Darkside

So instead of screaming, punching and fighting for what was left of her life, she could only blink in terror as the killer placed a pillow over her face.

He didn’t want to hurt her. Only wanted her dead.

As he suffocated Margaret Priddy with her own well-plumped pillow, the killer felt a rush of released tension, like an old watch exploding, scattering a thousand intricate parts and sending tightly wound springs bouncing off into nowhere as the bounds of the casing broke open around him.

He sobbed in sudden relief.

The feel of the old lady’s head through the pillow was comfortingly distant and indistinct. The unnatural stillness of her body seemed like permission to continue and so he did. He pressed his weight on to the pillow for far longer than he knew was necessary.

When he finally removed it and shone his torch into her face, the only discernible change in Margaret Priddy was that the light in her eyes had gone out.

‘There,’ thought the killer. ‘That was easy.’

* * *

First Lucy – and now this.

PC Jonas Holly leaned against the wall and took off his helmet so that his suddenly clammy head could breathe.

The body on the bed had played the organ at his wedding. He’d known her since he was a boy.

He could remember being small enough not to care that it wasn’t cool to be impressed by anything, waving at Mrs Priddy as she went past on an impossibly big grey horse – and her waving back. Over the next twenty-five years that scene had been repeated dozens of times, with all the characters in it evolving. Margaret growing older, but always vibrant; he stretching and growing, coming and going – university, Portishead, home to visit his parents while they were still alive. Even the horse changed, from a grey through any number of similar animals until Buster came along. Mrs Priddy always liked horses that were too big for her; ‘The bigger they are, the kinder they are,’ she’d told him once as he’d squinted up into the sky at her, trying to avoid looking at Buster’s hot, quivery shoulder.

Now Margaret Priddy was dead. It was a blessing really – the poor woman. But right now Jonas Holly only felt disorientated and sick that somehow, during the night, some strange magic had happened to turn life into death, warmth into cold and this world into the next.

Whatever the next world was. Jonas had only ever had a vague irreligious notion that it was probably nice enough.

This was not his first body; as a village bobby, he’d seen his fair share. But seeing Margaret Priddy lying there had hit him unexpectedly hard. He heard the nurse coming up the stairs and put his helmet back on, hurriedly wiping his face on his sleeve, hoping he didn’t look as nauseous as he felt. He was six-four and people seemed to have an odd idea that the taller you were, the more metaphorical backbone you should have.

The nurse smiled at him and held the door open behind her for Dr Dennis, who wore khaki chinos and a polo shirt at all times – as if he was in an Aussie soap and about to be whisked off in a Cessna to treat distant patients for snakebite in the sweltering outback, instead of certifying the death of a pensioner in her cottage on a damp January Exmoor.

‘Hello, Jonas,’ he said.

‘Right, Mark.’

‘How’s Lucy?’

‘OK, thanks.’

‘Good.’

Jonas had once seen Mark Dennis vomit into a yard of ale after a rugby match, but right now the doctor was all business, his regular, tanned face composed into a professional mask of thoughtful compassion. He went over to the bed and checked Margaret Priddy.

‘Nice lady,’ he said, for something to say.

‘The best,’ said Jonas Holly, with feeling. ‘Probably a blessing that she’s gone. For her, I mean.’

The nurse smiled and nodded professionally at him but Mark Dennis said nothing, seeming to be very interested in Margaret Priddy’s face.

Jonas looked around the room. Someone had hung a cheap silver-foil angel over the bed, and it twirled slowly like a child’s mobile. On the dresser, half a dozen Christmas cards had been pushed haphazardly aside to make way for more practical things. One of the cards had fallen over and Jonas’s fingers itched to right it.

Instead he made himself look at the old lady’s body. Not that old, he reminded himself, only sixty-something. But being bedridden had made her seem older and far more frail.

He thought of Lucy one day being that frail and tried to focus on Margaret lying on the bed, not his beautiful wife.

Her lips flecked with bile and soggy painkillers …

Jonas pushed the image away hard and took a deep breath. He focused and tried to imagine what Margaret Priddy’s last words might have been before the accident that crushed her spine and her larynx in one crunching blow. Final words spoken in ignorance three years before the demise of the rest of her body. Jonas thought probably: ‘Get on, Buster!’

‘Glad you’re here, Jonas,’ said Mark Dennis – and when he turned to look at him, Jonas Holly could see concern in the doctor’s face. His instincts stirred uneasily.

‘Her nose is broken.’