Darkside (19 page)

The memory absolved Clive Trewell in Jonas's eyes.

There were a dozen homes within a hundred yards of the stile, and the moor was open to all. Anyone could have stood where he'd stood; anyone could have seen him in the bath.

Anyone.

This morning, for the first time in his life, he'd pulled the blind down while showering.

Just after Mrs Paddon waved, Lucy knocked on the front window and mimed a cup of tea at him, but he was already late, so he tapped his watch at her. She blew him a kiss instead and he grinned and blushed - too embarrassed to blow one back in front of Mrs Paddon, even though he knew that was ridiculous. But she'd known him as a child, and that made all the difference.

He turned as a car pulled up with a slushy squeak outside the front gate.

Marvel.

Jonas's heart sank. Something told him Marvel hadn't stopped by to give him a lift to Margaret Priddy's doorstep.

He glanced back at Lucy and saw her face became quizzical. She must have seen the wariness on his. Jonas didn't want Lucy seeing anything of Marvel's attitude towards him, partly for her sake, partly for his own, so he went through the old wooden gate and down the three stone steps and walked round to the driver's door. Marvel's window was open.

'What the
fuck
are you playing at, Holly?'

Jonas was confused. 'I'm sweeping my path, sir.'

'Are you being funny?'

'No, sir. I don't think so.'

'The lab called to say your hair and fibres are all over Margaret Priddy and Yvonne Marsh.'

Jonas looked blank. Why was that a shock to Marvel? He'd have been shocked if his hair and fibres
hadn't
been found on both victims.

'And the button you found in the guttering? Mass produced for the uniform trade. Probably pulled it off your own fucking trousers when you climbed up there!'

'No, sir. I--'

'Are you trying to make me look like a fucking fool?' spat Marvel.

Jonas was caught off-balance by this sudden switch.

'Excuse me, sir?'

'Those bastards in the lab are laughing at me because of
you
, you understand?'

Jonas
did
understand - that Marvel was an insecure arsehole.

So he said 'Yes, sir, I understand.' And then carefully reminded Marvel, 'But I checked that I hadn't lost a button, and I
was
at both scenes ...' He tailed off at the immutable glare Marvel had fixed on him.

Marvel looked up - and up - at Jonas Holly. The expression on the young PC's face was utterly sincere - even hurt. Marvel pursed his lips. 'This is your last chance, Holly. Another fuck up like this and--'

'I didn't fuck-up,' Jonas said sharply, then added a considered 'sir'.

Marvel was surprised by the sudden display of backbone but it cut no ice with him. He was
so fucking angry
about the lack of progress and then that bastard Reeves giggling like a hippy down the line at him ... Yelling at Jonas Holly was like kicking the cat: satisfying even while serving no purpose.

'Watch your fucking tone, Holly.'

Jonas knew he had to back off now or engage in open warfare with a senior officer who wielded almost complete power over him. So he swallowed some of his pride and said, 'Sorry, sir.'

Marvel grunted and put the car into gear.

'You'd better start taking your job more seriously while you still have one.'

He pulled away sharply before Jonas could answer, forcing him to step quickly out of the way.

Jonas watched the car fishtail a little in the snow. He knew it was a hollow threat, but it still made him think.

He'd have to be careful around Marvel.

*

A & D M
ARSH
M
OTOR
R
EPAIRS
read the sign on the trustingly unlocked door of the broken-down tin shack.

It was gloomy inside and Reynolds ran his hands up and down the wall inside the door until he found the light switch, then looked at his fingers covered in black smudge.

'What are we looking for, sir?'

'Evidence.'

Reynolds knew he should never have bothered asking. Marvel had no more idea what they might find than he did. Probably less. Back at the Marsh house, poor Elizabeth Rice had instructions to do the same. 'Just nose around,' Marvel had told her.

Because apparently 'nosing around' did not require a stuffy old search warrant.

Reynolds felt an ever-rising sense that they were all stagnating. They had no fingerprints and - even more curiously - no footprints. Just dirty smears and vague
impressions in carpet. They were still pinning their forensic hopes on the single unidentified hair from the Margaret Priddy scene, but if that matched Peter Priddy or someone else who'd been at the scene in an official capacity then they were back to square one anyway.

When Marvel had told him about the Jonas Holly link, Reynolds had tutted in vague empathy and mentally sided with Holly.

It was just like Marvel to shit all over a guy for doing his job.

Here in the garage - for the first time since he'd come to Shipcott - Marvel felt some connection with someone local. They might be suspects, but at least it was something.

As a boy he'd wanted to be a bus driver. Not because he'd wanted to suffer the stop-and-go of Oxford Street or get caught in a six-mile tailback on the Edgware Road. No, when the boy-Marvel imagined his life as a bus driver, he'd always seen himself bent over with his head inside the cavernous engine bay, spanner in hand. Which was probably just as likely, given London's ageing bus population, he reflected wryly whenever he thought about those times.

He felt an unaccustomed smile curl the corner of his mouth.

'Something funny, sir?' asked Reynolds.

'No,' said Marvel. A childhood ambition to be a bus driver was the last thing he was prepared to share with an over-educated prick like Reynolds.

The workshop was far neater and cleaner inside than the exterior promised. Tools were hung neatly and surfaces were reasonably tidy. The two men split automatically and walked around the premises in opposite directions.

'You think it's the same killer?' mused Reynolds.

'In a place this size?'

'Different M.O.'

'In a place this size?' repeated Marvel.

'You know Arnold Avery buried all those kids on the moors around here. Lightning
can
strike twice.'

Marvel grunted.

Reynolds ran his fingers over the sharp jaws of a bench vice and spun the lever, loving the smooth silence of its travel.

As a boy, Reynolds had wanted to be a bus driver. He had vivid recollections of cycling to school - and later university -through the centre of Bristol. Every time he was in a queue of traffic, he would stop his bicycle beside a bus, just to listen to the engine with its thudding bass covered by curiously breathy high notes. A sublime metal orchestra inside the grand theatre of what Reynolds had always considered to be the perfect method of mass transportation. Even while slaving over his criminology degree, a part of him always fantasized about giving it all up and spending the rest of his life behind the wheel, high above the traffic, sitting over the engine of a Routemaster or a Leyland National. It was a fantasy he had never divulged to anyone. No one would understand.

Marvel whistled low behind him and Reynolds turned to see him holding up what looked like a tissue box.

When Reynolds walked over, he could see that it was filled with disposable latex gloves.

Jonas hated the doctor.

Dr Anil Wickramsinghe was his name and Jonas had come to hold him personally responsible for Lucy's decline. Dr Wickramsinghe was middle-aged, balding and utterly inoffensive, but Jonas always felt in his guts that he was holding out on them. That, for some reason he couldn't fathom, Dr Wickramsinghe thought it would be in everyone's best interests to watch Lucy Holly in pain, fear and depression.

Like today.

Today Dr Wickramsinghe had listened to Lucy's halting description of the progress of her disease with his head cocked to one side, feigning concern. When she said she had dropped a mug of tea on Wednesday, unable to feel that she wasn't gripping it properly, he nodded and tutted. When she recounted two episodes of MS hug, which had left her writhing on the floor in agony, he nodded and made a little sound like 'mm' in the back of his throat. And when her lip trembled as she told him that her eyesight had faltered in the
middle of
The Evil Dead
, he sighed as if he shared her pain.

'When?' said Jonas sharply. 'You didn't tell me that!'

Lucy bit her lip.

'Why didn't you tell me, Lu?'

'I'm sure I
did
, Jonas.'

When she used his name that way, she was lying. Not lying like criminals lie, just ... being economical with the truth, like a politician.

'If you don't tell me these things, Lu, how can I help?'

She was too kind to say it but he knew the answer. He
couldn't
help - so what was the point?

Dr Wickramsinghe placed his palms flat on the table as if he was about to make a decision. As if he was about to get up and go to the secret safe behind the ugly sailing ships above his desk and get the
real
medicine; the
actual
pills that would put an end to Lucy's suffering. Spin the dial and Open Sesame on a cure. Every single time they were here, Jonas expected him to confess that so far they'd been giving her sugar solution and peanut M&Ms, but that now - at last - she was sick enough for them to break out the good stuff.

Instead, Dr Wickramsinghe leaned back slightly in his chair, as if distancing himself from the awkward case before him, and said, 'This is the progression we can expect, I'm afraid.'

Jonas wanted to pounce across the desk, grip him by the throat and bang his skull repeatedly against the ships until the sea ran red.

Can't you SEE?
he wanted to shout.
Can't you SEE that she needs HELP?

Lucy's warm hand on his thigh told him she knew what he was thinking, even as she agreed with Dr Wickramsinghe: 'Of course, I understand. But is there any more we can do for the symptoms?'

So like Lucy. So like her to calm
him
down,
and to
make the bastard who was killing her feel less like a shit while doing it. What can
we
do for the symptoms? As if Dr Wickramsinghe and she were both in this together. Not for the first time, Jonas imagined Lucy breaking up a fight between two five-year-olds, resolving the row, drying the tears, making them shake hands. It made him love her more than ever, even if it meant the man across the desk was getting off lightly.

'We'll try some more M&Ms,' said Dr Wickramsinghe, 'and throw in some Smarties and a big bottle of Lucozade.'

Of course, he didn't say exactly that, but Jonas thought he might as well have.

*

Jonas took it slowly on the way home. The bigger roads had been gritted but if they hadn't had the appointment he would never have ventured out in Lucy's old Beetle. It had all its weight over the back wheels, leaving the front end to wander about at will, tilting at hedges and flirting with ditches. He was so used to the Land Rover with its four-wheel drive and traction control that the VW felt like a roller skate in the snow.

As they came down the hill into Shipcott, they could see a knot of people standing in the road roughly halfway through the village. In the brief glimpse they had before they lost sight of them again behind the hedges, Jonas thought he saw a horse, and felt unease start to pulse in his chest.

Lucy glanced at him questioningly, but he could only shrug.

They lost sight of the crowd until they rounded the curve in the road. Jonas slowed to a crawl and then parked a little haphazardly outside the shop and got out.

'What's going on?' he asked Billy Beer.

'The Marsh boy's gone mazed,' said Billy impatiently, as if it happened all the time and they were sick of it.

Jonas felt his stomach twist at the words. He hurried through the crowd and saw Danny Marsh dressed in hunting scarlet - complete with velvet hat, white britches and conker-topped boots - holding the reins of a large bay horse. It was saddled but ungroomed; there was dried mud up its legs, and its mane was a dusty tangle of dirt and twigs.

Before Jonas could speak, Danny saw him and broke into the biggest of smiles. 'Jonas! We're going hunting! You coming?' He rushed towards Jonas, making the horse throw its head up and roll its eyes. Danny jerked the reins. 'Steady up, Tigger! Stand!' Then he threw his arm around Jonas, laughing.

Jonas took in the scene. Danny and the horse, which Jonas knew wasn't his; beyond him stood Marvel and his team, including the woman - Rice, he thought her name was - who looked troubled, almost tearful. Framed in the doorway of his home stood Alan Marsh, his face blank as he watched his son disintegrate in front of him.