Part 30 (1/2)

'Well, some of my friends like . . .' Jay stopped as Shazia, balancing a paper plate of sandwiches and a cup of orange juice, joined them. They didn't get a chance to finish the conversation, and afterwards Kathy wondered what she was getting herself into.

Brock rocked forward on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, absorbing the confrontation between stubble fields and hedgerows out there, and stainless steel and leather cus.h.i.+ons in here. It was a plat.i.tude of modern architecture, he knew, but it still had the power to shock, the unmediated impact of room and landscape through a sheet of naked gla.s.s.

Luz Diaz stood with her back to him, arms folded, smoking angrily. 'I cannot believe that this is permitted in this country. It is worse than Franco.'

'I'm sorry, Ms Diaz. But the coroner . . .'

'f.u.c.k the coroner!' She spun around to face him.

'That's just an excuse. You know what I think? I think you enjoy breaking into people's houses and turning over their private things. I think you are no different from criminals.'

'Did you know that your gardener had an extensive criminal record?'

'George? Yes, of course I knew. Charles told me all about George, ages ago, before I even came here. He met him in prison, when he was working on the Marchdale project. Is that all you see? A man has a record, so that's it? Do you look beyond that? Do you know anything about him?'

'Tell me.'

'He was a model prisoner, doing a degree in horticulture with the Open University. No, he was the model prisoner, that is what the prison governor told Charles-the best, the most responsive prisoner he had ever met. And he had had a terrible life. Did you know that he witnessed his father murder his mother when he was five? Did you know that he was shockingly abused by the relatives who took him in, and then again when he was put into care?'

The blaze of anger in her eyes died a little as she took in Brock's look of concern. 'No, I didn't know that.'

'Well, you should do better research, Chief Inspector.

George is probably the most trustworthy and honest man I know. What do you suspect him of doing?'

'I can't say at present. But your a.s.sessment of his character is very helpful.'

'You're just saying that to calm me down, yes?' But despite her words, Brock saw that her stabs at her cigarette were less violent. 'You believe that once a thief, always a thief, right?'

'I think it's very hard for any of us to change a pattern that's shaped our whole lives.'

Luz frowned at him. 'So you would say that once we have decided what we are going to do with our lives-you a policeman, Charles an architect, me a painter-that those things then lock us into their own patterns? You think after thirty years of thinking and acting in our different ways, we're so shaped by the experience that we simply can't change?'

'Something like that.'

She stared back at him as if trying to provoke him into saying more, then broke into a smile. 'But people do it all the time, don't they? And in your heart I bet you believe that you could still be anything you want. And George is the proof that you can be. He overcame his past and changed himself.'

Brock smiled back. 'We'll see, Ms Diaz. We'll see.' Then he added, 'Is that why George was important to Charles, because he was able to change himself, like a hermit crab throwing off its sh.e.l.l?'

Luz looked startled. 'Why do you say that? That was . . .' She stopped herself and turned away, crus.h.i.+ng her cigarette into a gla.s.s bowl. 'George was a resource, that's all. Charles paid him as a consultant, because he knew everything about prisons from the inside.'

'I see.' There was a thump from the floor below, a m.u.f.fled curse, and Luz stiffened. 'If those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds break anything . . . I have jars of pigment down there from Venice. It's the only place in the world you can get it. You'd better tell them . . .'

'Don't worry, they know their job. And is that why you left Barcelona, to change yourself? Or your painting, perhaps? Your colours are so bright and clear, the geometry so sharp-will that survive this damp English light?' He nodded out to the view, where evening mist was seeping out of the copses.

'I haven't experienced an English winter yet,' she said, lighting another cigarette. 'But perhaps it is the reason, yes.

We all need a change of perspective from time to time.

Something to make us think and feel in fresh ways. A change of palette . . .'

Another dull thud sounded from below and Luz wheeled around and made for the spiral staircase. 'I'm going to see what those people are doing.'

Brock remained in the artist's studio, going over to a shelf of books. Most of them were gallery exhibition catalogues, many with pages marked by slips of paper. When he opened them he found ill.u.s.trations of her work. They dated back over ten years, from private galleries in Barcelona, Madrid, San Francisco and New York.

George Todd's yellow motorbike was spotted early that afternoon, twenty-four hours after he had disappeared, parked outside a small holiday hotel in Bexhill, the place where Charles Verge had supposedly walked into the sea.

Todd had apparently booked into the hotel the previous evening. Within half an hour he had been located in a pub less than a hundred yards away, and begun the journey back to London under escort.

Now he sat on the other side of the table, painstakingly rubbing his fingertips with a handkerchief. Brock could see no remaining traces of the ink, but still he rubbed and scoured.

'I thought you scanned them electronically now,' Todd said softly. 'What's the point, anyway? Did you think I were someone else?' A Yorks.h.i.+re accent. He looked up from his scrubbing with a glint in his eye, as if relis.h.i.+ng some private joke. 'Who did you reckon I was then, Charles Verge?'

Brock said nothing. The idea did seem far-fetched now, a clutching at straws.

It was hard not to stare at Todd. There was a fastidious intensity about his gestures, which contrasted oddly with the anarchy of his damaged features. Brock noted the creases down the arms of his s.h.i.+rt, the way he folded the handkerchief neatly before replacing it in his pocket. The crew that had searched his toolshed at Orchard Cottage had commented on how obsessively neat everything was, like in his rented room. Brock had seen it before, the model prisoners who responded to the order and discipline of prison that had been so absent from their early lives. More than one of the a.s.sessors in Todd's file had diagnosed an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

'What were you doing at Bexhill?'

'I wanted a few days' holiday. Decided to go down to the seaside.'

'To the place where Charles Verge was supposed to have disappeared.'

Another private smirk. 'Seemed as good a place as any.'

'When did you first meet Mr Verge?'

'Two, two and a half years ago.'

'That was at . . .' Brock consulted his notes.

'HMP Maidstone. He was doing research.'

'How did he come to meet you?'

'I was picked, by the governor, to talk to him about my experiences. We hit it off. I was able to put him right on a few things.'

Brock wondered if the two men had recognised something of themselves in the other. 'What sort of things?'

'He was interested in how people feel when they're inside, how their att.i.tudes change over time, what makes them tick. Then later on, when he was working on his plans, we talked about them. I helped him design Marchdale.' The claim was made flatly, without bombast.

'Did he pay you for your help?'

'He insisted. He called me a consultant, and put money into an account for me, for when I got out. Don't worry, it were all declared. I paid tax on it.'

'And you got out last January? What did you do then?'

'He invited me to work for his family, as a general handyman and gardener. I got Orchard Cottage ready for Miss Charlotte, painting and wallpapering and repairs, and I do the gardens and other odds and ends for her, and for Mrs Madelaine Verge and Ms Diaz at Briar Hill. Ask them.

I'm a good worker.'