Darkside

Staff rushed in, shouting and demanding a halt, but it was only when Mrs Betty Tithecott started a high, papery screaming and began pointing that they finally ended the shoving match and looked around, dishevelled and breathless.

Half wrapped in thick cloth – and stuffed between the now-displaced piano and the low wall of the garden room – was the body of Gary Liss.

* * *

Marvel was falling apart.

Reynolds had always known he would, but now that it was actually happening, the experience was more disconcerting than he’d expected it to be.

Even before their prime suspect had been found wrapped up like cod and chips and stuffed behind a piano, Marvel had been on a slippery slope. He’d seen Marvel’s hands shaking while they examined the Sunset Lodge bodies and bedrooms. Then there’d been the crying at the press conference. Reynolds had seen the shine in his eyes, and the light had had nothing to do with it.

And losing it with Jonas Holly like something out of The Sweeney.

It wasn’t shock and it wasn’t because Marvel cared so much.

He knew Marvel was off the wagon. Even though it was a wagon he’d only ever been hitched to, never really on. It didn’t take a genius to work it out when Marvel emerged from his cottage every morning smelling of booze and mint and covered in cat hair. Although if it had taken a genius, Reynolds liked to think he’d have been up to the task.

In Reynolds’s opinion – which was far from humble – Marvel had made some damaging decisions in this investigation.

Prime among these was his move from the occasional pint after work to the harder liquor when he was alone. Or with Joy Springer because, in Reynolds’s view, that was only being alone with somebody else in the room.

Another was his failure to use Jonas Holly.

In their business they relied on local plods like Jonas, and he and Marvel had done so in several investigations over the past year. Of course, Marvel always liked to show the locals right up front who was going to be boss. Rude, bullying, bulldozing – those were apparently Marvel’s guidelines for what he sarcastically called ‘First Contact’, as if local beat officers were some alien race whose sole purpose was to be subdued and bent to his will.

Something must have happened off-screen, as they said in the movies. One day Marvel had been merely rude to Jonas, the next Jonas was standing on a doorstep like an oversized garden gnome. If Marvel had employed a ducking stool he could hardly have humiliated the man more effectively.

Reynolds felt Jonas’s pain. Two cases back Marvel had been such a shit – and Reynolds had had to do so much damage control among the local constabulary – that his precious hair had fallen out in handfuls. Every night he had watched it swirling down the shower drain along with his self-esteem. He remembered vividly the rush of pure fury that had overtaken him as he watched it disappear. How he’d vowed to get revenge on Marvel, like some mythic hero in a Sergio Leone film.

Good old Sergio – he knew a dish served cold when he saw one.

And the dish Reynolds was preparing for Marvel was very cold indeed.

* * *

Jonas told Lucy about the notes. Now that he’d told Marvel he knew she’d hear about them sooner or later, and when she asked about the cut on his lip the moment he walked into the room, he couldn’t think of anything fast enough to divert her from the truth of what had happened and why. The only thing he didn’t say was that he had found the last note on their garden gate. He told her that one had also been under the wiper of the Land Rover. It was a small distinction, but Lucy was alone all day, and unwell; the last thing he needed was for her to feel even more nervous about the murders.

Everything he’d feared the notes might do to her, they did.

He saw the fear flash across her face, and then her concern was all for him, and Jonas watched miserably as the two emotions etched lines in her face that he’d never seen before. Jonas promised her he would be careful, promised not to take any risks – but those lines were there to stay.

Finally he told her that he’d informed Marvel – more to reassure her that he had police back-up than anything else.

‘What did he say?’ she demanded – at the same moment that Jonas realized he should have kept his mouth shut.

He was a lousy liar, so he told her the truth.

She was furious. He had to take the phone away from her to stop her calling 999.

‘It was an assault!’ she yelled.

‘It was just a bit of shoving. It was a disagreement, that’s all.’

Lucy shot him a fiery look that he hadn’t seen for ages. It reminded him of her soccer days, and he smiled, which only made her more furious.

‘It’s not funny, Jonas!’

‘No, it’s not,’ he agreed hastily. ‘You’re right.’

She gave him a circumspect stare that meant she knew he was placating her, but then allowed herself to feel a little placated anyway; she didn’t have the strength left to keep being angry.

‘I’d like to kick his arse,’ she told him seriously.

‘Me too,’ he sighed.