Finders Keepers (4 page)

Reynolds had always prided himself on his patience.

THERE WAS A
new girl. Emily Carver.

Steven tried not to look at her, but even the act of looking away from her made him self-conscious. When it was safe, he stared at the back of her head, where her thick brown hair was caught loosely in a green velvet ribbon.

Mr Peach had to call his name twice before he confirmed that he was present.

However, Emily’s sudden appearance in class caused barely a ripple, due to the equally sudden
dis
appearance of Jessica Took.

The school was alight with
that
news. Excitement crackled through every class like cinema sweets. The ADD kids and the ADHD kids, and the kids who were simply angling for a label so they’d have an excuse, took the opportunity to be extra ‘challenging’. Knots of girls stood around outside classrooms, tearful and hugging each other as if they’d all known Jess personally – and daring the boys or the teachers to question that sisterhood. In retaliation, the excluded boys took refuge in ghoulish speculation. Words that were too harsh for girls or
adults
to say out loud were common currency for the boys – worst-case scenarios shouted down corridors, and kicked about freely on the daisy-strewn playing field.

‘They’ll never find her.’

‘She’s dead already.’

‘I bet her dad did it. Jess always said he hated her.’

Steven did not join in. He kept his eye on the ball and scored twice, thanks to the inattention of the opposition. He didn’t want to speculate about a missing child. Many years ago, he’d almost been one himself. Up on the moor behind the houses, a man named Arnold Avery had once done his best to murder Steven Lamb, and it had left him wary beyond his years.

That didn’t stop his friends.

Lewis was the most voluble, naturally, and had a million ideas about what had happened, how it had happened,
why
it had happened and what the police should do now. Lalo Bryant told them his sister wasn’t allowed out on the moor alone any more, and those boys with sisters nodded agreement that this was a sensible precaution, and that they would immediately take on the role of warden once they got home. The Tithecott twins looked particularly keen, as their sister was a notorious pain in the arse, and definitely ripe for draconian controls disguised as brotherly love.

Only once the bell had gone and they were trailing back to class did Lalo Bryant say, ‘You see that new girl, Emma?’

‘Emily,’ said Steven.

‘Whatever. She’s hot.’

‘I’d give her one,’ agreed Lewis.

There was barely a woman alive that Lewis wouldn’t give one to; for a seventeen-year-old with flaming acne, he had remarkable reserves of self-worth. Even so, Steven felt a prick of anger and a defensive surge towards the brown hair and the green velvet ribbon.

‘Yeah, but would
I
give
you
one?’

They turned to see Emily Carver a few paces behind them.

Steven blushed all the way down to his toes and the others shuffled and looked away.

Always the rubber ball, Lewis bounced back sufficiently to bluster lamely, ‘Yeah, I bet you would.’

Emily Carver stopped, looked him slowly up and down with a curious expression on her face, and then burst out laughing.

It was devastating. Nothing she could ever have said could have destroyed Lewis more completely, and his acne positively glowed. Steven was a loyal friend, so he looked away to hide the fact that he was grinning.

Still giggling, Emily walked between the boys and towards the classrooms.

Lalo shoved Lewis in the shoulder. ‘She got
you
, dickhead.’

Lewis shoved him back, harder. ‘Thanks for telling me she was there, wanker.’

‘I’m not your
mummy
.’

‘Piss off.’

Steven stayed out of it. Lewis was his best friend, but it was nice to see him get taken down now and then. He needed it. Without it he would be
insufferable
. Insufferable was a good word. Steven had just learned it and was trying to work it in everywhere. This was a perfect place.

He watched Emily Carver walk on ahead of them, aware that by unspoken mutual agreement his little group had slowed so they wouldn’t catch her up. It was a sure sign that she’d defeated them.

To Steven, it didn’t feel much like losing.

By the time he got home, Davey had already told Mum and Nan about Jessica Took.

Typical.

Davey was the baby and spoiled – a double-whammy that meant he sailed through life with little regard for the feelings, thoughts or desires of other people.

Steven had that regard. Regard for the fact that his nan’s son,
Billy
, had been stolen and murdered and lost for a generation out on the moors. And regard for the fact that he himself had almost died trying to find his body.

And so
he
would have told them slowly. Would have skirted the subject to see whether they knew already or whether he was going to be the bearer of bad tidings – then would have told them just enough so that they were not badly surprised by neighbours’ gossip, or by seeing the papers in Mr Jacoby’s shop. Although Steven delivered those papers around Shipcott every morning, he didn’t deliver to his own home. His mother, Lettie, was too busy working to read, and Nan bought flimsy paperbacks filled with impossible crosswords, which she said were the only thing she ever wanted from a newspaper.

Steven would have been subtle.

But Davey didn’t have a subtle bone in his body. Steven knew how Davey imparted news – he’d seen him do it a hundred times. Banging the front door, slinging down his schoolbag, shouting
Mu-um! Mu-um!
Rushing into the kitchen, and then stumbling over himself to get the words out. The vital news of his goal at soccer, his earth-shattering B in computer studies, his inside knowledge of the kidnap and murder of Jessica Took.

Steven knew how it went down.

So he wasn’t surprised to walk into the kitchen to find his mother smoking furiously over the sink, his nan staring blankly into space over a half-finished puzzle, and Davey happily spraying tomato sauce over what looked like more than his fair share of fish fingers.

They knew.

‘Hi,’ he ventured.

‘Hello, Stevie.’ His mother’s voice was husky.

Nan looked up at him, her eyes watery with memories.

Steven loved his brother, but –
shit
– sometimes he wanted to punch him so hard!

Nan reached out faintly and, when Steven took her hand, she drew him to her and squeezed his waist.

‘Glad you’re home,’ she said, and then released him. Steven stayed by her side though, and rested a hand on her shoulder.

That night Steven and Davey watched
Top Gear
with the sound lower than usual, Nan frowned at her clues and Lettie laid what she called their ‘valuables’ out on the coffee table: an electroplated teapot and four mismatched candlesticks. She rubbed them all with Brasso until her fingers were black.

No one had asked him yet about the bike. That suited him fine. Nan had said she’d buy him a helmet as an early birthday gift. Steven didn’t think she knew how much they cost. He couldn’t in good conscience let her spend money on a helmet before he had a bike to ride. She’d expect to see him wearing it. Expect to see him
in
the helmet
on
the bike.

Which he didn’t have.

If anyone
had
asked, he’d have had to tell them that he’d bought two wheels and assorted ironmongery.

So, at the end of the day, the news of Jessica Took’s kidnap had saved him from an awkward situation.

Sick.

*

Because they knew Shipcott better than anywhere else on the moor, Rice had booked them rooms at the Red Lion.

It was a mistake on every level.

Cheap but noisy, and with mattresses that had been almost folded in half by years of heavy sleepers, and then turned upside down in a misguided attempt to redress the balance; it was like sleeping on the peak of a Toblerone. On the first morning, Reynolds rolled over, lost his grip – and slid down the west face to wakefulness.

They met in the deserted bar for breakfast – full English for Rice, croissant for Reynolds. None of it enough to disguise the
country-pub
whiff of stale beer, dogs and old crisps trodden into the carpet.

Reynolds wished they’d stayed somewhere else. He stood up before Rice could start mopping up baked beans with her fried bread. She was passably pretty and had many pretty habits, but that wasn’t one of them.

‘Meet you at the car,’ he said.

Outside, the sun was already squint-worthy. How different. Last time he was here it had been in the middle of winter – a bitter January when snow had started and then continued in a way that had made him think it might never stop. The skies had been white or charcoal or pale blue by turn – none of them any indicator of how the weather might be even half an hour later.

This fresh, brilliant scenery brought with it little pricks of guilt, like pins left in a new shirt.

The pub was where they’d bickered and clutched at straws, while the killer went about his work unmolested. Less than a hundred yards away was Sunset Lodge, where four people had died while the police had dithered. Reynolds could even see the first-floor window where the killer had forced the latch. There, beside that doorstep, the killer had washed his hands of blood in a pile of snow, and there he had hidden in the alleyway beside the shop.

The village was a mosaic of memories he’d rather forget. Nothing had gone right for them then. The team – led by DCI Marvel – were behind from the start and never caught up. The killer had come softly, slain silently, and disappeared, like a snowflake which had been unique as it fell but was now just part of the whole once again. The only evidence that he’d ever existed outside the bloody crime scenes had been the notes that he’d left Jonas Holly – taunting him over his inability to stop the killings. And he’d taken Jonas’s own wife as his final prize – a cruel punishment for the young policeman’s failure. Reynolds had never felt more lost or beaten by a case, by a crime, by a place.

His hair had come out in handfuls.

Now he touched his fringe almost unconsciously, seeking the reassurance of soft strands instead of patchy scalp.

Reynolds turned his back on Shipcott and looked instead at the moor, which rose behind the pub and beyond the stream where Jonas Holly had found a body held motionless in the ice. It all seemed like an empty stage where a murderous play had once been performed, because on a day like this it was almost impossible to imagine anything bad happening here. The azure sky, the dew glittering on the bright gorse and the sheer silence made it feel like the set of a film – one of those Jane Austen things that were always on BBC Four. Their scenery always seemed as fanciful to him as their plots, but Exmoor in early summer was just such a place, captured in time. A rock moved just below the close horizon, and Reynolds’s eyes adjusted to pick out the small group of deer grazing close to the skyline.

Calmed by the sight, Reynolds felt the jigsaw take shape in his mind. Now that he’d met Jess Took’s father, he was leaning towards the personal revenge motive, rather than the sexual. That was good.
Really
good. If Jess Took had been stolen for ransom or revenge, the chances of getting her back alive were vastly improved. And success instead of failure in a kidnapping case would look so much better on his record.

Yes, revenge was the most likely scenario
and
the one that was liable to have the most positive outcome. On a day like this, one couldn’t help being optimistic.

Rice walked across the car park towards him, and was opening her mouth to say something when her phone suddenly latched on to a passing signal and burst into life.

She took it from her pocket and frowned at the caller ID, then waited until it stopped ringing and put it back in her pocket.

Must be Eric.

Reynolds thought Rice had broken up with Eric. He wasn’t sure, but a few months back there’d been a time when he’d noticed she was often red-eyed in the mornings and she’d taken
some
personal days. This was not the first time since then that he’d seen her fail to answer her phone.

He was glad that signals on the moor were so appalling. The last thing he needed was Rice being weepy and distracted by boyfriend troubles while they were trying to find Jess Took.

The deer moved off over the rise, each silhouetted briefly against the sky before dropping out of sight. At the summit, the big male turned and looked over its shoulder, straight at him. Detective Inspector Reynolds felt himself unexpectedly moved. It felt like a benediction – like a promise of success.

This would be different. This was
already
different. A serial killer of the old and infirm was not a kidnapper of children. And
he
was in charge now – not some throwback who didn’t even have a degree.

He would work it out; Jess Took would be found; he would be a hero; he would lay to rest the hoodoo of the killer in the snow.