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From cursory inspection, Marvel surmised that each had been rendered unconscious or killed outright by a single mighty blow to the head. Then the killer had made sure by smothering them with their own pillows.

Marvel thought of the killer’s rough hand on the frail faces, holding it there until he was sure each was lifeless. Then moving on.

Marvel thought this, but said nothing. He did not trust himself. And he could barely hear himself think for the hoarse whispers of the dead. Avenge me! Avenge me!

Reynolds had his notebook out and for once Marvel was grateful. His own head was so full of the horror that he felt he’d need to empty it like a waste basket before he could actually sit down and start to make sense of the carnage.

Downstairs he could hear the sound of crying. Lynne Twitchett had been crying since they had arrived, less than ten minutes after getting the call from Jonas Holly. The other residents cried spasmodically, and when they weren’t crying they were comforting others who were, in quavering, tremulous voices that might as well have been weeping. Rupert Cooke had arrived red-eyed just after he and Reynolds had, and had continued to burst into tears every few minutes after that. The Reverend Chard was trying to offer words of comfort, while openly weeping at the loss of his own father.

Mayhem on wheels.

It seemed the only person not actively crying was Jonas Holly, and Marvel thought that might well be because the young constable was in shock. He had been called by Lynne Twitchett, and met Marvel and Reynolds at the door. He had taken them through his preservation of the scene in a low, careful voice. He had made sure everyone stayed in their rooms as far as was possible with confused old folk, and had asked Rupert Cooke to call all his relief staff in to help organize things in case the home had to be evacuated to allow the investigation to continue.

He had ensured that there were no other casualties in the first- or second-floor bedrooms and had kept people from moving about the house unnecessarily. He had taken off his boots. ‘I thought they might be able to get prints off the carpets.’ He shrugged sadly.

Jonas Holly had done a good job. Dully Marvel recognized that he’d done a similarly good job in most respects at the scene of Margaret Priddy’s murder, for which he’d received no credit. Ah well, life wasn’t fair.

The young constable had written everything in his notebook and kept referring to it for much longer than seemed necessary – kept staring at the pages as if he’d lost his place. At one point Marvel had become impatient and nearly snatched the notebook from him, but then he’d seen the man’s Adam’s apple working in his throat, and he’d given him the extra time he’d apparently needed to be able to speak without his voice breaking into a million pieces.

He felt close himself. Close to tears. He had never cried on a job – never even felt his bottom lip wobble in time to the grief around him.

But this …

This was …

Just.

Tragic.

The old people, helpless in their beds, their spectacles and teeth on their nightstands.

He remembered Lionel Chard, peering at the TV.

Countdown.

Big ears.

He wanted to punch a hole in Gary Liss’s face with his bare hands. The nurse had disappeared. Never come down from wreaking havoc on the first floor. It all made sense now. It always did when it was far too late. No doubt when they caught Liss he would have some ridiculous reason why he had not returned to the kitchen after going upstairs in response to an alarm. Tell them that he’d found the bodies and lost his mind, or pursued the killer across the moors at great personal risk, or checked on Violet Eaves and then remembered he’d left the gas on at home … Madmen were only clever in the movies; in real life they were mostly just mad – and it was usually only the inability of the sane to recognize the depth of that madness which allowed them to prosper even temporarily. Sometimes Marvel felt that being psychotic would be a great asset to a homicide detective; that possibly the Force should leave room for manoeuvre in its recruitment criteria.

‘We should’ve arrested the bastard.’

‘We couldn’t have held him for long, sir,’ Reynolds said. It wasn’t his style to make Marvel feel better about things, but that was the truth.

‘I don’t fucking care. The sonofabitch as good as said he’d killed Margaret Priddy, and we should have taken him in right there and then and made his life hell for forty-eight hours. Maybe we wouldn’t be standing here now. Maybe these three would still be alive.’

Reynolds said nothing, because he felt the same gnawing guilt that they had dismissed Gary Liss as merely a straight-talker, when now it looked as if he were more than that. A lot more than that.

He’d have to be a psychopath.

Yes, he would.