Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [109]
He'd always known it would come. Always. People who behaved like Marvel were on borrowed time. For a start, he knew that Marvel had left the Met under a cloud. Quite what kind of cloud he'd not been able to determine, but the police grapevine had whispered of Marvel squeezing the facts to make them fit a suspect - or squeezing that suspect to make him fit the facts. Reynolds believed it. He would have believed almost anything ill of Marvel. He hated the man's archaic approach - his reliance on 'hunches', his relaxed attitude to procedure, his personal whims and illogical vendettas; his secret drinking - none of these had any place in modern law enforcement.
Since he'd started working with Marvel, Reynolds had been shocked by his fixation on certain 'suspects'. In Weston last year, Marvel had held a nineteen-year-old homeless man for two days because he'd been near the scene of the crime and 'looked guilty'. Before that the married boyfriend of a strangled Asian teenager was terrified into a confession which took seconds to collapse once the girl's father haughtily confessed to the 'honour' killing a few days later.
Sure, Marvel did get results - even Reynolds had to admit that - and those results had kept him grudgingly secure ever since he'd left London. There was a kind of inferiority complex going on at the Avon & Somerset force which had allowed the big-city cop to bulldoze his way through conventional practice and on to cases that should have belonged to others. Even senior officers were only human, and - Reynolds knew - most just wanted things to run smoothly. Attempting to rein Marvel in and put him in his place would have taken more effort than any of the current incumbents were prepared to expend - even from behind a desk.
From his place at Marvel's side, Reynolds had been convinced that the man deserved to be kicked out. But because of Marvel's constant, dogged results, he'd always known he would also need to get good, sworn, hopefully civilian evidence of serious wrongdoing to bring the man down.
The kind of evidence that Lucy Holly had just dropped into his lap like manna from heaven. The kind of evidence that he could see the Independent Police Complaints Commission putting right at the top of the pile. The disabled wife of a serving officer alleging conduct unbecoming and being drunk on the job.
Superb.
Reynolds signed and dated his notes of the conversation and tucked them neatly into a folder with a sense of self-satisfaction. He was harassed and balding, trying to do his job and Marvel's, but as soon as he had a spare moment, he would go and see Lucy Holly, take her sworn statement and add it to the rest of the case he had built against his DCI in the past year.
Sergio Leone, eat your heart out.
One Day
It was gone five o'clock and Marvel was in the Red Lion nursing half a pint of piss masquerading as alcohol-free lager.
He hadn't invited anybody else along for an after-work drink. He was heartily sick of the lot of them and even more sick of being stuck here in Shipcott with what appeared to be trench foot.
Jos Reeves called to say that the prints inside the plastic bags they'd found in the courtyard were unidentifiable. Little more than muddy smears.
Marvel didn't even have the energy to be rude to him.
Someone walked through his line of vision with a lurching gait and Marvel focused. The young man had the look of someone who had put his weight and his drink on fast - florid, and with all the excess fat around his belly and his chin.
'What are you looking at?' said Neil Randall.
'You got a wooden leg?' said Marvel.
The young man was taken aback. He was used to people blushing and stammering when he confronted them.
'Yes,' he said.
Then he remembered his hostility and added, 'You want to