Darkside (12 page)

Unaware of Marvel's train of thought, Singh decided to add another helpful observation. 'He just didn't seem ... quite
right
, sir.'

'No,' said Grey, nodding in enthusiastic agreement. 'Not quite right.'

Hearing Jonas Holly's words echoed by Grey was what did it for Marvel. He made an all-purpose sound of disparagement, picked up the keys to the Ford Focus, and stomped out of the room to judge Ronnie Trewell for himself.

*

The boy was standing on the front step, squinting into the dim sun as it fell behind the moor. Ronnie Trewell was skinny and so gaunt he looked like an extra from a prison-camp movie. He had a shock of home-cut black hair, and a brow permanently creased by the confusion that was his life.

He saw Marvel pull up, threw down the roll-up he'd been smoking and backed towards the door.

'I want to talk with you!' Marvel yelled at him through the passenger window, and the boy stopped and waited.

Marvel liked a meek thief. He got out and went up the weed-strewn front path.

'DCI Marvel,' he said. 'You Ronnie Trewell?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'I haven't done a thing. I spoke to your lot already. I haven't done a thing. Is that a Zetec?'

Marvel was caught a little off-balance by the sudden change in direction. He glanced towards the Focus. 'I haven't come here to talk about cars, mate. Come about a murder.'

'Yeah I know,' shrugged Ronnie. 'But I told the others about that already. Can I have a drive?'

As he spoke, he stepped off the porch and headed for the car. Marvel found himself in undignified pursuit.

'No. Tell me where you were Saturday night.'

'Here. Asleep. I said already. Just a quick one. You can come too. I'm not gonna nick a police car, am I? Not with you
in
it, anyway.'

'Shut up about the fucking car, all right?' Marvel was already starting to feel that he was wasting his time here. 'You got any witnesses?'

'Nope. Not an ST though, is it?' said Ronnie with a little sneer in his voice as he peered through the window. Marvel didn't give a shit what the Focus was or wasn't, but that little sneer made him feel suddenly protective towards the pool car.

'Goes well though,' he said, feeling foolishly like he was seventeen again with his first learner motorbike - a 125cc Honda Benley with a hand-painted tank - trying to talk it up to the older, richer boys with their RD250s ...

'Yeah?' said Ronnie. 'Believe it when I see it.'

It nearly worked. For a second Marvel was all ready to jump behind the wheel and do a donut in the mud at the end of the lane beside the dirty little bungalow. Floor the accelerator and spray the kid with gravel. Maybe even let him feel the kick for himself ...

'Nice try, Ronnie,' he said, not without a little respect.

Marvel opened the door of the Ford and thought he'd better go out on an authoritarian note. 'Don't go anywhere, all right?'

'Where am I going to go?' said Ronnie Trewell, with a shrug at the darkening moor around them. He seemed genuinely at a loss.

Marvel ignored the question and drove away.

Ronnie Trewell wasn't the killer. He wasn't ...
quite right
.

The mobile incident room arrived and it was shit.

Just the way Marvel liked it.

There were soggy Polo mints in the desk, mud up the walls, two black bags filled with junk-food wrappers, and someone had used indelible green ink on the whiteboard and then what looked like some kind of wire brush to try to remove it.

Marvel felt himself relax into the squalor of the unit in a way he just couldn't into the rusticity of Springer Farm. The rutted driveway, the mossy roofs, the smell of manure repelled him. But this squalor was different. He
wanted
the stained coffee pot, he
liked
the muddy lino, and the sour reek of the grubby little fridge was napalm in the morning to him.

Didn't mean anyone else had to know that. 'Clean this place up,' he growled at Reynolds, who made a note in his book.

'What are you writing?' said Marvel irritably.

'Sir?'

'What are you writing in your little book? I said "Clean this place up." Doesn't need a fucking memo, does it?'

'No, sir.'

'Then clean this place up.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Don't let Rice do it.'

'No, sir.' Before Reynolds could ask why, when Rice was the only member of the team who might make a decent job of it, Marvel had trudged down the steps and slammed the door.

The unit was parked at the edge of the playing field alongside Margaret Priddy's home. Nonetheless, Marvel drove the four hundred yards to the shop.

He asked for wellington boots but was told he'd have to go to Dulverton or to somewhere the large, docile man behind the counter called 'the farm shop' - the directions to which were so complex that Marvel stopped listening after the third dogleg.

'You're the chap in charge?' asked the man, and Marvel nodded. 'Any progress?'

'Early days,' said Marvel. It was all he ever said in response to inquiries by civilians - right up to the point where he stood in his funeral suit and only decent tie to hear the verdict of the jury. Before that, nothing was sure.

'Poor Margaret,' said the shopkeeper. 'Although it was a blessing really.'

'Hmm,' nodded Marvel, but was not sure he agreed.

Outside, he saw the small brown dog from next door to the Priddy home, and introduced himself to the owner, Mrs Cobb. He asked whether the dog had barked on the night of the murder and she said 'No' as if it was the first time it had occurred to her.

Typical, thought Marvel. The dog barks at
me
but not at the bloody killer.

He went back to the unit, where Reynolds had made a poor enough job of cleaning the unit to satisfy the most ardent slob. He was now standing by for plaudits, but Marvel merely glanced around and grunted, then answered his phone. Jos Reeves told him they had the hair matches. Two from Peter Priddy, two from Dr Mark Dennis, and one each from Gary Liss and Annette Rogers.

'Nothing from Reynolds? He usually sheds like a fucking Retriever all over the scene.'

'Nothing from Reynolds.'

'You said there were seven.'

'One unidentified,' said Reeves.

Marvel accepted the news with grudging silence. 'What about fibres?'

Reeves sighed. 'Nothing of significance yet.'

'Let me be the judge of that,' snapped Marvel.

'OK,' said Reeves mildly and started to recite their results so far in a relentless monotone. 'Carpet, white cotton, black cotton, blue cotton, red wool, blue wool--'

'Email me,' said Marvel and hung up.

Mike Foster and his enthusiasm for vomit proved to be the highlight of Jonas's first few days on the doorstep. Linda Cobb brought him increasingly infrequent cups of tea and his novelty quickly wore off with the schoolchildren. None came out of their way to stare at him and whisper at each other now, and the few who passed gave him barely a glance. He had tried to maintain the illusion, even in his own head, that he might at some point spot the killer, but he really wasn't even rooting for himself. He felt it was a pointless exercise and had no wish for Marvel to be proven right through some weird fluke, even if it
did
mean catching the perpetrator of a horrible crime.

No, that wasn't true, thought Jonas, shamed. Catching the killer of Margaret Priddy would be worth any kind of humiliation. But he'd prefer it if they caught him another way - a way that wouldn't give Marvel the option of an 'I told you so.'

It was a long, cold day.

*

Jonas got home to find Lucy asleep on the couch with the phone in her hand and
Rosemary's Baby
playing silently on the TV.

'How are you, Lu?' he asked softly as she stirred.

She blinked in confusion for a few seconds and Jonas watched recognition float back into her eyes.

'My legs hurt,' she said grumpily. 'And Margaret Priddy's son called you. He didn't say why.'

She shifted up and he sat down and pulled her bare legs on to his lap, covering them up again with the brown tartan rug.

Jonas started to massage her calves.

'Are you going to call him back?' she said.

'In a minute.' He shrugged.

Onscreen Mia Farrow was over-acting at the sight of the devil-child she'd spawned.

'Let's have a baby,' said Lucy.

He didn't stop massaging her, but he also didn't answer her. Or even turn his eyes from the TV.

'Jonas?'

'Can we talk about it later?' He still caressed her, but she could tell now that it was perfunctory.

'I want to talk about it now.'

Jonas sighed and looked at her. 'We've talked about it, Lu. You're ill ...'

'That's not it.' She drew her legs up and away from him, and curled them under herself. Now it was her turn to look at the TV.

He said nothing. They had last had this conversation almost two years ago. He'd hoped they wouldn't have it again.

But Lucy wanted it again. 'You wanted children before we got married.'

'I didn't.'

He said it automatically and saw her eyes widen.

'You
said
you did.'

There was no way out of it now. His mouth had betrayed him and he couldn't take it back. '
You
said I did.'

'You never said you didn't.'

'Well ...' shrugged Jonas with a helpless lift of one hand. 'I don't.'

Lucy bit her lip, determined to be an adult about this. This was an adult conversation between two adults. The fact that she wanted to slap him and cry on the floor like a child was an aberration.

'Why?' she said and hated the tremble in her own voice.

'I just don't.'

'I think I deserve a better answer than that, Jonas.'

Jonas thought she did too.
Knew
she did. But stayed as silent as a coward, which he knew was his only defence.

Usually Lucy let it go. They never fought and weren't quite sure how to, but tonight Lucy was finally hurt enough ...

'Don't you want something to remember me by?'

Jonas stood up in an instant, and as soon as Lucy saw his face she wished she could take it back. For a second she was actually frightened.

He walked out of the room and she heard him pick up his car keys and phone from beside the flowers on the hall table.

She nearly called out to him, but then held her tongue.

She had a right to say what she was feeling! If things were the other way round, Lucy would have moved Heaven and Earth to have Jonas's child. She could barely believe that - for once - he did not want the same thing as she did. Disagreeing
was one thing, but refusal to even discuss such a vital issue was quite another. She felt her throat constrict in self-pity. She wasn't dead yet! Her vote still counted!

Didn't it?

She heard the front door shut quietly behind him.

Jonas drove away.

He had no idea how to tell her the truth:
I can't protect a child
.

Because in his head he always heard her ask
Why?

And then he'd have to tell the truth again.

Nobody can
...

*

Marvel sat with an unopened bottle of Jameson whiskey in one hand, the TV bunny aerial in the other, and watched
Coronation Street
for the first time in about twenty years. He was shocked and confused to find that at some point Tracy Barlow had served time for murder, and while he was trying to work out how that could legally happen to a five-year-old girl, someone knocked on his door.

He hadn't heard a car but he thought it might be Reynolds, who had taken the DNA swabs to Portishead. Marvel could have gone too, but had finally decided that going back to the future at this point would make it that much harder to return to Exmoor.

He was therefore more than a little surprised to find PC Jonas Holly standing in the dark.

'I need to speak to you about Peter Priddy.'

Marvel held open the door by way of invitation, and immediately felt the cold night air invade his cottage, giving him an unexpected pang of empathy with Joy Springer and her jealous guardianship of warmth.

But Jonas didn't come in. Instead he stood hesitantly in the yard, then asked if they could go to the pub. Marvel needed no second bidding. He abandoned Tracy Barlow to her fate and grabbed his coat.

It was warm in the Land Rover. Holly swung it round expertly in a tight turn. As he did, Marvel noticed Joy Springer peering at them from behind her kitchen curtain.

They turned right at the bottom of the drive - away from Shipcott - and headed up the hill across the moor.