Darkside

below it sparkled like quartz under a thick frost. Every breath he took was menthol in his nostrils. His work shoes were still soaked from the drama the night before, so he’d put his walking boots on, with three pairs of socks for warmth.

The fall-out from last night had been minimal. The Land Rover’s bull bars had protected the lights and bodywork, and he’d reported the dead horse to Eric Scott, the local park ranger, first thing this morning. Then he’d called Bob Coffin, the huntsman with the Blacklands Hunt, to tell him where he could find the carcass. His headache had gone so completely that Jonas could barely imagine what a headache felt like, and although Marvel had not exactly said he’d leave Peter Priddy alone, at least Jonas had raised the alibi with him as he’d promised he would.

Mostly, though, he felt better for having failed to take Marvel to the pub. It was a childish victory but a victory none the less. Of course, thanks to Marvel he now had all day to stand on the doorstep and savour it, while waiting for that wholly predictable killer to return like iron filings to the magnet of the crime scene.

Jonas smiled ruefully.

Oh well. At least it wasn’t raining.

The boys were skating as he came down the hill. In the quiet air he heard them before he saw them – a sound like little trains on short journeys, each ending with a clatter, a laugh, a sound of approval or a sharp expletive that floated faintly upward from the playing field. The ramp came into view below him. Three boys. Steven Lamb, Dougie Trewell and one of the Tithecott boys. Chris? Mark? He couldn’t tell from here.

Jonas stood and looked down on them for a moment, admiring their lazy grace – even all bundled up in their thick winter jackets, their motions were elegant. He’d seen plenty of bad skaters on that ramp since coming back to Shipcott – had taken Lalo Bryant and his broken ankle to hospital himself – but these three boys were good to watch, especially on a morning like this, where the white playing field around them was painted orange by the late- rising sun, and their tracks through the frost gave the scene a festive feel. The reminder of the Christmas just past made Jonas uneasy. The silence; the tight white face of Lucy’s mother bustling up and down stairs; the false smiles and season’s greetings, the unwrapped gifts under the unlit tree. Most of all, the sight of Lucy – wan and silent – in their bed, when she could just as easily have been dead. Before Christmas Day even dawned, Jonas had pushed the tree nose-first into the bin, lights, tinsel and all.

As he started to walk again, Jonas’s eye was caught by something yellow at the edge of the playing field. He backed up a couple of paces to regain the view through a gap in the hedge.

There was something in the stream that bordered the field close to the ramp. Probably a plastic bag, but Jonas’s gut stirred uneasily.

He hurried fifty yards down the hill to where the hedge was interrupted by a rusty five-bar gate, bent from the time Jack Biggins had roped a cow to it without using a baler-twine loop.

Now Jonas climbed those same bent bars until he’d gained another three feet to add to his existing six-four. From this height – and closer to the stream – he could see it was not a plastic bag.

Jonas leaped off the gate into the field and ran down the hill. The bright morning suddenly seemed surreal. He shouldn’t be running with this fluttering in his guts on such a morning, with frost crackling under his feet. At the bottom of the field he vaulted the stile on to the playing field and ran faster. Now he was on the flat he couldn’t see the yellow thing any more, but he’d taken bearings in his mind, and ran straight and true past the swings and then the ramp, towards the crooked blackthorn that leaned drunkenly over the stream.

He reached the bank and there it was.

The body.

Yellow T-shirt bunched around the waist, pink knickers, blue-white skin.

He knew. He knew!

Jonas slithered down the bank, half falling, feeling the frozen mud on one cheek of his backside. The boots he’d worn that day for warmth cracked through the delicate plates of ice that had formed at the edges of the stream, and filled with water as he splashed the few feet to the body and turned it over.

‘Mrs Marsh! Yvonne!’

Jonas dropped to his knees in the icy water and cleared her mouth, then started to breathe into the woman he knew was already dead.

Shit.

He dragged her to the water’s edge. He couldn’t get her up the bank – not alone – but he needed a firm surface. He balanced her awkwardly, knelt over her and pumped her chest, then breathed into her again.

‘Mrs Marsh!’

He slapped her face hard, then breathed again, pumped her chest, then breathed again … felt everything in the world going awry.

The three boys from the ramp were above him, pale-faced and big-eyed.

‘Call an ambulance!’ he yelled.

The Tithecott boy fumbled his phone open and said, ‘No signal.’

‘Run to the houses!’ Jonas yelled, before forcing more air into Yvonne Marsh’s spongey lungs.

The boy took off, running. Without a word, Dougie Trewell slid down the mud into the stream and helped to keep Yvonne Marsh’s upper body on the bank while Jonas worked on her. Steven Lamb sank to his knees in the white grass and just watched.

Jonas knew it was pointless. Yvonne Marsh was dead and had probably been dead for hours. Now he thought about it, there had been a little crackling sound as he’d tugged her body over on to its back – the sound of ice breaking around it. She had been there for a while, held still by the branches of the blackthorn and by the delicate ice that had embraced her. Maybe overnight. Who knew?

Danny Marsh might know. Or his father. And even if they didn’t know that, thought Jonas wearily, they would know this for sure – that all their vigilance and their locks and their love and their care had not been enough to stop one vulnerable woman from wandering out into the freezing winter in bare feet, knickers and a baggy T-shirt, to drown in a freezing stream.

Everybody had to sleep some time, and that was the truth.

It was this thought that finally made Jonas give up. He looked across the stream at the rising moors, keeping all his air for himself now.

‘Is she dead?’ said Dougie Trewell tremulously.

‘Yes,’ said Jonas. All the energy he’d been filled with this morning had gone. ‘You’d better get out of the water, Dougie.’

Dougie let go of the body and Jonas felt how much of its weight he’d taken in trying to help. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and the boy nodded mutely. He was Ronnie Trewell’s younger brother and so always skirting the edges of delinquency – but he’d shown some character today. Something to hope for. Jonas turned to the other boy, who looked a million miles away. ‘You want to help Dougie home, Steven? Make sure he gets warm?’

Steven focused slowly on him again.

‘What?’

‘Help Dougie, Steven. Take him home.’

‘OK.’

Steven reached out and helped Dougie up the bank, and they walked away in a daze.

Jonas realized he hadn’t given them instructions on getting help for him. The ambulance could take ages on icy roads. The boys might not have the presence of mind to think about him. He tried to manoeuvre his phone from inside his jacket, but the operation proved impossible while he was holding Yvonne Marsh. Finally he knew he’d have to let go of her body to do it, so he did, and felt the slow current start to pull it away from him. Her legs were still in the water. Jonas clutched at the yellow T-shirt with one hand while he flipped open his phone. There was one bar of signal. Miraculous. Maybe he should make all his mobile-phone calls from running water. He had been half kneeling on the bank, but now stood up in the water; his legs almost gave way under him, they were so cold. He stood in the way of the body and called Marvel while the current pressed the dead Yvonne Marsh insistently against his legs.

It wasn’t until he spoke to Marvel that Jonas realized he might be standing up to his knees in a crime scene. He’d only called him because he was police and there were no police closer to Shipcott than Marvel was, and he needed help getting the hell out of this water before his legs fell clean off. But Marvel was immediately suspicious. Jonas figured that was how it was to be a homicide detective – every death was guilty until proven innocent.