Marvel locked his lips and threw away the key. Brady laughed.
Latham ignored them and went on. ‘We’ve only got about fifty members now. And only twenty or so come regularly.’
‘What about when you were on TV?’
‘Ah. That was a different story. We had hundreds sometimes. Standing room only.’
‘So what went wrong?’
Latham shook his head. ‘You know what went wrong, Mr Marvel.’
‘You mean after you screwed up on Edie Evans, people realized you were a fake.’
Brady laughed, but Latham’s throat and ears started to go red, like some exotic lizard.
‘Everybody laughs,’ he said. ‘Everybody thinks it’s a big joke. It’s not a joke, Chief Inspector, it’s a gift.’
‘A gift you expect people to pay for.’
Latham fixed Marvel with his one good eye while his other kept a lookout. ‘Why not? People pay for rubbish they don’t even need. Milkshakes and porn mags and Botox. Why shouldn’t people pay for my gift? It’s something I’ve worked at, something incredible – this skill, this magic.’
‘I did pay for it, remember?’ said Marvel cheerfully. ‘But now I want a refund.’
Brady laughed again, but when Latham spoke next, there was an angry tremor in his voice. ‘A hundred years from now, you’ll see. People like me will be paid our due. We’ll be on the front page of every newspaper, received by presidents and kings. We’ll live in stately homes, like idiot footballers do now. Mansions and palaces, Marvel. Mansions and palaces!’ He slapped the table, making them both flinch, then jabbed his finger at their faces. ‘People like you, and you, will look like the Flat Earth Society, while the psychics and the seers and the shut eyes rule the world. You’ll see. In the future we’ll be heroes. In the future we’ll be gods!’
‘Maybe,’ said Marvel with a dismissive shrug. ‘But until then you can always make a few bob nicking dogs.’
‘Shut up,’ snapped Latham.
Marvel didn’t shut up. Instead he pressed his forefingers to his temples and gazed up at the strip lighting. ‘I can see Rover, Mrs Jones. And I predict that he will be miraculously returned to you. I also predict that will happen very soon now, when I get sick of cleaning shit off the bedroom carpet. Don’t give up hope, Mrs Jones, and that’ll be fifty quid for the church roof, please.’
‘Shut your fucking mouth.’
Brady and Marvel stopped laughing and stared at Richard Latham.
The man was shaking with fury, his fists gripped the edges of the table so hard that his knuckles were white, and there was spittle on his lips.
‘You shut your fucking mouth.’
Suddenly Marvel felt uneasy being this close to Latham. Even here in the police station, with Colin Brady by his side. There was something off-kilter about the man that he’d never noticed before. Not just his eye, not just the marionette bounce.
Something else.
Something that made him want this to end.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘all right. Let’s all just calm—’
‘Fuck you, Marvel! You think you’re the only one who wanted to find Edie Evans? It was just another case to you. To me it was my future on the line. My career. My whole reputation!’
Marvel looked at him coldly. ‘If your reputation depends on a lie, how much is it worth?’
‘It’s not a lie!’ Latham shoved his chair back hard as he got to his feet and leaned over the table. ‘It never was a lie!’
‘Sit down, Mr Latham,’ said Marvel coldly, and when he didn’t, he and Brady got up too, exchanging wary glances. But Richard Latham didn’t come at them. He leaned on the table, punching it with his knuckles and poking the air for emphasis.
‘I know things!’ said Latham. ‘I see things! I see you and I see you! I see you both! Your wife is pregnant. And you’re burning up in the ice and snow, with all the questions and none of the answers!’
Marvel tutted. ‘Typical.’
‘These things are true!’ shouted Latham. ‘These things are real! These things are not a lie! Oh my God! My God!’
He stopped suddenly to draw wheezing breath, leaning on his fists, red in the face; his glasses had slid so far down his nose they were held only by the fleshy tip. Then he slid slowly back into his chair.
The silence pulsed off the walls of the little room, making its own pressure, which Marvel could feel like a heartbeat under his eyes.
‘If you were a shut eye you’d have told me where Edie Evans was. You’d have been able to tell me what had happened to her, at the very least. But you couldn’t. And you still can’t.’ Marvel looked at him coldly. ‘Because you’re not psychic, Richard. You’re not special. You’re nothing but a liar and a fraud and a common thief.’
Latham started to say something, but his voice caught in his throat. He cleared it and tried again in a hoarse whisper.
‘I did find her.’
‘No you didn’t.’
‘Yes I did,’ said Latham.
He spoke with none of his previous fire, and yet Marvel felt his balls shrink into his body in a primal response.
Latham unclenched his fists and took off his glasses and sighed. He looked and sounded exhausted. He rubbed his red face and looked up into John Marvel’s eyes. ‘I found her the very first time I looked for her. The very first time I was shown her photograph.’
‘Where?’ said Marvel.
Latham looked at his hands and shook his head. Marvel leaned down and shouted in his face, ‘Where was she?’
Richard Latham started to cry.
‘She was already dead.’
35
FOR THE FIRST time since she’d been taken, Edie Evans was really scared that somebody might hurt her.
She’d been woken by a strange, persistent warbling noise unlike anything she’d heard since her abduction – or before it.
She sat up in bed and stared at Neil Armstrong on the back of the door. Neil wouldn’t be scared. Neil would be calm.
Edie tried to be calm, and it worked. A bit.