Jonas had not been specific about the wording of the first two notes. He hadn’t wanted to say the word ‘crybaby’, so had been fuzzy about the first note too, for the sake of appearing consistent, even if it was only consistently stupid. But Marvel’s words had snapped everything back into sharp relief.
Why had he said it?
As sleet started to spit in Jonas’s face, his mind turned slow, gravity-free circles around Marvel, looking at him from new angles and with fresh eyes.
Marvel had never liked him. He wasn’t sure how, but he’d managed to piss the man off right from the start of this investigation.
Now he began to wonder why.
Even from his doorstep viewpoint, Jonas had the feeling that Marvel had been lost on the case, that he’d employed a scattergun approach to suspects, that there was no real sense of focus in his investigation.
The way he’d over-reacted to finding Jonas on the doorstep of Margaret Priddy’s told of a man who was floundering and insecure, and Jonas had thought he had smelled booze on the man’s breath. Or maybe just in his sweat.
When the alleged vomit had disappeared, Marvel had told him to do his
And now he’d repeated the first note almost word for word.
Had he seen it?
Had he
It sounded stupid, even inside the privacy of his own head, but did Marvel have some kind of
Jonas shuddered at the thought. He had Reynolds’s card still in his breast pocket. Would Reynolds be discreet if Jonas voiced his fears to him? He doubted it. Jonas had the impression that Reynolds did not like Marvel that much, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d take sides against him.
He looked up into the sleet to see that he was almost at his gate.
He needed to speak to Lucy. Lucy’s brain worked faster than his at the best of times, and right now
Lucy was on the living-room floor, weeping and gnarled up with pain and with an unopened bottle of pills beside her.
In an instant the black hole in Jonas’s head shrank to a pinprick and his heart exploded into his throat with fear.
He dropped to the carpet beside her and tried to gather her into his arms, but she tucked up and resisted.
Her head was hot with tears, but the rest of her was icy from being on the floor. The fire was long burned out and had turned to white ashes. Jonas got her tartan rug and wrapped it around her, then lay down behind her and wrapped his arms around
‘Did you take anything, Lu?’
‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No, I didn’t!’
He squeezed her into his chest. ‘I meant for the pain.’
‘If I had then it wouldn’t be
An hour later they were in the same position but on the bed, where Lucy had allowed herself to be carried.
The silence was complete – what isolation and winter had not dampered, the snow had shushed as it fell.
Jonas had given her three painkillers and the worst of it was over.
‘How do you feel?’ he whispered.
‘Better,’ she said. Better than
Jonas stared unblinkingly at the opposite wall of what he would always think of as his parents’ room.
‘Tell me about your night,’ she said, still with the weary trace of a sob in her voice.
She needed to forget her own. He knew that.
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
How could he tell her? He felt numb. He felt detached. He didn’t know any more where lines could be drawn between past and present, good and evil, right and wrong.
‘Jonas?’
Jonas felt it all starting to rise in him. Everything
Jonas remembered.
Although he’d spent a lifetime forgetting.