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Marvel didn’t arrest Peter Priddy, of course. He didn’t even see Peter Priddy. He told Reynolds to continue the house-to-house in Shipcott and then spent the morning shouting at various imbeciles at HQ in a bid to get a mobile incident room assigned. Stuck out in the middle of all this air and weather, Marvel needed the grubby confines of a glorified caravan to feel a sense of purpose.

By the afternoon Marvel’s Task Force were all gossiped out. Unlike movie imaginings of the secretive, sinister life of a small village, Shipcott residents couldn’t wait to give their opinions of whodunnit, and have their shaky recall tested by questions about what they saw on the night Margaret Priddy died. The team felt overloaded by pointless information. Snippets and digs, Miss Marple theories and bad blood.

As the light started to fade from the overcast winter sky, the Task Force met Marvel in the Red Lion to pool their information, and quickly discovered that their collective picture of a possible perpetrator amounted to a sole suspect in the shape of a local thief called Ronnie Trewell. To add insult to injury, between them at first they thought they had three promising leads. It took them nearly an hour to realize that Skew Ronnie, Ron Trewell and ‘the boy what walks funny’ were all the same person – and a mere car thief, to boot.

Despite that, Reynolds made a dutiful note of the name, wrote ‘alias, Skew Ronnie (limp?)’ next to it in his book and felt like one of the Famous Five doing it.

The team also reported that several residents had been short with them because they’d already spoken to the local bobby.

‘That idiot who waggled the vic’s nose?’ frowned Marvel.

‘I suppose so,’ said Reynolds. ‘PC Holly.’

‘Very festive,’ said Elizabeth Rice, and Grey over-laughed as if he thought she just might sleep with him for doing so.

Marvel’s already lined face got even more rumpled and he flicked a fingernail repeatedly against his glass of bitter lemon as if all would be well with the world if only he had a proper pint.

No one had had anything to report from Saturday night that was out of the ordinary because by now they all knew as well as any local that Neil Randall getting drunk and falling over was a regular occurrence, and – as they’d heard from at least four separate sources – that in the throes of passion, Angela Stirk in Bellbow Cottage always yipped like a dog.

‘Got an Asbo for it, apparently,’ said Grey with just a hint of admiration. ‘And her husband’s away on the rigs!’

Marvel stared into his drink as the reality dawned on him.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘They’ve told us precisely nothing.’

‘Maybe there was nothing to tell,’ said Reynolds placatingly.

‘Or maybe they told it all to their mate Holly already.’

‘It’s a possibility,’ said Singh mildly.

‘Fucking yokels,’ said Marvel too loudly, and Reynolds glanced guiltily at the regulars at the bar and hogging the fire. None of them appeared to have heard. At least, no one was coming at Marvel with a pitchfork.

‘Seems Mrs Priddy had no enemies,’ Reynolds shrugged, steering them back to the victim. It always helped to be reminded of the victim in these cases – made everyone focus again when they were drifting or bickering.

‘Yeah. I’m starting to think it was a random thing,’ said Rice, downing her lemonade and wiping her mouth in a way that made Marvel wonder if she was a lesbian.

‘Nothing is random,’ he told her. ‘There will be a reason – even if that reason makes no sense to anyone but the killer.’

* * *

The killer observed Jonas with a cold eye as he made his calls. Saw him bang his head against Will Bishop’s odd logic, saw him step off the narrow pavement for Chantelle Cox with her ugly ginger baby in its cheap buggy, despised the way he scanned the street for the watcher he could feel but not see.

Jonas Holly was supposed to be the protector.

If he had done what he was supposed to, then the killer would never have started – and might have been stopped.

The killer was here because Jonas was not doing his job.

And as long as he continued not doing his job, the killer would only get stronger.

Twenty Days

Jonas got an anonymous call from Linda Cobb to say that Yvonne Marsh was on the swings in her knickers. He knew Linda’s voice and she knew that he knew it, but anonymity was hard to come by in a village as small as Shipcott, and he liked to respect it wherever possible. Nobody liked to be a tattle-tale.

Yvonne Marsh was indeed on the swings in her knickers. Despite the frozen ground, the dull brown sky and the stares of the boys on the nearby skate ramp, she sat slumped and flaccid in a greying bra and semi-matching briefs.

Not for the first time.

Jonas took a scratchy grey blanket from the Land Rover and walked towards the mother of his old school friend. As he got closer he could see her pale flesh raised in goose-bumps, mottled purple from the cold.