Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [123]
They left the orange glow and the heat that was turning the snowy courtyard into a giant puddle, and moved into the darkness behind the stables. Once away from the action, it was shockingly serene. Jonas felt quite removed from the horror of it all. The farmhouse burning down sounded like a jolly bonfire; the tiles blasting off the roof like rockets and bangers. The smell of roasting meat filled the air and Jonas shivered, but got a pang of hunger that disgusted the vegetarian in him.
He felt strangely ambivalent about Joy Springer inside the burning house. He wondered if her cats had died too, and thought of the way their fur made him sneeze whenever he'd gone into the gloomy old kitchen with its towering dresser and Belfast sink.
Reynolds switched his torch on; Jonas followed suit and immediately went blind, but for the two bright shafts of speckled light which showed tunnels of falling snow. He turned it off again, without bothering to explain to Reynolds why it was easier to see without it.
They crossed the old hard standing with its ridged concrete, where the blacksmith used to shoe the ponies. Jonas could almost feel Taffy's head, heavy in his arms as he dozed, while his neat little hoofs were shaved and shaped and scorched and hammered. That strangely comforting stink of burned hair, and the yard lurcher, Nelson, darting in to snatch the biggest bits of horn, which made his breath reek and gave him the runs ...
Reynolds said something Jonas didn't hear.
'What?' he asked.
'Could be anywhere,' said Reynolds again, shining his torch across the field behind the stables.
Jonas didn't answer. From the corner of his eye he'd seen something regular at one edge of the concrete standing. Three or four darker patches in the snow which his memory could supply no immediate explanation for.
He dropped back from Reynolds and walked over to check it out.
Footprints.
Now that he had found what he was looking for, Jonas switched his torch back on and examined the depressions in the snow.
Although the snow was filling them fast - softening them and making identification impossible - they were definitely footprints. Jonas shone his torch into them. There was no tread visible at the bottom of each twelve-inch-deep impression, just a delicate frosting of new flakes glittering in the false light.
Jonas followed them with his torch.
The prints led down the hill - straight towards Rose Cottage.
'Lucy!' he shouted into the night, as if she might hear him.
Reynolds shone his torch in Jonas's face and saw terror there.
'What?' he said.
'My house!' cried Jonas and pointed to where the bathroom light shone square and yellow two fields away. 'He's gone to my house! My wife! She's alone. I left her alone!'
Then he started to run, bounding through the snow in long, awkward strides.
Reynolds ran after him for a few paces, then stopped. 'Jonas! Wait!'
But Jonas ignored him.
'Fuck!' Reynolds turned and made his way back to the blackness behind the cottages. He needed reinforcements. If the killer was indeed at Jonas Holly's house then he didn't want to be the only back-up. Once back on the flat ground, he slipped and skidded around to the courtyard once more, almost surprised that things had been going on here without him. The house was still burning, Grey was still playing with the hosepipe, and Rice and Singh were still bent over Marvel and had started CPR again. Reynolds rushed straight to them.
'How is he?'
'Dead,' said Singh between compressions.
'Shit,' said Reynolds. 'Shit fuck shit!'
'Yeah, I know,' said Singh. 'Should I stop?'
Reynolds thought of the months of work he'd put into the file he'd hoped would see Marvel kicked off the force in disgrace