Darkside

Reynolds had mustered the troops, and that they had already left.

His phone rang and he found it under another cat on the corner of the table.

‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ said Jos Reeves, and from his tone Marvel could tell that he was even happy about the bad news, which immediately got under his skin.

‘Don’t fuck about, Reeves.’

‘All right,’ said Reeves, and then proceeded to fuck about. ‘The good news is there’s a forensic link between the two scenes.’

Marvel stayed silent, determined not to give Reeves the satisfaction of asking about the bad news, but his heart jerked anyway, as it always did when science put the seal on a suspect.

‘The bad news,’ said Reeves, in a voice that betrayed suppressed laughter, ‘is that it’s one of your own men.’

* * *

From her bedroom window, Mrs Paddon watched Jonas clear the snow off her path. His father used to do the same thing.

Although Jonas also frequently offered to pick up bread or a newspaper for her, Mrs Paddon preferred to walk into the village, despite her eighty-nine years. She had an umbrella, after all – and a pair of stout waterproof boots.

She didn’t speak to Jonas much, but she loved him dearly. Always had – from the day Cath and Des had brought him home from the hospital, all red and screwed up. Although the walls between Rose and Honeysuckle were thick and stone, she’d sometimes been able to hear him bawling, and whenever she did, she’d hold her breath until it stopped and she was sure that Cath had gone to him. Sometimes she lay awake wondering what she would do if little Jonas’s crying had ever gone unchecked, and in her sillier meanderings had imagined having to rescue him and bring him back to her bed to snuggle like a little kitten.

She smiled faintly now at the memory – and at the anomalous thought of that tiny baby and the tall man below.

Every now and then Jonas would straighten up and stare across the coombe. She wondered why. Could he see something suspicious? She looked herself, but things were as they always were – the rolling moor and the other side of the village nestling at its foot, all coated in virginal white that made her eyes ache.

Terrible thing, these murders. She’d known Yvonne Marsh by sight, but Margaret Priddy and she had been friends – even though Mrs Paddon disagreed with hunting. Disagreed so strongly, in fact, that sometimes she’d pull on her waterproof boots, walk up to the common with a thermos of tea and a small wooden sign, and join the saboteurs. She’d made the sign herself: Foxes are people too. The young sabs with their woollen hats and their nose rings always made her welcome, and whenever Margaret rode past she’d wave hello with her sign and they’d chat for a bit. The first time it had happened, a sab had rushed over and called Margaret a ‘fucking bitch’ and Mrs Paddon had smacked him with her sign. Not too hard – but hard enough to make them all laugh. She hadn’t driven an ambulance through the war so people could behave like that.

Ah yes, sabbing was a good day out.

Poor Margaret.

She had heard all the details in Mr Jacoby’s shop. The pillow on the face. The body in the stream, the lack of fingerprints. Gloves, Mr Jacoby said knowingly, and she thought of the films of her youth, where the goodies wore brown-leather gloves for driving, while the baddies wore black ones for killing. Gloves made the whole thing more Hollywood. She supposed she should be frightened by two murders in a week, but couldn’t find fear inside herself. She’d been in the East End during the Blitz and had expected to die every day. Being murdered now seemed ridiculously unlikely. She felt safe in her home, and even safer because Jonas and Lucy lived next door.

She tapped on the window and waved her thanks at Jonas, then decided, despite the snow, to make the most of her clear path and go and fetch a few bits from Mr Jacoby’s. Maybe pop into the Red Lion for a sherry on the way home.

‘It’s all go,’ she told herself wryly, and went to get her brolly from the airing cupboard.

Every now and then Jonas would stop scraping at the slate and look across the tall hedge in the direction of Ronnie Trewell’s house. He couldn’t see it at all from the front gardens, but he still felt compelled to keep an eye on the moorland above it in case he saw anyone there. He thought again of Ronnie and Dougie with the dog. Whichever way he came at it, he couldn’t see either of them writing the notes. Clive Trewell was the more obvious suspect. But Jonas had a lingering memory of Clive Trewell once picking him off the pavement after a spectacularly ill-judged wheelie had left him flat on his back outside the Red Lion, with a BMX bike on his chest.

The memory absolved Clive Trewell in Jonas’s eyes.

There were a dozen homes within a hundred yards of the stile, and the moor was open to all. Anyone could have stood where he’d stood; anyone could have seen him in the bath.

Anyone.

This morning, for the first time in his life, he’d pulled the blind down while showering.

Just after Mrs Paddon waved, Lucy knocked on the front window and mimed a cup of tea at him, but he was already late, so he tapped his watch at her. She blew him a kiss instead and he grinned and blushed – too embarrassed to blow one back in front of Mrs Paddon, even though he knew that was ridiculous. But she’d known him as a child, and that made all the difference.

He turned as a car pulled up with a slushy squeak outside the front gate.

Marvel.

Jonas’s heart sank. Something told him Marvel hadn’t stopped by to give him a lift to Margaret Priddy’s doorstep.

He glanced back at Lucy and saw her face became quizzical. She must have seen the wariness on his. Jonas didn’t want Lucy seeing anything of Marvel’s attitude towards him, partly for her sake, partly for his own, so he went through the old wooden gate and down the three stone steps and walked round to the driver’s door. Marvel’s window was open.

‘What the fuck are you playing at, Holly?’

Jonas was confused. ‘I’m sweeping my path, sir.’

‘Are you being funny?’

‘No, sir. I don’t think so.’

‘The lab called to say your hair and fibres are all over Margaret Priddy and Yvonne Marsh.’

Jonas looked blank. Why was that a shock to Marvel? He’d have been shocked if his hair and fibres hadn’t been found on both victims.

‘And the button you found in the guttering? Mass produced for the uniform trade. Probably pulled it off your own fucking trousers when you climbed up there!’

‘No, sir. I—’

‘Are you trying to make me look like a fucking fool?’ spat Marvel.

Jonas was caught off-balance by this sudden switch.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘Those bastards in the lab are laughing at me because of you, you understand?’

Jonas did understand – that Marvel was an insecure arsehole.

So he said ‘Yes, sir, I understand.’ And then carefully reminded Marvel, ‘But I checked that I hadn’t lost a button, and I was at both scenes …’ He tailed off at the immutable glare Marvel had fixed on him.

Marvel looked up – and up – at Jonas Holly. The expression on the young PC’s face was utterly sincere – even hurt. Marvel pursed his lips. ‘This is your last chance, Holly. Another fuck up like this and—’

‘I didn’t fuck-up,’ Jonas said sharply, then added a considered ‘sir’.

Marvel was surprised by the sudden display of backbone but it cut no ice with him. He was so fucking angry about the lack of progress and then that bastard Reeves giggling like a hippy down the line at him … Yelling at Jonas Holly was like kicking the cat: satisfying even while serving no purpose.

‘Watch your fucking tone, Holly.’

Jonas knew he had to back off now or engage in open warfare with a senior officer who wielded almost