Darkside

Jonas!

It had sounded like Danny.

But it had been a dream. Hadn’t it?

If you won’t do your job …

He had no idea what Marvel meant. … then I’ll do it for you.

The mobile unit was cramped, damp and smelly. A flickering fluorescent strip made this feel like a Stasi interrogation.

‘Sir, even if I believed he killed those people, which I don’t, why would I cover it up?’

‘You two were mates. I saw you on the playing field after we dragged his mother out of the stream. Good mates, I’d say. If he had something to hide, I reckon either you knew about it, or you’ve got something to hide too.’

‘What?’ demanded Jonas. ‘What am I hiding?’

From the look on Reynolds’s face, he’d only just beaten him to the question. Reynolds looked embarrassed even to be there.

‘You tell me,’ said Marvel, and sat back in his chair with an air of dogged certainty. ‘First,’ he continued when he got no response, ‘first tell me why you hit Danny Marsh the other day.’

‘He swung at me!’

‘So arrest him. Don’t beat the shit out of him!’

‘I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, sir,’ said Reynolds, and refused to look at Marvel so he could not be disciplined by a glare.

Jonas barely heard him. He recalled that feeling of threat that had come off Danny. While he laughed and joked about old times, Jonas had been consumed with fear, desperate for him to back off and stop … In hindsight it seemed very minor.

‘I felt threatened, sir,’ he said truthfully. ‘If I over-reacted, that’s why.’

‘Why did you fall out with him?’

Jonas was confused. ‘Fall out?’

‘When you were kids,’ Marvel insisted.

‘When we were kids?’ Jonas gave a small laugh.

‘Yes,’ said Marvel, deadly serious. ‘When you were eleven or so.’

Jonas looked blank.

‘Ten or eleven. You were best mates. Then one day you weren’t. What happened?’

The smell of burned things. Burned wood … burned hair … burned flesh.

Only confusing fragments.

‘I don’t remember, sir.’

‘Bollocks. You do.’

Jonas shrugged. He didn’t. He didn’t want to.

He looked around. The cramped unit was dingy and dirty. He didn’t think he could work in a place like this. There was a calendar on the wall that was four years out of date. Four years ago, Lu could have walked upstairs on her hands. Four years ago, Jonas was following another path to another place. Four years ago would do him nicely, thank you very much, so he let his mind linger there instead of here, where Lucy was dying, Danny was dead, and DCI Marvel was being a prick.

‘… to him? Holly!’

Jonas came back, blinking. ‘What?’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘Say to who?’

‘Whom,’ said Reynolds. ‘Sorry.’

They both ignored him.

‘To Danny Marsh. When he was dying. Rice says you said something to him.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘Bollocks. Again.’

Marvel pushed his chair away from Jonas and went over to the fridge. He opened it and took out a can of cola. Generic cola.

‘I think I said, “Thank you.”’

‘Why?’

Jonas frowned. ‘I don’t know.’

It was the truth. He had no idea. He’d taken his lips from Danny’s mouth and slid them round to his ear without any thought of why or of what he was going to say when he got there. There was just something inside him that had to be said. Had to be said. And when he’d said it, it had felt right.

Jonas!

The voice at the gate had been Danny Marsh, he was sure.

He’d wanted to talk to him.

Had Danny left him the note?

If so, what was the job Danny wanted him to do?

The dead eye of the pony. The prickle of hay against his cheek. The woman’s face at the dusty window …

Pfffftt! Marvel opened the cola and Jonas came back with a start to find him and Reynolds regarding him with interest.

‘He’s dead, Holly. You can’t protect him. Not if you call yourself a policeman.’

Jonas couldn’t breathe.

Call yourself a policeman?

How did he know? How did Marvel know? He’d never told him what the first note said!

Jonas sat there, staring wide-eyed at Marvel while his mind screamed at him, Don’t stare! Don’t look at him! He’ll know that you spotted the slip! But he couldn’t move – even his eyes.

‘Get out,’ Marvel said. ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’

* * *

Lucy Holly was sitting halfway up the stairs when she felt death approaching.

She had known for a while that she was dying. Every new symptom was a reminder of the fact that she wasn’t going to just snap out of it one day; that this thing inside her had come to stay and planned to kill her, like a psycho in the spare room. That craziness had become routine.

But she had never felt like this before.

She did not often go up and down stairs during the day. It was a chore that could take half an hour sometimes. Jonas had plumbed a toilet into the little shed outside the back door of the old cottage, which she used in all but the coldest weather. But she had woken at 5am to find Jonas was not beside her. Immediately, she knew she would not get back to sleep, so she edged downstairs in the darkness to make tea and to get her book and then decided to take both back to bed with her.

On the bottom step she’d put the luggage for her journey – the cup of tea, her book, a new tube of toothpaste, and the knife Jonas had made her promise to keep with her, even though she felt like a neurotic New Yorker every time she touched it. The thought of having to answer the door to somebody while holding it filled her with English embarrassment. But she’d promised Jonas, and mostly remembered to carry it from room to room with her, even though she thought there was more chance of falling off her crutches on to the knife than there was of it being of any use in repelling an invader.

She’d leaned her downstairs sticks against the banisters, lowered herself to the third step and started her little adventure, moving each item up a step before she levered herself on to the next tread. She got into a nice rhythm – almost laughing at how silly it was to feel that way about inching upstairs on your backside. She had good days like this, where her arms and legs felt stronger, and it always made her happy. Ever the competitor, Lucy got faster and faster, moving, hoisting, sipping tea, moving, hoisting, sipping tea … until suddenly she slipped, lurching sideways and banging her arm and her head painfully into the wall. She’d put the heel of her hand on