The Verge Practice Read Online Free Page A

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.
    ‘Charles Verge?’ Her eyes widened. ‘They’re not giving us the Verge case?’
    ‘They are. We’ll be having a briefing on Monday.’
    ‘But that’s fantastic!’
    Her enthusiasm was immediate and completely untainted by Brock’s misgivings. He envied her optimism and wondered if he’d been infected by Chivers’ gloom.
    ‘No, it’s not. It’s an act of desperation. Chivers’ people have been flogging it for four months and they’ve got nowhere.’
    ‘Yes, but we’re better . . .’ She grinned suddenly and said, ‘It’s an honour to be picked, and it’s a great opportunity.’ Brock acknowledged his own rather awkward words with a reluctant smile. Kathy’s attention had turned to the job matrix lying beside the files, and she frowned at the blank beside her own name. ‘I’ll be on the Verge team, won’t I?’
    ‘What did Sharpe have to say about time commitments?’ ‘He said it would be a fractional commitment, about fifty per cent. I just have to give the committee priority if there’s a clash with other duties. Oh, come on, Brock! You have to let me on.’
    He pondered a moment, then said, ‘Okay,’ and took up his pencil, writing ‘0.5’ in the blank space.
    She smiled her thanks, then checked her watch. ‘I have to run.’
    ‘A date?’
    ‘I’m meeting someone. Leon.’
    ‘Ah yes. Would you describe yourselves as partners these days, Kathy?’
    She gave him an odd look. ‘I might. Yes, something like that.’
    ‘Have fun.’ He turned back to his papers.
    When she had gone he repeated softly, ‘Something like that . . .’ What did that mean, exactly? Something unresolved? He shook his head and hoped that Leon Desai knew what he was playing at.
    On the way home through South London he stopped at a supermarket and stocked up for the weekend with some precooked lasagne, a pork pie, salad, eggs, bread, coffee and a couple of bottles of Chilean red. That evening he began with the crime scene file, and eventually fell asleep in his armchair over a copy of the pathology reports.
    By the following evening he felt he had a reasonable overview of the case. Although he had been given only a small part of the huge volume of material that had been generated, it was enough to confirm his earlier expectation that Chivers’ team had done a very thorough job. Once he had become convinced that Verge had indeed bolted, Chivers had set about constructing a huge spider’s web of tripwires that spanned the globe. Phones were tapped, mail intercepted, bank accounts monitored, passenger lists scanned, in the hope that one day, somewhere, a contact would register. Given the celebrity of the runaway and the crime, foreign police forces had been glad to assist, and liaison officers in over thirty countries had been identified, in addition to normal Interpol links. Particular effort had gone into working with the police in Spain and in a number