Darkside

by Belinda Bauer

  *

  Jonas Holly liked to think of himself as the protector, but the killer was a protector too, in his own way.

  They were trying to protect different people, that was all.

  Not for the first time, he wondered whether he should speak to Jonas. Maybe a face-to-face would be useful. Let Jonas see who he was dealing with; see if they could come to some kind of agreement. He was not an unreasonable man.

  Even though the killer despised Jonas for his weakness, somehow the policeman still kept getting in the way. He had been diverted twice now because of Jonas, and gave him grudging credit for that.

  Still, the policeman might not be doing his job, but he couldn’t keep the killer from doing his for ever.

  He glanced at his watch and saw it was 4am. He snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and slid a souvenir letter-opener out of his pocket. By the moonlight he could see the glint of fake gold-enamel lettering on the handle: A Gift from Weston-Super-Mare.

  He had noticed this first-floor window in the big old building. The only one that had not been replaced with plastic double glazing. He’d noticed it years ago. He’d noticed a lot of things over the years but had never really felt the need to use them before.

  Now he felt the need.

  He climbed on to the water butt and from there he swung easily on to the toughened glass roof. He braced his feet against the struts for purchase and slipped the letter-opener between the old wooden frames.

  Then the killer pushed aside the catch, slid the sash up – and quietly climbed through the window into the Sunset Lodge Retirement Home.

  *

  Gary Liss liked the nights at Sunset Lodge. The days were all bustle but the nights made him think of old war movies where nurses moved quietly between softly coughing patients, carrying candles.

  At night there were just three members of staff on duty. That was usually plenty. Mostly the residents slept through, with only occasional calls for help with the commode. They had one sleepwalker at present. Mrs Eaves had scared the shit out of him the first time he’d seen her tottering towards him in her flowing white nightie. Now he quite enjoyed the break in routine that was the silent little dance he occasionally performed with Mrs Eaves on the landing while he tried to head her off at the pass so she wouldn’t dance straight down the wide stairwell with its thick, swirly carpet that hid the stains so well. Mr Cooke had invested in an infrared alarm which fired a clever red beam across Mrs Eaves’s bedroom door and beeped loudly in the staffroom whenever she took to wandering through the home. When it did, one of them would bound upstairs – or squeeze into the lift in the case of Lynne Twitchett – and go and corral her back to bed.

  Tonight he was on with Lynne and Jen. He liked Lynne, who was giggly and sweet, but wasn’t so keen on Jen, who smelled of cigarettes and teased him about his girlfriend. Girlfriend, she always said. How’s the girlfriend, Gary? Why don’t you bring your girlfriend to the Christmas do? We’d all love to meet your girlfriend.

  Jen could go screw herself. He doubted anyone else ever did.

  Right now she was bitching about a woman she’d seen in a pub wearing yellow stilettos. Gary thought yellow stilettos sounded hideous, but he was still on the wearer’s side.

  The radio was tuned quietly to Lantern – the local station – which played old chart stuff and made him drum his fingers and think of school discos.

  Mrs Eaves’s alarm beeped and Gary picked up his torch. Turning lights on at night could be disastrous. Residents who had only been in bed for an hour would stir like grizzlies coming out of hibernation and start to dress themselves in wobbly anticipation of another day growing older in the garden room. Torches took care of that.

  There were fourteen bedrooms on the first floor and Gary knew that Violet Eaves could be in any one of them apart from her own, Gorse. All the rooms had twee names like Gorse and Heather, which were supposed to be Exmoor-centric. Whoever had chosen them had started grandly but must have quickly realized that gorse and heather were the only really recognizable flora the moors had to offer, and had been forced into crap names like Sedge and Blackthorn and – feeblest of all – Moss. Gary reckoned it was Mr Cooke’s wife who’d done it. She was always putting her finger in the Sunset Lodge pie.

  The old house was a maze of turns and steps and nooks and ramps. Two rooms here, three there, up two steps, round a corner to three more rooms. The beam of his little torch danced about like a firefly as he trod quietly along the corridors.

  No sign of her. Gary stood still on the wide landing. He’d have to check the bedrooms; it would not be the first time Violet had tried to climb in with someone else.

  ‘Violet!’ he hissed, even though when she sleepwalked she never responded to sound. ‘Pain in the arse!’ he muttered, but he didn’t really mean it. When she was awake, Violet was one of his favourites. Even at the age of ninety-two Violet had a sparkle. She would hold his hand and call him ‘such a good-looking bay’, then wink at him, because she’d been blind since she was seventy-five. It was an old joke but a good one. Then she would touch the rings that were stuck for ever on her gnarled fingers, and count off her husbands.

  ‘Eddie – never spent a penny on anyone but herself. Charlie – her was a good one, that’s why her died, of course! Only the good die young. Another Eddie, same as the first – never go out with an Eddie, young man, you’ll have nothing but worry and debts! And that one’s Matthew. Mattie, I used to call her, and her used to call me Viola, like in the Shakespeare, see? I was seventy-two when we got married and her was seventy. My toyboy. Always save the best till last, that’s what we used to say to each other. Always save the best till last.’

  She’d pat his hand and look into the past, which was somewhere over his left shoulder.

  Then she’d cock her head and say, ‘Is that the biscuits?’

  Standing here in the dark with his torch making a bright disc on the carpet, Gary smiled. Violet just looked confused if you shouted ‘HELLO!’ straight into her face, but she could hear a biscuit tin opening at a thousand yards.

  He heard what sounded like a scrape of furniture and hissed down the corridor: ‘Violet?’ and set off again. He hadn’t gone ten paces when he heard – from the open staffroom door below – the faint beep of Violet’s alarm going off for the second time.

  Miracle. She’d found her way home.

  He turned back, went down two stairs and turned a corner, then up two more to Gorse.

  He’d expected to find Violet standing by her bed, but she’d already got back into it.

  Gary stood in the doorway. ‘All right, Viola?’ he said very softly. He didn’t want to wake her, but if she had woken herself, he wanted her to know he was there. There was no answer. Asleep. Good.

  Out of habit he flicked the torch over her sleeping form, and frowned. There was the minimal lump in the bed that was Violet’s diminutive body, but he could not see her head. Like everyone in this place, Violet’s hair was naturally white, but once a month the stylist came and gave all the heads a good blue rinse. He should be able to see her head.

  Gary moved closer to the bed, angling the torch. Nothing but the white pillow.

  ‘Violet?’ he asked carefully, suppressing the silly panic that told him Violet’s head had somehow fallen off.

  He leaned over the old woman and almost laughed in relief. She was sleeping with her head under the pillow – that was all!

  Gently he lifted the pillow.

  Underneath it was Violet – her eyes closed, her toothless mouth puckered neatly, and a flower of blood blossoming on her forehead.

  Blood.

  Gary Liss stared in confusion at the blood and the pillow and the old lady. Whatever order he looked at them, they made no sense.

  I have to call Paul. He’ll know what to do.

  That was the only thought Gary’s numb brain could come up with. Paul was the smart one. Paul would take care of this. Because he sure as hell couldn’t work it out.

  Somewhere dow
n the long tunnel of his dulled senses, Gary Liss heard the alarm across the doorway beep one last time. He started to turn, started to open his mouth, started to think.

  But before he could complete any one of those actions, everything went black.

  *

  There were footprints in the snow behind him leading all the way back to Sunset Lodge, but the killer knew they would not give him away.

  He used the same snow to rinse his hands of blood.

  The night was cloudy, without a moon, and the village slept like Bethlehem – in blissful ignorance of how it would be changed by morning.

  He was about to step out of the alleyway when he caught sight of a movement at the end of the road, or, at least, under the dull orange reach of the farthest streetlamp.

  Out of the blackness at the edge of the known world came a single foxhound. Its nose swept the snow ahead of it, its brown velvet ears swung as its head turned this way and that in response to the scents of the village. The hound’s lean body glimmered under the light and, even from here, the killer could see the shining hide slip easily back and forth across the dog’s ribs.

  From the depths of a deep-sea dream, the rest of the pack came out of the darkness and into the light. Silent as wraiths, smooth as syrup, tails swaying, snouts seeking, the three dozen big hounds moved between the houses at a languid jog, as if by night the village belonged to them.

  Behind the pack the huntsman took shape. Bob Coffin, with his short, bowed legs, his flat cap and his old brown Barbour, creased and crinkled. He held a whip but didn’t look as if he planned to use it. He didn’t have to: the hounds trotted ahead of him in perfect harmony and total silence. Even when a small dog yapped from somewhere behind them, they ignored it and moved on.

  The killer stayed where he was in the shadows, hypnotized by their approach. The sight was strange, yet strangely calming. He felt himself suddenly unable to move, and disinterested in doing so, even if it meant he was seen. The hounds possessing the darkened village in the fallen snow were compelling to watch.

  The first dog drew level and raised its head towards him. Their eyes met briefly, then it dropped its nose to the snow once more – as it had been trained to do on pain of death: the hound that puts its head in the air to look for the fox has no place in the hunt. The killer watched the Blacklands pack move past him in a liquid jigsaw of brown, black and white, with only the sound of eager breathing moving the air around him.

  Then Bob Coffin went past him too.

  The huntsman glanced briefly at the killer and touched his cap in a market-day hello, never breaking his brisk, rolling stride.

  The killer watched the hounds pass under the streetlights and wink out in the darkness beyond as if they had never existed. Only a broad swathe of churned snow up the centre of the road bore testament to their reality.

  The killer sighed as if he had lost something dear to him.

  Then he stepped carefully into the ruined snow and walked home without leaving a trail.

  Six Days

  Marvel and Reynolds moved from room to room in silence.

  Gorse, Hazel and Moss.

  Violet Eaves, Bridget Hammond and Lionel Chard.

  Each had died without waking. Their covers were untrammelled, their hands lay calmly at their sides; Bridget Hammond still held a delicately embroidered handkerchief crumpled loosely in her palm.

  From cursory inspection, Marvel surmised that each had been rendered unconscious or killed outright by a single mighty blow to the head. Then the killer had made sure by smothering them with their own pillows.

  Marvel thought of the killer’s rough hand on the frail faces, holding it there until he was sure each was lifeless. Then moving on.

  Marvel thought this, but said nothing. He did not trust himself. And he could barely hear himself think for the hoarse whispers of the dead. Avenge me! Avenge me!

  Reynolds had his notebook out and for once Marvel was grateful. His own head was so full of the horror that he felt he’d need to empty it like a waste basket before he could actually sit down and start to make sense of the carnage.

  Downstairs he could hear the sound of crying. Lynne Twitchett had been crying since they had arrived, less than ten minutes after getting the call from Jonas Holly. The other residents cried spasmodically, and when they weren’t crying they were comforting others who were, in quavering, tremulous voices that might as well have been weeping. Rupert Cooke had arrived red-eyed just after he and Reynolds had, and had continued to burst into tears every few minutes after that. The Reverend Chard was trying to offer words of comfort, while openly weeping at the loss of his own father.

  Mayhem on wheels.

  It seemed the only person not actively crying was Jonas Holly, and Marvel thought that might well be because the young constable was in shock. He had been called by Lynne Twitchett, and met Marvel and Reynolds at the door. He had taken them through his preservation of the scene in a low, careful voice. He had made sure everyone stayed in their rooms as far as was possible with confused old folk, and had asked Rupert Cooke to call all his relief staff in to help organize things in case the home had to be evacuated to allow the investigation to continue.

  He had ensured that there were no other casualties in the first- or second-floor bedrooms and had kept people from moving about the house unnecessarily. He had taken off his boots. ‘I thought they might be able to get prints off the carpets.’ He shrugged sadly.

  Jonas Holly had done a good job. Dully Marvel recognized that he’d done a similarly good job in most respects at the scene of Margaret Priddy’s murder, for which he’d received no credit. Ah well, life wasn’t fair.

  The young constable had written everything in his notebook and kept referring to it for much longer than seemed necessary – kept staring at the pages as if he’d lost his place. At one point Marvel had become impatient and nearly snatched the notebook from him, but then he’d seen the man’s Adam’s apple working in his throat, and he’d given him the extra time he’d apparently needed to be able to speak without his voice breaking into a million pieces.

  He felt close himself. Close to tears. He had never cried on a job – never even felt his bottom lip wobble in time to the grief around him.

  But this …

  This was …

  Just.

  Tragic.

  The old people, helpless in their beds, their spectacles and teeth on their nightstands.

  He remembered Lionel Chard, peering at the TV.

  Countdown.

  Big ears.

  He wanted to punch a hole in Gary Liss’s face with his bare hands. The nurse had disappeared. Never come down from wreaking havoc on the first floor. It all made sense now. It always did when it was far too late. No doubt when they caught Liss he would have some ridiculous reason why he had not returned to the kitchen after going upstairs in response to an alarm. Tell them that he’d found the bodies and lost his mind, or pursued the killer across the moors at great personal risk, or checked on Violet Eaves and then remembered he’d left the gas on at home … Madmen were only clever in the movies; in real life they were mostly just mad – and it was usually only the inability of the sane to recognize the depth of that madness which allowed them to prosper even temporarily. Sometimes Marvel felt that being psychotic would be a great asset to a homicide detective; that possibly the Force should leave room for manoeuvre in its recruitment criteria.

  ‘We should’ve arrested the bastard.’

  ‘We couldn’t have held him for long, sir,’ Reynolds said. It wasn’t his style to make Marvel feel better about things, but that was the truth.

  ‘I don’t fucking care. The sonofabitch as good as said he’d killed Margaret Priddy, and we should have taken him in right there and then and made his life hell for forty-eight hours. Maybe we wouldn’t be standing here now. Maybe these three would still be alive.’

  Reynolds said nothing, because he felt the same gnawing guilt that they had dismissed Gary Liss as merely a str
aight-talker, when now it looked as if he were more than that. A lot more than that.

  He’d have to be a psychopath.

  Yes, he would.

  Marvel felt sick at the memory. They had left Gary Liss here. That meant they had left these poor people in the care of a serial killer. It was a miracle there were only three bodies, when you looked at it like that. Although he felt so far from a miracle right now that it would have taken Jesus Christ himself to come up the swirly stair carpet at Sunset Lodge and raise the victims from the dead before he’d be convinced of one.

  ‘Should we call Gulliver, sir?’ said Reynolds.

  Kate Gulliver was a forensic psychologist based in Bristol and one of Marvel’s least favourite people, right up there with Jos Reeves. He felt the little prick of anger at the implication that Reynolds thought he was out of his depth. Immediately after that, he realized that he was out of his depth – or at least wading there fast. And refusing to consult Gulliver at this point would look territorial and negligent.

  ‘You call her.’ He nodded to Reynolds. He knew Reynolds would love that – and be good at it. Kate Gulliver was his kind of person – the young, bright, First-Class-Honours kind.

  He was busy enough here.

  He wished he could clear the entire home properly, but transporting twenty-two elderly and frail residents was easier said than done. When he’d suggested it, Rupert Cooke – who was wearing paisley pyjamas under his mackintosh, like someone from an episode of Poirot – had started to list what they’d need to take with them. Medications, walking sticks, Zimmer frames, wheelchairs, warm clothing, changes of underwear … When he’d got to incontinence pads, Marvel had put up a hand to stop him and had asked for them all to be moved into the garden room until the CSIs could examine the first floor and establish points of entry and exit.

  He asked Rupert Cooke for the use of his office and got Reynolds to clear the desk so he had somewhere to put his elbows.