The Shut Eye (25 page)

As would he.

Ang Nu said a prayer to the ancestors, and went to claim his bride.

Edie was confused by the lampshade. The light in the room wasn’t the kind that needed a shade. It was a long strip of light right up high on the ceiling, so it couldn’t have been a lampshade. The contraption was like a wok, with dozens of spokes fanning out from the middle and bent down sharply at the ends. There were electrical wires running from them, with multiple little knots and lumps in a complex and dangerous-looking web. ‘What’s that?’ she said warily, but he didn’t answer her.

Instead he tried to put it on her head.

Edie pushed it aside and scrambled off the bed.

Her mind raced and her heart beat so fast she could feel it against her T-shirt. She knew that aliens did experiments on humans when they took them off in spaceships. They drilled into their teeth and took away their babies, and read their minds.

They read their minds.

Even as Edie had the thought, he came at her again, still making a high-pitched, wavering sound, and raising the wire helmet over her head.

‘No!’

This time she knocked it out of his hands and it fell to the floor with a clatter.

His face changed in an instant. He dropped the Bakewell tarts and they rolled across the floor like little white wheels with cherry hubs. He bent to pick up the machine, holding his arms out to protect it from her. He stopped singing and shouted furiously in his alien language.

She didn’t care. Edie no longer knew for sure whether she was in prison, or was the hostage of a madman, or was in a UFO, travelling forever in the spaces between the stars. But wherever she was, she wasn’t going to let anybody read her mind. Her mind was
hers
and it was
private
and
she
was the only one who could say who was allowed in there, not this stranger who’d given her a bicycle bell and some soft Ritz crackers, and now seemed to think that she owed him her
thoughts
. Her head was the only place she had to hide now – the only place where she could be the old Edie the way she was before – and she didn’t want to share it.

It was
her
mind.

Edie pushed him aside and stomped on the wire thing. He shoved her away, but she was frightened and furious, and those two things gave her strength and courage. She pushed back and reached around and kicked and stamped until the mind-reading machine was a useless mass of spikes and wires, broken on the floor.

The alien knelt to retrieve it – to save it – and Edie ran for the door.

It opened on the room she’d been in before – with the dark ceiling and all the pipes.

‘Help me!’ she shrieked. ‘Help me!’

His arm snaked around her neck and dragged her back inside. He wasn’t big, but it was scary to realize how much stronger he was than she could ever hope to be.

The door slammed shut.

He let her go, turned her round and slapped her face.

Edie stumbled backwards and sat down heavily on the bed, holding her cheek in shock, while the masked man she could no longer pretend was an alien stood over her, shaking the wire mess in front of her, showing her what she had done.

‘You break my hat!’ he shouted. ‘You break my hat!’

DCI MARVEL HAD
left his body.

He watched Richard Latham’s head, cradled on his arms, and felt very far away from the thinning patch on top of the shiny pink scalp.

A million miles. A billion. A light year from himself.

He was a murder detective. They’d found blood at the scene. They’d always been looking for a body and a killer.

And yet Marvel had never truly believed that Edie Evans was dead.

He only admitted this to himself here, now, as he watched Richard Latham weep into the elbows of his jumper, with his spectacles on the table beside him.

In Marvel’s head Edie had always been alive, and just waiting to be found.

By him.

‘You’re a liar,’ he heard himself choke.

The coming bald patch twisted slowly from side to side in denial.

‘You don’t know,’ said Marvel. ‘You can’t
know
.’

Latham raised his head briefly and said, ‘I know.’

Then he put his head back down on his arms and gave a sigh so deep that it ended in a shiver.

The hairs on Marvel’s forearms prickled. He had seen a thousand confessions and most of them ended like this – with a cavernous sigh, as if the body was relieved to be finally rid of the burden the mind had forced it to bear.

Mavel’s own mind whirred with connections and possibilities.

If he discounted the mystical, Richard Latham might have been a suspect all along. He’d known of Edie Evans through her mother, who had been to Bickley Spiritualist Church; his home was a bare mile from the Evans home. And, most damning of all, Latham had lied to police during a murder investigation.

At best, he had misled them by failing to disclose that Edie was already dead when he came on to the case.

At worst, he had killed her.

Marvel glanced at the recorder to make sure it was working. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Richard?’

‘ImmosheMED!’

‘What?’ said Marvel impatiently. ‘You have to take your face out of your jumper.’

He did. ‘I know she’s dead!’

‘Who killed her?’ said Marvel.

He shook his head. ‘Nobody.’

Marvel frowned. ‘Was it an accident?’

Latham hesitated. ‘I … I don’t think so. But I couldn’t see.’

‘So you know she’s dead, but you won’t say who killed her or how she died?’

‘I can’t,’ he insisted.

‘Sounds pretty suspicious, doesn’t it, Richard?’

‘I’m just telling you what I know.’

‘Well, if you knew she was dead and you had nothing to do with it, why didn’t you just tell us at the time?’

‘How could I? How could I say so? How could I tell those poor people?’

‘That’s bullshit. You didn’t have to tell her family anything. You only had to tell
us
.’

Latham started to cry again. ‘But what if I was
wrong
? What if people stopped looking for her and I was
wrong
?’ He shook his bowed head. ‘I couldn’t tell anybody.’

‘So you were forced to take our money and string everybody along,’ said Marvel. ‘How convenient.’

‘What else could I do?’ said Latham, pushing his glasses up his damp nose. ‘It was already too late.’ He wiped his nose on his jumper and sniffed up what he’d missed. He looked at Marvel pleadingly, his cheeks shining. ‘It nearly destroyed me,’ he said. ‘Every day she haunts me. That’s why I don’t look for missing children. I could never go through that again.’

‘Of course,’ said Marvel. ‘Poor you.’

‘That’s not what I—’ Latham stopped and shook his head. ‘Meant,’ he finished. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Well,’ said Marvel, ‘it’s a good story.’

‘It’s the truth,’ said Latham.

‘Maybe it is,’ said Marvel. ‘Maybe a jury would believe it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe they’d only convict on the lesser charges – the obstruction of justice and the fraud.’

Panic started to creep across Latham’s face. ‘What do you mean,
lesser charges
?’

‘Maybe they would consider the case for murder too circumstantial—’

‘
Murder?
’

‘But that’s not up to me. It’s up to the CPS to decide on the charges. It’s just my job to present them with the evidence.’

‘What evidence?’ said Latham. ‘There
is
no evidence.’

‘Well, there are close parallels, Richard, you have to admit.’

‘What parallels?’

‘Between nicking dogs and then finding them to boost your reputation as a so-called psychic, and kidnapping a child to do the same.’

‘
What?
’ Latham looked stunned. Then he started to cry again. Harder this time.

‘All that publicity. All that TV exposure. All that
money
.’

‘That’s not … what … happened.’

Marvel shrugged. ‘Maybe you didn’t mean to hurt her. Maybe you were going to keep her for a bit and then return her, just like with the dogs. Maybe something went wrong.’

‘No!’ cried Latham. ‘Nothing went wrong! I didn’t take her and I didn’t hurt her! I’d never even heard her name before the police called and asked for my help! I didn’t even know she was missing!’ His weeping now was unrestrained and noisy, with streamers of clear snot looping off his nose and chin. ‘When I found her it nearly
destroyed
me!’ he bawled. ‘It nearly killed me! You don’t understand what it’s like! You’re
there
. You feel what she
feels
! Never again! That’s why I wouldn’t help that woman with the picture of her son.’

He stopped talking and took off his glasses so he could wipe his eyes.

Marvel sat back in his chair and watched Latham through narrowed eyes. Brady was shooting looks at him, but knew better than to interrupt him at a critical point. Or at any point.

Marvel made a face, as if he was finding it all very hard to believe. ‘So what you’re telling me, Richard,’ he said carefully, ‘is that you kidnapping the dogs has nothing whatsoever to do with the kidnap and murder of Edie Evans.’

‘
Nothing
,’ said Latham eagerly. Then his eager look faded as he realized what he’d done, and his lips turned down yet again.

With grim pleasure, Marvel realized that – if he played this right – he might get everything he wanted and needed out of Richard Latham. With the leverage of that one-word confession, he might solve the Edie Evans case
and
let Superintendent Clyde off the hook. A double-whammy of promotion-worthy proportions.

With perfect timing, the door of the interview room opened and Dale Proctor strode in. He dropped his tatty old briefcase on to the table with a great puffing out of cheeks to indicate that he’d been moving Heaven and Earth to get there as fast as he could.

‘Say nothing,’ he barked at Latham.

‘Why is my client crying?’ he demanded of Marvel.

Marvel ignored him and leaned across the table to look deep into Latham’s eye. ‘I
might
be able to get you a deal, Richard.’

‘My client has done nothing wrong,’ said Proctor. ‘So why would he make a deal?’

But Latham glanced up. He reached forward slowly and picked up his glasses, then put them on so he could see Marvel properly. ‘What kind of deal?’

‘
Hey!
’ said Proctor irritably. ‘We’re not making deals. Dale Proctor is not in the deal-making business!’

Marvel looked at the lawyer. ‘Your client just admitted his involvement in a plot to steal dogs and to extort money from their owners.’

Proctor rounded on Latham. ‘Jesus! You didn’t, did you?’

Marvel went on: ‘And those owners include the wife of a senior Metropolitan police officer.’

‘Nobody’s supposed to speak to my client until I
get
here!’

‘That’s what
he
kept saying,’ grinned Marvel. ‘You can hear it on the tape if you wind it back. Along with his confession to theft, fraud, deception and extortion.’

They both looked at Latham, whose ruddy, tearful face acknowledged that all of it was true.

‘Bollocks,’ said Proctor. He slumped down into the chair next to Latham.

‘Sorry,’ said Latham.

‘Hey,’ shrugged Proctor, ‘it’s your neck.’

‘What about the deal?’ said Latham.

Proctor made a long-suffering face. ‘All right,’ he said grumpily. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘I’m not promising anything. I need to tell you that right up front. But I
might
be able to make this dog thing go away.’

Marvel spoke with caution; people never wanted something you were too keen to give them.

‘Yeah?’ said Proctor. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Your client gives us complete cooperation on the Edie Evans case.’

‘Who’s Edie Evans?’ said Proctor.

‘She’s a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared just over a year ago. Mr Latham here was employed by us in his capacity as a psychic, but she was never found.’

‘Is my client a suspect in that case?’

‘No,’ lied Marvel. ‘But he admits he’s withholding information that might be vital.’

Proctor exchanged a brief glance with Latham, who did not deny it.

‘And what would that cooperation involve?’

‘Not much. Just look at some pictures and use his … gift. We have new information he hasn’t worked with before. See if he can get anything from it that might be helpful to us. If he can’t, he can’t – but right now he’s not even prepared to try. That’s all I ask – that he tries.’

‘Shit,’ said Brady.

Proctor laughed and nodded at him. ‘Even he thinks it sounds too good to be true! What’s the catch?’

‘The only catch is, the deal’s so bloody good the super might not go for it.’

The super would bite his hand off up to the elbow. Marvel couldn’t believe his own genius. It was the perfect solution. He would be able to offload the Mitzi Clyde millstone
and
reopen the Edie Evans case in one easy step. At best, Latham might incriminate himself while revisiting it. At the very least, he could shed valuable light on the one case that still had the power to keep Marvel awake at night, blinking up at the charcoal ceiling while Debbie slept the sleep of the ignorant beside him and Buster snored on his feet.

Proctor turned to Latham and asked, ‘What do you think?’

Latham shrugged. ‘I don’t know ….’

He was playing hard to get. Let him, thought Marvel. Let him play the innocent who wanted his day in court. They all knew different, but if Latham wanted to be dragged kicking and screaming to the deal by his lawyer to keep up the pretence, then
let him
. Marvel wanted Latham to suffer, but he wanted to know what had happened to Edie Evans more; it was as simple as that.

He got up. ‘How about I run this past the super so we know exactly where we stand? There’s no point in me offering it if he’s not going to go for it.’

‘Right,’ said Proctor.

Marvel left the room.

He walked to the machine and got a cup of soup and put two sugars in it.

He stood there until the soup had gone cool, then he dropped it into the bin marked NO LIQUIDS, and went back to Interview Three.