The Shut Eye (29 page)

But Ang Nu ran, and Brady
was
there.

Brady chased the kid and Marvel chased Brady – at a distance – through the garage, between cars with their bonnets open and under cars with their wheels off, past a tall, skinny man who observed them with unsurprised eyes, and a tubby man, yelling, ‘What the
hell
is going on! I’m calling the fucking police!’

‘We
are
the police!’ shouted Marvel.

‘I didn’t call you!’ the man shouted furiously after him. ‘Where’s my fucking
phone
?’

A radio blared pop as Marvel ran into a dead end where there was nothing but an inspection pit filled with junk and a couple of bins overflowing with old car parts and packaging.

‘Shit!’ He turned round and shouted into the face of a pale-skinned man with white hair and eyelashes. ‘Where’s the back door?’

The man took his own sweet time pointing and Marvel jabbed a finger at him and said, ‘I’ll be back for you, Whitey,’ like he was Terminator, not an out-of-shape forty-five-year-old, panting and blowing.

‘You’ll have a fucking heart attack first, fatty!’ shouted the man as Marvel banged his way through the back door and into the alleyway behind Northborough Road.

Brady and the kid where nowhere to be seen.

Thank Christ.

Marvel slowed to a brisk walk and headed past the back of Anna Buck’s flat. Walled yards on one side, high railway railings on the other.

Marvel stopped and leaned on the wall, and pressed a hand into his side to stave off a stitch. His head pounded and his mouth was dry in a way that reminded him of Anna Buck last night, curled on the floor …

He should really lose some weight. Debbie was killing him with culinary kindness. He should walk the dog. Get fit.

His breathing slowed.

A small electronic beep made him turn his head.

The Chinese kid was clambering out of the skip behind TiggerTime. While he still had one leg over the edge, Marvel rushed him.

He nearly got him.

At the last moment, the boy saw him coming and hurled himself backwards, away from Marvel and out of the other end of the skip. He hit the ground with a grunt but was up like lightning, and by the time Marvel had crossed the four paces between them, he was off and running again.

This time Marvel had to run fast. There was nobody else to rely on. He did his best to keep his arms moving and breath passing in and out of his lungs.

It was agony.

He could see that the alleyway ended fifty yards ahead. A merciful dead end created by the rising wall of Bickley Bridge, where he’d first met Anna Buck.

It’s all circles.

The boy reached the wall and stopped and turned to see how close Marvel was.

‘Hold it right there!’ shouted Marvel, and for one second he could see in the kid’s eyes that he just might do that.

Then Brady shouted and burst out of a yard somewhere behind Marvel, and the boy hurled himself at the steel railway fence and started to climb.

Marvel got there just in time to grab his foot, but the boy kicked out at him so hard that his phone fell from his pocket and his shoe came off in Marvel’s hand. Then he toppled over the top of the fence and dropped into the grass and brambles and litter on the other side. For a second their eyes met through the railings.

‘So sorry!’ panted the boy, pleading. ‘So sorry!’

Then Brady hit the fence beside Marvel with a rattle, and went over it, and the boy turned and ran again – this time along the steep bank beside the tracks.

Marvel got a bad feeling, a sudden dread. ‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘Brady! Stop!’

Brady did, and so did the boy – he stopped and half turned to see what was happening.

Pivoted on one toe.

The overflow of momentum took him back a step.

The drop was steep, and when he put his foot down behind him, the ground wasn’t where it should have been.

One minute he was standing, looking at them, arms still swinging around his body with the energy of the chase.

The next, he had tumbled backwards down the bank and out of sight.

‘
Shit!
’

Marvel waited for the sound of a train to complete the horror, but there was nothing. He tested the railings in his fists and – with a deep grunt – pulled himself up and over them. Sweat sprung up on his face at the unaccustomed effort. He got his coat snagged at the top and half jumped, half fell on to the other side, accompanied by a loud ripping noise.

He got to his feet unsteadily.

‘Where is he?’ he yelled at Brady.

Brady turned towards him and pointed down the bank. ‘There.’

A few feet from the fence, the ground fell away steeply, so Marvel approached cautiously.

Ang Nu had not had that luxury.

At the foot of the embankment, abutting the brickwork of the bridge, was a wrought-iron fan of Victorian railings, made to keep children and the homeless out of the short tunnel.

Today its sharp points had broken a homeless child’s fall.

One had speared Ang Nu’s buttock; another protruded from his chest.

A third had gone straight through his skull and right eye.

The smell of old death rose up to meet them – as if Ang Nu’s life had already ended here, a long, long time ago.

Marvel said nothing and neither did Brady.

There was too much not to say.

BRADY BOOSTED MARVEL
back over the fence. His coat caught again on the top, but it was already torn. It smelled of vomit too, which made him remember the bucket the kid had chucked at him, and how hard he’d tried not to throw up on himself after leaving Anna Buck’s flat last night. He shouldn’t have bothered; it had got him in the end.

He turned the boy’s shoe over with his toe, and picked up the phone. The shoe was an Adidas knock-off with a hole in the heel; the phone was quite new.

Marvel left Brady at the embankment to keep rubberneckers at bay and walked slowly back to the garage, like a kid reluctant to go home for a hiding.

They weren’t even supposed to be here. Clyde had closed the case. He was supposed to be charging Richard Latham for dognapping or arresting some other bastard for shooting Tanzi Anderson.

Anything but this. Here. Now.

He was in deep shit.

By the time he got back to the garage, the tall skinny mechanic and the short white curly one had both vanished.

‘Where’s Ang?’ said James Buck.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Ang Nu.

‘Why’d he fucking
run
?’ Marvel complained, making the victim into the culprit with a single short question.

‘You scared him. He thought you were Immigration.’

‘He’s not legal then?’ Marvel was slightly cheered. That was good news. The kid was an illegal immigrant. Chasing down a guilty man was a whole different matter. A
guilty
man was fair game. Why he was guilty was beside the point.

Marvel looked around. ‘Where did the other two go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘
They
legal?’

Buck reddened and his eyes flickered towards the tubby man whose slicked-back hair and blue overalls made him look like Mao Tse Tung.

‘You the boss?’ said Marvel.

‘Yes.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Brian Pigeon.’

‘Well you’re in deep shit, Mr Pigeon.’ It was nice to pass it on. The man in the overalls didn’t even bother asking why. Just looked worried.

‘Where’s Ang?’ James Buck insisted.

‘Little shit took my phone,’ said Pigeon. ‘Right here off the bench!’

‘Ang’s dead,’ said Marvel.

‘
Dead?
’ said James. He and Pigeon exchanged stunned looks. ‘What
happened
?’

‘He fell.’

‘What?
How?
’

Marvel sighed and answered him out of courtesy for his help and for not making a complaint.

Yet.

‘Look, your colleague fell while trying to evade arrest, and sadly is deceased. The important thing now is to take care of matters in an appropriate manner. Did he have family here?’

Buck shook his head, looking sick, and Brian Pigeon answered, ‘No. Nobody.’

More music to Marvel’s ears. Nobody was going to make a fuss about Ang Nu. Nobody was going to cry to the newspapers. Nobody was going to call for his head or sue the Met.

‘Where did he live?’ he asked.

Buck glanced at Brian Pigeon, who said, ‘Here. He lived here. He couldn’t afford rent so I let him stay here.’

‘Anything to do with the fact that you’re employing a bunch of illegal immigrants?’

Pigeon said nothing more.

Marvel pointed a firm finger at him. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he said. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

The next several hours were a blur of ambulances, flapping crime-scene tape, news crews, Transport Police, Railtrack PR suits, and scenes of crime officers in white jumpsuits. Clyde himself made an appearance and gave a statement to TV reporters on the garage forecourt, before telling Marvel to go home.

‘But this is my case,’ Marvel had said defiantly.

‘This isn’t your case,’ Clyde had replied coldly. ‘You don’t have a case. As of right now, you don’t even have a job.’

When Marvel had looked blank, he’d added, ‘You’re suspended.’

Later, as Marvel got as drunk as he possibly could in the warm embrace of the King’s Arms, he watched the story play out on the TV over the bar.

Behind Clyde’s fake sorrow for Ang Nu, he could see Brian Pigeon being led away from the garage in handcuffs.

And beyond that was what looked like a small blue tent pitched on the edge of the forecourt. He thought the SOCOs might have erected it over the place where he’d vomited the night before. Then – just before the shot cut to the railway embankment – the little tent moved and he realized it was a person sitting there in a big blue nylon
something
.

When it moved he saw it was Anna Buck. A skinny blur, head bowed, legs like sticks.

Marvel suddenly realized the irony of seeking help on a missing-persons case from someone who couldn’t even find her own bloody kid.

He ordered another Jameson.

Another double.

Marvel finally got home a little after midnight, bloodshot and exhausted, to find that the coffee table had gone.

So had the Habitat sofa.

‘Debbie!’ he shouted.

So had Debbie.

‘Buster!’ he said loudly. ‘Buster?’

There was no clatter of tiny feet.

There was an envelope with his name on it taped to the TV screen with something that left a mark when he ripped it off.

He knelt and scratched at the gummy mess until he woke up with his forehead pressed against the dark screen and drool on his chin.

The sofa may have gone but luckily the rug was still there, so he lay down on it.

It was only as he fell into the wonderful, dreamless sleep of the hopelessly drunk that John Marvel remembered that the exhaust system on the Audi TT had not yet been checked.

But by then, it didn’t seem that important.

Edie Evans cried without tears. She made the face and a tiny humming sound. She hoped her body’s own memory might muster some moisture to ease the gritty blinking of her lids. When it didn’t, she closed her eyes instead to keep them from turning to little husks in their sockets.

Her bed floated in the dark.

The escape hatch that had invited her through the wall and into the blackness had repeated and widened in inexorable loops as she passed slowly into the beyond, until the walls were dark with escape.

There was nothing left now of Edie’s bedroom and books and Peter the mouse, and there was nothing left of the crayons but what was under her nails. Every last sliver of brown-blue-black wax had been pressed against the cement with her thumb; every bumpy smear had obliterated her life, and opened her eyes to other possibilities.

The view of the garden had been the last thing to go.

She missed it.

She
missed
it.

Now, as Edie lay curled and crisping on the bed, her hand flinched with independent desire to reach up and scratch away the dark wax and to uncover that memory once more.

She tightened her fist to keep it by her side.

Her past was gone, and trying to find it again would only make this harder.

Now Edie prepared to accept her future.

ANNA AND JAMES
Buck had breakfast together the next morning for the first time since Daniel had disappeared.

Neither of them ate, although Anna made toast, but they sat at the table with mugs of tea and sipped them together, bonded by a tragedy that was even more immediate than the loss of their son.

‘What will you do today?’ said Anna.

James shrugged. ‘As much as I can, I suppose. Brian’s sure to be back soon. His wife will bail him out.’

She nodded. ‘Poor Ang,’ she said.

James nodded. ‘I wish I knew where to send his stuff.’

Ang’s possessions lay on the table between them. The story cloth, a wire horse in the making, a carved wooden mask with small mouth, big teeth and wide eyes. The bottle of Goal.

Anna slowly unwound the cloth.

‘He told me his mother made that,’ said James.

Anna ran her finger over the raised stitching, tracing the whorls of petals and the spiral shells of snails. She bit her lip and said, ‘Now she’ll never know what happened to him.’

James reached out and touched the back of Anna’s hand.

After a moment, she turned it over so he could hold it.

DCI John Marvel (susp.) woke with a mouth like an old sock.

He was still on the rug in front of the TV, and that gummy mark was still on the screen.

Debbie had known it would drive him crazy. That’s why she’d done it, of course.

He smelled vomit and turned his head to look at the rug on either side of him, then realized it was him. He was still wearing his coat.

He rolled on to his side with the intention of rising, and winced as something in his pocket dug hard into his left buttock. He got unsteadily to all fours and, from there, to his knees.

His head was a medicine ball full of bees.

He needed a drink.