Darkside_ A Novel Part 23

'Hi,' said Steven, his eyes always fixed on the next lip, the next turn, the next swoop. His face was serene with the rhythm of it all.

Jonas watched the boy swing back and forth with complete grace - the slight bend of the knees before each ascent the only visible effort in near-perpetual motion.

He wished he didn't have to do this.

'How are you?' he asked.

'Fine, thanks,' said Steven.

'Just thought I'd ask. After the other day.' He thought again of Steven sinking to the ground beside the stream, his dark eyes huge in his white face.

Steven rolled to the lip of the pipe, was suspended there for a brief moment, straight-legged, defying gravity ... and then flicked his board round and pa.s.sed Jonas going the other way. Jonas noticed that his mouth had tightened, and that the lack of eye contact now looked more like avoidance.

'I know what happened to you, Steven,' he said quietly.

Although he'd never given any indication of it, Jonas knew that four years earlier, while trying to find the body of his missing Uncle Billy, Steven Lamb had almost died at the hands of a serial killer.

The boy didn't make the turn this time. He let his board carry him backwards down the ramp and halfway up the opposite side, before slowly putting a foot down and pushing off once more.

'Can we talk about it?'

Steven said nothing, his eyes fixed on the ramp, on the lip - but a new vertical frown-line had appeared between his brows.

'I need your help.'

Steven continued to skate, but his rhythm had gone. The skateboard barely reached the lip - or overshot and made him teeter - and his arms were working now instead of hanging loosely at his sides.

'I need to know ...' started Jonas. 'I need to know what to look for. I need to know what you see in the eyes of a killer.'

The skateboard clattered noisily and flipped over as Steven stepped off it and took a few faltering steps to stop himself falling. It slid back down the ramp towards him. He bent and picked it up angrily, and headed for his spade and anorak.

'Nothing,' he said, not looking at Jonas. He tugged the spade free of the snow, and slung it over his shoulder, yanking his anorak off the handle as he did so. Every jerky angle of his body screamed at Jonas that he wanted to be left alone.

But Jonas couldn't leave him alone. He spoke urgently to the boy. 'I know you don't want to remember it, Steven. I hate hate to ask you, believe me. But I to ask you, believe me. But I have have to know. Before he kills again, I to know. Before he kills again, I have to know have to know. Please!'

Steven made to go around him, and Jonas put out a hand to halt him, but the boy stopped before he could be touched. He looked away from Jonas, his chest heaving and his cheeks high with colour.

'Nothing!' he said with low vehemence. 'You see nothing.' nothing.'

Marvel and Reynolds sat side by side on a velveteen sofa so small that their thighs touched. Alan Marsh sat opposite in a matching easy chair.

Reynolds looked around the room.

The mantel held four or five sympathy cards and a couple of Christmas ones between family photos and a repeating motif of snub-nosed ceramic d.i.c.kensian boys, doing boy-stuff like whistling jauntily or selling newspapers. On the table there were more cards - opened but left in a pile. There was also an old photograph of Yvonne Marsh propped against a jumbled pile of clean laundry, like some kind of shrine to the memory of housework.

'So what was that all about the other day with Danny and Jonas Holly?' said Marvel, jerking his thumb randomly at the ugly striped wallpaper behind him.

Alan Marsh sighed and opened his hands in a 'beats me' gesture.

Elizabeth Rice had taken Danny Marsh to the pub. It wasn't difficult - she'd told them he had a little crush on her and she'd promised to buy.

Marvel said nothing further, allowing the aching silence slowly to reveal to Alan Marsh that this was not a social call.

'Well ...' the man started haltingly, then stopped. He was in overalls even though Rice had reported that he wasn't working. Apparently the habit was just too much to break while his mind was already distracted by the murder of his wife. He was wearing slippers rather than steel toe-caps though, Reynolds noticed - as if he'd remembered halfway through dressing that his wife was dead and he wasn't going to work after all.

Reynolds sighed and wondered why Marvel was going all round the houses before asking more relevant questions about Danny. It wasn't like him.

He wished he couldn't feel Marvel's hip against his.

'Them used to be friends. When 'em were nippers. Dunno what happened there ...'

He trailed off again.

Marvel realized he was going to have to tweeze information out of Alan Marsh like splinters. It was a job he hated. He preferred blunter tools.

'How old were they then?'

''Bout ten, I suppose.'

'Were they very close?'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, were they best friends?'

'I don't know,' said Alan a little dismissively. 'I was working mostly. Yvonne would know that.'

Yeah, but she's dead, Marvel felt like pointing out, but didn't. He could be pretty sensitive when he tried.

'Would they play here much?'

Again Alan Marsh made an all-purpose gesture of 'who knows?' 'It was a long time back,' he said. 'Seemed like it. Why do you want to know, anyway?'

Marvel hadn't expected the question and was annoyed that he hadn't antic.i.p.ated it. He bl.u.s.tered a little. 'We're always concerned when a serving officer gets into a public brawl, Mr Marsh. Aren't you?'

The man shrugged. 'Danny was mazed. And And he took the first swing.' he took the first swing.'

That was the countryside for you, Marvel supposed. In town, Jonas Holly would already have been suspended and have a lawsuit pending. Here the victim's own father father thought he deserved a good beating by the police. thought he deserved a good beating by the police.

Refreshing.

Reynolds sighed again and Marvel glared at him before turning back to Alan Marsh, who looked disinterested in life itself, let alone this particular conversation.

'Have you ever seen Officer Holly behave in that way before, Mr Marsh?'

'No, but I seen Danny Danny behave like that plenty!' behave like that plenty!'

'Well, he's just lost his mother in tragic circ.u.mstances.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to that,' said Marsh. 'Just the way he is. Has been for years.'

Marvel was surprised and looked it, so Alan Marsh went on.

'He'd bin under the doctor sometimes. Psychiatrist. You know.'

Marvel did know. His nose for motive started to quiver.

'What's wrong with him, Mr Marsh?'

'Not much. Just a bit here and there, you know. Not dangerous dangerous or nothing like that. Just a bit down sometimes, that's all.' or nothing like that. Just a bit down sometimes, that's all.'

'Depressed?'

'I suppose so. A bit down.'

'Has he ever been hospitalized for depression or something like that?'

'Oh, no,' said Alan Marsh definitely. 'He's not a nutter nutter, see? Just a bit up and then a bit down.'

'Manic depressive,' suggested Reynolds, who thought he'd have to get up and leave if Alan Marsh said 'a bit down' one more time.

'If that's what you call it.'

'Always?'

'Not always,' said Alan Marsh, looking as if he was thinking about it for the first time. 'Since he were about twelve or thirteen. About then.'

'And that's about the time he and Jonas fell out?' said Marvel, back on track.

'Suppose so.'

'Can you think of any specific reason?' said Marvel, without one single ounce of hope that Alan Marsh would.

'No.'

Of course he couldn't. That would be too b.l.o.o.d.y easy.

They left.

'What's this interest in Jonas, sir?'

Marvel clamped his teeth together. Trust Reynolds to leap to the right conclusion.

He thought his left little toe was getting damp - just on the short walk to the car! He'd have to throw these shoes away. Beyond the village the snow was a Christma.s.sy white blanket. Here it was just ridges of icy slush and running water. Wherever they went, whatever they did, they were accompanied by the gurgling of drains working overtime. At night it all froze again and made every step a hazard. d.a.m.n the doglegs that kept him from wellingtons and dry feet.

'He bothers me.'

Reynolds smiled. 'We like him him now, do we, sir?' now, do we, sir?'

Up until that very second, Marvel had only had a suspicion. A hunch. An intuitive feeling that all was not quite right quite right with Jonas Holly. with Jonas Holly.

But the moment Reynolds said that - that - in that amused, condescending tone - Marvel decided that he really in that amused, condescending tone - Marvel decided that he really did did like Holly after all. Liked him a like Holly after all. Liked him a lot lot.

And that he was right right.

And that he would do almost anything anything to prove Reynolds wrong. to prove Reynolds wrong.

It was over.

Danny Marsh knew it.

He'd known it the moment he'd run across the playing fields behind his father and seen his mother lying in the frost like a downed footballer waiting for a magic sponge or a stretcher.

Danny had known it was the beginning of the end for him; that he would never make it alone.

His mother had known him. One of only two people who did.

For years she had let him know - by her look, by her touch, by the stories she pointed out casually in newspapers - that she knew, and even understood. And although they'd never discussed it properly, knowing that had helped.

Boy, 15, Admits School Arson in Exam Dodge.

Choirboy Stabbed Paedo Priest 26 Times.

Murdered Pervert Preyed on Own Children!

She would toss down the newspaper beside him on the table and mutter darkly, 'Got what he he deserved!' or 'Poor boy. If only he'd told someone.' deserved!' or 'Poor boy. If only he'd told someone.'

Danny would say nothing. He had nothing he cared to tell. Just knowing she still loved him was enough. All through the bitter tears, the dark-tempered years and the razor-blade at the wrist, she loved him. While others started to walk away from him in the schoolyard, stopped pa.s.sing him the ball, whispered as he left a room ... Through all that, Yvonne Marsh had loved him like a big anchor on a small boat in a wild sea.

And then she'd started to just ... forget.

Forget that she loved him.

Forget that they shared a secret.

Forget even that she was his mother and he was her son.

It happened slowly and in patches, but it happened. And Danny found that he he was supposed to be the anchor now. Dressing her, feeding her, watching her, locking her in, following her out, fetching her back ... was supposed to be the anchor now. Dressing her, feeding her, watching her, locking her in, following her out, fetching her back ...

A boat is not an anchor. Yvonne Marsh was deep beneath the waves with a broken rope that swayed with the tides. Sometimes he could grasp that rope and feel the old tug of her. But, mostly, once his mother's mind was lost at sea, Danny Marsh was set adrift.

Even Jonas had let go of the line that had tethered him to the rest of the world.

Now, as Danny sat in the little room where he had grown up - where the back of the door still showed a faded poster of Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction Pulp Fiction - he thought about Jonas Holly. - he thought about Jonas Holly.