Darkside

by Belinda Bauer

  ‘Tell me about your day,’ he said.

  ‘You sure you want to hear all that boring crap?’ she said in surprise.

  ‘That’s exactly what I want to hear,’ he said with feeling.

  She got it, so she told him.

  Jonas felt warmed physically and spiritually as he ate and listened to his wife recounting the minutiae of her existence. Here in the kitchen, with a fire in the hearth and food in his belly, it was easy to imagine that all was well with the world.

  She told him about the robin that had sat on the window sill for almost ten minutes, staring in at her as she watched giant cockroaches munch New Yorkers in Mimic; she described the way she’d suddenly had a manic urge to bake a cake and had collected everything on the kitchen table, which had taken her over half an hour – and then there’d been a power cut which meant she couldn’t even pre-heat the oven. She’d taken another twenty minutes putting everything back much less tidily. She’d slept for an hour and been woken by Frank, who had come in and talked about Sunset Lodge. The postman knew almost everything there was to know, and Jonas and Lucy both rolled their eyes so they didn’t have to say out loud: Only in Shipcott!

  She had watched Countdown, where the conundrum had been ‘residents’ even though the same letters also spelled ‘tiredness’, which wasn’t really fair, was it? Then she rambled on for ages about her letter from Charlie, her oldest school friend. Charlie’s husband had had adult mumps, her seven-year-old son, Luca, had been diagnosed as dyslexic, while her younger, Saul, had run away from the first kitten he’d ever seen, shouting, ‘Rat! Rat!’

  They both laughed and Jonas stopped eating to stroke her face with the backs of his fingers.

  She crumpled before his eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks so hard that they splashed on to the table as if from a faulty tap. Jonas dropped his fork and took her in his arms. There was nothing he could – or would – say that would make any of it better.

  The illness, the murders, the baby-shaped hole in her life.

  In the face of each of them he was overwhelmed and useless. There had been a time when he’d thought he could help, could be of some comfort; a time when he’d thought he could make a difference.

  That was no longer true.

  Sometimes you just had to accept what you were.

  And what you were never meant to be.

  He had never cried with her, but he’d never come closer than this, and they spent minutes like that, he kneeling beside her, she rigid in his arms, her hands over her face to keep her pain to herself – her refusal to let him share it properly an indication that he was to blame, in some part at the very least. He felt that burden settle like cold lead in his heart.

  Slowly she quieted and disengaged herself. He gave her kitchen roll; she blew her nose.

  ‘OK, Lu?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Frank left the gate open,’ she replied without looking at him. ‘It’s been banging all day.’

  Jonas put his boots back on and went down the dark garden path. More snow had fallen this afternoon and he needed to clear it again. He thought how frustrating it must have been for Lucy not to be able to venture the ten yards to her own front gate for fear of falling, while all the time the gate banged. The catch needed oiling really, so it would shut more easily. When he’d shut it he would get the shovel and clear the path, in case he didn’t have time in the morning. Now that he was off Margaret Priddy’s doorstep, he expected to be hectic instead of bored.

  Oil the gate, empty the washing machine, do the ironing, clear the path, refill the bird feeders so that the robin would keep coming to keep Lucy company. He needed to remember the little things that kept their lives functioning, but he knew that by the time he went back into the house he’d have forgotten at least one of the items. He should make a list.

  Home and work. Both needed constant maintenance, like an old British motorbike. Otherwise the oil squeezed through the casings and left ugly black stains on the floor of their lives.

  He thought he’d keep up the night patrols. Just for an hour or so each night; give people a sense of security. A false sense, of course – events had demonstrated that only too well – but even a false sense of security was better than nothing when fear was uppermost in everybody’s mind. Yes, the night patrols were good for the village.

  Jonas shut the gate.

  As he did, his fingers touched something papery.

  By the stars he could see it was a note pinned to the outside of the gatepost.

  With his second underneath feeling of the day coiling like slime in his stomach, Jonas reached over and tugged the paper free of the shiny gold drawing pin.

  _

  Five Days

  Elizabeth Rice watched the CSI pottering about with powder and gelatin lifts at her window, keeping up a muttered running commentary on his own methods like a fussy TV cook.

  She had introduced him to the Marshes simply as ‘Tim’ and taken him up to her room and closed the door. She wondered whether they thought she and Tim were having sex. It couldn’t be helped. When she’d called the previous night, Marvel hadn’t wanted Danny and Alan alerted to the fact that they were under suspicion. He had asked her if she felt OK about remaining in the house and she’d said ‘yes’, because to say ‘no’ would have made her look weak. Actually the thought of staying there made her feel sick inside, the way she used to feel right before walking out of the wings in school plays. But being here with Tim doing his thing was fine. She hoped she would feel the same way once he left.

  Tim had found a latent print going out of the window, underneath the visible one she’d first spotted. He had photographed the visible print with a Polaroid camera so that she could match it to the Marshes’ shoes. She would have to do that in secret.

  Secret stuff connected to a murder inquiry should have been exciting, but the thought of sneaking into Alan and Danny’s bedrooms and going through their shoes made her feel slightly ashamed. They were bereaved; they were nice enough to her; Danny was quite fanciable in a lost-dog kind of way. She wished she didn’t have to treat them as suspects while eating their cornflakes.

  *

  ‘She’s great,’ said Reynolds as he hung up on Kate Gulliver.

  ‘We’ll see,’ grunted Marvel and flushed an old coffee filter down the Portaloo in the mobile unit.

  ‘She says,’ said Reynolds, then flicked back and forth through his notebook before finding his place. ‘She says the fixation on the elderly is almost certainly a product of resentment of a parent or parents.’ He looked up at Marvel, who rolled his eyes and made a little sound that said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  Reynolds was undaunted. ‘Gary Liss had to give up his job to nurse his father, didn’t he?’

  ‘And Peter Priddy had to give up his inheritance to pay for his mother’s care,’ countered Marvel. He didn’t know what it was that drove him to take issue with Reynolds even when he agreed with him. He hoped the spirit of debate was good for the investigation, but had a sneaking suspicion that it was not. He needed to try to curb that propensity for unmotivated bolshiness.

  ‘Well yes,’ said Reynolds, made generous by his fleeting contact with what he considered to be a similar intellect. ‘But her hypothesis is that it might go beyond material deprivation and into the arena of physical or emotional abuse.’

  The arena of physical or emotional abuse. The arena! Seriously, sometimes Marvel just felt like punching Reynolds and getting it over with. He wished now that he had spoken to Kate Gulliver, who was also ridiculously self-important, but at least he’d now be the one imparting information to Reynolds, instead of the other way round.

  ‘So Liss could have been beaten by his mother and is now killing other people’s mothers in revenge. In layman’s terms.’

  ‘Right. Or fathers. Remember Lionel Chard.’

  Marvel did. And that did put a new spin on things. Serial killers generally worked within certain parameters when it came to victims. Boys, or teenaged girl
s, or prostitutes with green eyes. The sex of the victims was often immutable.

  ‘So if Liss is a serial killer he’s changing his parameters, or had different ones all along.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Changing parameters and method.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Reynolds less confidently. ‘Maybe two killers? Working together? We’ve got the footprint at the Marsh house.’

  Marvel made a face that said he wasn’t in love with that theory.

  ‘Or maybe it’s not a serial killer at all. Kate says some elements feel more like the work of a spree killer due to the compact time frame and the number of—’

  ‘She’s reaching,’ interrupted Marvel.

  ‘So are we,’ said Reynolds defensively.

  ‘You’ll be saying next that Liss had permission from Peter Priddy and Alan Marsh to kill!’

  Reynolds looked wounded. ‘I’m just trying to run through every possibility, that’s all. I’m just trying to help.’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Marvel, which was as close as he’d ever come to apologizing to Reynolds for anything – even that time he’d run over his foot with the Ford Focus.

  Encouraged, Reynolds continued to postulate. As he opened and closed his mouth like one of his precious guppies, Marvel stopped listening and started thinking.

  He had felt lost on this case, but now they had a bona fide suspect. Few things pointed to a killer like fleeing the scene of a murder. It was a hard action to justify and Marvel felt relief spreading through him like liquor.

  Gary Liss.

  Finally!

  A male nurse. Statistics showed they were not unlikely serial killers. Boredom and distaste masquerading as mercy.

  Although poisoning or neglect were the usual methods employed by nurses who killed.

  And Yvonne Marsh had never been in the care of Gary Liss.

  Those two things bothered Marvel, he realized with a little jag of annoyance. Why couldn’t he just enjoy the fact that they had identified the killer? Why did his memory have to bring up the kind of annoying details that he was more used to discounting from Reynolds?

  The relief had been a con; a quick shot on a cold night, which could not keep him from frostbite – merely dull his senses while it ate his fingers and toes.

  He had no time for relief.

  Relief was for wimps.

  He could do with a drink to focus his mind.

  Marvel thought about the almost genteel murder of Margaret Priddy, compared to the efficient brutality visited on the three late residents of Sunset Lodge. The escalation was disturbing. It spoke of an increasing loss of control.

  It was probably Gary Liss. He wished he could be sure. He was sure. The disappearance, the stolen jewellery. He was sure.

  Soon they would know. Nobody was going to be able to stay hidden for long in this weather – not without at least trying to go home – and Jonas had assured him that Paul Angell was cooperating. Liss had no family to run to and Angell was also insisting that Gary Liss had no other lovers. Marvel wasn’t so sure about that but, either way, it had been thirty-six hours and Liss was without his car – a twelve-year-old Renault Clio which was sitting forlornly in the car park with a foot of snow on the roof and a flapping square of police tape around it. Marvel had moved all the new crew to house-to-house inquiries and searching outbuildings. It hadn’t made him popular, but very little he’d ever done had made him popular, so he wasn’t boo-hooing about that.

  No, Liss would soon be discovered, and then they would know the truth within seconds. A single killing might be concealed for a short while, but five was the work of a madman, and this time Marvel would be able to sniff it on Liss like a dog trained by having a murder-rag rubbed over its nose. He could almost smell it now, the sour fear of a man trapped by the enormity of his own crimes; the self-justification for unjustifiable deeds. Marvel’s jaw clenched in anger, even before he had anyone to take it out on.

  ‘… in which case the killer may not even be aware of what he’s doing. She also says some killers just stop. They reach saturation point and don’t feel the need to kill again for years – maybe even never – depending on …’ Reynolds tapered off lamely under Marvel’s glare.

  ‘I stopped listening to you,’ said Marvel bluntly, and Reynolds shrugged. He’d gathered that.

  Marvel got up and picked up the car keys. ‘This is bullshit. All these fucking theories aren’t getting us any closer to finding Liss. All we know for sure is that this bastard is escalating – fast.’

  Reynolds nodded. ‘Knowing him is not the same as stopping him.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Marvel, yanking open the unit door and letting winter rush in, ‘and we need to get our arses into gear, because something tells me that if we don’t stop him, he’s not finished.’

  *

  Lionel Chard’s room had been taped off as a crime scene.

  Now as he stared into it from the doorway, Marvel felt like a visitor to a stately home. Here is the bed, ladies and gentlemen, where the King took the virginity of Catherine of Aragon; and here is the Sealy Posturepedic upon which Mr Chard was beaten to death by person or persons unknown.

  Through the white window he could see flakes falling from the sky.

  Even the snow was against him.

  The manhunt had been stalled by snow, which could now only be traversed beyond the village boundaries by 4X4s.

  The footprints outside the garden room had been methodically measured and photographed, but Marvel had seen more convincing yeti prints.

  And finding a murder weapon in the snow was like … well, they might as well do it blindfolded. Grey had suggested as much after yet another Braille-like search of the graveyard, and Marvel had told him to do it again.

  Marvel moved the few paces to the entrance to Gorse – Violet Eaves’s room. As he did so he thought of Gary Liss doing the same thing. He waved a casual hand across the doorway and heard the faint beep from downstairs. Lynne Twitchett and Jen Hardy had heard several beeps. They couldn’t agree on how many exactly. Had that stupid electronic sound been the straw that broke the camel’s back for Gary Liss? Had Violet Eaves sleepwalked one too many times, in his perverse view? Had his patience finally snapped and he’d hit her and then panicked, which had led to the massacre?

  ‘Shit,’ said Marvel. It didn’t fit with the careful murder of Margaret Priddy and the seemingly random choice of Yvonne Marsh.

  If Gary Liss was not the killer, then that first beep may well have been the killer entering Violet’s room, rather than the old lady leaving it. Although she had left her room that night, one way or another.

  From this stately doorway Marvel could see over the graveyard next door, where the picture-perfect snow had been made hectic and muddy by the search. They were just going through the motions out there. Liss was the key. They had to find him before he struck again – as Marvel had little doubt that he would.

  He heard the doorbell and a minute later Singh came to say that Paul Angell was downstairs in the garden room and wanted to talk to him.

  As he walked downstairs, someone started to play the piano. Not Lynne Twitchett – someone who could play. Marvel knew the tune. Something by Cole Porter. ‘Cheek To Cheek’, he thought. It made him melancholy to hear the song of dancing and romance played in this place where such things were long gone.

  The garden room was its usual melting temperature and Marvel wrinkled his nose as he entered. The place smelled faintly of rotten … he couldn’t think of rotten what. No doubt Reynolds would call it generic rotten. He made a mental note to die before he could end up somewhere like this, smelling like that.

  Paul Angell stopped playing and looked up at him, and several of the old ladies clapped and one said, ‘Lovely,’ and another said, ‘Do you remember that one, Trinny?’

  Paul got up and started to ask about Gary. Paul had been helpful to the police, but wary, and Marvel wasn’t 100 per cent convinced that the man didn’t know where his lover was hiding, whatever
the hell Jonas Holly said. He got the impression that Paul Angell thought the police had been somehow against Liss from the outset because he was gay, instead of because he’d gone on the run after a triple murder. Idiot. Marvel had been polite to him so far, but he hoped Angell’s homosexuality gave him the sensitivity to know that his well of manners was not a deep one.

  Now Marvel found that, while Paul Angell asked why he hadn’t been kept advised of the status of the hunt for Gary, he was suddenly transfixed by the hand of the old lady who had asked Trinny if she remembered ‘Cheek To Cheek’. The hand had been clapping and Marvel had seen its palm. Just briefly. He wasn’t even sure why his eye had been caught. Now he listened with half an ear and answered Angell with half a brain, while both his eyes watched the old, lined hand touch the arm of the chair, then reach for the biscuit tin, then poke at the selection with one bony finger, then lift the biscuit to the old-lady mouth—

  Marvel stepped around Angell and gripped her by the wrist.

  ‘Oh!’ she said and dropped the biscuit. It fell on her chest and then to her lap. A Bourbon.

  Marvel turned her palm up as though he were about to read it. There was a dirty smudge in the middle of it. Red-brown. It might have been chocolate.

  ‘Reynolds!’

  Marvel turned and looked at Angell. ‘Get my sergeant for me. Now!’

  He looked back at the scared-looking old woman. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mrs Betty Tithecott,’ she answered tremulously.

  ‘Here, leave her alone,’ said Trinny next door.

  Marvel ignored Trinny and softened his tone, but still held the squirming hand in his. ‘I just need to have a look at your hand, all right, Betty? I’m not going to hurt you.’

  She met his eyes and nodded. Her hand relaxed.

  ‘This mark,’ he said. ‘What have you touched?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Betty, her eyes watery and confused.

  There was a similar, smaller stain inside her thumb.