For a split second the understanding was huge and brilliant, exploding like a supernova in his head, illuminating everything.
Then the wonder of it slid through his fingers like silk, and he was left thinking stupidly of lottery numbers.
Marvel sighed and dropped the papers back into the skip. He wondered if the mothers who cheerfully left their children at TiggerTime ever came round the back to look at the arse-end where all the crap was.
A door opened at the back of the playschool and Marvel withdrew quietly. He didn’t want to make contact on any terms but his own.
He walked down the dirty alleyway. The side away from the houses was bordered by a tall metal fence above the steep drop down the embankment to the railway line. He stopped at the back of Number 148. There wasn’t much to see. There was no garden, just a brick-walled yard. The downstairs windows had metal grilles across them.
He didn’t know what he’d expected to find. Nothing, really. But it was always worth seeing things from every possible angle.
He went back down the alleyway, where a monster drip of water caught him right on the crown. When he put a hand up to wipe it away, he found what felt like the beginning of a bald spot.
Great. He’d peaked.
He went round the front of the building and knocked on the door of the flat.
Anna Buck opened the door, already suspicious – as if she’d seen him snooping, although he doubted she had.
‘Hello, Mrs Buck,’ he said brusquely. ‘Can you spare a minute, please?’
She frowned. He could see she didn’t want to say yes, but he had saved her life, and British people found it so hard to say no at the best of times.
A nation hogtied by its own social graces.
So, inevitably, Anna Buck said ‘OK,’ and opened the door.
The flat was a mess. A blue mess. Someone had thrown a lot of paint around. It was on the taps and the sink mostly, but there were drips across the floor too – through the living room and to a door that Marvel assumed was a bedroom.
There was a bucket filled with blue water next to the kitchen door. Anna Buck had been cleaning up.
‘What happened here?’ said Marvel.
‘I spilled some paint.’
‘I see that,’ he said, but she didn’t volunteer any more.
‘Couldn’t have a cup of tea, could I, Mrs Buck?’
She hesitated. She was desperate not to encourage him, he could tell, but she was the host and she had to be hospitable.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said neutrally.
‘Thank you.’ He sat at the kitchen table. The chair was so cheap he felt it give a little under his arse.
He waited until she had made the tea, so that she couldn’t stop halfway through and ask him to leave. Once he had the tea, the rules said he must be allowed to finish it.
She put it down in front of him, along with a bag of sugar, and he noticed her hands were blue too – right into the sleeves of her cardigan.
Marvel stirred two spoons of sugar slowly into his tea.
Anna Buck didn’t sit down. She stood nervously by the sink.
‘I noticed the playschool a few doors down,’ said Marvel. ‘Did Daniel go there?’
‘TiggerTime? Yes.’
‘Nice place?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Edie Evans’s little brother used to go there. Frankie. Bit older than Daniel.’
Anna Buck gave a small frown and then said, ‘I don’t think he was there when Daniel was. I don’t remember a Frankie.’
‘No?’ he said, and sipped his weak tea. She hadn’t left the bag in long enough. Wanted him out of there.
‘Did you take him there every morning, or did your husband?’
‘I did. After James went to work.’
‘And you’d pick him up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Daniel like it?’
‘Loved it. He grew up so much.’ She smiled. Then she stepped to the fridge and slid two pictures from under a magnet. ‘These are his. He was always drawing and colouring in. His teacher said he was good.’
Marvel stared down at the scribbles on the paper. Might have been a house, might have been a fish. Parents were delusional; teachers must know it.
‘Very good,’ he said, because he needed her to want to help him. ‘Childcare’s pricey nowadays, isn’t it?’
‘And how,’ she said. ‘I went back to work to pay for it. I mean, I loved having Daniel at home, but children need to socialize, don’t they?’
‘Yes,’ said Marvel, although he’d never felt much need for it himself.
‘Do you have children?’ she asked.
‘No.’
That wasn’t true, but he didn’t want to answer awkward questions. Names, ages.
Whereabouts.
So he said, ‘Where did you work?’
‘I was a secretary at a little cosmetics firm in Penge. Part time, but it was enough.’
‘Nice,’ said Marvel, although he imagined it was shit. Typing, tea-making, slapping the boss’s hand off her thigh. ‘And your husband? Where does he work?’
‘Next door. At the garage.’
‘Mechanic, is he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good money?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a shame.’
She shrugged. ‘Who makes good money nowadays?’
‘Exactly,’ he agreed. Then he tapped the camera and said, ‘He doesn’t know anything about cameras, does he? I’m taking this to be fixed.’
She shook her head, uninterested, and stared at his cup, as if willing him to drink up and get out.
Marvel changed tack. ‘Must have been hard on him when you lost Daniel.’ It wasn’t the right time to ask the question, but sometimes that could make it the right time.
‘I didn’t lose Daniel,’ she snapped. ‘He did.’
Jackpot.
‘Really?’ he said, trying to sound casual. ‘What happened?’
‘James left the door open. Daniel ran outside.’
It wasn’t what Marvel had been hoping for. He’d wanted to hear that James Buck had never loved his son anyway, or that he’d been a discomfortingly strict disciplinarian. Even just the impression that there was a terrible secret … Something he could hang a motive on.
He suddenly felt a little sorry for James Buck. Leaving a door open didn’t seem like much of a crime.
‘I’m sure he feels terrible,’ he said.