Darkside

Taunton Homicide was a team of frustrated detectives generally under-extended by drunken brawls gone wrong, and Jonas thought Marvel should have been grateful for the call, not openly disdainful of him. He understood that in police hierarchy the village bobby – or ‘community beat officer’ as he was officially called – was the lowest of the low. He also knew that his youth worked against him. Any policeman of his age worth his salt should be at the top of his game – swathed in Kevlar, armed with something shiny, clearing tall buildings in his pursuit of criminal masterminds and mad bombers – not walking the beat, ticking off children and corralling stray sheep in some sleepy backwater. That was a job for an old man and Jonas had only just turned thirty-one, so it smacked of laziness or stupidity. Therefore Jonas tried hard to appear neither lazy nor stupid as he ran through his notes with Marvel.

It made no difference.

Marvel listened to the young PC’s report with a glazed look in his eyes, then asked: ‘Did you touch her?’

Jonas blinked then nodded – reddening at the same time.

Marvel pursed his lips. ‘Where?’

‘Her nose. Dr Dennis said it was broken and I felt it.’

‘Why?’

Jonas felt his face burn as everyone in the room seemed to have stopped what they were doing to watch him being grilled.

‘I don’t know, sir. Just to see.’

‘Just for fun?’

‘No, sir, the doctor said it was broken and I checked.’

‘Because you needed to confirm his diagnosis? Are you more highly qualified than him? Medically speaking?’ Marvel dripped sarcasm from every pore, and from the corner of his eye Jonas saw the Taunton cops grin and roll their eyes at each other.

‘No, sir.’

‘Anyone else touch her?’

‘The nurse, sir.’

‘Was she more highly qualified than Dr Dennis?’

‘No, sir.’

Marvel sighed and flapped his arms once helplessly like a man who has given up chasing down a mugger. The flap said, ‘There’s only so much you can do.’

‘So the doctor touched her. Then you touched her. Then the nurse touched her.’

Jonas didn’t correct Marvel on the sequence of events.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You sure? Not the milkman? The village idiot? You didn’t get one man and his dog up here to give her a little poke?’

There were snorts of amusement all round.

‘I’m sure, sir.’

Marvel sighed, then asked: ‘What’s your name?’

‘PC Holly, sir.’

‘Have you ever heard of a crime scene, Holly?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Jonas hated Marvel now. The man was grandstanding in front of his team and Jonas shouldn’t have touched Margaret Priddy’s nose, but still …

‘Have you ever heard of contaminating a crime scene, Holly?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The heat of embarrassment was leaving Jonas and being replaced by a cool and distant anger, which he found easy to hide but which he knew he would nurture forever in that very small and stony corner where he kept all that was not kind, responsible and selfless in his heart.

‘And you understand that it’s a bad thing, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A stupid thing.’

Jonas wanted to punch him.

‘Yes, sir.’

Marvel smiled slowly.

‘Then why would you do that?’

Jonas was eight years old and Pete Bryant had put a cricket ball through Mr Randall’s greenhouse roof. Pete had run, but Jonas had dithered – and Mr Randall had gripped him in a single meaty claw and shaken his arm while shouting that same question into his face. Eight-year-old Jonas could have told Mr Randall that it was Pete who had thrown the ball, but he didn’t. Not because he was scared; not because he wasn’t a rat; just because it was too late; the damage was already done. The glass was already shattered, Mr Randall already angry, his bicep already bruised, his tears already flowing and his self-worth already pricked. All that was left was for him to get home as quickly as possible so he could shut his bedroom door and cry at the unfairness of it all without alerting his mother.

Now the thirty-one-year-old Jonas swallowed that same bitter pill and unfocused his eyes so he could look straight over Marvel’s greying hair.

‘I’m very sorry, sir.’

Marvel regarded the tall young policeman with a little disappointment. He’d really have preferred the fool to have got defensive and angry. He loved a good fight. Instead PC Holly had rolled over like a puppy and shown the world his belly.

Ah well.

Marvel turned away before speaking.

‘You can go,’ he said.

In small defiance, Jonas bit back his ‘Yes, sir’ and left without another word. Halfway down the stairs he heard Marvel say something he didn’t catch, and the laughter of the big-town cops.

* * *

Some investigation, thought DCI John Marvel, as he stared out at the leaden Somerset sky. A dead old woman with a broken nose. Big deal. But a suspicious death was a suspicious death and helped to justify the funding that kept his Task Force (as he used to like to call it over late suppers with Debbie) in existence. So if they could whip suspicious death up into murder, then all well and good.