The Shut Eye (7 page)

She turned to Sandra. ‘What was he on TV for?’

Sandra dabbed tea from the corner of her mouth with the same tissue with which she’d blown her nose. It couldn’t be hygienic; Anna moved the buggy away from her.

‘He helped the police on a missing-persons case.’

Anna’s heart lurched.

‘A girl called Edie Evans,’ Sandra went on. ‘They found her bike all mangled somewhere over in Bromley. It was a year or so ago. Do you remember?’

Anna shook her head slowly and her ears thrummed with blood. She felt drunk, yet more alert than she’d ever been in her life. So alert that she felt the tiny soft hairs on the edges of her ears tingle in anticipation.

‘Did they … did they ever find her?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘But they didn’t find her …
body
?’

‘Oh no, I’d have remembered that.’

Anna put her hand over her heart and felt it pulsing crazily under the skin.

‘Sandra, is your dog dead?’ The words spilled out of her so urgently that she wasn’t even sure they were in the right order.

Is Sandra dog your dead?

‘Oh no!’ said Sandra. ‘Just lost! And Richard says she’ll be home very, very soon!’

Something expanded so fast in Anna’s chest that it took her breath away. It was a magical bubble that left her dizzy and tearful with forgotten joy.

This was why she was here!

This
was the reason she’d left the safety of the flat and brought the baby out into the filth of a London night.
This
was why she’d ventured past the footprints on the edge of the cement. Not to speak to the dead, but for this!

For something Anna thought had been lost to her for ever.

For hope.

THE BODY WAS
small but it wasn’t light.

He dragged it and lifted it and dragged it some more.

The dragging felt wrong. Not only because his hands were sweaty and kept slipping from around the narrow wrists, but because there was no dignity in it. Not for him, and not for the corpse.

He picked it up and carried it.

He tried to be kind to it.

That’s all he’d ever tried to be. And if he had failed in life then it didn’t mean he couldn’t try to make amends in death. They were not separate things; he had lived with the dead for most of his life and understood that. Just because a body no longer contained a spirit, it didn’t mean it should be treated with anything less than kindness and respect.

Even while he was trying to push it up and over the high railings.

He should have wrapped it in something. It was too late now. One loose fist swung gently as he struggled. He clenched his teeth. Sweat and summer rain ran into his eyes as he heaved.

His back cried out; his arms ached. He could feel the muscles stretching, trembling and starting to wobble.

The chiding fist bumped his cheek, reminding him, reminding him, reminding him.

He dropped the body.

It landed awkwardly in the damp grit, face down, and with the head twisted to the side under one hunched shoulder. The bare soles of the small feet glowing pale orange under the single streetlamp.

It was too hard. It was too horrible.

He started to cry.

He had failed the living and now he was failing the dead.

The rain on his face was swollen by sweat and then by tears and finally by snot as it ran down his cheeks, over his lips and into his mouth in a salty flash-flood of shame.

Eventually, he sighed and wiped his eyes on the damp sleeve of his shirt.

Then he bent and embraced the body one more time.

‘CHURCH?’ JAMES FROWNED
up at the ceiling.

Neither of them had ever been to church. After Daniel had disappeared—

because you left the door open

—a priest had come round anyway, and asked if he could help.

Yes
, Anna had said.
You can post these flyers through every letter box on Northborough Road.

She’d held them out angrily, and the priest had taken them and smiled and said
of course
– as if he was asked to deliver flyers all the time.

And he’d done it, too.

As far as James knew it was the only time either of them had ever spoken to a man of the cloth.

‘What church?’ he said.

‘The one on the bridge.’

‘There’s a church there?’

‘It’s like a hall. But it’s a church.’

‘Oh.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Are you going again?’

‘Yes.’

He lay in silence for a moment, then got out of bed and started to dress.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said.

He sat on the edge of the bed to put on his socks. ‘You don’t go out for months and the first place you decide to go is a church?’

‘I went for Daniel,’ said Anna.

James got up and took his T-shirt off the floor and pulled it over his head.

‘I went for
us
.’

He snorted. ‘Leave me out of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Leave me out of it,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t need you to go to church for me.’

‘But it’s not—’

‘I don’t care what it’s
not
,’ he said, suddenly angry, ‘I care what it
is
. And it’s the last thing we need right now. Or any time.’

Anna propped herself up on one elbow and watched him. James yanked open the wardrobe and started throwing random things at the bin bag in the corner that they used as a laundry hamper.

‘What happened to your hands?’ she said.

‘Nothing.’

‘They’re all swollen.’

He didn’t answer her. Kept throwing clothes she knew were clean across the room.

Anna picked at the edge of the duvet. ‘We all need hope,’ she said softly.

‘
I
don’t,’ he snapped, and looked at her properly for the first time that morning. ‘I don’t need the kind of hope that’s peddled by a church, Anna.’

He balled up a pair of jeans and hurled it hard at the bag. ‘Shit!’

Then he turned on her angrily. ‘And I tell you what else I don’t need. I don’t need you sitting in the street like a crazy old monk. I don’t need bloody refugees feeling sorry for me. I don’t need the constant cleaning the house, and the stripping off and the taking off my boots in the hallway, and the guilt! And the no sex! And that
fucking baby
!’

Anna flinched. His face was in hers; the tendons stood out in his neck.

He might hit her.

He didn’t.

He stood up straight. ‘And the last thing I need is for you get all
religious
on me.’

‘It’s not—’

‘Where was that bastard when Daniel disappeared? Eh? Where is he now?
Nowhere
. That’s where God is. Not in a church, not in this house, not with us, and not with Daniel! Just. Fucking.
Nowhere
.’

‘It’s not about God,’ she whispered.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Don’t make it.’ He slammed the bedroom door so hard behind him that old paint flecked off the frame and spun silently to the floor.

Anna let out a trembling breath and lay back down. The bed had cooled.

It was a long time since it had been hot.

‘
HAVE A SEAT
, Chief Inspector.’

Marvel knew something was wrong right there and then. Superintendent Robert Clyde was a taciturn man and Marvel could match him, monosyllable for monosyllable. Usually their interactions took place only in passing unless they were critical to a case. Even then, Marvel always stood and updated the super from somewhere near the doorway, a distance they both apparently found comfortable.

He had never before been offered a seat in his office.

He went in and saw it from a new perspective. It wasn’t much of an office – just a cubbyhole with a door, a desk, two chairs and a grubby little window that looked down on the roof of the Happy Kebabby next door. It explained why the super’s office often smelled of old lamb.

He scowled and sat down in a stained chair.

From here he had a close-up of a wooden plaque on Clyde’s desk, which from the door he’d always assumed was a name plate.

Now he saw it was a Bible quote.

‘I’m taking you off the Tanzi Anderson case.’

‘What?’ Marvel bristled. Being taken off a case he was almost sure to solve was a kick in the teeth. ‘What for, sir?’

‘Scanlon can handle it. It’s a no-brainer.’

Both of those things were true, but they hadn’t answered Marvel’s question, so he didn’t ask another one – just let the first one hang there.

Waiting.

‘I need you on another case,’ Clyde said finally, but he glanced past Marvel’s shoulder as he spoke.

Immediately Marvel knew two things. One: that it was not a murder case, and two: that Clyde was embarrassed to be asking.

The first thing was bad. But the second was good.

Really good.

Superintendent Clyde was a cold fish and Marvel could respect that quality, but ever since he had been transferred to Lewisham last Christmas to replace Superintendent Jeffries, it had been hard for Marvel to find a chink in the man’s armour.

And DI Marvel loved a chink. It was his unshakeable view that everybody had a flaw in their make-up that allowed leverage to be exerted, and he liked to think he had a knack of identifying those weaknesses, those tiny human failings, that would give him the upper hand in any relationship. It was often race or affairs or homosexuality, but Marvel preferred the less obvious.

Less actionable …

Like Craig Reilly, one of G Team’s DCs. He had a disabled son and was always begging for time off for doctors’ appointments, which meant that when he was at work, Marvel could give him the shittiest jobs with the longest hours, without fear of complaint. And Detective Sergeant Brady’s chink was Argentinians. Colin Brady’s father had been in the Falklands War and had taken Port Stanley – pretty much single-handedly, if his son were to be believed. Now, thirty-five years on, Brady still fumed about Maradonna’s Hand of God goal every time
Match of the Day
came on, and his wife was banned from playing the soundtrack album to
Evita
, even through headphones. Argentinians – or anyone he suspected might be Argentinian – made DS Brady lose all reason, and he had to be steered away from them.

Or towards them, if Marvel thought it might be useful …

Oh, what a circus.

Everybody had
something
that Marvel could exploit to his own end.

Superintendent Clyde, on the other hand, had so far appeared to be chink-free. But now that he was looking unsure about this other case, Marvel’s antennae twitched.

‘Is it a murder case, sir?’

‘Um,’ said Clyde, and Marvel sat up straighter. ‘No,’ the super continued carefully, ‘a disappearance.’ He handed Marvel a photograph of a buxom blonde woman with too much lipstick, sitting on a sofa.

‘What’s her name?’ Marvel asked.

‘Mitzi.’

‘Mitzi what?’

‘Just Mitzi,’ said Clyde. ‘It’s the dog that’s missing.’

‘The
dog
?’

Marvel looked again at the photo. The blonde woman had a poodle on her lap. It was small and pale ginger and had a pink bow on the top of its head.

‘My wife’s dog,’ added Clyde, as if it made all the difference.

Which it did, of course, thought Marvel, with a little bud of anger unfurling in his chest.

Clyde was pulling him off a murder case to look for a lost dog.

Shit
, he thought.
You shit
.

He was a murder detective, not a cub scout. What next? Would Superintendent Clyde have him shinning up trees to rescue cats? Opening a hedgehog hospital? Marvel didn’t even like animals –
any
animals – and dogs, especially small fluffy ones with bows on their heads, were his most un-favourite animals of all.

He cleared his throat. ‘And this is your wife, sir?’

‘Yes,’ said Clyde, looking uncomfortable at having to admit to something as human as a wife. ‘Sandra.’

Marvel nodded while his mind worked overtime to find the leverage.

‘The dog disappeared in the park,’ said Clyde. ‘While my wife was talking to a friend.’

‘I see,’ said Marvel. ‘So is there a lead attached to it?’

‘No.’

Marvel nodded at the photo. ‘Collar?’

‘No.’

‘
Micro
chip?’

‘No.’ Clyde cleared his throat and made a stab at being in charge. ‘Listen, John,’ he said, and Marvel cringed inwardly at the use of his first name. It made him think of Debbie and his mother in the same mental breath, which was just
wrong
.

‘Listen John, I know it’s a bit out of the ordinary, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. So I thought I’d put my best man on it, get it sorted and get it over with.’

My best man.
That stung like a salted slug. You didn’t put your best man on the trail of a lost poodle.

Marvel had to resist a sudden childish urge to tear the photograph into small pieces and toss them over his shoulder.

Next …

Instead he stared at the photo of the wife and the dog, hoping for divine inspiration that might absolve him from the task at hand. He could call down the rule book, he could call down his value to the South East’s G Team, he could call down the murder of Tanzi Anderson, or any one of his unsolved cases. He could even call down Edie Evans on her Apollo 11 BMX. He should. He should call them
all
down and nip this bollocks in the bud right here, right now.

The dingy little office reverberated with tense silence. If Superintendent Clyde had had an ounce of pride he would have told Marvel it was all a joke, and he’d almost had him. But what he actually said was, ‘Listen, John, she’s driving me mad about the dog. Day and bloody night. She’s even been to see a bloody psychic.’

Marvel almost laughed. A wife. A poodle. And now a
psychic
! Out of nowhere, there was so much leverage in this that it would almost be criminal not to exploit it.

Marvel wondered just how much he could get out of it.