Marvel stared at her suspiciously for a moment, then said, ‘How did you get the photo back so fast? Usually it’s like putting a message in a bloody bottle.’
‘I know Dean Frazzelli. He owed me a favour.’
‘What kind of favour?’
Emily had lent Dean Frazzelli her car to go on a blind date. It was a nice car – a neat little MR2 in candy-apple red. Apparently it had made quite an impression, because when he’d returned it, he’d told her he owed her one. And when she’d called and asked for his help analysing a photograph, he’d been happy to put it at the top of the pile.
‘You still seeing that girl?’ Emily had asked him.
‘I am seeing a lot of her,’ Frazzelli had answered, with feeling. ‘A. Whole. Lot.’ Then he’d offered to buy her car, and she’d said she would think about it.
‘Just a favour.’ She shrugged. Marvel didn’t need to know the fluff.
Marvel grunted. ‘Doesn’t make sense.’
‘Sir?’
‘It doesn’t make any bloody sense.’ He slapped the desk, making her jump. ‘Even if she’d been kidnapped and brainwashed, or had run away and was living a new life. She’s at a dog show. With her bicycle. A bicycle that’s been in the basement of this bloody building since January last year!’
He glared at Aguda as if she might confess that she’d made the whole thing up just to annoy him. But she said nothing.
‘Frazzelli’s an idiot,’ he concluded. ‘Because that photo is impossible.’
He glared forcefully at Emily, but she didn’t concede the point. She thought that Dean Frazzelli wouldn’t last five minutes in his job if he were an idiot. She could feel the frustration coming off Marvel in waves, and understood his reaction, but wasn’t going to be cowed in the face of it.
‘Also, sir, I was thinking about what Mrs Buck said about her husband?’
Marvel glared at her, then said, ‘Go on, for Christ’s sake! Just because you decide to put a question mark at the end of a statement doesn’t mean I have to suddenly think of an answer to a question you haven’t even bloody well asked.’
Emily Aguda almost giggled. She was used to being demeaned because she was black and because she was a woman, and sometimes because she was gay, but she’d never been demeaned over her choice of punctuation before, and was surprised to find it a refreshing change.
She went on, ‘Mrs Buck said that she didn’t trust her husband around children. It struck me as a strange thing for someone to say, sir.’
Marvel nodded slowly. Then he said, ‘With children.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘She said with children, not around children.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Emily was surprised that Marvel had picked up on it too – and so closely.
Marvel fixed her with a glare. ‘You know she’s stark staring mad, right? The hysterics and the water and the fake baby. Anyone can see. Mad or a scammer. Pound to a pinch of dog shit.’
Emily looked at his face to see whether he truly believed that. It was hard to tell.
‘Perhaps,’ she said with what she hoped was a diplomatic note to her voice.
Marvel said nothing more, but he stopped scowling, so Emily pressed on. ‘I just thought it was interesting, sir. Given that Mrs Buck’s son and Edie Evans disappeared within a couple of miles of each other. And given that – statistically – children are at greater risk of harm from a relative than they are from a stranger …’
Emily stopped herself saying more. She had a tendency to over-explain things and something told her it was a trait that DCI Marvel might not appreciate.
Marvel stared at Emily, but she could tell he wasn’t thinking of her, so it didn’t seem weird.
‘James,’ said Marvel at last. ‘James Buck.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Emily.
‘OK,’ he said.
She started to go and he said thank you so softly that she wasn’t sure she’d heard it. And when she turned to say you’re welcome, he already had his back to her and his feet on the desk.
After Aguda had gone, Marvel lowered his feet and logged on to his computer. He typed in James Buck’s name and got nothing.
Marvel never trusted the computer when it said it couldn’t find something. He always suspected laziness, rather than an absence of something to be found. But apparently James Buck of 148 Northborough Road had no previous convictions.
He sat and glared at the screen for a bit, not really seeing it, while his mind tested and discarded possibilities. His instincts were on the alert, just waiting for the right possibility to put its head above the parapet so that he could pounce on it. Mental whack-a-mole.
Marvel got up and went over to the big map on the wall near the door, which showed the South East murder-team patch. With one blunt finger he traced the roadway between Bromley, where Edie Evans came from, and Bickley, where James Buck lived.
It was two miles of suburbia – houses and little rows of shops and traffic lights and schools. Now and then a small patch of green – a cricket pitch, a football field, a strip of parkland or playground.
He saw nothing obvious. No reason why Edie Evans and James Buck might ever have been in the same place at the same time.
Marvel groaned inwardly. He was going to have to call Edie Evans’s parents. He hated to do it. He knew that just hearing his voice would bring the pain back for them, along with the adrenaline shot of instant dread or hope that she was dead or alive.
Right now, Edie was neither, and that was the hardest thing of all.
He reached for the phone, but before he could pick it up, Colin Brady pushed off hard from his desk, so that his chair rattled across the lino towards Marvel at speed, only slowing down a few feet from him.
‘What did Abooba want?’ he grinned.
Marvel was in no mood. ‘She had an interesting insight,’ he said coldly.
‘Yeah?’ leered Brady. ‘I bet it’s interesting insight her knickers.’
He laughed to encourage Marvel to get the joke, but Marvel said, ‘At least she had a bloody idea.’
‘Really?’ said Brady.
‘Really,’ said Marvel. ‘And I don’t want to hear that name again, right?’
‘What name?’