The Shut Eye (17 page)

He leaned across the table and stared intently at Marvel through his thick lenses. ‘
Your
future,’ he whispered, ‘is
my
memory.’

Marvel felt an illogical chill. For one gut-wrenching moment he was on a precipice, with his own destiny gaping blackly before him and the past at his back, pressing him gently but firmly towards the edge. Somewhere in his soul he could hear the overhang crumbling under his frightened feet; pieces of stone clicking away like unlucky dice—

‘Can you remember next week’s Lottery numbers?’ said Brady.

They both ignored him, but it broke the spell, and Marvel leaned across the table so that his nose almost touched Latham’s.

‘Mumbo. Fucking. Jumbo. You can’t see Edie Evans and you never could. You see nothing but money. I see
your
future, Latham, and it’s in handcuffs.’

Latham dabbed carefully at his mouth with the napkin. ‘Is that some kind of threat, Mr Marvel?’

‘You bet your arse it is,’ said Marvel. ‘And DS Brady is my witness.’

Latham screwed up the napkin and dropped it into his teacup, where it browned and swelled. ‘Then next time you’re feeling guilty about Edie Evans, Mr Marvel, don’t come crying to me.’

‘Fuck off!’ said Marvel. He stood up furiously. Brady looked up at him in surprise, then he stood too, with a forkful of carrot cake in his hand.

Marvel jabbed an angry finger across the table, making Latham flinch. ‘I’ll find out what happened to Edie without your so-called help.’ He turned, then remembered: ‘And you can stop tapping Sandra Clyde for cash, too, because her dog was returned to her this morning, no thanks to
you
!’

Latham gave Marvel a sanctimonious smile. ‘Isn’t the important thing that she has her dog back?’

‘To her, maybe. Not to me.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be unsurprised to hear it.’

‘And
I’m
sure you’ll be giving her a refund on her donations to the church bloody roof.’

Latham raised his brows mysteriously. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Maybe, in the future, I already have.’

‘You piece of—’

‘Are these gentlemen bothering you, Richard?’ Two middle-aged ladies were suddenly at the table. One was thin, the other was dumpy, but both had faux fezzes over their wispy grey hair, little round glasses, and the redoubtable self-confidence bestowed upon them by an M&S uniform and a reserve army of beige back-ups.

‘Yes,’ said Latham. ‘Actually they are.’

‘Time to go, I think, sir,’ said the dumpy one, holding out her arms to usher Marvel out.

‘I’m a police officer,’ he protested.

‘Well then, sir, you should know better.’

If she’d been a man Marvel could have hit her, but what could he do with an old woman who barely reached his armpit?

Nothing but obey.

‘Come on, Brady,’ he said.

They’d only taken a couple of paces away from the table when Latham called out, ‘Sergeant Brady?’

They stopped and turned around. Latham was looking at Colin Brady with an earnest expression on his face.

‘There’ll be complications when your wife gives birth. You’ll be worried the baby’s going to die, but it won’t; it will be just fine.’

Brady gave a hollow laugh. ‘I’ve had the snip, mate. Shows how much
you
know!’

‘Oh,’ said Latham. He frowned – and then gave the smallest of smiles. ‘In that case, maybe you could give my message to your milkman.’

Marvel swore and started towards him, but the dumpy woman said, ‘Now, now, sticks and stones and all that,’ and – somehow – herded them both out of the café and into Menswear.

‘Bastard,’ said Brady.

‘
Fucking
bastard,’ said Marvel.

They strode past the fey white mannequins with their gilets and their man-bags, and out to the car park.

Marvel fumed, ‘Did you see his face when he saw that photo?’

‘Yeah,’ said Brady.

‘White as a sheet. Then he tries to say he doesn’t recognize her.’

‘Yeah,’ said Brady.

‘Bloody fake. Preying on the weak and vulnerable.’

‘Funny about that garden thing, though.’

‘Not if Latham told Mrs Buck about it.’

‘Yeah,’ said Brady. ‘But if he didn’t.’

Marvel gave a dismissive snort and stormed through the car park while Brady hurried to keep up. But the question did nag at him. What if Latham
hadn’t
told Anna Buck about the garden? Where did that leave them?

Nowhere he felt comfortable being …

‘Maybe he hypnotized her or some crap,’ he thought out loud. ‘He was on TV. You know what those pricks are like.’

‘Yeah,’ said Brady thoughtfully. ‘You think he meant that about the milkman?’

‘Course not,’ said Marvel. ‘He’s just winding you up.’

The pink bumper sticker made Marvel’s car easy to spot. ‘Bloody thing,’ he said, and slapped the Edie Evans file against Brady’s chest. He squatted behind the BMW and picked at one corner of the sticker. ‘He’s a fake, no question,’ he went on. ‘But he’s hiding something else.’

‘What?’ said Brady.

‘I don’t know,’ said Marvel. ‘But I’m going to find out.’

He yanked off the sticker with a single Elastoplastic rip.

The paint came off with it.

When Marvel got back to the station, Emily Aguda deepened his bad mood by telling him that last year’s Beckenham dog show had been held on 14 September.

‘Impossible,’ said Marvel. ‘Edie was abducted on January twelfth.’

‘I checked with Mrs Clyde—’

Marvel waved that away dismissively. ‘Mrs Clyde doesn’t know whether she’s Arthur or bloody Martha.’

‘Mmm.’ Aguda pursed her lips diplomatically and read from her notebook. ‘So then I spoke to the show secretary. There was a show in April last year and another in September, but the April one was indoors.’

‘I don’t care if it was indoors or outdoors,’ said Marvel. ‘She couldn’t have been at either. It must have been held earlier than that.’

Aguda looked puzzled.

‘Check again,’ he told her. ‘Get it right.’

WHEN ANNA GOT
home, James was in the nursery with Daniel’s red dungarees in his hand.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Putting these away. Where have you been?’

Anna took the dungarees from him and went to the chest of drawers. ‘They were already away.’

‘No they weren’t; they were on the bed.’

He was lying. She never left them out. Before she laid them in the bottom drawer with the rest of his clothes, Anna pressed them to her face – to her nose. They still smelled faintly of Daniel. That was why she never washed them. The only thing in the flat she hadn’t washed and scrubbed and washed again. She’d have to wash the baby’s clothes now, after what that woman did to him, and the blanket that had fallen on the floor. And his bedding; and
their
bedding and everything—

‘Where have you been?’

‘The police station.’

‘What for?’

‘I thought I could help someone who’d lost their dog.’

‘A lost dog? How?’

Anna hesitated, but she was not a liar; she’d never seen the point, when the truth was so much simpler to remember.

‘I had a vision,’ she said. ‘I looked at a photograph of the dog and I had a vision.’

‘Since when do you have visions?’

She said nothing. She opened another drawer and smoothed the clothes in it – just for something to do. They’d all have to be washed, but not today. She would have to do everything in the correct order. Efficiently, so that one thing did not contaminate the next.

‘Is this about that bloody church?’

When she didn’t answer him, James said, ‘A vision of what?’

‘Of a garden. And of circles and … and … eighty-eight.’ She shrugged.

‘Eighty-eight what?’

‘I don’t know.’

James sighed. ‘You know all this makes you sound mental, right?’

‘I know. I just thought they might be something to do with the dog.’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t they?’ Sarcasm didn’t become him. James never used to be sarcastic with her.

Before.

‘Nobody believes shit like that,’ he went on.

‘The police took it seriously,’ she said without inflection.

‘Were they wearing white coats?’

She knew he was trying to be mean, but she ignored it. ‘They asked me all about it and to draw pictures of all the things I saw. They had me there for two hours.’

‘Yeah?’ said James. That obviously surprised him and he lost that knowing expression.

‘It was nothing to do with the dog though. The dog had already been found.’

James laughed – relieved to be back on solid ground.

‘They thought it might have something to do with a girl who went missing.’

‘What girl?’

‘Her name’s Edie Evans. She was in the photo.’

‘What photo?’

‘Of the dog.’

‘Where is it then?’

‘The police kept it.’ Anna opened another drawer – this one full of bits and bobs. The tie James had worn to his mother’s funeral, spare batteries, a small sheaf of Daniel’s drawings that had been transferred from the playschool to the fridge and then were too precious to make their logical way to the bin. Wax crayon on butcher paper; random three-legged animals and wonky houses with curly smoke.

‘Why are we even together?’ Anna said suddenly.

James looked at her in surprise, but Anna felt calm inside – as if she were on a slow summer ocean. She couldn’t believe that just a few hours earlier she had been curling up to die on a police station floor …

‘I mean, we only got married because I was pregnant with Daniel.’

‘
What?
’ He looked at her in disbelief. ‘You know that’s not true.’

Anna avoided his eyes. ‘And now he’s gone—’

She stopped. She had said that without crying. She said it again.

‘Now he’s gone …’

The second time was a charm, and she felt the lump growing in her throat that meant that soon she wouldn’t be able to speak at all. She stared into the drawer filled with her son’s baby clothes and whispered, ‘You can go too. If you want.’

James went.

On his way out he slammed the door, and opened the floodgates.

James only got as far as the King’s Arms, where he drank until he ran out of money. Then he drank until he ran out of goodwill, and then he got into a scuffle with someone who wouldn’t buy him another pint.

Then he got thrown out.

In revenge he pissed into the drooping pansies planted in barrels along the front wall. They were already fighting a losing battle against the waterlogging and the traffic and the cigarette stubs, so it was a mercy killing really.

He headed for home. Anna had told him to leave, but he was going back. She might claim to have married him because of Daniel, but that wasn’t the only reason
he
’d married
her
.

So he was going home. Or, at least, to the place where he paid the rent – and if she told him to leave again, he’d ignore her again.

He’d drunk so much that he couldn’t make it home before he needed to relieve himself again, so he stumbled down the alleyway next to the mini-mart and pissed with his forearm against the wall and his face cradled in the crook. Hot and cold in shivery waves, dimly feeling the rain seeping under his collar and the splatter on his trainers.

He thought of the red dungarees, and the way they smelled of Daniel, and his eyes overflowed too, and his nose.

‘James?’

‘What?’

‘OK?’

‘Piss off,’ he snuffled into his elbow.

There was silence bar the sound of rain gurgling down the supermarket gutters.

‘You want to eat?’

James turned his head to see Ang standing a few feet away, his thick black hair plastered close to his small head.

‘What?’

‘You want to eat?’ repeated Ang, and gestured that James should follow him behind the building.

James pushed off the wall gently, but still too hard, and stumbled backwards as he zipped up. Then he followed Ang round the back of the supermarket.

He had disappeared.

‘Hello,’ said Ang. He was in a skip, holding a sandwich in a cardboard wrapper.

‘What are you doing?’ said James.

‘Eating.’

James peered over the lip of the skip and Ang switched on a torch. James noticed it was the one Brian Pigeon kept in the office. Ang directed the beam at the rubbish. Cardboard, plastic, a couple of black bags, and scattered food in broken packaging. Ang had collected a little pile of booty at his feet: bread rolls in plastic wrap, fish fingers and yoghurt; two boxes of eggs, only half crushed.

James wiped his face on his arm and said, ‘No. Going home.’

Ang nodded doubtfully. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Me too.’

He put his food in a plastic bag and clambered out of the skip and they walked together, James stumbling and Ang hovering around him like a worried bee, touching him now and then to keep him steady and headed in the right direction.

Halfway home, James threw up.

‘Shit,’ said Ang.

James swayed and wiped his mouth and wondered how much the puddle of vomit had cost him. Whatever it was, they couldn’t afford it. Maybe Anna would start working again, now she’d started going outside. Maybe going to the church hadn’t been such a terrible thing, if it had reminded her that going out was what
normal
people did. Not going out to polish your dead child’s footprints, but going out to the shops and the post office and a job, and coming home to a husband who wanted you back.

Outside the garage, the footprints were filled with rain, and dancing with more.

James stared down at them, and then squatted awkwardly. He put out an unsteady hand to touch the nearest of them, and only Ang’s quick grip on his shoulder stopped him from falling on his face.

He didn’t try again.

‘So sorry, James,’ said Ang tenderly.

‘Me too,’ said James.

The five footprints didn’t remind him of Daniel; they reminded him only of doing something so wrong that he could never make it right. Anna would never forgive him, and he couldn’t blame her. Even
he
couldn’t forgive him.

When James got in the lights were out, so he didn’t turn them on. Anna was a restless sleeper. The kitchen floor was wet and the washing machine was on. Anna had obviously begun a major sweep of the house. He knew that the next few weeks would be chaotic as she took the clean flat apart and put it back together even cleaner.