Snap_‘The best crime novel I’ve read in a very long time’ Val McDermid

by Belinda Bauer

  ‘The TO LET sign’s back up. It had fallen down.’

  Marvel chewed over that for half a minute. ‘I assumed she’d just moved in. She didn’t look like someone who was planning to move out. And, trust me, those cats were there to stay.’

  Reynolds nodded.

  They all stared at the house.

  ‘Can you see the gnome?’ said Marvel.

  ‘What gnome?’ said Jack.

  ‘No,’ said Reynolds.

  Marvel focused his binoculars on the lawn. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Reynolds.

  Marvel handed him the binoculars and took out his phone. ‘Read me the number on that TO LET sign.’

  Reynolds did, and Marvel rang it.

  He could hear the ring-tone change as the call was patched through – he guessed from the closed letting office to some on-call person.

  ‘Hello?’ The on-call person sounded quite cross to have been called.

  Marvel told him who he was and asked about the tenant in the Cumberland Road property.

  ‘There’s no tenant in there,’ said the young-sounding man. ‘That’s why it’s to let.’

  ‘I spoke to the tenant at the house this afternoon,’ said Marvel. ‘So check your records again, please.’

  ‘I know the house,’ said the agent snottily. ‘Sixties brick. Cumberland Road. It’s been empty for months.’

  ‘When were you last there?’ said Marvel.

  The man hesitated. ‘A while ago.’

  ‘OK,’ said Marvel, and hung up. It wasn’t his business to run a letting agency.

  He turned to Reynolds. ‘They’re bloody squatters!’

  They got out of the car.

  ‘Can I come?’ said Jack, and they both said ‘No!’ as one.

  Reynolds went round the back, while Marvel walked down the side of the driveway in the shadow of the neighbour’s hedge, where the neighbour’s large-sounding dog barked angrily at him. Then across the front of the house, his shoulder brushing the brickwork, trying to cheat the CCTV.

  At the front window he cupped his hands around his torch and looked in.

  Everything was the same. The cats were all present and as correct as cats could be. The tea tray was still on the table.

  Marvel wondered if Mrs Creed was all right. She didn’t strike him as the kind of person who would leave dirty cups in the living room. A teapot getting stained by old bags. That used to drive Debbie mad when they lived together. One of the many things. So he was a little concerned. It was only a niggle, but definitely there.

  What if Christopher Creed had been watching them? What if he was furious with his mother for letting them in? What if they’d had a row? The dumpy little woman versus her ex-marine, underpants-wearing, spoiled-baby son with the knife obsession? What if he’d killed her in a fit of anger? It might sound far-fetched to the uninitiated, but Marvel had seen far worse things with his own eyes.

  Marvel joined Reynolds at the back of the house.

  ‘Anything?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Nothing. Can’t see anything. Too dark.’

  Marvel nodded. ‘I think we should go in.’

  ‘On what grounds?’ said Reynolds. ‘We can’t break into a house just because we fancy a nose about.’

  Marvel ignored him and tried the back door, but it was locked.

  They walked around the house, but the front door was locked too.

  ‘Shit,’ said Marvel.

  Then they just stood there while the dog went mad next door.

  Finally Marvel said, ‘Go get the kid.’

  Reynolds was aghast. ‘Sir, we barely have probable cause to enter the house, let alone a known felon!’

  ‘I’m concerned for the safety of Mrs Creed,’ said Marvel grandly. ‘I could break down her back door, but the least intrusive way of gaining access and making sure she is all right is to send the boy in.’

  ‘But what if he gets injured? Or even killed? Christopher Creed makes knives, and one of them has been used to commit murder. He has a vested interest in not being caught!’

  ‘If Creed is there, he’s hiding. Hiding is not an aggressive act.’

  ‘Hiding from us, maybe! He’s not going to take on two police officers on lawful business,’ hissed Reynolds. ‘But a boy alone in a dark house? Anything could happen!’

  ‘Jack Bright can take care of himself,’ said Marvel. ‘And we’re right here if he needs us. Go get him.’

  ‘I don’t like this, sir,’ said Reynolds stiffly. ‘Not one bit.’

  ‘Noted,’ said Marvel.

  Reynolds went to the car and came back with Jack.

  ‘There’s no answer,’ Marvel explained to the boy. ‘We are concerned that Mrs Creed might be injured or unwell. We’d like you to break in to make sure she’s safe.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘See if she’s all right.’

  ‘And if you happen to see any relevant paperwork …’

  ‘It’s an illegal search,’ said Reynolds. ‘Anything he finds is inadmissible.’

  ‘He’s not going to search for anything,’ snapped Marvel. ‘He’s going to go in and see if Mrs Creed is all right. If he happens to see any documentation with Adam While’s name on it, in drawers or filing cabinets …’ – he nodded at Jack – ‘well, that’s just a lucky accident.’

  ‘I won’t be any part of this,’ said Reynolds, and turned away from both of them.

  Marvel rolled his eyes, and Jack couldn’t help grinning.

  ‘Do your thing,’ said Marvel.

  He followed Jack Bright round to the back of the house. Despite his grand declaration, Reynolds did remain a small part of it by trailing behind them, muttering.

  Jack walked ten feet down the back garden to assess the guttering and drains. There were always more at the back of a house, where the soil pipes ran.

  His burglar’s eye quickly found the weak point – a small window over the garden shed. He glanced about the patio and picked up a trowel that had been dug into a planter full of dead daisies. Then he put a patio chair next to the shed, scrambled quickly to the apex of the roof, and easily scaled a downpipe to reach the window. Once there, he worked the trowel into the wooden window frame until it cracked and popped open, then slid silently through the window and disappeared from view.

  The whole operation had taken less than two minutes.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Marvel.

  ‘Appalling,’ said Reynolds.

  Jack dropped into a box room. Even empty, it looked too small for a bed.

  He crept across the carpet, treading gingerly in case of creaks, but the house was not so old that the nails had shrunk in their holes, and his step was comfortingly silent.

  He opened the door on to a narrow landing, off which there were only closed doors.

  Jack took a shaky breath. He never broke into houses where he thought there were people. Catherine While had been a mistake. Shawn had fucked up, and it had been a horrible shock to suddenly realize that he wasn’t alone in the house.

  But here, he knew he wasn’t alone, and he was nervous as hell.

  He opened the first door.

  It was dark, but he could see it was a bathroom. Empty. Not even toilet paper.

  He took a few paces down the thick pale carpet that lined the hallway. The next door opened on to an empty bedroom. No bed, no wardrobe. Only more carpet.

  And a smell he couldn’t place.

  Industrial. That was as close as he could get to it.

  Another bathroom. This time Jack stood in the doorway long enough to see that there were no towels. No toothbrushes. No toilet paper. Again.

  Odd.

  There were only two more doors. One on his right and the other straight ahead at the end of the landing. For some reason he went past the door on his right and headed to the one facing him, and turned the handle slowly.

  It was the master bedroom. Jack could see that from the light of
the streetlamp outside. And it, too, was empty of everything but carpet.

  He frowned in the dark, then quietly shut the door.

  The last door. He was expecting more of the same, but resisted the feeling of complacency. He hadn’t got away with 117 burglaries by being complacent.

  There could be anything behind the final door.

  Anything.

  He turned the handle slowly and pushed open the door.

  Nothing.

  Jack stood for a moment, unsure of his next move. Then he remembered that Marvel said they had spoken to an old lady. Maybe she couldn’t get up the stairs. Maybe there were more bedrooms downstairs.

  He took a moment to regain the required caution, then crept down the stairs and searched methodically.

  Every room was empty. The kitchen did not even have a kettle. Jack opened the fridge and the kitchen cabinets. Empty.

  Everywhere.

  Except the one room that was entirely filled with cats.

  It was the weirdest thing he’d ever seen.

  Jack walked to the back door to let Marvel and Reynolds in. But as he reached for the bolts, a woman’s voice demanded, ‘Can I help you?’

  The longer Jack was in the house, the more tense Marvel got.

  He’d hoped the boy would be inside for a few minutes at the most, and would come back out the way he’d gone in, telling them that Mrs Creed was asleep in her bed, and – hopefully – clutching an invoice addressed to Adam While.

  Now he really did begin to wonder whether Mrs Creed was OK.

  Maybe sending a fourteen-year-old boy into the house to find out hadn’t been such a great idea, after all. What had Ralph Stourbridge said?

  Not my finest hour.

  Marvel hoped he wouldn’t look back on this hour and think the same thing. Even if Jack were safe, he wouldn’t want the kid finding a body. Marvel had found his share of bodies during his years in homicide, but you never got used to that initial shock, even if you were expecting it. It was like a balloon you were blowing up bursting in your face.

  Reynolds was looking through the kitchen window, his hands cupped around his eyes, and Marvel stepped alongside him and peered into the darkness himself.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  They both flinched and turned to see a middle-aged woman. She was wearing a yellow towelling dressing gown and green wellington boots, and had a large black dog on a lead.

  ‘Hello,’ said Marvel.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

  ‘Police,’ said Marvel, and held up his ID. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh!’ said the woman, visibly relieved. ‘I live next door. Bobby was barking and I wanted to make sure everything was all right.’

  ‘You’re a friend of Mrs Creed’s?’

  ‘Not really, just a neighbour. She’s only been here for a few months. Keeps herself to herself.’

  ‘She doesn’t seem to be at home.’

  ‘No, she left,’ said the woman.

  ‘When?’

  ‘This afternoon. Around four.’

  The men exchanged glances. Mrs Creed had left shortly after they had. That felt suspicious – as if their visit had prompted her departure.

  ‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’ asked Marvel.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What kind of car does she drive?’

  ‘She doesn’t have a car,’ said the woman. ‘She has a lorry.’

  ‘A big blue lorry?’ said Reynolds, glancing at Marvel. ‘Parked round the corner?’

  ‘Yes. Bloody great thing. She parked it there three months ago and never budged it once, even when Mrs Chandra in the bungalow asked her nicely because it was blocking her light.’

  Marvel and Reynolds exchanged sick looks. They’d parked right behind the getaway vehicle.

  ‘She never moved it until today?’ said Marvel.

  ‘That’s right. She often got into it, as if she was going to move it, but she never actually did. Mrs Chandra thought she was taunting her, but she doesn’t seem like that kind of person to me.’

  ‘Was her son with her when she left?’ said Marvel.

  ‘Her son?’

  ‘Christopher.’

  ‘I never saw a son,’ she said. ‘But then, I’m not nosy.’

  Again Marvel and Reynolds exchanged confused looks.

  Reynolds asked the next question: ‘What’s Mrs Creed’s first name, do you know?’

  ‘Veronica, I think.’

  ‘Veronica?’ said Marvel.

  ‘Veronica Creed,’ said Reynolds slowly. ‘VC.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Marvel. ‘She’s the maker!’

  ‘Jesus,’ muttered Reynolds. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘What’s this all about?’ asked the neighbour, but suddenly Marvel wanted her out of there, not witnessing their failure.

  ‘Police business,’ he said brusquely. ‘Thank you for your help, Mrs …?’

  ‘Mizz Flowers.’

  ‘Thank you for your help, Ms Flowers, but I’m going to ask you to go home now while we continue our inquiries.’

  Ms Flowers looked disgruntled. ‘What? So I come over here and give you a whole load of useful information and you’re not going to give me any back?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Marvel, and ushered her and her dog into the night.

  Marvel, Reynolds and Jack Bright stood in the cat room with the lights on.

  The photograph of Christopher Creed – or whoever the hell he was – was gone, and in its place a Chinese lucky cat waved its mocking golden fist up and down, leaving them in no doubt as to what it thought of them.

  ‘She even asked if we were sure we were looking for a man,’ groaned Marvel. ‘She made an ass out of u and me.’

  ‘It’s not our fault, sir! She lied!’

  ‘They all lie!’ Marvel snapped. ‘It’s our job to remember that! But we had our witness in our effective custody. Our witness made us tea. And then we let our witness go because we assumed that the knife-maker must be a man.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Reynolds. ‘Maybe a little bit our fault.’

  Veronica Creed had toyed with them. Dropped a big fat clue in front of them and then watched them ignore it as they stumbled around blindly, trying to pin the tail on their own prejudices.

  They’d been outwitted by an old lady in a cat jumper.

  ‘She must work in the lorry,’ Reynolds went on. ‘Why else would she have a vehicle that big? Knife-making requires some heavy-duty milling and grinding equipment, so keeping everything in her lorry – and nothing in the house – means she can just up and leave at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘So this isn’t even her house?’ said Jack.

  ‘No,’ said Marvel. ‘She probably squats in one place so she can set up things like phone accounts and credit cards, and then, if things get a bit warm, she moves on.’

  ‘So all this,’ Jack waved an arm around the cat room, ‘it’s really just a capture house.’

  Marvel and Reynolds exchanged embarrassed looks and Jack laughed.

  ‘So what happens now?’ he said. ‘How are you going to catch her?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Marvel morosely. ‘How many other clues did she give us that we didn’t even notice because of the cats and the custard fucking creams?’

  ‘Or because she’s an unattractive middle-aged woman,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘All right, Germaine Greer,’ snapped Marvel. ‘It’s not like she wasn’t trying to deceive us. If she was trying to make it easy she would have just given us Adam While’s bloody invoice.’

  The two of them glared at their notebooks. The only sound was the tiny click of the cat’s golden paw waving back and forth.

  ‘Can’t you just find the lorry?’ said Jack.

  ‘Good thinking,’ snapped Marvel. ‘I’ll put out an alert. Big blue lorry. Somewhere in London. Should do the trick.’

  ‘I thought you could trace the number plate.’

  ‘Well, if we had it, we could.’

/>   ‘X250 TBB,’ said Jack.

  The both looked at him and he shrugged. ‘Well, you were gone ages and there was nothing else to do.’

  WITH THE HELP of three force control rooms, they finally found the lorry three hours later on a blunt spur of tarmac that was a small excuse for a car park overlooking a Sussex beach.

  Marvel parked the Ford Focus fifty yards away, next to a bin overflowing with chip paper and plastic bottles. On the side was a notice that said Keep Pevensey Bay Beautiful.

  In the dark they couldn’t see whether Pevensey Bay was beautiful or not. Couldn’t see the caravans or the little boats corralled by wire, or even the ocean – although they could hear the waves breaking on to the beach below, each one dashing pebbles on to the shingle, then sucking them out to sea again in hissing, clicking foam.

  It was a warm, still night and with only the stars and the sound of the waves, it made Jack think they could be in Bali.

  ‘What now?’ he yawned. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left Bromley.

  Marvel said nothing. Jack wondered if he’d heard him, so said again, ‘What now?’

  ‘Don’t keep going on,’ said Marvel rattily.

  Jack shut up. He didn’t really mind being sidelined. It was nice not to have to make any decisions. To have them made for him and take no responsibility for the outcome.

  ‘William the Conqueror landed here, you know,’ mused Reynolds. ‘Ten sixty-six.’

  Jack looked down the beach and imagined men with bows and arrows and pikes and maces, slipping and sliding up the shingle. The roar they would make. The way their blood would run between the pebbles and disappear into the land below.

  ‘What else did you nick of mine?’ said Reynolds.

  ‘What?’

  ‘From the capture house. Besides my suit and tie.’

  Jack glowered at him. They’d been having a nice time! They were a team! And now he had to bring that up.

  He folded his arms and said nothing.

  ‘We need to get her out of the lorry,’ said Marvel. ‘So we can have a look inside.’

  ‘We can’t search the lorry without a warrant, sir,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘We’re not going to,’ agreed Marvel.

  They both turned to look at Jack.

  ‘OK.’ Jack unfolded his arms, and his heart started to pick up its pace. He’d never broken into a lorry but already knew how to. While he’d been waiting for Marvel and Reynolds with no radio to distract him, he’d studied the back of this very vehicle – his practised eye idly working out how the latches operated, and seeking the weak link in the mechanism. Planning a break-in was a habit. A dirty little habit of which he was ashamed and proud in equal measure. He’d never imagined he’d put this particular bit of knowledge to practical use, but if it would keep the investigation on track, he was more than willing to have a bash.