The Shut Eye (18 page)

It was mad, but it could be worse. Better a clean flat than a filthy one. And things would improve with time. James lived in the hope that they would, that they
must
.

Even though he was drunk, James knew he wouldn’t be welcome in their bed tonight – even hanging off his own edge of the mattress. So, with a sigh, he opened the door to Daniel’s bedroom and switched on the light.

‘
Jesus!
’ he breathed, and sobered like ice.

It was all covered with paint. Blue paint. James recognized the can on the chest of drawers as one of several that had been in the cupboard under the stairs for a few years. He’d used it to paint Daniel’s toy chest, which had been pink when they’d got it from the charity shop.

Anna had painted four huge circles on the walls, each the radius of her own arm, wonky and sloppy, with drips all over the floor and furniture. Three circles filled one wall, and the fourth ran on to the next. She had moved the chest of drawers to accommodate the last one, and there were blue handprints all over that too.

It made him realize that she hadn’t even used a brush. He looked at the circles and saw the unmistakeable trails of fingers and palms. His wife had interrupted her obsessive cleaning operation to vandalize her own home.

Unless someone else had done this.

It suddenly seemed more likely – more horribly possible – that some crazed smack-head had broken into the flat while he was out getting pissed, assaulted his wife, vandalized the room, taken what little they had—

Had he left the door open?

James rushed into their bedroom and banged on the light with a frightened fist.

Anna woke with a start. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

She shielded her eyes with a single blue hand.

‘
MY WIFE TELLS
me you told her to stop the cheque for the reward money.’

Superintendent Clyde had sneaked up on Marvel like a bad smell.

‘That’s right, sir. A thousand pounds is a lot of money. I thought you’d like to make sure this boy deserves it.’

‘He brought the dog back,’ said Clyde flatly. ‘He deserves the money.’

Marvel was rendered almost speechless by the naivety of the man. What was it that plaque on the super’s desk said? Something about the Lord taking over when the law was broken. Marvel suddenly wondered just how appropriate it was for a senior police officer – or
any
police officer – to have that motto on his desk. As if day-to-day police operations had been contracted out to the Almighty like catering or cleaning. It smacked of the same sort of abdication of responsibility as
no questions asked
– as if Clyde’s heart really wasn’t in this crime-fighting lark.

He spoke carefully. ‘What if he pinched the dog in the first place, sir? People will do a lot for a thousand quid.’

‘You should have a bit more faith in human nature, John.’

Marvel almost laughed in his face.
What an idiot!

Out loud he took a more conciliatory tone. ‘Sir, I just want to make sure you and Mrs Clyde aren’t being ripped off, that’s all.’

‘Thank you for your concern, but
I
’m sure and I think that should be enough, don’t you?’

Marvel didn’t reply, but the super seemed to assume the affirmative.

‘You’ll be reassigned to another case shortly, and I’ll deal with the matter from now on, thank you.’

Marvel remained mutinously mute.

‘Understood?’ said Clyde.

Marvel understood. Clyde wanted the Mitzi business over and he didn’t want anything happening that might prolong it – even if that meant ignoring an infringement of the law.

Marvel understood that. And he wanted the super to
know
that he understood.

So he looked steadily up at Clyde and said, ‘No questions asked, sir?’

‘That’s right,’ snapped Clyde. ‘No questions asked.’

‘No questions asked?’ said Debbie. ‘But that’s what
everybody
puts on posters.’

‘Well, everybody’s
wrong
.’

The dog, now named Buster, stretched out between them, its round pink belly stretched by food. Buster was allowed to have all four feet on the Habitat couch, while Marvel still wasn’t allowed even one.

‘People aren’t wrong just because they don’t agree with you, John.’

Marvel pursed his lips and glared at the TV. It was about koala bears so he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to change channels. Debbie was crazy for koalas. They were her second-favourite TV animal behind meerkats. She’d sit for hours with her knees tucked to one side, a glass of rosé in her hand, watching the anthropomorphism of anything small and furry.

She was watching them now, and stroking Buster’s belly, while she was talking to Marvel. ‘And now you’ve fallen out with your boss,’ she said, ‘over something so silly.’

‘It’s not
silly
. Jesus Christ! It’s obstruction of
justice
. By a senior police officer!’

Debbie sipped her wine. ‘But it’s a very
small
obstruction.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

Marvel picked up the remote and started changing channels. ‘It’s not the size of the obstruction that matters. What matters is that there has
been
an obstruction at all. And that he knew that and allowed it to remain there! A copper’s job is to solve crimes, and to solve crimes you have to ask questions. If you don’t ask questions, criminals get away with crimes.
Now
do you understand?’

Debbie made a face and emptied her glass. ‘You’re just grumpy because we had hummus for tea.’

‘No, I’m grumpy because you’re so
fucking stupid
.’

There was a horrible silence and Marvel felt guilt crawling up his neck and behind his ears. But he couldn’t say sorry because he was
right.
Who couldn’t see that? She must be stupid not to.

Debbie said nothing. She watched the flickering television while her fingers moved gently back and forth over the coarse fur on the dog’s chest.

Marvel ran through the channels again, but there wasn’t even anything on that was better than the koalas. Infuriatingly, he’d finally made a stand over the control of the television in the only five minutes of the decade when nobody was showing
Top Gear
.

Debbie watched in cool silence until he finally switched the TV off completely and tossed the remote across the coffee table with a clatter.

Buster twitched, and farted in surprise, and gave Marvel the excuse he needed to get up and go to bed without apologizing.

EVANS, EDITH
.

For the millionth time, Marvel flicked through the tatty brown folder.

At the back of the file was a Polaroid of Anna Buck, the transcript of her interview, and an A5 envelope containing the drawings she had done.

She looked tired and washed out in the photo, but she was the only person Marvel had ever seen who looked better in a Polaroid than she did in the flesh. She was holding a plastic cup of water; the rim was just visible at the bottom of the frame. He had taken the picture himself, before Aguda brought in the tea. On a sudden whim, Marvel pinned the photo to the wall under the Mitzi bumper sticker he’d peeled off his car.

Then he found a photo online of Richard Latham – a screen-grab from a news bulletin – and printed that and pinned it beside the others.

The four pictures sat in uneasy proximity. Edie, Mitzi, Anna Buck and Richard Latham. He felt there was a link – some force of attraction between them – but he certainly couldn’t see what it might be.

Marvel didn’t believe in coincidence, but he did believe in a good hunch, and he felt better for having put all the photos on the wall together.

He tipped Anna’s drawings out of the envelope. There were two small sketches – more doodles than drawings. The first was a window frame, with flowers beyond it and a weird perspective. Anna had drawn one of the flowers inside the bottom edge of the window – as if on the sill. All around the frame she had scribbled blackness. The second scrap of paper – torn from Marvel’s own notebook – was a confusing sketch. He turned it around a few times to try to make sense of it. Eventually he held it vertically. A wide stand, a kinked shaft and a thick U-shaped bit at the top. It was the kind of thing Debbie would buy from Habitat and stick two candles in. On the widest part of the U was the number 88

What’s this?
he’d said to her.

I don’t know
, she’d replied.

Marvel didn’t know either. But he pinned the drawings to the wall as well.

The Anna Buck intervention in the Edie Evans case was just another shroud over a concealed truth. He almost resented that it had happened at all, but now that it had, it had to be treated as part of the whole, or he wouldn’t be doing his job.

And his job – finding Edie Evans – had only become harder because of it.

He picked up the phone on his desk, called DCI Lloyd and asked him whether Anna Buck was nuts.

‘She’s lost her son,’ said Lloyd, after a small pause – as if that was an answer.

‘But is she nuts?’ insisted Marvel. ‘She came in here yesterday with a fake baby, claiming a photo was talking to her.’

‘Well,’ said Lloyd cautiously, ‘I’d say she’s greatly disturbed.’

‘Nuts, you mean?’

‘I’m not a doctor,’ said Lloyd.

Or much of a policeman
, thought Marvel. Then he asked Lloyd to send over a photo of Daniel Buck, and hung up.

Somebody behind him said, ‘Sir?’

Emily Aguda had missed DCI Marvel at first because he was sitting in the far corner with his back to the murder-squad room, and with his feet on the desk. She only noticed him then because she spotted the polaroid of Anna Buck on the wall over his desk. After that she recognized the photo of Edie Evans. There was also a photo of a middle-aged man in glasses, and a bright-pink bumper sticker pinned underneath them with the motto FIND MITZI!

So it
was
a real name!

‘Sir?’ she said politely.

‘What?’ said Marvel without turning round.

‘I got that photo back from the lab.’

Marvel used his feet to swivel his chair around enough to see who was talking to him. When he saw Emily, he scowled. ‘I didn’t know you’d
sent
it to the lab.’

‘You told me to check it again, sir, and I wanted to get it right. They say the date on the rosette is correct and they can’t see any evidence of tampering or manipulation, only a bit of damage caused by the water. So I called the show secretary and asked if they’d had any errors on the dates on their rosettes and she said no.’

Marvel stared at her suspiciously for a moment, then said, ‘How did you get the photo back so fast? Usually it’s like putting a message in a bloody bottle.’

‘I know Dean Frazzelli. He owed me a favour.’

‘What
kind
of favour?’

Emily had lent Dean Frazzelli her car to go on a blind date. It was a nice car – a neat little MR2 in candy-apple red. Apparently it had made quite an impression, because when he’d returned it, he’d told her he owed her one. And when she’d called and asked for his help analysing a photograph, he’d been happy to put it at the top of the pile.

‘You still seeing that girl?’ Emily had asked him.

‘I am seeing a lot of her,’ Frazzelli had answered, with feeling. ‘A. Whole.
Lot
.’ Then he’d offered to buy her car, and she’d said she would think about it.

‘Just a favour.’ She shrugged. Marvel didn’t need to know the fluff.

Marvel grunted. ‘Doesn’t make sense.’

‘Sir?’

‘It doesn’t make any bloody
sense
.’ He slapped the desk, making her jump. ‘Even if she’d been kidnapped and brainwashed, or had run away and was living a new life. She’s at a
dog show
. With her
bicycle
. A bicycle that’s been in the basement of this bloody building since January last year!’

He glared at Aguda as if she might confess that she’d made the whole thing up just to annoy him. But she said nothing.

‘Frazzelli’s an idiot,’ he concluded. ‘Because that photo is impossible.’

He glared forcefully at Emily, but she didn’t concede the point. She thought that Dean Frazzelli wouldn’t last five minutes in his job if he were an idiot. She could feel the frustration coming off Marvel in waves, and understood his reaction, but wasn’t going to be cowed in the face of it.

‘Also, sir, I was thinking about what Mrs Buck said about her husband?’

Marvel glared at her, then said, ‘Go
on
, for Christ’s sake! Just because you decide to put a question mark at the end of a statement doesn’t mean I have to suddenly think of an answer to a question you haven’t even bloody well asked.’

Emily Aguda almost giggled. She was used to being demeaned because she was black and because she was a woman, and sometimes because she was gay, but she’d never been demeaned over her choice of punctuation before, and was surprised to find it a refreshing change.

She went on, ‘Mrs Buck said that she didn’t trust her husband around children. It struck me as a strange thing for someone to say, sir.’

Marvel nodded slowly. Then he said, ‘With children.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘She said
with
children, not
around
children.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Emily was surprised that Marvel had picked up on it too – and so closely.

Marvel fixed her with a glare. ‘You know she’s stark staring mad, right? The hysterics and the water and the fake baby. Anyone can see. Mad or a scammer. Pound to a pinch of dog shit.’

Emily looked at his face to see whether he truly believed that. It was hard to tell.

‘Perhaps,’ she said with what she hoped was a diplomatic note to her voice.

Marvel said nothing more, but he stopped scowling, so Emily pressed on. ‘I just thought it was interesting, sir. Given that Mrs Buck’s son and Edie Evans disappeared within a couple of miles of each other. And given that – statistically – children are at greater risk of harm from a relative than they are from a stranger …’

Emily stopped herself saying more. She had a tendency to over-explain things and something told her it was a trait that DCI Marvel might not appreciate.