The boy and Clyde talked briefly. The boy had a piece of paper that Marvel assumed was the stopped cheque.
They talked, Clyde smiled and nodded, then replaced the cheque with what looked like another one. Clyde himself handed it over. Marvel wished he had brought that camera again. It would have served Clyde right. He had promised he’d be very grateful and he hadn’t been. Fair enough, thought Marvel, if he’d done a bad job, but he hadn’t; he’d done a good job, even though it wasn’t one worth doing – let alone well. Now Marvel couldn’t let go of the idea that he’d somehow been cheated out of the gratitude he’d been due, and therefore cheated out of his chance of a promotion.
If he had been cheated by this kid, Marvel wanted to know about it. And if there was a chance that he might still derive some advantage from the case of Mitzi Clyde, then Marvel wanted to know about that too.
Across the street the boy left Clyde, folding the cheque and putting it in his back pocket as he trotted down the garden steps and carefully closed the gate behind him. Before he turned away, he waved, and Clyde waved back and then shut the door.
Didn’t even watch the kid go. Some bloody copper.
Marvel waited until the Spurs fan got to the end of the street and turned left before he pulled the BMW out of its space and followed him.
The boy walked like all kids did nowadays – like a gangsta with an a, and his underpants showing. That underpants thing never failed to get Marvel riled.
The boy passed the police station and went into the kebab shop. Five minutes later he came out and continued his journey, eating a huge doner, leaning well forward so the shredded lettuce and sauce didn’t drop down his nice white Spurs shirt.
Marvel hadn’t had a kebab for years. The smell of the super’s office always put him off, but now he could see the food, he remembered the taste of pungent fat in his cheeks, and his mouth watered.
A thousand quid bought a lot of kebabs.
A thousand quid bought a lot of everything when you were fourteen.
The boy ate quickly, and when he’d finished, he balled up the wrapper – and then held on to it until he got to a litter bin.
Surprising.
His civic pride belied his underpants.
It made Marvel doubly suspicious when people didn’t behave the way they should. Or at least, the way they looked as if they should. He was a firm believer in stereotypes. As far as he was concerned, stereotypes were there for a reason, and trying to ignore them for the purposes of objectivity was political correctness gone mad.
He continued the slow-motion pursuit with new interest. There was something about this kid he didn’t like. More than just the Spurs shirt and his arse hanging out of his jeans.
Marvel’s hackles rose even further when the boy slouched through the doors of Marks & Spencer – that bastion of the middle-aged and middle-class. Marvel pulled the BMW into a bus stop and hurried across the pavement to follow the boy inside. As his instincts had told him he would, the boy got on the escalator and went up to the second floor.
Straight to the café.
Marvel stood in the queue a few places behind him. He picked up a tray, for cover, and peered around the café’s clientele.
There were the same well-to-do grey-haired customers and the same women in their monkey outfits, bustling between tables with trays and teacakes and toasted sandwiches.
There was nobody else in the café under the age of fifty. Marvel frowned. Had his instincts deserted him? He had been so sure he would see Richard Latham here. He looked down the line behind him, confused.
The boy up ahead stood out like a sore thumb. He’d picked up a tray but hadn’t put anything on it. Yet.
Marvel swore to himself that if the kid bought a pot of tea and sat down and drank it alone, he’d hand in his resignation from the Metropolitan Police Force.
It was a close-run thing.
The boy got all the way to the till and ordered something. Then he pulled out a few coins and his green loyalty card – and the cheque. If Marvel hadn’t seen him tuck the cheque away at the super’s house, he would never have spotted it now, folded neatly under the card.
The woman behind the till didn’t miss a beat. She put the money in the till; she stamped the card; she pocketed the cheque.
The boy picked up his coffee, put it on his tray – and left them both on the table nearest the door on his way out.
Marvel was momentarily torn over whether or not to go after him, but quickly decided to stay with the money. He reached the till himself and asked for a coffee. The generic middle-aged woman with the fez was as chatty as a chimp. ‘Anything to eat with that, sir? Do you have a loyalty card, sir? Do you want one? Every ten coffees you get one free …’
When she opened the till for his change, he looked at her big bosom and read her name tag.
Denise.
‘No thanks, Denise. The teacake will be fine for now.’
This was the woman who had come over and made a lame joke about Richard Latham. She’d patted his shoulder. They knew each other. And she had just received a thousand pounds in reward money for finding a lost dog that Latham had promised would ‘be home soon’.
Jackpot.
When Denise handed Marvel his change, he snapped a handcuff on her wrist and told her she was under arrest for extortion – for starters.
She said ‘What?’ then burst into loud tears while her colleagues rushed over from all corners of the café, screeching and chattering their confusion and outrage.
Marvel left M&S with Denise trailing reluctantly behind him, feeling like an extremely smug organ-grinder.
The moment they opened the door to Denise Granger’s home, Marvel could smell the dogs.
There were four of them in a back bedroom, all pedigrees and each in a wire cage, turning circles in its own shit. Marvel thought of Denise giving him his change, and wished he could wash his hands.
‘I knew he was hiding something,’ Marvel told the super – but Clyde said nothing.
One of the cages was empty.