Darkside

Twelve Days

When it finally made up its mind, the snow came with a vengeance.

The first flakes wandered down from the black velvet sky like little stars that had lost their way, and within minutes the galaxies themselves were raining down on Exmoor. Without a breath of breeze to divert or delay them, a million billion points of fractured light poured from the heavens, to be finally reunited under the moon in a brilliant carpet of silent white.

Marvel woke up with a cat staring into his eyes from a distance of about three inches. He flinched and it dug its claws into his chest, keeping him just where it wanted him.

‘Get off,’ he suggested, but the enormously fluffy grey ball merely blinked its orange eyes and looked contemptuous. It did withdraw its claws a little, but was certainly not going anywhere soon.

Marvel turned his head with a wince to find he was asleep on Joy Springer’s hairy kitchen sofa and couldn’t feel his legs. Because of the cat, he couldn’t immediately see them either, which only added to the surreal feeling that his legs could be absolutely anywhere. He reached down and touched his thigh. Or what he assumed was his thigh – he had no sensation in the slab his finger felt through the cloth of his suit trousers.

The light was oddly muted, as if someone had put a pale veil over the windows while he slept. It added to the air of strangeness that waking up without his legs was giving him.

It had been a late night at the mobile unit. Late and smelling of Calor gas. He’d kept his team up past their bedtimes, laying out a strategy for the two inquiries; being the swan while wanting a drink. Luckily Reynolds was on the ball. Him and his fucking little notebook, thought Marvel sourly.

Then he had come back to the farm to find that although he’d given Joy Springer money for a bottle of whiskey, she’d instead bought two bottles of Cinzano, which he hadn’t even known they made any more.

‘Get off!’ he shouted into the cat’s face and – after a rebellious beat – it rose slowly, dug in its claws in farewell, and sauntered down his body with its tail in the air, so that Marvel could see from its puckered arse exactly what it thought of him.

Marvel struggled to his elbows and looked down at his legs, which – in their paralysis – seemed to be completely separate from his hips. He actually had to lean down and pull his own feet to the floor so that he could sit up. He noticed he’d removed his shoes, even though Joy Springer’s couch looked as if it had been retrieved from a tip. So did his shoes; they had been wet and dried so often in the past fortnight that the leather was going stiff. How hard could it be to buy wellington fucking boots?

He looked at his watch. Eight thirty-five am.

Bollocks.

The empty bottles on the table told their own story and as a prequel to that he had a hazy recollection of Joy Springer cackling while he told her an anecdote. He had several that he rolled out again and again and again in company – each time starting with ‘Reminds me of…’ As if he’d ever forgotten.

There was the story of Jason Harman, the Butcher of Bermondsey, who’d sliced up his wife and his mother-in-law and boiled their remains to soup on a two-ring hob; of Nance Locke, who’d murdered her three children by tying their hands and forcing their heads into a bucket of water one after the other; or of Ang Nu, who’d run as if guilty and then, when cornered, jumped from a bridge – not into the expected river, but on to the unfortunate spikes of the railings below. ‘One in his arse, one in his heart and one right through the eye socket,’ Marvel always finished with ghoulish glee. ‘The eyeball was sat on top of the spike like a cocktail onion on a stick.’

Of course, the older Marvel got, the fewer people had ever seen a cocktail onion on a stick and the less punch the image packed. Still, he enjoyed saying it, even if the denouement was always accompanied by the guilty nudge of the untold aftermath. That Ang Nu had been beaten up twice because of his immigrant status, spoke no English, and had probably been wholly unaware that the four burly men chasing him this time were police.

That would have spoiled the story.

Which would have been a shame, because Joy Springer had seemed to enjoy that one. Old enough to remember cocktail onions, for sure. No doubt if he’d had a story about a fondue-related crime, she’d have liked that too.

Joy had a few stories of her own, Marvel remembered dimly now with a grimace. A few too many and all against the same backdrop of Springer Farm: buying the place as newly-weds, individual horses and all their little horsey quirks, the seemingly endless years of trekking and local shows and children falling off and grockles getting trampled and the stables burning down and the cottages being built in their place… mercifully Marvel had been able to tune much of it out entirely. Until she’d got tearful. Then he’d had to re-focus and at least look as if he’d been listening all along. Really, the things you had to do to get a companionable drink around here.

She’d shown him a photo of her husband. Marvel turned his head now and could still see it on the table, propped up as if it had been watching him all night. Creepy. Her husband had been called Roy. Or Ralph. Something with an R.

Debbie used to say, ‘People get the face they deserve.’ Another of her hippy-dippy Sting-clinging homilies that made him want to smack her with her Amazonian rainstick. Annoyingly, though, Marvel had come to the grudging conclusion that she was generally right on this one. He’d banged up enough pinch-lipped, low-browed, boss-eyed criminals in his time to become receptive to the idea. Now he thought that if Something with an R had got the face he deserved then he probably should have been banged up too.

Not according to Joy Springer, he recalled vaguely. Apparently Something with an R had been descended from angels and had returned there ‘to sleep’ with them once his tortured life was at an end. Marvel tried to remember what had tortured him so badly – ill health or no money or just being so bloody ugly and married to Joy Springer – but he wasn’t sure she had told him. He did remember being surprised that the resilient old bird had got emotional about anything other than the fact that the Cinzano was finished. She didn’t seem the type.

Ah well, it was all a bit of a haze now.

Marvel rubbed his eyes and face. Reynolds would muster the troops; it wouldn’t be the first time. He got to his unsteady feet and saw the white outside. Snow making everything seem black and white, deep enough that he could not see the gravel of the courtyard, even through the footprints and the tyre tracks that indicated that Reynolds had mustered the troops, and that they had already left.

His phone rang and he found it under another cat on the corner of the table.

‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ said Jos Reeves, and from his tone Marvel could tell that he was even happy about the bad news, which immediately got under his skin.

‘Don’t fuck about, Reeves.’

‘All right,’ said Reeves, and then proceeded to fuck about. ‘The good news is there’s a forensic link between the two scenes.’

Marvel stayed silent, determined not to give Reeves the satisfaction of asking about the bad news, but his heart jerked anyway, as it always did when science put the seal on a suspect.

‘The bad news,’ said Reeves, in a voice that betrayed suppressed laughter, ‘is that it’s one of your own men.’

From her bedroom window, Mrs Paddon watched Jonas clear the snow off her path. His father used to do the same thing.

Although Jonas also frequently offered to pick up bread or a newspaper for her, Mrs Paddon preferred to walk into the village, despite her eighty-nine years. She had an umbrella, after all – and a pair of stout waterproof boots.

She didn’t speak to Jonas much, but she loved him dearly. Always had – from the day Cath and Des had brought him home from the hospital, all red and screwed up. Although the walls between Rose and Honeysuckle were thick and stone, she’d sometimes been able to hear him bawling, and whenever she did, she’d hold her breath until it stopped and she was sure that Cath had gone to him. Sometimes she lay awake wondering what she would do if little Jonas’s crying had ever gone unchecked, and in her sillier meanderings had imagined having to rescue him and bring him back to her bed to snuggle like a little kitten.

She smiled faintly now at the memory – and at the anomalous thought of that tiny baby and the tall man below.

Every now and then Jonas would straighten up and stare across the coombe. She wondered why. Could he see something suspicious? She looked herself, but things were as they always were – the rolling moor and the other side of the village nestling at its foot, all coated in virginal white that made her eyes ache.

Terrible thing, these murders. She’d known Yvonne Marsh by sight, but Margaret Priddy and she had been friends – even though Mrs Paddon disagreed with hunting. Disagreed so strongly, in fact, that sometimes she’d pull on her waterproof boots, walk up to the common with a thermos of tea and a small wooden sign, and join the saboteurs. She’d made the sign herself: Foxes are people too. The young sabs with their woollen hats and their nose rings always made her welcome, and whenever Margaret rode past she’d wave hello with her sign and they’d chat for a bit. The first time it had happened, a sab had rushed over and called Margaret a ‘fucking bitch’ and Mrs Paddon had smacked him with her sign. Not too hard – but hard enough to make them all laugh. She hadn’t driven an ambulance through the war so people could behave like that.

Ah yes, sabbing was a good day out.

Poor Margaret.

She had heard all the details in Mr Jacoby’s shop. The pillow on the face. The body in the stream, the lack of fingerprints. Gloves, Mr Jacoby said knowingly, and she thought of the films of her youth, where the goodies wore brown-leather gloves for driving, while the baddies wore black ones for killing. Gloves made the whole thing more Hollywood. She supposed she should be frightened by two murders in a week, but couldn’t find fear inside herself. She’d been in the East End during the Blitz and had expected to die every day. Being murdered now seemed ridiculously unlikely. She felt safe in her home, and even safer because Jonas and Lucy lived next door.

She tapped on the window and waved her thanks at Jonas, then decided, despite the snow, to make the most of her clear path and go and fetch a few bits from Mr Jacoby’s. Maybe pop into the Red Lion for a sherry on the way home.

‘It’s all go,’ she told herself wryly, and went to get her brolly from the airing cupboard.

Every now and then Jonas would stop scraping at the slate and look across the tall hedge in the direction of Ronnie Trewell’s house. He couldn’t see it at all from the front gardens, but he still felt compelled to keep an eye on the moorland above it in case he saw anyone there. He thought again of Ronnie and Dougie with the dog. Whichever way he came at it, he couldn’t see either of them writing the notes. Clive Trewell was the more obvious suspect. But Jonas had a lingering memory of Clive Trewell once picking him off the pavement after a spectacularly ill-judged wheelie had left him flat on his back outside the Red Lion, with a BMX bike on his chest.

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 MARSH MOTOR REPAIRS 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.