Darkside

He asked Jonas to hand him his field bags and bemoaned his own stupidity at only bringing plastic instead of paper bags too.

‘Only expected vomit, you see?’ he reminded Jonas. ‘But you should always be prepared.’

He continued to chat happily as he took several minutes measuring and photographing the button in situ, then he picked it up with tweezers and put it in an evidence bag before lowering himself gingerly off the roof and on to the upturned bin which Jonas held steady for him.

He held the plastic bag up to the questionable light and they both examined the button as if it were a goldfish they’d won at the fair.

‘Nice spot,’ smiled Foster and, for the first time in days, Jonas felt like a real policeman.

‘It was right here!’ Marvel stood in the freezing rain holding the dustbin lid like a riot shield and pointing at his feet. ‘Right here!’

He glared at Jonas, who deflected the look to Mike Foster, who shrugged for them both.

‘Maybe someone moved it,’ said Foster in a helpful tone that showed Jonas he had no first-hand experience of DCI Marvel.

‘You think so?’ said Marvel furiously. ‘The lid’s on the grass covering the vomit. Then the lid’s on the bin and the vomit is all washed away. You think someone moved the lid? You think so? You’re wasted at this forensics shit! You should be a fucking psychic!’ He hurled the bin lid across the garden. Dixie rushed from his hidey-hole all noise and thunder and little white teeth as the lid rolled into the fence and toppled to a standstill.

‘Couldn’t we have fingerprinted that to find out who?’ said Reynolds tentatively.

‘Shit!’

While Marvel stomped across the wet grass to retrieve the bin lid, Jonas and Mike Foster exchanged guilty looks, as if they were jointly responsible for whatever it was Marvel wanted to blame them for.

‘I touched the lid,’ Jonas said quietly.

Reynolds rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll tell him.’

Marvel returned, holding the lid by an edge.

‘Jonas found a button on the roof,’ said Foster with just the right note of submission.

Reynolds raised an interested eyebrow, but it was wasted on Marvel.

‘I don’t give a shit if Jonas found the fucking Rosetta Stone on the roof. I want to know what happened to the vomit.’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Jonas when it became clear Marvel expected a response and that Foster was too cowed to give one.

‘It was your job to keep the scene secure. Your fucking job!’

Jonas flared a little. ‘With respect, sir, you said my job was to stand on the doorstep and wait for the killer to come back.’ From the corner of his eye, Jonas saw Foster and Reynolds exchange puzzled looks. Good. Let them know Marvel was a prick.

Marvel glared at him, then turned away dismissively and muttered darkly, ‘Can’t protect a puddle of fucking sick …’

Nobody knew what had happened – and no amount of haranguing from Marvel could enlighten them. Finally he jerked his head at Reynolds and stalked away down the garden in his porous shoes. When Reynolds caught him up and asked where they were going next, he told him they were going to put the squeeze on Peter Priddy.

Jonas helped Mike Foster put his bags into his car and almost felt like hugging him goodbye. He was the first sensible official Jonas had met on the case.

* * *

Squeezing Peter Priddy didn’t go quite to plan.

For a start, Peter Priddy blubbing in his dead mother’s kitchen while in search of Jaffa Cakes was a very different person from Prison Officer Priddy, angry, embarrassed and defensive about being pulled off shift on a wing full of nosey cons to speak to homicide detectives.

Marvel squeezed and Priddy pushed back and the worry lines on Reynolds’s brow got deeper and more indicative of imminent hair loss the more evident it became that they were really just there taking a flyer.

‘Of course my hairs are going to be on the bed!’ said Priddy. ‘She’s my mother! I don’t stand at the door and shout at her!’

‘But you didn’t visit her on Saturday night?’

‘I told you.’

‘Were you in Shipcott on Saturday at all?’

‘No! I told you!’

Marvel nodded slowly as if he agreed 100 per cent with what Peter Priddy had told them. ‘Because we have a witness who saw your car parked on Barnstaple Road at …’ He stopped for Reynolds to fill him in on the details but never took his eyes off Peter Priddy’s face, so was perfectly placed to see the big man’s fair skin flush a deep red.

‘Between 8.45pm and 6am,’ supplied Reynolds.

‘Bollocks!’ Priddy pushed his chair back from the staffroom table with a loud rasp.

‘We have a witness,’ said Marvel with a careless shrug.

‘Who? Where? They’re lying.’

‘No need to get agitated, Mr Priddy,’ said Marvel in a tone guaranteed to agitate.

‘Fuck off.’

‘Are you saying you weren’t there, Mr Priddy?’

‘Yes I am.’

Marvel raised his eyebrows in open disbelief. ‘Well, maybe they’re mistaken.’

‘Yes they bloody are. Or mischief-making.’