Finders Keepers полностью

All she knew right now, though, was that her throat ached from trying not to cry, here in the open, with Reynolds beside her and the forensic and medical teams unloading their vans and trucks and ambulances behind them.

It was the thumb in the mouth that had undone her – that little-boy gesture that betrayed the teenager for what he really was, and what he always would have been, if he weren’t lying dead at her feet.

‘We’ll have to inform Mr Peach,’ said Reynolds tentatively. ‘Would you mind, Elizabeth?’

‘Yes, I fucking would,’ said Rice, and burst into loud sobs. She knelt down next to Charlie. There was a fly at the corner of his mouth and she flapped it away. It came straight back and danced on his lip.

‘Don’t touch him,’ said Reynolds, but she put a hand on Charlie’s head anyway, and stroked his fine yellow hair the way a mother would.

If she found the man who’d done this, she’d kill him the way a mother would too.

The doctor came over in white paper overalls. He set his bag down at Charlie’s feet and cleared his throat.

Reynolds was at her back. Rice thought that if he tried to drag her away from Charlie she’d have to gouge his eyes out, and then her career would be over. Instead, he touched her shoulder and said gently, ‘Come on, Elizabeth. We should leave him to the doctor now.’

The doctor who was going to saw the top of Charlie’s soft blond head off. For a nanosecond Elizabeth Rice wanted to kill him too. Then all the anger left her and she felt limp without it to hold her up.

It was over. They were too late. For Charlie Peach the Pied Piper case had ended badly.

Rice nodded and wiped her eyes and thanked God for waterproof mascara. Reynolds helped her to her feet with a hand on her elbow.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said.

56

REYNOLDS KNOCKED AND then waited on the pavement outside David Peach’s front door.

A dozen times in his head he’d run through a rota of other officers he could have sent, but had finally accepted that this was something he had to do himself. He’d done it a couple of times as a rookie and been appalled that he’d been allowed to inflict himself on the bereaved. But children were different. Reynolds recognized that, even though he’d never had one. Anyone who had lost a child deserved the most senior officer available to break the news, and that buck stopped with him. All the bucks seemed to stop with him now. It didn’t make him feel any better. He kept clearing his throat, and was suddenly very aware of every single finger and what each was doing. He stilled them all by clasping his hands together like Prince Charles, and felt even more nervous.

How to say it? How to start? There was a right way and a wrong way – he remembered that much. Reynolds ran through it over and over in his head, like an Oscar speech.

Hello, Mr Peach. Can I come in? Get him away from the prying eyes of the neighbours and lingering press.

Can we sit down? Get him off his feet in case he faints and hits his head on the coffee table.

I’m here with bad news, I’m afraid. Too fast. But anything less fast only seemed like toying with the man when he needed to get to the point.

Charlie’s dead. That was the point. There was no sugar-coating it. DCI Marvel would have just said it and moved on. But DCI Marvel was no role model.

Reynolds looked up at the wall of the house, which was painted pale blue like the sky beyond it. In the top window was a piece of paper taped to the glass. It was covered with stickers and glitter and the carefully coloured-in words CHARLIE LIVES HERE.

Tears sprang unexpectedly to his eyes. Shit, shit, shit. He wiped them away roughly but more leaked out. He thought of Charlie in the hay with his thumb in his mouth, of Elizabeth Rice stroking his hair as though he were sleeping, and he couldn’t believe he’d asked her not to do that – or to do this.

Shameful.

He hoped David Peach wasn’t home. Please God, don’t let him be home.

Reynolds didn’t believe in God and apparently God didn’t believe in him either, because almost immediately he heard the sound of someone coming down the stairs, and then David Peach opened the door, took one look at his face, and said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

Bob Coffin opened the gate to Jonas’s run with hands that shook with fury.

He wasn’t wearing his mask. It was that that made Jonas’s stomach clench with fear. The man was so angry he’d forgotten it.

Instead he had a white hunting whip.

Jonas didn’t know what was happening, or why, but he scrambled to his feet. He was still tethered, but the animal in him wanted to be as upright as possible in the face of attack, and as Coffin came at him, he stuck out his hands in self-defence.