Darkside

Despite his job, it had been a long time since Marvel was in any actual personal danger. Homicide detectives, by their very nature, arrived after the killer had done his deed, and retro-engineered the crime from there. Sure, sometimes the killer was still at the scene – in the shape of a glazed-drunk teenager or a husband who had snapped and was already confessing. But being in imminent threat of violence was so rare that – if pressed – Marvel would have had trouble remembering when it had last happened.

Now he was shocked by how nervous he felt. How his breathing got too short and too loud and how he was suddenly aware of how noisy he was! His shoes creaked, his palm squeaked on the banister; his thigh-length coat scraped the woodchip wall in papery warning. Everything gave him away. And in a way he wanted it to. In a way he wanted the person who was now trying to gain access to the scene of Margaret Priddy’s murder to hear him and run off. Then Marvel could open the front door and stare belligerently up and down the narrow street and pretend he was sorry to have missed his chance.

He suddenly remembered how a lot of people in Quentin Tarantino movies ended up.

He reached the bottom stair, the gloomy tiled hallway, ran his eyes over the door catch – bog-standard Yale – and braced his feet apart for balance. He raised his hands and saw that they were trembling like a drunk’s. Outside, the scrape came again. A little whisper of cloth on the other side of the wooden door. He held his breath. All he had to do was quietly twist the knob, grip the handle and pull …

The brass knob slipped from his sweaty grip, the door hit his foot and rebounded, making him shut his eyes; he grabbed at it and caught the tip of his finger between it and the frame, sending a needle of pain running up his shoulders and neck like voltage.

Fuck!

Marvel finally gripped the door and focused.

Jonas Holly stood on the doorstep with a guilty look on his face and three pints of milk clutched to his chest.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

Marvel slammed the door behind Jonas and strode through the dim house to the kitchen. As he did, his fear and pain segued seamlessly into an anger that was fuelled by the dread that the younger man might have seen the panic on his face in the seconds he took to fumble the door open like some crappy amateur magician bungling a trick.

Jonas followed, as the DCI’s angry stride demanded of him, still holding the icy bottles.

In the kitchen Marvel turned on Jonas.

‘Explain yourself.’

Haltingly, Jonas did. He explained about Will Bishop, the relentless milkman. He tried to lighten the mood with the joke about the twister but it went nowhere. He got back on track by suggesting that the cordon of tape was doing nothing but flapping a challenge to local boys who were daring each other underneath it and annoying the neighbours; he dangled a comradely escape route in front of Marvel in the shape of a comment about how everyone in the village was understandably on edge with the killer still at large. Marvel ignored the comradeship and the escape.

And so – because he didn’t really know what else he could usefully say – Jonas Holly made a serious mistake.

He apologized.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘if I gave you a fright.’

The glamorous assistant with a sword through her leg, the dead rabbit in the hat.

‘You didn’t give me a fright, you fucking moron! I almost fucking killed you, that’s all! You don’t know how close you fucking came!’ Marvel bumped round the Formica table and held his thumb and forefinger a hair’s breadth apart an inch from Jonas’s nose.

‘This close! This fucking close!’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jonas, unable to meet Marvel’s eyes to lend honesty to his answer.

Marvel glared up at him and Jonas felt himself starting to detach. He’d done all he could here. He’d done the right thing. If it hadn’t worked then he would just have to let Marvel decide how this would play out.

Marvel watched Jonas’s face go blank and knew he was hiding his real feelings. Knew he was hating him inside. Somehow that made Marvel feel a little better – that Jonas had to hide his feelings, while he – as the senior officer – was allowed to give vent to his.

‘What was your name again?

‘Jonas Holly, sir.’

Jonas felt cool now. Felt no need to justify himself or his actions. Felt comfortably distant. He’d seen the panic in Marvel’s eyes as he cocked up the simple task of opening the door. He’d offered the man a graceful exit from embarrassment and Marvel had not only declined to accept that offer but Jonas had the distinct suspicion that the DCI was going to make him suffer for it.

‘What’s your take on this, Holly?’

‘On what, sir?’

Marvel rolled his eyes and waved a brief arm at Margaret Priddy’s house. ‘This! What do you think of this case?’

Jonas was careful. He shrugged. He looked around. ‘Um, I’m not sure, sir.’