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

by Belinda Bauer

  ‘Another illegal search,’ said Reynolds, tight-lipped.

  ‘And where would we be without the first one?’ Marvel shot back. ‘Anyway, Veronica Creed upped and moved within hours of us asking her about the knife used to kill Eileen Bright. I think that gives us probable cause.’

  ‘For a warrant, possibly. Not to just bowl in and search! And to send in a burglar to turn the place over …! I don’t think any judge in the land would sign that order, sir! It’s contributing to the delinquency of a minor, at the very least!’

  ‘That bird has fucking flown!’ laughed Marvel. ‘And I’m not sending him into the Tower after the Crown bloody Jewels – just the back of a lorry to look for a bit of paper that could help us catch the man who killed his mother!’

  Reynolds looked unconvinced.

  ‘And anyway,’ Marvel went on, ‘who’s going to tell?’

  ‘Not me!’ said Jack.

  Marvel turned to Reynolds, who shook his head and said, ‘I feel very uncomfortable about this, sir.’

  ‘Well,’ said Marvel, getting out his phone, ‘you can feel uncomfortable for both of us while Jack and me catch a killer.’

  ‘Jack and I,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Marvel. ‘Then we’re all agreed.’

  Jack rummaged through the toolbox in the boot while Marvel spoke to the local police, and within ten minutes a marked patrol car crunched slowly past them and pulled up beside the lorry.

  As soon as it had, Jack slipped quietly into the night – embraced by the darkness that tanged of salt and wild adventure.

  As he skirted the shadows of the lorry, a copper in a hi-vis jacket knocked on the door of the cab.

  Once.

  And then again.

  And a third time.

  ‘Police. Open up, please.’

  The door opened. Low voices. Then the sound of somebody climbing down from the cab, and they led the woman away to speak to her, just like Marvel had asked. She was dressed in a heavy coat and boots.

  Using the wheel brace from the Focus, Jack wrestled with the padlock. It was a good lock, and the brace was not long, but leverage and grunting won out, and the lock popped with a click. It was then a simple matter to lift the catch on the door. It creaked open, and Jack vaulted inside.

  They watched Jack Bright spring easily into the back of the lorry.

  ‘Whatever happens with this,’ said Marvel suddenly, ‘I don’t think we should charge him.’

  ‘What?’ said Reynolds. ‘But he’s Goldilocks! He’s admitted it!’

  Marvel stared steadily at the back of the lorry. ‘In three years, two police forces have failed to find his mother’s killer. I don’t want to charge him for crimes he committed because of our failure. I don’t feel comfortable about it.’

  Reynolds pursed his lips. ‘Whatever the reason, sir, the fact is, he’s burgled and vandalized more than a hundred houses. Even he accepts now that a custodial sentence is inevitable!’

  Marvel nodded and was silent for a short while. Then he said, ‘It’s not, though, is it?’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not inevitable.’

  Reynolds frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not if we’re … flexible.’

  Reynolds didn’t like the sound of that. In his experience, flexibility was a very overrated quality.

  ‘There’s no way around the law, sir.’

  Marvel barked a laugh. ‘We both know that’s not true!’

  ‘I don’t know that at all,’ said Reynolds stiffly. ‘After all, I arrested Jack Bright myself! Twice!’

  ‘Did you?’ said Marvel.

  ‘You know I did,’ grumbled Reynolds. ‘Read him his rights, the whole nine yards. Especially the second time!’

  ‘I didn’t see the arrest myself,’ said Marvel. ‘Do you have witnesses?’

  ‘Witnesses?’ said Reynolds. ‘To the arrest?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marvel.

  ‘The arrest in the police station?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘Hm,’ said Marvel.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Reynolds, getting aerated.

  ‘I mean, if you have no witnesses to the arrest, then it’s his word against yours.’

  Reynolds looked at the DCI in utter astonishment. ‘You mean the word of a boy who’s a liar and a thief against the word of a serving police officer with an impeccable record?’

  ‘A serving police officer who screwed up the first arrest,’ said Marvel. ‘And who has no witnesses to the second alleged arrest of an unaccompanied and unrepresented minor – a boy whose mother was brutally murdered, and who was let down by the police and then by everybody who should have helped him. From his own father to all those people who should have noticed three little kids not going to school and living alone in that shithole of a house. That boy, Reynolds?’

  Reynolds glared at the lorry. ‘It was a lawful arrest,’ he said. ‘You know it, and I know it.’

  He didn’t say sir and he didn’t care.

  The sea air was replaced inside the lorry by a flat, metallic taste that sat badly in the back of Jack’s throat.

  Jack stood still for a moment; he could hear the woman and the policemen talking outside. He had to find the evidence they needed fast, and get out.

  He used the torch on his phone to pan around the room. Louis was right – the machines used to make knives would have fitted in a shed. Packed closely together at the far end of the container, there was even room left over for a little fridge, a hotplate and a microwave oven. Everything had been fastened to a metal framework welded to the interior walls of the lorry, so that nothing could budge while in transit.

  Even a plastic bucket had been clipped to the wall.

  But there was no filing cabinet. No cupboard. No safe. Nowhere the records of a business might be kept. He even checked the fridge and the microwave.

  Nothing.

  ‘Shit,’ he murmured.

  He examined the tools. They were big, oven-sized blocks with gleaming shafts and blades and calibrations. The base of one of them opened out in a door that he’d missed the first time around, and inside it were sliding metal drawers of segmented trays – compartments of various sizes, each with a hinged, clear lid so he could see at a glance the array of hand tools, and drill bits and half-tooled knife blades and mouldings for handles and indeterminate pieces of metal and wood and stone and leather.

  Four slim drawers. Scores of compartments.

  But only one with diamonds.

  Jack held his breath as, slowly, he lifted the lid.

  This compartment alone was lined with black velvet, so that the dozens of brilliant stones glittered like a distant galaxy in a dark new world.

  Jack breathed out. Then in again. Then quickly he folded the velvet over the diamonds, scooped them out and stuffed them deep into the pocket of his jeans.

  He was a burglar, after all.

  But he had not come for diamonds.

  The voices outside rose slightly. Thank-yous and goodbyes.

  Shit!

  Jack looked around desperately. The records weren’t here. The sliding drawers were the obvious place for them and they weren’t there. With a plummeting heart, he realized the logical place for important business records would not be in the back of the lorry at all, but in the cab! Up front, where VC would have them at her fingertips.

  He was in the wrong place and there was no time to get to the right one.

  He forced himself to stand still and listen.

  He heard the police car crunching away, and the woman’s footsteps cross the gritty tarmac towards him. He glanced at the back door. It was open, but only a bit. If she checked it, he was screwed. He had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.

  She didn’t check.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard and felt her climb back into the cab, the vibrations of her movement travelling through the metal and his feet. And if he could f
eel her movement, she would feel his. Jack knew that any move he made now would have to be made with extraordinary caution. He put his torch off and took a careful step towards the door.

  The engine started.

  For some reason, Jack hadn’t expected that. He’d thought VC would just get into her cab and go back to sleep.

  But VC wasn’t sleeping. She was moving on. Getting away.

  With him!

  Sound of car driving off.

  Panic gripped Jack. He had to get out! Now!

  But before he could move, the hydraulic brakes hissed and the lorry jerked backwards, throwing him to his hands and knees. He got up but then stumbled again as the vehicle lurched forward, and grabbed the edge of the fridge for support.

  Then the vehicle turned sharply and Jack rolled across the floor with a grunt. The door of the fridge swung open behind him, illuminating the scene. As the lorry swayed he grabbed it again and hauled himself back to his knees, now at eye level with a narrow freezer compartment he’d missed before.

  He yanked it open as if looking for a snack.

  Inside was a bag of frozen peas, and – under that – a plastic bag containing something large and flat. Something that had no more place in a freezer than a knife does in a boot …

  Reynolds was going to have a heart attack.

  It was bad enough to be told that his arrest of Jack Bright would be called into question once they were back in Tiverton, without having to watch the same little thief sneak across the car park and break into private property – all with the blessing of the Senior Investigating Officer.

  And to have to sit and wait and not know what the hell was going on inside the back of the lorry was a rare torture.

  There might be booby traps. Armed guards. A tiger in a cage!

  He tensed unbearably as Veronica Creed – cutler to kings and killers – finished up her conversation and headed back to the cab.

  And then she started the engine …

  Reynolds went cold. He hadn’t expected that.

  And neither had Marvel, who grunted his surprise.

  ‘Sir?’ said Reynolds nervously.

  ‘Give him a minute,’ said Marvel.

  Reynolds gave him ten seconds, then said ‘Sir?’ again, more forcefully. But Marvel stood his ground.

  The lorry backed up. Then went forward. Then reversed again in an arc. Now they couldn’t see the back door any more. Didn’t know what was happening inside the lorry even more than they hadn’t known what was happening a minute ago.

  The brakes hissed and Reynolds saw the big front wheels turning to make the final sweep out of the car park.

  ‘Sir!’ he squeaked.

  ‘Give him a minute,’ said Marvel.

  Reynolds imagined the disciplinary hearing – maybe the trial. How he’d bear witness to Marvel’s cold, uncaring tone as the child he’d sent out to steal evidence for him was injured or killed or kidnapped and never seen again. A fat, selfish Fagin. While he was—

  Reynolds’ imagination hit PAUSE. What was he? What would he be in all of this if Jack Bright came to harm?

  ‘Shit!’ he yelled, and finally flung open his door to put a stop to this madness, just as the big blue lorry rumbled past them in the darkness.

  ‘Shit!’ he yelled again, and threw himself back in his seat and slammed the door shut and shouted, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ like a bank robber.

  But Marvel didn’t go. Didn’t even start the getaway car.

  ‘SIR!’ Reynolds yelled at him, but Marvel was grinning.

  Grinning and pointing.

  At Jack Bright, on his hands and knees, alone in the middle of the car park.

  ‘I told you to give him a minute,’ he said.

  Reynolds watched in amazement as the skinny boy rose gingerly from the tarmac, looked around to get his bearings, and then jogged towards them unevenly, clutching something large and flat to his chest.

  He yanked open the back door and fell on to the seat, gasping for air.

  ‘Did you get it?’ said Marvel in the mirror.

  ‘I got something,’ said the boy, and held it out.

  ‘Why’s it cold?’ said Marvel. He switched on the interior light. Inside the clear plastic bag they could see a black leather ledger.

  And embossed in gold on the cover:

  BOOK OF KNIVES.

  THE BOOK WAS all in code.

  Every entry was a series of seemingly unrelated numbers and letters in short bursts, annotated here or there by a symbol and a footnote that was also unintelligible.

  Marvel had grumbled and bumbled over it in the car park for a while and hadn’t made an iota of progress.

  ‘Mumbo fucking jumbo,’ he’d finally said – then closed the book with a petulant clap, handed it to Reynolds, and started the car.

  As they left Pevensey Bay, Reynolds opened the Book of Knives on his knees.

  He relished the task. At school he’d been good at maths – could spot patterns and anomalies more quickly than his classmates. And he liked crosswords, too. The Times, the Telegraph. Cryptic stuff. He was sure his talents would help him now.

  First he scanned each lined page without much focus – just letting his eyes drift down the entries, which were written in a hand that was so tight and precise that it hardly seemed human. He turned the pages with an easy rhythm, his eyes gliding smoothly over the entries until the writing ran out.

  There were ten entries on each page and a little over nine pages had been filled. If he assumed (even though he winced at the very thought) that each entry related to a single knife, it would mean that VC had made an average of fewer than ten knives a year. It didn’t seem a lot.

  Or it did.

  Reynolds realized he had no frame of reference so any speculation was pointless.

  In the back, Jack Bright said something. He turned to look at the boy, but he was asleep, frowning against the upholstery, his fist balled over his ear.

  ‘What did he say?’ said Marvel.

  ‘Didn’t catch it, sir,’ said Reynolds. ‘He’s asleep.’

  He paged through the book again, more slowly this time.

  He assumed that the entries had been made in chronological order. With that his only focus, dates made themselves known to him. Days were in figures, months represented by a letter or two, the year in figures again. Just the two that counted.

  Once that small triumph had been silently celebrated, there was little else in which to rejoice. Every entry was a jumble of numbers and upper- and lower-case letters, broken into batches as if they were words, except they were not. Every entry had a single full stop. Other than that, each was a string of unintelligible nonsense.

  His eyes burning with lack of sleep, DS Reynolds stared at a random entry, willing it to miraculously rearrange itself into sense.

  22AP98S7433t 334546anPK3gWC e0.3CTN133500

  It meant nothing to him.

  14JL98G7869r 667897aST7vAGC e0.7CCF72s6500

  Neither did the next one.

  12OC98W799h 223988iFH5lABT e0.5CTA1110250R

  And then they were out of ninety-eight. Still no sense.

  19MR99H7224a 775888yPK3deWT n0.2CBR173250

  ‘Any luck?’ said Marvel quietly.

  Reynolds sighed. ‘Not really, sir, although I can see they’re listed by date, so I assume each entry relates to the sale of a knife, but that’s about it. It’s not a code based on mathematics or language, but on the unique attributes of knives and the business dealings of their maker – to which we are not privy.’

  Marvel drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Surely it can’t be that different from any other sales ledger. What would she have wanted to record about each sale? Date, item, price, purchaser. What else?’

  ‘Ummm … address? Quality? Special features?’

  Marvel nodded. ‘That’s about it, isn’t it? So even if she was thorough, we’re still only talking about half a dozen things she’d record. So, as long as that’s a sales ledger and not her attempts to communic
ate with Martians, we do have a guide to decoding it. We just need to relate each element to a knife or purchaser and so on.’

  ‘But we don’t know anything about the knives or the purchasers.’

  ‘We know about one knife and one possible purchaser,’ said Marvel. ‘Start there.’

  ‘Well, after the date,’ said Reynolds, ‘every entry has a letter and a seven.’ He read random entries. ‘W7991, L7634, P7220 … it goes on.’

  ‘And what comes after that?’

  Reynolds took a moment to check several entries before answering.

  ‘Another letter. Seemingly random. So, a random letter, a random four-figure number starting with a seven, and another random letter …’

  ‘And then?’

  Again Reynolds checked several entries. ‘And then a six-figure number. Again, seemingly random. There’s a full stop in each entry.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘About two-thirds along in each case. Oh, and with a zero in front of it. As if it’s zero point five, zero point two, etc.’

  He read out an entry. ‘19MY00H7224a 775888yPK3deWT n0.2CBR173250.’

  Silence.

  ‘What comes before the full stop?’

  ‘A zero, sir. In every case. And after it a number and the letter C.’

  ‘In every case?’

  Reynolds checked and nodded. ‘Looks like it.’

  Marvel gave a precautionary yank on his nasal hairs while Reynolds stared stupidly at the book on his lap. And all the time the convergent white lines of the M4 motorway rushed at them out of the darkness and flickered away under the car.

  Jack Bright woke and stretched and then hung between the front seats, peering at the book too, as if he might help.

  ‘Why’s that one got R at the end?’

  Another ten miles of black road hissed under them.