Darkside

The empty bottles on the table told their own story and as a prequel to that he had a hazy recollection of Joy Springer cackling while he told her an anecdote. He had several that he rolled out again and again and again in company – each time starting with ‘Reminds me of …’ As if he’d ever forgotten.

There was the story of Jason Harman, the Butcher of Bermondsey, who’d sliced up his wife and his mother-in-law and boiled their remains to soup on a two-ring hob; of Nance Locke, who’d murdered her three children by tying their hands and forcing their heads into a bucket of water one after the other; or of Ang Nu, who’d run as if guilty and then, when cornered, jumped from a bridge – not into the expected river, but on to the unfortunate spikes of the railings below. ‘One in his arse, one in his heart and one right through the eye socket,’ Marvel always finished with ghoulish glee. ‘The eyeball was sat on top of the spike like a cocktail onion on a stick.’

Of course, the older Marvel got, the fewer people had ever seen a cocktail onion on a stick and the less punch the image packed. Still, he enjoyed saying it, even if the denouement was always accompanied by the guilty nudge of the untold aftermath. That Ang Nu had been beaten up twice because of his immigrant status, spoke no English, and had probably been wholly unaware that the four burly men chasing him this time were police.

That would have spoiled the story.

Which would have been a shame, because Joy Springer had seemed to enjoy that one. Old enough to remember cocktail onions, for sure. No doubt if he’d had a story about a fondue-related crime, she’d have liked that too.

Joy had a few stories of her own, Marvel remembered dimly now with a grimace. A few too many and all against the same backdrop of Springer Farm: buying the place as newly-weds, individual horses and all their little horsey quirks, the seemingly endless years of trekking and local shows and children falling off and grockles getting trampled and the stables burning down and the cottages being built in their place … mercifully Marvel had been able to tune much of it out entirely. Until she’d got tearful. Then he’d had to re-focus and at least look as if he’d been listening all along. Really, the things you had to do to get a companionable drink around here.

She’d shown him a photo of her husband. Marvel turned his head now and could still see it on the table, propped up as if it had been watching him all night. Creepy. Her husband had been called Roy. Or Ralph. Something with an R.

Debbie used to say, ‘People get the face they deserve.’ Another of her hippy-dippy Sting-clinging homilies that made him want to smack her with her Amazonian rainstick. Annoyingly, though, Marvel had come to the grudging conclusion that she was generally right on this one. He’d banged up enough pinch-lipped, low-browed, boss-eyed criminals in his time to become receptive to the idea. Now he thought that if Something with an R had got the face he deserved then he probably should have been banged up too.

Not according to Joy Springer, he recalled vaguely. Apparently Something with an R had been descended from angels and had returned there ‘to sleep’ with them once his tortured life was at an end. Marvel tried to remember what had tortured him so badly – ill health or no money or just being so bloody ugly and married to Joy Springer – but he wasn’t sure she had told him. He did remember being surprised that the resilient old bird had got emotional about anything other than the fact that the Cinzano was finished. She didn’t seem the type.

Ah well, it was all a bit of a haze now.

Marvel rubbed his eyes and face. Reynolds would muster the troops; it wouldn’t be the first time. He got to his unsteady feet and saw the white outside. Snow making everything seem black and white, deep enough that he could not see the gravel of the courtyard, even through the footprints and the tyre tracks that indicated that Reynolds had mustered the troops, and that they had already left.

His phone rang and he found it under another cat on the corner of the table.

‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ said Jos Reeves, and from his tone Marvel could tell that he was even happy about the bad news, which immediately got under his skin.

‘Don’t fuck about, Reeves.’

‘All right,’ said Reeves, and then proceeded to fuck about. ‘The good news is there’s a forensic link between the two scenes.’

Marvel stayed silent, determined not to give Reeves the satisfaction of asking about the bad news, but his heart jerked anyway, as it always did when science put the seal on a suspect.

‘The bad news,’ said Reeves, in a voice that betrayed suppressed laughter, ‘is that it’s one of your own men.’

* * *

From her bedroom window, Mrs Paddon watched Jonas clear the snow off her path. His father used to do the same thing.