Finders Keepers полностью

Bob Stripe from Points West came out of the Gents’ toilets. ‘Not interrupting, I hope?’ he said, when it was quite clear to all present that he fervently hoped he was.

‘Not at all,’ said Reynolds as he squeezed between them.

Reynolds waited until he’d closed the skittle-alley door behind him. ‘Steven Lamb raised a question—’

‘Which was bollocks. Even Kate Gulliver said so.’

‘Kate Gulliver’s changed her mind.’

Rice’s jaw dropped. ‘Is she allowed to do that?’

Reynolds turned his face away from her for a moment. He looked through the little square window in the skittle-alley door at the noisy throng.

Rice could tell he was wondering whether or not to share.

To her surprise, he did.

‘I spoke to her earlier. She told me that she was frightened by Jonas Holly during their final session. So frightened that she feels it might have influenced her decision to clear him for duty.’

Rice was stunned. She couldn’t imagine the super-confident Kate Gulliver being frightened or admitting she might have made a mistake – especially to a by-the-book man like Reynolds.

‘Jesus! What did he do?’

‘Nothing. Or at least, nothing that sounds like anything. She said he brought up the abduction of Jess Took. Then he said that people hurt children.’

People hurt children. Jonas had said the same thing to Steven Lamb, Rice remembered.

Reynolds continued, ‘She said she felt an overwhelming sense of threat and danger from him.’

‘A sense?’ Rice struggled to stick to her guns. ‘Not much to base an accusation of kidnap and murder on, is it?’

‘She says it was just the way he said it.’

Rice felt the sands of reality shift under her feet. With sudden clarity she remembered Jonas saying he understood the Piper’s anger. What was it he’d said? That people left their children on display in their cars like old umbrellas. At the time it had sounded sane. Harmless.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

She bit her lip and turned her face to stare through the little window in the door. Framed like a Hogarth, Bob Stripe spooned one, two, three sugars into his teacup. Marcie Meyrick frowned up into the dark toe of her own empty shoe, while Mike Armstrong from the Bugle set up the skittles.

‘You don’t believe he killed his wife, do you?’ Rice said flatly.

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ said Reynolds, more cautiously than she’d ever heard him.

‘We were there …’

‘I know.’

She nodded. She was all out of fight.

‘I understand your concerns, Elizabeth. But we have to weigh the reputation of one man against the lives of six children.’

‘Five now,’ said Rice sombrely.

‘Exactly,’ said Reynolds.

After the press conference, Rice went back to Rose Cottage with a sense of foreboding.

Mrs Paddon let her in and then stood in the hallway. ‘What are you looking for?’ she said suspiciously.

‘I don’t know.’ Rice started in the kitchen, looking with different eyes this time.

‘You’re wasting your time.’

Rice ignored her.

The bottle of red wine that Jonas had opened for her was still on the counter; still half full. The bills were routine, the laundry still washed but un-ironed, the sink still empty. There was a glass of water on the table with faint dirty smears where the fingers would grip, and Rice remembered that Jonas had been gardening when he’d been interrupted by the children on their way to the woods.

She bent down and examined the glass. The smears were just that – no prints. She straightened up and started to look around her.

‘What are you looking for?’ said Mrs Paddon from the kitchen doorway.

‘Gloves,’ said Rice.

Mrs Paddon stared at her, unblinking.

‘Maybe woollen or gardening gloves?’ She made it a question but Mrs Paddon didn’t give her any help. Rice wished she’d go back to her own house.

She went out into the garden. It was easy to see where Jonas had been. The beds there were clear and turned over, only the flowers remaining in the newly turned soil. Rice didn’t know a lot about flowers – not even cut ones, which Eric had never bought her – but she enjoyed these blue delphiniums, the heady phlox and the great bushes of pink daisies.

No gloves.

There was a little wooden shed at the end of the garden. Inside was dark and stuffy and smelled of earth. The single window was festooned with cobwebs, heavy with dust. She reached to brush them aside, then saw a fat spider stretched out along the sill.

She would make do with the light that she had.

There were tools in the shed and a couple of mountain bikes with webs between the spokes. The single shelf that ran at head-height held countless cans and bottles and containers: slug pellets, weedkiller, rose food, fly spray. There was a plastic bin filled with birdseed. Rice dug into it, in case it concealed something incriminating, and kept her arm there for a bit, up to the elbow, because it felt so odd and interesting.