A third had gone straight through his skull and right eye.
The smell of old death rose up to meet them – as if Ang Nu’s life had already ended here, a long, long time ago.
Marvel said nothing and neither did Brady.
There was too much not to say.
42
BRADY BOOSTED MARVEL back over the fence. His coat caught again on the top, but it was already torn. It smelled of vomit too, which made him remember the bucket the kid had chucked at him, and how hard he’d tried not to throw up on himself after leaving Anna Buck’s flat last night. He shouldn’t have bothered; it had got him in the end.
He turned the boy’s shoe over with his toe, and picked up the phone. The shoe was an Adidas knock-off with a hole in the heel; the phone was quite new.
Marvel left Brady at the embankment to keep rubberneckers at bay and walked slowly back to the garage, like a kid reluctant to go home for a hiding.
They weren’t even supposed to be here. Clyde had closed the case. He was supposed to be charging Richard Latham for dognapping or arresting some other bastard for shooting Tanzi Anderson.
Anything but this. Here. Now.
He was in deep shit.
By the time he got back to the garage, the tall skinny mechanic and the short white curly one had both vanished.
‘Where’s Ang?’ said James Buck.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Ang Nu.
‘Why’d he fucking run?’ Marvel complained, making the victim into the culprit with a single short question.
‘You scared him. He thought you were Immigration.’
‘He’s not legal then?’ Marvel was slightly cheered. That was good news. The kid was an illegal immigrant. Chasing down a guilty man was a whole different matter. A guilty man was fair game. Why he was guilty was beside the point.
Marvel looked around. ‘Where did the other two go?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They legal?’
Buck reddened and his eyes flickered towards the tubby man whose slicked-back hair and blue overalls made him look like Mao Tse Tung.
‘You the boss?’ said Marvel.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Brian Pigeon.’
‘Well you’re in deep shit, Mr Pigeon.’ It was nice to pass it on. The man in the overalls didn’t even bother asking why. Just looked worried.
‘Where’s Ang?’ James Buck insisted.
‘Little shit took my phone,’ said Pigeon. ‘Right here off the bench!’
‘Ang’s dead,’ said Marvel.
‘Dead?’ said James. He and Pigeon exchanged stunned looks. ‘What happened?’
‘He fell.’
‘What? How?’
Marvel sighed and answered him out of courtesy for his help and for not making a complaint.
Yet.
‘Look, your colleague fell while trying to evade arrest, and sadly is deceased. The important thing now is to take care of matters in an appropriate manner. Did he have family here?’
Buck shook his head, looking sick, and Brian Pigeon answered, ‘No. Nobody.’
More music to Marvel’s ears. Nobody was going to make a fuss about Ang Nu. Nobody was going to cry to the newspapers. Nobody was going to call for his head or sue the Met.
‘Where did he live?’ he asked.
Buck glanced at Brian Pigeon, who said, ‘Here. He lived here. He couldn’t afford rent so I let him stay here.’
‘Anything to do with the fact that you’re employing a bunch of illegal immigrants?’
Pigeon said nothing more.
Marvel pointed a firm finger at him. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he said. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’
The next several hours were a blur of ambulances, flapping crime-scene tape, news crews, Transport Police, Railtrack PR suits, and scenes of crime officers in white jumpsuits. Clyde himself made an appearance and gave a statement to TV reporters on the garage forecourt, before telling Marvel to go home.
‘But this is my case,’ Marvel had said defiantly.
‘This isn’t your case,’ Clyde had replied coldly. ‘You don’t have a case. As of right now, you don’t even have a job.’
When Marvel had looked blank, he’d added, ‘You’re suspended.’
Later, as Marvel got as drunk as he possibly could in the warm embrace of the King’s Arms, he watched the story play out on the TV over the bar.
Behind Clyde’s fake sorrow for Ang Nu, he could see Brian Pigeon being led away from the garage in handcuffs.
And beyond that was what looked like a small blue tent pitched on the edge of the forecourt. He thought the SOCOs might have erected it over the place where he’d vomited the night before. Then – just before the shot cut to the railway embankment – the little tent moved and he realized it was a person sitting there in a big blue nylon something.
When it moved he saw it was Anna Buck. A skinny blur, head bowed, legs like sticks.
Marvel suddenly realized the irony of seeking help on a missing-persons case from someone who couldn’t even find her own bloody kid.
He ordered another Jameson.
Another double.
Marvel finally got home a little after midnight, bloodshot and exhausted, to find that the coffee table had gone.
So had the Habitat sofa.
‘Debbie!’ he shouted.
So had Debbie.
‘Buster!’ he said loudly. ‘Buster?’
There was no clatter of tiny feet.
There was an envelope with his name on it taped to the TV screen with something that left a mark when he ripped it off.
He knelt and scratched at the gummy mess until he woke up with his forehead pressed against the dark screen and drool on his chin.
The sofa may have gone but luckily the rug was still there, so he lay down on it.
It was only as he fell into the wonderful, dreamless sleep of the hopelessly drunk that John Marvel remembered that the exhaust system on the Audi TT had not yet been checked.
But by then, it didn’t seem that important.
Edie Evans cried without tears. She made the face and a tiny humming sound. She hoped her body’s own memory might muster some moisture to ease the gritty blinking of her lids. When it didn’t, she closed her eyes instead to keep them from turning to little husks in their sockets.