Buoyed by b.l.o.o.d.y-mindedness and sweet vermouth, he carried on inching his way across the room until he could make out Joy Springer lying face-down on the hairy sofa with her four cats running frantically up and down her body as though she were the last piece of flotsam in the wake of a shipwreck.
He reached out to take her arm and the big grey fluffy cat shot out a razor-sharp claw to keep him at bay.
f.u.c.k.
Marvel dropped to his knees and huddled under his coat for a moment and he coughed until he retched - his eyes and nose and mouth streaming with fluids as his body tried to reject the killing smoke.
Down here the air was clearer, and Marvel bent and touched his head to the flagstones as if praying, so he could breathe better. When he had refreshed himself he looked up blearily and saw the writing on the wall behind the sofa.
He recognized it immediately, even though it was a foot high and on a wall. How he could ever have thought it might be a match for Danny Marsh"s hand was ridiculous. He saw that, now that it was writ so large. And in what appeared to be blood.
Marvel grabbed Joy Springer"s arm and yanked her unceremoniously on to the floor. Three of the cats leaped clear and disappeared; the grey one came with her - its claws firmly lodged in the wool of her old cardigan. It glared at Marvel and growled menacingly before darting away.
He rolled Joy on to her back and recoiled at the b.l.o.o.d.y sockets where her eyes had been.
He thought of Ang Nu. He thought of c.o.c.ktail-onion jokes. He thought of Danny Marsh.
Danny Marsh was not the killer. The killer had been here here.
The b.a.s.t.a.r.d had killed Joy Springer right under his nose! right under his nose!
Suddenly there was not enough air. He gulped for it, needing even more than usual to combat his shock, and finding so much less than he wanted that his shock became panic in a hot, blinding second.
He had to get out!
He half stood, staggered, banged his head on the table, fell to his knees, rolled, crawled, gasped at the floor, lungs bursting, head about to pop, lost his way to the door, and finally curled into a ball and retched Cinzano-flavoured bile on to his own hands.
He had to get out. He had to tell Reynolds. He had to-- Breathe. He had to breathe breathe ... ...
But he couldn"t.
He couldn"t couldn"t-- And the door at the far end of the kitchen suddenly blew off its hinges and let in a fireball that incinerated Joy Springer and the hairy sofa as if they were one big ball of tinder, and then rolled across the room towards Marvel.
The Land Rover only took Jonas so far.
The blizzard was blinding and he did his best but he needed to get there fast and he tried too hard. Halfway up the driveway to Springer Farm it came to a sudden lurching halt in a ditch that Jonas couldn"t even see until after he"d climbed out and gone round to the front of the car.
He wasted no time digging it out, just headed up towards the farm on foot, just as he always had as a boy.
Reynolds despised Marvel. Never more than now, when the man had elbowed him aside and rushed into flames in a display of stupid bravado fuelled by liquor.
Part of him was horrified when his commanding officer disappeared through the door; the bigger part was just furious that when Marvel emerged he would be regarded as a hero instead of the selfish, stupid, alcoholic w.a.n.ker w.a.n.ker that he undoubtedly was. that he undoubtedly was.
He shouted for Marvel a few times, and set his face in a worried frown. His colleagues stood, open-mouthed, exchanging looks, carrying off their worried frowns with far more skill, in his eyes, while all silently asked each other the same question: Should we go after him? Should we go after him?
Grey yelled something unintelligible and ran off into the darkness.
The kitchen window blew out as if a bomb had gone off inside. Bright new flames licked out of the cavity as the fire tried its best to escape the confines of the house and reach the courtyard and the cottages beyond.
"No one go after him!" Reynolds barked. "I don"t want anyone else hurt!"
He saw their relief and was relieved in turn that no one was going to insist that they all do something heroic.
Then someone rushed past his shoulder and into the house anyway.
It was Jonas Holly.
Jonas had arrived just in time to hear Reynolds yell not to go after him, and knew there must be at least one person in that inferno.
He ran into the farmhouse before he"d even decided to.
The heat was like being hit in the face, and steam rose immediately from his wet clothes and hair. The smoke was debilitating. He stopped dead, then took a few blind paces - hands out in front of him in case of obstacles.
He hit the table with his thigh and at the same time stepped on something hard yet yielding. He groped at his feet and found a slippery arm. He seized it with both hands, and backed out of the door with the body b.u.mping along behind him.
The others crowded round, helping him to drag it out of the danger zone.
It was Marvel.
Only half of one sleeve and the upper part of his coat still gave him much cover - his vest and shorts were just blackened rags. His left shin was a vivid mess of red and black, like the leading edge of a lava-flow, with the bedrock of bone showing through in places. The rest of that leg was livid and raw, with bubbles in the flesh of the thigh. His ever-damp shoes had protected his feet from the worst of it, but it was small comfort.
Singh immediately dropped to his knees to check his vitals.
"Not breathing," he said, and started CPR.
Jonas coughed and spat before gasping, "Is there anyone else?"
"Mrs Springer, we think," said Rice.
Jonas turned to go back but Reynolds and Pollard barred his way.
"She can"t be alive," said Reynolds. "Stay here."
"She might be!" cried Jonas, bursting into a fresh bout of coughing and trying to go around them.
"Stay here here," said Reynolds. "That"s an order."
Jonas looked at him in fury and Reynolds almost put up a hand in self-defence.
"It"s your job job to to protect protect people!" people!"
"Not dead people," said Reynolds - and although it was a good answer, he took no pleasure in saying it.
"He"s coming back," said Singh with relief flooding his voice.
They all turned to look down at Marvel, who was now breathing noisily and irregularly, and jerking his arms and legs as if trying to make angels in the snow.
"s.h.i.t," said Grey. "You think he"s got brain damage?"
"Where"s the f.u.c.king the f.u.c.king ambulance?" cried Singh. ambulance?" cried Singh.
"Call control and tell them we need an air ambulance," said Reynolds. "Tell them officer down."
Pollard opened his phone and scurried about the courtyard, seeking a signal.
Jonas started to heap snow on to Marvel"s burned legs and Singh and Rice quickly did the same.
"He"ll be fine," said Reynolds with more confidence than he felt. He leaned over Marvel and said, "Sir? John? Can you hear me, sir?"
Marvel"s eyes flickered and rolled back in his head, then steadied and came to something like focus on his Task Force and Jonas Holly looking down at him.
"Murder," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.
"What, sir?" Reynolds put his ear close to Marvel"s lips.
"Murder," he mouthed again weakly.
This time Reynolds got it.
"He said murder."
The others looked at him, confused.
Reynolds shrugged and - with a wholly inappropriate sense of dawning happiness - realized he was now in charge, due to the unforeseen incapacity of the Senior Investigating Officer. The fire was obviously beyond their control, even though Grey had finally arrived with a coil of heavy-duty yellow hosepipe over his shoulder. Now he needed to stop responding like a panicky man in pyjamas, and start responding like an SIO at a crime scene. He swelled visibly as he straightened up over Marvel"s p.r.o.ne figure half buried in snow.
"Charlie, get that pipe hooked up and you and Dave do your best," he told Grey and Pollard, then pointed at Marvel. "Armand and Elizabeth, keep helping him him. The whole area is a potential crime scene. Me and Jonas will take a look round, just in case." Jonas and I I. Jonas and I I. Jesus Christ! One man down and his grammar was all over the f.u.c.king place.
"We"re just giving up on her, are we?" said Jonas.
"Yes," said Reynolds, thrilled by the horrible brutality of that truth. He looked Jonas square in the eye in case he was going to have trouble with him, but the young policeman just gave a tilt of his head that might have been a.s.sent, might have been a shrug. Either way, Reynolds strode away from the scene of the crime and fetched his torch and his back-up torch for Jonas, then led him across the courtyard.
They left the orange glow and the heat that was turning the snowy courtyard into a giant puddle, and moved into the darkness behind the stables. Once away from the action, it was shockingly serene. Jonas felt quite removed from the horror of it all. The farmhouse burning down sounded like a jolly bonfire; the tiles blasting off the roof like rockets and bangers. The smell of roasting meat filled the air and Jonas shivered, but got a pang of hunger that disgusted the vegetarian in him.
He felt strangely ambivalent about Joy Springer inside the burning house. He wondered if her cats had died too, and thought of the way their fur made him sneeze whenever he"d gone into the gloomy old kitchen with its towering dresser and Belfast sink.
Reynolds switched his torch on; Jonas followed suit and immediately went blind, but for the two bright shafts of speckled light which showed tunnels of falling snow. He turned it off again, without bothering to explain to Reynolds why it was easier to see without it.
They crossed the old hard standing with its ridged concrete, where the blacksmith used to shoe the ponies. Jonas could almost feel Taffy"s head, heavy in his arms as he dozed, while his neat little hoofs were shaved and shaped and scorched and hammered. That strangely comforting stink of burned hair, and the yard lurcher, Nelson, darting in to s.n.a.t.c.h the biggest bits of horn, which made his breath reek and gave him the runs ...
Reynolds said something Jonas didn"t hear.
"What?" he asked.
"Could be anywhere," said Reynolds again, shining his torch across the field behind the stables.
Jonas didn"t answer. From the corner of his eye he"d seen something regular at one edge of the concrete standing. Three or four darker patches in the snow which his memory could supply no immediate explanation for.
He dropped back from Reynolds and walked over to check it out.
Footprints.
Now that he had found what he was looking for, Jonas switched his torch back on and examined the depressions in the snow.
Although the snow was filling them fast - softening them and making identification impossible - they were definitely footprints. Jonas shone his torch into them. There was no tread visible at the bottom of each twelve-inch-deep impression, just a delicate frosting of new flakes glittering in the false light.
Jonas followed them with his torch.
The prints led down the hill - straight towards Rose Cottage.
"Lucy!" he shouted into the night, as if she might hear him.
Reynolds shone his torch in Jonas"s face and saw terror there.
"What?" he said.
"My house!" cried Jonas and pointed to where the bathroom light shone square and yellow two fields away. "He"s gone to my house! My wife! She"s alone. I left her alone alone!"
Then he started to run, bounding through the snow in long, awkward strides.
Reynolds ran after him for a few paces, then stopped. "Jonas! Wait!"
But Jonas ignored him.
"f.u.c.k!" Reynolds turned and made his way back to the blackness behind the cottages. He needed reinforcements. If the killer was indeed at Jonas Holly"s house then he didn"t want to be the only back-up. Once back on the flat ground, he slipped and skidded around to the courtyard once more, almost surprised that things had been going on here without him. The house was still burning, Grey was still playing with the hosepipe, and Rice and Singh were still bent over Marvel and had started CPR again. Reynolds rushed straight to them.
"How is he?"
"Dead," said Singh between compressions.
"s.h.i.t," said Reynolds. "s.h.i.t f.u.c.k s.h.i.t!"
"Yeah, I know," said Singh. "Should I stop?"
Reynolds thought of the months of work he"d put into the file he"d hoped would see Marvel kicked off the force in disgrace and without a pension.
Wasted.
Now Marvel had instead died trying to rescue a civilian from a burning building.
Die a hero, stay a hero.
Nothing was fair.