Marvel pursed his lips and glared at the TV. It was about koala bears so he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to change channels. Debbie was crazy for koalas. They were her second-favourite TV animal behind meerkats. She’d sit for hours with her knees tucked to one side, a glass of rosé in her hand, watching the anthropomorphism of anything small and furry.
She was watching them now, and stroking Buster’s belly, while she was talking to Marvel. ‘And now you’ve fallen out with your boss,’ she said, ‘over something so silly.’
‘It’s not silly. Jesus Christ! It’s obstruction of justice. By a senior police officer!’
Debbie sipped her wine. ‘But it’s a very small obstruction.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
Marvel picked up the remote and started changing channels. ‘It’s not the size of the obstruction that matters. What matters is that there has been an obstruction at all. And that he knew that and allowed it to remain there! A copper’s job is to solve crimes, and to solve crimes you have to ask questions. If you don’t ask questions, criminals get away with crimes. Now do you understand?’
Debbie made a face and emptied her glass. ‘You’re just grumpy because we had hummus for tea.’
‘No, I’m grumpy because you’re so fucking stupid.’
There was a horrible silence and Marvel felt guilt crawling up his neck and behind his ears. But he couldn’t say sorry because he was right. Who couldn’t see that? She must be stupid not to.
Debbie said nothing. She watched the flickering television while her fingers moved gently back and forth over the coarse fur on the dog’s chest.
Marvel ran through the channels again, but there wasn’t even anything on that was better than the koalas. Infuriatingly, he’d finally made a stand over the control of the television in the only five minutes of the decade when nobody was showing Top Gear.
Debbie watched in cool silence until he finally switched the TV off completely and tossed the remote across the coffee table with a clatter.
Buster twitched, and farted in surprise, and gave Marvel the excuse he needed to get up and go to bed without apologizing.
26
EVANS, EDITH.
For the millionth time, Marvel flicked through the tatty brown folder.
At the back of the file was a Polaroid of Anna Buck, the transcript of her interview, and an A5 envelope containing the drawings she had done.
She looked tired and washed out in the photo, but she was the only person Marvel had ever seen who looked better in a Polaroid than she did in the flesh. She was holding a plastic cup of water; the rim was just visible at the bottom of the frame. He had taken the picture himself, before Aguda brought in the tea. On a sudden whim, Marvel pinned the photo to the wall under the Mitzi bumper sticker he’d peeled off his car.
Then he found a photo online of Richard Latham – a screen-grab from a news bulletin – and printed that and pinned it beside the others.
The four pictures sat in uneasy proximity. Edie, Mitzi, Anna Buck and Richard Latham. He felt there was a link – some force of attraction between them – but he certainly couldn’t see what it might be.
Marvel didn’t believe in coincidence, but he did believe in a good hunch, and he felt better for having put all the photos on the wall together.
He tipped Anna’s drawings out of the envelope. There were two small sketches – more doodles than drawings. The first was a window frame, with flowers beyond it and a weird perspective. Anna had drawn one of the flowers inside the bottom edge of the window – as if on the sill. All around the frame she had scribbled blackness. The second scrap of paper – torn from Marvel’s own notebook – was a confusing sketch. He turned it around a few times to try to make sense of it. Eventually he held it vertically. A wide stand, a kinked shaft and a thick U-shaped bit at the top. It was the kind of thing Debbie would buy from Habitat and stick two candles in. On the widest part of the U was the number 88
What’s this? he’d said to her.
I don’t know, she’d replied.
Marvel didn’t know either. But he pinned the drawings to the wall as well.
The Anna Buck intervention in the Edie Evans case was just another shroud over a concealed truth. He almost resented that it had happened at all, but now that it had, it had to be treated as part of the whole, or he wouldn’t be doing his job.
And his job – finding Edie Evans – had only become harder because of it.
He picked up the phone on his desk, called DCI Lloyd and asked him whether Anna Buck was nuts.
‘She’s lost her son,’ said Lloyd, after a small pause – as if that was an answer.
‘But is she nuts?’ insisted Marvel. ‘She came in here yesterday with a fake baby, claiming a photo was talking to her.’
‘Well,’ said Lloyd cautiously, ‘I’d say she’s greatly disturbed.’
‘Nuts, you mean?’
‘I’m not a doctor,’ said Lloyd.
Or much of a policeman, thought Marvel. Then he asked Lloyd to send over a photo of Daniel Buck, and hung up.
Somebody behind him said, ‘Sir?’
Emily Aguda had missed DCI Marvel at first because he was sitting in the far corner with his back to the murder-squad room, and with his feet on the desk. She only noticed him then because she spotted the polaroid of Anna Buck on the wall over his desk. After that she recognized the photo of Edie Evans. There was also a photo of a middle-aged man in glasses, and a bright-pink bumper sticker pinned underneath them with the motto FIND MITZI!
So it was a real name!
‘Sir?’ she said politely.
‘What?’ said Marvel without turning round.
‘I got that photo back from the lab.’
Marvel used his feet to swivel his chair around enough to see who was talking to him. When he saw Emily, he scowled. ‘I didn’t know you’d sent it to the lab.’
‘You told me to check it again, sir, and I wanted to get it right. They say the date on the rosette is correct and they can’t see any evidence of tampering or manipulation, only a bit of damage caused by the water. So I called the show secretary and asked if they’d had any errors on the dates on their rosettes and she said no.’