Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [50]
Then he stopped to chat to Linda Cobb with Dixie.
'I still have your umbrella,' he told Linda.
'Drop it in when you're passing,' she said.
Jonas said he'd be back on the doorstep tomorrow and would drop it by then.
'And you're doing this too?' she said, waving her arm at the street.
Jonas agreed that he was, and the look she gave him made everything worthwhile - even having to leave Lucy alone. With any luck the news would be all round Shipcott tomorrow that he was making night patrols. If a killer was out there, maybe it would make him think twice.
For the same reason he dropped into the Red Lion and was greeted so warmly that yesterday's impressions did seem to be no more than paranoia. He felt foolish. Everyone in the bar now seemed to know that he had jumped into the freezing stream and tried to revive Yvonne Marsh, and clamoured to buy him a drink. When he told them he was on duty and explained about the night patrols, the atmosphere grew even warmer.
'Good thinking, Jonas,' said Mr Jacoby to general agreement, and Graham Nash brought over a coffee on the house.
The talk in the pub was all about the deaths. Murders, they called them both already, because nobody believed that Yvonne Marsh had lived all her life in Shipcott but had chosen this week to fall into the stream and drown. Jonas couldn't disagree, although he wouldn't speculate out loud for them. They didn't mind; having Jonas be the voice of reason would only have spoiled their theories.
'I reckon it's some nutter from Tiverton,' said old Jack Biggins of the cow-and-gate incident. His macro-xenophobia meant that everyone beyond Dulverton was a suspect.
'Could be anyone just passing through,' suggested Billy Beer, vaguely enough for the others to feel confident in disagreeing with him.
'Now if that were it,' said Graham Nash, 'we'd have noticed him.' Which was true, thought Jonas, because a stranger in a village this size in the middle of winter stuck out like a sore thumb.
'Maybe one of our own turned bad then,' shrugged Stuart Beard.
Beard was the kind of man whose opinion usually attracted sage nods all round, but Jonas noted that this time there were only a few careful grunts of agreement, noticeably half-hearted enough for him to look up and see that Clive Trewell - father of Skew Ronnie - was sat in the window nursing a half.
Jonas went over to him and said hello.
Ronnie Trewell had been a good kid but was growing up all wrong, and Clive Trewell was not used to speaking to Jonas Holly in anything other than an official capacity.
Clive blamed himself; he'd encouraged his son to take driving lessons, and driving lessons had been like lighting a blue touch paper for Ronnie Trewell. Some people had a calling. They were called to be missionaries in Africa; they were called to find delicate art hidden in marble blocks; they were called to open their homes to hedgehogs or stray cats. Ronnie Trewell was called to drive. Very fast. And because he couldn't afford anything faster than a thirteen-year-old Ford Fiesta with the weekly wage he earned at Mr Marsh's car-repair garage, he was called to steal those very fast cars.
Teased away from school because of his lopsided walk, caused by an uncorrected club foot, Skew Ronnie had achieved the wherewithal to steal cars, but not the guile to hide the fact. He would simply drive around in his Fiesta until he saw a car he wanted to drive. Then he would steal it, leaving his Fiesta in its place, keys in the ignition for convenience's sake. It did not take Sherlock Holmes