Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [37]
He hadn't heard a car but he thought it might be Reynolds, who had taken the DNA swabs to Portishead. Marvel could have gone too, but had finally decided that going back to the future at this point would make it that much harder to return to Exmoor.
He was therefore more than a little surprised to find PC Jonas Holly standing in the dark.
'I need to speak to you about Peter Priddy.'
Marvel held open the door by way of invitation, and immediately felt the cold night air invade his cottage, giving him an unexpected pang of empathy with Joy Springer and her jealous guardianship of warmth.
But Jonas didn't come in. Instead he stood hesitantly in the yard, then asked if they could go to the pub. Marvel needed no second bidding. He abandoned Tracy Barlow to her fate and grabbed his coat.
It was warm in the Land Rover. Holly swung it round expertly in a tight turn. As he did, Marvel noticed Joy Springer peering at them from behind her kitchen curtain.
They turned right at the bottom of the drive - away from Shipcott - and headed up the hill across the moor.
'Not going to the Red Lion?'
'I thought it would be better to go somewhere away from the village to discuss work.'
Marvel nodded. Holly was different tonight. There was nothing of the junior officer about him. His manner was surprisingly brusque and he looked as if he was brooding about something.
'I spoke to Peter Priddy. He's got a right cob on.'
Marvel didn't understand the reference but got the gist. 'Mr Priddy doesn't understand the process of elimination.'
'He feels victimized.'
'He had motive, opportunity and probably inclination.'
'It's his mother!'
'You think nobody kills their mother? Or father? Or their own kids? What do you think this is, bloody Toytown? Grow up, Holly, for fuck's sake!'
Jonas said nothing and put his foot down.
Marvel watched the empty ribbon of tarmac lined by dirty brown moor race at them out of blackness and disappear as soon as the lights had passed over it. It was like travelling through space, or a lower intestine. The blackness could have been infinite or claustrophobically close, there was no way of telling - and the motion was timeless and hypnotic.
'Where's the pub?' he said.
'Withypool,' said Jonas just as curtly, as he stopped at a T-junction.
A porcupine of white wooden signposts bristled out of the opposite hedge.
'Withypool two and a quarter!' read Marvel in exasperation. 'This place is like Middle fucking Earth.'
Jonas turned right and floored the accelerator again, his jaw set. Marvel was starting to enjoy needling him.
'He was with a woman at the time. Not his wife.'
Marvel rubbed his hands together. 'Now we're talking! In Shipcott?'
'Yes.'
'Yeah, we had someone who saw his car on Saturday night. He with her all night?'
'I guess so.'
'Guessing so does not make it so. You spoken to her?'
'No.'
'A miracle! Someone you haven't fucked about with before we could get there. Who is it?'
Jonas tightened his fists on the wheel. This wasn't going as planned. He should have thought it through before calling Marvel. He'd thought he was doing Peter Priddy a favour ... that Marvel would accept his word about an alibi, but now it was all getting away from him. His head had started to ache as soon as he'd walked out on Lucy and now it throbbed cruelly as the tunnel of road and moor rushed at him like a video game. He should never have gone to see Marvel when he felt this way but he'd needed something to take his mind off her words. He couldn't bear to think about them - to think of her being gone. Of her being not there. Of having to have something to remember her by ...
He'd had to stop thinking of it. He'd called Peter Priddy; he'd picked up Marvel. Now he tried to focus on what they'd said and what he'd said to them, piling words up like ashes on embers, but her words still glowed and flickered underneath. Now those words had been lit, he