Free The Verge Practice by Barry Maitland Page B

was becoming convinced that he shouldn’t be in the police force, at least not in the forensic area of laboratory liaison. His working hours revolved around the nasty end of the business, constantly confronted by the worst in life, a never-ending stream of crime scenes and their aftermath.
    Unrelieved by contact with living clients, he met only victims dehumanised by violent death, and she thought it was beginning to tell on him. He finished chopping and stood for a moment, as if wondering what to do next, looking forlorn and troubled and beautiful, and she was on the point of taking hold of him and telling him how much she loved him, when he suddenly shoved his hand inside the chicken carcass and began to scrape out the scraps of offal inside.
    And she felt guilty, because he had had an escape plan and she had been one of the reasons he had abandoned it.
    As a laboratory liaison officer he couldn’t rise above sergeant, so he had planned to go up to Liverpool University to do a master’s in forensic psychology and move into a more open career path, perhaps in the private sector. Kathy had felt that she would lose him if he left, and had made it easier for him to stay than to go.
    ‘You’ve got a lot of reading to do?’ Leon nodded at the pile of documents she’d dropped on the table, and she told him about the first meeting of the Crime Strategy Working Party. After some hiatus Desmond had returned with Robert, but without Rex, and they had agreed to postpone the meeting until something could be worked out. Kathy tried to make it sound funny, but Leon didn’t respond.
    ‘The Asian kid is paralysed,’ he said gloomily. ‘The one who got kicked by the police horse. It was on the news.
    He’ll likely be a quadriplegic. I shouldn’t think this is a very good time to be starting up your committee.’
    Kathy felt mildly deflated. ‘Well, it would suit me if they forgot the whole thing.’ She changed the subject. ‘Did you call your mum today?’
    He nodded, stuffing a whole lemon into the chicken.
    ‘You can open that wine if you like.’
    ‘How’s your dad’s tummy?’
    ‘Okay. The doctor said he was pleased with the way it’s going.’
    ‘Good. I’m going to be out that way tomorrow. I thought I might call in on your mum.’
    Leon looked at her in surprise.
    ‘Just to see how she’s coping. What do you think?’
    ‘Fine . . .’ Leon looked extremely doubtful. ‘Afternoon would probably be best. Do you want me to call her?’
    ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it once I know how my time is going. Do you want some help with that?’
    ‘It’s all under control.’
    She thumbed reluctantly through the pile of her documents and, coming to the scrapbook that Brock had given her, pulled it out and opened the cover. Inside was the title, Dossier on the Murder of Miki Norinaga and Disappearance of Charles Verge. Compiled by Stewart and Miranda Collins, aged 9 and 6, of 349A High Street, Battle, East Sussex . She smiled to herself and began to turn the pages of cuttings.
    Later, relaxed by the wine and a surprisingly competent meal, they lay together in the darkness in the large bed that almost filled the tiny bedroom, and into Kathy’s mind returned the question Brock had asked and she had glibly deflected. Why had Charles Verge marked a passage describing an eighteenth-century architect identifying their crimes from the heads of dead criminals? She pictured the bizarre and macabre scene, and wondered how Verge might have interpreted it. Was he taken with the idea that somehow our worst acts were stamped on our faces? Or, if the faces preceded the acts, were we doomed to commit the crimes that our heredity or environment had conditioned us to? Or was it something to do with the idea of Verge’s new prison, that you had to reconstruct the whole person, physically as well as spiritually, in order to free it from its criminal fate? She was on the point of drifting off, when the idea suddenly hit her. She blinked