Live with.
The only other explanation was not rational, and Marvel shied away from it, even though it was what had led him here – to this dark crack and this shining bell.
That explanation was that Anna Buck had a psychic connection to Edie Evans, or to her killer. That she possessed mystical powers and had the secrets of the universe at her fingertips.
When she wasn’t trying to jump in front of a train, of course.
Or breastfeeding a fucking doll.
‘Oh,’ said Brady. ‘You found it.’ He sounded disappointed, as if tearing a twelve-year-old’s bedroom apart had been top of his bucket list.
‘Give me an evidence bag,’ said Marvel.
Brady opened the bag for him and he dropped the bell into it.
‘How did you know where to look, sir?’
‘Just a hunch,’ said Marvel.
30
JAMES BUCK WOKE with his wife screaming beside him.
‘Get it off me! Get it off!’
She was thrashing crazily, slapping at her own face and head, gripping great handfuls of hair and trying to tear it out by the roots.
‘Anna!’ he shouted. ‘Anna! Wake up!’
She didn’t. Instead she started to punch and kick him, hysterical with terror.
James rolled out of bed, turned on the light and picked his spot.
He hit her.
Just once, but just right. An open-handed slap to the face that woke her and stopped her in the same instant.
She looked at him with wide, shocked eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and burst into tears.
He got back into bed beside her, and held her while she cried. It was the first time she’d let him hold her in nearly five months. She’d lost so much weight! Everywhere James touched her, he could feel her bones through the thin, stretched skin. He hadn’t noticed; he had hardly seen her naked in all that time, but touching her now, he felt a jagged edge of fear. He’d already been worried about her mental state – what with the church and the police and the blue circles – but her physical frailty was now obvious to his hands in brutal relief.
‘What happened?’ he said next to her ear, but she was crying too hard to tell him.
But she did allow him to hold her, to stroke her inflamed cheek, to spoon up behind her and soothe her like a baby, with soft ‘shushes’ while she sobbed out her fear until she knew she was here and not there, and could speak again.
When she did, she spoke so softly that James had to lean even closer, putting his ear on her neck to hear her.
‘There was an alien,’ she said.
James didn’t laugh, she was too upset.
‘It had this metal … thing – like a crown with wires – and it put it on my head …’
She ended in a small whining sound and touched her own head, as if she could still feel it there, and James touched her hair gently, reassuringly, in those same places.
‘You’re safe now,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘It was only a dream.’
‘I know,’ she said again. ‘But it felt so real.’
He squeezed her, and she let him.
They lay together while the room grew light.
Anna was quiet for so long that James thought she had fallen asleep. He was close to dozing off himself when she whispered, ‘They want to know what I’m thinking.’
31
MARVEL LAID ALL his new evidence before Superintendent Robert Clyde and submitted an official request to be put back on the Edie Evans case.
‘But John,’ said Clyde, ‘this isn’t evidence. This is speculation based on the supernatural rantings of a mentally disturbed woman.’
‘What about the bicycle bell, sir?’
‘What about it?’ said Clyde. ‘Look, I’m not being facetious, but really, what about it?’ It’s a bell. From a bicycle. Granted, you found it under unusual circumstances, but even if I believed that this woman saw it in a crystal ball and led you to a big spot marked with an X … what does it tell us about what happened to Edie Evans? How does it help?’
‘Sir, the garden, the other drawings, the bicycle bell – I’m not sure we can just ignore all these things. I’m not saying Anna Buck’s not bonkers; I think she’s as mad as a bucket of frogs. But maybe she’s being used without understanding it. Maybe she has some involvement – some knowledge – and this is the only way she can reveal it. Maybe she knows much more about the Edie Evans case than even she knows. There may be other … insights she could offer. Other leads that might emerge from things she says that will prove to be useful. Maybe even vital.’
Clyde got up and shut the window. It was Friday afternoon and the demand for kebabs started early.
‘You know my feelings on psychics, Marvel.’
A little alarm went off in Marvel’s head. Whatever happened to ‘John’?
‘I do, sir,’ he said. ‘And I share them, believe me. That’s why I worked so hard to get Mitzi returned to Mrs Clyde as soon as possible. To avoid embarrassment for you, sir.’
Marvel hoped the super knew that he meant more than just the embarrassment of a wife and a small fluffy dog. Had the man forgotten so soon that he had paid a thousand-pound reward, no questions asked, to some anonymous kid? How embarrassing would that have been for Clyde if it had got out?
Very.
The super owed him. Big time. Owed him, even if it was only for not revealing the humiliating details to the entire second floor. Owed him a bloody sight more than putting him back on the Edie Evans case! That should be just for starters.
Apparently Clyde didn’t see things the same way.
‘I don’t think your suspicions hold water,’ said Clyde. ‘And I certainly don’t feel that re-examining the Evans case on the basis of such tenuous evidence would be worthwhile.’
Marvel could feel it slipping away from him.