Part 7 (1/2)

'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.'