Finders Keepers (44 page)

Jonas saw the same things they all did: the bench, the vice, the winch, the chains. But he truly
looked
at only one thing – the half-open door to the flesh room, where Bob Coffin would soon stuff the weeping, terrified children into the stinking carcasses like pimentos in olives. Already the huntsman had a hold of the chain between Jess and Pete. Already he was tugging them away from the others, the gun in his hand making things easy.

But there was something wrong …

Jonas frowned and strained his eyes, and leaned away from Steven to see as much of the small room as possible. It was dark but his eyes were adjusting, and it shouldn’t be
that
hard to see …

When he realized what he was seeing – or what he wasn’t seeing – Jonas felt the world tilt under him. He stumbled and Steven grabbed him before he could fall.

‘You OK?’

Jonas shook his head.

He wasn’t OK.

None of them were.

Jonas said something that Steven didn’t catch.

‘What?’ said Steven.

‘There’s no meat,’ said Jonas faintly. ‘In the flesh room.’

No meat. Steven frowned. That must be wrong. No meat meant there was nowhere to hide them. Nowhere to hide their heat. If there was no meat, how would the huntsman conceal them from the thermal-imaging camera?

How would he make them all cold?

It took Steven for ever to understand. Time slowed to a virtual standstill. He blinked at Jonas with rusty eyelids, then turned his creaking head to stare into the infinite flesh room. The neurons in his brain fired up the message like a sputtering candle; it plodded slowly down axons, and connected to other neurons via two tin cans and a piece of string.

When the answer finally came, it hit him like a sledgehammer.

‘
Steven!
’

He spun round at the sound of Jess’s desperate cry.

She and Pete were on their hands and knees; Jess was trying to get back up, but the huntsman’s right boot was on the coupling chain, holding it to the concrete floor. The muzzle of the small black gun banged and slid against Pete’s thrashing head.

Steven and Jonas moved as one – the only way they could.

The gunshot was deafening.

They fell over Pete and on to Bob Coffin. Steven had the hand with the gun in it in both of his hands, pressing it to the floor like a snake, too scared to let go. The shot still rang inside his head like thunder in an iron bucket.

Jonas and the huntsman struggled beside him and under him, but Steven just focused on the gun. His only job was the gun. The huntsman fought like the insane thing he was, and Jonas’s knees and elbows and head slammed into Steven repeatedly, like a boat tied to a dock in a storm.

Slowly the waves subsided but still Steven leaned on the wrist, trembling with effort, until he saw Coffin’s grip on the gun start to slacken. Even then he was too frightened to let go and grab it. Instead he banged the hand against the cement until the
gun
fell from it, and then used the same slack hand to knock the gun across the floor, where Maisie and Kylie shuffled over to it.

‘Leave it!’ he yelled, and they left it, looking almost as frightened of him as they had been of Coffin.

For a long moment, Steven just lay there, gripping the still wrist, wondering if this could really be the end of it all, or whether Bob Coffin might suddenly throw them both off and murder them all – the way things happened in the movies.

He looked around. Jess was helping Pete to his feet; Pete had pissed himself and Steven didn’t blame him.

Finally,
finally
, Steven looked over at the huntsman’s face.

Jonas Holly had wrapped the long, loose end of his tether chain around Bob Coffin’s neck. Coffin was puce, his small blue eyes wide and staring up into Jonas’s, small bubbles of spit popping at the corners of his mouth.

‘It’s OK, Jonas! I got the gun!’ panted Steven.

Jonas felt for the key in the huntsman’s pocket and then sat up on his chest. He fumbled for the lock under his own chin, and the padlock clicked open. The chain snaked on to Bob Coffin’s chest with a musical hiss.

Then Jonas rose to his feet, dragging Steven up with him, and hauled the slack-kneed Coffin across the shed. He seemed to have no regard for the fact that they were still chained together, and the movement hurt Steven’s neck.

‘Give me the key,’ he gasped, but Jonas ignored him. Instead he looped the free end of the tether chain over the low hook bolted to the wall. Then he squatted down beside Coffin, whose hands now clawed desperately at the links biting into his flesh.

Jonas stared hard into Coffin’s face and jerked the chain around his neck. ‘This is not love,’ he said softly.

Steven shuddered. He’d heard that voice before. He had not imagined it.

You can run now
.

Jonas stood up and crossed the shed as if Steven wasn’t
lurching
and stumbling beside him, and pulled the end of the cable from the winch. The huntsman was lying on the floor, barely moving, his hands at his throat and a faint whine coming from his bloodless lips. Jonas looped the cable around his boots.

‘Stop!’ croaked Steven. ‘Stop!’

But Jonas walked right through him, knocking him off his feet once more. He kept going, pulling Steven along with him, backwards and in a crude headlock. The feeble hostage who had looked like roadkill now seemed to have the strength of ten men; the teenager hanging from his throat was a drag, not a bar to his progress. Steven clutched at Jonas’s arm for support and looked up at the ceiling – at the curtains of cobwebs in the rafters, and the old-fashioned strip lighting like in Ronnie’s garage. He arched his back and craned his head to see where they were going, and saw the buttons on the wall beside the winch.

Jonas Holly was going to tear Bob Coffin apart.

In his mind, Steven could already see the huntsman stretch, hear the shrieks and the ripping muscles, watch the neck lengthen and split, exposing red-liquorice veins and chewing-gum skin. He could already see the head jerk and pop off, and roll twitching into a corner, while the rest of Bob Coffin fishtailed across the floor, spraying fountains of blood, until the soles of his dead feet hit the wall.

Jonas stopped at the winch and Steven twisted to look up into his eyes.

They were as blank as a shark’s – as cold and dark as the muzzle of the huntsman’s gun – in a face Steven had seen before and would never make the mistake of forgetting again.

‘You killed her,’ he whispered. ‘I know you did.’

Jonas said nothing. And – even over the battle-drum roar of the rain on the roof – Steven heard the winch whirr into life.

‘Get out!’ he shouted at the rafters. ‘Jess, get them OUT!’

Then he squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears, but he heard the screams anyway, as Bob Coffin started to die.

RICE BEAT THE
helicopter to the Blacklands Hunt kennels.

Reynolds knew she would.

The rain was biblical now and the second they stepped out of the car they were drenched. Reynolds ran through the yard – past the row of empty kennels on his left, stables on his right.

‘Be careful!’ yelled Rice behind him, but he wasn’t. Irrational fear had gripped him and made him reckless for the first time in his life.

Ahead of him the concrete sloped down towards a large shed. Reynolds faltered as the huge door squealed open, then stopped dead as four children spilled out of the light and into the storm. They were half naked, weeping and terrified, but even through the driving rain Reynolds recognized them as if he’d fathered them.

‘
Elizabeth!
’ he yelled, and he ran down the ramp.

Jess Took pointed into the shed and cried, ‘He’s killing him.’

Reynolds burst through the door in time to see the final screaming agony of Bob Coffin.

Too late
.

There was a loud crack and the chain wound around Coffin’s neck snapped in two. It whipped up and hit the wall, sending a single broken link skittering past Reynolds’s feet like money. The huntsman skidded across the concrete in the other direction, his boots hitting the opposite wall, his knees crumpling behind them.

‘Christ!’ Reynolds bounded across the room and hit the cutoff switch. Jonas Holly and Steven Lamb were right there and he turned to them now, fizzing with adrenaline.

The sight of them stopped him dead.

Jonas Holly was covered in blood and bruises, one eye was barely open and his chest and stomach ran with blood from fresh wounds. Beside him –
chained
to him – Steven Lamb emitted a high, whining noise. His eyes were tightly shut, his teeth gritted with the effort of remaining blind, his hands pressed against his ears.

‘Steven?’ said Reynolds, and touched his shoulder. ‘Steven, you’re safe.’

Steven opened his eyes. For a brief second Reynolds saw relief on his face – then panic hit, and he started to shout and flail.

‘Get him off me! Get him
off me
! Please, just get him off me!
Please
…’

Jonas and Reynolds fended off what blows they could. Reynolds kept saying
You’re safe
and
It’s over
, but Steven was beyond sense. In the middle of it all, Jonas put his hands to Steven’s throat – and opened the lock that had held them together. Steven grabbed the key from his hand and pushed himself off Jonas. He fell to the floor and crawled rapidly away, only stumbling to his feet again as he burst out of the shed door.

Reynolds was so full of questions that he asked none of them. And Jonas Holly just stood there blinking, as if he’d been surprised out of sleep. The brief silence was plugged by the rain and – at last – the
whup-whup-whup
of the chopper.

Reynolds knelt and unwound the chain from Coffin’s neck as the ambulances approached. He was going to need one. Coffin was still breathing but not moving. Whatever the provocation, if Jonas Holly had done this to him, there was something wrong with the man. Something seriously wrong. Reynolds felt it in his guts and he didn’t care if it was unscientific.

He saw a gun lying in the middle of the floor. Under normal circumstances he’d insist that it was left where it was, for the scenes-of-crime officers to photograph in situ. But these were not normal circumstances, and Reynolds stepped swiftly over Bob Coffin to pick it up. He felt safer with it in his hand, and realized just how
un
safe he’d felt until then.

God knows what the hell had happened here over the past two months
or
the past two minutes. He had an uneasy feeling that the Piper case had only just started giving up its secrets. He shivered. This hunch thing was like opening the window to a vampire – after letting the first one in, it seemed he had no choice in the matter.

Paramedics strode in, and he pointed at Bob Coffin. One of them put a blanket around Jonas’s shoulders and led him out of the big shed.

Reynolds watched him all the way.

Close to the door, Jonas bent and picked up the broken link. He held it up to the light and turned it in his fingers – twisted and bent out of shape, and rubbed shiny in the corner where it had snapped.

Reynolds heard him ask, ‘How did this get here?’

Rice was in one of the stables, in the dry, wrapping the children in blankets. They were all crying, but for once she felt blameless.

A medic moved among them with the key he’d taken from Steven, unlocking the collars they’d worn for so long.

Steven stood outside. When Rice tried to usher him out of the rain, he twisted away from her. ‘I don’t want to go inside!’ he said. Then, more calmly, ‘Thank you.’

She nodded and brought him a rough grey NHS blanket and he stood shivering against the wall of the stable block as, one by one, the other children were led to the waiting ambulances. Their tearful faces were freshly washed with rain and cautious hope as they waved goodbye. Jess Took hugged him as she left.

Two medics tried to lead him away, but Steven resisted.

‘I don’t want to go to hospital.’

‘You need to be checked out,’ said one medic.

‘I’m fine.’

The man took hold of his arm – gentle but firm. Steven shook him off and pushed him away, panic rising within him—

Elizabeth Rice was suddenly at his side. Her hair was wet again, but this time she didn’t look annoyed.

‘He won’t get in the ambulance,’ said the medic, but she just waved him away and then turned to Steven.

‘Shall we just go straight home?’ she said.

Steven’s eyes pricked and he felt joy cup his heart at the thought of his mother’s arms open to greet him, Nan’s eyes all big and shiny behind her glasses, Davey happy to see him, and Em’s warm back under his hands. The images were so powerful that he felt the muscles in his arms twitch to embrace them all.

‘Yes, please,’ he said. And he put his arms around Elizabeth Rice and let her hold him until his mother could.

Over her shoulder, Jonas Holly limped past between two paramedics. He turned his brown eyes towards Steven and raised a hand.