Darkside

‘Don’t touch the body!’ Marvel snapped as soon as Jonas told him he’d found one.

Jonas said nothing, feeling guilty – and angry at himself for feeling that way.

‘You fucking touched it, didn’t you?’

‘I tried CPR.’

If there was a Scorn Olympics, Marvel could have sighed for England.

‘Well, don’t touch it again, for Christ’s sake! Stand by and wait for me!’

Jonas was wet, cold, traumatized and tired of being spoken to like a car-park attendant. ‘Listen, sir. I’m up to my arse in ice, trying to stop the body floating downstream, so either get down here fast and help me out, or I’m going to let it go and your crime scene’ll stretch all the way from here to bloody Tiverton!’

Jonas snapped his phone shut and hoped Marvel wouldn’t be churlish enough to take his time.

He wasn’t.

In less than five minutes, Marvel was watching Pollard and Reynolds help a shaky Jonas Holly out of the water.

He sent Grey and Singh down the icy bank to retrieve the body. There was little point in leaving it in situ now that Holly had already altered the scene by dragging it from the water.

The ambulance tipped off the village that something was happening down at the playing fields, and within ten minutes of its arrival the entire populace, made jumpy by one murder, was standing on the playing field, craning to see from behind the blue-and-white tape that Rice had rolled out from the lamp-post outside Margaret Priddy’s across to the far goalpost, making a single cordon which now encompassed two crime scenes.

Maybe.

Marvel was unsure for about sixty seconds, and then he nodded as Dr Mark Dennis pointed to the livid finger-shaped bruises under Yvonne Marsh’s wet hair.

‘Not the throat, see?’ Marvel told Reynolds. ‘He held her like this …’ He clawed his hands and hovered them over the back of the dead woman’s neck. ‘I think he held her face-down in the water and drowned her.’

‘Could be,’ said Mark Dennis.

‘Pathologist will tell us for sure,’ nodded Reynolds.

‘I’m telling you for sure,’ snapped Marvel. ‘He’ll just confirm it.’

Reynolds pursed his lips and tried hard, but finally couldn’t help himself. ‘Do we still like Peter Priddy, sir?’

‘Fuck off, Reynolds.’

Reynolds withdrew a few paces from the scene and took out his notebook.

‘That’s F-U-C-K,’ Marvel said and Reynolds put his notebook away again without writing in it.

‘Pollard’s in charge of the press,’ Marvel told him.

‘There is no press,’ said Reynolds – and to all intents and purposes that was true. Marvel was all for the new breed of lazy, desk-bound journalists who Googled instead of bothering him for proper answers. Margaret Priddy’s murder had elicited a few calls from the local rag, the Bugle, but the Western Morning News had been content to pick up a few paragraphs from that.

‘There will be,’ said Marvel in a doom-laden voice. He knew that one old woman being murdered was a shame, but two in the same tiny village in just over a week had the thrilling ring of serial violence about it, and it was only a matter of time before reporters started to arrive with their pushy ways and their cock-eyed views. He wanted Dave Pollard in charge of the press because he was the dullest and least forthcoming of the team. He had no fear that Pollard would suddenly get all star-struck and blab too much at a press conference just because the reporter who’d asked the question was wearing a push-up bra.

Two paramedics, finding their intended patient was past help, had instead turned their attentions to Jonas and stripped his trousers, socks and boots from him with professional disregard for his dignity. They had wrapped him in a foil blanket, followed by a scratchy grey one very like the blanket he himself had draped around the shoulders of Yvonne Marsh just a couple of days ago. At that thought, Jonas stopped trying to fight the chattering of his teeth and let them drown out all sound, like snare drums between his ears.

He’d known as soon as he saw the body in the water that it was Yvonne Marsh. He could have saved her. Could have followed her into the house that day and talked with Danny and his father about their options, the help available, safety locks. He could have given them the number of Social Services for respite care, or quietly asked Rupert Cooke up at Sunset Lodge whether he had room for another resident.

Could have, would have, should have. Now that Yvonne Marsh was dead, Jonas could think of a million ways of keeping her alive.

Because once Marvel pointed out the bruises to Reynolds, Jonas knew that the man who had killed Margaret Priddy had also killed Yvonne Marsh. Knew it in his gut.

More easily, too, he imagined. Jonas would bet good money that the killer had not had to break into the Marsh home to find his second victim. No doubt Yvonne had just wandered out into the confused night of her mind to go to the shops, or to pick little Danny up from school, or to find her sandals in the lake.

Instead she had found her killer, or he had found her.

And Jonas had failed again.

‘’Vonne!’ He heard a jolting, whimpering sound and looked up to see Alan Marsh running awkwardly across the playing field in the oily blue overalls and steel toecaps he wore to work. The man’s usually dour face was twisted open by emotion. Twenty yards behind him was his son, barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, careless of the cold – and the Reverend Chard, too tubby to travel at more than a brisk walk.

Grey tried to stop Alan Marsh from just rushing the scene, but the older man ran past him as if he wasn’t there, and fell to his knees beside his dead wife.

Jonas expected tears and wailing, but Alan Marsh calmed right down when he saw his worst fears confirmed. He didn’t even touch the body – just knelt and looked at it and shook his head. Danny allowed himself to be slowed by Grey, and then stood with his hand on his father’s shoulder.

Jonas wished he had his trousers on, but this wasn’t about him. Holding the blanket around his hips like a sarong, he went over to the tableau of sorrow and stood in Danny’s eye-line.

‘I’m sorry, Danny. Mr Marsh.’

Danny looked at Jonas, dazed. ‘What happened?’

‘We’re not sure yet. I found her in the stream.’

‘She drowned?’

Jonas ignored Marvel’s unnecessary warning look. ‘We don’t know yet. I tried CPR but I think she’d been in the water a while. Hours, maybe.’

Danny nodded and bit his lip until he could speak again. ‘We didn’t even know she were gone. Not until we heard the ambulance.’

Jonas nodded.

‘You can’t watch her all the time,’ said Danny dully.

‘I know,’ said Jonas. ‘I know.’

He saw the tears gather in his former friend’s eyes and looked away.

‘You can’t watch her all the fucking time!’ Danny shouted suddenly. ‘Every fucking DAY!’

Jonas touched Danny’s shoulder. His hand was knocked away but he put it back and this time Danny let it stay. He led Danny away from the crowd and towards the stream. The two of them stood and stared across the singing water at the white-frosted moor. Jonas didn’t look at Danny as he cried. There was very little sound from behind them, considering the whole village was just a hundred yards away. The morning was still beautiful – facing this way, at least – and Jonas was seized with a sudden notion to take Danny by the arm and lead him through the stream and up on to the moorland opposite and just keep walking, leaving everything behind them and never looking back to see the horror of reality.

He didn’t, of course, but he could taste in his mouth what it would be like to do it.

Finally Danny spoke softly.

‘She hated being that way.’

Jonas nodded.