He knew Marvel was off the wagon. Even though it was a wagon he'd only ever been hitched to, never really on on. It didn't take a genius to work it out when Marvel emerged from his cottage every morning smelling of booze and mint and covered in cat hair. Although if it had had taken a genius, Reynolds liked to think he'd have been up to the task. taken a genius, Reynolds liked to think he'd have been up to the task.

In Reynolds's opinion - which was far from humble - Marvel had made some damaging decisions in this investigation.

Prime among these was his move from the occasional pint after work to the harder liquor when he was alone. Or with Joy Springer because, in Reynolds's view, that was only being alone with somebody else in the room.

Another was his failure to use Jonas Holly.

In their business they relied on local plods like Jonas, and he and Marvel had done so in several investigations over the past year. Of course, Marvel always liked to show the locals right up front who was going to be boss. Rude, bullying, bulldozing - those were apparently Marvel's guidelines for what he sarcastically called 'First Contact', as if local beat officers were some alien race whose sole purpose was to be subdued and bent to his will.

Something must have happened off-screen off-screen, as they said in the movies. One day Marvel had been merely rude to Jonas, the next Jonas was standing on a doorstep like an oversized garden gnome. If Marvel had employed a ducking stool he could hardly have humiliated the man more effectively.

Reynolds felt Jonas's pain. Two cases back Marvel had been such a s.h.i.t - and Reynolds had had to do so much damage control among the local constabulary - that his precious hair had fallen out in handfuls. Every night he had watched it swirling down the shower drain along with his self-esteem. He remembered vividly the rush of pure fury that had overtaken him as he watched it disappear. How he'd vowed to get revenge on Marvel, like some mythic hero in a Sergio Leone film.

Good old Sergio - he knew a dish served cold when he saw one.

And the dish Reynolds was preparing for Marvel was very cold indeed.

Jonas told Lucy about the notes. Now that he'd told Marvel he knew she'd hear about them sooner or later, and when she asked about the cut on his lip the moment he walked into the room, he couldn't think of anything fast enough to divert her from the truth of what had happened and why. The only thing he didn't say was that he had found the last note on their garden gate. He told her that one had also been under the wiper of the Land Rover. It was a small distinction, but Lucy was alone all day, and unwell; the last thing he needed was for her to feel even more nervous about the murders.

Everything he'd feared the notes might do to her, they did.

He saw the fear flash across her face, and then her concern was all for him, and Jonas watched miserably as the two emotions etched lines in her face that he'd never seen before. Jonas promised her he would be careful, promised not to take any risks - but those lines were there to stay.

Finally he told her that he'd informed Marvel - more to rea.s.sure her that he had police back-up than anything else.

'What did he say?' she demanded - at the same moment that Jonas realized he should have kept his mouth shut.

He was a lousy liar, so he told her the truth.

She was furious. He had to take the phone away from her to stop her calling 999.

'It was an a.s.sault a.s.sault!' she yelled.

'It was just a bit of shoving. It was a disagreement, that's all.'

Lucy shot him a fiery look that he hadn't seen for ages. It reminded him of her soccer days, and he smiled, which only made her more furious.

'It's not funny funny, Jonas!'

'No, it's not,' he agreed hastily. 'You're right.'

She gave him a circ.u.mspect stare that meant she knew he was placating her, but then allowed herself to feel a little placated anyway; she didn't have the strength left to keep being angry.

'I'd like to kick his a.r.s.e,' she told him seriously.

'Me too,' he sighed.

They were on the couch, he with his long legs stretched out and his big feet on an old tapestry footstool that showed the wear of his father before him, Lucy facing him with her back against the padded leather arm. Now she wiggled her toes under his thigh for added warmth, and he knew he was forgiven. For a minute they watched Tom Hanks having a mental breakdown on a desert island.

'This is a bit cheerful for you, isn't it, sweetheart?'

Lucy stuck out her tongue and dug her toes into him.

'What job does he mean?'

'What?'

'In the notes he keeps going on about doing your job your job. What does it mean?'

He frowned and shrugged one shoulder. 'Finding the killer, I suppose.'

Lucy nodded slowly, but Jonas could hear her brain ticking over from where he sat.

'But you're already doing that.'

'Maybe he thinks I should be doing more.'

'Maybe,' she agreed tentatively, while Tom Hanks's skin blistered off his face in the white-hot sun.

'Or maybe,' she shrugged, 'that's not the job the job he wants you to do.' he wants you to do.'

The day had pa.s.sed in a blur for John Marvel.

Another body bag. Another crime scene. More hysterical crones. The decision to move all the residents after all, and the logistics of making that happen in a snowstorm while all roads out of the village were impa.s.sable by anything but a tractor or a four-wheel-drive.

Now - back in his little apartment with his inadequate travel kettle taking a week to boil - Marvel sat slumped and glum at the end of his bed.

So Gary Liss was a petty thief, but not a killer.

No doubt he had not been the intended target, but he'd probably been murdered for interrupting the killer - and then stuffed behind the garden-room piano like a surprise Christmas present. The thick old pile of heavy maroon curtaining had been wadded down the back of the piano for years, Rupert Cooke told them, white-faced with shock. He said it acted as a damper so the sound wasn't too loud for the residents.

In Marvel's brief experience with the residents, no sound could be loud enough enough for them. for them.

But what it meant was that the killer had known about the curtains and therefore must must be local. Not that that narrowed things down a lot - he imagined everyone in Shipcott had had a relative or friend at Sunset Lodge at some point in the past few years. be local. Not that that narrowed things down a lot - he imagined everyone in Shipcott had had a relative or friend at Sunset Lodge at some point in the past few years.

The killer had also dragged or carried Liss downstairs - close to the staffroom where the two women were - and had taken the time to wrap him up and hide him behind the piano. It spoke of great strength and it spoke of calmness, not panic. The killer had been interrupted, certainly - but he had also adapted to that interruption so brutally and so efficiently that Lynne Twitchett and Jen Hardy had never heard a sound from Liss.

This latest crime scene was now one that had been ravaged by heat and constant human traffic for the near forty-eight hours since the victim had died. No wonder the place had started to smell. If he hadn't spent so much time there he'd have noticed it himself. And they didn't even know yet where where Gary Liss had been killed. Blood on the body was minimal - a single crusty smear over a depression fracture of the front of the skull, and smears on the throat where it looked as if he'd been manually strangled. Gary Liss had been killed. Blood on the body was minimal - a single crusty smear over a depression fracture of the front of the skull, and smears on the throat where it looked as if he'd been manually strangled.

Yet another modus operandi ...

I once was found, but now am lost.

Marvel sighed and put a tea bag into a mug, hoping that if he took the lead, the kettle might catch up.

His phone rang; it was Jos Reeves on a scratchy line. There were no prints on the walking stick, and the blood on the roof belonged not to the killer but to Lionel Chard, so it added nothing to their well of knowledge.

Marvel was so annoyed by the c.r.a.ppy news that he yelled, 'I can't hear you!' and hung up on Reeves mid-sentence.

So it was back to square one. Only with more dead people.

Great.

Alan Marsh? Danny Marsh? Peter f.u.c.king Priddy? Marvel felt like having a tantrum. He'd 'liked' Peter Priddy so much; liked the hunchy feeling that he was the one the one - but now Peter Priddy felt like a best friend at school, whose name he barely remembered. - but now Peter Priddy felt like a best friend at school, whose name he barely remembered.

He switched off the kettle and opened a bottle of Jameson's instead. It would help him think; it always had and always would. That was what Debbie had never understood. You're sick You're sick, she'd told him once. You get drunk and lie around and think about murder. It's sick! You get drunk and lie around and think about murder. It's sick!

He'd come close to hitting her.

Marvel knocked back the first two fingers and went for a slightly larger chaser, which he sipped more slowly while watching Newsnight Newsnight with the sound down; it was better that way. with the sound down; it was better that way.

This case was already like musical chairs, and then Jonas Holly comes out with a critical piece of evidence he'd been h.o.a.rding like a f.u.c.king hamster hamster while they were all chasing their own a.r.s.es. while they were all chasing their own a.r.s.es.

Just the thought of it sent Marvel's blood pressure up again.

It amounted to withholding evidence in a murder investigation, and as soon as this case was over and Jonas Holly had outlived any modic.u.m of usefulness, Marvel would file a complaint against him. f.u.c.k the paperwork. Get the moron off the streets for good and stuck behind a desk up in Taunton, answering 999 calls for real real cops. cops.

Marvel had no compunction about it. Jonas had screwed up badly - and it wasn't the first time. He'd potentially contaminated the first scene by pawing the vic, and allowing others to do the same. He'd moved the second body, and although that hadn't really been his fault, Marvel was sore enough now to overlook that. The vomit had disappeared on Jonas Holly's watch and then he'd shown an unexpected lack of control when he'd laid into Danny Marsh, who'd really only needed one good smack to jolt him out of his hysteria.

And he'd kept the notes secret when they were probably the best clue they now had to the ident.i.ty of the killer.

Of course, he'd also scared Marvel at Margaret Priddy's house, but he wasn't taking that into consideration.

He was pretty sure he wasn't.

Killers were a strange bunch. Some returned to the scene of the crime. Some took trophies and photos and kept detailed cuttings. Some tried to get involved with the investigation; tried to 'help' the police. Some were were the police. the police.

Now he had mentally laid out all Jonas Holly's transgressions in a neat chronological list, Marvel was surprised by how much involvement he seemed to have had in this case, considering he'd spent most of it on a b.l.o.o.d.y doorstep.

The more he thought about those transgressions, the less they looked like incompetence and the more they looked like a deliberate attempt to mislead.

And the more deliberate they looked, the more suspicious Marvel became, until finally - half a bottle in - DCI John Marvel started to like Jonas Holly.

But not in a good way.

Four Days

'You think we should pull Danny Marsh in?'

Reynolds broached the subject carefully because Marvel was only really receptive to his own ideas.

Marvel stared at him across the Calor gas, with eyes rimmed red from drink and lack of sleep.

Reynolds proceeded: 'We've got the gloves in the garage and we've got the footprint on the window sill. You think that's enough?'

Marvel continued to stare at him until Reynolds wondered if he'd had a stroke.

Finally Marvel stirred. 'It's not much.'

'It's more than we've got on anyone else now.'

Marvel nodded slowly. 'Let's talk to his father first.'

Reynolds nodded in relief and picked up the phone.

Jonas needed help.

He stood at the edge of the playing field and thought about the nature of evil.

The scenes he had witnessed at Sunset Lodge would never leave him. Margaret Priddy was sad, Yvonne Marsh was dramatic and pathetic. But the sheer cold brutality of the murders at the Lodge was something he couldn't quite get a hold of. The slaughter of the old people, defenceless in their beds, the cool killing of Gary Liss, and the bravado of the body behind the piano.

Jonas's brain skittered about the crime, peered around corners at it, ducked and dived, trying to get a better look, but ultimately was lost in the supermarket when it came to any kind of understanding of what it must take for a man to grow into a cold-blooded killer. He had spent most of a sleepless night running up and down the aisles of why? why? and it was only as he'd walked down the hill into the village that he had realized the only question he really needed to buy was and it was only as he'd walked down the hill into the village that he had realized the only question he really needed to buy was who? who?

Without the killer in custody, he could theorize till the cows came home and never find the truth.

Jonas was convinced now that the killer was a local man. He had known that Margaret Priddy lay paralysed in the back bedroom of her home, he had left Yvonne Marsh in a stream that was barely visible from the road, and he had crawled through the only window at Sunset Lodge that Rupert Cooke had been too cheap to modernize, then bound Gary Liss's corpse in a vast curtain which had been there for years but which was hardly visible, stuffed behind the piano as it was. Jonas vaguely remembered having seen it before - probably because Sunset Lodge was a regular part of his beat, along with schools, pubs and village halls.

The killer must be local, which meant Jonas must know him. He knew everybody.

What would he look like?

If Jonas could stare into enough eyes for long enough, would he glimpse the killer looking back? Would his gaze burn like Holy Water on a demon? Would Jonas feel cold jelly fill his bones, and recoil in recognition of evil?

He didn't know.

How could he? He had no experience.

So he needed help.

A rhythmic sound and a pendulum blur in his vision brought him slowly back to the playing field and reminded him of why he had stopped here on his way to the mobile unit to report for whatever duty Marvel saw fit to a.s.sign him.

On the half-pipe ramp, Steven Lamb swooped through lazy arcs, turning smoothly at each lip, accompanied only by the hypnotic rumble of the skateboard's wheels. He had cleared the snow from the ramp with a rusted spade, which now stood upright in the resulting lumpy pile of white, with Steven's anorak slung over it.

Jonas walked across the crunchy snow, wondering whether he was following in the footsteps of the killer. Today was overcast and promised more snow - very different from the shiny morning that had greeted the horror of Yvonne Marsh.

He stopped six feet from the ramp and said, 'Hi.'