Finders Keepers (29 page)

‘You don’t really think Jonas killed his wife and kidnapped all these children, do you?’ Rice asked him bluntly.

‘No, but life has taught me to consider all possibilities,’ said Reynolds.

But he was also a cautious man, and Rice was relieved when Reynolds told the search team that they were searching the home of a fellow officer who was more likely to have been a victim of a crime than the culprit. In that spirit they moved through Rose Cottage with a rare degree of consideration.

Even so, the search felt intrusive, and Rice was not inclined to turn the place upside down. As she went through the house she was struck by the curious mix of chaos and Spartan neatness – as if Jonas Holly never entered certain rooms any more, but lived in the others without thought of his surroundings. Rice didn’t do a meticulous search; she didn’t feel it was called for, or that Reynolds had meant her to. She went through the rooms upstairs with a careful hand and an experienced eye.

But she didn’t need an experienced eye to see Lucy Holly everywhere. Her make-up bag was still on the bedroom dresser; her clothes were still in the wardrobe. A woman’s bathrobe hung on the back of the door, her trainers were under the bed – a scruffy pair of pink Converse All Stars.

It was as if Lucy Holly had popped out to the shops and would be back any second, bearing pasta for dinner and maybe a bottle of red like the one Jonas had opened for
her
.

It was a little unsettling, but maybe that was how Jonas liked it. Maybe he liked to imagine that his wife was so close he could almost touch her. That she might walk into the bedroom one night and turn down the covers and climb in beside him as if she’d never been away.

Maybe that was how it was when you lost somebody you loved.

Rice didn’t know. She’d never loved someone like that. She realized that now for the first time, standing at the foot of the
Hollys’
marital bed, and felt the lingering regret of breaking up with Eric leave her like a soft burp.

Staring at the old mascara gone dry on the dressing table, Rice was engulfed by a wave of sadness for Jonas, and another for herself.

Downstairs, the kitchen table was piled high with laundry and mail – most of it junk – while the sink was clean and bare and the draining board held only a single mug, bowl and spoon. A half-bottle of Spanish wine was going bad without a cork.

Reynolds opened the cupboards, which contained ingredients but barely a thing to eat. Herbs, condiments, flour, rice, dried lentils, noodles and split peas, old sauces with sticky lids, and cans of tomatoes.

The front room was dim and everything was covered in a film of grey dust, as if it was all made of television. A red tartan rug folded over the arm of the leather couch was the only touch of warmth.

Reynolds ran his eyes over the eclectic mix on the bookshelf: Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, sports biographies and psychology textbooks. He recognized university leftovers and wondered who had studied the subject. He tilted a copy of
Civilization and its Discontents
off the shelf but found no clue inside. On the mantelpiece was a clock stopped at 7.39, a blue vase without flowers in it, and a photo of Lucy Holly in a silver frame. She was kneeling beside a fresh flowerbed, smiling up into the sunlight with a trowel in one gloved hand.

Not lying at the foot of the stairs with blood bubbling out of her neck.

Reynolds met his own eyes through the mist of the over-mantel mirror. Hazy, and with the light from the window behind him, his hair looked great.

He sighed deeply. If it had only been Steven Lamb who had disappeared, he might have delayed the roadblocks and the immediate request for extra manpower. In the middle of a crisis
there
was always the chance that children – OK,
boys
– there was always a chance that
boys
would invent their own slice of the action. Pretend to fall down a well, pretend to be lost at sea, pretend to be kidnapped …

But with Jonas Holly apparently missing too, everything became even more serious. Either both of them had been abducted, which seemed bizarre, or Jonas had taken the boy and, by logical conclusion, the other children as well.

Which seemed bizarre.

Reynolds sighed again and stared gloomily into the mirror. Overhead the floorboards creaked as Rice searched Jonas’s bedroom.

The answerphone flashed and Reynolds hit Play on a robot message telling Jonas he had won a holiday in Florida and needed only to call this number to claim his prize.

He moved away, then back again – and played the outgoing message:

Hi, you’ve reached Jonas and Lucy …

Shit.

He’d forgotten what a bloody weirdo Jonas Holly was. For the first time, the idea that he might have murdered his wife and stolen a slew of local children didn’t even seem that far-fetched.

He ordered his team to go through the house and garden again. This time with far more rigour.

JESS TOOK WATCHED THE
skin peel off a small brown pony like a flesh banana, and remembered the fruit bowl in her mother’s kitchen. The way her mother polished each apple before it was allowed to take its place among the peaches and grapes; the way Jess was only allowed to take a piece of fruit if she rearranged the display so it didn’t look unbalanced.

Nothing worse than lopsided fruit
, her mother used to say.

Jess smiled wryly against the cold block wall. She wished her mother could see her now. See the straw she slept on, the cement she shat on and the filth she ate. See if her mother still thought there was
nothing worse
than a wonky apple.

Jess’s mouth filled suddenly with tangy saliva as her body remembered the fresh, sweet, juicy crunch of a Braeburn.

Her eyes overflowed.

In the past six weeks, her mouth had almost forgotten what freshness was. Her tongue tasted fetid and her teeth were jagged traps for tiny shards of bone and frayed strands of flesh that resisted her constant probing. She tried never to close her
mouth
now; tried to keep the air circulating. Sometimes she drooled because of it, but it was better than closing her lips on that dank cavern.

The
ssssssssss
sound rose like sticky tape coming off a roll; the pony’s carcass jerked as the last of its skin left it and skidded across the floor attached to the winch. The huntsman filled his arms with the hide and hoofs and head, and walked from the big shed to the incinerator to create more stench of burning hair.

He sang as he went, like a madman.

Of course he did. He
was
a madman.

Jess sighed and turned away.

In the kennel next to hers was the new boy. She didn’t know his name but she had seen him at school. He was in the sixth form. He wasn’t one of the cool kids; he was just an average kid.

Now he was just an average dog.

Hound
. Her father always hated it when she called the foxhounds dogs.

The older boy stirred and Jess turned away from the breeze-block wall and hung her fingers through the chain link on the other side instead.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Hey, you with the ears.’

He blinked and frowned and then opened his eyes and looked at the corrugated plastic sheeting over his head.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’

He turned towards her.

‘I’m Jess.’

He closed his eyes again and ignored her. Jess let him. She’d done that plenty when she’d first woken up here: closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep so she could wake from this lunatic dream in her own bed.

After a few moments, he opened his eyes and looked at her again. She laughed – a short humourless sound.

‘Yeah, it’s real,’ she said. ‘Crap, right?’

He propped himself on his elbows. ‘Jess Took?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re alive.’

‘You’re a genius.’

He got slowly to his feet and stared stupidly down at his dark-blue briefs. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘He took them. Don’t worry about it. He takes all our clothes.’

‘Who does?’

‘The huntsman. I can’t remember his name. But I know he’s the huntsman. Don’t worry, he’s not a perv. Not yet, anyway.’

Steven looked at her as if for the first time, taking in her grubby bra and matching knickers. It was only the second time he’d ever seen a girl in a bra, but this was nothing like the first.

‘I feel sick,’ he said.

‘It’s just the drugs,’ Jess told him. ‘Everyone feels sick when they first get here.’

Everyone
.

Steven peered through the chain link beyond Jess Took and saw a little blonde girl, staring at him with solemn eyes; beyond her was a brown-haired child of about the same size. Kylie someone, and the other girl whose name he couldn’t remember – they’d been taken from the bus. In the furthest kennel of all was a thin, freckled boy with red hair. All the wire between them made the child he guessed must be Pete Knox indistinct and hazy in a block pattern, like a bad digital signal.

‘Hi,’ Pete said, and waved sombrely. Steven raised a slow hand.

‘What’s your name?’ said the blonde girl.

‘Steven,’ he said.

‘She’s Kylie,’ said Jess. ‘And that’s Maisie and Pete.’ She flicked her filthy hair and Steven noticed her collar for the first time. Almost simultaneously he put his hand to his own throat and felt the thick, soft leather collar there. His fingers worked at the buckle.

‘You can’t take it off. It’s locked on.’

His fingers found the little padlock. ‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘’Cos he’s a loony, that’s why.’

A loony
. The childish tag was not enough to describe anyone who would do this.

‘Hey!’ The shout and a metallic rattle behind him made Steven spin round, heart in his mouth. Two kennels down a youngster with bright-yellow hair slapped the chain link with the flats of both palms, and grinned happily.

‘Hey! Hello!’

‘Hi,’ said Steven cautiously.

‘Are we going home? Are we going home for tea? Can I have biscuits when we get home?’

Charlie Peach.

Steven had seen him occasionally, trailing behind his father into Mr Jacoby’s shop; once waiting for Mr Peach inside the secretary’s office after school. But mostly Charlie lived in a separate world, away from the normality of Shipcott. An indoors world where it was safe, or at the special school he went to. Steven had seen a Sunshine coach parked outside Mr Peach’s house on more than one occasion, waiting to take Charlie out for the day with the other vacant, smiling children packed inside.

Although once he’d met the eyes of a boy in that coach.

Above the boy’s crooked hands and shiny, wagging chin, he’d met a pair of eyes that had glared at him as if it was all
his
fault. Steven had looked away and never looked into the coach again. It was a different world in that coach.

Now he and Charlie Peach were in the
same
world. That made his already uneasy stomach feel still more sour.

‘Who’s
he
?’ demanded Charlie, waggling a finger through the diamonds.

Steven looked down and sucked in his breath.

In the cage between them lay Jonas Holly – a bruise painting one eye as black as a pirate’s patch, and a three-foot chain leading from the metal hoop on his collar to a small brass padlock fed through the fence that separated him from Charlie.

Jonas Holly was a
victim
– just like
him
.

All the rules Steven had lived by for eighteen long months
changed
in an instant and he felt dizzy with the adjustment. What did it mean? If Jonas hadn’t kidnapped the children, then had he still killed his wife? Steven felt the two notions warring within him. He’d been almost sure of
both
those things, and now his own eyes were telling him that at least one of them was not true.

He thought of the woods. The memories came in disjointed flashes – the smooth-faced man trying to heave a limp body on to the back seat of the old Ford; Davey’s red shoulder just visible in the open boot; the fear of moving
towards
danger instead of
away
from it, the way his gut churned at him not to …

His brother in his arms – warm, and waking too loudly.

Ssssssh!

Davey hadn’t shushed. Instead he’d shouted and lashed out and caught Steven a stunning blow on the nose. Steven sighed. It wasn’t Davey’s fault; he hadn’t known what he was doing.

‘Where’s Davey?’ he said to no one.

‘Who’s Davey?’ said Jess.

Steven looked both ways through the wire and did not see his brother. He had made it! He smiled inside – then thought of Davey falling into his mother’s arms instead of him, and his face tingled with imminent tears.

‘Who’s
he
?’ Charlie asked again, more forcefully, still wiggling a finger at Jonas Holly.

‘He’s a policeman,’ said Steven.