Darkside

control.

It was probably Gary Liss. He wished he could be sure. He was sure. The disappearance, the stolen jewellery. He was sure.

Soon they would know. Nobody was going to be able to stay hidden for long in this weather – not without at least trying to go home – and Jonas had assured him that Paul Angell was cooperating. Liss had no family to run to and Angell was also insisting that Gary Liss had no other lovers. Marvel wasn’t so sure about that but, either way, it had been thirty-six hours and Liss was without his car – a twelve- year-old Renault Clio which was sitting forlornly in the car park with a foot of snow on the roof and a flapping square of police tape around it. Marvel had moved all the new crew to house-to-house inquiries and searching outbuildings. It hadn’t made him popular, but very little he’d ever done had made him popular, so he wasn’t boo- hooing about that.

No, Liss would soon be discovered, and then they would know the truth within seconds. A single killing might be concealed for a short while, but five was the work of a madman, and this time Marvel would be able to sniff it on Liss like a dog trained by having a murder-rag rubbed over its nose. He could almost smell it now, the sour fear of a man trapped by the enormity of his own crimes; the self-justification for unjustifiable deeds. Marvel’s jaw clenched in anger, even before he had anyone to take it out on.

‘… in which case the killer may not even be aware of what he’s doing. She also says some killers just stop. They reach saturation point and don’t feel the need to kill again for years – maybe even never – depending on …’ Reynolds tapered off lamely under Marvel’s glare.

‘I stopped listening to you,’ said Marvel bluntly, and Reynolds shrugged. He’d gathered that.

Marvel got up and picked up the car keys. ‘This is bullshit. All these fucking theories aren’t getting us any closer to finding Liss. All we know for sure is that this bastard is escalating – fast.’

Reynolds nodded. ‘Knowing him is not the same as stopping him.’

‘That’s right,’ said Marvel, yanking open the unit door and letting winter rush in, ‘and we need to get our arses into gear, because something tells me that if we don’t stop him, he’s not finished.’

* * *

Lionel Chard’s room had been taped off as a crime scene.

Now as he stared into it from the doorway, Marvel felt like a visitor to a stately home. Here is the bed, ladies and gentlemen, where the King took the virginity of Catherine of Aragon; and here is the Sealy Posturepedic upon which Mr Chard was beaten to death by person or persons unknown.

Through the white window he could see flakes falling from the sky.

Even the snow was against him.

The manhunt had been stalled by snow, which could now only be traversed beyond the village boundaries by 4X4s.

The footprints outside the garden room had been methodically measured and photographed, but Marvel had seen more convincing yeti prints.

And finding a murder weapon in the snow was like … well, they might as well do it blindfolded. Grey had suggested as much after yet another Braille-like search of the graveyard, and Marvel had told him to do it again.

Marvel moved the few paces to the entrance to Gorse – Violet Eaves’s room. As he did so he thought of Gary Liss doing the same thing. He waved a casual hand across the doorway and heard the faint beep from downstairs. Lynne Twitchett and Jen Hardy had heard several beeps. They couldn’t agree on how many exactly. Had that stupid electronic sound been the straw that broke the camel’s back for Gary Liss? Had Violet Eaves sleepwalked one too many times, in his perverse view? Had his patience finally snapped and he’d hit her and then panicked, which had led to the massacre?

‘Shit,’ said Marvel. It didn’t fit with the careful murder of Margaret Priddy and the seemingly random choice of Yvonne Marsh.

If Gary Liss was not the killer, then that first beep may well have been the killer entering Violet’s room, rather than the old lady leaving it. Although she had left her room that night, one way or another.

From this stately doorway Marvel could see over the graveyard next door, where the picture-perfect snow had been made hectic and muddy by the search. They were just going through the motions out there. Liss was the key. They had to find him before he struck again – as Marvel had little doubt that he would.

He heard the doorbell and a minute later Singh came to say that Paul Angell was downstairs in the garden room and wanted to talk to him.

As he walked downstairs, someone started to play the piano. Not Lynne Twitchett – someone who could play. Marvel knew the tune. Something by Cole Porter. ‘Cheek To Cheek’, he thought. It made him melancholy to hear the song of dancing and romance played in this place where such things were long gone.

The garden room was its usual melting temperature and Marvel wrinkled his nose as he entered. The place smelled faintly of rotten … he couldn’t think of rotten what. No doubt Reynolds would call it generic rotten. He made a mental note to die before he could end up somewhere like this, smelling like that.

Paul Angell stopped playing and looked up at him, and several of the old ladies clapped and one said, ‘Lovely,’ and another said, ‘Do you remember that one, Trinny?’

Paul got up and started to ask about Gary. Paul had been helpful to the police, but wary, and Marvel wasn’t 100 per cent convinced that the man didn’t know where his lover was hiding, whatever the hell Jonas Holly said. He got the impression that Paul Angell thought the police had been somehow against Liss from the outset because he was gay, instead of because he’d gone on the run after a triple murder. Idiot. Marvel had been polite to him so far, but he hoped Angell’s homosexuality gave him the sensitivity to know that his well of manners was not a deep one.

Now Marvel found that, while Paul Angell asked why he hadn’t been kept advised of the status of the hunt for Gary, he was suddenly transfixed by the hand of the old lady who had asked Trinny if she remembered ‘Cheek To Cheek’. The hand had been clapping and Marvel had seen its palm. Just briefly. He wasn’t even sure why his eye had been caught. Now he listened with half an ear and answered Angell with half a brain, while both his eyes watched the old, lined hand touch the arm of the chair, then reach for the biscuit tin, then poke at the selection with one bony finger, then lift the biscuit to the old-lady mouth—

Marvel stepped around Angell and gripped her by the wrist.

‘Oh!’ she said and dropped the biscuit. It fell on her chest and then to her lap. A Bourbon.

Marvel turned her palm up as though he were about to read it. There was a dirty smudge in the middle of it. Red-brown. It might have been chocolate.

‘Reynolds!’

Marvel turned and looked at Angell. ‘Get my sergeant for me. Now!’

He looked back at the scared-looking old woman. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Mrs Betty Tithecott,’ she answered tremulously.

‘Here, leave her alone,’ said Trinny next door.

Marvel ignored Trinny and softened his tone, but still held the squirming hand in his. ‘I just need to have a look at your hand, all right, Betty? I’m not going to hurt you.’

She met his eyes and nodded. Her hand relaxed.

‘This mark,’ he said. ‘What have you touched?’

‘Nothing,’ said Betty, her eyes watery and confused.

There was a similar, smaller stain inside her thumb.

Lynne Twitchett approached a little nervously. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No,’ said Marvel curtly and heard Reynolds hurrying into the room.

‘What’s up, sir?’

Marvel turned the hand up so Reynolds could see it, and was gratified to hear a surprised expletive. He rubbed his thumb across the smudge and a small amount of colour transferred itself. Whatever Betty had touched, she had touched it recently.