She nodded.
Marvel knew of the case. He and DCI Lloyd over in Serious Crime had compared notes briefly a few months before, but the two cases hadn’t had anything in common apart from vague geography. One boy, one girl; one toddler, one twelve-year-old; one who’d run out of a door left open, the other the victim of what looked like a planned abduction and possible foul play. A few miles wasn’t all that separated the cases.
Anna nodded and went on, ‘I suppose I thought – I hoped – that helping her … I mean, if I helped her, maybe … somehow, someone would help me find Daniel too. Do you see?’
She looked at him with such hope and sincerity that Marvel found himself nodding in ridiculous agreement. ‘What goes around comes around,’ he said.
‘Exactly!’ She smiled, and when she did, Anna Buck’s face lit up, as if from within. ‘Exactly that. What goes around. Like karma, you know? I wasn’t trying to interfere or … or … obstruct anyone. I was only trying to help find the dog, in case someone could help me …’
She tailed off into silence and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
Marvel sighed. ‘The dog’s back home,’ he said. ‘It was returned this morning.’
Marvel had been driving to work when Sandra Clyde called to say Mitzi was home.
‘I just opened the door and there she was! And she jumped into my arms and gave me a million kisses and then went running, running, running round the house and the garden and her bowl and her little green monkey! So happy, weren’t you, baby girl? Who’s mummy’s Mitzi Mitzi Moo-moo? Hmmm? Who’s mummy’s—’
‘Who found her?’ Marvel interrupted.
‘A boy!’ said Sandra. ‘A dear, sweet little boy! He had her on a lead made from his school tie! It was like something out of Just William! I just opened the door and he said, Is this your dog? and I said, Yes, it is! I’ve been looking everywhere for her! and I kissed him and I kissed Mitzi. I think he was quite embarrassed, poor child!’
‘How did he know where you lived?’
‘He said he just knocked on doors and someone recognized Mitzi from one of the photos I’d given out. I put them through hundreds of doors, you know.’
Marvel knew that. He also knew it meant the dog wasn’t home because of anything he’d done. That was bad news. How could Superintendent Clyde be very grateful to him now that some random brat had returned the bloody dog because of the efforts of his wife?
If that was what had happened.
Marvel’s natural suspicion stirred in his belly. How could he find out? He needed to regain his lost leverage. His mind darted about, feeling for a chink.
‘Don’t pay the reward yet, Mrs Clyde.’
There was a stuttering break in her stream of doggy consciousness and Marvel knew before she even said so that the reward money had already been paid. A thousand pounds. The idiot.
‘… He didn’t want to take it, of course,’ Sandra Clyde was babbling. ‘He was such a sweet boy. I had to make him, and then you should have seen his little face—’
‘Cheque or cash?’ he interrupted bluntly.
‘Cheque.’
‘So you have his name?’
‘Well, no. I mean he’s just a little boy, you see, so he doesn’t have a bank account and so I made it out to cash.’
Marvel swore under his breath and did a U-turn under a No U-turns sign, to a chorus of disapproving horns.
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ he told her roughly. ‘In the meantime, call your bank and put a stop on the cheque.’
‘Put a stop to it?’
‘Yes. Stop the cheque. Right now.’
He hung up on her before she could irritate him further.
The cheque would be stopped. The reward money would not be paid.
Even a guilty person would come back to find out what had happened …
And Marvel would be there when he did.
Anna Buck paled.
Now she looked Marvel steadily in the eye for the first time since they’d sat down.
‘What time this morning?’
‘Around seven thirty.’
‘Oh,’ Anna said softly, and looked away again. ‘That’s before …’
She trailed off, but her face was an open book. If there had been guilt and deception, Marvel believed he would have read it. There was neither. If anything, Anna looked embarrassed. With good reason, thought Marvel: Mitzi was safely back home before she’d had her so-called visions. Before she’d phoned Sandra Clyde. And long before she’d had a funny turn at the police station.
It all made her look pretty stupid.
‘I’m happy for Sandra,’ she said dully, then looked at him earnestly. ‘I really am.’
John Marvel nodded. He could see the bad in anyone, but he was having trouble with Anna Buck – and that uncertainty confused him. Mentally and physically, she looked smaller now, weaker and less connected. It might have been because her plan to extort money from Sandra Clyde had been thwarted. Or because her karmic leverage on the universe had disappeared the minute Mitzi had been found.
Just like his own.
His instinct was to pin her to the wall like a butterfly, pour scorn on her visions and force her to confess that she was just a scammer looking for an easy mark, foiled by a schoolboy sleuth.
But something stopped him and for a moment he was at a loss.
Then Aguda cleared her throat and made eye-contact. ‘Sir?’ She lowered her voice and he leaned in to look at what she was pointing out in the photo – the gold lettering printed on the ribbons of the rosette.
Marvel squinted and leaned back. He kept a magnifying glass in his desk drawer for small print, but he didn’t have it here.
‘What does it say?’ he asked testily.
‘Beckenham Show, 1999.’
‘Beckenham?’ Marvel frowned. Beckenham wasn’t far from Edie’s home. That made sense. ‘When was last year’s show held?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Marvel nodded and was about to let it go. It was minor; it was meaningless; it didn’t matter.
But it would get Aguda out of the room …
‘Go and find out, will you?’