessions for line managers, but he’d always been busy elsewhere.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Brock said cautiously. ‘A positive move, post-Macpherson . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes. But more than that. In the Deputy Commissioner’s words, this is a core business imperative.’

  Sharpe paused to let that sink in, then tapped the document with his fingertips and went on severely, ‘It’s that important, Brock, and we all have to embrace it.’

  Brock was wondering now whether this was some kind of reprimand. Had his absence from the briefings been noted, or had he inadvertently committed some error somewhere along the line? Had he been reported for political incorrectness?

  ‘The Diversity Strategy includes a six-point action plan, as you know. Six strategic areas, right?’

  For an awful moment Brock thought he was going to be tested, but Sharpe lifted his left hand, fingers outstretched, and ticked the points off with his right index finger, one by one, for emphasis. ‘Leadership, crime, processes, workforce, training and communications. And to help stimulate debate and develop policy in each of these strategic areas, six Strategy Working Parties are being established. One which will be particularly close to your heart, Brock, will be the Crime Strategy Working Party.’

  He opened the booklet and read, ‘“Resolving problems, investigating and preventing crime through a more inclusive approach . . .” Now, Human Resources have been charged with bringing forward names, and from our point of view, you will agree, it is crucial that the voice of experienced, serving detectives is heard on these committees.

  Especially the Crime Strategy Working Party.’

  While Sharpe returned to his desk for another document, a sheaf of A4 pages clipped together, Brock thought, oh no, I’m not going to waste my time on some bloody committee.

  ‘The name of one of your team has come up, Brock, and I wondered what you thought. DS Kolla.’

  Brock hadn’t expected this, and Sharpe saw his surprise.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I thought you’d be looking for someone older, sir.’

  ‘She’s got quite a few years under her belt now, and we’re after new blood. Over the next ten years the Met is going to have to recruit two-thirds of its staff over again, and people at her level are going to be crucial to that process. Besides, she’s got an excellent record at the coalface, both in crime detection and in interacting with ethnic communities. There are a couple of recent letters of appreciation here from community leaders; one fro
m a Mr Sanjeev Manzoor of the Pakistani community in Stepney, and another from Mr Qasim Ali of the Shiite community.’

  Brock was familiar with the letters. Sanjeev Manzoor had deemed it politic to be nice to Kathy, hoping to avoid prosecution for making false statements to a magistrate, and Qasim Ali probably fancied her. ‘Yes, I got copies of the letters. They were well deserved. And she’s a woman, of course.’

  Sharpe smiled briefly. ‘That too. And with an ethnic partner, I understand.’

  ‘How did Human Resources get hold of that?’

  ‘We’ve run a bit of a check on her, and it all sounds good. So what do you think? You don’t look certain.’

  ‘No, no, I think she would do very well. She’s intelligent and articulate. I’m just being selfish. I don’t want to lose her, especially if we’re taking on the Verge case.’

  ‘Oh, it would only be a part-time commitment, and you wouldn’t be losing her forever—at least, not unless she performs brilliantly, in which case it could well open up a whole new career path for her. But you would hardly deny her that now, would you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Good, well I’ll speak to her. Keep it to yourself until then, will you?’

  ‘Bugger,’ Brock muttered under his breath after he had closed the door behind him, and strode off down the anonymous corridor towards the lift.

  Dick ‘Cheery’ Chivers was seated in the middle of the small conference room on the fourth floor, staring dolefully at a pile of unopened files on the table in front of him. He looked up as Brock came in and rose unsmiling to his feet.

  He was a veteran cop of the same generation as Brock, and had a morose look at the best of times. Clearly this wasn’t one of those. ‘Brock,’ he acknowledged grudgingly, and took the offered hand.

  ‘Sharpe’s just told me,’ Brock said. ‘I’m sorry, Dick.’

  ‘He dropped it on me at nine this morning. No warning. Out of the flaming blue.’

  ‘He made a point of saying that it was no reflection on the way you’ve been running the case.’

  ‘Bollocks. Course it is. Got to be.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, I like it as little as you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it puts you in the firing line, doesn’t it?’

  Chivers said. The thought seemed to cheer him up a little.

  ‘I sent back to my office for these to help you get started.’

  He placed his large fist on top of the files as if reluctant to give them up. ‘I’ve put a lot of hours into this case over the past four months, Brock. We all have. We’ve covered every angle. It’s bloody ridiculous changing jockeys at this stage in the race. Sheer bloody foolishness. And bloody insulting to me.’ His face was becoming darker as his anger found voice.

  ‘What reason did he give you?’ Brock asked gently.

  ‘He needs fresh blood!’

  ‘That’s what he said when he told me he was taking one of my best young detectives from me to put her on a committee. He must have blood on the brain.’

  ‘Bloody vampire,’ Chivers growled, but the anger had faded as quickly as it had bloomed. ‘I told him, with a case like this, you’ve got to have patience. If you haven’t caught the runner within the first week then you have to be prepared to wait until he becomes careless or homesick or unlucky, and gives himself away.’

  ‘So you have no doubt that Verge was the killer?’

  ‘None at all. We considered all the alternatives— business partner, commercial rivals, a possible lover—but there were no other plausible suspects.’

  ‘And you think he’s still alive?’

  ‘We’ve no evidence that he is, but I’d say it’s ninety per cent certain. He was last seen on the morning of Saturday the twelfth of May, when he returned from a business trip to the States. His wife’s body wasn’t found until the Monday morning, between forty and sixty hours after the time of death, according to the pathologist, so he had the whole weekend to get clear. Later on that Monday his car was found beside a beach on the south coast, his clothes neatly folded inside, along with a handkerchief stained with his wife’s blood, and a piece of paper bearing the single word “SORRY” in block capitals. There’s been no trace of a body, and the whole business with the car looked dodgy.’

  ‘Like the Stonehouse case.’ Brock recalled another famous disappearance case, when a British cabinet minister had staged his own apparent death while holidaying in Florida, leaving a pile of clothes on a beach.

  ‘Exactly. You’d have thought he’d have been a bit more original, wouldn’t you? A bit more creative? I’ve gone over the case with Brian Ridley, who picked Stonehouse up in Melbourne, and there are definite parallels.’

  ‘And with Lord Lucan.’

  ‘The murdered nanny, yes. Though of course he’s never been traced.’

  ‘So you think Verge is hiding out somewhere overseas?’

  ‘South America is my bet.’ Chivers relaxed his protective grip on the files and sat back with a grim smile.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He’s a fluent Spanish speaker, and he could probably pass himself off as a native. He was actually born Carlos Vergés in Barcelona to a Spanish father and English mother, and spent a part of his childhood over there. Then his father died and his mother brought him back to England and Anglicised the name. He’s still got family there, cousins and the like, and my bet is that he went there first and they helped him move on. We had one possible sighting in Barcelona a few days after he disappeared, and we’ve been working closely with the Barcelona police. I’ve been over there a couple of times, and though we couldn’t shake anything out of the family, I’m pretty certain that’s where he went. He had to have had help.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Must have. This murder couldn’t have been premeditated. I mean, this wasn’t some loser doing a bunk. This bloke was at the peak of his success, a worldwide reputation, featured on TV and in weekend colour supplements, an ego as big as his bank account. Killing her must have been a moment of blind fury, and it finished him as surely as it did her. From that moment the good life was over.

  We’ve been monitoring every bank account and possible source of funds, and there’s been no contact. Apart from what he had in his pockets, he must be relying on friends for everything. And that must be a pretty shattering thing for someone in his position, yeah? It’s going to get to him, especially in about six weeks’ time.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘He has one daughter, dotes on her. She’s pregnant and he knew it. Baby’s due towards the end of October. That’s what I told Sharpe. I’m betting she’ll have heard from him between then and Christmas, and that’ll give us the chance we need. But that’s not soon enough, apparently. Politics.

  Too many red faces. So, good luck, old son. You’re going to need it.’ A sudden thought struck him. ‘I don’t suppose we could bring the birth forward, eh? Have the baby induced?’

  He seemed to consider this seriously for a moment.

  ‘I think that may be beyond our powers, Dick.’

  Cheery Chivers shrugged gloomily and pushed the pile of files across to Brock, and they set about making arrangements for the handover. They continued over a lunchtime sandwich and coffee, then Brock had himself a haircut and beard trim on the way back to his own office. There he worked through the afternoon, sleeves rolled up, reorganising case loads, reassigning tasks within his squad. It was a Friday, and they had agreed that Chivers would give a full briefing to a joint meeting of both their teams on the following Monday morning. That would give Brock the weekend to go through the files himself and try to form some initial ideas of where they might go from here, and also to make up his mind which of Chivers’ people he would need to poach. By six he was finished with the rescheduling, all except the irritating blank against the name Kolla. He was staring at this when there was a knock, and she put her head around his door.

  ‘Have you got a moment, Brock?’

  ‘The very per
son,’ he said. Getting to his feet, he stretched stiffly and waved her in.

  She was crisply turned out in a black suit he couldn’t recall seeing before, and the effect with a white shirt and her short, straight blonde hair was very smart, he thought approvingly. Sharpe would have been impressed, certainly a good deal more so than with himself in his perennial crumpled charcoal job. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘You knew? About the committee?’

  ‘Sharpe spoke to me this morning.’

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘Didn’t you decide on the spot?’

  ‘I asked him to give me the weekend to think about it.’

  In the reflected glow of the pool of light shining from the lamp over the desk he noticed a small, unfamiliar scar on the side of the bridge of her nose. Had she acquired this on one of the cases they’d worked on together? Why had he never noticed it before? She was gazing at him steadily, waiting for his answer. He looked away and thought, this is how we end up lying to our friends, wanting to do the right thing by them.

  ‘Of course you should do it. It’s an honour to be picked, and it’s a great opportunity. If nothing else, it’ll look good on your CV.’

  ‘But I hate committees. I never know what to say. I hate listening to people who love the sound of their own voices.’

  ‘You just do what we do on the job—you sit quiet and listen and observe, and when the moment comes you put the boot in.’

  She smiled, but still watched him carefully. ‘So you recommended me?’

  ‘He asked my opinion and I told him you’d be excellent.’

  ‘And you want me to take it?’

  ‘No, I’d rather have you here to be honest, but that’s not the point. Look . . .’ he added brusquely, ‘. . . you make up your own mind, but if you ask me I say you’d be mad to turn it down.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. I suppose I’ll do it.’ Her eyes passed over the papers on the desk, the job schedules and files. ‘Has something come up?’ She read the label on the top file.