Darkside_ A Novel Part 26

'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 hurting hurting so much!' she yelled at him - and started a new bout of hopeless crying. so much!' she yelled at him - and started a new bout of hopeless crying.

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 what what she did not say, but Jonas understood that, and hoped she knew that he did. she did not say, but Jonas understood that, and hoped she knew that he did.

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 underneath underneath was coming to the surface - however much he tried to keep it down. was coming to the surface - however much he tried to keep it down.

Tigger for Danny, Taffy for him. The slide of polished leather against his knees and the grip-and-release wonder of a whole beast held in his little-boy hands; the bunching and b.u.mping of muscles under his backside; watching Danny fly along beside him and hoping he looked as free as his best friend did; the eager little ears, between which he'd viewed his whole world. For a happy while.

Jonas remembered.

Although he'd spent a lifetime forgetting.

He remembered the heady smell of the coa.r.s.e mix and hay; the quiet sounds of hoofs brushing straw over concrete, and the velvet breath of Taffy's muzzle touching his hair, while all the time he was held down and ordered not to cry while unspeakable things were done to him.

Unspeakable.

He shuddered against Lucy's back.

'Jonas?'

But Danny had seen. Danny had known. Maybe Danny had even had the same thing happen to him him. He knew that must have been true, because even though they'd never spoken of it - because it was unspeakable - because it was unspeakable - Danny had done something about it. Danny had done something about it.

He'd burned the place down.

Now, here, twenty years later, Jonas's head pounded and he twitched, as he remembered like a dog.

Going down the row of smouldering stables, roofs caved in and doors thrown open for the ponies to escape. Someone had done that. Someone who loved them had thought of the ponies. But the ponies had not escaped. Terrified by the flames, the ponies had screamed and died in the fire, just as Robert Springer had. Seven sad carca.s.ses still in their boxes. Some so charred that only their legs protruded from a pile of ash, some barely damaged, killed by smoke had not escaped. Terrified by the flames, the ponies had screamed and died in the fire, just as Robert Springer had. Seven sad carca.s.ses still in their boxes. Some so charred that only their legs protruded from a pile of ash, some barely damaged, killed by smoke.

Tigger was half gone but Taffy was unmarked - collapsed against the back wall of his stable, with his legs tucked under his chest, his clever little head bowed gracefully, and his soft lips pressed against the concrete, as if he were lying in a summer meadow nibbling at daisies.

The eighth carca.s.s had already been taken away in an ambulance with a sheet over its blackened, grinning face.

The smell of death was overwhelming.

Turning to his friend through a blur of tears to find comfort in shared misery, Jonas had instead seen pale shock - and guilt.

'Why didn't they run away, Jonas? They should have run away!'

The ponies had died because of him. Because he was too weak to stop it.

Jonas started to shake.

'Sweetheart. What's wrong?'

'Danny Marsh is dead,' he told her bluntly.

And then - finally - he started to cry.

'I'm glad he's gone,' said Joy Springer. 'Good riddance to bad rubbish.'

Marvel was so surprised that he sloshed Cinzano on the kitchen table. The stuff wasn't so bad once you got a taste for it.

Joy sat on a kitchen chair, elbows on the table and her gla.s.s outstretched for a refill. The old woman's frizzy grey bun had escaped its grips and she looked like Albert Einstein on a bad-hair day.

'Why?' he said - and Marvel didn't often say that around Joy Springer. He'd soon learned in their almost nightly sessions not to use certain words. Why Why was high on the list, with its answering convolutions and explanations, although was high on the list, with its answering convolutions and explanations, although When When was the real killer, as it allowed Joy to ramble back over what felt like the last 150 years of her life - none of it of the slightest interest to Marvel. One night she had held him h.e.l.l-bound, running through the names of her friends from nursery school onwards. No stories, no descriptions, no insightful recollections or pivotal moments - just a litany of meaningless names like a bore of biblical begattings. was the real killer, as it allowed Joy to ramble back over what felt like the last 150 years of her life - none of it of the slightest interest to Marvel. One night she had held him h.e.l.l-bound, running through the names of her friends from nursery school onwards. No stories, no descriptions, no insightful recollections or pivotal moments - just a litany of meaningless names like a bore of biblical begattings.

'Nothing,' she said after a pause, and waggled her gla.s.s at him.

Marvel was instantly fascinated. All of a sudden here was something Joy Springer didn't didn't want to talk about. want to talk about.

'You knew Danny Marsh?'

'Years back.' She shrugged. 'Something be wrong with your arm, bay?'

But Marvel withheld the bottle and took a deep breath. 'When?'

The story Joy Springer told was a good one. Everyone has to have one one, Marvel reasoned, even if it was bulls.h.i.t.

It was a story of flames and smoke and panic and of murder murder, which the coroner had stupidly ruled misadventure, after hearing of how Robert Springer was both an ardent horseman and an ardent smoker - two hobbies that Marvel gathered should be kept apart, like wives and girlfriends.

Not only was the coroner a conspiratorial fool, but Danny Marsh was the killer, according to Joy Springer. She became loud and slurred about it without ever giving Marvel any real evidence, then lost her thread a bit and went off at a paranoid tangent that included the p.r.i.c.k of an executor, the lousy job a local builder had done on the stable conversions, and some idiot vet who said her cats needed worming.

After three more gla.s.ses of Cinzano, Joy Springer suddenly got up and wobbled across to the Welsh dresser. She opened a door on an avalanche of paperwork, old magazines, cards and photographs.

'Robert's things,' she mumbled. 'I don't like to throw them away. Memories.'

Marvel wondered again at the sheer tedium of those memories. Who the h.e.l.l would want to mull over them them?

Yet another tumbler allowed her to find what she was looking for, and she handed Marvel a photograph.

'Tha's Danny Marsh when her were a bay,' she slurred. 'Little sod would be in jail if in jail if your lot had done a proper job, not living here throwing it in my face!' your lot had done a proper job, not living here throwing it in my face!'

Although the photo was of two boys of about ten years old, Marvel recognized Danny immediately. The photo had been kept bright in the dresser, and Danny Marsh's brown hair had apparently been given the same cut its entire life - short back and sides. He didn't look like a little sod; he looked like a cheeky, happy kid, holding the reins of a s.h.a.ggy red pony. The photo had been taken at a show and both boys were in white shirts and Pony Club ties. The second boy was smaller and holding a brown pony with a red rosette fluttering from its bridle.

Marvel's fingers twitched as he recognized Jonas Holly. That wide brow, dark eyes and nose that was already too straight for its age. Only the mouth here was different, and Marvel realized it was because he'd never seen Jonas smile.

He thought instantly of the dead pony on the moor. Of the way Jonas Holly had been almost pathologically unwilling to touch it - had actually refused to take a leg and help pull the carca.s.s out of the road. And yet here he was with one arm thrown casually over the pony's neck, a hank of mane in his little hand, leaning into the animal like a friend. What did kids say nowadays? Best friend for ever. That's what the brown pony looked like it meant to Jonas.

What changed?

What changed in Jonas Holly to turn him from a boy who loved horses into a man who couldn't even bear to touch a dead one?

'Can I keep this?' he asked Joy Springer.

But he'd looked at the photo for so long that she'd fallen asleep and was snoring with her shiny-knuckled hand still around her empty gla.s.s.

From the shadows outside the kitchen window, Reynolds watched Marvel finish his drink, then 's.h.i.t' and 'f.u.c.k' his way across the icy cobbles to his room.

Elizabeth Rice had been too embarra.s.sed to ask Alan Marsh whether she could go through his dead son's clothing looking for a missing b.u.t.ton so that he could be more conclusively branded a killer. More conclusively than hanging himself and leaving a confessional note, she thought with no little irritation. But because that's what Marvel had ordered her to do by tomorrow, she was doing it now, at almost midnight, by torchlight and in secret.

While Alan Marsh was next door in a sleep induced by the local surfer-c.u.m-doctor and his magic needle, she crept into his dead son's room and started to do her duty.

Danny Marsh had been surprisingly neat for a young man who'd never been in the army. He didn't have many clothes. Maybe a dozen shirts and T-shirts, a winter jacket, a summer jacket, three or four pairs of jeans and a cheap black suit she remembered he'd worn at his mother's funeral.

All b.u.t.tons were present.

A pair of black Doc Martens with steel toecaps had matched the Polaroid of the dusty shoe-print that the CSI had taken off her window sill. Danny Marsh had pa.s.sed her silently in the night. Going out and coming in. Hadn't hurt her. Hadn't even woken her.

It didn't matter now.

She found a small stash of p.o.r.n under his shirts. Magazines on busty blondes and MILFs. Mild, really, by today's standards. Certainly milder than the stuff that Eric often failed to wipe clear of their computer's history.

She'd liked Danny Marsh. He was a good listener. When they'd been to the pub together that one time, he'd made her laugh. Rice sat down on the bed. It was still up against the window where Danny had pulled it so he could tie the sheet to it before jumping out.

That was where Alan Marsh found her fifteen minutes later when her loud sobs pulled him from his magic sleep.

He sat down beside her and took her hand in his and hushed her gently the way he always had Yvonne, whenever she remembered that she'd lost her mind. They sat there for a long time - the weeping police officer and the bereaved husband and father - their joined hands resting in her lap on a dog-eared copy of Big Jugs Big Jugs.

Three Days

Lucy Holly hated John Marvel, and it felt good.

She was so used to hating her hands, hating her legs, hating her memory, hating her disease, that to hate something external and tangible that might actually be able to give a s.h.i.t about her hatred was invigorating in a dour, angry way.

Jonas had told her that Marvel obviously thought he had been protecting Danny Marsh in some way; that Danny was the killer, and that that made Jonas somehow complicit in the murders. And he'd told her of Marvel's repet.i.tion of the words that had been contained in the first note.

Call yourself a policeman?

That b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

The thought of Jonas or or Danny being involved was laughable. Or would be if it were not potentially so serious. She thought Jonas was a little paranoid - that the idea of Marvel being involved in the crimes was also too far-fetched to be credible - but she hated Marvel anyway for taunting Jonas when he was obviously in shock, even if his words had been a lucky guess. Danny being involved was laughable. Or would be if it were not potentially so serious. She thought Jonas was a little paranoid - that the idea of Marvel being involved in the crimes was also too far-fetched to be credible - but she hated Marvel anyway for taunting Jonas when he was obviously in shock, even if his words had been a lucky guess.

Danny Marsh was dead. Lucy could hardly believe it herself. Danny, who worked shifts with his dad and Ronnie Trewell at the little tin garage A & D MARSH M MOTOR R REPAIRS. Danny, who was so nice that she could never understand why he hadn't been snapped up by some local girl.

Jonas had not elaborated on his childhood friendship with Danny, but she thought it must have been deeper than he'd ever said, given how distraught he had been over his death.

Once he had let go and started to cry, it had been difficult for him to stop.

I'm sorry, he'd kept saying, I'm sorry I'm sorry - as if he had done something terrible, instead of finally given in to understandable grief. - as if he had done something terrible, instead of finally given in to understandable grief.

Here over the remains of breakfast - eggsh.e.l.ls and crusts - Lucy felt her eyes heat up at the memory of her big, capable husband reduced to a weeping, foetal ball in her arms.

That b.a.s.t.a.r.d! b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

Jonas had left already - ever the professional, even when other professionals were acting like p.r.i.c.ks around him. He hadn't had a day off since this all started. On an uncommon whim she called him.

I love you, she wanted to say. Just for the h.e.l.l of it.

But the phone just rang and rang.

Marvel would have to pa.s.s the cottage to get to the village from Springer Farm.

Before she had really thought about it, Lucy had seized her sticks, stamped her feet into her wellies and was out of the front door.

Jonas drove through Shipcott without stopping. He pa.s.sed the mobile police unit and Danny Marsh's house without looking at either.

His head was so profoundly numb that his thoughts were only wisps and fragments, like a blizzard on his tongue. Nothing was sticking - except for the weird feeling that with the snow, the white sky and this blankness of mind, he was moving slowly through the tunnel of light that leads to death.

At the brow of the steep slope leading down into Withypool, Jonas stamped on the brakes and the Land Rover slid to a halt. He got out and locked the door.