Darkside

Because once Marvel pointed out the bruises to Reynolds, Jonas knew that the man who had killed Margaret Priddy had also killed Yvonne Marsh. Knew it in his gut.

More easily, too, he imagined. Jonas would bet good money that the killer had not had to break into the Marsh home to find his second victim. No doubt Yvonne had just wandered out into the confused night of her mind to go to the shops, or to pick little Danny up from school, or to find her sandals in the lake.

Instead she had found her killer, or he had found her.

And Jonas had failed again.

‘’Vonne!’ He heard a jolting, whimpering sound and looked up to see Alan Marsh running awkwardly across the playing field in the oily blue overalls and steel toecaps he wore to work. The man’s usually dour face was twisted open by emotion. Twenty yards behind him was his son, barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, careless of the cold – and the Reverend Chard, too tubby to travel at more than a brisk walk.

Grey tried to stop Alan Marsh from just rushing the scene, but the older man ran past him as if he wasn’t there, and fell to his knees beside his dead wife.

Jonas expected tears and wailing, but Alan Marsh calmed right down when he saw his worst fears confirmed. He didn’t even touch the body – just knelt and looked at it and shook his head. Danny allowed himself to be slowed by Grey, and then stood with his hand on his father’s shoulder.

Jonas wished he had his trousers on, but this wasn’t about him. Holding the blanket around his hips like a sarong, he went over to the tableau of sorrow and stood in Danny’s eye-line.

‘I’m sorry, Danny. Mr Marsh.’

Danny looked at Jonas, dazed. ‘What happened?’

‘We’re not sure yet. I found her in the stream.’

‘She drowned?’

Jonas ignored Marvel’s unnecessary warning look. ‘We don’t know yet. I tried CPR but I think she’d been in the water a while. Hours, maybe.’

Danny nodded and bit his lip until he could speak again. ‘We didn’t even know she were gone. Not until we heard the ambulance.’

Jonas nodded.

‘You can’t watch her all the time,’ said Danny dully.

‘I know,’ said Jonas. ‘I know.’

He saw the tears gather in his former friend’s eyes and looked away.

‘You can’t watch her all the fucking time!’ Danny shouted suddenly. ‘Every fucking DAY!’

Jonas touched Danny’s shoulder. His hand was knocked away but he put it back and this time Danny let it stay. He led Danny away from the crowd and towards the stream. The two of them stood and stared across the singing water at the white-frosted moor. Jonas didn’t look at Danny as he cried. There was very little sound from behind them, considering the whole village was just a hundred yards away. The morning was still beautiful – facing this way, at least – and Jonas was seized with a sudden notion to take Danny by the arm and lead him through the stream and up on to the moorland opposite and just keep walking, leaving everything behind them and never looking back to see the horror of reality.

He didn’t, of course, but he could taste in his mouth what it would be like to do it.

Finally Danny spoke softly.

‘She hated being that way.’

Jonas nodded.

‘You remember what she was like?’

‘Of course,’ said Jonas and Danny sighed.

‘Sometimes she remembered. How she’d been. That was the worst part, you know? Not her going nuts, but her knowing that she was going nuts.’

Jonas nodded. He understood.

‘At least that’s over now,’ Danny said, and turned back towards the surreal scene of his mother lying dead near the corner flag while the whole village watched silently from the far touchline, as if they’d come to see a match and stayed to watch a murder. His father was in the back of the ambulance now, with the two paramedics fussing over him.

Jonas saw that someone had put a blanket over Mrs Marsh’s body and he was stupidly grateful, because it was a cold day, despite the sunshine.

Danny sniffed, sighed, and shook a B&H out of a crumpled pack he found in his jeans.

‘You all right, Jonas?’

Jonas glanced at him, perplexed. He was all right! He wasn’t the one whose dead mother had just been hauled out of a frozen stream like an Arctic seal. Why the hell would Danny ask him that?

He said nothing and Danny didn’t ask again.

Nearby a blackbird burst into song and Jonas allowed it to fill him up. With his back to the body there was nothing but beauty in the world.

Danny squinted as he blew the only cloud into the clear blue sky. ‘We should have a drink,’ he said.

‘Some time,’ said Jonas, and hoped Danny realized that that meant ‘never’.

Danny smoked half the cigarette and flicked the rest into the stream. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you soon, Jonas.’

Marvel watched Danny Marsh walk away from Jonas Holly and back to his father. Without averting his gaze, he spoke quietly to Reynolds, who stood beside him with that damned notebook open.

‘What’s the link?’

‘Pardon, sir?’

‘The link. Between Margaret Priddy and …’ He nodded at the corpse.

‘Yvonne Marsh.’