Belinda Bauer - Darkside

‘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.

Jonas stared at the words in dumb shock. It was so unexpected. The note was only pen on paper but contempt came off it like something sharp and physical. Whoever wrote it hated him.

Hated.

Him .

Jonas couldn’t think for a moment or two – just gripped the scrap of paper so tightly that his fingers went white at the tips, while his stomach clenched painfully.

Then he felt the heat of shame rise up his neck and into his ears.

Whoever had written this note was right. He was a policeman. The only policeman in Shipcott! And protecting people was his job – his whole reason for being. If he couldn’t protect people, he had no right to the title. The logical part of his brain started to complain that he could not have known that Margaret Priddy was in danger, but it was quickly smothered by the guilt. It didn’t matter. He should have known. Mrs Priddy was a member of his community; she was his responsibility. And yet someone had climbed through Mrs Priddy’s window and crammed a pillow on to her face and stolen her life from her, such as it was. He, Jonas Holly, was here to stop things like that happening. He’d failed, and she’d died – simple as that.

Jonas bit his lip. He looked around to see if anyone was watching him – maybe a clue as to who had written the note in this odd, spiky hand. His eyes scanned the empty street and darted from parked car to parked car, seeking a watchful silhouette or the sudden ducking motion that could denote culpability. Then his gaze flickered over the windows of the brightly painted cottages that crowded the narrow main street, waiting for a twitching net to give the guilty party away.

Nothing moved apart from Bill Beer’s fat border collie, Bongo, snuffling his way up towards the shop where he spent every day door-hanging for treats and gently removing sweets from the unwary hands of passing toddlers.

Jonas felt like a stranger in his own home. Somebody knew he’d failed in his duty. Worse than that… that somebody wasn’t on his side. Jonas had always felt that the local people held him in warm regard. Now a small dagger of ice had pierced that warmth and everything had changed in an instant.

Call yourself a policeman?

Jonas tore the note into small pieces and squeezed those pieces together into a shapeless lump in his hand, before dropping them in the litter bag behind the passenger seat. Then he looked around at the village once more and – with a hollow sense of foreboding – drove slowly away down its curiously silent street.