Darkside (23 page)

Jonas Holly had done a good job. Dully Marvel recognized that he'd done a similarly good job in most respects at the scene of Margaret Priddy's murder, for which he'd received no credit. Ah well, life wasn't fair.

The young constable had written everything in his notebook and kept referring to it for much longer than seemed necessary - kept staring at the pages as if he'd lost his place. At one point Marvel had become impatient and nearly snatched the notebook from him, but then he'd seen the man's Adam's apple working in his throat, and he'd given him the extra time he'd apparently needed to be able to speak without his voice breaking into a million pieces.

He felt close himself. Close to tears. He had never cried on a job - never even felt his bottom lip wobble in time to the grief around him.

But this ...

This was ...

Just.

Tragic.

The old people, helpless in their beds, their spectacles and teeth on their nightstands.

He remembered Lionel Chard, peering at the TV.

Countdown
.

Big ears.

He wanted to punch a hole in Gary Liss's face with his bare hands. The nurse had disappeared. Never come down from wreaking havoc on the first floor. It all made sense now. It always did when it was far too late. No doubt when they caught Liss he would have some ridiculous reason why he had not returned to the kitchen after going upstairs in response to an alarm. Tell them that he'd found the bodies and lost his mind, or pursued the killer across the moors at great personal risk, or checked on Violet Eaves and then remembered he'd left the gas on at home ... Madmen were only clever in the movies; in real life they were mostly just mad - and it was usually only the inability of the sane to recognize the depth of that madness which allowed them to prosper even
temporarily. Sometimes Marvel felt that being psychotic would be a great asset to a homicide detective; that possibly the Force should leave room for manoeuvre in its recruitment criteria.

'We should've arrested the bastard.'

'We couldn't have held him for long, sir,' Reynolds said. It wasn't his style to make Marvel feel better about things, but that was the truth.

'I don't fucking care. The sonofabitch as good as said he'd killed Margaret Priddy, and we should have taken him in right there and then and made his life hell for forty-eight hours. Maybe we wouldn't be standing here now. Maybe these three would still be alive.'

Reynolds said nothing, because he felt the same gnawing guilt that they had dismissed Gary Liss as merely a straight-talker, when now it looked as if he were more than that. A
lot
more than that.

He'd have to be a psychopath
.

Yes, he would.

Marvel felt sick at the memory. They had left Gary Liss here. That meant they had left these poor people in the care of a serial killer. It was a miracle there were only three bodies, when you looked at it like that. Although he felt so far from a miracle right now that it would have taken Jesus Christ himself to come up the swirly stair carpet at Sunset Lodge and raise the victims from the dead before he'd be convinced of one.

'Should we call Gulliver, sir?' said Reynolds.

Kate Gulliver was a forensic psychologist based in Bristol and one of Marvel's least favourite people, right up there with Jos Reeves. He felt the little prick of anger at the implication that Reynolds thought he was out of his depth. Immediately after that, he realized that he
was
out of his depth - or at least
wading there fast. And refusing to consult Gulliver at this point would look territorial and negligent.

'You call her.' He nodded to Reynolds. He knew Reynolds would love that - and be good at it. Kate Gulliver was his kind of person - the young, bright, First-Class-Honours kind.

He was busy enough here.

He wished he could clear the entire home properly, but transporting twenty-two elderly and frail residents was easier said than done. When he'd suggested it, Rupert Cooke - who was wearing paisley pyjamas under his mackintosh, like someone from an episode of
Poirot
- had started to list what they'd need to take with them. Medications, walking sticks, Zimmer frames, wheelchairs, warm clothing, changes of underwear ... When he'd got to incontinence pads, Marvel had put up a hand to stop him and had asked for them all to be moved into the garden room until the CSIs could examine the first floor and establish points of entry and exit.

He asked Rupert Cooke for the use of his office and got Reynolds to clear the desk so he had somewhere to put his elbows.

Grey said they had not yet found the murder weapon but confirmed that as soon as it was light they'd be moving outside the house to the grounds and the graveyard and starting on a grid until reinforcements arrived. Marvel told him to take Singh to Liss's home in the meantime - just in case their man was stupid after all.

Then Dave Pollard lumbered in and said a local agency reporter had picked up the story from a loose-lipped control-room officer, and had already called him three times on her way to Shipcott. She had said something about getting there 'before the circus starts'. Which Pollard 'thought'
might
mean they were about to be besieged by the press. Marvel mentally rolled his eyes at Pollard's lack of imagination and had second
thoughts about putting him in charge now that this thing looked like going national, but was too busy to start redeploying staff at this stage.

At 6am he called Elizabeth Rice to check on the Marshes. He didn't want to start going after Liss if she told him both men had sneaked out in the night and come home covered in blood. He really hoped they had; everything would be so much easier. He held while she checked that they were still in bed. She said she had last checked on them at midnight and had personally locked the front and back doors and all the downstairs windows, and had kept the keys with her at all times.

'Why, sir?' she asked.

He told her there'd been three murders at Sunset Lodge, then the doorbell rang and Marvel heard the CSIs identifying themselves at the entrance. They had a huge job ahead of them.

'Shall I come up to help, sir?' said Rice hopefully.

Marvel thought of Reynolds's tipping-point theory. If it was true then nobody was off the hook quite yet.

'No,' he told her. 'You stay there.'

Downstairs, Jonas was sitting white-faced and dark-eyed in a chair with an undrunk cup of tea on his knee.

Around him the vast black windows of the garden room reflected the scene in all directions, making it seem that hundreds of people were standing around whispering, bending over each other; crying in relay in a cocktail party of mourning.

'You take sugar?' said Marvel.

Jonas raised his eyes slowly to Marvel's. 'What?'

'Do you take sugar?'

Jonas looked dully at his cup and shook his head. Marvel
picked the sugar bowl off a nearby tea trolley, put two heaped spoonfuls into Jonas's tea and stirred it briskly, slopping it into the saucer.

'Drink up,' he said.

Jonas did, wincing at the sweetness. Marvel pulled the piano stool away from the piano and sat down facing him.

'You know Gary Liss?'

'Not well, but yeah, I know him. He lives here, so I know him.'

'Tell me about him.'

Jonas stared down at his cup for a long moment. 'I can't believe he did this.'

Marvel spread his hands and said curtly, '
You
can't believe
anyone
did it - but there are three dead people upstairs and Liss has taken off. It doesn't look good.'

'I know,' said Jonas miserably.

'He ever been in trouble?'

'Not really. Once there were some things missing. From the residents' rooms. A few bits of jewellery, that kind of thing. I came round and spoke to staff members. There was no evidence even though I suspected it might be Gary, so it was more to let them know it had been noticed than anything else. It stopped. That was all.'

'Any items recovered?' asked Reynolds.

'Not to my knowledge.'

'Could've been Liss,' said Marvel. 'Petty crime leads to bigger things.'

'But not
this
,' said Jonas. 'I don't understand what's happening here. Why this is
happening
...' He stopped, realizing he sounded lost and feeble, and cleared his throat.

Marvel said, 'Grey and Singh are at Liss's house but it doesn't look as if he's been back home. You know where else he might be?'

'Paul's,' said Jonas, and then sat up quickly, clattering his cup and saucer on to the trolley. 'Shit. I have to tell Paul.'

'Who's Paul?'

'His partner.'

Marvel glanced at Reynolds. 'He told us he had a girlfriend.'

'He doesn't know you.' Jonas shrugged, getting up and picking up his helmet. 'Why would he tell you?'

Marvel felt a twinge of irritation. 'Hold on. I'll send a man with you. He could be harbouring Liss.'

But Jonas was impatient. 'He lives in Withypool. I can't see how Gary would have got there by now, sir. Not in this snow, and his car's still out the back. I don't want Paul to hear it through the grapevine.' He lowered his voice. 'Mr Cooke's wife is Dr Dennis's receptionist and she's best friends with Lisa Tanner who lives next door to Paul. She'll tell him if I don't get there first.' Jonas hesitated, then remembered that he was supposed to be on doorstep duty. 'If that's all right with you, sir?'

Marvel nodded curtly. 'Come to the unit afterwards. I'll need you on other things now.'

'Yes, sir,' said Jonas. 'Will you be treating Gary as a suspect? Just want to know how to handle Paul.'

'Bloody right!' said Marvel. 'The
only
bloody suspect.'

Jonas nodded neutrally.

'Get a picture of Liss,' Marvel said as Jonas left, then added, 'preferably one where he's not wearing leather shorts.'

Reynolds and Marvel sat for a minute in the soporific heat of the garden room. God knew what it was like in the summer. Reynolds wrinkled his nose. The room was clean and tidy but it smelled of old things.

'Liss lied to us,' said Marvel.

'Only about his sexuality,' shrugged Reynolds. 'That's understandable in a small village.'

'Not in a fucking murder investigation, it's not.'

'Jonas seems to think it's beyond him,' said Reynolds cautiously.

'Bollocks to him. He's a boy scout.'

Several old ladies looked round at the language and Marvel lowered his voice. 'You think Liss
didn't
do it?'

'No, sir,' said Reynolds - and meant it. 'I was only keeping an open mind, that's all. As we haven't interviewed him yet.'

'Well when we have him behind bars, I'll keep an open mind too. Until then he's Jack the fucking Ripper in my book.'

One of the CSIs spoke from the door: 'We've got a trail.'

Reynolds got up, but Marvel didn't rise from the piano stool. Instead he pursed his lips and looked around at the remaining residents. They wept and held each other's hands - and stared into their own short futures with new fear.

'The old, the weak, the infirm,' he said in a low but harsh voice that Reynolds had to lean forward to hear ...

'This is not a killing - it's a cull.'

*

Jonas had no fear of going to Paul Angell's alone. He knew it wasn't Gary Liss. He couldn't have said
how
he knew it. It was the same way he knew it wasn't Peter Priddy, and the same way he'd known the identity of the body in the stream; the same way he knew that the killer of Margaret Priddy had also killed Yvonne Marsh. He
just felt
it.

Big deal, he berated himself under his breath, as he drove carefully through the snow to Withypool. He seemed to know an awful lot about who the killer
wasn't
. But he felt no closer
to understanding who the killer
was
. And although he hadn't been involved in the investigation, he also had a gut feeling that Marvel had no more insight than he did. The man had the look of someone who has just realized he has wandered off a true path and into quicksand. Something in Jonas enjoyed knowing that the abrasive Marvel was suffering.

They were all suffering.

Jonas found it hard to grasp what was happening to his village; to his friends and neighbours; to the very
life
he had always known.

He had already called Lucy from Sunset Lodge. Woken her up to ask if she had the knife with her, less than an hour since he'd taken so much care
not
to wake her as he slipped out of bed in response to the vibration of his phone. She had asked him to repeat the question, and said crossly, 'Wait a mo.' She had taken ages to groggily turn on the light and look for the knife, and, while she did, Jonas had the nutty idea that he should attach it to her with a piece of elastic the way surfers did with their boards. If an intruder broke in, she wouldn't be able to ask him to 'wait a mo' while she groped about on the bedside table for her only means of defence.

Finally she'd said, 'Yes, why?' still sounding irritated. He didn't blame her. Even without being woken in the early hours and ordered to seek out random cutlery, Lucy's moods could be erratic nowadays. Dr Wickramsinghe told them it was 'to be expected', but Jonas never quite
did
expect it.