‘Fuck off!’ said Marvel. He stood up furiously. Brady looked up at him in surprise, then he stood too, with a forkful of carrot cake in his hand.
Marvel jabbed an angry finger across the table, making Latham flinch. ‘I’ll find out what happened to Edie without your so-called help.’ He turned, then remembered: ‘And you can stop tapping Sandra Clyde for cash, too, because her dog was returned to her this morning, no thanks to you!’
Latham gave Marvel a sanctimonious smile. ‘Isn’t the important thing that she has her dog back?’
‘To her, maybe. Not to me.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be unsurprised to hear it.’
‘And I’m sure you’ll be giving her a refund on her donations to the church bloody roof.’
Latham raised his brows mysteriously. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Maybe, in the future, I already have.’
‘You piece of—’
‘Are these gentlemen bothering you, Richard?’ Two middle-aged ladies were suddenly at the table. One was thin, the other was dumpy, but both had faux fezzes over their wispy grey hair, little round glasses, and the redoubtable self-confidence bestowed upon them by an M&S uniform and a reserve army of beige back-ups.
‘Yes,’ said Latham. ‘Actually they are.’
‘Time to go, I think, sir,’ said the dumpy one, holding out her arms to usher Marvel out.
‘I’m a police officer,’ he protested.
‘Well then, sir, you should know better.’
If she’d been a man Marvel could have hit her, but what could he do with an old woman who barely reached his armpit?
Nothing but obey.
‘Come on, Brady,’ he said.
They’d only taken a couple of paces away from the table when Latham called out, ‘Sergeant Brady?’
They stopped and turned around. Latham was looking at Colin Brady with an earnest expression on his face.
‘There’ll be complications when your wife gives birth. You’ll be worried the baby’s going to die, but it won’t; it will be just fine.’
Brady gave a hollow laugh. ‘I’ve had the snip, mate. Shows how much you know!’
‘Oh,’ said Latham. He frowned – and then gave the smallest of smiles. ‘In that case, maybe you could give my message to your milkman.’
Marvel swore and started towards him, but the dumpy woman said, ‘Now, now, sticks and stones and all that,’ and – somehow – herded them both out of the café and into Menswear.
‘Bastard,’ said Brady.
‘Fucking bastard,’ said Marvel.
They strode past the fey white mannequins with their gilets and their man-bags, and out to the car park.
Marvel fumed, ‘Did you see his face when he saw that photo?’
‘Yeah,’ said Brady.
‘White as a sheet. Then he tries to say he doesn’t recognize her.’
‘Yeah,’ said Brady.
‘Bloody fake. Preying on the weak and vulnerable.’
‘Funny about that garden thing, though.’
‘Not if Latham told Mrs Buck about it.’
‘Yeah,’ said Brady. ‘But if he didn’t.’
Marvel gave a dismissive snort and stormed through the car park while Brady hurried to keep up. But the question did nag at him. What if Latham hadn’t told Anna Buck about the garden? Where did that leave them?
Nowhere he felt comfortable being …
‘Maybe he hypnotized her or some crap,’ he thought out loud. ‘He was on TV. You know what those pricks are like.’
‘Yeah,’ said Brady thoughtfully. ‘You think he meant that about the milkman?’
‘Course not,’ said Marvel. ‘He’s just winding you up.’
The pink bumper sticker made Marvel’s car easy to spot. ‘Bloody thing,’ he said, and slapped the Edie Evans file against Brady’s chest. He squatted behind the BMW and picked at one corner of the sticker. ‘He’s a fake, no question,’ he went on. ‘But he’s hiding something else.’
‘What?’ said Brady.
‘I don’t know,’ said Marvel. ‘But I’m going to find out.’
He yanked off the sticker with a single Elastoplastic rip.
The paint came off with it.
When Marvel got back to the station, Emily Aguda deepened his bad mood by telling him that last year’s Beckenham dog show had been held on 14 September.
‘Impossible,’ said Marvel. ‘Edie was abducted on January twelfth.’
‘I checked with Mrs Clyde—’
Marvel waved that away dismissively. ‘Mrs Clyde doesn’t know whether she’s Arthur or bloody Martha.’
‘Mmm.’ Aguda pursed her lips diplomatically and read from her notebook. ‘So then I spoke to the show secretary. There was a show in April last year and another in September, but the April one was indoors.’
‘I don’t care if it was indoors or outdoors,’ said Marvel. ‘She couldn’t have been at either. It must have been held earlier than that.’
Aguda looked puzzled.
‘Check again,’ he told her. ‘Get it right.’
24
WHEN ANNA GOT home, James was in the nursery with Daniel’s red dungarees in his hand.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Putting these away. Where have you been?’
Anna took the dungarees from him and went to the chest of drawers. ‘They were already away.’
‘No they weren’t; they were on the bed.’
He was lying. She never left them out. Before she laid them in the bottom drawer with the rest of his clothes, Anna pressed them to her face – to her nose. They still smelled faintly of Daniel. That was why she never washed them. The only thing in the flat she hadn’t washed and scrubbed and washed again. She’d have to wash the baby’s clothes now, after what that woman did to him, and the blanket that had fallen on the floor. And his bedding; and their bedding and everything— ‘Where have you been?’
‘The police station.’
‘What for?’
‘I thought I could help someone who’d lost their dog.’
‘A lost dog? How?’
Anna hesitated, but she was not a liar; she’d never seen the point, when the truth was so much simpler to remember.
‘I had a vision,’ she said. ‘I looked at a photograph of the dog and I had a vision.’