Darkside

They talked to Lynne Twitchett for less than five minutes in the office. Her near-impenetrable Somerset accent made her sound like one of Marvel’s yokels, but even Reynolds felt it was less a misleading anomaly than the cherry on the top of her dubious intellect.

Marvel loved dumb people. If guilty, they either confessed or were so transparent in their lies that there was never any doubt about their culpability. Similarly, if they were innocent it shone through despite their nerves or their rambling or their accidental self-incriminatory statements. Dumb people were a breeze and Lynne Twitchett was right up there with the breeziest he’d encountered. Added to which, he had discounted her as a suspect the moment they saw her; the thought of Ms Twitchett tiptoeing unnoticed past Annette Rogers, or bounding gracefully on to the lean-to roof, was comical. Reynolds thanked her and released her back into the greenhouse, where she would no doubt grow even bigger on a mulch of the residents’ biscuits.

They found Gary Liss changing beds upstairs, where it was cooler and apparently empty of old folk.

Gary Liss was nothing like Marvel had imagined. He was a small and lithe thirty-five-year-old. He had dark hair, an olive complexion and narrow blue eyes. He looked like a circus acrobat who had been reassigned to bedpans and taken to them like a duck to water. He didn’t miss a beat while they talked, and his military bed-making was hypnotic to watch. Marvel and Reynolds followed him from room to room asking their questions, and Gary Liss stripped beds, bundled dirty sheets, shook out fresh ones and then wound mattresses in them as neat and as tight as if he was working in the gift-wrap department of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Marvel wondered how the hell the old folk managed to fight their way between the top and bottom sheets every night, and had a mental image of residents spending years shivering above the covers, too frail to gain entry to their own beds.

Despite the efficiency of recall that his phenomenal work-rate promised, Gary Liss was almost as useless as Lynne Twitchett when it came to the details leading up to Margaret Priddy’s death. He had been on the early shift before she was killed – seven in the morning until three in the afternoon – and had gone to the pictures that night.

‘Alone?’ said Marvel.

‘No,’ said Liss, then volunteered, ‘with my girlfriend.’

‘What did you see?’

‘Some old French crap at the art-house place.’

‘Not a film buff?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Not all that foreign bollocks.’

‘Can you remember the title?’ persisted Marvel – it was a fact that could be checked.

‘Mister Somebody’s Vacation, I think.’

‘National Lampoon?’ suggested Marvel.

‘Nah, something French.’

‘Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday?’

Trust Reynolds.

‘Yeah,’ said Liss. ‘Total junk.’

‘I agree,’ said Marvel, although he hadn’t seen it. It was just to piss Reynolds off. ‘Give me Will Smith any day.’

‘Exactly,’ said Liss, turning a sheet over a blanket and tucking it in ruthlessly. ‘I, Robot.’

‘How about Dune?’

‘Yeah. You a fan?’

‘No. You left a book at Margaret Priddy’s.’

Liss looked blank for a second, then smiled. ‘That’s where it is!’

‘How did you get into this line of work?’ Marvel asked Liss as they moved to the next room. The man was starting to interest him.

Liss shrugged. ‘I cared for my father while he died. Lost my job because of it, so when I started looking again, it was just something I knew I could do.’

‘What did you do before that?’

‘Nothing special. Factory work. Glad to lose it, the way things worked out.’

‘What did your father die of?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Lung cancer,’ said Liss without emotion. ‘And I didn’t help him along, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He winked at Reynolds, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

‘So how did you get on with Mrs Priddy?’ Marvel asked.

Liss looked a little confused by the sudden switch, but that was good – to catch them off balance …

‘Wasn’t much to get along with.’ He shrugged. ‘She couldn’t say anything or even let you know how she was feeling.’ He stopped bustling and stood still for the first time since they’d started talking to him. ‘It was fucking awful, ’scuse my French. I mean, the people in here, they’re old and lots are sick, but at least they can let you know what they want, but her …’ He picked a bundle of used sheets off the floor. ‘It was like she was already dead. If she hadn’t died I’d have left soon. Depressing.’

They followed him to the next bedroom.

‘You think maybe it was a mercy killing then?’ said Marvel carefully, but Liss was not fazed by the question.

‘Could be,’ he said and flapped open a new sheet.

‘You could understand something like that?’ Marvel asked.

Liss didn’t hesitate. ‘If she was my mother I’d have done it myself.’

Reynolds and Marvel didn’t speak for a long time as they drove back to the farm.

Reynolds broke the silence.

‘You think that was a confession? A kind of double bluff?’