Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [69]
'We should've arrested the bastard.'
'We couldn't have held him for long, sir,' Reynolds said. It wasn't his style to make Marvel feel better about things, but that was the truth.
'I don't fucking care. The sonofabitch as good as said he'd killed Margaret Priddy, and we should have taken him in right there and then and made his life hell for forty-eight hours. Maybe we wouldn't be standing here now. Maybe these three would still be alive.'
Reynolds said nothing, because he felt the same gnawing guilt that they had dismissed Gary Liss as merely a straight-talker, when now it looked as if he were more than that. A lot more than that.
He'd have to be a psychopath.
Yes, he would.
Marvel felt sick at the memory. They had left Gary Liss here. That meant they had left these poor people in the care of a serial killer. It was a miracle there were only three bodies, when you looked at it like that. Although he felt so far from a miracle right now that it would have taken Jesus Christ himself to come up the swirly stair carpet at Sunset Lodge and raise the victims from the dead before he'd be convinced of one.
'Should we call Gulliver, sir?' said Reynolds.
Kate Gulliver was a forensic psychologist based in Bristol and one of Marvel's least favourite people, right up there with Jos Reeves. He felt the little prick of anger at the implication that Reynolds thought he was out of his depth. Immediately after that, he realized that he was out of his depth - or at least wading there fast. And refusing to consult Gulliver at this point would look territorial and negligent.
'You call her.' He nodded to Reynolds. He knew Reynolds would love that - and be good at it. Kate Gulliver was his kind of person - the young, bright, First-Class-Honours kind.
He was busy enough here.
He wished he could clear the entire home properly, but transporting twenty-two elderly and frail residents was easier said than done. When he'd suggested it, Rupert Cooke - who was wearing paisley pyjamas under his mackintosh, like someone from an episode of Poirot - had started to list what they'd need to take with them. Medications, walking sticks, Zimmer frames, wheelchairs, warm clothing, changes of underwear ... When he'd got to incontinence pads, Marvel had put up a hand to stop him and had asked for them all to be moved into the garden room until the CSIs could examine the first floor and establish points of entry and exit.
He asked Rupert Cooke for the use of his office and got Reynolds to clear the desk so he had somewhere to put his elbows.
Grey said they had not yet found the murder weapon but confirmed that as soon as it was light they'd be moving outside the house to the grounds and the graveyard and starting on a grid until reinforcements arrived. Marvel told him to take Singh to Liss's home in the meantime - just in case their man was stupid after all.
Then Dave Pollard lumbered in and said a local agency reporter had picked up the story from a loose-lipped control-room officer, and had already called him three times on her way to Shipcott. She had said something about getting there 'before the circus starts'. Which Pollard 'thought' might mean they were about to be besieged by the press. Marvel mentally rolled his eyes at Pollard's lack of imagination and had second thoughts about putting him in charge