The mobile unit was cramped, damp and smelly. A flickering fluorescent strip made this feel like a Stasi interrogation.

'Sir, even if I believed he killed those people, which I don't, why would I cover it up?'

'You two were mates. I saw you on the playing field after we dragged his mother out of the stream. Good mates, I'd say. If he he had something to hide, I reckon either you knew about it, had something to hide, I reckon either you knew about it, or you've or you've got something to hide too.' got something to hide too.'

'What?' demanded Jonas. 'What am I hiding?'

From the look on Reynolds's face, he'd only just beaten him to the question. Reynolds looked embarra.s.sed even to be there.

'You tell me me,' said Marvel, and sat back in his chair with an air of dogged certainty. 'First,' he continued when he got no response, 'first tell me why you hit Danny Marsh the other day.'

'He swung at swung at me me!'

'So arrest him. Don't beat the s.h.i.t out of him!'

'I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, sir,' said Reynolds, and refused to look at Marvel so he could not be disciplined by a glare.

Jonas barely heard him. He recalled that feeling of threat that had come off Danny. While he laughed and joked about old times, Jonas had been consumed with fear, desperate for him to back off and stop stop ... In hindsight it seemed very minor. ... In hindsight it seemed very minor.

'I felt threatened, sir,' he said truthfully. 'If I over-reacted, that's why.'

'Why did you fall out with him?'

Jonas was confused. 'Fall out out?'

'When you were kids,' Marvel insisted.

'When we were kids kids?' Jonas gave a small laugh.

'Yes,' said Marvel, deadly serious. 'When you were eleven or so.'

Jonas looked blank.

'Ten or eleven. You were best mates. Then one day you weren't. What happened?'

The smell of burned things. Burned wood ... burned hair ... burned flesh.

Only confusing fragments.

'I don't remember, sir.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. You do.'

Jonas shrugged. He didn't. He didn't want to.

He looked around. The cramped unit was dingy and dirty. He didn't think he could work in a place like this. There was a calendar on the wall that was four years out of date. Four years ago, Lu could have walked upstairs on her hands. Four years ago, Jonas was following another path to another place. Four years ago would do him nicely, thank you very much, so he let his mind linger there instead of here, where Lucy was dying, Danny was dead, and DCI Marvel was being a p.r.i.c.k.

'... to him? Holly! Holly!'

Jonas came back, blinking. 'What?'

'What did you say to him?'

'Say to who?'

'Whom,' said Reynolds. 'Sorry.'

They both ignored him.

'To Danny Marsh. When he was dying. Rice says you said something to him.'

'I didn't say anything.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. Again.'

Marvel pushed his chair away from Jonas and went over to the fridge. He opened it and took out a can of cola. Generic Generic cola. cola.

'I think I said, "Thank you."'

'Why?'

Jonas frowned. 'I don't know.'

It was the truth. He had no idea. He'd taken his lips from Danny's mouth and slid them round to his ear without any thought of why or of what he was going to say when he got there. There was just something inside him that had to be said. Had Had to be said. And when he'd said it, it had felt to be said. And when he'd said it, it had felt right right.

Jonas!

The voice at the gate had been Danny Marsh, he was sure.

He'd wanted to talk to him.

Had Danny left him the note?

If so, what was the job job Danny wanted him to do? Danny wanted him to do?

The dead eye of the pony. The p.r.i.c.kle of hay against his cheek. The woman's face at the dusty window ...

Pfffftt! Marvel opened the cola and Jonas came back with a start to find him and Reynolds regarding him with interest. Marvel opened the cola and Jonas came back with a start to find him and Reynolds regarding him with interest.

'He's dead, Holly. You can't protect him. Not if you call yourself a policeman.'

Jonas couldn't breathe.

Call yourself a policeman?

How did he know? How did Marvel know? know? He'd never told him what the first note said! He'd never told him what the first note said!

Jonas sat there, staring wide-eyed at Marvel while his mind screamed at him, Don't stare! Don't look at him! He'll know that you spotted the slip! Don't stare! Don't look at him! He'll know that you spotted the slip! But he couldn't move - even his eyes. But he couldn't move - even his eyes.

'Get out,' Marvel said. 'I'll speak to you tomorrow.'

Lucy Holly was sitting halfway up the stairs when she felt death approaching.

She had known for a while that she was dying. Every new symptom was a reminder of the fact that she wasn't going to just snap out of it one day; that this thing inside her had come to stay and planned to kill her, like a psycho in the spare room. That craziness had become routine.

But she had never felt like this before.

She did not often go up and down stairs during the day. It was a ch.o.r.e that could take half an hour sometimes. Jonas had plumbed a toilet into the little shed outside the back door of the old cottage, which she used in all but the coldest weather. But she had woken at 5am to find Jonas was not beside her. Immediately, she knew she would not get back to sleep, so she edged downstairs in the darkness to make tea and to get her book and then decided to take both back to bed with her.

On the bottom step she'd put the luggage for her journey - the cup of tea, her book, a new tube of toothpaste, and the knife Jonas had made her promise to keep with her, even though she felt like a neurotic New Yorker every time she touched it. The thought of having to answer the door to somebody while holding it filled her with English embarra.s.sment. But she'd promised Jonas, and mostly remembered to carry it from room to room with her, even though she thought there was more chance of falling off her crutches on to on to the knife than there was of it being of any use in repelling an invader. the knife than there was of it being of any use in repelling an invader.

She'd leaned her downstairs sticks against the banisters, lowered herself to the third step and started her little adventure, moving each item up a step before she levered herself on to the next tread. She got into a nice rhythm - almost laughing at how silly it was to feel that way about inching upstairs on your backside. She had good days like this, where her arms and legs felt stronger, and it always made her happy. Ever the compet.i.tor, Lucy got faster and faster, moving, hoisting, sipping tea, moving, hoisting, sipping tea ... until suddenly she slipped, lurching sideways and banging her arm and her head painfully into the wall. She'd put the heel of her hand on Fate Dictates Fate Dictates, which had skidded off the stair and now lay open and face-down in the hallway.

's.h.i.t! ' Lucy bit her lip while her funny bone grinningly punished her for being careless. She'd dropped the knife down a few treads too, and knocked her mug so that some tea had dotted the carpet. ' Lucy bit her lip while her funny bone grinningly punished her for being careless. She'd dropped the knife down a few treads too, and knocked her mug so that some tea had dotted the carpet.

Lucy had slipped before; she had fallen before; she had hurt herself worse than she was hurt now.

But this this time ... time ... This This time she understood death. time she understood death.

With the house wrapped in the coc.o.o.n of snow that made it quiet as a tomb, Lucy became aware that her own breathing was the only sound that demarcated her living living from her from her dying dying.

She held it.

She sat halfway up the stairs and held her breath and let the silence a.s.sault her ears.

This was what it would be like.

Underneath the dirt.

Lying still and silent and helpless in a box waiting for nature to worm its way into her so that it could reclaim her for the greater good.

Lucy Holly was not stupid. She understood the cessation of consciousness that comes with death. She understood that if she were aware of anything it would be in a spiritual sense, and that her body was just meat. Meat rotting on young bones.

But this vivid preview was new. This feeling that she was lying in this house with her wedding ring on and a posy on her chest, and that death had finally arrived with the snow and was even now pressed against the windows, testing the c.h.i.n.ks made by the mice and the sparrows, trying to slither inside to get at her while she sat halfway up the stairs without even Jonas's knife to protect herself with. This was all new.

Before - before the pills - death had been an abstract notion, a way to be relieved of the pain. The relief of pain had been the goal - and she'd barely thought about the death that would facilitate that. Now she knew she'd turned a corner. She didn't only know it was coming, she knew how it would feel feel when it did. How it would when it did. How it would look look. How it would taste taste.

It was overwhelming. And inconsequential.

She'd thought she would cry, but instead she got calm, calm, calm, as if someone had drugged her tea. She wished they had. She wished suddenly and fiercely that someone had drugged her tea and that she would fall asleep here on the stair that always creaked, and that they would come and kill her softly so she'd never have to bother with the rest of the stairs. They were a struggle and she was sick of them.

Her b.u.m started to ache and she looked at her watch to see she had sat here for more than an hour. No wonder she was so cold and desperate for the loo.

She would go outside.

Lucy left the toothpaste and the mug of cold tea on the stairs.

She picked up the knife as she slid back down past it and, when she got to the bottom, she closed Fate Dictates Fate Dictates and never opened it again. and never opened it again.

Jonas walked home in a daze just before 6am.

He'd felt as if he were floating ever since Danny died in his arms. Like a s.p.a.cewalking astronaut whose tether has been severed, Jonas felt himself drifting slowly away from everything, and off towards nothing.

How did Marvel know?

Jonas had not been specific about the wording of the first two notes. He hadn't wanted to say the word 'crybaby', so had been fuzzy about the first note too, for the sake of appearing consistent, even if it was only consistently stupid. But Marvel's words had snapped everything back into sharp relief.

Call yourself a policeman.

Why had he said it? How did he know? How did he know?

As sleet started to spit in Jonas's face, his mind turned slow, gravity-free circles around Marvel, looking at him from new angles and with fresh eyes.

Marvel had never liked him. He wasn't sure how, but he'd managed to p.i.s.s the man off right from the start of this investigation.

Now he began to wonder why.

Even from his doorstep viewpoint, Jonas had the feeling that Marvel had been lost on the case, that he'd employed a scattergun approach to suspects, that there was no real sense of focus in his investigation.

The way he'd over-reacted to finding Jonas on the doorstep of Margaret Priddy's told of a man who was floundering and insecure, and Jonas had thought he had smelled booze on the man's breath. Or maybe just in his sweat.

When the alleged vomit had disappeared, Marvel had told him to do his job job - and the way he'd said it, - and the way he'd said it, 'crybaby' 'crybaby' was only a whisper away. was only a whisper away.

And now he'd repeated the first note almost word for word.

Had he seen it?

Had he written written it? it?

It sounded stupid, even inside the privacy of his own head, but did Marvel have some kind of connection connection with the killer? with the killer?

Jonas shuddered at the thought. He had Reynolds's card still in his breast pocket. Would Reynolds be discreet if Jonas voiced his fears to him? He doubted it. Jonas had the impression that Reynolds did not like Marvel that much, but that didn't necessarily mean he'd take sides against him.

He looked up into the sleet to see that he was almost at his gate.

He needed to speak to Lucy. Lucy's brain worked faster than his at the best of times, and right now his his brain was stuffed so full, and was nonetheless so empty of solutions, that it was as if a super-ma.s.sive black hole was expanding slowly within his head, ready to burst out and swallow up the whole world in compressed nothingness. brain was stuffed so full, and was nonetheless so empty of solutions, that it was as if a super-ma.s.sive black hole was expanding slowly within his head, ready to burst out and swallow up the whole world in compressed nothingness.

Lucy was on the living-room floor, weeping and gnarled up with pain and with an unopened bottle of pills beside her.

In an instant the black hole in Jonas's head shrank to a pinp.r.i.c.k and his heart exploded into his throat with fear.

He dropped to the carpet beside her and tried to gather her into his arms, but she tucked up and resisted.

Her head was hot with tears, but the rest of her was icy from being on the floor. The fire was long burned out and had turned to white ashes. Jonas got her tartan rug and wrapped it around her, then lay down behind her and wrapped his arms around that that. He could keep her warm, even if he couldn't keep her well.