‘Must’ve been where she kept Mitzi,’ Marvel went on.
The super only grunted. Marvel had never seen anybody less happy to get a thousand pounds back.
Eventually Clyde spoke – staring at a miniature Schnauzer. ‘Has she confessed?’
‘Like the fucking pope!’ Marvel said gleefully. He handed Clyde the same flyer that had lured Anna Buck out of the house. ‘Nice little business. Kid steals the dogs, Granger looks after them. Then they drop church leaflets through a few doors in the area where the dogs were nicked. Have you lost a loved one? Blah blah blah. Depending on what the owner does, they either sell the dog on for cash, or Latham keeps the owner on the hook for a while for donations and then they collect the reward.’
No questions asked. The words hung in the air so loudly that even Marvel didn’t think there was any mileage in repeating them.
Clyde stared at the dogs for a moment, then said, ‘I’m Catholic, Chief Inspector,’ and walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
Marvel rolled his eyes at his crappy luck and followed him downstairs to the hallway of the small terraced house.
Through the open door into the lounge he could see three lanky teenagers crammed together on the sofa – two girls and a boy. Despite their mother’s arrest and the police in the house and the stolen dogs upstairs, all he saw in their eyes was the reflection of the TV screen.
Clyde spoke without looking at Marvel. ‘She’s implicated Latham by name?’
‘Yes, sir. And the kid’s the grandson of a neighbour. Bloody Spurs fans.’ He stopped quickly in case the Super was a Catholic and a Spurs fan, but if he was, he didn’t say so.
‘So,’ Marvel counted charges off on his fingers. ‘We’ve got theft of property, extortion, misrepresentation, obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, conspiracy to defraud.’ He paused, then added, ‘Obstruction of justice …’
The Super gave him a chilly stare. ‘I’ll tell you all you’ve got, Marvel. Three defendants, one of them a minor, another one a mother of three who works at M and bloody S, and an old man who was once paid two thousand pounds by this very department. Workload – huge; chance of convictions – maybe five per cent. Sentences – a slap on the wrist all round if we’re lucky. Publicity – bloody terrible. All over a lost dog that you promised to find quickly and discreetly as a personal fucking favour.’
The super’s voice had increased in intensity to the point where even the teenagers were staring at him now, like three wise monkeys on a sofa. The one with the remote had even hit Mute, in order to hear him better.
The super glanced round, then leaned into the room and pulled the door shut on them. ‘You couldn’t let it go, could you?’ he hissed. ‘Even after I told you.’
Marvel understood the super’s anger. Clyde’s transgression was not big, but it was potentially very damaging. Any half-smart lawyer would point out his failure to carry out a proper investigation at any trial, to try to discredit the department, and it was a discredit. At Clyde’s rank – at his time of life – a black mark on his record would put the brakes on any further progress he’d hoped to make.
‘There’s still time to stop this,’ said the super.
Marvel hesitated. There was still time, and he knew it. All he had to do was give Denise Granger a caution, scare the kid, give Latham notice to cease and desist, and return the dogs. That would keep the whole thing out of court, and he’d be on easy street – cherry-picking his cases and almost certain of that promotion, whether he deserved it or not.
But he’d lose any leverage he’d ever have on Richard Latham regarding the Edie Evans case.
Marvel sighed deeply. He’d always rubbed people up the wrong way; he was a throwback whose face didn’t fit the new, modern police force peopled by short men with degrees and vegetarian lesbians. He hadn’t always made the right friends, said the right things, kissed the right arses.
Now the super was offering him a chance to change all that, and all he had to do was … nothing.
He didn’t really have a choice.
‘I’m arresting him,’ he said.
Superintendent Clyde stared at him in disbelief, then glanced at the door to the living room. ‘This isn’t about stolen dogs and you know it! It’s about your obsession with Edie Evans.’
Marvel couldn’t even deny it. ‘Latham knows more about her than he’s told us.’
‘If he knew any more, he’d have told you when you were paying him to tell you.’
‘Not if he killed her.’
‘What do you mean?’
Marvel wasn’t sure what he meant. The words had fallen out of his mouth before his brain had even engaged. But now that they were out there, they started to make sense to him. And something – anything – making sense right now felt like a breath of fresh air.
He looked over his shoulder at the living-room door and lowered his voice. ‘Look what he did with Mitzi. Kidnapped her and made money off the back of it. Not just reward money, but people coming into the church every week, paying for private consultations, making donations to that bloody roof until – lo and behold – the dog is returned, just as he said it would be. And all of it stroking his ego. Building his reputation as a psychic. Earning him money.’
‘So?’ Clyde looked unimpressed.
‘So,’ said Marvel, ‘think about Edie Evans. What if he kidnapped her, only so that he could find her?’
Clyde blinked in surprise and Marvel hurried on. ‘All of a sudden he’s on TV, being a big shot. The numbers at the church go into orbit. His ego goes into orbit. All he has to do is waffle about gardens and rolling white wheels for a while and then lead us to her and he’s got it made. A bigger church; a TV series; books, videos, movies, the lot. After that he’s always going to be the psychic who found Edie Evans.’