Darkside

bringing out the next lion, whose job was to jump through hoops.

At times, though, Jonas got the feeling that the catches on the cages were loose, that the lions were plotting behind his back – and that there was imminent danger of a great escape, during which he would be torn to pieces in his top hat and red tails.

Which was probably what this poor ewe thought was about to happen to her.

Don’t be scared. I’ll protect you. That’s my job.

The words rushed at him from nowhere and for the first time in decades he remembered the face of the policeman who had told him that. The man had looked like a father. Not like his father, but like the kind of father Jonas had seen on TV – middle-aged, greying at the temples, slightly overweight. Jonas could even remember the shiny buttons on the policeman’s tunic and being overwhelmed that this exciting uniform was actually in his mother’s cramped little kitchen.

The policeman had asked his parents to stay in the front room. Jonas had panicked then, and imagined the policeman taking him out of the back door to prison while his parents waited trustingly in front of the TV that was showing Grange Hill. Or he might hurt him to find out what he wanted to know. Jonas didn’t want to be hurt any more. But he also didn’t want to tell. If he told on Danny about the stables, it would all come out. All the horror and the shame would come out and everybody would know about it, even his parents. And nobody must ever know that Jonas even knew that pathetic child – let alone used to be him. Even he, Jonas, had learned to leave that weak little boy to his fate and go somewhere else while unspeakable things were happening.

The big policeman had bent his head and asked quiet questions about the fire. Jonas had told him the truth – that he knew nothing. But he didn’t tell him the truth of what he suspected.

Somehow the policeman had known that he was hiding something. Like magic, he knew. How? He had probed and prodded and gently persuaded until finally Jonas had burst into tears.

‘Are you scared, Jonas?’ he’d asked with great kindness.

Jonas had nodded with his fists in his eyes. The policeman had taken one of those hot, wet fists and engulfed it in his own.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll protect you. That’s my job.’

It was tempting. So tempting. To blurt it all out and be done with it and let grown-ups take charge. But Jonas never told because he knew that there was only one way now to protect himself, and that was by protecting the other boy – even from the nice policeman …

Here and now, Jonas’s face was as flushed and hot as his hands were cold. He wished he could run away and never come back. He had failed the village and – now that he had cried – he had failed Lucy too. She had seen his weakness and could no longer call on him for strength.

He was falling apart on her.

The anger of that thought gave him strength and suddenly he managed to grasp the sheep’s ear and a handful of dirty wet fleece in just the right place so that he could lever the animal upwards and out from where it was wedged in the V of two branches. As he did, the ewe’s legs flailed wildly and caught him in the thigh. He bit his lip and grunted as he heaved it free and let it go.

After an initial panicky dash, the ewe turned and surveyed him with a supercilious yellow eye.

Jonas panted and rubbed his leg. His trousers had ripped and he could feel the cold touching his thigh. He’d have to go home and change. Again.

Even so, he wasn’t angry any more; he was grateful. The kick had brought him out of it. Out of that terrifying place where memories rose like dead fish breaking the calm surface of his mind.

He was here.

He was safe.

He was Jonas Holly, the protector, once more.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he told the sheep.

* * *

An abandoned Toyota had blocked the bottom of the lane to the house. Apparently the driver had been attempting to get up the hill but had slid sideways, and the car was now wedged between the spiny black winter hedges with their thick caps of soft-edged snow going grey in the fading daylight.

Jonas said, ‘Shit’ quietly and sat for a moment, hating the driver, who had no doubt wandered back to the village and was probably even now having steak-and-kidney pudding in the Red Lion, while trusting that someone would do something about his misfortune while he was gone.

No local would have left his car there, Jonas reckoned. Locals knew that even in conditions like this, farmers in tractors needed to reach livestock all over the moor. Locals had more sense and more courtesy.

Fuming silently, Jonas climbed out into the snow – and was bitingly reminded that he had only just managed to get warm again after the sheep episode.

He had to slide across the boot of the car to attach the winch, getting a wet arse for his pains.

As he dropped off the other side of the boot, the Toyota’s rear end broke free and the car lurched sideways, then started to slide slowly back down the hill.

Jonas took a few faltering paces, but then stopped and could only watch as the car arced gently into his Land Rover before skating on and coming to rest against a drift at the bottom of the hill.

‘Bastard,’ said Jonas quietly but with feeling. He was freezing cold, it had started to snow again, and now he’d have to fill out forms explaining how the Land Rover got damaged, when all he wanted was to get home, have a steaming hot bath and share supper with Lu.

As he started down through the churned snow where the Toyota had been, Jonas noticed what he assumed were the driver’s footprints leading not down the hill to the Red Lion, but up the lane towards Rose Cottage.

He stopped and shone his torch into the prints.

The new snow was starting to soften them a little, but Jonas could still see the tread pattern.

Herringbone.

Jonas switched off the torch and ran up the hill.

The footprints led straight to his front door.

He skidded on the path despite the grit, and skidded again in the porch, sending several loud logs tumbling off the neat pile.

Shit.

Any attempt at stealth ruined, Jonas burst through the front door.

‘Lucy!’

No answer.

Please be OK. Please, please, please.

He opened the door into the front room.

Lucy was on the couch under the friendly glow of the fire, her eyes closed and her head nestled on the tasselled cushion.

Jonas released a huge breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. She was safe. She was fine. The driver had probably asked to use the phone, that was all—

The back door closed quietly.

Jonas’s heart pumped a shot of pure ice into his system. He could even feel it in his teeth.

He grabbed the poker from beside the fire and rushed into the kitchen.

Empty.

Jonas crossed the room in three strides and yanked open the back door. By the light spilling out of the kitchen it was easy to make out the herringbone treads.

‘Jonas?’

Jonas ignored Lucy and ran into the night once more. As soon as he was beyond the reach of the kitchen light, he lost the tracks, but he ran anyway, past the Beetle domed with snow, out into the road and down the hill.

In the jerking beam of the torch, he saw the indistinct shape of the man running for his life through the fast- falling snow. He was fast, but Jonas was gaining.