In all this weirdness, the blanket was the only thing that made Edie really uneasy.
Since she’d been a little girl, Edie had read hundreds of books and watched dozens of films and TV shows about space. She knew that the first spacemen were fruit-flies and monkeys and a dog called Laika; she knew that Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the Moon, and that Buzz Aldrin was the second and that Michael Collins had stayed in the getaway car. That’s what Dad always said. They got dropped off on the Moon and he stayed in the car for a quick getaway. She knew about Sally Ride and Helen Sharman and satellites and Hubble and the rings of Saturn. She knew that the sun was really a star and that all the other stars were so far away that it would take her years and years to get there, even if she went in a beam of light, like a speck.
Alongside all the real stuff, Edie knew all about Vulcans and Jedis and Close Encounters. She knew about their light sabres and mind melds and the metal chips they put in your head so they always knew how to find you again. And even though that stuff wasn’t real, maybe one day it would be – or already was, on another planet.
So there wasn’t much Edie Evans didn’t know about aliens.
And she was pretty sure that they didn’t have itchy blankets.
Edie started to worry then, started to be afraid that she had been taken by a human being, and for another reason entirely.
She knew about those things too.
But before that fear could properly dig its claws into Edie’s fertile imagination, a light went on – and an alien walked into the room.
21
MARVEL GOT ANNA Buck a cup of tea from the machine. This time he made sure it was tea, because that’s what she had asked for.
‘Thank you,’ she said softly when he put it on the desk in front of her.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
Marvel had brought Aguda into the room with them. Partly because she was a woman, which might be useful, and partly because he was grudgingly impressed by the way she’d handled things so far. Handled herself and handled other people.
Even hanging up on him made sense now, with the benefit of hindsight.
Aguda spoke carefully to Anna. ‘Do you want me to call someone to come and fetch the … baby?’
Anna hesitated, then shook her head and looked at the table top. ‘I don’t trust James,’ she said. ‘Not with children.’
Aguda shot a quizzical glance at Marvel, who sat down opposite Anna, wincing at the pain in his knee and his groin.
Like everything else on this case, he wasn’t sure where to start. He wasn’t even sure which case he was working on.
Did Anna Buck know that Edie Evans was in the photo of Sandra and Mitzi? Was she a dumb stooge in the opening gambit of a cruel negotiation? Or an unlikely mastermind? Each option had a million implications and permutations – all built on the bizarre quicksand of a five-by-seven snapshot carried into his world by a crazy woman and her phony baby.
Whatever the answer, Marvel needed to know what the hell was going on. And if that meant being all touchy-feely with a nutcase while he found out what she had to tell him, then he was prepared to do it.
For Edie Evans.
The photograph lay on the table between them, starting to curl at the edges now that it was drying out.
‘This photo …’ Marvel started, then looked at the picture and stopped.
Every time he saw it, it hit him again.
Edie was the third person along, behind the blue rope. Her face was turned away from the camera, and even if it hadn’t been, it would have been too blurred to be identified as anything more than a girl by almost anybody else.
But Marvel knew it was her. He’d spent a year learning Edie Evans. A year learning her shape. The way she stood. How her hair hung, pushed behind that one sticky-out ear. He knew her like a parent, with his gut. And when he’d studied the photo more closely, the strange, abstract, angular thing glimpsed between the hazy legs of the people had suddenly become Edie’s bicycle – lying in the grass behind her.
It had almost brought tears to his eyes to see it there.
He thought he had exhausted the evidence in the Edie Evans case. He’d been over it so often he knew it by heart. It had become meaningless with repetition.
But this was new.
Out of nowhere – a tiny spark that might illuminate everything.
And it had come in a photo of Sandra Clyde and her lost poodle, Mitzi.
John Marvel didn’t believe in coincidence any more than he believed in global warming, and the convergence of the two cases made him deeply suspicious.
But it also made him feel like the very start of being drunk: foolish and disorientated.
‘Tell me about this photo.’
‘It’s of this woman, Sandra, and her dog.’
‘Do you recognize anyone else in the picture?’
She frowned. ‘There isn’t anyone else in the picture.’
‘Do you know where it was taken?’
‘No.’
‘Or when?’
‘No.’
‘And where did you get it?’
‘From Sandra. A few weeks ago. At the church.’
‘Did you speak to anybody about it?’
‘No.’
‘Nobody from the church?’
‘About the photo? No.’
Aguda interrupted:. ‘May I see it, sir?’
Marvel nodded and she slid the photo across the table and bent closely over it.
He turned his attention back to Anna Buck. ‘You called Sandra earlier today. Why?’
She shrugged. ‘I told you already. On the phone. It sounds stupid now.’
‘Tell me again.’
There was a long, reluctant silence before Anna said haltingly, ‘I saw … things. Because of the photo. I think I did, anyway. I wanted to see if they meant anything to her, in case it would help her to find her dog, because my son—’
She stopped and swallowed, then went on, ‘My son, Daniel, he’s missing too.’
‘Daniel Buck.’