Darkside

Rice looked down at the boxes of junk and selected an ugly blue vase. She weighed it in her hand. She had always been a supporter of the British police remaining un-armed apart from specialized units. She felt that the lack of a firearm enforced the tacit notion of policing by consent, and that – democratically speaking – that was a good thing.

But right now she would give her right arm for a big gun.

Rice walked through the house – quietly, but not quietly enough to scare herself – switching on lights, checking doors and rattling windows. She stood outside the other bedroom doors and listened to the Marshes breathe.

There was no intruder.

There was no smearing of the inward-bound print. Therefore Rice felt it was fair to deduce that whoever had climbed in through this window had not climbed out through it again – and therefore they must be in the house.

Unless the person who had come in through the window had climbed out of it first before they muddied their shoes.

In which case there were only two suspects …

Neither Alan nor Danny Marsh had moved from the sofa today apart from brief visits to the bathroom or to the kitchen for tea.

Was it possible that between her checks last night – between midnight and 6am – one of the Marshes had crept past her bed and climbed out of her window?

Then back in?

Possible.

Improbable, of course, but Sherlock Holmes would base an entire case on improbable.

Her window was at the back of the house and there was a four-foot drop to the lean-to. With the downstairs doors and windows locked, it was the only viable route into or out of the house. It was, after all, the way the killer had entered Margaret Priddy’s home.

The thought of someone in her bedroom while she slept was disturbing enough; the idea that someone might have passed through on their way to and from murdering three people at Sunset Lodge made her feel sick.

She dragged one of the boxes of junk across the room and against the bedroom door. It wouldn’t stop anyone, but it would slow them down.

Then she sat on the bed cross-legged, fully clothed, with the blue vase in one hand and her phone in the other, and called DCI Marvel.

* * *

Jonas got home so late and so weary that when Lucy told him she’d made supper he could have kissed her feet. It was only spaghetti with tomatoes and basil but it tasted fantastic, and she’d put out a bottle of smooth red wine for him to open. She sat and watched him eat.

‘You want to talk about it, sweetheart?’ she said quietly.

He stared across the kitchen in silence.

‘He beat them to death.’

Lucy bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Then put pillows over their faces.’

‘Like with Margaret?’

Jonas shook his head but did not drop his sightless thousand-yard stare at the washing machine.

‘I don’t think he meant to smother them.’

‘Why, then?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe so he couldn’t see their faces.’

Lucy hated to ask, but the images in her head begged the question.

‘Did they … was there a struggle?’

‘I don’t think so. They all looked quite … peaceful. I think he hit them while they were asleep. They died quickly. I hope they did.’

Lucy put her hand over Jonas’s and looked down at the knife he’d given her, lying on the table between them. It had seemed a silly thing at first, but since his early-morning call from Sunset Lodge, she’d barely let it go.

She shuddered and her movement made Jonas blink. He focused on the washing machine and remembered it needed emptying. And there was a basket of ironing to do. Work shirts mostly, and a couple of pairs of uniform trousers. And the one or two tops that Lucy couldn’t wear if they were wrinkled. Jonas was bad at ironing and they always tried to buy wisely so he wouldn’t have to do much.

Lucy stroked his hand. ‘Eat, sweetheart.’

Jonas dutifully picked up his fork again.

He noticed that there was new mail propped against the fruit bowl. They’d been without mail for a few days, but now that Marvel’s team and Jonas had been up and down the hill on several occasions, turning snow to slush, apparently Frank Tithecott’s old red Royal Mail van was up to the challenge once more.

‘Tell me about your day,’ he said.

‘You sure you want to hear all that boring crap?’ she said in surprise.

‘That’s exactly what I want to hear,’ he said with feeling.

She got it, so she told him.

Jonas felt warmed physically and spiritually as he ate and listened to his wife recounting the minutiae of her existence. Here in the kitchen, with a fire in the hearth and food in his belly, it was easy to imagine that all was well with the world.

She told him about the robin that had sat on the window sill for almost ten minutes, staring in at her as she watched giant cockroaches munch New Yorkers in Mimic; she described the way she’d suddenly had a manic urge to bake a cake and had collected everything on the kitchen table, which had taken her over half an hour – and then there’d been a power cut which meant she couldn’t even pre-heat the oven. She’d taken another twenty minutes putting everything back much less tidily. She’d slept for an hour and been woken by Frank, who had come in and talked about Sunset Lodge. The postman knew almost everything there was to know, and Jonas and Lucy both rolled their eyes so they didn’t have to say out loud: Only in Shipcott!

She had watched Countdown, where the conundrum had been ‘residents’ even though the same letters also spelled ‘tiredness’, which wasn’t really fair, was it? Then she rambled on for ages about her letter from Charlie, her oldest school friend. Charlie’s husband had had adult mumps, her seven-year-old son, Luca, had been diagnosed as dyslexic, while her younger, Saul, had run away from the first kitten he’d ever seen, shouting, ‘Rat! Rat!’

They both laughed and Jonas stopped eating to stroke her face with the backs of his fingers.

She crumpled before his eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks so hard that they splashed on to the table as if from a faulty tap. Jonas dropped his fork and took her in his arms. There was nothing he could – or would – say that would make any of it better.

The illness, the murders, the baby-shaped hole in her life.

In the face of each of them he was overwhelmed and useless. There had been a time when he’d thought he could help, could be of some comfort; a time when he’d thought he could make a difference.

That was no longer true.

Sometimes you just had to accept what you were.

And what you were never meant to be.

He had never cried with her, but he’d never come closer than this, and they spent minutes like that, he kneeling beside her, she rigid in his arms, her hands over her face to keep her pain to herself – her refusal to let him share it properly an indication that he was to blame, in some part at the very least. He felt that burden settle like cold lead in his heart.

Slowly she quieted and disengaged herself. He gave her kitchen roll; she blew her nose.

‘OK, Lu?’ he asked softly.

‘Frank left the gate open,’ she replied without looking at him. ‘It’s been banging all day.’

Jonas put his boots back on and went down the dark garden path. More snow had fallen this afternoon and he needed to clear it again. He thought how frustrating it must have been for Lucy not to be able to venture the ten