Belinda Bauer - Darkside

Marvel liked a meek thief. He got out and went up the weed-strewn front path.

‘DCI Marvel,’ he said. ‘You Ronnie Trewell?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I haven’t done a thing. I spoke to your lot already. I haven’t done a thing. Is that a Zetec?’

Marvel was caught a little off-balance by the sudden change in direction. He glanced towards the Focus. ‘I haven’t come here to talk about cars, mate. Come about a murder.’

‘Yeah I know,’ shrugged Ronnie. ‘But I told the others about that already. Can I have a drive?’

As he spoke, he stepped off the porch and headed for the car. Marvel found himself in undignified pursuit.

‘No. Tell me where you were Saturday night.’

‘Here. Asleep. I said already. Just a quick one. You can come too. I’m not gonna nick a police car, am I? Not with you in it, anyway.’

‘Shut up about the fucking car, all right?’ Marvel was already starting to feel that he was wasting his time here. ‘You got any witnesses?’

‘Nope. Not an ST though, is it?’ said Ronnie with a little sneer in his voice as he peered through the window. Marvel didn’t give a shit what the Focus was or wasn’t, but that little sneer made him feel suddenly protective towards the pool car.

‘Goes well though,’ he said, feeling foolishly like he was seventeen again with his first learner motorbike – a 125cc Honda Benley with a hand-painted tank – trying to talk it up to the older, richer boys with their RD250s…

‘Yeah?’ said Ronnie. ‘Believe it when I see it.’

It nearly worked. For a second Marvel was all ready to jump behind the wheel and do a donut in the mud at the end of the lane beside the dirty little bungalow. Floor the accelerator and spray the kid with gravel. Maybe even let him feel the kick for himself…

‘Nice try, Ronnie,’ he said, not without a little respect.

Marvel opened the door of the Ford and thought he’d better go out on an authoritarian note. ‘Don’t go anywhere, all right?’

‘Where am I going to go?’ said Ronnie Trewell, with a shrug at the darkening moor around them. He seemed genuinely at a loss.

Marvel ignored the question and drove away.

Ronnie Trewell wasn’t the killer. He wasn’t… quite right .

The mobile incident room arrived and it was shit.

Just the way Marvel liked it.

There were soggy Polo mints in the desk, mud up the walls, two black bags filled with junk-food wrappers, and someone had used indelible green ink on the whiteboard and then what looked like some kind of wire brush to try to remove it.

Marvel felt himself relax into the squalor of the unit in a way he just couldn’t into the rusticity of Springer Farm. The rutted driveway, the mossy roofs, the smell of manure repelled him. But this squalor was different. He wanted the stained coffee pot, he liked the muddy lino, and the sour reek of the grubby little fridge was napalm in the morning to him.

Didn’t mean anyone else had to know that. ‘Clean this place up,’ he growled at Reynolds, who made a note in his book.

‘What are you writing?’ said Marvel irritably.

‘Sir?’

‘What are you writing in your little book? I said “Clean this place up.” Doesn’t need a fucking memo, does it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then clean this place up.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t let Rice do it.’

‘No, sir.’ Before Reynolds could ask why, when Rice was the only member of the team who might make a decent job of it, Marvel had trudged down the steps and slammed the door.

The unit was parked at the edge of the playing field alongside Margaret Priddy’s home. Nonetheless, Marvel drove the four hundred yards to the shop.

He asked for wellington boots but was told he’d have to go to Dulverton or to somewhere the large, docile man behind the counter called ‘the farm shop’ – the directions to which were so complex that Marvel stopped listening after the third dogleg.

‘You’re the chap in charge?’ asked the man, and Marvel nodded. ‘Any progress?’

‘Early days,’ said Marvel. It was all he ever said in response to inquiries by civilians – right up to the point where he stood in his funeral suit and only decent tie to hear the verdict of the jury. Before that, nothing was sure.

‘Poor Margaret,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Although it was a blessing really.’

‘Hmm,’ nodded Marvel, but was not sure he agreed.

Outside, he saw the small brown dog from next door to the Priddy home, and introduced himself to the owner, Mrs Cobb. He asked whether the dog had barked on the night of the murder and she said ‘No’ as if it was the first time it had occurred to her.

Typical, thought Marvel. The dog barks at me but not at the bloody killer.

He went back to the unit, where Reynolds had made a poor enough job of cleaning the unit to satisfy the most ardent slob. He was now standing by for plaudits, but Marvel merely glanced around and grunted, then answered his phone. Jos Reeves told him they had the hair matches. Two from Peter Priddy, two from Dr Mark Dennis, and one each from Gary Liss and Annette Rogers.

‘Nothing from Reynolds? He usually sheds like a fucking Retriever all over the scene.’

‘Nothing from Reynolds.’

‘You said there were seven.’

‘One unidentified,’ said Reeves.

Marvel accepted the news with grudging silence. ‘What about fibres?’

Reeves sighed. ‘Nothing of significance yet.’

‘Let me be the judge of that,’ snapped Marvel.

‘OK,’ said Reeves mildly and started to recite their results so far in a relentless monotone. ‘Carpet, white cotton, black cotton, blue cotton, red wool, blue wool—’

‘Email me,’ said Marvel and hung up.

Mike Foster and his enthusiasm for vomit proved to be the highlight of Jonas’s first few days on the doorstep. Linda Cobb brought him increasingly infrequent cups of tea and his novelty quickly wore off with the schoolchildren. None came out of their way to stare at him and whisper at each other now, and the few who passed gave him barely a glance. He had tried to maintain the illusion, even in his own head, that he might at some point spot the killer, but he really wasn’t even rooting for himself. He felt it was a pointless exercise and had no wish for Marvel to be proven right through some weird fluke, even if it did mean catching the perpetrator of a horrible crime.

No, that wasn’t true, thought Jonas, shamed. Catching the killer of Margaret Priddy would be worth any kind of humiliation. But he’d prefer it if they caught him another way – a way that wouldn’t give Marvel the option of an ‘I told you so.’

It was a long, cold day.

Jonas got home to find Lucy asleep on the couch with the phone in her hand and Rosemary’s Baby playing silently on the TV.

‘How are you, Lu?’ he asked softly as she stirred.

She blinked in confusion for a few seconds and Jonas watched recognition float back into her eyes.

‘My legs hurt,’ she said grumpily. ‘And Margaret Priddy’s son called you. He didn’t say why.’

She shifted up and he sat down and pulled her bare legs on to his lap, covering them up again with the brown tartan rug.

Jonas started to massage her calves.

‘Are you going to call him back?’ she said.

‘In a minute.’ He shrugged.

Onscreen Mia Farrow was over-acting at the sight of the devil-child she’d spawned.

‘Let’s have a baby,’ said Lucy.

He didn’t stop massaging her, but he also didn’t answer her. Or even turn his eyes from the TV.