Darkside

Lucy was asleep in bed. She liked to make the effort to get upstairs even if he wasn’t there to help her. Sometimes she could crawl up quite fast; sometimes it took her half an hour. She’d taken to leaving a book halfway up the stairs so she could stop and rest without getting bored. The book there at the moment was a novel called Fate Dictates. Like his woolly thinking on the afterlife, Jonas was unsure about whether or not he believed in Fate. Who knew how life was going to work out? What weirdness was just around the corner? Could it be controlled? And if it could, would you want to control it?

He towelled his short, dark hair hard and fast and slid into bed beside Lucy before he could lose the wonderful warmth of the shower.

As he did, she stirred and rolled towards him.

‘Where were you?’ she murmured sleepily.

‘Wet and cold and not with you,’ he whispered, stroking her hair.

‘I’m glad you’re home.’ He could hear the lazy little smile in her voice and felt her hand sneak on to his hip. He smiled in the darkness at the way it made the night’s events disappear behind him as if they’d never been.

She lifted his hand and placed it over her small round breast.

‘I’m glad you’re home too,’ he said, and kissed her with intent for the first time in months. At the same time, he whispered into her mouth: ‘I’m sorry.’

Fifteen Days

Jonas walked down into the village at eight o’clock the next day feeling truly happy for the first time in many weeks.

The morning was so bright it hurt his eyes. The sky was already a pale Mediterranean blue, while the moor below it sparkled like quartz under a thick frost. Every breath he took was menthol in his nostrils. His work shoes were still soaked from the drama the night before, so he’d put his walking boots on, with three pairs of socks for warmth.

The fall-out from last night had been minimal. The Land Rover’s bull bars had protected the lights and bodywork, and he’d reported the dead horse to Eric Scott, the local park ranger, first thing this morning. Then he’d called Bob Coffin, the huntsman with the Blacklands Hunt, to tell him where he could find the carcass. His headache had gone so completely that Jonas could barely imagine what a headache felt like, and although Marvel had not exactly said he’d leave Peter Priddy alone, at least Jonas had raised the alibi with him as he’d promised he would.

Mostly, though, he felt better for having failed to take Marvel to the pub. It was a childish victory but a victory none the less. Of course, thanks to Marvel he now had all day to stand on the doorstep and savour it, while waiting for that wholly predictable killer to return like iron filings to the magnet of the crime scene.

Jonas smiled ruefully.

Oh well. At least it wasn’t raining.

The boys were skating as he came down the hill. In the quiet air he heard them before he saw them – a sound like little trains on short journeys, each ending with a clatter, a laugh, a sound of approval or a sharp expletive that floated faintly upward from the playing field. The ramp came into view below him. Three boys. Steven Lamb, Dougie Trewell and one of the Tithecott boys. Chris? Mark? He couldn’t tell from here.

Jonas stood and looked down on them for a moment, admiring their lazy grace – even all bundled up in their thick winter jackets, their motions were elegant. He’d seen plenty of bad skaters on that ramp since coming back to Shipcott – had taken Lalo Bryant and his broken ankle to hospital himself – but these three boys were good to watch, especially on a morning like this, where the white playing field around them was painted orange by the late-rising sun, and their tracks through the frost gave the scene a festive feel. The reminder of the Christmas just past made Jonas uneasy. The silence; the tight white face of Lucy’s mother bustling up and down stairs; the false smiles and season’s greetings, the unwrapped gifts under the unlit tree. Most of all, the sight of Lucy – wan and silent – in their bed, when she could just as easily have been dead. Before Christmas Day even dawned, Jonas had pushed the tree nose-first into the bin, lights, tinsel and all.

As he started to walk again, Jonas’s eye was caught by something yellow at the edge of the playing field. He backed up a couple of paces to regain the view through a gap in the hedge.

There was something in the stream that bordered the field close to the ramp. Probably a plastic bag, but Jonas’s gut stirred uneasily.

He hurried fifty yards down the hill to where the hedge was interrupted by a rusty five-bar gate, bent from the time Jack Biggins had roped a cow to it without using a baler-twine loop.

Now Jonas climbed those same bent bars until he’d gained another three feet to add to his existing six-four. From this height – and closer to the stream – he could see it was not a plastic bag.