‘Abooba.’
Brady’s expression said he suspected a joke, but he erred on the side of ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell the others.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now fuck off.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Brady slunk back to his desk as quietly as he could on castors, and Marvel picked up the phone. Whisky used to give him courage to do shit like this. Nowadays he had to rely on just not thinking about the consequences.
He called the Evans’s number from memory. Mr Evans – Mark – answered the phone. Good.
‘Mr Evans?’ said Marvel.
There was the smallest hesitation, then, ‘Chief Inspector?’ And the hope and the terror were right there in an instant.
‘There’s no news,’ Marvel said at once, and Mark Evans made a noise like someone undoing a radiator cap. The sound of tension leaving his lungs.
The next natural thing to ask would have been How are you? but Marvel had been in this job long enough to know that that only prolonged the agony. How was anyone when their child had been missing for over a year and they didn’t know whether she was alive or dead?
Shit was a given, he always supposed.
So Marvel went straight to: ‘I wanted to ask you a question.’
‘Of course.’
‘Did Edie ever go to Beckenham to a dog show? On her bike?’
‘Beckenham? No.’
‘You’re sure? Or maybe just to a park or somewhere there might have been a dog show taking place?’
‘No,’ said Mark Evans. ‘Definitely not.’
‘What about Bickley?’
Evans mused. ‘I know Frankie went to playschool over that way …’
‘You remember the name of the playschool?
‘Ummmmm … Tiger something. I think.’
‘TiggerTime?’
‘I think so. Hold on, I’ll ask Carrie.’
A little chill ran up Marvel’s spine. Edie’s brother had gone to the same playschool as Daniel Buck. Edie’s brother. How had they missed it?
‘Hello, John.’ Carrie Evans was trying to be bright, but he could hear the tremor in her voice.
‘Hello, Mrs Evans.’ Marvel couldn’t bear to use her first name, even though she always used his, and he didn’t mind that. But calling her Carrie would have obliged him to make much more personal investment than he wanted to.
‘Frankie went to the TiggerTime playschool. Why? Is it important?’
‘I don’t know,’ Marvel told her truthfully. For some reason, he had always been completely honest with the Evans family. He supposed it was because he had worked so hard on the case – so far above and beyond what might reasonably be expected of him – that there had never been anything to hide. He couldn’t even hide the fact that he wanted Edie home almost as much as they did.
‘Did Edie ever go with you to pick him up?’
‘Yes. If it was nice we would walk, and Edie went on her bicycle. After a while she left her bike at home and we walked together.’
Walking’s for OLD people.
Marvel had never heard Edie Evans’s voice, but he almost laughed out loud as the words popped into his head as clearly as if she was sitting beside him. Certainly, the Edie he knew would have wanted to ride her bike whenever possible.
It piqued his curiosity.
‘Why did she stop riding?’ he asked. ‘Did something happen?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Carrie Evans. ‘Certainly nothing she told me. One day she just walked with me instead and she said it was so we could talk. I thought that was lovely. Before that she’d be racing on ahead and coming back to me, then racing off again – you know what I mean?’
‘She didn’t have a fall or knock into someone or get shouted at? Any kind of a fright?
‘Not that I know. Why is this important, John?’
‘I really don’t know whether it is, Mrs Evans. I’m just trying to work that out.’
‘OK,’ she said, and Marvel could almost feel the self-control it took for her to keep calm, keep answering his questions, not scream and tear out her hair.
‘Did you or she ever speak to anyone, even just to say hello, on your way to or from the playschool?’
‘No. Nodded at a few regulars, but that was all.’
‘But one day she just stopped riding her bike?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How long was that before she went missing?’
‘Hmmmm,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘Maybe a month? I’m really not sure.’
It felt relevant, although Marvel couldn’t have said how. He almost pressed the point about the dog show, but he didn’t want to reveal the photo at this point. Not until he was sure of exactly what it was.
One tenuous clue at a time, he thought wryly.
‘Does Frankie still go to TiggerTime?’ he asked.
‘Oh no,’ she said hastily. ‘He’ll be going to big school next year, so I thought it would be nicer to … you know … keep him at home …’
She gave a weak laugh. She was fooling nobody. But Marvel didn’t blame her. She’d lost one child on her way to school, after all. She wasn’t taking any chances with the other.
‘Do you know the address of the playschool, Mrs Evans?’
‘Sure,’ said Carrie. ‘One-five-two Northborough Road.’
Marvel had a pen in his hand, but he didn’t write it down. Instead he thanked her and said that he would call them if he ever had any news, good or bad.
The usual.
Then he hung up and got his notebook out of his drawer for the second time in half an hour. He flicked to the Anna Buck interview.
There it was, right at the front of the interview.
The man Anna Buck was married to – but still didn’t trust with children – lived four doors away from the playschool.
27
AS JAMES CUT across the forecourt to work, he saw a stocky child with pigtails squatting beside the five footprints. He stopped beside her.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
‘What are you doing?’
She glanced up at him, but lowered her head again before answering.
‘Cleaning.’
‘Why?’ he said.