Darkside

life he had always known.

He had already called Lucy from Sunset Lodge. Woken her up to ask if she had the knife with her, less than an hour since he’d taken so much care not to wake her as he slipped out of bed in response to the vibration of his phone. She had asked him to repeat the question, and said crossly, ‘Wait a mo.’ She had taken ages to groggily turn on the light and look for the knife, and, while she did, Jonas had the nutty idea that he should attach it to her with a piece of elastic the way surfers did with their boards. If an intruder broke in, she wouldn’t be able to ask him to ‘wait a mo’ while she groped about on the bedside table for her only means of defence.

Finally she’d said, ‘Yes, why?’ still sounding irritated. He didn’t blame her. Even without being woken in the early hours and ordered to seek out random cutlery, Lucy’s moods could be erratic nowadays. Dr Wickramsinghe told them it was ‘to be expected’, but Jonas never quite did expect it.

Briefly he’d told her what had happened, because not telling her would only have irritated her further, and she’d been shocked into silence.

‘I’ll be home as soon as I can,’ he’d said.

‘OK,’ she’d answered in a voice that was not ratty or cross, only very small. ‘Be careful, Jonas.’

* * *

‘There’s blood on the roof.’

Marvel followed the CSI’s finger to what looked like a couple of thin smears on the glass between a small window above the garden room and the guttering over the water-butt. He wondered how they could tell from down here, or whether they’d already been on the roof.

‘Might be the killer’s,’ said Reynolds hopefully, even though they all knew that that was a very long and desperate shot. Still.

‘Looks like the point of entry and exit,’ said the CSI. ‘And prints going that way.’

The narrow concrete pathway around the building’s perimeter was flat and a perfect surface for snow. And the flat and perfect snow held the prints like a joke trail for them to follow, starting incongruously at the water- butt.

‘Can’t see any patterns,’ added the CSI with a petulant tone, flickering a torch over the treads. ‘Maybe when it gets lighter …’

Marvel didn’t care about the tread pattern on the killer’s shoes. Only where he was going.

In the half-dark, Marvel and Reynolds followed the trail out of the Sunset Lodge grounds and on to the main street. Despite the hour, the road outside Sunset Lodge was already lined with tyre tracks from their own cars and those of the scenes-of-crime officers, but the pavements were still mostly clear and the trail of footprints was ludicrously easy to follow.

‘I feel like Elmer Fudd,’ said Reynolds, and when Marvel showed no recognition, added, ‘Where da wabbit?’

Marvel knew what he meant but ignored him. So what if they were following a cartoon trail of footprints? So what if they led them straight to the killer’s front door? They deserved a break in this fucking case and it wouldn’t be a moment too soon.

In a small pile of snow which had been cleared from a doorstep, they saw blood.

‘Maybe he’s injured,’ said Marvel, unable to keep an edge of hope out of his voice.

‘Maybe,’ said Reynolds. ‘Or maybe he washed the murder weapon there. Get the blood off it.’

Marvel nodded. They stood for a moment building the picture in their heads, then moved on briskly.

‘We’re heading for the Marshes’ house,’ Reynolds observed neutrally.

‘And the bloody shop,’ Marvel pointed out with an edge of annoyance as the snow started to show more prints.

They passed the Marshes’ house without stopping, then crossed the road – the strangely featureless prints disappearing in the churned snow, but picking up again on the opposite pavement. They glanced at each other as the snow became dark and slushy for the ten yards either side of the door of the Spar shop. It was 7am – plenty late enough for any number of villagers to have collected their morning papers or to have topped up with breakfast milk. They lost the footprints.

‘Bollocks,’ said Marvel with real feeling.

‘Shit,’ said Reynolds.

They stood still – not wanting to risk inadvertently trampling over any print they might still pick up.

‘There,’ pointed Reynolds.

The killer’s fragmented prints deviated into a narrow covered passageway beside the shop, where no snow had fallen. There they simply disappeared.

Both men started warily up the alleyway. It turned into a courtyard.

Nobody there.

‘We fucking lost him,’ said Reynolds. ‘In the snow. How the fuck?’

Reynolds lifted the lid on a green wheelie bin. There was nothing inside. They looked around the edges of the courtyard carefully but there was nothing of interest. Just scraps of paper, a couple of plastic bags rustling against the wall, and broken-down cardboard boxes gone soggy in the snow.

Reynolds realized that this must be the alleyway Jonas had told him about – the one where the stranger had given him the slip. He hadn’t taken Jonas seriously. He’d dismissed the report as parochial paranoia, and he had only written it down to make Jonas feel he was being listened to. For that reason, he hadn’t reported it to Marvel.

Reynolds regretted that, of course. But the idea of telling Marvel about it now and being shat on from a great height was less than appealing.

They walked back to the entrance to the alleyway. People were passing regularly now, and the snow on the pavement around the shop was melting in dirty brown patches. The prints that they themselves had made were already all but obliterated. Prints made in the early hours of the morning would be gone by now for sure.

Marvel stepped into the road and stared glumly up and down as if he might still spot the killer.

‘Bollocks,’ he said again.

‘Hold on,’ said Reynolds with sudden urgency. He pointed back into the courtyard, where the Spar bags fluttered against the wall.

‘Two plastic bags.’

‘You found some litter,’ said Marvel. ‘Well done, Reynolds. Have a fucking Blue Peter badge.’

Reynolds ignored him. ‘Two bags, two feet! He puts the bags on his feet so he doesn’t leave identifiable prints. Then he comes in here and takes them off—’

‘And walks back into the slush and disappears,’ finished Marvel, catching up fast and hurrying over.

Reynolds snapped on gloves and picked the bags up. ‘That means there could be prints inside the bags.’

Reynolds looked as pleased as punch, but even that couldn’t stop Marvel feeling a lift in his own spirits.

They stared at the white bags with the green and red logo, and wondered whether this odd little scene would spell a change in their luck.

* * *

In the grey light of morning the snow on the moor looked dull and worn out, and the narrow strip of road was just a sunken impression in the bumpy landscape. All the white was disorientating and Jonas had to work hard to keep focused on the route ahead. It was as if the moor and the murders were conspiring to confuse him, using optical illusions to obfuscate the truth of the killings and the landscape alike, and to blur the two into one. A blanket of snow had descended on Shipcott, but under that coating of purity something dark and evil was going about its work, unseen and unchecked.

Jonas thought of the notes that had first alerted him to some undercurrent of discord.

He thought of that prickly feeling that he was being watched. Observed.

Judged.

He thought of staring into the small yellow square of his own bathroom while standing like a cold giant under the starlit sky; of the stiff greyhound with the cloudy eyes; and of the man in the hat and the herringbone treads