Darkside

involved.’

Jonas said nothing. Marvel cocked his head and put a hand behind his ear. ‘I didn’t hear you, PC Holly.’

Jonas had one last stab at resistance: ‘What about my job? I’m not under your command. Sir.’

‘What job? Cats up trees and taking fags off school kids? Do me a fucking favour. This is a murder investigation and I’m the senior investigating officer so you’re under my command if I say you are. Got it?’

Again he cocked his head. Again the hand behind the ear.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jonas. ‘I got it.’

* * *

Marvel’s shoes were ruined and they were the only pair he had with him. He turned the heating up to Full and put his brogues on the radiator, stuffed with the sudoku and horoscope pages from the Daily Mail; each as pointless and confusing as the other. Debbie used to read his stars to him. at him, really. Taurus. The Bull. Bullshit, more likely. She’d always said they were a perfect match. Well look at them now: him sat in a stable with wet shoes, her back with her mother like some impecunious student, having chosen the retro couch over him and his growing collection of empty Jameson bottles. A match made in heaven.

Fuck. He suddenly remembered the vomit. He pulled his phone out of his pocket more in hope than expectation, but was surprised to see five full bars of signal inviting him to make the call while he still could.

‘Reeves?’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

Jos Reeves had obviously been asleep and Marvel glanced at his watch. It was only 11.10pm, the bloody stoner.

‘Yeah,’ said Reeves. ‘What?’

‘I found what looks like vomit outside the vic’s back door.’

‘Vomit?’ said Reeves through a yawn.

‘Yes. Your boys must’ve missed it.’ Marvel didn’t say he’d have missed it himself if he hadn’t almost stepped in it.

‘OK, I’ll send Mikey down in the morning.’

‘What’s wrong with tonight?’ said Marvel, uncomfortably aware that he’d forgotten all about it until this minute.

Jos Reeves laughed as if he’d meant to make a joke and Marvel hoped this case never came to hang on the freshness or otherwise of said vomit, or he’d have to do some serious verbal sword-dancing to avoid the whole bloody thing collapsing around his ears. He knew that Jos Reeves wasn’t going to send a man down at this time of night, and knew it was unreasonable to ask him to do so.

‘Well it’s not getting any fresher,’ he said petulantly, ‘and it’s pissing down.’

‘Yeah, it’s raining here too,’ said Reeves mildly in that conversational way that got under Marvel’s skin so badly.

‘It’s a lot wetter here,’ he said, and hung up before Reeves could further irritate him with some eyebrow- arching clever remark about the wetness of water.

Marvel wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air like a dog, before realizing that the reek came from his steaming shoes releasing pungent foot-smell into the room.

Tomorrow he would get some wellington boots and put them on his expenses.

* * *

Jonas had cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, put on a load of washing, ironed a shirt for the morning and made supper of fake steak, oven chips and broccoli. The only real meat Lucy insisted on nowadays was bacon and the occasional McDonald’s, which she craved as if pregnant. The nearest outlet was a forty-minute drive away in Minehead, but sometimes they’d make a day of it, laughing at their own bumpkin quest for what Jonas always called ‘the fabled Golden Arches’.

At least you could pick up a burger with your hands, thought Lucy ruefully as she struggled to cut her fake steak. Sometimes her hands could do these things and sometimes they just couldn’t. Jonas leaned over and did it for her, without missing a beat and – somehow – without making her feel patronized or pathetic.

He told her he was now involved in the investigation. He didn’t tell her how it had come about, or that the Senior Investigating Officer apparently thought he was a moron. He also didn’t tell her that his involvement would consist of standing on a freezing doorstep with the wholly spurious aim of spotting the killer as he sauntered compulsively back and forth past the scene of the crime.

Basically he didn’t tell her any of the details that he knew would get her so angry on his behalf.

And although she knew he was hiding something, Lucy didn’t ask. She just squeezed his hand as well as she could, told him she felt safer because he was on the case, and thanked him for bringing home the extra milk.

Nineteen Days

Jonas was on Margaret Priddy’s doorstep by 8am, which meant a trickle of schoolchildren had nearly an hour to stare and whisper and giggle at him on their way to school. The cordon of tape had been attraction enough; Jonas standing there like the policeman outside 10 Downing Street was a black hole of fascination that sucked kids in from all over the village.

Linda Cobb from next door brought him a cup of tea at eight thirty. He accepted politely and then had to stand pointless guard while sipping now and then from a mug which read World’s Best Mum. It was just fuel on the irritating little fire that was the Schadenfreude of the mocking children. They were nice children; Jonas knew all of them. And he knew too that it was only the odd alignment of the murder, the cordon and his sudden silly vigil that had made them bratty – but right now he wished the lot of them would quietly disappear. His wish came true when the school bell dragged them to the other end of the village at a collective run.

At nine thirty it started to rain – icy droplets that drummed off his helmet. Jonas had worn his black waterproof windcheater but his legs from the thighs down were soon soaked. Linda Cobb collected the mug and brought him an umbrella. With flowers on it.

At 10.01am Jonas decided to walk the perimeter to keep warm. After all, he reasoned, if the killer returned to the scene he might just as easily return to the back of the house as the front.

He trudged through the muddy grass of the playing field at the side of Margaret Priddy’s home, and round the back – much as Marvel had the day before. Just as Marvel had done, he made his way up the garden, past a small pile of metal strips at the end, noting the old kennel as – right on cue – the terrier next door rushed the fence, its whole body quivering every time it barked.

‘Hello, Dixie,’ said Jonas calmly and the dog wagged and stopped barking to hear its name.

The wheelie bin was gone – to the lab, most likely – but in his mind’s eye he saw it there still beside the lean-to, the easy route on to the flat roof and from there through the bedroom window.

Call yourself a policeman?

Jonas swallowed hard. How easy it had been. Everything the killer needed was right there. Even the smaller steel dustbin that was left behind would probably have been enough to allow a fit man on to the lean-to roof. He took the lid off and turned it upside-down, then stepped on to it, keeping his feet close to the edges so he wouldn’t punch a hole right through the base, teetering like an elephant on a beach ball.

The felt of the lean-to roof was gritty under his hands but it was no great feat to pull himself on to it. Then he took a few creaking paces across to the window, where dusky fingerprint powder still clung to the paintwork. It was a sash-style window and the latch was at the limit of Jonas’s height. A shorter man – which he assumed the killer must be – would have had to work with his hands over his head, looking up. Awkward but possible. All it really required was a thin strip of metal forced between the paintwork and pushed against the latch to shove it aside. A knife – or a piece from the little collection of junk at the end of the garden might have done just as well. From here the grooves and nicks in the paint around the latch were more obvious than they had been from the inside, and Jonas noticed that flecks of lemon-coloured gloss had sifted to the dark roof below. Once the latch was conquered it would just be a matter of sliding the window up. Jonas put his hands against the frame to see what kind of