Darkside

Three Days

Lucy Holly hated John Marvel, and it felt good.

She was so used to hating her hands, hating her legs, hating her memory, hating her disease, that to hate something external and tangible that might actually be able to give a shit about her hatred was invigorating in a dour, angry way.

Jonas had told her that Marvel obviously thought he had been protecting Danny Marsh in some way; that Danny was the killer, and that that made Jonas somehow complicit in the murders. And he’d told her of Marvel’s repetition of the words that had been contained in the first note.

Call yourself a policeman?

That bastard.

The thought of Jonas or Danny being involved was laughable. Or would be if it were not potentially so serious. She thought Jonas was a little paranoid – that the idea of Marvel being involved in the crimes was also too far-fetched to be credible – but she hated Marvel anyway for taunting Jonas when he was obviously in shock, even if his words had been a lucky guess.

Danny Marsh was dead. Lucy could hardly believe it herself. Danny, who worked shifts with his dad and Ronnie Trewell at the little tin garage A & D MARSH MOTOR REPAIRS. Danny, who was so nice that she could never understand why he hadn’t been snapped up by some local girl.

Jonas had not elaborated on his childhood friendship with Danny, but she thought it must have been deeper than he’d ever said, given how distraught he had been over his death.

Once he had let go and started to cry, it had been difficult for him to stop.

I’m sorry, he’d kept saying, I’m sorry – as if he had done something terrible, instead of finally given in to understandable grief.

Here over the remains of breakfast – eggshells and crusts – Lucy felt her eyes heat up at the memory of her big, capable husband reduced to a weeping, foetal ball in her arms.

That bastard!

Jonas had left already – ever the professional, even when other professionals were acting like pricks around him. He hadn’t had a day off since this all started. On an uncommon whim she called him.

I love you, she wanted to say. Just for the hell of it.

But the phone just rang and rang.

Marvel would have to pass the cottage to get to the village from Springer Farm.

Before she had really thought about it, Lucy had seized her sticks, stamped her feet into her wellies and was out of the front door.

Jonas drove through Shipcott without stopping. He passed the mobile police unit and Danny Marsh’s house without looking at either.

His head was so profoundly numb that his thoughts were only wisps and fragments, like a blizzard on his tongue. Nothing was sticking – except for the weird feeling that with the snow, the white sky and this blankness of mind, he was moving slowly through the tunnel of light that leads to death.

At the brow of the steep slope leading down into Withypool, Jonas stamped on the brakes and the Land Rover slid to a halt. He got out and locked the door.

He put one foot in front of the other, watching the snow give way under him, hearing the soft, squeaky crunch, and the sound of his own breathing as he climbed the narrow track away from the houses towards the top of Withypool Hill.

Everything disappeared in the mist behind him. The car, the knee-high blackthorn halfway up the hill, the village itself. He could not even make out the matching lump of the high common across the way, it was all so white-on-white.

At the summit, the silence was a cotton-wool-covered heartbeat. Jonas felt nothing as he listened to it fill the void.

He called Peter Priddy on a fractured line.

‘Did you do it?’ he asked softly.

‘…alling?’

‘Did you kill them, Pete? Just tell me, please.’

Priddy was the only one who made any real sense now – and Jonas had vouched for him; diverted Marvel from him. Priddy had asked him for a favour and he had granted it out of a misplaced sense of loyalty.

Call yourself a policeman?

‘I understand if it was. I really do, Pete. But I have to know. Because it’s my job. That’s all.’ Jonas was in a dream, so there was no harm asking.

‘Sorr… c… hear… ou…’ lied Priddy through the static.

Jonas calmly threw his phone off Withypool Hill. It spun lazily through the air like a disobedient boomerang, and landed out of sight and without a sound somewhere in the mist that was rising around him like a sea of bleach. Jonas watched the dead black heather dissolve into white in front of his eyes. No wonder he couldn’t see the common.

He turned to go.

And was lost.

Just like that.

He had been here a hundred times, but he had no idea how to get back to the car. The blackthorn and the common were the only landmarks, and both were hidden by a conjurer’s cloth of white damp.

He stood and watched the mist swirl around his legs. His own feet were dimmed by it. Soon it would cover him like a tide and he would be gone.

The thought was calming.

He would be gone. He wouldn’t have to do his job any more – this job he was failing at so spectacularly.

Jonas closed his eyes.

Now that the adrenaline of the walk up here had worn off, he was bitterly cold. He had left his gloves in the car, along with the scratchy blanket.

No matter.

Jonas sat down.

It was cold and wet but the relief numbed him. The relief of calm acceptance.

He crossed his legs like a schoolboy and put his hands on his knees.

This was the end and it wasn’t so bad.

It was the easiest thing he’d ever done.

He wondered whether he would fall over, or remain sitting for hikers to find here like an icy Buddha.

Jonas smiled.

The mist stroked his cheek like a dead lover.

His phone rang.

Somewhere in the white nothingness, it rang its sensible old-fashioned telephone ring – like the phone they’d had when he was a child.

It rang and rang. Maybe it was Lucy. Maybe she needed him. Jonas got up to follow the sound.

He found his phone just as it stopped ringing. He picked it out of a depression in the snow, which his brain only slowly registered as his own footprint.

He followed his prints back to the car, then called Lucy, but there was no answer.

Jonas drove back towards Shipcott and the dream faded to white behind him.

As it did, he forgot all about the ice Buddha and all about Peter Priddy.

Marvel was late again. The cars were gone again. Déjà vu again.

He walked from Joy’s kitchen across the yard to his stable. His cottage. His cottage that used to be a stable.

He took a piss and did his teeth but didn’t bother changing his clothes.

They had left him the Honda this time, which was the best of the cars they’d brought with them.

Marvel was still bleary-eyed as he swung the car out of the farm driveway and on to the snowy road. Once again the slush had frozen overnight and the Honda immediately slid sideways a little. He corrected it easily and stayed in second down the hill.

Halfway down he saw someone stepping into the road ahead. Awkwardly. Someone was coming down the stone steps from the cottages into the lane. He started to brake and the car slowed gently.

He could see now that it was a woman on crutches. Not the old-fashioned under-the-armers, but those steel ones with a grip that went around the forearm. The woman was young, but her legs were crippled – he could see that much. And she didn’t appear to be wearing a coat, just a thick jumper over a floral skirt. And wellington boots. Everyone had those bastards but him!

Marvel expected the woman to turn and walk down the hill, close to the hedge. He thought he’d stop and give her a lift. It was against the rules, but fuck the rules. A woman on crutches in snow. You’d have to be a freak not to stop for her.

But instead of turning, the woman hobbled slowly into the middle of the narrow lane, then turned so that she was facing him, and just stood there!

Marvel braked more firmly.

Too firmly.

Wheels locked and the Honda slid sideways. He applied opposite lock and he thought he’d caught it, then the car gripped briefly and fishtailed away from him again. It slewed once more and – all in slow motion – started to slide down the lane broadside on. Marvel turned the wheel and braked, to no avail.

He looked out of his side window at the woman standing in the road, leaning on her crutches, watching his unusual approach. Part of him was embarrassed, but an increasingly larger part of him was starting to realize that she didn’t understand that he had no control of the car.

She just stood there! As if she was somehow expecting him to go around her!

Thirty yards from the woman, the Honda brushed the hedge and wavered, then kept on going at an only slightly different angle.

And still she stood there.

Marvel yelled, ‘Out of the way!’ through the closed window, then jammed the heel of his hand on to the horn.

She didn’t move. The lane was narrow; the car was wide; there was no way he wasn’t going to hit her unless she moved. For a surreal moment, Marvel looked into her eyes and realized how beautiful she was. And how calm.

Marvel’s entire future flashed before him: the ghastly bump of the car going over the woman, the horror of the eviscerated corpse, the flashing blue lights – and the red one on the breathalyser, the humiliation of the cell in his own nick, the smug look on Reynolds’s forever unpunched face, the collar of his good shirt tight around his neck as the jury foreman stood to condemn him, the slow-drip terror of a cop in prison, the halfway house, the bedsit, the menial office job he’d be lucky to get, the gel-haired teenaged boss who said things like ‘Whatever’ and ‘Facebook’…

The nightmare that his life would become in a single split second.

Then the rear end hit the opposite bank, the Honda bounced off at a new angle, and – miraculously – slid past the woman in the narrowest of gaps between her and the hedge. The wing mirror actually clipped one of her sticks, and he had time to see her lurch, but not fall, as he passed her.

Another teeth-jarring bump sent the car into a shallow ditch, where it came to a halt sudden enough to throw his forehead against the steering wheel.

Marvel was dazed for a moment and stared stupidly at the unexpected close-up of the slightly retro Honda logo in the centre of the wheel. He thought of Debbie and her lava lamps and that fucking couch. Of putting his shoes on it even though it drove her nuts. Sometimes because it drove her nuts. What kind of prick was he?

Seriously.

What kind of prick?

He jerked in shock at a loud bang on the window beside his right ear, and squinted up at the woman he’d just narrowly avoided squashing to a pulp. He wanted to throw his arms around her and kiss her for not being dead; to cry with gratitude and become a monk and dedicate his life to others as penance for every wrong he’d ever done to anyone.

But she didn’t look grateful. She looked so angry that he was almost afraid to roll down the window, which was plainly stupid, so he did.

‘Are you Marvel?’ she said grittily. And when he nodded she said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Why are you picking on Jonas?’

What a silly thing to say to a grown-up! Marvel would have laughed, except for the fact that the woman he realized must be Jonas Holly’s wife had lost none of her anger between the lane and the cosy little room where they stood now.

He had followed her in, impressed by her dexterity and strength despite the crutches. Up the three stone steps, through the wooden gate, across the uneven slate path and through the front door. She did it all with such determined energy that he dared not even offer his assistance.

She leaned her sticks against the fireplace, where a new fire was made but not lit, and lowered herself on to the couch, from where she eyed him coldly, still apparently expecting an answer.

‘I’m not,’ he said, trying – but failing – not to feel like a naughty schoolboy.

She said nothing, just sat there and looked up at him. Somehow the fact that she was sitting now, while he was still standing, put him at a disadvantage. His feeling of bonhomie at not having flattened her while in the throes of a morning-after hangover had dissipated surprisingly fast, and wanting to be a better person seemed as silly now as a childhood dream to ride dolphins for a living.

He had options now.

He could walk out. He could just turn around and walk away. He used to walk out on Debbie all the time. Whenever she wanted to talk or fight he would leave the room. Sometimes she would come after him, whining or yelling. Once she had thrown a cushion at him. A retro cushion. But what could Jonas Holly’s much prettier wife do? Down him with a crutch?

But he didn’t walk out. ‘I’m trying to catch a killer. That’s my priority. Not keeping the locals happy.’

‘I think there’s a difference between keeping somebody happy and implying that they are complicit in murder, don’t you?’

So Jonas had told her everything. Complained to her, more like.

Well, fuck them both.

He almost said that to her – Fuck you both! – then he remembered the crutches. And the way she’d come out into the road, no doubt to flag him down, to stop him – if he hadn’t already been on a collision course with a hedge and a ditch and a steering wheel. Marvel touched his forehead and felt a little bump there, but no blood.

So he didn’t want to blow her off; because of the crutches. It wasn’t politically correct. Two years back he’d fumed silently through a compulsory course on political correctness, but something must have stuck, because instead of walking out, Marvel pointed to the easy chair that didn’t match the couch.

‘Can I sit down?’

She hesitated, then nodded briefly.

He sat. By the time he had completed the manoeuvre, he had decided to lay it on the line for her. If her husband had been shielding a killer she was going to find out sooner or later. Her crutches couldn’t protect her from that. And maybe Jonas had told Lucy things he hadn’t told him. If he appeared to be open with her, then maybe she’d be open back and he could glean new information to fatten up his case. God knows, it needed it.

‘What’s your name?’ he started – then watched her struggle briefly not to tell him. He knew she thought it took away some of her strength, and she was right. That was why he’d asked.

‘Lucy,’ she finally said, because giving a civil answer to a civil question was in her nature.

So Marvel told Lucy all the reasons why he liked Jonas Holly. Contamination of scenes, disappearance of vomit, concealment of crucial evidence.

Lucy stared at him unforgivingly as he spoke – Marvel reckoned she probably wore the pants in the Holly household.

‘You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,’ she interrupted, although he could see by her face that that was a lie. ‘I’m hearing a lot of coincidence and circumstantial evidence and no proof at all. You don’t even have proof that Danny was involved, let alone Jonas!’

Marvel wasn’t used to anyone telling him that he was taking a flyer. When he was Senior Investigating Officer on a case he was used to people doing as he told them without questioning his choices. Reynolds tried sometimes, but Reynolds wasn’t really a policeman; he had no feel for the job.

‘Danny Marsh left a written confession,’ he said. ‘You don’t get more involved than that.’

‘Bullshit!’ she said with spirit. ‘Jonas told me what it said. I did it. I’m not sorry? That’s not a confession to murder. He could have run over a neighbour’s cat for all you know!’

Although she was giving him a hard time, Marvel couldn’t help liking Lucy Holly. Her staunch defence and willingness to engage in battle appealed to him. Sitting on the couch with her eyes sparking – and without her crooked legs on such obvious display – Lucy Holly was quite captivating.

‘Jonas says you don’t even have any fingerprints!’

Marvel shrugged. ‘People are wise to prints nowadays. They all wear surgical gloves. The only ones who don’t are drunks and fools. We found a box of surgical gloves in the Marshes’ garage.’

‘And I’m sure you’d also find several boxes at Mark Dennis’s surgery. And the vet’s in Dulverton,’ she came back at him. ‘Either way, you don’t have prints,’ she continued briskly. ‘What about the button?’

Damn. She knew about the button. The weak link in his weak chain of evidence against Jonas Holly.

‘What button?’ he said.

‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ Lucy told him with a hard stare that made Marvel feel like a toddler who’s just hit a playmate with a toy train.

‘It’s one of 500,000 produced every year.’

‘For the uniform trade, Jonas said. Doesn’t that mean people like security guards and bouncers might be suspects? Not people like Danny who wear overalls for a living.’

‘Your husband should not be discussing the details of this case. Even with you. There are certain things which we like to hold back—’

‘So only the police and the killer know about it,’ Lucy finished for him impatiently. ‘Everybody knows that from half an hour in front of the telly! But it bothers me that you don’t seem to be taking the button seriously. Doesn’t it bother you?’

She looked at him expectantly and again he wished he could just tell her to fuck off and walk out. Everything became easier when that was an option.

‘We have no idea if the button is even connected to the murder of Mrs Priddy,’ he said stiffly.

‘That’s not the point,’ she shot back. ‘The point is, why would Jonas be revealing evidence or possible evidence if he’s been trying to hide the truth? Is he finding evidence or is he hiding it, Mr Marvel? You can’t have it both ways. It makes no sense.’

It made no sense to Marvel either, but he’d be damned if he was going to concede that point to Lucy Holly.

‘Mrs Holly—’ he started officiously, but she cut him off.

‘Come on, Mr Marvel. Everyone knows there’s a million bits of forensic evidence that you can use to convict somebody.’

‘True,’ said Marvel. ‘And if that vomit hadn’t disappeared, we might have it.’

‘Or you might have a pile of vomit without a DNA match,’ countered Lucy defiantly. ‘And you have no proof that Danny threw it up or Jonas cleared it away. The point is, you don’t have it at all. Jonas said it was there overnight, which is pretty lax, if you ask me!’

Marvel knew it was too, of course, so he changed tack, hoping to wrong-foot Lucy.

‘Did you know that twenty years ago there was a fire up at Springer Farm?’

‘No.’

‘Well, there was. The owner, Robert Springer, was killed.’

‘So? What does this have to do with you bullying Jonas?’

He ignored her and ploughed on: ‘Mr Springer’s body was found in the only stable that had the door shut. The other doors had been opened – presumably to let the horses out, although they didn’t go.’

He let the fact hang there, hoping for some indication that she knew about it, or had something to hide. She just looked at him neutrally.

‘The coroner ruled misadventure, but I’m not sure that’s the whole story.’

Lucy waited again for him to go on. He collected his thoughts before he continued. He’d only heard of these events hours earlier, and wasn’t sure how they affected his case, so he was even less sure of what – if anything – to tell Lucy Holly.

‘When I told Joy Springer about Danny Marsh’s death last night, she was happy.’

He could read the surprise in Lucy’s eyes, along with the questions she didn’t ask. He answered them anyway.

‘Seems she always suspected Danny of starting the fire.’

‘Why?’

‘Apparently local kids would work up there in exchange for rides, but her husband was always getting at Danny for not pulling his weight, forgetting to put water in the stables, stuff like that. I don’t know what; I don’t know shit about horses. She says he resented it. When the fire happened, the police interviewed all the kids who rode there, but they never came up with any evidence that any of them played any part in the fire.’

‘Maybe she did it,’ interrupted Lucy. ‘Aren’t spouses always the first suspects? Maybe she was pointing the finger at Danny to distract from the fact that she killed him.’

‘I’m just telling you what she told me,’ said Marvel impatiently.

‘Maybe she wore surgical gloves,’ Lucy murmured with a wry raise of her eyebrows.

Marvel ignored the dig. ‘You know Jonas and Danny Marsh were childhood friends?’

‘That doesn’t mean he’d cover up for him if he knew Danny had done something wrong,’ said Lucy quickly. ‘Jonas would never do that.’

Marvel smiled without humour. ‘You know, every wife of every criminal I’ve ever caught has said exactly the same thing – he’d never do that.’

‘Well, it’s true,’ she said defiantly.

‘You knew him as a boy?’ he inquired sarcastically.

‘I know him now,’ she snapped back.

‘You and your husband are well matched.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You both think you know people. Know what they’re capable of.’

‘I suppose you think you know people.’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Marvel. ‘And what I know is that people are capable of anything.’

Lucy looked at him with a small smile. ‘I think you know the wrong kind of people, Mr Marvel.’

He shrugged and let her score that point. Proving her wrong would take time he didn’t want to waste. He changed direction again. Maybe he could get something out of Lucy Holly without her even knowing it.

‘Your husband tell you what happened the other night? When we hit the horse?’

‘Yes.’

‘He wouldn’t touch it.’

‘Jonas doesn’t like horses.’ She shrugged.

‘Not now,’ agreed Marvel.

He reached into his inside coat pocket and handed her the photo.

‘What’s this?’ she said, but he thought he’d let her work it out for herself.

She did, but it took her a lot longer than it had taken him. He saw the exact moment she recognized her future husband – the tiny intake of breath and the way she dropped her head to get closer to the photo.

‘Jonas,’ she said.

‘And Danny Marsh.’

She didn’t say anything, her head bowed.

‘Seemed to like horses plenty then, didn’t he?’

Nothing.

‘You know what changed?’

She shook her head, unable to tear her eyes away from the photo.

‘I’m thinking it might go back to the night the stables burned down. Someone they knew died. All the horses died. Must have been traumatic for a kid.’

Lucy nodded silently.

‘Maybe he even felt guilty,’ he suggested carefully. ‘Maybe Danny burned the stables down and Jonas knew about it.’

‘Maybe,’ she said, to his surprise. Seeing the photo seemed to have knocked all the spirit out of Lucy Holly, all the defence and all the defiance.

‘What did he say about it?’ It was worth a shot – tricking her into blurting out something by behaving as if his theory was already established fact.

‘He never told me. I don’t know. I never knew this.’

Her voice was dull. Dead. Marvel was a little concerned, despite himself, at the radical change in Lucy Holly. Her feisty spirit had seemed real, but he saw now that it had been a mere soap-bubble which, once popped, had disappeared so completely that he could not even see where it used to be.

He stood up, feeling oddly guilty that he had done something to her that might be irreparable.

‘I’ve never seen a picture of him as a boy,’ she said, still not looking at him.

‘Why is that?’ Marvel was surprised. Even in his fucked-up relationships he could remember the mother-bearing-photo-album routine as an early step in the courtship dance.

‘I don’t know. Can I keep it?’

‘I’m afraid I need it.’

But she held on to it in hands that shook just a little.

Marvel stood undecided for a long moment. Lucy Holly stared at the photo in her wasted lap, as if he’d already left.

Jonas looked so happy!

That was Lucy’s overwhelming first impression. She had almost not recognized him because of it. His brow, his nose, his lips – all were younger but definite versions of the Jonas she had fallen in love with. But his eyes… his eyes were completely different. Across the years, ten-year-old Jonas Holly grinned at her – without shyness, without caution.

Without fear.

It was all she could think of.

Nothing bad has happened to him yet.

She had never thought of Jonas as fearful until she’d seen this picture. She might have, if she’d seen others, but there were none to see that she could find. No reminders for her of how he had been as a child.

The photo was a tunnel in time. Danny was taller and bigger than the friend who would eventually tower over him and they held two proud little ponies – no doubt long dead. Lucy could see that this was a snapshot of the boys’ whole lives at that moment, plucked from the past and shown to her now: they were at a summer show; they had won; they were happy. That was all that shone from their faces.

Her heart wrenched to see them, so young and so vital together, when now Danny was cold on a slab and Jonas’s eyes were sunken with lack of sleep, and his body made too thin by work and fear and the burden of her; it seemed a fate too cruel to befall the two joyous children she held in her trembling hands.

‘How could you do this?’ she said.

‘Hmm?’ Marvel bent at the waist to hear her better.

‘How could you do this to him?’

‘I haven’t done anything to him.’

‘Look at him,’ she said, her voice starting to strengthen once more.

Lucy turned the photo to Marvel and he looked past it to where her eyes had gone dark with anger. Real anger this time – not feistiness.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

‘Look at him!’ she said again. ‘Look how happy he is! And look what you’ve done to him now! He’s a good man trying to do his job and you’re just trying to make him look bad because you can’t catch the killer!’

Lucy got to her unsteady feet as her voice gathered pace. ‘Putting him on a doorstep, humiliating him in front of the whole village, implying that he’d cover up for someone who had killed six people! It’s just sick! You’re sick.’

Sick.

Marvel snatched the photo from her hand, giving her a fright.

‘Fuck you!’ she hissed at him.

‘Fuck you!’ he spat back, making her flinch. ‘If your husband’s miserable it’s your fault, not mine! Someone in this shit-hole village has been taking out old people like seal pups, and your yokel husband is hiding something from me. So the last thing I need is some angry cripple telling me how to do my fucking job.’

He walked out and slammed the front door behind him as hard as he could.

Lucy swayed in his wake, breathless with shock, holding the arm of the couch for support – and viewed herself in Marvel’s words as if in the brightest mirror. She had seen herself reflected in Jonas’s loving eyes for so long that she had forgotten what she really was.

Some angry cripple.

Reynolds sat in the chilly mobile unit and compared Danny Marsh’s suicide note with the one Jonas Holly had found pinned to his garden gate.

There was not the slightest resemblance between the two hands. In the suicide note it was rounded and sprawling; in the other it was tight and spiky.

Reynolds was no expert, but they couldn’t get the notes to the expert, Bob Hamilton, until the snow cleared a little. They had emailed a scan so that he could start work but he’d need the originals to make a proper comparison. In the interim, they were all having a good look – although Reynolds didn’t need more than a glance to tell him that a match between the two notes was highly unlikely.

He looked up at Marvel with a shrug and a bottom lip that expressed that opinion.

‘It’s possible the writing in the gate note was disguised,’ said Marvel in a tone that invited no dissent. ‘Hamilton may well be able to make a match.’

‘He’d have to be a magician or an idiot,’ dissented Reynolds.

Grey sniggered and Marvel’s fist itched. Reynolds was always such a fucking clever clogs. Marvel knew the writing on the notes was never going to be a match. Hell, Stevie Wonder could see that. But as he saw it, it was Reynolds’s job to support his decisions and to pretend to be surprised and disappointed when the expert failed to make a connection – especially in front of other people. Of course, he’d long ceased to expect such support from his DS, but just once would be nice.

Especially in this case.

There was still a chance, of course, that the notes written to Jonas Holly had not come from the killer – although that seemed unlikely. But if the note left on Holly’s gate was written by the killer, and Danny Marsh hadn’t written it, then two plus two made four and Danny Marsh could not be the killer.

And that made Marvel feel that he might be going quietly crazy.

By this stage in an investigation, Marvel was used to feeling as though he were in complete control. But here he was so far from control that he couldn’t quite remember what control felt like.

It was the village; he was sure.

In Shipcott he felt cut off and lost. He was in this glorified horsebox, or he was staring at static in a stable. People told him everything and nothing. Everyone knew everyone else – except that nobody knew the killer. Evidence was there one day and gone the next. Suspects fell into his lap and then slipped through his fingers. Mobile connections were made and lost in the twinkling of an eye – and the cold, the rain, the snow were active and malicious participants in the slippery deception.

It was like investigating a murder in Brigadoon.

Every morning he got up and drove down the hill into the village and was somehow surprised to find it still there. Every day was another dose of secrecy and fuzzy disconnection, and it was only his now nightly sessions with Joy Springer that seemed to anchor him in time or space.

He snatched the two notes from Reynolds, and when Pollard held out his hand for them, he ignored him and banged them back into the battered filing cabinet euphemistically marked ‘Evidence’.

Jonas got home and found that Lucy had changed into another person who wore Lucy’s smile and Lucy’s eyes like a poor facsimile of the real thing.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her in bed.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I love you.’

He wanted to tell her not to change the subject, but couldn’t find it in his heart – not even in that very small and stony corner where he kept all that was not kind, responsible and selfless.

‘I love you too,’ he agreed sadly.

Jonas thought he was strong, but the killer knew her was as weak as a kitten.

You can’t fall apart now.

But Jonas was falling apart.

He left the house every morning and some nights to satisfy his own fragile ego in the name of protection – all the while leaving the most important person in the world alone and in peril. He seemed to have no idea about how to do his job. No idea who it was that he should really be protecting…

The killer got shivers at the thought.

Those shivers kept him focused – his eyes on the prize.

The killer liked Lucy Holly.

Loved her, in his own way.

But it didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill her given half a chance.