Darkside (5 page)

Mr Jacoby's shop had become a Spar; Mr Randall's son Neil had left his right leg beside an army checkpoint in Iraq, and the bones of poor Mrs Peters' lost son had been found at last up on the moor. The consequences would have been imperceptible to anyone but a local. When he'd first come back after the death of his parents, Jonas had noticed that everything in Mr Jacoby's shop had a price label on it now, so Mr Jacoby's eidetic recall was surplus to requirements - which made Mr Jacoby sort of surplus to requirements too; that Neil
Randall was getting drunker and more bloated by the day, so that his woven way home along narrow pavements on his poorly fitted prosthetic was becoming a hazard to traffic; and that Mrs Peters no longer stood at her window waiting for Billy to come back.

A stranger wouldn't have understood.

But Jonas did.

While never wondering why he was so blessed - or cursed - Jonas understood how almost everything important happens underneath, and away from public view - that signage and medals and headlines are just the tip of the village iceberg, and that real life is shaped long before and far below the surface in the blue-black depths of the community ocean.

Linda Cobb complained about the boys getting under the tape and banging on Margaret's door and windows. Jonas said he'd have a word.

A little way up, Mrs Peters opened her door. 'What's happening with Margaret?' He told her what he'd been telling people all day.

'And what are
you
doing?' she asked bluntly.

'Nothing,' he said, and when Mrs Peters cocked her grey head and peered up at him intently, he hurried on: 'I mean, they're the experts in this sort of crime.'

She eyed him for a disbelieving second, then snorted.

Jonas got a sudden uneasy flash of the day her son had disappeared. Jonas had been at school with Billy. In the not-quite-dark summer evening he and his friends had buzzed with the sick thrill of a boy gone missing. For a short while they had roamed the streets, made adult and brash by the self-proclaimed tag of 'search party'. Then later, when he was alone, there had been the more sobering - more
real -
sight of torches on the moor and lazy blue lights pulsing past the windows, until his mother came into his room, yanked his
curtains together, and told him if she had to come in one more time, then his behind would be the first to know about it. He remembered lying in the dark afterwards, sure of what must have happened to Mrs Peters' little boy, and fearing it would happen to him too ...

'They'll catch him, Mrs Peters,' he said now, and tried to put as much feeling into it as he could. More than anyone in Shipcott, she deserved to be reassured that she was safe - that her family was safe.

She didn't look reassured. 'Poor Margaret,' she said by way of goodbye. Then she turned into the house and closed the door.

He really should be doing something. Or at least come up with a better answer than 'nothing' the next time somebody asked him. He hadn't realized how bad it sounded until he said it out loud.

Up ahead he saw the milk float bump on to the pavement ...

Will Bishop told Jonas that he'd been paid a month in advance.

'But there's nobody there, Will.'

'Yur, but her's paid me to provide a service, see. Can't just take the money and then stop doing the job just on account of Mrs Priddy being dead, can I?'

Jonas knew that the 'her' who had paid Will Bishop was Peter Priddy. Older locals still blurred their genders that way. He looked at the milkman. He was seventy if he was a day. Whip-thin, weathered, and as crumpled as a brown paper bag. Been delivering milk on this part of the moor seven days a week for over fifty years.

Jonas admired his devotion to duty but he also knew that the logical option - halting the deliveries and giving Peter
Priddy his money back - had not even crossed Will Bishop's mind. If there was a tighter fist on Exmoor, Jonas would not have liked to have felt its grip. Had Margaret Priddy's house been picked up and swept away by a twister, Will Bishop would have continued to place a pint on the lonely doorstep every day until he'd discharged his duty. And the very day the bill was overdue, he'd have left a note instead:
Pay yor bill or I will see you in cort
, or
Pay yor milkman or pay the consuquenses
. Jonas and Lucy had had such a note themselves which read:
Milk bill dew. Pay up OR ELSE
.

Jonas hated to pull rank, but ... 'You're not supposed to cross the police tapes, Will. It's a crime scene.'

Will looked up at him witheringly with his small, bright-blue eyes: 'I seen them roller-skate boys bang on the door plenty.'

'I know, but they don't leave a pint of milk there as proof that they've been.' Jonas sighed. '
I
don't mind. I know it's harmless. But Taunton is handling the investigation now and they
will
mind.'

Will waved a hand of dismissal and hopped back into his float. 'Let 'em sue me then! I'll see 'em in court!'

His getaway was slow and electric, but Jonas still felt as if he'd been left eating the milkman's dust.

*

The CSIs had finished with Margaret Priddy's home and so, in the absence of a local police station - and with the stables too far from the village to make an effective base - Marvel had arranged to meet her son there. Once foul play was confirmed, he'd be able to call in a mobile incident room and work from that.

In any case, Marvel liked to question suspects or would-be
suspects at the scene of the crime whenever possible. He had seen too many guilty men crack under the weight of memory to discount it as an investigative tool. So he got Reynolds to tell Priddy to meet them outside, and then Marvel led them into the kitchen.

Peter Priddy was a tall, broad man, but with the unfortunate face of a toddler. His cheeks were too rosy, his chin too pudgy, his eyes too blue and his hair too wispy-yellow to fake adulthood, even when perched atop such a frame. But Marvel noted that the man's hand engulfed his own when he shook it. He also noted the shiny black work-shoes that spoke of a uniform in another context.

'Prison officer,' said Priddy when he enquired. 'At Longmoor.'

'Interesting,' said Marvel, which was what he always said when he had no interest.

Priddy spoke slowly and carefully and in the country twang Marvel hated so much. He made tea - thick and milky - and then searched pointlessly through the cluttered kitchen cupboards for a packet of Jaffa Cakes he claimed to have brought on his last visit, while Marvel and Reynolds sat at the table.

'Not real ones,' Priddy added hastily, to allay any soaring expectations. 'Spar ones. Copies.'

'Generic,' supplied Reynolds helpfully and Marvel frowned; Reynolds couldn't bear to hide his education - even when it came to biscuits.

'Please don't trouble yourself,' said Marvel formally, but Priddy got on his haunches in case someone had hidden them behind the bleach under the kitchen sink.

'I know they're by here somewhere. I brought them myself and Mum weren't a big biscuit person.'

'Could she eat anything? With her injury?'

'Only all mushed up.'

Reynolds grimaced at the idea.

'Was that the last time you saw your mother?' asked Marvel.

'Yes.'

'How long ago was that?'

'Errrrr ... About two weeks.' He straightened up and stared at the door of the refrigerator. 'This is daft.'

'I understand she was unable to speak?'

'That's true,' said Priddy with his head in another cupboard, 'but she could blink and smile and so forth. I'll bet them fucking nurses have had them.' He slammed the door.

Marvel and Reynolds exchanged brief looks. For the first time since they'd arrived, Peter Priddy looked at them properly. He sighed, leaned on the kitchen counter and threw his hands briefly in the air in anger. 'Have you seen the size of them? Them nurses? I'm amazed there's a bloody thing left in these cupboards.' Then his big baby-face screwed up and he let out a single bubbly sob.

'Sorry,' he added and blew his nose into a crumpled handkerchief.

Marvel hated shows of emotion and ignored them whenever possible. 'Is anything missing from the house?'

Priddy looked confused. 'Not that I've noticed. They wouldn't let me upstairs.'

Reynolds looked sympathetic. 'We can assign you a family liaison officer, Mr Priddy. They'd keep you informed of the progress of the investigation.'

Priddy shook his big baby-head and stared at the new contents of his handkerchief before stuffing it back into his pocket.

'Who paid for your mother's care, Mr Priddy?'

'She did. She had savings.'

'What's that cost nowadays?' said Marvel, turning to
Reynolds as if he would know. 'Five hundred, six hundred quid a week? Savings don't last long at that rate.'

'More like seven hundred,' supplied Priddy with a grimace. 'She had my dad's pension too, but it weren't going to last for ever.'

'No. Precisely. And what would have happened then?'

Priddy sighed and shrugged. 'Would have had to sell up and go into a home, I suppose. On benefits.'

'Once she'd spent all her savings?'

'Yes.'

'All your inheritance.'

'That's the way it goes nowadays,' said Priddy with a long-suffering air. 'She would have wanted to stay here though. That's why I got the nurses. I'm glad in a way that she died here and never had to go into some shitty nursing home.'

'Oh yes. Much better she die in her own bed, hey?'

Marvel watched for his response but the barb was lost; Priddy was staring at curling photos stuck on the fridge. Horses mostly, several with Margaret on them. One of a chubby child in a Batman T-shirt.

'Did you ever get the feeling that your mother was in danger, Mr Priddy?'

'No,' said Priddy, returning his attention to Marvel. 'Who from?'

'One of the nurses perhaps?'

Priddy shook his head, surprised. 'I don't think so. Why?'

'Anyone else?'

'Like who?'

'
You
tell
me
like who,' Marvel said - and the words hung between them, their slightly harder tone changing the very air in the room.

Peter Priddy's gaze hardened. 'Not like me,' he said very slowly.

Marvel shrugged, his eyes never leaving Priddy's. 'All that money pouring out every week.
Your
money, really ...'

'That's sick.'

'People
are
sick,' said Marvel sharply. 'Most people are murdered by someone they know. Someone they love. I'm just asking.'

'And I'm just telling you,' said Priddy stiffly.

'Well,' said Marvel, pushing himself off the chair with the help of a heavy hand on the kitchen table, 'thank you, Mr Priddy.'

Silence.

Reynolds flipped his notebook shut and looked uncomfortable.

'We'll be in touch,' added Marvel as he started towards the front door.

The big man watched them leave with contempt in his baby-blue eyes.

At the front door Reynolds turned back. 'Thanks for the tea, Mr Priddy,' he said.

Priddy snorted as he swung the door closed. 'I can't believe I was trying to find the Jaffa Cakes for you.'

They walked to the car.

'That went well,' said Reynolds.

'Shut up,' said Marvel.

*

At the shop Jonas bought a Mars Bar and peeled the price off a can of pineapple chunks so that Mr Jacoby could exercise his dormant talent and tell him they were 44p.

He came outside and saw a slip of paper under the windscreen wiper of his Land Rover. This was how a village worked - gossip over garden fences, Chinese whispers from
the postman or the milkman, idle chats with Mr Jacoby or Graham Nash in the Red Lion - and these little flyers. They were run off on home PCs and displayed a wild variety of grammatical competence while offering a wide range of content: Young Farmers' Club discos, car-boot sales, the Winsford Woodbees doing
South Pacific
, cats lost and umbrellas found. He slid the flyer from under the wiper and got into the car, which was still warm because he'd left the engine running. He knew it was against the rules but this wasn't Bristol; this was Shipcott, where he knew all by sight and most by name; nobody was going to steal his car except possibly Ronnie Trewell, and if Ronnie stole it, Jonas would know where to find it, so that wasn't so much stealing as it was borrowing really, when you thought about it.

Jonas unfolded the flyer, expecting to crumple it immediately and throw it in the plastic Spar bag he kept for litter.

Instead he felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach.