Darkside

by Belinda Bauer

  ‘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 somethin
g 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 fallin
g 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.

  Two Days

  As soon as Jonas left in the Land Rover the next morning, Lucy Holly got the number of the mobile unit from Taunton HQ, then called it. When a man picked up, she said she wanted to make a formal complaint about DCI Marvel.

  There was a pregnant silence at the other end of the line and Lucy braced herself for a hostile request for her address so that the appropriate form could be sent. She was prepared to argue the toss; she didn’t want an appropriate form; she wanted to drop Marvel in shit right up to his foul, hurtful, bastard mouth.

  Instead of turning cold and official, the policeman – who identified himself as DS Reynolds – started to ask her quite pertinent questions, which allowed her to vent in the most satisfying way imaginable. She told Reynolds about Marvel nearly hitting her with the car; she told him how he had snatched the photograph of Jonas from her; she took a deep breath and told him that Marvel had said, ‘Fuck you’ and called her a name.

  ‘What name?’ asked Reynolds.

  ‘A horrible name,’ said Lucy.

  ‘I am writing these things down,’ said Reynolds. ‘It would be helpful if you could be specific.’

  There was a pause. ‘He called me an angry cripple.’

  Another long silence, which the words expanded to fill.

  ‘And are you disabled, Mrs Holly?’ asked Reynolds gently.

  ‘I have MS,’ she told him, filling up unexpectedly. ‘I use sticks to help me walk.’