The Shut Eye (8 page)

As much as a promotion?

He’d only been a Chief Inspector for a couple of years, so it would be unusual to climb another rung of the ladder so soon. But not unheard of. And not unwelcome, now he thought about it. His knees were starting to play up. And the thought of controlling a whole room of murder detectives – of having his finger in every pie – appealed to him. Not to mention getting more money and a fatter pension to sit on his arse behind a desk all day.

Promotion was like committing a crime. You needed means, motive and opportunity, and although Marvel reckoned he’d always have the means and the motivation, opportunity didn’t always knock exactly when you needed it to. But it was knocking now, and he’d probably never get a simpler crack at promotion.

Marvel had no illusions about his chances of promotion to superintendent – or his suitability. He wasn’t a political animal, and knew he’d never be the first-choice candidate. DCI Lloyd would be the arse-creeper at the head of that queue, all things being equal.

But in life all things were rarely equal, and the Metropolitan police force was no exception. Very often, what was more important was a nod and a wink, and friends in high places.

The superintendent was in a high place.

And the psychic was the bow on the gift-wrapped, lever-shaped parcel he’d just been handed by his new friend, who was suddenly looking chinkier than chain mail.

‘I see your problem, sir,’ he nodded sympathetically.

In the face of such sympathy, Clyde’s superintendent-of-police façade momentarily slipped and his real, haggard, haunted face was briefly revealed. ‘I’ll not get any peace until that dog’s found, John. Until it is, my life is going to be an utter bloody misery.’

Then, with a reverberating sigh, he looked Marvel straight in the eyes and added, ‘I’d be very grateful.’

And – only because he was
absolutely sure
that that was true – Marvel nodded eagerly and said, ‘Don’t worry, sir, I’ll find it.’

ANNA BUCK WAS
on a mission.

Often, after James left for work, she would slide back into sleep. That oblivion was such a temptation to her that sometimes the sound of a child crying was the only thing that could rouse her. Occasionally – in that netherworld between dreams and misery – the crying sounded so like Daniel that she would wake up, run into his room and stand there, naked and shaking beside his empty bed, as brutal reality slowly reclaimed her. It was a car horn, an ice-cream van, the garage radio, or a dog wailing mournfully for its owner gone to work.

But today Anna swung her legs from under the duvet before sleep could reclaim her, quickly pulled on yesterday’s clothes and changed and fed Charlie with an unaccustomed air of urgency.

The gas meter was in the cupboard under the stairs. On top of it was a short stack of 50p coins. The meter was secured with a padlock but they never locked it because it was just them in the house. The landlord, Brian Pigeon, kept spares in the ground-floor rooms – boxes and boxes and boxes. He had a spare front-door key but rarely came in.

Anna twisted the padlock out of the metal loops on the meter and pulled open the little drawer, counting out the money in the sickly yellow glow of a low-wattage bulb.

Thirty-two pounds. Not as much as she’d hoped.

She couldn’t take it all, either. But she could turn off the heating, wear more jumpers, put another blanket on the baby. It would be warmer soon. Soon
ish
. Maybe by the time the meter was read and the bill came in, she could have reduced their consumption so much that the shortfall would be negligible.

Or maybe by the time the meter was read and the bill came in, Daniel would be home and they wouldn’t give a shit about being able to pay the gas bill – or about anything else that might ever go wrong in their lives again.

She wondered how much Richard Latham charged for a consultation. She couldn’t begin to imagine what something like that would cost. A token? Or a fortune? She should have asked.

She took twenty-five pounds. Fifty big coins bulging in her pockets and fists. It felt like a lot.

In the kitchen she put the coins in an old carrier bag and left it on the counter top. It gave her a thrill to look at it, sitting there, waiting to change their lives like a pouch of gold coins in a fairy tale. She thought about a beanstalk stretching from this world to the next – connecting the two, allowing passage between them.

She decided to have a cup of tea and think about what Richard Latham might tell her. She didn’t often entertain fantasies about Daniel’s return because it was too painful when they ended. But this felt different, exciting, and she decided to indulge herself just for five minutes, before cleaning the flat.

As she filled the kettle at the kitchen sink, she peered out on to the footprints – five dark smudges across the corner of the yellow-grey forecourt. Her lips tightened as a boy in baggy jeans rode his bike over them. There was nothing she could do about things like that. Nothing. Not without a bazooka.

She wished she could build a barrier around the prints, or stay out there all day guarding them, but she had the house to clean. And a new baby to look after, of course.

Charlie grizzled in his cot and she called through to him in a soft, sing-song voice.
Hey Charlie … Hey Charlie Barley … Mummy’s here, baby … Mummy’s right here …

But today it felt automatic, and she had no desire to go through and pick him up and feel the weight of him, safe in her arms. Going nowhere.

Instead she sipped her tea quickly at the kitchen window. As she did, she reached into the pouch of her hoodie to get the elastic that she used to keep her hair off her face while she worked. She took it out, along with a piece of white card with a phone number on it.

It was only when she turned it over that Anna realized it was the photo of Sandra and her dog, Mitzi.

She studied the photo. Sandra’s dark roots were showing a bit in the picture, but her make-up was perfect. A long time ago, perfect make-up was something Anna cared about. She used to get free samples at work and try out different ‘looks’. Hours in front of the mirror applying Cleopatra eyeliner, dabbing at kohl with a makeup sponge, lining her lips so they seemed fuller than they really were.

Often while Daniel played on the floor behind her with bricks or books.

Entertaining himself while she stared at her own stupid face.

It made her clammy with shame.

She put the photo down on the counter and stared out of the kitchen window on to a beautiful garden with curved beds, filled with wrong flowers and not-right shrubs against a backdrop of fuzzy trees.

She blinked, and it was gone.

Before she could even think about how odd that had been, Anna was overtaken by a desperate need for water. Tea was not enough. She leaned over and turned on the tap so hard that water ricocheted off the sink and sprayed across her T-shirt. Anna didn’t care; she was so dry! No time for a glass or a mug or even a cupped hand. She twisted her head under the flow and gulped at the water that hammered out of the spout, greedily sucking it down, as it overflowed and ran into her hair and her ear.

Once, when Anna was four or five, her mother had bought her a paper lily that was packed tight into a tiny plastic bubble only an inch across. They had run a sinkful of water and dropped the little pink knot into it and watched it magically uncurl and blossom into a wonderful flower nearly a foot wide. Anna thought of it now for the first time in years, as she felt the water race through her body like an electrical current, making her alive again, when she had been dry and dead and tightly packed.

After a few moments she straightened up a little unsteadily. Her hair dripped on to her shoulders and she felt lightheaded and foolish.

She should eat something. She had to think hard about what she had eaten – or when – before the two biscuits at the church last night. She got all the way back to a boiled egg for lunch on Thursday. Had she drunk anything since then? She must have. But she couldn’t think when.

No wonder she was hallucinating!

Anna took a slice of bread from the loaf in the fridge, and made toast and another cup of tea.

She needed to take care of herself. She needed to be here when Daniel came home.

‘
WOULD YOU LIKE
a cup of tea, Chief Inspector? And a piece of cake?’

Marvel looked up from the pink velour sofa and confirmed the order, and Sandra Clyde bustled off to the kitchen.

So, this was where the super lived.

Marvel looked around and mentally snorted. Even though Clyde was probably in his mid fifties – only ten years older than him – he lived in the house of an old fart.

There were lace cloths on the side tables and antimacassars on the backs of the chairs, and a plastic runner in the hallway to protect the carpet. There were photos of babies that Marvel assumed were grandchildren, and of adults he assumed were children, doing expensive things like skiing and climbing that place in Peru with all the bloody steps. There were crap trinkets from foreign holidays – a bon-bon dish shaped like a sombrero, and a bull’s pizzle twisted into something disgusting you could hang on the wall.

The sofa was pink, the carpet was pink, the wallpaper was maroon – which was just dark pink really. Marvel suddenly wondered why it was that men allowed women to control the way their homes looked. Now that he thought about it, when Debbie had moved in, his stuff had started to move out. His sofa had been the very first thing to go. Marvel had spent many a long, happy night on that sagging dark-blue corduroy, sipping whisky at one end, his feet wearing a hole in the arm at the other, all the while berating the England cricket team as they lost to the Aussies on Sky Sports. Then, within days of Debbie moving in, it had been replaced by a blocky cream-leather Habitat couch. Debbie said it was retro, which meant you couldn’t put your feet on it.

Then he’d found his lung ashtray in a box she was taking to charity. She’d said it was a mistake and he’d taken it to work for safekeeping. And then, on the night he’d stopped on Bickley Bridge, he’d come home to find his Jameson bar towel collection had disappeared from the coffee table, in favour of two red candles and a pale chunk of pink rock on an ornate wooden stand.

‘Rose quartz opens the heart chakra,’ she had told him, embarrassingly.

‘Interesting,’ he’d said. ‘Where are my bar towels?

‘Under the sink. I hope that’s OK.’

Marvel had stayed quiet while she’d bent and lit the candles, even though she was right in the way of San Marino versus Belgium.

And then he’d said, ‘What’s that smell?’

‘What smell?’

‘Like a hippy’s armpit.’

‘Patchouli,’ she’d said, looking crushed.

‘Why?’ he’d asked. ‘Are we smoking pot now?’

Debbie’s heart chakra must have snapped shut at that point, because they hadn’t had sex that night or for several nights afterwards, which was a shame because Debbie was surprisingly uninhibited in bed.

A while later he’d realized it had been Valentine’s Day.

He’d have to make it up to her next year.

Sandra Clyde brought tea in a pot on a tray, delicate china cups and a slab of Victoria sponge that would have choked a carthorse.

Marvel felt more cultured just holding a cup and saucer. More sensible. Older.

Closer to death.

Sandra sat down in the wing chair opposite and looked expectant. It reminded Marvel that there was no such thing as free cake.

‘Any news?’ she said – as if he would have kept it from her if he had found Muttley already.

No, not Muttley. Mindy.

Not Mindy.

Something
like
Mindy.

Morky.

No.

Marty, Mandy, Monkey, Mopsy. Shit, he’d forgotten the name of the bloody thing now.

He shook his head. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. But it’s early days.’

‘Mitzi’s been gone for five weeks,’ said Sandra a little reproachfully.

‘Early days for the official investigation,’ soothed Marvel. He took out his notebook and wrote MITZI in big letters on the first blank page so that he wouldn’t forget it again. Then Sandra told him everything she’d done to try to find the dog since she’d disappeared in the park. She’d printed photos and flyers and bumper stickers; she’d got her grandson to upload Mitzi’s picture to the internet; she’d put cards in newsagents’ windows, and offered a reward.

‘Reward?’

‘A thousand pounds,’ she nodded. ‘No questions asked.’

Marvel tutted. ‘We don’t encourage that,’ he said. ‘In fact, we don’t approve of it at all. I’m surprised the super allowed it.’

‘You don’t approve of offering a reward?’

‘Saying “no questions asked”,’ said Marvel. ‘It confuses the investigation and could be seen as an obstruction of justice.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How many calls have you had about Mitzi since putting up the cards?’

‘Oh, lots. Everyone wants to help.’

‘A thousand quid buys a lot of so-called help,’ said Marvel. ‘Especially when there are no questions asked. If the dog was nicked, then the criminals feel safer about bringing it back for the reward because they reckon you won’t be calling the police, you see?’

Sandra got all flustered at that and Marvel put up a hand to wave the issue away. ‘What’s done is done. We’ll let it go.’

‘Thank you
very
much, Chief Inspector,’ she said.

‘No problem,’ said Marvel magnanimously. He filed it away though, for future reference. It was minor, but minor things could become major things – especially for people in positions of responsibility. Like police superintendents. What kind of police officer wouldn’t ask questions? It would be a dereliction of duty not to ask questions!

‘Now,’ he said seriously, ‘I understand you’ve consulted a psychic?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sandra. ‘He’s been very helpful too.’

‘Has he found Mitzi?’

‘Well, no. Not yet.’

‘Then he hasn’t been that helpful, has he?’ said Marvel.

‘Well, he
has
,’ said Sandra, a little defensively. ‘He’s told me not to give up hope and that Mitzi will be home soon.’