Darkside

by Belinda Bauer

  Jonas said nothing, feeling guilty – and angry at himself for feeling that way.

  ‘You fucking touched it, didn’t you?’

  ‘I tried CPR.’

  If there was a Scorn Olympics, Marvel could have sighed for England.

  ‘Well, don’t touch it again, for Christ’s sake! Stand by and wait for me!’

  Jonas was wet, cold, traumatized and tired of being spoken to like a car-park attendant. ‘Listen, sir. I’m up to my arse in ice, trying to stop the body floating downstream, so either get down here fast and help me out, or I’m going to let it go and your crime scene’ll stretch all the way from here to bloody Tiverton!’

  Jonas snapped his phone shut and hoped Marvel wouldn’t be churlish enough to take his time.

  He wasn’t.

  In less than five minutes, Marvel was watching Pollard and Reynolds help a shaky Jonas Holly out of the water.

  He sent Grey and Singh down the icy bank to retrieve the body. There was little point in leaving it in situ now that Holly had already altered the scene by dragging it from the water.

  The ambulance tipped off the village that something was happening down at the playing fields, and within ten minutes of its arrival the entire populace, made jumpy by one murder, was standing on the playing field, craning to see from behind the blue-and-white tape that Rice had rolled out from the lamp-post outside Margaret Priddy’s across to the far goalpost, making a single cordon which now encompassed two crime scenes.

  Maybe.

  Marvel was unsure for about sixty seconds, and then he nodded as Dr Mark Dennis pointed to the livid finger-shaped bruises under Yvonne Marsh’s wet hair.

  ‘Not the throat, see?’ Marvel told Reynolds. ‘He held her like this …’ He clawed his hands and hovered them over the back of the dead woman’s neck. ‘I think he held her face-down in the water and drowned her.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Mark Dennis.

  ‘Pathologist will tell us for sure,’ nodded Reynolds.

  ‘I’m telling you for sure,’ snapped Marvel. ‘He’ll just confirm it.’

  Reynolds pursed his lips and tried hard, but finally couldn’t help himself. ‘Do we still like Peter Priddy, sir?’

  ‘Fuck off, Reynolds.’

  Reynolds withdrew a few paces from the scene and took out his notebook.

  ‘That’s F-U-C-K,’ Marvel said and Reynolds put his notebook away again without writing in it.

  ‘Pollard’s in charge of the press,’ Marvel told him.

  ‘There is no press,’ said Reynolds – and to all intents and purposes that was true. Marvel was all for the new breed of lazy, desk-bound journalists who Googled instead of bothering him for proper answers. Margaret Priddy’s murder had elicited a few calls from the local rag, the Bugle, but the Western Morning News had been content to pick up a few paragraphs from that.

  ‘There will be,’ said Marvel in a doom-laden voice. He knew that one old woman being murdered was a shame, but two in the same tiny village in just over a week had the thrilling ring of serial violence about it, and it was only a matter of time before reporters started to arrive with their pushy ways and their cock-eyed views. He wanted Dave Pollard in charge of the press because he was the dullest and least forthcoming of the team. He had no fear that Pollard would suddenly get all star-struck and blab too much at a press conference just because the reporter who’d asked the question was wearing a push-up bra.

  Two paramedics, finding their intended patient was past help, had instead turned their attentions to Jonas and stripped his trousers, socks and boots from him with professional disregard for his dignity. They had wrapped him in a foil blanket, followed by a scratchy grey one very like the blanket he himself had draped around the shoulders of Yvonne Marsh just a couple of days ago. At that thought, Jonas stopped trying to fight the chattering of his teeth and let them drown out all sound, like snare drums between his ears.

  He’d known as soon as he saw the body in the water that it was Yvonne Marsh. He could have saved her. Could have followed her into the house that day and talked with Danny and his father about their options, the help available, safety locks. He could have given them the number of Social Services for respite care, or quietly asked Rupert Cooke up at Sunset Lodge whether he had room for another resident.

  Could have, would have, should have. Now that Yvonne Marsh was dead, Jonas could think of a million ways of keeping her alive.

  Because once Marvel pointed out the bruises to Reynolds, Jonas knew that the man who had killed Margaret Priddy had also killed Yvonne Marsh. Knew it in his gut.

  More easily, too, he imagined. Jonas would bet good money that the killer had not had to break into the Marsh home to find his second victim. No doubt Yvonne had just wandered out into the confused night of her mind to go to the shops, or to pick little Danny up from school, or to find her sandals in the lake.

  Instead she had found her killer, or he had found her.

  And Jonas had failed again.

  ‘’Vonne!’ He heard a jolting, whimpering sound and looked up to see Alan Marsh running awkwardly across the playing field in the oily blue overalls and steel toecaps he wore to work. The man’s usually dour face was twisted open by emotion. Twenty yards behind him was his son, barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, careless of the cold – and the Reverend Chard, too tubby to travel at more than a brisk walk.

  Grey tried to stop Alan Marsh from just rushing the scene, but the older man ran past him as if he wasn’t there, and fell to his knees beside his dead wife.

  Jonas expected tears and wailing, but Alan Marsh calmed right down when he saw his worst fears confirmed. He didn’t even touch the body – just knelt and looked at it and shook his head. Danny allowed himself to be slowed by Grey, and then stood with his hand on his father’s shoulder.

  Jonas wished he had his trousers on, but this wasn’t about him. Holding the blanket around his hips like a sarong, he went over to the tableau of sorrow and stood in Danny’s eye-line.

  ‘I’m sorry, Danny. Mr Marsh.’

  Danny looked at Jonas, dazed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We’re not sure yet. I found her in the stream.’

  ‘She drowned?’

  Jonas ignored Marvel’s unnecessary warning look. ‘We don’t know yet. I tried CPR but I think she’d been in the water a while. Hours, maybe.’

  Danny nodded and bit his lip until he could speak again. ‘We didn’t even know she were gone. Not until we heard the ambulance.’

  Jonas nodded.

  ‘You can’t watch her all the time,’ said Danny dully.

  ‘I know,’ said Jonas. ‘I know.’

  He saw the tears gather in his former friend’s eyes and looked away.

  ‘You can’t watch her all the fucking time!’ Danny shouted suddenly. ‘Every fucking DAY!’

  Jonas touched Danny’s shoulder. His hand was knocked away but he put it back and this time Danny let it stay. He led Danny away from the crowd and towards the stream. The two of them stood and stared across the singing water at the white-frosted moor. Jonas didn’t look at Danny as he cried. There was very little sound from behind them, considering the whole village was just a hundred yards away. The morning was still beautiful – facing this way, at least – and Jonas was seized with a sudden notion to take Danny by the arm and lead him through the stream and up on to the moorland opposite and just keep walking, leaving everything behind them and never looking back to see the horror of reality.

  He didn’t, of course, but he could taste in his mouth what it would be like to do it.

  Finally Danny spoke softly.

  ‘She hated being that way.’

  Jonas nodded.

  ‘You remember what she was like?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jonas and Danny sighed.

  ‘Sometimes she remembered. How she’d been. That was the worst part, you know? Not her going nuts, but her knowing that she was going nuts.’

  Jonas nodded. He understood.

  �
��At least that’s over now,’ Danny said, and turned back towards the surreal scene of his mother lying dead near the corner flag while the whole village watched silently from the far touchline, as if they’d come to see a match and stayed to watch a murder. His father was in the back of the ambulance now, with the two paramedics fussing over him.

  Jonas saw that someone had put a blanket over Mrs Marsh’s body and he was stupidly grateful, because it was a cold day, despite the sunshine.

  Danny sniffed, sighed, and shook a B&H out of a crumpled pack he found in his jeans.

  ‘You all right, Jonas?’

  Jonas glanced at him, perplexed. He was all right! He wasn’t the one whose dead mother had just been hauled out of a frozen stream like an Arctic seal. Why the hell would Danny ask him that?

  He said nothing and Danny didn’t ask again.

  Nearby a blackbird burst into song and Jonas allowed it to fill him up. With his back to the body there was nothing but beauty in the world.

  Danny squinted as he blew the only cloud into the clear blue sky. ‘We should have a drink,’ he said.

  ‘Some time,’ said Jonas, and hoped Danny realized that that meant ‘never’.

  Danny smoked half the cigarette and flicked the rest into the stream. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you soon, Jonas.’

  Marvel watched Danny Marsh walk away from Jonas Holly and back to his father. Without averting his gaze, he spoke quietly to Reynolds, who stood beside him with that damned notebook open.

  ‘What’s the link?’

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘The link. Between Margaret Priddy and …’ He nodded at the corpse.

  ‘Yvonne Marsh.’

  ‘Yes. Assuming this is murder and it’s the same killer. What’s the link?’

  Reynolds thought for a second. ‘Both in their sixties. Both women …’ He dried up.

  Marvel looked at Reynolds directly now. ‘Both a burden on their families, wouldn’t you say?’

  Reynolds nodded his thoughtful agreement.

  ‘Could be two families finally snapping. But if it’s not, then what’s the link? More important, who’s the link?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Well nor do I,’ said Marvel. ‘Yet.’

  He told Pollard to bag up PC Holly’s clothes for Jos Reeves at the lab. The crime scene here was a joke – in the open air and on a field that half the village used, trampled by Holly and the skateboarders at the very least, and the body had been in water and then moved, just to add to the complications – but he might as well preserve everything he could, if only for the purpose of elimination. He walked back towards the car, his feet making a satisfying crunching sound on the frosty field, and called Jos Reeves to tell him to be sure to compare forensics in the Yvonne Marsh case with Margaret Priddy’s. Reeves got in a huff with him. Got all offended that Marvel thought he didn’t know his own job. Prima donna. Next time he’d have Reynolds call Reeves.

  He sent Singh, Pollard and Grey to do another house-to-house, asking all the same questions but about a different time, place and victim. It was a chore but it had to be done.

  Later he took Elizabeth Rice to meet the Marshes. He told them she would be their family liaison officer, staying with them twenty-four hours a day for support, and keeping them informed of how the investigation was progressing.

  ‘Anything you want, or anything you need to know, you just ask her,’ he said with surprising kindness.

  He told her they were both suspects until further notice.

  *

  After Jonas had given a preliminary statement to one of Marvel’s DCs, the paramedics dropped him off at home so he could finally get some trousers on. They wanted their scratchy blanket back, and Lucy looked up in surprise as he walked into the cottage wrapped from the waist down in silver foil. She made a mermaid joke, then saw his face. He told her what had happened and watched her get quiet. More quiet; Lucy was always calm – even when told about what looked like the village’s second murder in eight days.

  ‘You need to get warm,’ was her verdict. She insisted on coming upstairs with him, so he carried her on legs that throbbed painfully now, cramping as the blood got going again. Without her sticks she moved carefully and with a break in her stride that made it look as if she might fall at any minute. Still, need gave her strength, and she bossed him and ran him a bath while he stripped off and bundled his clothes into the laundry basket. He thought he might as well be a mermaid, he’d been so wet in the past twelve hours. His good shoes and another pair of work trousers were still on the radiators from last night. He could hear Lucy painstakingly laying out a fresh uniform on the bed – doing her wifely thing in jerky slow motion – while he stepped into the bath, sending needles of hot pain up his legs.

  Their bath – which had a view of the moor on one side and the fields sloping up to Springer Farm on the other – was the biggest that would fit into the tiny bathroom, but it was no match for Jonas. It was why he preferred the shower; in the bath he had to sit up to keep both his legs submerged. As his legs warmed and he listened to Lucy moving around – making all that effort for his benefit – he slumped back against the cold enamel and a great weariness overtook him. The shock of last night, and the bigger shock of this morning. Two murders. Two murders! Perhaps if he’d watched more American television, he wouldn’t feel so appalled. Perhaps being a policeman and having two murders in quick succession on his patch would not feel so surreal if only he’d tuned in to NYPD Blue a bit more dutifully in his formative years.

  Somewhere out there was a killer. It seemed unbelievable, but a killer had come to town and – like the shark in Jaws – had apparently decided to stick around.

  Call yourself a policeman?

  The words hit him again, but this time they seemed to be not just an accusation but a warning. Was it the killer who had left him a message? The idea jolted him. Was the killer taunting him? Letting him know how ineffective he was? Was Yvonne Marsh another display of his dubious skills? If so, how many more people might the killer be planning to murder? Where would his appetite end?

  The shame he’d felt as he read the note came back to Jonas hard, along with this new fear and a fresh wave of helplessness. He was the protector. He should be out there on the high seas hunting down the killer shark, when all he was doing was standing on the jetty with a shrimping net, hoping it would swim past and wave a fin. And if the killer was here to stay, then all he really wanted to do was stock up on canned goods, barricade the doors and wrap Lucy in his arms until it all went away.

  Except that what Lucy really needed protecting from was never going to go away …

  A loud sob escaped him and he clapped a hand over his mouth, feeling the tears heat his eyes as efficiently as the bath had heated his legs.

  ‘Jonas?’

  He bent his knees and slid quickly down the enamel and under the water, so that when she came in, there would be a good reason why his face was wet.

  *

  The killer was angry.

  Margaret Priddy had been unavoidable in a way, but Yvonne Marsh should never have had to happen. If Jonas had understood the first message, then he’d have done his job – and if Jonas had done his job, then Yvonne Marsh would still be alive.

  To the killer it all seemed very simple.

  He didn’t know why Jonas had to make it so complicated.

  *

  Marvel had rather grudgingly told him to take the rest of the day off, but Jonas knew he couldn’t stay at home and out of sight for all of it – not after a second murder in the village he was charged with the care of. He also didn’t want to leave Lucy alone. He knew he’d have to at some point, but today was too raw, too soon.

  So that night he took her to the Red Lion, ostensibly for a drink, but they both knew it was so he could be seen; be seen to be part of things.

  The mood in the pub was paradoxically sober and the moment they walked in Jonas knew it had been a bad idea to come. Everyone wante
d to talk to him, everyone wanted to speculate and everyone wanted to know what the police were doing. This would have been bad enough if he’d been alone – telling them that all he was doing was standing on a doorstep, effectively doing nothing while villagers were being slaughtered – but with Lucy in tow, it was truly shaming. She squeezed his hand under the table at one point, which made it even worse. People weren’t rude about it, but he could see the esteem in which he’d been held slipping as they realized that, while they’d been treating him like one for years, he wasn’t a real policeman after all. All very well to drive about the place in a flashy Land Rover with bull bars and a winch, but when it came down to the nitty gritty, they might as well have a scarecrow for a village bobby, if all he was going to do was stand there.

  Jonas felt a sweat starting and got up and went to the bathroom, just to get away from them all. He shut himself in a stall and tried to think clearly.

  If he could only go back to his usual routine it wouldn’t be so bad. At least then he’d look as if he was doing what he did best while leaving the murder investigation to the experts. But Marvel wasn’t going to give him a break. He felt that instinctively. He may not keep him on the doorstep for ever, but there was no way he was going to release Jonas while he was still smarting over some imagined slight. He’d give him some other shit thing to do; keep punishing him. Jonas saw his days stretching out in front of him, pointless, boring, undermining his position in the community, and – most importantly – not helping to catch the killer. It was a grim picture.

  He stepped out of the stall, still deep in thought, and went over to wash his hands. As he raised his eyes to his reflection in the scarred and pitted mirror over the basin, he noticed the writing on the door behind him. Graham Nash had painted all the toilet doors with blackboard paint inside and out, and provided chalk so customers could write on them. It was a nice idea and gave people something to read while taking a shit, but, of course, it always threw up a mixed bag of dirty limericks, four-letter words and local libel, which required that the whole lot was washed down and erased on a regular basis.