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.
10
‘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.
It is time for the Lord to act,
For your law has been broken.
‘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.