Darkside

But the thought of staggering back into the snow with nothing to show for his derring-do but a bit of a cough was anathema.

Buoyed by bloody-mindedness and sweet vermouth, he carried on inching his way across the room until he could make out Joy Springer lying face-down on the hairy sofa with her four cats running frantically up and down her body as though she were the last piece of flotsam in the wake of a shipwreck.

He reached out to take her arm and the big grey fluffy cat shot out a razor-sharp claw to keep him at bay.

Fuck.

Marvel dropped to his knees and huddled under his coat for a moment and he coughed until he retched – his eyes and nose and mouth streaming with fluids as his body tried to reject the killing smoke.

Down here the air was clearer, and Marvel bent and touched his head to the flagstones as if praying, so he could breathe better. When he had refreshed himself he looked up blearily and saw the writing on the wall behind the sofa.

He recognized it immediately, even though it was a foot high and on a wall. How he could ever have thought it might be a match for Danny Marsh’s hand was ridiculous. He saw that, now that it was writ so large. And in what appeared to be blood.

Marvel grabbed Joy Springer’s arm and yanked her unceremoniously on to the floor. Three of the cats leaped clear and disappeared; the grey one came with her – its claws firmly lodged in the wool of her old cardigan. It glared at Marvel and growled menacingly before darting away.

He rolled Joy on to her back and recoiled at the bloody sockets where her eyes had been.

He thought of Ang Nu. He thought of cocktail-onion jokes. He thought of Danny Marsh.

Danny Marsh was not the killer. The killer had been here.

The bastard had killed Joy Springer right under his nose!

Suddenly there was not enough air. He gulped for it, needing even more than usual to combat his shock, and finding so much less than he wanted that his shock became panic in a hot, blinding second.

He had to get out!

He half stood, staggered, banged his head on the table, fell to his knees, rolled, crawled, gasped at the floor, lungs bursting, head about to pop, lost his way to the door, and finally curled into a ball and retched Cinzano-flavoured bile on to his own hands.

He had to get out. He had to tell Reynolds. He had to—

Breathe. He had to breathe …

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t—

And the door at the far end of the kitchen suddenly blew off its hinges and let in a fireball that incinerated Joy Springer and the hairy sofa as if they were one big ball of tinder, and then rolled across the room towards Marvel.

* * *

The Land Rover only took Jonas so far.

The blizzard was blinding and he did his best but he needed to get there fast and he tried too hard. Halfway up the driveway to Springer Farm it came to a sudden lurching halt in a ditch that Jonas couldn’t even see until after he’d climbed out and gone round to the front of the car.

He wasted no time digging it out, just headed up towards the farm on foot, just as he always had as a boy.

* * *

Reynolds despised Marvel. Never more than now, when the man had elbowed him aside and rushed into flames in a display of stupid bravado fuelled by liquor.

Part of him was horrified when his commanding officer disappeared through the door; the bigger part was just furious that when Marvel emerged he would be regarded as a hero instead of the selfish, stupid, alcoholic wanker that he undoubtedly was.

He shouted for Marvel a few times, and set his face in a worried frown. His colleagues stood, open-mouthed, exchanging looks, carrying off their worried frowns with far more skill, in his eyes, while all silently asked each other the same question: Should we go after him?

Grey yelled something unintelligible and ran off into the darkness.

The kitchen window blew out as if a bomb had gone off inside. Bright new flames licked out of the cavity as the fire tried its best to escape the confines of the house and reach the courtyard and the cottages beyond.

‘No one go after him!’ Reynolds barked. ‘I don’t want anyone else hurt!’

He saw their relief and was relieved in turn that no one was going to insist that they all do something heroic.

Then someone rushed past his shoulder and into the house anyway.

It was Jonas Holly.

* * *

Jonas had arrived just in time to hear Reynolds yell not to go after him, and knew there must be at least one person in that inferno.

He ran into the farmhouse before he’d even decided to.

The heat was like being hit in the face, and steam rose immediately from his wet clothes and hair. The smoke was debilitating. He stopped dead, then took a few blind paces – hands out in front of him in case of obstacles.

He hit the table with his thigh and at the same time stepped on something hard yet yielding. He groped at his feet and found a slippery arm. He seized it with both hands, and backed out of the door with the body bumping along behind him.