'Going through their records, I found that Sandy Clarke had a visit from Paul Oakley on the morning of the twenty-third of May.'

Bren's perplexity deepened. 'Yeah . . .?'

'This was nine days after Miki's body was found, and two days after Oakley took over from Leon as LO on the case. It was also two days after the lab results on the pillow with Clarke's DNA were first recorded.'

'Okay. So Oakley wanted to familiarise himself with the scene.'

'No, he didn't go up to the apartment. He stayed in Clarke's office the whole time. The secretary remembers that they were so engrossed that Clarke kept the Mayor waiting for his next appointment.'

There was silence for a moment, then Bren said softly, 'What are you thinking, Kathy?'

'I don't know . . .' Now it came to the point, she found she couldn't bring it out into the open.

'Come on. You've got a theory, haven't you?'

'Well . . . it's just, the mistake, the cover-up. Like you said, both unlike the lab. And both involving the same officer who pays a private visit to the suspect at the critical time when the crucial information gets lost . . .' Again she hesitated, hoping Bren would finish the train of thought for her, save her from actually putting it into words.

'Go on,' he said impa.s.sively.

'I thought about that case last year, the SOCO who tried to lose evidence for money.'

Bren said nothing at first, then under his breath, 'h.e.l.l.'

'What do you think?'

'I think you should talk to Brock.'

'I can't.' And this time she knew she couldn't put it into words, not all of it. 'Oakley is a good friend of Leon, and Leon himself might have got involved without realising it, and Leon and I have just split up, so it'd look as if I was stirring this up out of spite.'

'So you want me to take it on.'

She nodded.

'Well . . . we can't just leave it, can we?'

'I appreciate it, Bren. I mean it. This has been really bothering me.'

'Don't worry. You can forget about it now.'

'Thanks. It's been weighing me down.'

And that was true, she realised, as she walked away. She literally did feel as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

There was a stack of mail and papers waiting on her desk, too. She flicked through them, then froze at the sight of an envelope addressed to her in immaculate handwriting she knew very well. Leon's. A rush of possibilities came to her- he had made a terrible mistake, he couldn't live without her, he wanted to meet again. She almost got on the phone to tell Bren to forget what she'd said about Oakley, but instead she picked up the envelope, seeing it tremble in her hand.

Inside was a standard form with the report of forensic tests carried out on her car. There was no accompanying letter, not even a signature.

She sat down with a deep breath and scanned the report, hardly taking it in. No fingerprints, no distinguishing MO. Some fabric traces had been found on the jagged edge of gla.s.s remaining in the window frame. Further action requested? Kathy ticked the 'NO' box and slipped the form into the file tray. She tore the envelope with its neat handwriting into a dozen small pieces and threw them into the bin.

23.

Paul Oakley sounded delighted to get the call from Bren, requesting a meeting. 'I'll come to you, Bren,' he said.

'Any time it suits. Today? Not a problem. I'll be there.'

He was under the impression, so Bren soon realised, that the purpose of their meeting was to discuss ways in which his fledgling company, Independent Forensic Services, could a.s.sist the Met, and specifically the Serious Crime Branch.

'Leon put in a plug, did he, Bren? Well, what are mates for, eh? To be honest, there's a fortune to be made out there in what I call the badlands, you know, discreet testing of celebrities' f.a.g ends for dodgy journos who want to know what diseases they've got, that sort of stuff. But that's not what we're interested in. With my background in the force, true forensic work is our forte.'

Bren let him talk without interruption, trying to a.s.sess the man. He'd had little contact with him before, and tried to keep an open mind, but Oakley's endless optimism and overenthusiastic sales pitch began to grate.

'. . . Rigorous support for rigorous police work has always been my pa.s.sion, Bren, and I think we can honestly compete with the old hands and come up with a service of absolute dependability, integrity and, most important, attractive cost. You and I both know what a burden it is to your inquiries to know that each and every DNA test is costing your budget three hundred and twenty pounds.

Suppose we could improve on that by, say, twenty per cent.

That means twenty per cent more tests, maybe a twenty per cent better success rate.'

'Cost is important, sure,' Bren said, breaking into the flow. 'But reliability has got to be the most important thing.'

'Absolutely!'

'And there have been a few slip-ups in the past that have been both costly and embarra.s.sing.'

'Sure, sure.' Oakley nodded his head vigorously.

'We're just cleaning up the end of the Verge inquiry, and that was badly compromised by a lab mistake. Well, you must know all about that. You were the LO at the time, weren't you?'

Oakley's smile didn't waver, but his eyes became a little brighter. 'Briefly, Bren, briefly. Then I left the force and went overseas.'

'Where did you go?'

'To the States. Caught up with a few contacts I'd made to get right up to speed with the latest developments over there before setting up our company. We explored a few possibilities-franchising, partnerships, etcetera-but in the end we decided to go independent. Best way.'

'Right. So you know all about the problem with the Verge evidence. What was it, a breakdown in supervision?'

'I'm not really acquainted with all the details, Bren.

Leon told me a bit about it. He said it was all cleared up now, though. Is that right?'

'Seems so. Apparently a clerk called Langley made a simple error. Did you know her?'

Oakley shook his head slowly. 'Leon did mention the name. I suppose I must have b.u.mped into her, but I can't really recall. You know, mistakes like that can be the result of size, Bren. The organisation gets too big, too unwieldy, and quality control suffers. Whereas with a small outfit like ours, there's more personal responsibility. Fascinating case though, the Verge murders. And you've cleared it all up magnificently-with a bit of help from DCI Brock, I dare say.' He chuckled. 'You must be delighted.'

'Yeah, it was interesting. Did you ever meet Sandy Clarke?'

'The killer? No, I don't believe I had that pleasure. Must have been a devious character.'

'Oh yes, there are a few of those around.' Bren glanced at his watch. 'Well now, have you any literature you can leave me, Paul? I'm afraid I'm due in a meeting.'

'Oh, can't I buy you lunch, Bren? Never mind, another time. Here's our prospectus and some brochures to pa.s.s around to whoever you see fit, okay?'

Bren showed him to the door, then went up to Brock's office.

'Chief,' he said, noting the ordnance survey map spread out over the old man's desk, Brock peering closely at it through his half-rims.

'Morning, Bren.' He straightened.

'The fens?' Bren asked, seeing the tracery of dead straight roads and waterways pa.s.sing unswerving across the map.

'Yes. Marchdale.'

'Working out how to get there?'

'Something like that. What can I do you for?'

'I've got a bit of a problem. Something I need to pa.s.s by you, if you've got the time.'

They settled in the two old leather chairs that Brock had long ago installed each side of the fireplace, and Bren spelled it out.

'If Kathy got it right about the clerk and the Verge office records, then Oakley was lying through his teeth, no two ways about it.'

'Yes, I see. You say you spoke to Oakley alone? I suppose Kathy was caught up in her committee.'

'It's a little more complicated than that. I think she's worried that Oakley might have got Leon involved in this somehow.'

'In what, exactly?'

'Hard to say. I'll let her put you in the picture, chief, but I gather she and Leon aren't seeing eye to eye at the moment, and she'd rather be kept out of it.'

'Hm. Even if Oakley was responsible for the original slip-up, and has covered it up, it's still hardly a matter for us.'

'Kathy feels there's more to it. She thinks that the original forensic evidence against Clarke may have been deliberately hidden.' He saw Brock's eyebrow go up and added quickly, 'It's just a theory, but she thought it needed checking out.'

Brock got to his feet and went over to the window, and stared out at the damp morning. The top floors of the main Scotland Yard building were visible over the rooftops against the sky, and he visualised Commander Sharpe at one of those windows staring back down at him.

'I'll have a word with the director at the lab, Bren,' he said finally. 'Then we'll decide what to do.'

When the committee reconvened early that afternoon, after a shared lunch of sandwiches and orange juice provided by Robert's a.s.siduous staff, Kathy was handed a note requesting that she report to DCI Brock as soon as she was free.

She managed to bring the session to a close within an hour, and hurried back to Queen Anne's Gate, where she found Bren waiting with Brock in his office.

'Didn't think you'd get away so soon, Kathy,' Brock said. 'Come in, sit down. We've been talking about the Oakley business you asked Bren to follow up. He's had an informal interview with Oakley, and I've spoken to the director at the lab, and both seem to raise more questions than they answer. I understand you don't want to be involved in this for personal reasons, which is understandable, but I'd like to hear your comments all the same.'

Kathy, still a little out of breath, nodded. 'Yes, fine.'

'This is a copy of the statement that Debbie Langley signed when she was visited at home, ten days ago.'

He handed Kathy a single faxed sheet. The text stated that Debbie Langley freely admitted that it was possible, under the pressure of the workload during May of that year, that she was responsible for the error in transcription which had led to a piece of forensic evidence in the Verge investigation being overlooked. It was signed and dated by her, and as Kathy scanned past her signature to the familiar scrawl underneath, her heart gave a jolt. The statement had been witnessed by DS Leon Desai.

'I don't understand,' she said softly. 'I even asked Debbie if it might have been an Indian who came to speak to her, and she said no. She knew Oakley quite well from her days at the lab, she said. She was adamant that it was Oakley.'

'But he could hardly be the one to witness her statement,' Bren said. 'He doesn't work at the lab any more, and he was under suspicion himself. The question is, what's Leon playing at?'

'Well,' Brock said, 'we can check that easily enough. But then there's Oakley's conversation with Bren this morning.

He denied knowing Debbie, and also said he'd never met Sandy Clarke.'

'Clarke's secretary was quite clear. Brock, I'm not imagining this . . .'

Brock raised a placatory hand. 'Of course not. Bren spoke to her again, and we have a signed statement and a hard copy of their record of visitors that day. He was definitely there. So, what's going on? Bren says you have a theory that Oakley may have deliberately hidden the evidence against Clarke.'

'It's a possibility, isn't it?'

'In order to blackmail Clarke?'

Kathy said nothing, hearing the scepticism in Brock's voice.

'Well, how do we find out? He's hardly going to admit it. Blackmail, perverting the course of justice on a major inquiry-he'd be looking at what, ten, fifteen?'

His question hung unanswered, until Kathy finally said, 'That's what bothers me. If he did do that, and then the evidence finally came out, and Clarke realised that he'd paid Oakley off for nothing, what would Clarke do?'

'Speak to Oakley?' Bren said. 'Threaten to report him?'

'It's the timing again,' Kathy said. 'Clarke died so soon after you confronted him with the DNA evidence, before you really had time to question him in depth. And there's the tidiness of the scene of Clarke's suicide, the neat fingerprints in all the right places. You'd expect an LO to at least get that right.'

Bren looked troubled. 'I think we're getting way ahead of ourselves. Oakley wouldn't have known enough to write Clarke's confession, would he?' He turned to appeal to Brock, who seemed absorbed in his own thoughts.

'He might if he'd had help,' Brock murmured eventually. 'If he'd seen the record of Clarke's interview with us, and spoken to someone who'd read the file. You're worried that Leon might be involved somehow, I take it, Kathy?'

'I think . . . I think he might want to help a former colleague, another LO. Innocently, I mean. I think Oakley could have used him, like with endorsing Debbie's statement.' 'Interesting.' Brock roused himself, glancing at his watch. 'I've got another meeting now, and we've asked Mr Oakley to come in to speak to Bren and myself at four. I'd like you to watch it on the closed circuit, Kathy. Let's talk again after that.'

As she and Bren made for the door, Brock called Kathy back. 'Bren mentioned that you and Leon are going through a bad patch, Kathy. I'm sorry. You okay?'

'Yes, I'm fine.'

'A temporary hiccup, I hope?'

She drew a deep breath. 'Doesn't look like it. But it has nothing to do with this. I don't want to see him compromised by someone like Oakley, that's all.'

Was that all? She found it hard to concentrate on anything in the hour before she went to the small monitoring room next to the interview room to await Oakley's arrival.