Darkside

Fourteen Days

Shipcott shut down.

In the wake of two murders, the village folded in on itself with a surreal sense of disbelief.

An outsider would have noticed nothing but furtive looks; any local would have known that nothing was as it was before, and nothing was as it should be.

People went about their business. They worked, they shopped, they walked their dogs. But the Shipcott air itself had changed and all who lived there took in toxins with every breath now. Suspicion, fear and confusion started to suffuse their beings and they looked at each other with new eyes that sought clues to the killer’s identity.

It was only 3.45pm but the light was already fading from the sky. The streetlamps flickered orange and warmed up slowly and, while death was still the subject on everyone’s mind, life poured out of the school gates into the strange new world. Children who were used to walking home alone were surprised and embarrassed to find that nervous mothers had come to meet them with pushchairs and dogs on leads, while the narrow road outside the school was clogged with cars ready to transport children through the normally quiet lanes to other villages, rather than risk their missing the bus or walking the last few hundred yards alone in the dark. A single murder was bad enough; a second had created a sense of beyond-coincidence which justified vehicular over-protectiveness, and Pat Jones the lollipop lady bore the brunt of the fear as she tried to cope single-handedly with the sudden traffic mayhem.

Dog-walkers stopped approaching each other so readily. Women walking alone on the moor or on the playing field were nervous of men they’d known all their lives, and those men kept their distance to avoid scaring the women. Farmers who noticed walkers on footpaths kept watching until they were out of sight, and made notes of the number plates of cars parked in lay-bys. Brusque waves took the place of face-to-face conversations, and people shouted ‘Hello’ too loudly at each other across the street, so everyone could tell they were normal and friendly and not weird loners plotting murder.

The Bugle reporter came from Dulverton and attracted small knots of people nodding and looking worried on each other’s doorsteps.

The Red Lion and the Blue Dolphin chip shop saw brisk early trade, but each then closed earlier than usual for want of customers. Dedicated drinkers went home at an unaccustomed hour to discover that their children had grown up in their pub-induced absence and now insisted on watching sexually charged soaps instead of Sesame Street.

Steven Lamb was forbidden by his mother to go to the skate ramp after dark and was secretly relieved, and Billy Beer – who had been plagued for years by a small knot of teenagers who gathered at the bus stop outside his home every night and made Bongo bark – was so unnerved by the sudden silence that he tossed and turned all night, and woke up each morning more exhausted than he had been the night before.

Jonas kissed Lucy goodnight and felt like a bigamist.

She’d said she didn’t mind. No, she’d been more generous than that – she’d encouraged him to go, even though she was confused about his reasoning.

‘I don’t think anyone was blaming you yesterday, sweetheart.’

‘I could tell,’ he said.

‘You don’t think you’re being a little paranoid?’

‘Why? Do you think I am?’ Obviously the answer must be ‘yes’ or Lucy wouldn’t have asked the question, but Jonas was always interested in hearing what she had to say.

‘A little.’ She shrugged. ‘I can understand how you must feel you’re somehow responsible… that you failed Margaret and Yvonne in some way… even though I don’t see how. But all I saw at the pub was worried people turning to you for information.’

Jonas was silent so he didn’t have to disagree with her. He didn’t want to voice dissent that might turn into an argument that might lead back to the question of children. He had no stomach for it. He just hoped her contention wasn’t going to turn into a suggestion that he stay at home, because his mind was made up.

Instead Lucy said, ‘But I know it’s not about them as much as it is about the way you feel about it, Jonas, and I agree that that’s what’s important. If going out at night makes you feel better, then you should do that.’

He didn’t deserve her. He never had and he never would.

He got up and took their best knife from the block in the kitchen.

‘Promise me you’ll keep this with you all the time when I’m not here.’

She laughed. ‘Jonas!’

‘I’m serious, Lu. I have to do this, but I hate leaving you here alone—’

‘Mrs Paddon’s a foot away through the wall.’

‘I know. And I don’t want you to be nervous. But please. For my sake, so I’m not nervous.’

He held it out to her, grip-first, and after another moment’s hesitation she took it.

‘Promise me,’ he said.

Lucy drew a Zorro-esque Z in the air and faked a Spanish accent. ‘You have my word, amigo! Any mad dog will feel the edge of my blade on his balls.’

‘Promise me,’ he said seriously.

‘I promise,’ she said, and didn’t smile this time because she wanted him to know she did take him seriously, even if she felt it was an overreaction.

Then he kissed her and left to spend the night with the village.

After he went, Lucy smiled at the knife, then took it through to the lounge with her.

She put Scream into the DVD player, cursing her own unsteady hands that dropped the disc twice before she managed to load it correctly; sometimes the sheer force of will it took not to be feeble was beyond her.

Ten minutes into the movie, she started to feel uneasy.

She heard a sound at the window.

She knotted her fingers into the tassels of the cushion.

She made sure the knife was close at hand.

She told herself not to be stupid.

Twenty minutes in, she realized she was missing Desperate Housewives.

Lucy hadn’t watched it for a while but thought it would be nice to catch up, so she switched off the horror and lost herself instead in a place where bad things were made laughable by sunshine and great shoes.

It was only when he started to walk up one side of Barnstaple Road a little after 9pm that Jonas realized how lost he had been.

The fact that it was dark made no difference; he was back on the beat, back where he should be, and – more importantly – back where people expected him to be. The street was pretty empty but for a few late-night dog-walkers. He said hello to Rob Ticker and his spaniel, Jerry, and John Took – the Master of the Blacklands – thanked him for the dead pony and told him there were saboteurs in the area. They’d laid a false trail for the Tiverton hounds, which had ended up in a Tesco car park. Typical hunter, thought Jonas even as he made the right noises – two women murdered and John Took was worried about missing a fox. He asked Took whether he’d heard about Yvonne Marsh and Took said, ‘Bloody awful. But that’s care in the bloody community for you’ – to which there was no answer except to tell Took he’d do his best to be at the next meet just in case of trouble.

Then he stopped to chat to Linda Cobb with Dixie.

‘I still have your umbrella,’ he told Linda.

‘Drop it in when you’re passing,’ she said.

Jonas said he’d be back on the doorstep tomorrow and would drop it by then.

‘And you’re doing this too?’ she said, waving her arm at the street.

Jonas agreed that he was, and the look she gave him made everything worthwhile – even having to leave Lucy alone. With any luck the news would be all round Shipcott tomorrow that he was making night patrols. If a killer was out there, maybe it would make him think twice.

For the same reason he dropped into the Red Lion and was greeted so warmly that yesterday’s impressions did seem to be no more than paranoia. He felt foolish. Everyone in the bar now seemed to know that he had jumped into the freezing stream and tried to revive Yvonne Marsh, and clamoured to buy him a drink. When he told them he was on duty and explained about the night patrols, the atmosphere grew even warmer.

‘Good thinking, Jonas,’ said Mr Jacoby to general agreement, and Graham Nash brought over a coffee on the house.

The talk in the pub was all about the deaths. Murders, they called them both already, because nobody believed that Yvonne Marsh had lived all her life in Shipcott but had chosen this week to fall into the stream and drown. Jonas couldn’t disagree, although he wouldn’t speculate out loud for them. They didn’t mind; having Jonas be the voice of reason would only have spoiled their theories.

‘I reckon it’s some nutter from Tiverton,’ said old Jack Biggins of the cow-and-gate incident. His macro-xenophobia meant that everyone beyond Dulverton was a suspect.

‘Could be anyone just passing through,’ suggested Billy Beer, vaguely enough for the others to feel confident in disagreeing with him.

‘Now if that were it,’ said Graham Nash, ‘we’d have noticed him.’ Which was true, thought Jonas, because a stranger in a village this size in the middle of winter stuck out like a sore thumb.

‘Maybe one of our own turned bad then,’ shrugged Stuart Beard.

Beard was the kind of man whose opinion usually attracted sage nods all round, but Jonas noted that this time there were only a few careful grunts of agreement, noticeably half-hearted enough for him to look up and see that Clive Trewell – father of Skew Ronnie – was sat in the window nursing a half.

Jonas went over to him and said hello.

Ronnie Trewell had been a good kid but was growing up all wrong, and Clive Trewell was not used to speaking to Jonas Holly in anything other than an official capacity.

Clive blamed himself; he’d encouraged his son to take driving lessons, and driving lessons had been like lighting a blue touch paper for Ronnie Trewell. Some people had a calling. They were called to be missionaries in Africa; they were called to find delicate art hidden in marble blocks; they were called to open their homes to hedgehogs or stray cats. Ronnie Trewell was called to drive. Very fast. And because he couldn’t afford anything faster than a thirteen-year-old Ford Fiesta with the weekly wage he earned at Mr Marsh’s car-repair garage, he was called to steal those very fast cars.

Teased away from school because of his lopsided walk, caused by an uncorrected club foot, Skew Ronnie had achieved the wherewithal to steal cars, but not the guile to hide the fact. He would simply drive around in his Fiesta until he saw a car he wanted to drive. Then he would steal it, leaving his Fiesta in its place, keys in the ignition for convenience’s sake. It did not take Sherlock Holmes to work out whodunit. But depending on where Ronnie Trewell had stolen the car from, it did sometimes take a little while for the police to come knocking on the door. During that time Ronnie would drive at breakneck speed across the moors, and when he wasn’t actually driving the stolen car, he was modifying, tuning and customizing it in his dad’s garage. Given that he didn’t steal the cars to sell – and that the cars were always recovered eventually – it was this curious aspect of the crimes, coupled with his youth, which had so far kept nineteen-year-old Ronnie Trewell away from hard-core custodial sentences. Owners who had their cars returned in better condition than when they were stolen were disinclined to press charges. The owner of an old but sporty Honda CRX discovered a rusty wheel-arch had been excised, welded and expertly re-sprayed. A woman in Taunton was delighted to have her Toyota MR2 returned with a new, satisfyingly throaty exhaust fitted, and the owner of an Alfa Romeo GTV was so impressed by his reclaimed car’s improved performance that he sent Ronnie a thank-you note.

Clive knew that Ronnie couldn’t help himself. He had tried to teach him right from wrong but, when it came to cars, it just hadn’t taken. Something in his son needed those cars the way other people needed braces or spectacles. Each car Ronnie stole became part of him; he put his heart, soul and all his meagre spare cash into it. And every time the police sent a tow truck to take away a stolen car, Ronnie stood in the road and cried.

PC Holly had made half a dozen visits to the Trewell home in the past two years, so Clive was prepared.

‘Them other police already talked to Ronnie!’ he said – and was taken aback when Jonas started to talk not about Ronnie, but about Dougie.

‘Did he tell you what happened yesterday?’

Clive’s heart sank. Not Dougie too! But then he listened in amazement as Jonas told him about the part his younger son had played in the drama down behind the playing field.

‘Didn’t say a word!’ he said.

When he’d first stood up, Jonas had fully intended to quiz Clive Trewell about Ronnie. Where he was. Where he’d been. What he’d been doing. But when he’d got close to the man and seen the sad, wary look in his eyes as he approached, he’d lost the stomach for it.

Instead he talked up Dougie – told Clive what a good lad he had there – and then brought the surprised man a drink before saying goodnight and heading back out on patrol.

Before he did, he went into the gents’ toilets.

There was no message.

The night was clear and bitter and the stars were close overhead. The street had emptied of dog-walkers and was awaiting the early exodus from the Red Lion, after which it would finally rest for the night.

Without thinking why, Jonas walked towards the Trewell home, skidding more than once on the ice that had already formed on the narrow pavement.

He had no great suspicion that Ronnie Trewell was involved in the murders. He knew he was only going to speak to him now because Ronnie was the only person in Shipcott whom anyone could logically accuse of any wrongdoing that went beyond poor parking or leaving the bins out too early. He worked for Alan Marsh, certainly, but Jonas wasn’t setting much store by that. Talking to him seemed sensible – that was all. Marvel may have done it already but Marvel wasn’t local, so anything anyone told him or his team was necessarily open to improvement.

Jonas turned up Heather View – a name which always made him smile because, unless you stuck your head in a cupboard, there was nowhere in Shipcott that didn’t offer a heather view. The short, steep lane ended in a dead end of frozen mud in front of the stile beside the Trewell home, which consisted of a tiny, ugly bungalow and a vast double garage. It seemed that even the buildings of his childhood home had conspired to lure Ronnie into following his calling.

Dougie answered the door and looked concerned to see Jonas.

‘All right?’ he said carefully.

‘All right, Dougie. Warm now?’ said Jonas and the boy smiled faintly. ‘Can I come in for a minute?’

‘OK,’ said Dougie.

The house smelled old and cold. The front room was devoid of furniture apart from an oversized green vinyl sofa and a large TV with wires pouring from the back like entrails, and connected to various speakers, games consoles, DVD players and satellite receivers strewn about the dirty carpet.

‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ said Ronnie instantly. He sat on the floor while a white-muzzled greyhound took up the whole length of the sofa behind his head. The dog lifted its nose and looked at Jonas with its solemn, blue-sheened eyes, then lay flat again.

‘I know,’ said Jonas, standing in the doorway. Dougie hovered a little nervously between the two of them, unsure of whose side he should be on.

‘Then why are you here?’ Ronnie put down the game control he’d been holding in his lap and turned away from Jonas to pet the dog. The vast, flat animal lifted its front leg off the sofa so Ronnie could tickle its armpit.

‘She likes that,’ said Jonas.

‘Yeah,’ said Ronnie. And then – after a long pause – ‘You told me that.’

‘What?’

Ronnie spoke with his back to Jonas but his voice was softened by the contact with the greyhound, which lay stiff-legged, hypnotized by pleasure.

‘You told me dogs like their armpits tickled.’

‘Yeah?’ Jonas was puzzled. ‘When?’

Ronnie shrugged one shoulder. ‘Dunno. When I was a kid.’

Jonas had no recollection of it. He only vaguely recalled Ronnie Trewell as a child – marked out by his limp – hanging around on the edges of everything, never excluded but never really involved either.

He watched the teenager’s callused, oil-stained fingers gently stroke the most tender skin the dog had to offer.

‘How old is she?’ he asked.

‘Twelve,’ said Dougie, relieved at this new non-confrontational turn in the conversation. ‘She used to race. She had tattoos in her ears but they cut them out when they dumped her.’

Jonas saw the dog’s cloudy eyes widen and its whole body stiffen as Ronnie lifted its ear to show where the delicate drape of silken flesh had been brutally sliced to prevent identification and responsibility.

‘She doesn’t like it when you touch it,’ said Ronnie, letting the ear drop back into place. ‘Even after all this time.’

‘She remembers, see?’ said Dougie, and he walked over, perched on the edge of the sofa and smoothed the dog’s brindle flank. ‘Don’t you, girl?’

Jonas suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad and disconnected.

The soft thief, the unformed boy, the stale room. The old dog with its long memory of bad things.

He said something to Dougie – something about the help he’d rendered yesterday. He didn’t know what he said or what was said in return – it was just a way to excuse himself and move from inside the house to outside, where he could breathe and be alone.

He turned left out of the front gate instead of right and walked twenty paces across the frozen mud to the stile that led to the moor. He climbed on to it and stood there, raised into the icy night sky, confused by the depth of his own feelings.

So what if the dog was old? So what if it had had its tattoos cut out? Dogs went through bad things all the time and then recovered from them and lived happy lives. Just like people did. The dog was loved and cared for now, so why did he feel so sad?

Because the dog remembered.

Worse than that, the dog could not forget.

Even when it had an entire green-vinyl sofa to stretch out on, and a boy stroking its armpit, the memory was right there, right underneath, all ready to burst through the skin, tear open old wounds and make them bleed afresh. And it wasn’t just the wounds. It was the memory of the trembling, pissing terror every time a human approached and a hand reached out, in case it held not titbits but sudden sharp and selfish pain.

Jonas was dizzy with the fear of the remembering dog. He had no idea why; he just was.

He swayed atop the icy stile, sucked air into his lungs as if he’d just missed drowning, and squeezed his eyes shut.

He wouldn’t cry. He mustn’t cry. He was not allowed to cry.

For some reason which escaped him, that thought made his eyes burn even harder and his throat felt filled with a balloon with the effort it took to keep from tears.

It was Lucy. He knew it was all about Lucy, this new tearful streak. He tried to tell himself it was understandable – that facing the loss of someone he loved so much was sure to make him weak and vulnerable – but something in him found it merely pathetic and he hated himself because of it.

He opened his eyes and blinked at the monochromatic haloes around the stars above him and the streetlights below him. He made no effort to clear his vision – blurred was nice for now. Even blurred, he knew the shape of the village. He knew the light that was the pub and the light over the bus stop. A hundred feet below him he knew the yellow blob of Linda Cobb’s kitchen, and the absence of light that was Margaret Priddy’s home.

One light sparkled in isolation across the coombe – separate from the others. Jonas focused on it and breathed steadily. Slowly, slowly, the cobwebs faded around the single light and he saw it was a yellowish, un-curtained window across the way, only just visible above the rough silhouette of a hedge, which cut it off at the sill.

He looked down towards the village and took his bearings, then looked back up at that single pale window.

And felt his heart miss a beat.

From here.

From this place alone.

From atop the stile outside the Trewell home, Jonas Holly could see directly into his own bathroom.