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‘NO! NO! NO!’

Jonas reached her in two seconds and caught her before she fell. The knife was lodged in her jugular, blood beat from her neck in time to her heart, while she made a very small mewling sound, like a kitten in a box.

Jonas made all the noise. He screamed her name and screamed for help and tried to stop the blood with his hands, then dragged her towards the hatch. He had to get her to hospital. He barely touched the ladder, dropping on to the landing in a heap with his wife in his arms, then down the stairs, slipping halfway, banging his head, and falling to the hallway, holding on to Lucy in a tangled mess of blood and arms and legs.

He raised his face from the cold flagstones, sat up and pulled her on to his lap, repeating her name like a talisman against bad things. If only he kept saying Lucy then she would not die. Would not.

Her copper hair was darkened by thick blood, and her face was spattered and smeared. Her eyes were still open and found his.

‘LucyLucyLucyLucy …’

She looked away from him then and into a future where he could not follow.

‘Don’t go,’ he begged her. ‘Please don’t go.’

But he could do nothing but hold her and watch the light in her eyes go out.

Here on the cold floor behind the front door – where Lucy Holly had already tried to end her life once – she finally succeeded.

Jonas laid her head gently on his knees and pulled the knife from her neck. Then he plunged it into his belly.

‘GET OUT!’ he screamed. ‘GET OUT!’

Jonas repeatedly sought the killer inside him, but his job was done and he was nowhere to be found.

* * *

The walls were thick and stone, but Mrs Paddon was woken by Jonas’s shout of ‘NO! NO! NO!’

She was eighty-nine, but she had been through the war, so she got out of bed and pulled on her coat and boots.

She heard Jonas screaming ‘GET OUT!’ as she approached the front door, but nobody burst past her, so she went inside.

She found Lucy dead and Jonas still alive, so she fetched towels to staunch the blood.

She saw the knife lying nearby, so she didn’t touch it in case it was evidence.

She called the police and the ambulance and told them two people had been attacked in their home and stabbed.

She went back to help Jonas and noticed with a puzzled frown the surgical gloves on his hands.

She had known Jonas Holly since he came home from the hospital in his proud father’s arms, and she knew he was a good boy.

There could be no doubt about that.

So she pulled them off and threw them in the embers of the fire, where they stank and smoked and then melted into flames just as Reynolds and his team finally burst through the front door.

Another Day

Jonas didn’t want to survive and had tried his best not to, but the doctors were skilful and the nurses relentlessly vigilant.

Reynolds insisted on driving him home. He talked all the way. About that night.

He told Jonas how fortunate he’d been that Mrs Paddon knew the basics, and that the air ambulance already on its way for Marvel had been diverted to save his life.

‘You came this close,’ Reynolds told him. ‘You were unbelievably lucky.’

Lucky. Yes. Jonas nodded.

Marvel was dead. Joy Springer was dead. The farm was destroyed. The blood in Jonas’s bathroom was Joy Springer’s. Herringbone footprints found outside the back door had been lost in the snow beyond the shelter of the eaves. They had the knife, but no prints on it except Lucy’s.

‘She must have fought, Jonas,’ he said, in that sick pseudo-sympathetic way that was really just prurience. ‘She must have grabbed the knife at one stage. She was very brave.’

Yes, Jonas nodded. Very brave.

The snow had melted on Exmoor and the day was bright with spring.

They reached Rose Cottage and Reynolds followed Jonas in, even though he was desperate to be alone.

Mrs Paddon was just inside the door and hugged him right on the spot where Lucy had died.

‘You’re a bag of bones,’ she said. ‘There’s a pie in the oven. Vegetarian.’

He nodded and thanked her and wished she hadn’t bothered. Not with the pie and not with saving his life.

They both hovered but he had no more to say to them, and Mrs Paddon had the decency to leave. Reynolds kept talking mindlessly from the hallway as Jonas walked slowly upstairs, one arm protectively across his abdomen where the stitches were itchy and tender.

There was a new stair carpet.

No blood anywhere.

In the back bedroom the ladder was up and the trapdoor shut. He wondered who had cleaned the house and whether they had done the attic.

This is the job you were meant to do, Jonas.

He closed his eyes and swayed.

Marvel was to receive a posthumous Queen’s Commendation for bravery.

‘He was drunk, of course,’ added Reynolds from the hallway. ‘But they’re hushing that up.’

Here was the bed where he would sleep alone for ever.

Here was the bathroom, all nice and shiny.

Here was the laundry basket. Empty.

Here was the mirror.

Jonas stopped his slow inspection and stared at himself.