Darkside

Although Jonas also frequently offered to pick up bread or a newspaper for her, Mrs Paddon preferred to walk into the village, despite her eighty-nine years. She had an umbrella, after all – and a pair of stout waterproof boots.

She didn’t speak to Jonas much, but she loved him dearly. Always had – from the day Cath and Des had brought him home from the hospital, all red and screwed up. Although the walls between Rose and Honeysuckle were thick and stone, she’d sometimes been able to hear him bawling, and whenever she did, she’d hold her breath until it stopped and she was sure that Cath had gone to him. Sometimes she lay awake wondering what she would do if little Jonas’s crying had ever gone unchecked, and in her sillier meanderings had imagined having to rescue him and bring him back to her bed to snuggle like a little kitten.

She smiled faintly now at the memory – and at the anomalous thought of that tiny baby and the tall man below.

Every now and then Jonas would straighten up and stare across the coombe. She wondered why. Could he see something suspicious? She looked herself, but things were as they always were – the rolling moor and the other side of the village nestling at its foot, all coated in virginal white that made her eyes ache.

Terrible thing, these murders. She’d known Yvonne Marsh by sight, but Margaret Priddy and she had been friends – even though Mrs Paddon disagreed with hunting. Disagreed so strongly, in fact, that sometimes she’d pull on her waterproof boots, walk up to the common with a thermos of tea and a small wooden sign, and join the saboteurs. She’d made the sign herself: Foxes are people too. The young sabs with their woollen hats and their nose rings always made her welcome, and whenever Margaret rode past she’d wave hello with her sign and they’d chat for a bit. The first time it had happened, a sab had rushed over and called Margaret a ‘fucking bitch’ and Mrs Paddon had smacked him with her sign. Not too hard – but hard enough to make them all laugh. She hadn’t driven an ambulance through the war so people could behave like that.

Ah yes, sabbing was a good day out.

Poor Margaret.

She had heard all the details in Mr Jacoby’s shop. The pillow on the face. The body in the stream, the lack of fingerprints. Gloves, Mr Jacoby said knowingly, and she thought of the films of her youth, where the goodies wore brown-leather gloves for driving, while the baddies wore black ones for killing. Gloves made the whole thing more Hollywood. She supposed she should be frightened by two murders in a week, but couldn’t find fear inside herself. She’d been in the East End during the Blitz and had expected to die every day. Being murdered now seemed ridiculously unlikely. She felt safe in her home, and even safer because Jonas and Lucy lived next door.

She tapped on the window and waved her thanks at Jonas, then decided, despite the snow, to make the most of her clear path and go and fetch a few bits from Mr Jacoby’s. Maybe pop into the Red Lion for a sherry on the way home.

‘It’s all go,’ she told herself wryly, and went to get her brolly from the airing cupboard.

Every now and then Jonas would stop scraping at the slate and look across the tall hedge in the direction of Ronnie Trewell’s house. He couldn’t see it at all from the front gardens, but he still felt compelled to keep an eye on the moorland above it in case he saw anyone there. He thought again of Ronnie and Dougie with the dog. Whichever way he came at it, he couldn’t see either of them writing the notes. Clive Trewell was the more obvious suspect. But Jonas had a lingering memory of Clive Trewell once picking him off the pavement after a spectacularly ill-judged wheelie had left him flat on his back outside the Red Lion, with a BMX bike on his chest.

The memory absolved Clive Trewell in Jonas’s eyes.

There were a dozen homes within a hundred yards of the stile, and the moor was open to all. Anyone could have stood where he’d stood; anyone could have seen him in the bath.

Anyone.

This morning, for the first time in his life, he’d pulled the blind down while showering.

Just after Mrs Paddon waved, Lucy knocked on the front window and mimed a cup of tea at him, but he was already late, so he tapped his watch at her. She blew him a kiss instead and he grinned and blushed – too embarrassed to blow one back in front of Mrs Paddon, even though he knew that was ridiculous. But she’d known him as a child, and that made all the difference.

He turned as a car pulled up with a slushy squeak outside the front gate.

Marvel.

Jonas’s heart sank. Something told him Marvel hadn’t stopped by to give him a lift to Margaret Priddy’s doorstep.