Darkside

Eighteen Days

Annette Rogers had been interviewed at the scene and had already moved on to care full-time for an elderly man in Minehead, but Gary Liss and Lynne Twitchett both worked part-time in Shipcott at Sunset Lodge, a large detached stone house in its own grounds set back from the road and conveniently adjoining the graveyard behind the church. As they got out of the car, Marvel wondered at the horror of growing old and infirm within a geriatric stone’s throw of your final resting place.

The home’s owner, Rupert Cooke, was a chubby, happy-faced man with the habit of bending slightly forward and turning his head attentively when he listened, even though Marvel wasn’t seated in a wheelchair. He offered Marvel and Reynolds his office for privacy and Reynolds thanked him politely.

‘I’ll give Lynne and Gary a shout,’ he said.

‘Don’t,’ said Marvel. ‘We’ll find them. Have a look around at the same time.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ added Reynolds hurriedly.

‘Of course,’ said Cooke. ‘Be my guests.’

‘Not for a while, I hope,’ said Marvel drily. Too drily, apparently, as nobody laughed.

He and Reynolds wandered through the large airy rooms where a few residents sat and did jigsaws or knitted. An old man with an oxygen mask on and ears so big he looked like a spaniel peered fixedly at an enormous television with the sound down so low that it was all but inaudible. Seemed that past a certain age, one functioning sense at a time was all any resident could really expect to enjoy.

Reynolds peered into a large aquarium. ‘They’ve got a Japanese fighting fish in here. Beautiful.’

Marvel ignored him. Ridiculous hobby, fish-keeping. Making yourself a slave to guppies.

A middle-aged woman in a blue uniform bustled towards them and Marvel stopped and raised his eyebrows. ‘Lynne Twitchett?’

‘In the garden room, I think,’ smiled the woman, pointing in the direction they were already heading.

The majority of the residents were in the garden room and Marvel understood why the moment they entered. It was hot. Saharan hot – even in the middle of winter. With its long windows and glass roof, the garden room was no more or less than a greenhouse for cultivating old folk. And it seemed to be working. At least two dozen old women with identical hair sat around the perimeter of the room, sunning themselves like lizards in wing chairs, sucking up the heat as if they’d outlived the capacity to make their own. Several of them wore hand-knitted cardigans and crocheted knee-rugs just to be on the safe side. A large tin of cheap biscuits was being passed around the room and examined at each station as if it were the Holy Grail. Ahead of the tin was all craning white heads and expectant muttering, behind it was silence and crumbs.

Lynne Twitchett sat at the upright piano against the far wall of the room, playing a faltering version of ‘Jingle Bells’ while perched on a piano stool. At least, Marvel assumed that was what she was sitting on. From behind it looked as if Lynne Twitchett’s giant blue arse had simply sprouted four spindly wooden legs, so completely had her bulk consumed the rest of the furniture.

Reynolds leaned in to him and murmured, ‘Who ate all the Jaffa Cakes?’ – the first funny thing Marvel had ever heard come out of his mouth.

They talked to Lynne Twitchett for less than five minutes in the office. Her near-impenetrable Somerset accent made her sound like one of Marvel’s yokels, but even Reynolds felt it was less a misleading anomaly than the cherry on the top of her dubious intellect.

Marvel loved dumb people. If guilty, they either confessed or were so transparent in their lies that there was never any doubt about their culpability. Similarly, if they were innocent it shone through despite their nerves or their rambling or their accidental self-incriminatory statements. Dumb people were a breeze and Lynne Twitchett was right up there with the breeziest he’d encountered. Added to which, he had discounted her as a suspect the moment they saw her; the thought of Ms Twitchett tiptoeing unnoticed past Annette Rogers, or bounding gracefully on to the lean-to roof, was comical. Reynolds thanked her and released her back into the greenhouse, where she would no doubt grow even bigger on a mulch of the residents’ biscuits.

They found Gary Liss changing beds upstairs, where it was cooler and apparently empty of old folk.

Gary Liss was nothing like Marvel had imagined. He was a small and lithe thirty-five-year-old. He had dark hair, an olive complexion and narrow blue eyes. He looked like a circus acrobat who had been reassigned to bedpans and taken to them like a duck to water. He didn’t miss a beat while they talked, and his military bed-making was hypnotic to watch. Marvel and Reynolds followed him from room to room asking their questions, and Gary Liss stripped beds, bundled dirty sheets, shook out fresh ones and then wound mattresses in them as neat and as tight as if he was working in the gift-wrap department of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Marvel wondered how the hell the old folk managed to fight their way between the top and bottom sheets every night, and had a mental image of residents spending years shivering above the covers, too frail to gain entry to their own beds.

Despite the efficiency of recall that his phenomenal work-rate promised, Gary Liss was almost as useless as Lynne Twitchett when it came to the details leading up to Margaret Priddy’s death. He had been on the early shift before she was killed – seven in the morning until three in the afternoon – and had gone to the pictures that night.

‘Alone?’ said Marvel.

‘No,’ said Liss, then volunteered, ‘with my girlfriend.’

‘What did you see?’

‘Some old French crap at the art-house place.’

‘Not a film buff?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Not all that foreign bollocks.’

‘Can you remember the title?’ persisted Marvel – it was a fact that could be checked.

‘Mister Somebody’s Vacation, I think.’

‘National Lampoon?’ suggested Marvel.

‘Nah, something French.’

‘Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday?’

Trust Reynolds.

‘Yeah,’ said Liss. ‘Total junk.’

‘I agree,’ said Marvel, although he hadn’t seen it. It was just to piss Reynolds off. ‘Give me Will Smith any day.’

‘Exactly,’ said Liss, turning a sheet over a blanket and tucking it in ruthlessly. ‘I, Robot.’

‘How about Dune?’

‘Yeah. You a fan?’

‘No. You left a book at Margaret Priddy’s.’

Liss looked blank for a second, then smiled. ‘That’s where it is!’

‘How did you get into this line of work?’ Marvel asked Liss as they moved to the next room. The man was starting to interest him.

Liss shrugged. ‘I cared for my father while he died. Lost my job because of it, so when I started looking again, it was just something I knew I could do.’

‘What did you do before that?’

‘Nothing special. Factory work. Glad to lose it, the way things worked out.’

‘What did your father die of?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Lung cancer,’ said Liss without emotion. ‘And I didn’t help him along, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He winked at Reynolds, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

‘So how did you get on with Mrs Priddy?’ Marvel asked.

Liss looked a little confused by the sudden switch, but that was good – to catch them off balance…

‘Wasn’t much to get along with.’ He shrugged. ‘She couldn’t say anything or even let you know how she was feeling.’ He stopped bustling and stood still for the first time since they’d started talking to him. ‘It was fucking awful, ’scuse my French. I mean, the people in here, they’re old and lots are sick, but at least they can let you know what they want, but her…’ He picked a bundle of used sheets off the floor. ‘It was like she was already dead. If she hadn’t died I’d have left soon. Depressing.’

They followed him to the next bedroom.

‘You think maybe it was a mercy killing then?’ said Marvel carefully, but Liss was not fazed by the question.

‘Could be,’ he said and flapped open a new sheet.

‘You could understand something like that?’ Marvel asked.

Liss didn’t hesitate. ‘If she was my mother I’d have done it myself.’

Reynolds and Marvel didn’t speak for a long time as they drove back to the farm.

Reynolds broke the silence.

‘You think that was a confession? A kind of double bluff?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Marvel. It was not something he often admitted to, but on this occasion he felt it was OK to be a bit confused.

‘He had a door key, he hated the job, he obviously has no compunction about euthanasia…’

‘But to say it right out loud like that – to us!’

‘I know,’ said Reynolds. ‘He’d have to be a psychopath.’

Marvel shrugged. ‘Yes, he would.’

Less than an hour after Reynolds and Marvel got back to Springer Farm, Grey and Singh returned from interviewing Skew Ronnie Trewell and everyone crammed into Marvel’s room to hear how they’d got on.

‘It’s not him,’ said Grey.

‘Yeah, boss, I don’t think he’s our man,’ said Singh more tactfully.

Marvel was unwilling to let the only tentative lead they’d got from their sweep of the village go so easily.

‘He got an alibi?’

The two detectives exchanged looks.

‘Well, he says he was asleep,’ said Grey.

‘At home all night,’ added Singh.

‘Compelling,’ said Marvel sarcastically.

‘He just doesn’t seem the type, sir,’ said Grey. Then, when he saw Marvel’s face tighten angrily, he added, ‘I didn’t get a vibe off him. Nor did Armand,’ he said, turning to Singh, ‘did you?’

‘No,’ said Singh. ‘I didn’t get any vibe at all. The guy’s a car thief through and through. Obsessed. Couldn’t stop talking about them even while we were asking him about a murder!’

‘Yeah,’ added Grey. ‘His only interest in Mrs Priddy seemed to be that she used to own some sporty BMW.’

‘A three-litre CSi,’ remembered Singh.

‘Good car,’ said Grey approvingly and Pollard nodded in agreement.

Marvel glared at them all. He thought about Margaret Priddy dropping down through the cracks of society from horsewoman and BMW-owner to being bedridden while her savings ran out of her bank account like water from a punctured paddling pool. He thought about Peter Priddy and how he must have felt about that. He thought about Skew Ronnie Trewell and wondered if he should leave it at that or go and intimidate the little thief himself. It irked him that Jonas Holly had dismissed the man as a suspect; part of him wanted Ronnie Trewell to be the killer, for that reason alone. But Grey and Singh were good men. He trusted their judgement. Usually. While these thoughts whizzed through his mind, his eyes never left the two DCs, who became more and more uncomfortable.

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.