Even through clear plastic, the knife exuded menace. It was open, so its jewel-like handle couldn’t hide its true purpose, which was the swift and merciless imposition of death. Curved on one side, serrated on the other, just as the boy had said. But more than that – Marvel noticed that the thumb stud was inlaid with a small but brilliant diamond.
And between the blade and the handle was a black crust of old blood …
‘Was it found open like this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wiped?’
‘Yup,’ said Stourbridge. ‘And yet thrown away.’
Marvel understood what he meant. Wiping the knife clean of prints spoke of control; throwing it away close to the body spoke of panic.
‘Odd,’ he said.
‘No odder than stabbing a pregnant woman in the stomach.’
‘You’re right,’ said Marvel.
It made him uneasy. The crime was so … personal.
‘You sure it wasn’t the husband?’
‘Sure as we could be,’ Stourbridge sighed. ‘Although I’m never sure of anything until the jury foreman says guilty.’
Marvel snorted his appreciation of that legal nicety.
‘Arthur Bright was in pieces from day one. Missing wife; three traumatized kids. I don’t think he even understood that he might be a suspect, you know? I think he honestly believed that it was all a mistake and his wife might come home any time. When we found her body it broke him and – from what you say about him leaving the kids – he probably didn’t recover—’
Stourbridge stopped with his mouth open, staring at the knife in the bag.
Then he said ‘Shit’ for a second time.
‘What’s up?’ said Marvel.
‘I just remembered something.’ Stourbridge shifted uncomfortably and smoothed the ends of his moustache. ‘I took the knife with me when I went to tell Arthur Bright that his wife’s body had been found. See his reaction. Shock tactics, you know? But I was clutching at straws.’
He glanced at Marvel sheepishly but Marvel only shrugged. Sometimes you had to break somebody apart, just to look inside them to see if they were guilty. If they were, you’d done your job. If they weren’t – well, you’d done your job then too.
Either way, the person got broken.
It was collateral damage.
Stourbridge continued, ‘I had the knife with me just in the bag. I should have put it in a box or something but I didn’t. And the kid was right there …’
‘You think he saw it?’ said Marvel.
‘I think so. The WPC who came with me said he got very agitated. She had to restrain him from following me.’
‘So that’s how he knows what it looks like.’
Stourbridge rubbed his jaw as if he had toothache. ‘Not my finest hour.’
Marvel shrugged again. He’d had many hours that were not his finest. He was a murder detective. The interests of the corpse came first. He changed the subject with uncharacteristic tact. ‘What was the motive?’
Stourbridge glanced at him gratefully. ‘The only motive we could come up with was robbery. Eileen had a purse with her when she left home. She was taking the kids to buy school shoes in Exeter, and she stopped for petrol at the M5 junction. We carried out fingertip searches around each scene – the abduction, the car, and the body dump. That’s how we found the knife, but we never found the purse.’
‘Robbery seems logical.’
‘Yeah,’ said Stourbridge, ‘but her card was never used, so …’
He shrugged and Marvel nodded. Sometimes things didn’t fit. Or they did fit, but you never discovered exactly how. It was the nature of the murder beast.
‘Can I have a copy of the file?’
‘Sure,’ said Stourbridge. ‘I’ll have it sent to you.’
‘Great. And can I borrow this?’ said Marvel, holding up the knife in the bag.
Stourbridge hesitated. Marvel could see that he didn’t want to let the murder weapon go.
It wasn’t doing anybody any good where it was, but he still understood. When a case was unsolved, every clue – no matter how small – might turn out to be vital. The compulsion to keep hold of every single thing was extreme.
Especially when that thing was the murder weapon.
So he was sympathetic, but he wasn’t about to show that to Stourbridge, or he wouldn’t get what he wanted.
Finally the big man sighed and said, ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t lose it.’
Stourbridge walked Marvel to his car and they shook hands there.
‘Thanks,’ said Marvel.
‘Any time you want to compare notes, just call me,’ said Stourbridge. ‘I think about it all the time anyway – might as well bore somebody new.’
‘I will,’ Marvel said and got into his car. He checked his watch. It would take him thirty minutes to get back to Tiverton – well within the few hours he’d promised, even if it wasn’t with the news the boy wanted.
‘Oh, and remember me to Jack,’ said Stourbridge. ‘I’m sorry he’s gone wrong, but there’s always time to go right.’
‘I will,’ said Marvel again, although, in his experience, once a kid had gone wrong, the road back to right was a hard one to find.
JACK FOUND HIS mother.
He was on the hard shoulder and she was alongside him in a car – looking out of the passenger window, smiling, and with one bare arm dangling down, her hand patting the metallic door now and then, as if to encourage him to keep up.
Everything was so clear! Even the tiny golden hairs on her arm that trembled in the breeze created by slow motion.
Her wedding ring made the tiniest tink against the door panel.
He couldn’t see who was driving the car, but he knew it wasn’t his father.
Slow down, he said.
Hurry up, she told him.
As if in response, the driver dipped the throttle and the car went a little bit faster.
Jack broke into a jog.
Wait! he said.
You’re too slow, she said, and the car accelerated again so that now Jack was running along the hard shoulder, and it was raining, but only from his knees down, so that his trainers slapped and splashed while the rest of him baked in the August sun.
The car pulled away and his mother looked back and patted the door.
Tink. Tink. Tink.
Jack sprinted after the car, hot air burning holes in his lungs.
Mum! Wait! Call the police!
His mother shrugged her bare arm and gave a sad little smile.
It’s too late, she said, and the car got smaller and smaller and its engine faded into the distance …
Jack woke with a start, with his face on the cool surface of the Formica table, next to an uneaten Big Mac and a cup of Pepsi sitting in a puddle of its own sweat.
He straightened up, disorientated, and breathing hard. The nightmares scooped him out, and it always took him a moment to leave the dream and return to reality.
‘All right?’ said DC Rice.
But before he could properly gather himself, the door opened and Marvel walked in.
He sat down and moved the burger box and the wet Pepsi out of the way, then placed a clear plastic bag on the Formica table between them.
Jack looked up at Marvel in happy wonder.
‘You found it!’
Marvel cleared his throat. ‘This is the murder weapon—’
‘I know! I—’
But Marvel held up his hand and went on: ‘It’s been in the Taunton police evidence room for the past three years.’
Jack frowned and shook his head. That couldn’t be right! It would make everything else … wrong.
‘But …’ he said haltingly, ‘it’s Adam While’s knife.’
‘No it’s not,’ said Marvel. ‘DCI Stourbridge – you remember him?’
Jack paused and then said uncertainly, ‘Call-Me-Ralph?’
Marvel nodded. ‘He tells me that on the day it was found, he brought this knife to your ho
me to show it to your father. He thinks you might have seen it then. Do you remember that?’
Jack stared at the knife. ‘I … I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Adam While’s knife might look the same. It’s probably one of thousands just like it,’ said Marvel. ‘But his knife didn’t kill your mother.’
Jack felt hot and cold. If the knife in Adam While’s house was one of thousands, then everything he’d done, everything he’d risked, was all for nothing.
‘But – but it’s the same knife!’ he stammered. ‘Even if they’re different, they’re the same! They must be connected. Because … because why would he hide it in his boot? If it wasn’t the one, why would he hide it? And he lied about it to his boot! Why would he lie about it if it didn’t mean anything? Why?’
‘I don’t know why,’ said Marvel. ‘But I do know it’s not because it was the murder weapon.’
Vaguely Jack felt Rice’s sympathetic hand on his shoulder. It made him want to cry or to scream, but he didn’t even have the energy to shake it off.
‘What about our deal?’ he said softly.
Marvel sighed and shook his head, and Jack felt as if he were falling through space – light years from anything to grab on to.
He’d blown it. He had no leverage. Nothing to trade. He’d gambled his family’s future on making a deal with the police … and he’d lost. Louis was right. They’d get him for some fucking thing. And Joy was right too. He was shit at being in charge. Even worse than their father.
Now the remaining fragments of his shattered family would be lost to him, and probably to each other, for ever.
A sudden harsh pain made him grimace and he clutched at his chest – right in the middle, between the sharp sweep of his ribs.
This is how Mum felt.
Jack knew that suddenly. Knew it like breathing.
She had been in charge, that sunny August afternoon a lifetime ago. She, too, had risked her family’s future, without even realizing it and never dreaming she’d lose. Never dreaming that a stranger in a car would stop to help her, and instead drive her away and put a knife – THIS KNIFE! – through her and her unborn child.
Because who would ever dream that such a thing could happen?
Nobody.
She’d made a mistake. And who could blame her?
Nobody. Nobody!
Not even him.
And Jack also knew that when his mother had finally understood what was happening to her – what was happening to all of them – she had felt this same horror. The same fear. The same searing guilt. The same unbearable sadness.
‘Mum!’
The word was ripped from a place so deep and dark inside Jack Bright that it tore his throat, and rang hoarsely around the little room where the photocopier hummed.
Then he put his head on his arms and wept.
THEY LOCKED HIM up.
The police station was so small that the holding cell was little more than the twin of the interview room, but with a peephole and a flap in the door, and without the photocopier.
Someone at the little station had taken pride in it though, and had made it more comfortable than was the norm. There was a single mattress on the bench-slash-bed. There was a box of old wax crayons with which the prisoners could draw or write on the walls – which they apparently did with unequal parts talent and filth – and on the sill of the long, high window was a posy of fake flowers in a plastic pot, which the prisoners couldn’t reach, but which they could enjoy, if their eyesight was good enough.
‘Well, this isn’t so bad, is it?’ said Rice encouragingly. ‘There’s crayons.’
Jack walked into the middle of the room, silent and dazed.
From the doorway Reynolds said, ‘That bed’ll be just right for you, Goldilocks.’
‘Bit mean, isn’t it?’ said Rice sharply.
‘Bit mean, isn’t it, sir,’ he snapped back.
‘Jack?’ said Marvel. Then again, ‘Jack?’
When Jack turned to look at him, he went on, ‘When the duty solicitor gets in we can take a proper statement, all right? Until then, have a kip. You look like shit.’
‘But I have to go home,’ said Jack. ‘They’ve only got oranges.’
Rice touched his arm gently. ‘I’ll call Social Services, all right? They’ll sort things out.’
Angrily he shook her hand off his arm. ‘They’ll put them in care!’ he shouted. ‘I have to go home! I’m in charge!’
‘Sorry, Jack,’ said Rice.
Parrott closed the door and locked it.
As they stood outside the cell, Marvel turned to Reynolds. ‘You and Parrott go back to the capture house and start dismantling it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Parrott, is there a safe here?’
‘Yes, sir. Behind the front desk.’
Marvel handed him the knife. ‘Be sure to put that in it before you go.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Parrott disappeared down the dingy corridor.
‘Rice, get someone to pick up the kids.’
Rice pulled a face. ‘But sir—’
Marvel’s phone rang and he answered it.
‘Hello, John,’ said Ralph Stourbridge irritatingly. ‘Am I right in thinking you mentioned Adam While’s wife?’
‘Yes,’ said Marvel. ‘What about it?’
‘Well, I was boring a colleague about the case just now and it turns out this colleague knows Mrs While’s cousin. She tells me Mrs While left her husband the day we picked him up.’
There was a crackling silence.
‘The same day?’ said Marvel incredulously.
‘The same day,’ said Stourbridge. ‘And I have to tell you, John … that bothers me.’
‘Yeah,’ said Marvel. ‘It bothers me too.’
ADAM WHILE’S WIFE opened the door looking like a whale.
She was hugely pregnant.
‘Mrs While?’ said Marvel.
‘Yes?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Marvel. Can I come in?’
Mrs While looked worried. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ said Marvel. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’
Reluctantly, she opened the door.
Marvel was always amazed how just saying that nothing was wrong could reassure people to the point of compliance. Even when there was loads wrong. Marvel wasn’t above a little white lie – or a big black one – in this regard. The job was all about getting inside and sitting down with people. Get them to make you a cup of tea, and you were halfway to a confession.
Marvel prided himself on his skill as an interviewer. On his way over in the car, he’d decided only to address the period immediately after the Eileen Bright murder. Unless it came up in the course of the conversation, he didn’t plan to touch on the burglary at all, now that it was clear that the knife Jack Bright had found was a red herring. A red herring that had set wheels in motion, but a red herring nonetheless.
Mrs While was a pretty girl, but had an anxious air about her that made Marvel suspicious. He liked that. Suspicious was his default setting, and he liked to know that he might actually have a valid reason to believe the worst about people.
He followed her through to the kitchen, hoping she’d put the kettle on.
Catherine didn’t put the kettle on. Her mind bubbled instead.
The policeman had said there was nothing wrong. But when was the last time somebody sent the police round to deliver good news? So although he’d said nothing was wrong, there plainly was something wrong.
Adam and the boy. It must be.
What had one of them done?
But if something had happened, surely the detective would have been legally obliged to use some other form of words, even if it was ambiguous? Maybe Nothing serious or There’s been an incident … Something like that?
So she walked him through to the kitchen – really only because she didn’t know what else to do, and because it gave her a moment to
process these thoughts in her anxious head.
‘Do you mind if I sit?’ she asked. She patted the top of her tummy and gave him a meaningful smile, but he didn’t smile back. Only inclined his head briefly to show that he had no objection.
Rude!
Catherine had got so used to people accommodating her pregnancy that she felt a spark of resentment at the man’s lack of interest.
She didn’t offer him a seat.
He didn’t seem to care. Just stood in the middle of the floor, got out his notebook and flipped through it.
‘I wanted to ask you about your husband.’
Catherine’s heart skipped an anxious beat. ‘Why? she said. ‘What’s wrong? Is he OK? You said nothing had happened! But something’s happened, hasn’t it? So what’s happened?’
The detective held up his hand as if she were a collie and he a shepherd. It made her hackles rise.
‘Don’t panic,’ he told her firmly.
‘I wasn’t panicking,’ she snapped. Although she had been, a little bit.
‘As far as I know, Mr While is fine. I’m just filling in some gaps in an old case.’
‘What old case?’
‘It’s a simple thing,’ he said. ‘I understand that when Mr While was questioned about the incident on the M5 a few years back, you left the family home.’
‘The incident?’
‘Yes,’ said the policeman. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Stourbridge tells me you left the family home the same day your husband was questioned. I wonder if you could tell me why?’
Catherine frowned. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about. And you just saying it again in a different order doesn’t help!’
She smiled briefly at him, but the detective sighed as if she were being very stupid indeed, when he was the one who’d got things wrong!
She didn’t like him.
At all.
‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here,’ she said briskly, ‘but I’m eight months pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I don’t need the stress, Mr Marble—’
‘Marvel,’ said Marvel.
‘Whatever!’ said Catherine. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘Look, Mrs While, it’s not a big deal. I’d just like to know why you left your husband that day, and why you came back.’
Snap_‘The best crime novel I’ve read in a very long time’ Val McDermid Page 18